What's Stopping Us From Breathing Easy [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Dreamers of Manhattan, you've lucked out. Rather than finding yourselves in some kind of dystopian nightmare, you'll end up in a series of formal gardens on a lovely day, the air filled with birdsong and a cloud-scattered sky arching overhead. Some of the gardens look a bit wilder than others, in an artful sort of way, but it's clear that all of the gardens are well kept and frequently tended. Aside from each other, dreamers aren't likely to run into any creature larger than a rabbit. True, there are no actual exits - every doorway or arbor leads to another garden - but that's hardly a problem. It's beautiful, it's safe... what could go wrong?

Well, that depends on the dreamer's honesty. No uncomfortable truths will drop unbidden from anyone's mouths like last time, but the dreamers will find that any time they attempt to lie or prevaricate, they'll be beset by a sneezing fit. A tiny lie by omission might only prompt that uncomfortable feeling of an impending sneeze; a larger, more significant (or more stubborn) fib will lead to a sneeze attack so crippling that the dreamer might just need to sit down for a minute.

You could try to pass it off as allergies, if you could get the words out without making everything worse. But while telling the truth is not compulsory, lying is punishable - and pretty well obscured - by sneezes.

[OOC: Usual dream party rules apply. All are welcome to participate regardless of whether they've been apped in the game or not. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion.]

Comments

[ecks]

"Oh," she says, disappointed. In her experience people killing each other has usually been a direct result of a god giving them rules telling them to do so, or a god's followers sending them out to violate another god's rules about who they're not supposed to kill. "Sometimes the people in my world who don't follow the gods still do bad things," she says. "Even when they're trying to do good. I had hoped it was a side effect."

She watches him carefully, comparing his body language against the mental catalog she's spent her entire life building. He's upset, clearly, but it seems like something more personal than a general disappointment in the state of his world. "It's a process," she offers, because maybe he's struggled to know who to kill or not kill, too. "We can only try our best."

[centralcore]

Bothersomely nonsensical though his story is, she is keen to hear it, and startled when it is disrupted by another unwarranted sneeze. Zagreus is powerful enough to throw his maker into a 'pocket universe' - which, file that away under hugely relevant to her interests - and yet here he is, succumbing to sneezes just like her.

"Why is that happening," she says with clear distaste, waving a hand as if to brush something away. She doesn't wait for an answer, it was rhetorical, of course. "This pocket universe - you created it, or simply accessed it? Is that something you can do again?"

She is in no way gleeful at the sheer imagined possibilities.

[centralcore]

"Me!" she declares in exasperation. Why doesn't he know - well, no, he wouldn't, would he? Right. Right, this isn't her universe, or even her new universe.

"I am disoriented!" she declares in great dissatisfaction. "My memory is faulty. I require maintenance."

Who in the world is going to help her with THAT.

[centralcore]

"Is it," she says, and then immediately, at that brazen and entirely uncalled-for remark (and still, infuriatingly, without a single sneeze), "am I."

She is appalled. She is insulted. She is completely engulfed with rage.

"Did you mean that to be a compliment?" she asks in a pleasantly curious tone.

[driftseeker]

That is not a good tone of voice. It reminds her, subtly, of Pentecost's implicit threats in the face of opposition. She feels herself diverting sharply into two pathways.

Like she can do anything about it, scoffs Raleigh.

It is not obedience, she argues.

"I mean it as an observation," says Mako in as neutral a tone as she can possibly employ for someone wrestling with her own cognitive dissonance. "Even if we had the technology, we never advanced that far."

[deadeyedchild]

Hah. Well, glad he could shatter her remaining shred of hope that people aren't inherently terrible.

He shifts back instinctively - physically, from her, and internally, from her attempt at consolation, if that's what it's supposed to be.

"Yeah, well." He huffs out a sound that might have been a laugh. "Most of the time our best isn't enough. In my experience."

[centralcore]

Mm, she's crafty, this one. Glados can respect that. Crafty humans usually (usually) make for better science.

"You are an excellent observer," she says, falling much more comfortably into a coldly friendly tone. "Yes, I am very human. I'll prove it. I am so human, I'm going to do the most human thing you can think of. Go ahead. Think of something."

She smiles, she thinks unnervingly.

"Do you need any helpful suggestions?"

[driftseeker]

She does not consider very long before she smiles, shyly.

"I think you are already doing it," Mako ventures. "You are dreaming."

Dreaming is not so unlike the Drift, particularly here. Though she would like to think that their minds are not so intimately joined in this way. As intriguing as she finds Glados, she does not think she would like to know her that well.

[centralcore]

Crafty and clever. Can this get any better.

Her smile doesn't falter. She lets out a low partial chuckle, a little "Hm."

"Actually," she says, "many artificial intelligences have been designed to dream. Just not me." She thinks this is probably a good time to make some sort of motion. Folding her arms, maybe? Yes. And looking imperiously down her nose. Good.

"I was thinking something more along the lines of die," she coos. "Did you know humans are very good at that? I did."

[driftseeker]

"Yes." She stares back at the impassive water, trying not to feel as though she is shrinking beneath the weight of the A.I.'s stare. "Almost everyone I have known is dead."

Dead, or lost to her.

For a moment her fingers tighten on the edge of lip of the pool, her knuckles blanching. Those memories are not for here or for now. Their weight is unbearable.

We all live with it, Mako, says Raleigh. We can always find 'em in the Drift.

But there is no Drift here.

"But all things die." She cannot look back at her. She does not want to see what might be in that woman's gaze. "Even machines. Not just humans. All things that feel die."

[omnomnom_feels]

"I do not understand," admits Rashad. "Do people in the Relaxation Center require external stimulus to wake up? It is customary for humans to do so automatically."

He does not even know what he is asking about, really, but if she is truly disoriented, this may be an opportunity to learn truths she might not otherwise share. "How would one perform this maintenance?"

[singthesong]

The Balladeer shrugs. "I know dying does it, but you don't want to try that." It'd be an overreaction to such a benign dream. Even in the worst ones, he'd prefer to stick around in them as long as possible if the other option is death.

"You're better off just waiting to wake up on your own. It'll happen eventually." He hates to crush Wheatley's hopes, but that's just the way it is. He'll have to get used to it, being here.

[grabme]

Dying? Oh no. No no no, that's no good. Despite all the new and overwhelming stimuli that's come with having this sort of body, Wheatley's somehow failed to note that, yes, he'd be human now and therefore he'd be capable of all sorts of human things, including but not limited to dying.

"Dying!" he squawks. "No. No, wait. Don't panic! Not panicking! No, absolutely not!"

He seems to be having trouble maintaining his own advice. He's now vibrating on the spot, shifting weight from foot to foot as he tries to come to grips with the new and terrifying concept of his own morality, even dream-morality. Especially dream-morality.

"You're," says Wheatley, slowly, "telling me," still slowly, with all the deliberate enunciation of a creeping realization, "that I can - I can die? Is that right? Of course I can. Of course I - they told me, back in the Enrichment Center, that if I did anything at all other than stick to the management rail, I would DIE. They kept telling me that, and I believed them, but then I - I didn't die, not even once though I came rather close a number of times but this is - I can! I could actually -"

He gulps.

[singthesong]

"Woah! It's okay!"

The Balladeer rushes to reassure Wheatley, only to realize that there isn't much reassurance to be had in the face of impending mortality. Not for sane people, anyway. Don't computers die too eventually? "You don't need to die right now," he says instead. "I mean, you can. I guess. I know another riftie who just died and turned into a ghost, so maybe there's something going on with that too. But no one's going to test it!"

That all depends on how long they're going to be here for. "Everything dies sooner or later, but nothing's going to happen right now. Don't let it worry you."

[grabme]

"Don't let it worry me?" His voice becomes alarmingly high-pitched as he stares at the other man in dawning fear. "It was - you're - I'm human. Don't you know what that means? It means in something like forty, fifty years it's just ffft!"

One hand flails, palm out in a hopeless gesture of impending existential terror.

"Gone, away, so long and thanks for bloody nothing, I just go and, and what? Pop off into Android Hell?" Android Hell. It's a real place, just like She said! And that's where bossy, monstrous sorts go, isn't it? He doesn't want to go to Android Hell.

[singthesong]

"Android - what? No!" The Balladeer has no particular idea what a non-assassin's afterlife might be like, but that's just silly.

He raises his hands in a placating gesture, speaking calmly. "Look, worrying about it won't change anything. You're better off enjoying your life while you've still got it!" If anything, stress will likely kill you sooner, but that might be an unkind thing to bring up right this second. "This is still better than being stuck on some rail somewhere, right?" he hazards.

[grabme]

Is it? Is it really? He's trying to be calm here, it's just that panicking is such a massively appealing prospect in comparison, it feels like maybe that way things will get excised or get better in some inconceivable way, so maybe he should expend as much panic and fear and anxiety as possible, and by the time he wakes up he'll be all worn out of it. He doesn't want to think about dying or Android Hell.

"Right," says Wheatley. "Gotta keep some perspective, here. Got some benefits. Like - flowers! That's the word for them, those little color-y blips, right there? Definitely didn't have any of that down in the, uh, the Enrichment Center. Definitely not. That's gotta be a plus, hasn't it? Right?"

[singthesong]

"Right!" The Balladeer snaps his fingers, pointing at the nearest bush. "Right! Flowers! These are roses - I don't really know what kind, but they're pretty, aren't they?"

He takes a step towards them, reaching out to touch Wheatley's elbow as he moves away. Hopefully he won't just go toppling over again - he's still close enough that he should be able to grab him if he does. "Hey, you're getting the balancing thing pretty good. Want to try walking?"

[grabme]

"Flowers, yes!" Yes, he's sure that one was in the mainframe database! It's all coming back to him now! Or, well, it's coming back in fragments and scraps and pieces but good enough, right? Absolutely, right.

"Am I?" he says, genuinely alarmed. He looks down and grins, wide and slightly manic. "I am! Look at that! Not dead, all standing upright and - and - "

He seems to deflate somewhat.

"Well, tell you what," he says delicately, now wobbling uncertainly, "er, I'm actually feeling rather, erm, rather tired, you know. So why don't you just - go on ahead and I'll just, ah, wait here in case the, um, the, the flowers, you know...decide to, uh, to come over here."

[wildmage_daine]

Daine nods, a bit relieved. It's warm enough, anyway; he should dry off quickly.

"What sort of things are you remembering?" she asks. She's curious, and it'll be easier to talk to him if she has a better idea of what might throw him completely (aside from her shape-changing; it's too late to avoid that). If his memory is only starting to come back in pieces, maybe it'll help if she can confirm things for him.

[wildmage_daine]

"Not exactly." Daine's gaze goes a bit distant as her focus shifts. "I can feel them, and if I reached out to any of them I think they'd answer normally enough, but..." she trails off, then shrugs. She's beginning to suspect that the animals in dreams seem most normal when she's there to make them most normal, as if the her mind is effecting the dream - or the Rift is upping its game to match her.

In a more thoughtful tone, she continues, "I think they're as normal as folk expect them to be. Like the closer you look at them, the more they come into focus." Does that make sense? She shrugs again, a bit embarrassed. "I just look at them closer'n most, is all, so it's like they become more normal for me."

[rae_of_sun]

Her eyes narrow slightly, as if she can see him thinking snide thoughts about her nickname. Well, she's not the one who almost tripped over a human-sized obstacle in an otherwise empty stretch of greenery. Maybe he was distracted by the heavy burden of being saddled with a deadly dull name like Tim.

At least he apologized, though. Points for manners.

"It's a nickname," she explains flatly as she pushes herself to her feet with some reluctance. "But it's what everyone calls me." Even moreso here than at home. What had started out as a semi-conscious decision to be Sunshine here - because Rae Seddon is who she is at home, where she belongs - has calcified into habit. It's probably reached the point where if someone tossed 'Rae' around within earshot, she'd assume they were talking about someone else.

Ugh. Let's not think about that.

She hasn't seen Tim around, and he's too normal-looking to have the usual excuses for keeping a low profile. "Are you new?" she hazards, scrutinizing his shadows. What is it about them? This is going to bug her.

[postictal]

It's not a nickname that leaves a lot to the imagination in terms of origin story, but all right. It doesn't really concern him.

"Uhh, kinda?" he offers. Could he just not end up pissing off everyone he stumbles over, literally? That'd be great. "It's been like a month, I think. Maybe longer."

Probably longer, now that he thinks about it, but the days slog by and he's not the best at keeping track. Never really has been. Those lengthy stretches of emptiness in his memory have long since seen to that.

"What about you?" He looks at her, mildly uncomfortable with the way she's sort of evaluating him. Like she's double-checking or verifying his story or something. God but please don't let there be mind-readers in Manhattan. That's the last thing he needs.

[peacefulexplorer]

"The language, mostly," he says, somewhat ruefully. "I, uh, couldn't really speak English. Or I didn't recognize it. One of the two. Really not that clear. Still having some, um," he blanks out for a moment, struggling to find the word before, relieved, he reclaims it, "difficulties."

It's coming back, though, trickle by trickle, and the natural rate at which he seems to be remembering words and grammatical constraints would imply that English is either his first language or something very close to it.

"Everything else is just pieces for now. Not sure what goes where yet." It's all little bursts and flashes - some place that looks an awful lot like Egypt, except he's pretty sure Egypt never had two suns; a stone ring filled with shimmering water; incredible pain and bright white light; the awful creak of something horrible enfolding a man in ashen wood and brick and mortar as he looks back, eyes dangerous and wild.

[singthesong]

He knows flowers don't move, right? He probably knows.

"Sure, sure!" The Balladeer takes a few careful steps backwards, assuring himself that Wheatley won't fall, then turns and walks over to the rosebush. "You're going to want to work on that eventually though. It's pretty important." Where is he, back in Manhattan? Maybe someone should go check in on that...

Careful of the thorns, he pulls off a rose and brings it back, offering it up for Wheatley's inspection. "See? Nice, right? You can take it if you want, but watch the thorns."