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

city

[takenalive]

[Alloran is an Andalite, able to process three separate streams of vision simultaneously. Esplin has used him to acquire and morph an eight-headed beast and one with twenty eyes, each overseeing a different tentacle, and even though that was really only possible through the morph including those creatures' nervous systems he has that experience. He has a better ability to sort through this kind of thing than a human would, but it's still so much information all at once. Maybe if the ancillaries had all been clustered together in one place he'd be on top of things, but even then, it's more complicated than spreading one mind over multiple heads.

So he can process some of this but it's a lot, and he's got to let it stream past and glean what he can.]

<This will give me a headache, I expect.>

[breq]

It might.

[ There's a murmur and there's Breq, watching it all play out. She knows what happens; how this ends. It's a memory after all. It's all quiet, all still.

And then she goes to pieces. All of her fragments are fractured and confused, not able to communicate, none of them working together. This is a memory, though, and so she still manages to "see", because eventually she was made whole again. One of her hits a storm alarm and the wail of a siren starts to rise over the city. Another of her runs to wake the officer. Yet more of her come streaming into the central square. It's all confusion and raised voices as they try to coordinate. ]

[takenalive]

[Usually this kind of thing gets conceptualized as standing by, like invisible actors, while the scenario plays out. And that's here, sort of, but there being so many sources of perception is so integral to this memory that it's hard to have a sense of being present as himself at all.

It's easier after the fracturing, because even if it's still a memory from many points of view, the whole is assembled after the fact.]

<Urgh. I assume that was some signal being disrupted?>

[breq]

Yes.

[ She replies with a nod, watching as the confusion continues. Like a group of ants disturbed, all running in different directions. ]

They were blocking the signal that allowed me to be... whole. It was unknown to me at this point.

[ The lieutenant is awake and now things move swiftly; one part of her returns to report a mob of people descending from the upper city. Still others begin to gather in the square. And another reports on the safety of the lieutenant. ]

[takenalive]

[He raises his hands and rubs an area that would be around the hinges of his jaw if he was human. As an Andalite he's got a very different skull and braincase arrangement and this is something a little closer to rubbing his temples.]

<So that's what it is, you're not quantum entangled. It's maintained by something in the ship? And this disruption also disables more traditional communications, so it's not just to affect... you.>

[It would have to be, the ancillaries still coordinate well just based on vocal communication.]

[breq]

In point of fact... it is meant to disrupt me. But also to prevent other people from knowing what's about to happen.

[ The mob from the upper city descends while the lieutenant speaks to the Lord of the Radch, who has seemingly come to see this situation herself. She's been visiting, some part of Breq's memory notes, but she ought not to be here. Especially not alone. There are thoughts running in so many ways, but the ancillaries and the officer begin to cobble together a plan - they'll get the mob into the temple and then they can be handled and hopefully no one in the lower city will be hurt.

Because this mob is after blood.

So the square empties. The temple yawns open. The mob approaches. ]