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
"Hey. Just...was hoping if I couldn't see it it'd go away." Which obviously didn't work.
"Goddamnit," the girl sitting on the blanket says, flapping a developing polaroid photograph in her hand. "That meteor didn't take either."
"Language," Dan in the memory says, laying back on the blanket with his head cradled in his arms, looking smug.
"You swear all the time," she says. The real Dan keeps looking at Price, not at the memory he's still trying to ignore gamboling around him.
Price has made efforts to understand him, same as Dan's made efforts to understand Price and arrange the constellation of behaviors and details he's noticed alongside the reputation to try and make sense of him. As much as Dan hates it, hates transparency in any form, and as much as he doesn't trust Price not to weaponize Dan's past the next time Price decides to lash out at someone, maybe it's not the worst thing in the world that Price sees a little more of the inner workings of the guy who's committed himself to being Price's friend.
It's not a gesture of trust, because it isn't willing. Dan wouldn't willingly share any of this. But it's something.
Dan turns to Price. "So, the last time this happened, where we all saw each others' memories, I had a gentleman's agreement with the other guy that we'd never, ever talk about it again to each other or anyone else. That a bargain you'd be willing to make with me?"
no subject
Dan is really adamant on not addressing this memory, is he?
This tickles Price's petty side. What is it, Dan gets to be seemingly perfect and a human being? He should be forced to pick one too.
It's so irritating! Dan is rotten just like everyone else, but acts like he's so pure, and now comes up with this trick question. Asking not to speak about it like he's begging for an amount mercy that Price is supposed to feel (wrong), but also implying that Price can't be trusted with a secret even if it is his damn job. Fake, disgusting emotional blackmail. Which wouldn't be disgusting if it came from someone who did not act like they were above it. Oh, Dan will pay for this.
A smirk creeps on Price's face for a fraction of a second.
"I assume the little girl dies, correct?"
If Dan is so smart he should have not said 'again', that implies that now it's more than alright to pester and torture him about it.
"That is quite sad." the monotone doesn't make it easy to distinguish, but he's mocking him. "I understand why you do not want to see this, Daniel. Would it reassure you to know that I will gladly grant your request?"
no subject
"It would reassure me. I ain't never been nothing but good to you, Counselor, and I can mostly say the same of how you've been to me."
So why change that now? They have, thus far, an acquaintanceship - Dan considers it a friendship but suspects that's one-sided - that Dan's felt has been nice and positive for both of them, uneasy but filled with little moments of understanding and connection. It's a painful subversion of expectations that Price would capitalize on Dan's dead daughter to twist the knife.
Why be cruel? Why be cruel about this?
The memory shifts very abruptly, so quickly that Dan almost loses his footing as the desert vanishes and is replaced by linoleum, aisles of packaged products, shopping cars and overhead fluorescent, name brands, piped in maudlin 90's hits. He steadies himself against a display of peanut butter inside a grocery store, an...Albertson's, if Dan's guessing correctly at which memory this might be, which of many as the memory versions of him and the girl run a scam they've done a thousand times.
The memory of Dan is a little bit younger, even though Ellie seems the same age. "Find a pack of thank you cards," Dan says to Ellie as they go through an aisle of stationary, and he grabs a large bouquet of somber white flowers and dumps them into the loaded shopping cart, which is otherwise populated by a mixture of necessities of living in a car - wet wipes, toothpaste, a box of cereal, a case of bottled water - covering small indulgences like candy bars and a jug of malt liquor.
"You think they reported the credit card stolen yet?" Ellie asks, picking through cards and finding a set with white lilies and In times of need, all that matters is the people who are there for us on the front.
"Hopefully they didn't, but if they did-" Dan grabs a big box of diapers as they turn the aisle and plunks it into the cart, "-don't see no reason why this wouldn't work as well as the last time. Okay, find our mark."
The memory follows the duo as they finish their shopping trip and get in a checkout line Ellie selects, the same line as a college girl with nice clothes and a t-shirt for a local charity. Dan's credit card is, as Ellie predicted, declined, which means that he and Ellie smoothly dovetail into plan B.
"I'm sorry, sir, it looks like you must have hit your limit- I can have the bagboy help you put some things back-" the cashier says, trying to be gentle and uphold store policy at the same time as she hands the credit card back.
"It must be the flowers, they're putting it over," Dan says sadly, with tears welling in his eyes. "Sweetheart, can you take these back? Mommy knows we love her even without flowers."
Ellie, with her voice quavering, takes the bouquet. Her lower lip shakes and she cries. "But she'll be the only mom at the cemetery without flowers!"
"I know, honey, just please don't make a scene and put these back," Dan says, playing the part of a stressed-out, bereaved widower barely keeping from melting down in public to an absolute T, feeding off the improvisation with Ellie, who's just as committed to her role. He turns back to the cashier. "I'm sorry, since her mom passed my head's been so scattered. The cremation place must have auto-charged my card. There any way you can tell me how far over we are, so I can go through the cart and make sure we're not buying nothing we don't need?"
"I'm sorry, sir," the cashier says, "but I can't see how far over your credit limit you are. Maybe try the chip again, it could be a card reader error..."
Ellie bursts into tears and starts to slowly walk towards the aisle to return the flowers. It's maudlin, it's even transparent. But the college girl has looked up from her phone and is peeking at the shopping cart full of diapers and essentials, and she's looking at her purse with the Doctors Without Borders sticker, and after a moment the college girl speaks up.
"Hey, hey, sorry, sir, you can just put it all on my card." She gives Dan a smile. "Just pay it forward, okay? Losing a parent sucks, I want her to have some flowers."
"I couldn't ask you to do that-" Dan starts, but she interrupts and insists, and Ellie gives the college kid a big hug around the waist that distracts the college girl from seeing that plenty of the stuff going from the cart to the conveyor belt isn't essential at all. Soon, Dan and Ellie are leaving the grocery store with nearly three hundred dollars worth of groceries, with only the cashier's long stare as evidence that anyone suspected it was all a ruse.
The real Dan and Price are compelled by some invisible force to follow to the sunbaked parking lot, where, upon getting to the car she and Dan live in, Ellie dumps the thank you cards and flowers in a trashcan. "Save the diapers, they're better than paper towels," Dan in the memory says.
no subject
Even so, now that he's been proven right, that Dan isn't a saint at all, it's...Satisfying and disappointing at the same time. The negative feelings take over.
"Are you perchance afraid of making yourself look bad?" he defies "It's not like anyone would believe me if I ever decide to say anything."
Plus it's not like Dan didn't befriend him to show how much of a good person he is, the saint that tends to the outcast because his heart is so pure and special, because proclaiming himself as the paladin of lost causes is his way to reframe his failures in order to cope with them. If this wasn't true, then Price wouldn't have been able to take a gamble such as jumping off the damn roof so that Dan could react accordingly.
"YOU are a liar that plays with people's emotions too, Daniel!" he fails to raise his voice as always "I don't judge people for committing crimes or inflicting pain, whether they do so out of necessity or not...But you do."
So how are they different, really? What allows Dan to preach from his high horse?
"So what is the truth? Is it part of your mask?" meaning, are you like me? "Or are you just a hypocrite?"
no subject
"Judge people? Is that what this is about?" Dan goes through a quick journey, all written on his face, of confusion to hurt to annoyance. "Counselor, I ain't never held myself out as better than anyone else here. I ain't ever judged you and found you wanting. I've sure as hell disagreed with you, but that ain't the same as disrespecting you."
Dan feels hard-pressed to even properly address Price right now, because the accusation feels so completely inane compared to the fact that, in front of him, he can see an image clear as day of the girl who became his traveling companion and only family for years, the definition of "thick as thieves", as she flips through a giant book of miscellaneous CDs to pick the road music.
"I don't care if I look bad." To an extent, it's true. Dan wants to be social and make people happy and look out for them, but it's not about whether he's liked or respected. He's an illiterate, undocumented stripper and panhandler who lives in a car and sounds exactly like the twenty years of tobacco use he's lived. As far as he's concerned, Price may be the pariah of the New Hires, but Dan's the outcast in the world at large, his very existence extremely judgable. "I just don't want to remember things I can't have back. That's why I want to not talk about all this again. That's all. Ain't everyone out to get over on you, Counselor. You want the truth, the truth is that I'm a liar and a cheat and a whore and a thief, so if that makes my being kind to you hypocritical, so be it."
no subject
"Don't worry, I will not tell anyone."
That's what matters, anyway...
no subject
If he weren't in the middle of his own hell, he might be able to think of some reasons, understand some of why the Counselor is meeting him with mockery and derision and paranoia when Dan feels he's invited none of that. But Dan can't think straight. Dan's only barely able to hold his thoughts together right now. It's as if halfway through each thought in his head, the image of Ellie, dead, prompted by the sight of her alive, crashes like a wrecking ball. He feels sick, and moreso, in having to even spare attention to Price's anger, like the victim of a car accident being tasked to pick themselves up and walk to the payphone to call their own ambulance.
No, maybe this isn't about Price at all. Maybe Price isn't surprising and disappointing him at once. Dan can't tell if he thought it possible Price wouldn't lash out at him, or if he knew Price would eventually but just didn't care enough about protecting himself to avoiding engaging.
"Whatever. Reckon it don't matter if folks know. Everyone will soon enough, with how often this memory thing happens." It's a flimsy attempt to pretend none of this matters and it doesn't bother him, but he stays looking at Price throughout.
As the memory versions of Dan and Ellie drive away, the memory starts to shift again, and Dan tries to control it, tries to psychically beg the universe to show him something easy and benign, but he can't offer it suggestions because his relationship with his memories is fundamentally broken. He can't think of any happy memories, because memories that are happy in him turn into nothing but sorrow that they're in the past, no longer accessible to this version of Dan that exists here, now, walking the world alone.
Because now they're in the desert, middle of nowhere, a ridge of pine-speckled mountains against the horizon on one side and an endless expanse of dirt and scrub to the other, barren and beautiful with arid electricity and a sky swirled with cottonball clouds. Dan still isn't looking at anyone but Price, although he flinches as his eyes adjust to just how bright it is out here.
There's a mustached, short-statured man, and three horses, and five children ranging from about ten years old to five either riding or sitting in a trundling wagon. The family resemblance is so pronounced that it's nearly impossible to tell which of the kids is Dan until his father addresses him.
"Danny, tether up the horses and give the youngsters some treats to give them," Dan's father says, dismounting his horse and grabbing a crate from the back of one of the two wagons. "Kitty and me'll get everything set up."
Dan, the oldest boy at maybe nine years old, hops off his horse and starts to pull extra rein from the saddlebag while the eldest daughter, around the same age, helps her father open the crate and start pulling out metal boxes that look like suitcases and have FRONT TOWARD ENEMY printed on the front. The youngest children are well-behaved, quietly popping apple slices into the mouths of the horses. From here, it's easy to see that all five children have holsters with firearms at their hips.
Kitty sets up one of the boxes, front facing away from the group, while Dan's father explains. "We ain't never going to need to learn how to defuse a goddamn landmine," she mutters under her breath, barely audible.
"Alright, listen up, everyone," Dan's father says, to respectful attention from the whole brood. "We done practiced this on the fake ones already, and Danny and Kitty can undo a Claymore like no one's business, so there ain't no reason to be hesitant. Y'all youngsters are going to direct Danny what to do as he takes this one apart, so I know how well you know your stuff, and then if that goes well you can put your hands on some mines of your own."
"This one got live ammunition, Dad?" Dan, the child, wipes his hands on his jeans.
"Always assume it does, even if you know it don't," Dan's father says, giving him a pat on the shoulder. "But just the dummy one for now, Danny. That way the youngsters can get close enough to watch and learn."
The child Dan crouches down near the mine, and the other kids huddle around, and the real Dan just stays looking at Price, only the slight raise of one eyebrow a challenge to ask Price what his thoughts are on how this strange, child militia point A led to a grocery store diaper scam at point B - how, and if that story is good enough to be up to Price's snuff, enough to absolve Dan's compassion of accusations of hypocrisy.
no subject
He is confused by what happens afterwards.
"...I don't understand. I thought you were fighting monsters."
Monsters don't use landmines, do they?
no subject
He huffs a frustrated sigh, not at Price so much as at this entire situation and having anyone else have access to the things he's tried to bury. "You'll get the whole story anyway at this rate. My parents didn't know what in the world they were supposed to really be afraid of, so they prepared us to be afraid of the military and the government."
Which may explain why Dan finds Price's participation in Project Freelancer to be so foreign. Dan was always raised in opposition to unified structure. He was raised to preserve a small piece of land for a small group of blood-related people, not to invent and create and dominate in any kind of tandem. To an extent, he can never understand Price's position enough to be adequately horrified.
"Should've been afraid of witches." Dan makes another huffing sound. "We got cursed and everyone died and I'm the only one who got away. That's why I don't like people talking about it. Nothing about looking bad, nothing sinister or self-righteous, just about..."
The stiffness, the borderline-combativeness, abates in the face of sorrow. "It's just about the fact that they're dead."
no subject
Dan is treating him like an idiot, of course he's aware that Dan is sorry for his family dying. It's not like Price hadn't pieced the 'everyone died and I couldn't save them' part together, it was already obvious in their very first encounter.
He thinks about how he interacted with Sam exactly three times and how in two out of three he had mentioned Dan, either speaking highly about him explicitly or hinting his fondness for him. He is the one that called him a good person. What the hell was he thinking?!
He feels stupid, if only a little bit. What makes a good person? Isn't it following the orders of empaths who supposedly know better? Isn't it breaking laws that are unfair? Why does it always backfire for him? And why does Dan get to break every rule, commit every crime, and still be a good person? ...Was the Director a good person? He did value 'the right things', before going insane.
"I know you're in pain. I'm not doubting that at all."
no subject
"Then why the accusations?"
The younger version of himself successfully disarms the mine, gets his hair ruffled by his father.
Dan's hands are shaking, even tucked into his arms. He raises his eyebrows at Price again.
"You want folks to treat you better, Counselor, next time you see someone in pain, don't use it as an opportunity to tell them their compassion ain't been good enough for you."
no subject
He suddenly feels unable to formulate a sentence that would convey it properly. Maybe it would just look like an excuse, maybe it is better not to voice this thought, if only because it's Dan's moment and Price having feelings about it must be a manipulation of some sort.
Wouldn't anyone else be disappointed finding out that the one person who encouraged good behaviour and seemingly practised what he preached turned out to be just like the people that hurt them? Is this emotional response inappropriate? Is it once again only inappropriate because it's him?
"You wouldn't understand." he sighs "Besides, I did warn you. If you don't want me to hurt you then you should stay away from me."
A mixture of anger and sadness marks his face before he fades away from the memoryscape.
"You need to give up on your lost causes."
He says it, and he means it, yet there is a smaller but way louder part of him that silently begs 'Please, please don't give up on me'.
no subject
But now Price is gone. Dan's left in a desert that's slowly fading away, watching as the family he watched die fades into the air, as the sun dissolves, the air gets moist and heavy instead of static-shock dry. And he's left without a person to try and help, without someone else's problems to occupy his mind.
Just him and his grief, a world alone.