[network] @Mnemosyne; video; the light we cannot see [open] Night 165

[bookofnope]

I can't sleep.

[The tablet is on the floor, lighting its own patch of paleness on the ceiling above. Beckett is lying next to it, prone on his back - that's what the angle of his arm, raised half-heartedly into the frame, suggests. He pulls more clearly into view for a moment, rising to a sitting position, to squint at the camera. His glasses are off, and his eyes glow a faint red in an ashen face.]

For all I know, I imagined it - the girl, the eyes. I'm certain the red pen was real, though, and the choice that came with it.

[He falls back again. Too tired to sit up. The tablet records to show nothing but light and shadow as he speaks.]

It may have been just me. Doubtful, but possible... but it was not just me who saw things. Perhaps we all did. I'd like to know what. Piece of some whole, or just another attack on what's left of our collective sanity... either way. For the sake of the record, if not any kind of answer.

[His relationship with answers isn't getting any less complicated. His voice drops low, dreamlike as he speaks on.] I saw a girl wearing a cloak. She was drawing the eyes, all around me... around me... until I was surrounded. She climbed on my back and drew her eyes on mine, and I knew there was no leaving. There has never been, not for me. Perhaps we are all...

[Too much. He stops abruptly, and rises again, grabbing for the tablet.]

It's all in my notes.

[The recording ends. In its place he sends his notes file out again.]

Comments

@LELRIC; audio

[armoured]

[He sounds a little strained, but he can't ignore the distress underpinning this whole broadcast. His voice is soft and gentle, though not pitying.]

It wasn't just you, and you're not-- there is going to be leaving, for all of us. I saw it too, not that exact thing, but... I saw someone drawing eyes on me. Asking me to draw them on myself.

[He saw Truth.]

audio;

[bookofnope]

Asking? [He wasn't expecting that, and it throws him just enough to distract him from commenting on the promise Al makes that he can't seriously expect to keep.] Do you truly mean asking, or more enticing, or pushing?

threadjack - @ordo; audio

[hangfire]

Try deceiving. It definitely wasn't asking.

[It's almost a scoff in how he interrupts, though shaken in its own right. The utter lack of control and inability to fight an instinct not quite his own wasn't an easy idea to swallow.]

Hold your sanity, for god's sake.

[armoured]

I mean asking.

[Truth never did anything other than ask, but it was the way he asked that made it impossible to refuse.]

It wasn't easy to say no-- actually, I didn't say no.

action;

[phaseshifter]

[ Another set of glowing eyes - blue, unlike his red - are fixed on Beckett as he makes his recording. Angel doesn't say anything for a minute or two even after he's finished, but she's still awake. Still watching.

When she does speak up, it's very quiet. There's no sense in waking Vaughn or the Cat, assuming they're really asleep at all. ]

You sound like --

[ --you've given up.

She doesn't finish, though, and just lets the half-sentence hang. Does she even have a right to say it, considering how she's been acting lately? ]

[bookofnope]

[She doesn't say it, but he hears it.

He tilts his head back a little, awkward in his lying flat position, to meet her eyes. He doesn't want to tell her - she already knows - that he's given up more than once before, and has never really mastered hope or defiance again. Survival, yes; stubborn animal survival. But another thing they both know is that it isn't the same.

He doesn't want to say anything that would make it worse for her. With the way she's been, with Fiona, now with Rhys somewhere out there, doing God knows what. But staying silent is the surest way of saying yes.]

Not on you, [he says finally.] Didn't you tell me that you'd like it if you could stay? It's better than being dead.

[phaseshifter]

Dude. I'm already dead. If I did get to stay, it'd be putting that state off again for a little longer.

[ It's a little more bluntly than she'd usually put it, but. Still. Everything's too awful right now for her to be able to see any kind of future for herself; even a bleak one.

But it's not about her, he's deflecting -- ]

Not like you. If we get out of this, I mean. There's - Iunno. A place for you.

@betterhalf; text

[darkincrement]

[ The notes are useful. He's going to save them to his own tablet. ]

I might have seen something.

audio;

[bookofnope]

[He's seen Vanitas around the network; he can tell where this is going. Well, information has never come to him freely before.]

I will trade for it, if there is anything you want.

text; private

[darkincrement]

Have a copy of @jwatson's notes the admin screened for him?

@spectreone, video

[dumed]

It was a vision, but it wasn't your imagination.

[ Let's not ask Kanan how he's so sure of that, maybe. He's distracted by the glow of Beckett's eyes, at the moment; he doesn't sense an evil presence from him, but then he doesn't sense much of anything. A sith could be hiding in plain sight anywhere here and he wouldn't know it.

Unseen by the camera, his hand closes around the useless shaft of his broken-down saber and then lets go. ]

I saw a light.

audio;

[bookofnope]

[A vision. Yes, Beckett knows about those.

He doesn't want visions. He's had enough of them. But he knows it's in their nature, in their definition almost, that they cannot be denied. If that is what he can have then he should be grateful. He should be grateful that he can have something, surely.]

How would you define "vision"? [He'd like to know they're talking about the same thing.] And what do you mean by a light? There must have been more.

Re: audio;

[dumed]

Being able to see something that may be true, even if it's happening in another place or time or not quite the way you're percieving it.

[ Kanan's never had the talent for it himself, not the way some Jedi do. Maybe if he'd trained long enough to become a knight, he might've developed the knack; as things stood, they had always been confusing and chaotic. His apprentice seemed better at it, but then Ezra was better at a lot of things. ]

For the entire day, there was a light like a falling star coming toward the town. Closer and closer, bringing doom with it. It disappeared when everything else happened; maybe that was doom.

@donner; audio

[imgonnatouchit]

[What a coincidence! Hange can't sleep either.]

I didn't experience anything unusual- er, aside from the eyes and the screaming. What I mean is that my experience seems to have been the same as most everyone else's. With the pen, and the voices. [A small pause here. Getting thoughts together. The whole "prophet" incident was very unexpected and very unwelcome, and they still haven't quite processed it completely.]

It was... definitely something!

But hey, I just had a chance to look over your notes- we've been a little busy up here- and I noticed a couple of interesting parts. Well, I mean, all of it's interesting. But two parts specifically.

1. If we're being pulled here to fill some population quota, does that mean there aren't enough people in this world to fill it?

And 2. If it's supposedly impossible to bring someone back from "true death", does that mean we aren't actually dying? Has anyone managed to check and see if the bodies in the morgues are actually dead and not just in some kind of... stasis? But of course that brings up the problem of murder victims, so what does the town define as a "true death"?

[This rambling is brought to you by: mania. Or maybe that's just how Hange is. Yeah, nevermind, that's just Hange.]

audio

[bookofnope]

[Bless Hange and their systematic approach. Beckett is perfectly happy to get rambling. It helps keep the whole thing academic. It's the most tried and true coping method he has ever had.]

You're certain that you had no more - personalised experiences? It is possible that it was only some of us. [And if so, what is the pattern? The question seems obvious enough that he doesn't voice it, only keeps thinking, as best he can.]

Regarding the second point, we don't have the equipment to determine "true death" in the more mundane sense, anyway. No one has been able to check due to the bodies' inaccessibility. But for all we know, no one has revived from the full brain death that is the definite stopping point for modern medicine... except myself, really. [For which reason he remains inclined towards a supernatural explanation. He's been dead for three hundred years, for God's sake.]

And regarding the first... well, that depends on whether you think dimensional travel is more or less likely a technology than teleportation.

[imgonnatouchit]

No, nothing personalized. From what the others in my group have described, most of us had the same experiences. [The ones who were willing to talk about it, anyway.] The exception was Francel- I'm sure you saw his network post.

Are you saying you revived for certain from a proven state of death? When did this happen? [The vampire point is going right over their head for now. Vampires aren't something they talk about much in their world- too many real monsters to make up a lot of fake ones. And as far as Hange knows, things like vampires are fake in their world.]

Either of those technologies sound impossible to me, but I suppose teleportation would be... less impossible. That would be transporting a person from one part of a world to another location in that same world, which seems, theoretically, easier to do than to not only prove the existence of other worlds, but to tap into them and transport people from their reality into this one. When you break it down, I would think you'd have to develop the technology for teleportation before you could develop the technology for dimensional travel.

@haurchefant; voice

[silverfuller]

There was something that was attempting to commune with us, of this I've no doubt, though I am yet uncertain of its intentions.

voice;

[bookofnope]

Did it speak to you, Haurchefant? I can't tell what the pattern is, some seem to have distinct experiences, and others have not.

@haurchefant; voice

[silverfuller]

[There is a slight pause before he answers.]

Not in words, but it spoke to me, aye.

It attempted to sway me from my faith in Halone and offer me respite.

[His belief that his Goddess loves him has been tried in Norfinbury. That is not a topic he cares to discuss in public, but Beckett already knows.]

'Twould seem that the creature below us is some manner of deity or at least a being that sees itself as such.

@hotstud_xxx; text

[rubikscomplex]

[He's going to force you to get up and read or turn on text-to-voice, Beckett.]

we should take a survey of who marked out the eyes
who drew them
keep an eye on them for any differences in effects or anomaly encounter rates moving forward

audio;

[bookofnope]

[The tablet is close enough to pick up and read while still lying down. Getting up denied.]

We should. Though I can't help but suspect the true outcome will be on a larger scale.

@determination, voice

[despiteeverything]

I still see them. They're on my hands 'n face 'n everywhere. Everywhere I drew.

[The eyes may only appear in flashes when one is tired or not paying attention, but someone has been very tired or out of it. The kind of tired sleep didn't fix. They're still sick too, which doesn't help, but most of it is grief.

Especially by now, when there's been days and no sign of her return.]

voice;

[bookofnope]

[Somehow he was expecting to hear from Frisk, he can't stay why. But he hadn't expected to hear that. He doesn't immediately make the connection to Toriel's death or the child's probable state. His mind, unsurprisingly, leaps to the worst, and his voice is urgent.]

Still? Do you still hear any of the voices? The urges or the screaming?

@expostfacto; voice

[whatjupitercouldnt]

It's too bad more people haven't replied. We're working with such limited information.

[Can't come up with proper conclusions with insufficient data, dammit.]

Are we able to confirm if every experience was different, or if there were some similarities? For me, I found the pen and was compelled to mark out all of the eyes that I saw. Along with the screaming that seemed to be coming from Hsiaoke Pass.

voice;

[bookofnope]

For all the claims of the importance of cooperation and trust flying around here, you would think people would be more forthcoming. Then again, this is always how it is.

[And he cannot entirely blame them considering how intense Norfinbury's influence can be. He would certainly not be sharing in such a public, careless fashion, if he thought he had a choice.]

It seems everyone was compelled to choose something - draw more eyes or cross them out. But there were those who saw more. I now know of six, including my own experience. And yourself?