[network] @r_m; A Message [DAY 441; open]

[snowblindmods]

I hope you've had fun.

Comments

[snowblindmods]

That was always a bit confusing. They weren't of their right mind, of course, but I think they were referring to a soul. Whatever it is that makes you yourself, specifically, so maybe they could be themselves again.

[thewarningafter]

I was still myself. I've always been myself, even when it was gone, and I -- I know what a soul is. What it really is.

[snowblindmods]

Then maybe you know more about what they were after than I do.

[thewarningafter]

...That's why they're insane. You've--they have no souls. These things you've made aren't us.

[snowblindmods]

Of course they're not you. That's impossible. They're close enough to count for the quota, though.

[thewarningafter]

They aren't even human.

[snowblindmods]

Obviously.

[thewarningafter]

[A brief stint of silence again, this time in anger.]

Some of us became anomalies, once. Or believed that we did.

[snowblindmods]

You believed that you did.

[thewarningafter]

And how much of this have we just believed we experienced?

[And why couldn't Christine have been one of the things that wasn't real?]

[snowblindmods]

I don't know how much it matters. The experiences felt real to all of you, so they might as well have been.

[thewarningafter]

Like how it felt real that I'd been home and come back here?

[snowblindmods]

Will it be better or worse to know?

[thewarningafter]

We're going to die. The least you can give me is answers.

[snowblindmods]

It was a quantum-based simulation, not unlike that incident where you all saw potential alternate outcomes of your lives here.

[thewarningafter]

[He blows out a ragged breath. He really doesn't know whether that makes it worse. Whether knowing something like that even can make things worse at this point. He's already confirmed the thing that hurts most.]

And in these quantum-based simulations, multiple people just happened to experience the same...what? False memories?

[snowblindmods]

The most likely future outcome of your world, had you remained in it as it was.

[thewarningafter]

What I saw, what I did had universal import. Are you telling me that while I was undergoing a medical treatment the machinery just happened to conduct a years-long simulation of an entire universe alien to the one we're in?

[snowblindmods]

It wasn't as if it actually took years.

[thewarningafter]

That's not the point!

[snowblindmods]

Is it that much stranger than that you're here at all?

[thewarningafter]

How? Piercing the dimensions I understand, but how can it gain the kind of data to make something like that possible?

[snowblindmods]

You can get a lot done with a powerful enough computer.

[thewarningafter]

Bull. Shit.

[snowblindmods]

It's not my problem if you don't believe the answer.