Piper 90: Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goneawaymod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
goneawayworld2021-04-10 09:37 pm
goneawaymod) wrote in goneawayworld2021-04-10 09:37 pm
3..2...1...CONTACT!
Who: The New Hires
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Possible in every memory, warn in subject lines.
Contact.
It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking across the Top Deck. Taking a slow breath between reps in the training room.
The New Hires are connected. Mental pathways locking together, they're forced into one another's innermost beings. Thrust into one another's memory palaces where the mind collects and stores everything that makes them who they are. The core of their beings are only a few steps away and no one can help the violation.
To make matters worse, it comes with no explanation or no ability to pull out and stop. Once they're through the first memory, perhaps they can find a way out, but they're already witnessing some event from their host's past. And, if they left, who knows whether or not they'd end up accidentally invading another memory palace?
And if they were there, who was in theirs?
[[So, how this works: the memories can either be viewed in spectator mode or the guest can be experiencing everything themselves. The person whose memories are being shown, the host, can watch as their current self or take the form they had of their past self. They can talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.
They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can control any other memories they'd like to show people after. Of course, there's also always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up other memories unbidden.]]
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Possible in every memory, warn in subject lines.
Contact.
It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking across the Top Deck. Taking a slow breath between reps in the training room.
The New Hires are connected. Mental pathways locking together, they're forced into one another's innermost beings. Thrust into one another's memory palaces where the mind collects and stores everything that makes them who they are. The core of their beings are only a few steps away and no one can help the violation.
To make matters worse, it comes with no explanation or no ability to pull out and stop. Once they're through the first memory, perhaps they can find a way out, but they're already witnessing some event from their host's past. And, if they left, who knows whether or not they'd end up accidentally invading another memory palace?
And if they were there, who was in theirs?
[[So, how this works: the memories can either be viewed in spectator mode or the guest can be experiencing everything themselves. The person whose memories are being shown, the host, can watch as their current self or take the form they had of their past self. They can talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.
They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can control any other memories they'd like to show people after. Of course, there's also always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up other memories unbidden.]]
no subject
"She was a threat in the only way that fucking mattered to him."
Her shoulders tense up and her fists clench, her posture shifting as if she's going to suddenly lash out at something—it's the kind of body language Carolina may still recognise, from the many times South took out her frustration on door panels, locker doors, and other inanimate objects.
But then, just like that, it falls away. South's shoulders slump.
"Damn fucking right you failed her," she says, and, beneath the anger, her voice threatens to crack. "You were too wrapped up in the Director's fucking games to really see anything else, too busy trying to get what you wanted."
There's a sense she's not just talking to Carolina, anymore.
no subject
And she regrets that.
Carolina watches South, carefully. "...Do you know what I wanted?"
This isn't a game. It isn't a gotcha, or a trap. Carolina just probes the edge of seeing whether South has bothered to put this together. It's not whether she can, it's whether she's bothered.
no subject
South wonders, sometimes. Wonders if, maybe, she could have been easier for CT to trust if she'd just tried, if maybe then...
She tries to shake the thought away, and it's easier when Carolina asks that question. It makes South's back straighten up a little, her head half turning back towards Carolina. Her mouth opens, then closes, her jaw flexing subtly.
"You wanted to..." her brow furrows. She wanted to win, right? She wanted to beat Texas. She wanted to...
What did she want? Why did beating Texas matter so fucking much to Carolina? Why did any of it matter so much to Carolina? What mind game were they playing with her? For her it was her brother, but Texas was only...
Wait. No. Texas was something else. North told her, the day Carolina arrived, the day Price did that stupid 'apology' and...
"...shit."
no subject
It's over, between Carolina and the ghost that raised her. No matter how many times Price tries to raise the specter, Carolina has her closure.
"But maybe some things make more sense now."
no subject
"Yeah, uh. Yeah. They do. Shit."
It was bad enough having her brother around, pseudo-dad as he always has been to her, but to have your father be in command of the program, and then the whole weird shit with Texas...
Yeah. Thinking about that's enough to cut through a lot of the surface-level rage. It makes some things slot into place in a way they couldn't before.
South groans, turning around only to sit herself on the floor, knees up loosely and elbows resting on them. She drags her hands through her hair again, taking a deep breath.
"...not like I have a leg to stand on. I fuckin' all but killed my brother. It's just— this," she gestures around, vaguely, "this is... fuck."
no subject
Carolina didn't expect it. Her hopes only went as high as 'endure memory purgatory and not start an actual fight.'
"Yeah," is what she says. What is she going to do here, now? How do you follow this up? Carolina isn't wise, she's just tired.
"I'm serious when I say I don't think I'm better than any of the rest of you. I was trying to be, once, but..."
no subject
South’s hands fall away from her head and droop between her knees, instead. She looks the kind of tired sleep can’t fix and uncharacteristically unsure of herself, now that so much of the rage has fallen away.
This certainly isn’t the South from the Project, and it’s probably not even the South that so baldly let Carolina know everything she’d done wrong when Carolina first arrived.
“No shit,” South says with a weak snort. “I... fuck. You pissed me off so fucking much with that— that golden child act, the way you freaked the fuck out about being number two when they just kept pushing me down and...”
She groans, again, dropping her head. She takes a breath.
“I was so fucking done with your shit I petitioned for one of your fucking AIs if you died or became a fuckin’ vegetable, as if that wasn’t fucked up as hell.”
It was callous and cruel and maybe South should have known then that she was on a path that would only end in her causing irreversible harm, but at the time...
“I was just so... so... done. With Command’s bullshit. With all of you. CT was fucking gone and North cared more about his stupid AI and—”
Another breath. Her hands cup over the back of her skull, now, her head down.
no subject
She rests her forearms on her legs, a crack in the composed posture she's been holding.
"I finally had a place where I had done everything he asked of me, and it wasn't enough. So, I kept trying. And he let me, because I pissed him off and he knew it would hurt me."
He knew. Carolina can see it in hindsight, it slots into a pattern of other times where her father lost his temper and let her charge ahead to prove a point. It was the same way the last fight about how her decision to enlist had ended, once.
"I think wanting to be done with all of Command's bullshit is probably the most rational thing any of us can feel. CT, you, hell. Even Tex figured that one out before I did."
It's fucking embarrassing.
no subject
“Fuck. And I thought my dad sucked. Which, I mean, he fucking did, but once I was out of there I was fucking out of there.” He wasn’t her fucking boss, jesus christ.
She exhales something resembling a laugh without any humour.
“S’not like I was done with their shit for the right reasons. CT— she saw what was happening, I sure fucking didn’t. I was just done with being treated like... like I’ve alway been fucking treated. It wasn’t even new. Fuck.”
That’s almost the worst of it, it wasn’t new. It was the same old bullshit she’d been dealing with her entire life, just planned instead of organic. Her life experience condensed down into a fucking experiment.
“I kept working for them. Even after everything. I kept fucking working for them and— and—” then she let North die. “Ugh. Look, my fuckin’ point is— I didn’t figure out shit, either. Not really.”
no subject
Carolina did. It all made a twisted kind of sense to her that she could only pick apart later. It hadn't been right, but she'd spent so long trying to win the system it had to be if it was going to mean anything.
And it wasn't just the system.
"I thought I deserved it. Good parts and bad parts."
For not being good enough.
no subject
South lifts her head to look at her. There's not exactly something as obvious as concern or sympathy in her face, but there's something there.
"...fuck. We really were all some kind of fucked up, huh."
She's always sort of known that subconsciously, of course, but knowing it consciously is new. Thinking about it. Realising the ways the Project fucked with them all in ways that were designed to hit them where it hurt the most, pulling on strings that, for many of them, had always been there, but were placed into the hands of the Counselor and the Director.