[network] @ADMIN; Notice [DAY 097]

[snowblindmods]

Surveillance encountered an error shortly after 8PM last night and was out of order until shortly after 6AM. We apologize for any inconvenience.

[@ADMIN will not respond to any messages here, but this post can be used as a catch-all for the event!]

Comments

[bookofnope]

Don't give her any bright ideas, please. [Just the mention of the mold house makes him swallow a little uneasily. Well, it's a justified response.]

Although, does this mean you suspect that she is in some way actively involved in this? I took the message to imply otherwise.

[phaseshifter]

I'm not sure. I don't like the idea that she did it, but I'm uncertain how it could have happened at all.
It's an impossibility that I'd have been able to get to where I am overnight by any normal means. It'd take days. A week, maybe? I'm being conservative in my estimations, if anything.
There are only two other times we've seen or heard of anything like this occurring. The first (and most obvious) is when people die, right? They often revive a long way away from where they died, with no substantial delays. Since we can safely assume that the administrator - or those giving her orders - are in control of whatever happens there, it'd make sense for the same thing to have happened to us all last night.

Alternatively, I seem to recall
ugh
Remember the messages on the network? From the previous cycle, if we're using that term??
Some of those referred to someone moving impossibly fast. Here.
This was the last set before people started
well
going wrong, I suppose.
And the person moving quickly? Deleted_009? As far as the messages show, they were the first of that batch to go into the state where they said nothing but HELLO over and over.
So with the available evidence, I suppose I just *want* it to be the admin's fault? The alternative is so much worse.

Text

[bookofnope]

[She makes a very good point. Beckett swallows uneasily again. Now is probably the time to switch to text.]

Much as I hate to say it, your analysis makes sense. Although there are several more things to consider. I'm still reasonably convinced that the admin and whatever entity is NIMA are not one and the same, and the relationship is one of control; if the latter is responsible for what happened, the former may not be actively or consentually involved.

But as for the second explanation... there is no rejecting it outright. But there may be more available evidence. Tell me, did you dream anything last night?

[phaseshifter]

[ Oh. The dream. She'd forgotten about it in the panic of being alone, but when Beckett mentions it it comes flooding back as dreams do.

Huh. ]

Yes.
I was walking through the snow. It
Okay, this sounds really dumb! But it felt like when I died? I was short of breath and tasted blood, and my heart was sort of. Iunno. Buzzy, not full palpitations.
And there was humming. I remember that part.

[bookofnope]

Hardly dumb. Interesting, rather. I can't say my experience with death has been the same, but it was more like - certain forms of possession or magical compulsion, the sense of being guided by a persistent rhythm.

Now, I don't want to go out and make any decisive and terribly cliched announcements such as "this was no simple dream!", but it is quite possible that we were rationalising an experience we have no other means to comprehend. Which, just maybe, possibly, suggests that whatever it was, we did still keep some part of our minds through it.

[And then maybe he's reaching. False optimism? Oh, Beckett, how far you have fallen.]