3..2...1...CONTACT!

[goneawaymod]

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.]]

Comments

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan snorts. "No, you wouldn't want to hear of it-" but then realizes that if he holds off on explaining, possibly this memory world will decide to spill the beans for him, and as little as he enjoys talking about the curse he would take it a thousand times over having to relive parts of it.

"A witch cursed my family and one of us died painfully every January full moon for eight years. And I'm the only one who got away."

He doesn't want to say more about it. He hopes that's enough for both Loken and for whatever power might force him to see it all again- the way he's so clearly seeing Loken's memory now. He doesn't understand what is happening, doesn't know the history between these two, knows Loken's world only from the descriptions of violence and turning people into weapons.

He watches the memory of Loken's face to see how to respond.

[greyerrant]

Memory-Loken walks away, looking hollow and despondent. He leaves the great cathedral ship to board a smaller shuttle, ignoring the pilot and other servant-like figures beyond giving them a quiet command, and looks at two children, though seemingly not genetically related to the last woman and quietly tells them that Mersadie won't be coming with them anymore. He leaves them to their thoughts, stepping to a window and watches the space around Terra, or Earth as Dan would know it, flare and burn and be blotted out in turn by a tremendous space battle, huge hulking ships fighting others in the void with laser lances and other farm more esoteric weapons. He looks so incredibly tired in the past, as though losing this woman has taken away some final impelling force from him, and the desire for revenge that is more obvious in other sequences or times he has spoken with Dan seems to be nowhere too be found.

"That is vile." Loken says, in the present, and reaches out to gently embrace Dan around his shoulder, trying to comfort the smaller hunter.

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan, for all his gentleness and kindness, doesn't seem particularly receptive to Loken's compassion. He just sort of stiffens under Loken's hand. It's not that he has any disdain for it; it's just that if he takes the moment to feel comforted, to actually think about how deeply he's been wounded, he might never be able to put himself back together, so it's easier to just give Loken a curt nod and think about anything else.

And Loken's memory continues to provide so many other things to think about. Here is a similar deep pain, and a completely different response to it.

"You believe in revenge."

[greyerrant]

"Yes. If the trespass were forgivable, I would not. But when someone embraces something anathema to the continued existence of humanity, you can only respond with retribution."

He pauses. "Your situation seems... more grey."

[hallelujahjunction]

"Retribution don't bring anyone back." Dan shrugs. "Does the opposite, in fact. Just makes more people to grieve."

He shakes his head. "I don't believe there's a such thing as a trespass that's unforgivable. Unforgivable to a certain person, maybe. I wouldn't never ask someone who been victimized to forgive. But so long as someone has free will, they can change what they are now and going forward, and I wouldn't never want to punish the potential decent person they could be over the past person that they were."

Which is an extreme stance in general, but particularly for someone who watched everyone they loved die in agony over a decade because one evil person out there was bored and cruel.

[greyerrant]

" I intellectually understand your point. There is virtue and kindness in it, but it is not one I can subscribe to. When a man chooses to burn entire worlds because they will not swear loyalty to him, I am content to stop him. And that's who I take vengeance on. Fighting... others as a soldier, that is the business of a soldier. Fighting Horus was and always will be about revenge, and about protecting what is left of a wounded humanity."

He looks saddened. "The world would be better, were more people to embrace your ideals. I believe the world is too cruel for them, at least the one I live in."

[hallelujahjunction]

"Stopping someone and punishing someone ain't the same, that's all I'm saying. Even right now, you're placing the two side by side, revenge and protecting, and I'm saying they're very separate and often at odds." Dan shrugs. "We don't got to agree to be friends. I'm aware don't many folks agree with me beyond thinking it's nice thought, intellectually."

[greyerrant]

"I think I can see your point. Have you had to choose between revenge and protecting, then?"

He feels like some aspects of the shared memories have already demonstrated it, but he'd prefer to hear his friend confirm it verbally.

[hallelujahjunction]

"Often." Sounds from Dan's memories seem to intrude, although they just overlay the visual of Loken's memories instead of replace them. Screams, shouts. Gunshots, not the rapid-fire artillery of war but the single cracks of one armed person putting someone or something down.