lifeaftr | January Undercurrent: Growing Pains

January Undercurrent: Growing Pains

JANUARY UNDERCURRENT

Who: Everyone!
What: Hey bud, how's it growing?
When: January 3rd to January 20th
Where: Everywhere!
Warnings: This event has a potential for body horror and character death; please mark anything as it comes up!

A Notion Growing Inside Me

Those of you who weren't with us the last time Umui entered the archipelago didn't have to contend with the lethal illness known as the Overgrowth personally, but anyone who remembers it probably doesn't remember it fondly. Fortunately, this isn't quite the same strain of the illness that you had to contend with the last time. It's not unrelentingly and uncompromisingly fatal, for one! That's always nice.

For those that need a primer on the Overgrowth, it is best described as a sickness that overcomes you with floral growth both inside and outside your body that can only be cured by expressions of emotional honesty. Expressions of truths, affections, and admissions of things that you have hidden from yourselves or from others were critical in dispensing of the illness. These could be as simple as admissions of past sins or the revealing of secrets, or as grandiose and overt as confessions of guilt or love. That general idea will remain more or less the key means of curing this strain as well, though the stakes fortunately aren't as high this go around! Which is to say, if you fail to have any grand emotional epiphanies by the time this event ends, you aren't doomed to suffer a character death; symptoms will simply dissipate come January 20th.

So what's this sickness going to be like in this particular instance, then? We're so glad you asked!

You can go the standard route, of course. Adventurers' first brush with the illness saw the following afflicted upon them:

[ ♆ ] Stage One: Germination. Initial symptoms involve fever, coughing fits, numbness to nerves and extremities, and general joint stiffness. Difficulty breathing or performing other basic functions will often occur. Fatigue, difficulty sleeping, and intense weakness or dizzy spells are also liable to occur as the flowers begin to harvest nutrients from the body. This will also generate extreme thirst and periods of intense nausea. Tremors and the sensation of something "itching" from inside are also common. The end of Stage One is usually marked by the act of vomiting or coughing up flower petals or spores, along with a not-insignificant amount of blood.

[ ♆ ] Stage Two: Budding. The floral growths spread more completely inside the body, and begin to grow on the skin or exterior. Difficulty performing basic functions will increase as, for example, airways become obstructed and flowers grow around joints and pinch them still. The site of affliction also yields rashes, blisters, and blood sores as the flowers sprout from the skin. The rate of vomiting or coughing up floral growths will increase dramatically. Flowers often bloom quickly, and very painfully. Numbness in affected areas will increase, oftentimes rendering parts of the body completely inert - a pair of legs claimed completely by blooms, for example, will no longer work.

This was followed by Stage Three: Bloom, which resulted in character death. However, this strain will not advance to this style of Stage Three. All symptoms will disperse by the time Umui resurfaces.

This strain is also rather more erratic, which can make emotional repression more of an inconvenience than a horrifying circumstance. For those who would rather not play around with intense sickness (or who have already endured this once before), you have the option to go that route if you like! With this variant of the Overgrowth, one can become, for example, so embarrassed that they hiccup up a flower. A vicious denial of their feelings may cause them to spontaneously erupt into a rash of dandelion puffballs, seemingly immediately. You might end up walking around with a bouquet for an arm for a few hours. Perhaps mortifying, but certainly not fatal! Isn't that nice?

Unless, of course, you want it to be...

I Can't Fight It Much Longer

Now, while the Bloom Stage isn't present in this strain, it has mutated its progression into a rather nasty end stage. Those of you who succumb a little too readily to this illness, who don't fight off the emotional repression quickly, who don't admit those difficult truths to yourself or confess to whatever you're bottling up, you'll be faced with a potentially horrifying transformation. Potentially, because it is your choice whether or not you see fit to commit your character to that fate - as stated above, this option might simply skip over your character entirely, and the worst they'll have to deal with are cartoonishly over-the-top effects that disperse in due time.

But maybe not all of you will be so lucky. Some of you might discover for yourselves how this particular variant of the Overgrowth has mutated.

We call this mutation Stage Three: Outbreak.

In this final Stage, those beautiful blooms wither and harden into a fungus-like carapace as the illness grows into the victim's brain and shuts down virtually all higher functions. This can sometimes render them almost wholly recognizable, but not always - oftentimes, it's very obvious who this person once was. The victim is reduced to a carrier of the virus, which causes them to act the way you'd expect most viruses to act: becoming intent on spreading. Advanced brain functions such as speech, rational thought, and so on tend to shut off and become wholly inaccessible.

Now that the victim's body is no longer fighting the Overgrowth, the illness lends them increased speed, strength, and durability, making them dangerous foes indeed. They will usually seek to infect others by whatever means necessary - usually via biting or exuding breathable spores - but in some cases, they will simply reduce to base instincts, and just outright attempt to attack and kill whoever is closest.

Unfortunately, at this point, there is no hope of a cure; it's hard to make someone be emotionally honest when they're capable of little more than blunt, animal instinct. At this point, you can either wait for the Stage Three symptoms to disperse come Umui's return, or take manners into your own hands. You can probably guess what that might entail.

If you decide to put your Overgrown friends out of their misery, this will count as a character death. If it comes to that, be sure to let us know on the Deaths page! Death penalties, however, will not be reduced for this event.

Try to Get Through It

Of course, there's a lot going on in the background as well. You're free to use this log as a catch-all for the duration of January's Undercurrent Event, as well as any of the other minor events listed on our Monthly Rundown post. And, of course, you are always free to create your own individual logs and posts as needed.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them over on the Questions header on our Rundown post!

January Timeline

[ ♆ ] January 1st: "This Sucks" begins and lasts until January 10th
[ ♆ ] January 3rd: "Growing Pains" begins and lasts until January 20th
[ ♆ ] January 11th: "No Water is Safe" begins and lasts until January 19th
[ ♆ ] January 20th: Umui returns to the archipelago
[ ♆ ] January 21st: "Impawsible Geometries" begins and lasts until January 31st

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(He has changed his mind. Legion looks at him with some interest.)

Yes. AI are treated poorly in multiple universes.

(They have discussed this.)

Washington-Agent mentioned torture?

...Yeah. Man, he would mention torture.

Okay. So. [There's an almost wheezing sound that comes from him, airflow obstructed by fucking petals and plant matter clogging things up. Petals whirl out from under his helmet. He moves to sit on the nearest flat surface, motioning for Legion to follow suit.]

How much detail did he get into?

(And they begin to replay back recordings from prior conversations.)

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.

They split into different...traits. Reverse - 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.

(Wash told them quite a bit, apparently.)

[Church shudders, the sound of Wash explaining it all over again, in similar or the same words...haunting, in a fashion.

Him. Wash keeps calling Alpha him, not it like before. Fuck. This is going to hurt.]

Okay, so he wasn't sparing you some of the details.

The Alpha. The Alpha AI of Project Freelancer was a...special case. Some brainiac with some deep personal trauma and no god damn scruples running a secret elite military operation to try and end the war decided to make a copy of himself in AI form. Pretty sure that's super illegal or at least super dangerous, but that's how you get smart AI, the kind that truly think for themselves, able to grow and change, rather than the--pardon the phrase--dumb AI that can't grow past their programming.

Though I'd argue how figuratively dumb some of those AI are. I'll tell you about the tank that helped stage a robot uprising and fell in love sometime.

[There's more history there than he even knows, but it's all beside the point. Shit. This is going to be hard. But that's the point, right? Talking about the stuff that he'd rather keep buried, the things he doesn't want to look at.]

But he had all these soldiers and only one AI he was allowed to use to test with them. They didn't...know Alpha existed. They didn't know a lot of things. So the Director decided he would just make more AI with what he had. So he took an AI he made of himself, did the...the torture, the fragmenting, b-because...who would know better how to hurt him beyond repair than himself?

All these bits came off, including a memory of someone he lost that he then turned into a soldier, it--it's a whole thing, that's a whole thing in itself. All these fragments came off, different aspects of one person, until it...until Alpha ripped his own memories out. Then the whole project started crashing down, cuz when you put the memories of someone that's been tortured beyond repair directly into someone's meaty brain, then, heh, yeah, that's not gonna end well.

Some of the agents fought back, some fled into hiding, some stayed, some did their own thing, I don't, I don't know everyone's stories or anything, just a buncha people having different opinions, but obviously the Director didn't want all these disparate pieces out and about in the galaxy, right? Top secret property. And evidence of his fuckery. Gotta send people to try and find these AI, and what does he do with Alpha, the one that's left, who doesn't remember who he is or what he exists for?

[Somehow, it's even worse saying it out loud. It makes it real, makes it solid. One thing to think about it, to play it out in his head, to realize internally how fucked up it all is, but it's another entirely to say it to another person. To really hammer home how awful and horrible it all was.

One thing to think shit, that was me; another to say oh...and btw that was me and shit I'm sorry I said anything I want to put the words back in my mouth and forget we had this conversation. Because he's pretty sure that's how this is going to go. He's close, he just has to...he has to commit to this if he's going to do it. He's not sure. It towers over him, constantly lurks around him, follows behind him, and it scares him.]

Well, the Director needed a safe place to store him. I think he tried a couple of times, to hide the Alpha in bases, surrounded by soldiers, and things went awry each time. At least, that seems to be the case. [The reality of Sidewinder is still...tentative, at best, to him. But Tex seems to think it happened in some fashion. Maybe that part was real. Just not in the way he remembers it.]

So you gotta stick this thing on some backwater nowhere planet that nobody has any reason to be concerned about. You surround it with dropouts and dipshits who can't be paid to care, who are too stupid to connect anything together. You put in an agent undercover to make sure things go smoothly. And you pretend there's nothing amiss, nothing awry, like it was never there.

What you do...what you do with an amnesic digital fraction of yourself, when you need to hide the evidence of what you did...what you do is, you put him in a body. You give him a story. You let him fill in his own details, using the fragments of your memory to give him a life. You treat him like any other soldier. You call him by your own name instead of a callsign or a designation.

[If he had a mouth, it would feel glued shut, all of a sudden. The sensation is still there, and he wonders how much of that is sense-memory, when he was in a human body, or when his mind was really the Director's, and how much of it is a remnant of his own mind trying to cope with that he is (and what he isn't). The flowers blow gentle in the breeze. Somewhere in his mind, the unbidden thought of at least they're not forget-me-nots is thought and leaves as soon as it came. He's not sure he'd know what forget-me-nots look like. He sees yellow and all he can think of is yellow rose of Texas but they're not roses and Tex would probably punch him if he started singing that.

No. He's veering off track. This is what he does. He doesn't have a safeword here; Legion isn't Wash, and after all, Church is the one doing the talking. He could stop himself. But his brain doesn't want to acknowledge this, so he thinks of something else, thinks of something funnier, and was he programmed to do that, or is it just self-preservation the same way he ripped his own psyche to shreds?

There's no joke to soften the blow. There's no immediate defensiveness, now casual tossing out of bullshit, because Legion doesn't do that. It's all on him. He has a complicated relationship with the thing-he-used-to-be. Embraced more of his AI qualities when the plan was to die together, he and Wash, still claimed himself a ghost even when they both knew better, they knew better he knows better now but the threat of death means so much less here, he's not about to throw himself into oblivion-

-or into a head full of voices that are not his but all his and all the pieces slotting into place we missed you we missed you alpha welcome home-

-so it's harder to face it. To reconcile with the fact that his life is a lie, that he got his name from a crazed and desperate fuck, that Tex was a memory of a memory of someone dear, that everything that happened to so many people was, in some way or another, his fault.

That he'll never get any of it back.

That he's just collateral damage.]

You make--

[He doesn't have to say it. Legion can probably figure out what he's trying to say. How much do the flowers need? What if letting them take him wouldn't be so bad? In this place where death carries a short-term penalty of some kind. He'd get over it. He'd get over death. It might even him and Wash out. Even if Wash wouldn't be the one doing the killing. His throat is full of petals and he doesn't know if that's figurative or literal anymore because the yellow is filling his vision and his body's locking up full of evergrowing matter and it chokes him, crushes him, makes him feel small and nothing. He doesn't have to say it. He doesn't need to do this. He doesn't have to say anything if he doesn't want to.

There are certain things about the human body he misses. He does not miss: the mess one becomes when their face is covered in snot and tears, the ugly way a face screws up in pain, the whole nasty business of crying. He does miss: the emotional catharsis of crying.]

You make Private Leonard Church think he's a human being.

(Geth do not feel physical pain, but that does not mean Legion is unfamiliar with torture.

They just don't ever talk about their experiences, or the horror of being forcibly used by a being beyond comprehension.

They are also not unfamiliar with what had occurred with the Alpha AI, but hearing the story of a Human harmed as a result of it and encountering the AI himself is ... different.

...They don't know how to respond, or what to say.

Finally, they try: )

You are a Human being, regardless of your synthetic origin: your mind, feelings, and perspective are Human in nature.

They're based off a human being; that doesn't make me human. Having a human perspective up until my world got shattered doesn't necessarily make me human either. And the only reason I have a perspective like that is through lies and--and--oh, fuck, I was shoved in some poor fuck's head and used him like some kinda meatsuit and got him killed!

(Physically, they withdraw to themselves, just slightly.)

We apologize. We should not have interjected.

(This is, after all, about his troubles. If he does not speak of them, he will die.

By offering their perspective, they are making themselves an obstacle.)

Edited 2020-01-22 23:19 (UTC)

...No, no, it's--you're good. You're okay. It's--it's nice to get your perspective. I just get, uh. Volatile? Understandably so. About this topic. Like, yeah, that's what Wash would say. That I'm human, more or less, like, that my remembered lived experience and the way I see the world is--

I mean. I mean disagreeing would be like saying oh, I'm just an AI, a dumb and broken one at that, and like...I'm more than that. Right? I'm...

[He's so tired. He hasn't noticed petals falling off the flowers, wilting stems.]

I'm the Alpha. I'm the Alpha AI. But I'm also Church. Not Director Church, or whatever. Leonard Church. If nothing else, I'm me, whatever I am. I just--I-I never wanted to say it. It's like if I think about it too long, I wanna scream for how fucked up it is, so I always denied it, and even when I talked about it, it was like...third person. Talking about it, about him, about Alpha. I heard about these things that happened to Alpha, but he--I ripped out my own memories to keep my sanity, which then drove Wash crazy, but he's...arguably better now, so I guess...

He and I get into shouting matches. Because I want to know, right up until he tells me things, then I suddenly don't want to know. I don't know how he keeps it all in his head. I don't know how he's lived with the kn-knowing.

[He's babbling. Shut up. Shut the fuck up before you choke on it all. How is it fair to dump it all on Legion like that? Church coughs, not physically needing to and yet his more human of senses telling him he needs to.]

I value your opinion, Legion. As a fellow inorganic. Don't ever think I don't.

(And, because it is Church's turn to speak and his survival depends on it, they listen.

As they do so, their body language shifts to something less withdrawn.)

Acknowledged. Your reactions are reasonable, given the situation.

(They are familiar with not wishing to discuss trauma, and also with such a desire causing strife with allies: they have done this themselves.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

January Undercurrent: Growing Pains

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CW brief allusion to particularly awful torture trauma

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