snowblindrpg | [network] @jwatson; text; Weather Update [Night 308] [open/semi-open] [shadownet]

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[network] @jwatson; text; Weather Update [Night 308] [open/semi-open] [shadownet]

[The second part of the message is OPEN. The first part is SEMI-CLOSED to anyone with access to the Shadownet - a text only app created by Winter. Winter is an NPC that you'll read about in the Survival Guide, but the basic primer is that she's a Russian AI who has been periodically contacting the Snowblind characters and trying to help them to some extent. She has been encountered in multiple events and aided characters in making private messages actually private.

Please see this post about Shadownet distribution. These are also characters who currently possess Shadownet. Anyone traveling with these characters will likely be able to read messages on Shadownet through their travel companions. We're working to get more copies.]

Shadownet Access Only
@dulcedeleche
Winter, it's John. Finally getting you some new information. It's been rough lately. It's always rough, but moreso than the usual, I think. We seem to be stuck at the high school. If there's anything you can do to help, we'd really appreciate it. We were able to get the classrooms open, but inside it's just... nothing. Like whoever was making this world forgot about that piece. I think it might be under quarantine like the building where the converts did those surgeries on the 'sinners.' I don't know what you can do, but anything you can think of after reading this and looking at some of the attached information would really help. Bullet points, as usual, covering Day 290 through Day 308. Others are welcome to fill in the finer details, of course.

Open to Everyone
Hullo, everyone. Dr. Watson here with a summary update of recent happenings. For anyone new, an archive of my previous summaries can be found HERE. I'm heading to work with a patient at the moment, but I'm also available for medical consultation as one of the medics here. Please let me know if you need anything. I'm running an on-again, off-again blood transfusion service for those with severe MN Poisoning. It's only a temporary reprieve from symptoms, but blood transfusions from healthy donors have proven to alleviate MN symptoms for up to two weeks.

As always, the new arrivals continue to trickle in. It's still every nine-to-eleven-day intervals. How do we shut this down? We need to stop dragging more and more people into this. It's not right and the conditions here just keep getting worse. The Admin told us we were running low on supplies a while back and I've noticed it's harder to find items lately. Maybe we're going longer between restocks? We're still running low on pain medication, too. The food situation seems to be stable still, at least. We'll have to hope that keeps up.
Exploration of the new residential area (Residential Zone 3) has been ongoing. We still need to find a way through the bunker. Unfortunately, Robert Miller's keycard did not work (a warning that this is a message from a young man who died overnight).

We've made it into the high school fully after Jim and his mates were able to get the password to the classrooms from some sort of blood sacrifice fire. Using the Eye app while feeding blood to it brought up 'SACRIFICE', and then a series of numbers when it had enough blood.

Rhys and Beckett tried doing some magical/spiritual rituals at the school once they entered the classroom and ended up getting stabbed by something invisible. Please do not try to piss off the data ghosts/spirits/whatevers here unless you have medical staff and appropriate supplies on hand. I would think that goes without saying, but apparently it doesn't.

Additional experiments have been conducted at the high school now that the classrooms are open. Some of the most notable outcomes from all that seem to be that the darkness within the classrooms can cling to you, people branded with the Prophet symbol seem to be able to hear some song while inside, and you can't breathe in the classrooms. Like all the air's gone out of them. Or someone forgot to put it in there in the first place, maybe.
Sherlock and Dr. House tried an indescribably stupid experiment where they put most of Sherlock's blood into a corpse they'd dug up from one of the mass graves. It resulted in Sherlock reviving in the body he transferred his nanomachines to. Unfortunately with a death price that put a man from our universe in the driver's seat. Before anyone gets the bright idea to repeat said experiment, Sherlock's new body died suddenly and without warning about three weeks after he woke up from apparent heart failure or perhaps an aneurysm. We weren't able to check at the time. He's revived again in his real body and the one he was using before seems to have disappeared. Although, it might be in one of the other morgues. We haven't gone to check them.
On Day 293, something strange happened. The longest anyone's technically been here is 308 days now, but with the way things were going off, it started to feel like months longer, then years. We aged. We seemed to age, anyway. All of us were experiencing different lengths of time and we had memories from what had happened in the interim that weren't real. They seemed it at the time. They were all too painfully real. We also experienced dreams of our own universes. They were incredibly vivid and just from what I've spoken to others about, they seem to have centered on us not being there and something terrible happening because of our absence. I'm not sure what that's meant to tell us. That we really are missing from the universes we were brought from? I wish we had more information.

Castiel's post during this "imaginary" time along with Alfie's and Quark's best illustrate what happened, I think. Quark's particularly. When he made that post, he looked like a man in his twenties, not a little boy like now. We've had errors that have altered our perceptions of our own bodies before, but never quite like this.

Everything resolved on Day 295 with an injection from the Admin. We were able to still remember everything, but our bodies went back to normal and none of it felt quite as real. Just like a nightmare you were woken up in the middle of. I've lost some of the details of all of that, but I'm not sure about others.
On Day 296, Dr. House hosted a discussion on potential experiments. We at least answered one of the questions we had out of that. Or rather, we reconfirmed something Steph and Kunsel had found out earlier and a conversation with Mr. Miller indicated that the nanomachines contain some of the same high entropy alloys that the buildings are constructed from. Is this why anomalies can only interact with us and the rubble? They go through everything else here like it's not even there unless it's been coated in rubble dust.
And talking of more asinine experiments, Mr. Graham and Dr. House decided to share the results of a few of their own. Which again, seemed designed to piss off the data ghosts/spirits. They did find that you can get a Prophet eye mark on your body using the totem in Building 217. Highly useful. And apparently made one of the spirits scream in agony while they tried to burn down the place where Winter was murdered. Good for them.
On Day 300 we had another error. More false memories. This time it wasn't just the future, it was the past. Everything mixed around. People who were never here were. People who'd died were back. Or it seemed like it anyway. I had memories shoved into my head that some people who weren't around to experience certain errors were, or that events went a different way. It was confusing and disorienting and I'm still untangling what happened here form what happened in these "alternate timelines," I guess you'd call them. It's like we were seeing through the looking glass into the hundreds of other possibilities for how things might have gone. People I was friends with were my enemies and vice versa. The Admin fixed all of us on Day 302, but the memories are still lingering. I don't know what this means or why they keep mucking about with our memories like this. It's incredibly frustrating. What's the point of it all? If there's any design here, there has to be a point to it. I know there's some sort of quantum physics thing in effect. Is more of that coming out?
On Day 302, Mr. Hans Christian Andersen requested information on strange happenings by the data ghosts/spirits around town. If you encounter any oddities that bear further investigation, please let him know.
On Day 304, Stephen and his group discovered that the Admin's robotic spiders have returned. At least this means those bloody awful cloaks are gone and smashing your tablet by accident or on purpose won't be deadly. I would strongly advise against trying to smash your tablet, though. You can talk to Angel (@guardian) or Rhys (@dickcheese) if you're in need of some information about what the tablets might contain.
On Day 305, Alfie announced that he and Royce had finished putting up some storage caches around town near the entrances to the maintenance tunnels. Please only take advantage of these caches if you're in dire need and add to them if you can. Contact @ASolomons if you're in need of specific supplies. I also have some spare clothing that I'm happy to distribute to new arrivals.
No new SD Cards and Records have been added to the Public Data App since my last update. Keep an eye out, though!

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That's not the problem, kid. They were talking past each other. Graham was making the point that Watson's got a double-standard and he's in a position of power and abusing it to get all high and mighty. Watson was making the point that the Joker's scum and no one should help him, or he'll just murder more people.

Neither of them are wrong. Watson's just an emotional moron with tunnel vision, and Graham doesn't actually know how to talk to people when he's trying to make a point.

I don't understand how it is a double standard to want the Joker to die.

Watson's the one who made it about the Joker. Graham's point was about his message as a whole and what they fought about the first time they talked. Us doing risky experiments to push forward. Watson's just being a dick about it. Graham called him out.

But your experiments are stupid and dangerous.

[This despite her willingly going along to participate in the next round of them.]

I do not know what they fought about before. I do not listen to everything on the network.

And it's your right to think that. Or say that. Are you stopping me? No. Are you using what power you have to try to belittle the effort and progress that goes into them? No.

That's the difference.

They fought about Holmes's experiment. Killing himself and having me put his blood in a corpse.

That was also very stupid and dangerous, but he consented. It was stupid and dangerous but not immoral.

Has Doctor Watson stopped you and Will from doing experiments?

Yeah, it was immoral in Watson's eyes, even with the consent. Because in his eyes, you're supposed to make choices for other people to protect them from themselves. It's the philosophy doctors like him and Strange live by. If I ignore someone's consent, there'd better be a damn good reason for it. And no other options to make them do what I want.

He hasn't tried to physically stop us, yet. He'll probably try to stop Holmes. How he's writing is meant to shame us into stopping. Or get other people to shame us into stopping. Which is stupid. Graham Cracker might have shame, but I don't.

Edited 2017-12-11 23:24 (UTC)

[She hears what he's saying and she's sort of getting the point he's trying to make, but she keeps getting stuck on related issues and examples. That's true now, as she pauses to consider Doctor House again, thinking about his stupid experiments and about that time she made him not stand out on a lake until he froze to death.]

What is a damn good reason?

Giving up. Killing yourself just because you're too tired or too scared or too whatever to go on? That's a crap reason to die and risk not coming back. Because if you do come back, you'll just be in the same situation you were to begin with. Dying like that doesn't change anything. There's no actual reward to the risk.

What about getting murdered? There is no reward to getting murdered.

[She gives him a blank but meaningful stare.]

[House gives her a long look.]

I never ask people to murder me, you know? It's just one of those things that happens.

You do things that are highly likely to cause people to murder you. You say things about people that you should not say. You share secrets that are not your secrets.

[All things she's been holding back on saying, but now that she's started she doesn't feel inclined to stop right away.]

There is no reward to the risk.

[They're in a small shed with Will and Hannibal very much within listening distance. Although, he suspects Will's not in much of a state to listen right now. Hannibal is the one who concerns him more.]

So, it's my fault other people murder me. Sure. That makes sense. It's not their fault. I'm a mean, heartless jerk who hurt their fee-fees and forced them to murder me. It was literally the only thing they could do. They weren't in control of their actions.

[Will and Hannibal have, by now, been reclassified in Ecks's mind as minimal threats. She knows that certain types of caution are to be exercised around them, but at the moment it does not occur to her that this might be a matter in which that applies.]

It is their fault but that is not relevant. It is possible to avoid being murdered when you are aware of likely causes of murder. You are not stupid. You behave as if you are stupid, but you are not stupid and you knew why Royce Melborn did not want you to say what you did and what he would be likely to do about it.

[House's eyes flash.]

This is what that's about. No...

[The look he gives her is searching, but entirely clinical, detached. He snorts and breaks off, waving a hand dismissively.]

So you made nice with him in a timeline that never actually happened and now you're buddies. Isn't that cute. You think what he did was right, then you need to adjust your rulebook, Eckers. Or maybe you wanna finish what he started?

[His tone is low, but cutting.]

I am not going to murder you, Gregory.

[The suggestion appalls her, but his other words just anger her. He is still behaving as though he does not understand.]

He does not need to be right for you to be wrong.

[ For the record, he may currently have his head up his ass but when he hears 'Gregory', Will turned his head against his knees and glanced over at them.

Because this just got good! ]

[If Ecks wanted him pissed off instead of just irritated, she's effectively done that. One of House's hands balls into a tight fist, and he bristles at her.]

Give me your keycards. You think there's any kind of equivalence to draw between what I did and what he did, then you don't belong here. I called you here because I need your equipment, not you.

Edited 2017-12-17 18:21 (UTC)

[Ecks sits up straighter, eyes boring into him -- is that all? Is she only here because her things are useful to him? Is that the only reason he called her at all?]

No.

[Her hand goes to her bag and tightens on it.]

You are not stupid. Stop behaving as if you are stupid. It is not equivalent and it is not necessary for it to be equivalent and I am not going to give you my keycards because my things are not your things to take because you do not own me.

It's necessary for it to be equivalent if you're gonna sit there and tell me you understand what happened and why you think it's okay for people like Melborn to get away with that crap. And get your hand off your bag. [There's disdain in his tone now.] I'm not gonna steal from you. Unlike you would steal from me.

[Her hand comes off the bag; she's angry enough to disobey on general principle but a direct order like that is as sharp as the insult that comes after it. She bares her teeth at him in a simulation of a scowl, but it's fleeting as she grasps for another way to make her point.]

That's not the problem, kid. They were talking past each other.

[She remembers full well how he told her that it sounds like she's making fun of people when she mimics tone and words like that. The choice is deliberate.]

You are saying that I said things that I did not say, asshole.

[Well, she's getting to be more astute. There's a part of him that's pleased. That part is not the one actively arguing with her right now that needs her to back down and reestablish his control of the situation.]

So, what do you want me to do about it?

Apologize to a guy who murdered me? Stop experimenting? Stop antagonizing people? 'Cause I can tell you the answer to all of those is gonna be 'no.'

You either get to murder someone or get an apology. You don't get both. I asked for people to come up with experiments if they didn't like mine. I got exactly two people who offered anything concrete and relevant, and one of them was the Joker. And if you don't like me antagonizing people, then welcome to the freaking club. Can't handle it? Leave. And run back to Melborn. I'm sure he'll teach you all kinds of things. You probably make a great surrogate for that daughter he's missing here.

I could. I could help Royce Melborn and even Alfie Solomons instead of helping you.

[She's shocked at herself once she's said it. She doesn't have any more love for Alfie than she did before, but he's part of the package with Royce and she already had this thought last night. She's shaking now, losing coherency even as she's still able to get to the heart of the matter.]

I want you to stop dying for stupid reasons, because you are not stupid. That is what I want. I know that I cannot make you stop but that is what I want and I am telling you that that is what I want and that is why I am here instead of with Royce Melborn, and your face is a penis and your penis is a spider and I am not going to give you my keycards and if you want me to help you I am going to help you but I am not going to not tell you that I think you are being stupid.

[Good. She's losing the thread of the argument and devolving into juvenile comebacks. House lightens the touch a little as a sort of reward.]

As the great human philosopher Jagger once said: "You can't always get what you want." I value your opinion. I'm gonna ignore it, and we're gonna rewind to before you ran this conversation off the rails, but I value it. Now eat something for dinner and be quiet.

[Ecks has the distinct feeling that she's failed -- that once again she brought her complaints to him and it has ended with him somehow right and her somehow wrong no matter how sure she was of her position or how she tried to express what she meant. There's sudden fear, too; she remembers the last time he offered to ignore something she had done -- she could hardly forget after he brought it up only a minute ago. She had ignored the offer then, and he had not forgiven her for it.

She stares at him for several long moments more, but finally her gaze drops. She pulls up her knees, starting to tuck in on herself -- then, following the same old impulse that used to make her insist on sleeping in closets, she reaches down and yanks her blanket over top of her, removing herself from view.

She'll eat eventually. And she'll be quiet.]

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rubikscomplex - 2017-12-17 20:22 (UTC) - Expand

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[network] @jwatson; text; Weather Update [Night 308] [open/semi-open] [shadownet]

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