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, who just, as a matter of habit, chronically ghosts people and would have wordlessly abandoned this entire Rig and everyone on it months ago if not for the fact that he couldn't and for the fact that it would leave everyone here remaining in the ambient peril of their enslavement, smiles and shakes his head.] Attachment's scary to some folks.

[An understatement, from Dan.]

Where I'm from, the first time werewolves change is real traumatic, especially for people who don't now what's happening. Most werewolves who have children turn their kids before they're old enough to remember it.

cw: blood

[credit_not_blame]

I suppose that's true. But given what I know about him, he'd probably just be proud that I figured out how to hunt him down in spite of him going to ground.

[New topic? New topic, apparently. Stacia makes a face.]

We don't know for sure who is and isn't going to shift until around adolescence. There's a whole...magical-science deal there that's not my area. [The moon decides, and she keeps her own counsel. Like the big spirits do. Not Stacia's area, though she keeps meaning to ask some Theurges about it.] It's absolutely traumatic though, even if you grew up knowing it could happen and if someone was on-hand to help you -- fuck!

[The two of them have gone from a well-lit bar to a pitch-dark forest -- well, pitch-dark except for the lights held by three men nearby, clustered around something. As one of them crouches down, the 'something' is revealed to be Stacia, unconscious, her hair a mess and her dress split along its seams and soaked in blood. Present-day Stacia grimaces.]

I didn't have any warning, and I didn't have anyone to restrain me. Cover your ears, I'm about to start screaming.

[hallelujahjunction]

It's alright, I'm part-deaf anyway. [Less than bringing it up would suggest, just with some loss in one ear from a lifetime of firearm useage, but it's not the first time Dan's heard someone wake up screaming and he doesn't want to do anything that might make Stacia feel ashamed of not having full possession of her faculties during a disorienting and traumatizing time like this.]

Are they... [He bites his lip looking at the men, hoping that Stacia would have told him if the three of them were people to be wary of or about to do something evil.] Were they good to you?

[credit_not_blame]

[Stacia looks confused by Dan's question, but her past self starts screaming fit to raise the dead before she can ask for clarification. The man who'd crouched down so that he wasn't looming over her falls over backward in surprise, and the two who'd remained standing likewise recoil from her. Past Stacia continues screaming, and adds thrown forest detritus to her defense until the men have retreated to the other side of the clearing. Present-Stacia lowers her hands from her ears as her past self stops screaming and starts to sob.]

Oh, yeah, I'm safe with these guys. Look, that's Bulletproof.

[The lighting isn't very good, but the man she points at could be the same one from the bar.]

And that's Ace with him. The other guy was never a packmate, but he also used to look out for me. That's what they were trying to do here, they didn't...

[She trails off, looking away.]

I don't remember what happened, not...clearly. I didn't have to see the body.

[hallelujahjunction]

[Dan's sure plenty of people have told Stacia that it wasn't her fault - it is, after all, the kneejerk way to try and ameliorate guilt and counsel somebody. So he doesn't say it. Stacia's at ease enough, it seems, with her lycanthropy that Dan doesn't need to go slapping verbal band-aids on wounds that have healed past that point.

But he does, making sure that he's not sneaking it up on Stacia, reach out to pat her shoulder, as if he could channel the universe into saying sorry you had to go through that through his hand.]

[credit_not_blame]

[A lot of people have tried to reassure her that it wasn't her fault. And, objectively, she's done worse since. But for some reason, this is the one that crops up again and again in her nightmares. She offers Dan a weak smile, more of an acknowledgement of his gesture of comfort than anything else, then looks away toward the wolf that's just appeared in the trees.]

It's why I'm so mad at my mom, you know? [She waves a hand at her sobbing, blood-soaked past self.] She knew this could happen. She hoped it wouldn't, but she knew it could. And even if she'd been lucky and none of us had shifted, it still could have happened to our kids when we had them. Or theirs.

[The wolf emerges from the trees and goes over to nose at the crying girl, who seems willing enough to accept comfort from someone who isn't a strange man.]