[log] New Housing Developments [closed]

[rattlingthestars]

Characters: House, Jim, Kunsel, Zack and Zell
Location: 316
Date: Night 265
Summary: Exploring a new area & hanging out
Warnings: To be added to individual threads.

This was a house once, but all that's left is a living room. Still, it's lavishly decorated in blacks and reds, thick tapestries depicting the prophet's eye symbol covering the windows and a delicately carved eye drawn on the inside of the door that exits into the rest of the area. At least, with the tapestries, it's a bit warmer in here than in other places.

Comments

Later - cw ptsd and possibly body horror/torture discussion

[rattlingthestars]

What?

[ Jim had been shuffling around, idly trying to pull up the tapestries and examine each of the eye symbols. He's almost certain it's not going to reveal anything - too easy - but it's better than sitting around and thinking about the past few days.

Or the past few hours, for that matter. He'd recognized something of House's reaction. He hadn't wanted to, but he's never been able to avoid putting together pieces that are in front of him. ]

You wanna watch that crap? Why?

cw ptsd and possibly body horror/torture discussion

[rubikscomplex]

['Why?' is a better answer than 'there's nothing there,' at least. It might be incredulous, but House does have an answer.]

Information is power. I have the Eye App on my tablet. I wanna see if anything comes up when I run that while playing the vids. I also just want them on my tablet. Might be able to use 'em for something later.

probably blanket warning for everything

[rattlingthestars]

Yeah, okay. Maybe you'll spot something different.

[ Jim's not handing his tablet over right away, even though House does have a point.

Still: ]

You think you can handle that right now?

[rubikscomplex]

[The look House gives Jim is icy.]

I'm fine. Send me the tapes.

[rattlingthestars]

[ Jim gives him a wary look in return, but then shrugs with one shoulder and sends the video over. It's not complete - Jim hadn't made it through all the surgeries himself - but there's a lot of footage there. ]

Knock yourself out.

[ Jim will just be... keeping an eye on him while he does, is all. ]

[rubikscomplex]

[Good boy, Jim. House doesn't say thank you, just goes back to focusing on the screen... where America is cheerily torturing people. He makes it through the first surgery/torture session, gripping his tablet hard enough to break a regular piece of electronic equipment. His breath comes quicker, and House is aware that he's reacting very poorly to this. The next few sessions are tolerated with a growing sense of terror. It's an hour or so later that he hears himself talking to Kid and-

House turns it off. He can't watch his own. The whole point was to watch his own, reclaim the moment somehow. And yet, here he is, shaking and ready to start crying. And there's nothing he's learned from this except that everything was even more sick and twisted than he first thought.

He curls himself up into a ball and just sits there, holding in screams that was to be let out again, reliving the moments with Kid holding his mouth open. When words do come, they're quiet.]

The machine they used... it has to be NIMA.

[rattlingthestars]

You think so?

[ Jim saw the machine, of course he had, but it had taken a backseat to the horror of what was actually happening. ]

It's ... everything they were doing was so primitive.

[ It's at odds with the rest of this place, with what Jim would think of nanomachines, which is already pretty far beyond what he understands easily.

He looks sideways at House, evaluating, before he adds: ]

Think the pain's some way to override the nanomachines to reprogram them?

[rubikscomplex]

Maybe. There was something in the food they were giving us, too. [Just focus on facts, on solving the puzzle.]

And it was primitive, but none of us were getting infections. Every single person in there should have died of shock or sepsis. We didn't. That has to nanomachines, nothing they did. They didn't even scrub down for the surgeries where they were skinning people.

Could've just been passing the time while they blasted some sort of signal at us, too. Localized signal. Might be they didn't have enough power to go farther out.

[rattlingthestars]

That's a huge waste of resources just to pass the time.

[ Granted, this entire place is a huge waste of resources, as far as Jim can tell, bu it's still worth pointing out. ]

Keeping everyone clean, medicated, alive while they did... whatever your actual purpose is there, assuming there was one.

[rubikscomplex]

That's why I said blasting a signal. They were trying to so something. Break us to get permanent converts? There was that computer Enoch found on the top floor and the giant eye.

[What for is still the question of the hour. House falls quiet as he ponders it for a moment.]

Convert purge. Purging the converts. Killing them. Killing the people with nanomachines? Maybe it was like ELF--Earth Liberation Front. Crazy assholes who destroy crap to make their point. The cult could be some terrorist group that was anti-nanomachine.

[rattlingthestars]

They're not anti-nanomachine, or they're hypocrites. Remember the idol? The one Winter said worked through interfacing them?

[ Jim only vaguely grasps what House is talking about with the ELF business, so he's making a guess. ]

Maybe they think there's something like Winter and Andromeda living in the machines. Instead of killing bodies, they're purging minds until that's all that's left.

[rubikscomplex]

Kid if you don't think terrorists can be hypocrites, Idunno what to tell you. Never heard of using the Man's tools against him?

[But his hypothesis warrants some considering.]

They were doing something to our bodies. It tied into the mind bullshit. Still not sure how. We need more information.

[rattlingthestars]

I just said -!

[ He cuts himself off, huffing and deciding it's probably not worth it. ]

Whatever. Do you feel any different now?

[rubikscomplex]

Well, I have a headache starting up, but that's from you, I'm pretty sure.

[rattlingthestars]

Don't let me keep you. Snow's right out there.

[rubikscomplex]

There's a lot of space in between, short-stack. Go away.

[rattlingthestars]

Enjoy tossing theories an an actual wall.

[ Damn it, now he looks stupid having to get up and huff off. :| ]