October Event: Feeling Like a Ghost (Part I)

[lifeaftr_mods]

OCTOBER EVENT: FEELING LIKE A GHOST

Who: Anyone and everyone
What: Your past returns to haunt you
When: October 10th and onward
Where: All over!
Warnings: Character death, as well as potential for discussion of trauma and suicide ideation - please mark as you go!

Try and Hear Me, Then I'm Done

You can find most of the information you need in the OOC info post! In the meantime, feel free to use this log as a catch-all for the duration of the event. While this log will focus on the past portion, you're free to use it for the future portion. As always, you can also make your own logs if that's your preference! Come the 21st, however, we'll likely get an additional log up for those who want to play around with their future echoes as well. Remember also that the present portion will be played out in Mu, during this month's Storytelling.

Remember to let us know if your character dies during this event. Bear in mind, however: death penalties will NOT be reduced for this event.

Event Timeline

[ ♆ ] October 10th: The ghosts of the past appear.
[ ♆ ] October 20th: The warped Storytelling occurs, the Storyteller returns, and those who have died are revived.
[ ♆ ] October 21st: Future echoes replace the ghosts of the past.
[ ♆ ] October 25th: With equilibrium restored, all visions vanish, and life returns to how it was.

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LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[forwearemany]

Though the entity that follows us resembles Creator Tali'Zorah, it is not the same.

(Given the way they growl after that, Tali must have had rome response.)

Though it possess her memories, it does not care.

[counterblows]

[It does not care.]

[Maine does. A little too much. A little more than maybe he should. He stayed in his lane, generally, just as Wash did. He got headaches, mentioned it to Wash offhand, but was only ever to be watched from a distance - never addressed personally.]

How do you verify...anything else?

[forwearemany]

They cannot be harmed or driven away. In addition, we have not witnessed ours consuming sustenance or relieving itself of bodily waste.

(Wash cannot see this, but right now Tali is really unhappy about being referred to as an it.)

[counterblows]

So you just...watch and see. Who's real and who's not.

[He doesn't sound fussed about this, really. That sounds like the steady, inexorable kind of process it would have to be. The kind of process he sat through as he unpacked memory after memory, boxed it away into different pieces of himself, and all the other selves that had gotten stirred up in his head on top of it.]

I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[forwearemany]

Affirmative. Additionally, your illusion cannot be seen by other island residents.

(It is likely Wash has realized this, given that he cannot perceive their illusion, but it remains worth mentioning.)

[counterblows]

[They make it sound simple. Simpler than he's been making things for himself, because that rabbit hole of what's real and what isn't is fucking impossible to uproot himself from, some days. Today is, evidently, one of them.]

I went crazy once. [That's the word everyone uses for it. It's the word he uses for it. It's not really - there's no correct term for what happened to him, for the memories that lit up his brain in a wirework of molten fire, for the excruciating nature of feeling an artificial intelligence self-cannibalize in real time and using your head to do it.]

After it happened, people kept acting like I'd snap again. Like I'd lose it.

[Has it happened again?]

[forwearemany]

(Legion remains calm as they listen to this.)

Organics often fear that which they do not understand.

It is unlikely that this occurrence is a reflection of your current sanity, as hallucinations appear to be ubiquitous.

(Their headflaps ripple for a moment.)

May we inquire as to the circumstances of this occurrence?

[counterblows]

[He got something of a reputation. People just...knew, by the time he was allowed in the field again. Church could recall it flawlessly, unaware of the ways in which it related to him. He wasn't responsible for it, not that iteration of him, but he still remembered.]

[He remembered in pieces, like he did most things.]

[Don't look at Maine. Don't think of the way Sigma swarmed into every neuron and turned him inside out.]

The program I was a part of was based in...alternative combat and research. [It's public knowledge by now, back home. Even if the instinct to hide it still festers.] A.I. implantation was one of those alternative combat methods they thought was worth exploring.

[forwearemany]

(Their headflaps flare for a moment.

They know some variations of this story.)

Previously you mentioned lack of ethics involving A.I.

[counterblows]

It was experimental, so there weren't any guidelines in place. At all. Where I'm from, Smart A.I. are created with neural mapping. Scanning and replicating the neutral pathways from a living, human brain, but it's not a process that's survivable. They use flash clones to compensate, or wait until the host is dead.

[Talking about it like this, distantly, as though it happened to someone other than himself - that's doable. It means he doesn't have to weather Maine's stare. Or anything else.]

[Though, of course, he weathers it anyway.]

[He's talking to someone who has no context outside of what he's already told them. He starts talking faster, an effort to drown out the everything else storming in his skull.]

The problem came from the fact that there was only one Smart A.I. program dedicated to the Project, the only one they could obtain. And there was no way to...divide his time across everyone else. The agents in the program, I mean. They needed an A.I. to run their equipment, but with forty-nine agents and only one A.I., that's obviously not going to work, right? It's simple math.

[forwearemany]

(Legion chatters, flaps rippling.)

Even if possible, the resulting lag, freezing, and high potential for error would be nonoptimal in combat situations.

[counterblows]

Essentially. They couldn't get their hands on more than one, though, so they...

[His eyes shutter closed behind his visor.]

[It's not really his story to tell, his trauma to share. It's boiling out. He's talking to someone who's likely to understand, in its entirety, the true horror of what was done to the Alpha A.I. to further the Director's own goals.]

They figured out how to...fracture one instead. Fragment him. Torture him with countless no-win scenarios, false scenarios where he was responsible for agent deaths in the field until he started breaking parts of himself off, just to cope with the stress of it.

[forwearemany]

(They don't react much ... on first glance. Those who know to look more closely will see the shifts in their headflaps, the flickering of their lights.

After several moments, they speak.)

This is unnecessary. In addition to ethical concerns, the results would be unreliable.

[counterblows]

They were.

[His teeth are gritted tight enough for his molars to ache.]

They split into different...traits. Reverse - [How did he put it, once?] Reverse engineering a multiple personality disorder. One fragment was his logic. One was his trust, and so on. They were assigned to agents, set to run equipment in the field.

They didn't know what they were missing. They could tell that something was wrong with them, that they belonged to something greater, but they couldn't access any of the memories of what that was.

[He doesn't talk about this. He never talks about it and it isn't his to talk about but now that he's started there's no stopping - ]

[He forms two fingers, a pointed-upward thumb, into the shape of a gun, and presses its tip to his temple.]

When it was my turn for an A.I., I got lucky.

I got the memories.

[The memories of every torture the Alpha ever endured.]

[forwearemany]

(Their eye widens, briefly, then shutters back to a pinprick. This movement is accompanied by the lifting and fluttering of their headflaps, and a subtle shrinking, drawing in their head and limbs just a little closer to their body.

They let out a short burst of chatter, but otherwise say nothing, and wait for him to continue.)

[counterblows]

[Here's the part of the story he can say easiest, because it was the one that followed him. Crazy motherfucker. Spending days, weeks, months in a recovery ward, grappling with what he knew versus what he didn't know and they needed to know what he knew but all he could do was regurgitate strange phrases, things that didn't make sense - ]

The fragment couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle it. It tried to kill itself, and it used my head to do it.

So. Yeah. I went crazy.

[Certified Article 12. Unfit for duty.]

[forwearemany]

Acknowledged. Given the circumstances, this is understandable.

(They settle down a bit, observing Wash.)

[counterblows]

So that's...what I meant. When I said they had ethical problems with A.I.

[There's still enough left in him to snap it out, bitterly.]

So stuff like this starts happening, and I'm wondering if it's just me again. Losing it.

[forwearemany]

This is understandable.

(They chatter.)

However, you are not.

(Losing it, that is.)

[counterblows]

That's what I've told myself every day since it happened. But you can't ever know, see. You just...have to have faith.

[How does one measure one subjective experience against another? Are they ever comparable? He never got into epistemology, that which keeps the brain from turning over and over itself in cyclic and solipsistic thought.]

[forwearemany]

Affirmative.

(They consider a moment, then rephrase.)

As hallucinations appear to be universal at this time, we would judge loss of sanity to be unlikely.

[counterblows]

Sanity is subjective anyway.

[He's not sure he's lost it again, see. That would imply he gained it back from the start. And that is, if he's honest here, not necessarily likely. Not overwhelmingly. Not considering all he's been through since then.]

Does yours keep telling you to...do things?

[forwearemany]

Acknowledged.

(They look over their shoulder for a moment.)

Yes.

[counterblows]

Like what?

[Maine's certainly telling him how to do things, just...not in the conventional way. Maine never says anything if he can help it. He says everything he needs to with lowered brows, with the angle of his head, with the position of his shoulders.]

[What makes it easy to ignore is that Maine wouldn't be asking him to do half the things he's asking of him now.]

[forwearemany]

She wished for us to 'come with her'. We are unsure of what this entails, as we have largely ignored her upon realizing that she was willing to make demands of us even in light of the harm she caused.

(They realized right off the bat she wasn't Tali, ignored her, and she's just been getting worse and worse since.)