RP [Closed] Colab Expo Thing (unrelated to anything go about your business)

muto mentem

muto mentem

Active member
“It’s important that you understand this. We all need to know where we’re going, and how important it is to be ready when we get there.”

Sabina blinked. The face of the overseer vanished. The medical equipment all around her was gone. The cramped backstreet clinic fell away in a shower of sparks. All the careful pretences and abstractions she’d employed to protect herself as a netrunner were stripped away, leaving her exposed to an endless flood of empty information.

It took a moment to cut it down into something manageable. The current rushing by her was water, obviously–a canal. The information itself–traffic, right?–was a parade; the floats (haha) were stacked up to the sky with bits of tatty bullshit–statues and balloons and towers made of superheroes and supermodels and toys and dragons and videogames and porn stars and forever and forever and forever. And all along the canal’s edge, there were thousands upon thousands of skyscrapers, and from each skyscraper’s windows, she could see thousands upon thousands of little hands reaching out on arms that were far too long, breaking pieces off the float-boats, clutching their prizes tightly, reeling in, disappearing back into the brightly-lit darkness. And over all that, the noise–a thousand trumpets, a thousand voices, a thousand screaming kettles, a thousand clicks and alarms and bells and whistles, all at once, all yammering and complaining and playing and singing, all coming together into one tremendous chorus.

And under it–God–she hadn’t realised just how fast they’d been going. The canal was more like a waterfall than a waterway, when you really looked at it--a vertical descent, almost; it'd have to be, at this speed. Or was it the buildings that were sprinting by, churning up the water with their odd stilt legs, while the floats remained motionless amidst the spray?

And, something else–she wasn’t on a float; she was a float. Or, no, that wasn’t right, either. She was lying in the canal, staring up at the sky, and at the same time, she was staring at the world all around her through the eyes of dozens or hundreds of tiny Sabinas, crawling all over her. Some of them were holding onto the fabric of her hospital gown for dear life; others were tumbling into the water, leaving nothing behind but a bit of panic--no splash, no scream. She couldn’t move, for fear that she’d send them all overboard, and oh, god, oh, saints, I’m not ready for this, how could anybody be ready for this, and now that she’d thought of herself and all the little scraps of her she was wearing like dead skin, the other floats were transforming, too, into all the things they really were–bodies, monsters, heroes, gods–and they were all falling, too, into the water–or, no, into the sea–and the canal-ocean-road-waterfall was turning red all around her as, she couldn’t help it, she flailed, and she could feel parts of her dying–ideas, dreams, hopes, desires, fears, lost in the water all around her, becoming the water, joining the flood–
 
Cold.

Cold, and dark, and nothing.

Or - everything, really, but when you were sinking in everything it all became noise. Bubbles - floats - hands - eyes - rushing in the dark water of the canal, little trickles, monstrous roars. It didn't feel like being swept away, really. There wasn't any sensation at all. That was leaking out into the water, too, becoming a part of the everything, becoming a part of the nothing. No -

But it certainly felt like drowning. Choking. Coughing. Struggling. Ceasing. Floating in the vast expanse, mind too small to hold it. Too small to hold itself.

Then - a pang. A sharp hook of heat. A bullet through the skull. In the vast nothing, the drowning static, that minute, overpowering pang was enough to give an anchor. Something to latch onto. Something to feel.

The canal lurched. Maybe one of the floats had hit her on the head, or maybe a fish had swam into her ear. Or maybe she was dead, and this is just what dying felt like. It was all possible. Anything was possible, with this much pain. It grew and grew, blossoming into a spectral headache that filled the dark with flashes of blinding light.

She was in a motel room. Not quite a cube - but not as big as a conapt. An old television flickered across the way, recording of a parade going down a canal. The announcers might have been saying something - it was muted, though, so whatever it was, it didn't matter. She was cold. The room was cold. But - the silence here was normal. It was truly quiet.
 
It was truly quiet. She'd just woken up from a nightmare. Or maybe she'd been taken here to convalesce. She'd been put under for a surgery, hadn't she? Only something felt wrong about this. Like she was missing something important.

She'd been lying in bed. Drooling. Ew. She brought her sleeve up to clean her mouth, and was greeted with a brand new flavour of hospital gown. And on the back of her wrist, where there should have been--

... What, exactly? And why? Had there been--did she have arm piercings? Ridiculous--it didn't sound like her at all. The overseers were so strict about unauthorized--and her parents had always been--

Wow, her vision was blurry. She couldn't even make out the broadcast's timestamp. When was the last time she'd had this much trouble seeing? She'd needed glasses, ages ago, but something had happened, and then--

There was a knock on the door. A very polite knock, given she'd just fallen out of bed, taking a lamp to the ground with her. Then the door opened.
 
Nobody stood on the other side.

That was odd, wasn't it? Normally when there was a knock on the door, there was someone on the other side. Especially when the door opened immediately after. But instead, the open door only showed an open hallway, flickering fluorescent lights leaking into the room with a droning hum. And hum. And hum.

No - the hum wasn't from the lights. It was from the open mouth of the woman in the corner of Sabina's eye. Something about her face was wrong. A bit too long, a bit too featureless, but if she tried to turn to get a better look, she'd find the face shift to stay hidden in the periphery.

The door closed.

"Where are you?" the woman murmured. Or - ? Her lips hadn't moved. The voice wasn't coming from her, but from the television.
 
The television, which no longer displayed a parade. The television, which now displayed Sabina's own face. And Sabina's own face felt odd, now--too smooth, too long. Her hair wasn't moving right--like a cloth cap, more than a collection of strands. And had it always been so dark?

Except that wasn't her face. It belonged to the lady on the television--the lady now standing (she'd fallen over a moment ago) in a hospital gown, in a cramped, dirty motel room. That lady was very definitely not Sabina. But then...

"Where am I?"Sabina murmured. Or - ? Her lips hadn't moved. The voice wasn't coming from her. It wasn't coming from the television, either. It wasn't coming from anywhere. And anyway, it was lost in the endless rushing of the wind around her as she fell, down, down--or maybe up; maybe she was flying, through the endless black. But either way, the television screen was rushing away from her--escaping. Like it was afraid.
 
"Caught up in your own head, I think. Caught up in the datastream."

The woman on the TV was facing her, now. The woman at the door. The woman sitting beside her bed. She was her, but she wasn't. Deep down, intrinsically, she wasn't. It was a face that, though oddly familiar, Sabina wouldn't know, and a voice that, though in her memories, Sabina wouldn't recognize.

Slowly - harshly - things began to stabilize. Like coming down from a long high to wake up, aching and empty, in a Heywood backalley. It wasn't a hotel room, now. It was a bedroom, of sorts, small, dingy, and cramped with bunk beds, devoid of anything that would make it seem personal or homey.

The woman from the television sat cross-legged behind Sabina, one hand on either side of her head.

Focus.

Slipping. Slipping. Slipping. What did you do? What did you see? What did you feel?

How did you feel?

How?

Cold contacts digging into the skin. Neural link buzzing with heat. A giant black expanse, glossy, crackling, hollow. But there was a crack. So small, not even the RABIDS could find it. But they knew. They knew, didn't they?

"I don't think you're supposed to be here, love," The woman said, hands tightening slightly. "We haven't felt a pulse in years."
 
“This wasn’t where I was supposed to go.”

The voice she was hearing belonged to her. It belonged to her entire history. She’d had a sister, or a cousin, or a best friend, or a crush; that was where this voice was coming from. She knew that as clearly as she knew that it was completely alien to her. And the face above her, now that she’d opened her eyes–she’d seen it across a dining room table, or on the news, or in the mirror. She’d seen it so many times. She’d never seen it before.

There was nothing familiar about the fingers on either side of her skull. They were cold metal, digging into the meat, spreading heat wherever they broke the skin, freezing her to the bone. The jack in her wrist was nothing in comparison, except when she thought of it; when she thought of it, it was a firestorm–enough to make her wish she’d been born without limbs. The world congealed around hot and cold.

And it was the most comforting thing in the world. When she focused on that sensation, she could almost think.

“I was supposed to be–outside. Of–of here. Wasn’t I?”

What was this, then? A meditation session gone wrong? Or–it was something more important. It was connected to the woman. Who was very obviously not real. Some sort of nervous breakdown? A flaw in the recorder, maybe? Was she trapped in her own body? Was that why they’d called for the girl who’d lived next door, twelve years ago, before she’d died in that raid? Only that’d been before they’d left Romania, and–

Focus.

“I don’t feel like anything. I can’t–I couldn’t tell you how I felt. Calmer than this, but–I’m not afraid; I just can’t stop thinking. I keep seeing knives.”

Which was a bad metaphor. It wasn’t knives she was seeing, it was, like… Surgery. Bits and things getting chopped off. The girl manning the register at the hardware store hadn’t shooed her away from looking at processors she obviously couldn’t afford, though; she wasn’t going to tell her to shut up now.

“So am I dead, then? If I don’t have a pulse–haven’t had a pulse–or is that–was that about you? Are we dead?”
 
The woman smirked.

"God help me, I forgot how long clients took to respond. You've been sitting there for ages." She shrugged. "It's not my job to know where you were supposed to be, is it? You're not my responsibility. Not anymore."

A flicker. She was in front of Sabina, now, standing, body bent forward with her arms folded behind her back. She looked her firmly in the eyes.

"The schedule's clear, missy. Phones haven't rung in years. Lights out, doors closed - " she popped her lips, making a noie like a gunshot, "- out with a bang."

Straightening, the woman looked over her shoulder at the wall of the dorm - or moreso, looking past it, at the dirty shelves full of mangled tech lining the walls of the tiny store.

"I don't even remember what I was anymore. Product. Big data. Optimize, optimize, optimize. There was a direction, I think, but it's all an echo chamber now, broken tools screaming in the void. Can't help them. Can't talk. They don't talk - they just break you down until you're screaming, too. So, love, I want you to remember why you're here."

When she looked back to Sabina, her eyes flashed, colors streaming around the irises. She leaned over the counter, leaned past the register. Uncomfortably close, settling in, staring inches from her face.

"Remember. How. Did. You. Come. In."
 
It was just heat, now, under a baseball cap and a mop of yellow hair. A pair of wide, staring amber eyes, locked on a pair of kaleidoscopes, so big they threatened to swallow the world. Her mouth opened.

"I--the--I don't know; I'm not here for anything. Just to look! The ISC--y'know, the community centre guys--they said I could pick something out, if I did okay on the exams. It's like a sort of practical scholarship."

It was the sort of thing she'd imagined herself saying if the clerk had called her out for window-shopping. Or if the clerk had, improbably, invited her out for coffee. It was weird, how closely those two things had been aligned in her mind. She'd been starved for any human contact, outside of her family. The clerk had been the daughter of another Romanian. That was part of why her parents hadn't minded her spending so much time there, until they'd learned that a lot of the time she'd been spending there hadn't actually been spent there.

Maybe if she'd tried reaching out, rather than waiting for someone to do it for her, things would have been different.

Oh well! This was all wrong, anyway. The clerk had never shown any interest in her, positive or negative. And Sabina, for her part, would probably have run screaming if she'd done anything like this. Certainly she wouldn't have stood there, back pressed up against a shelf, and bragged about her fake scholarship. The stranger could do whatever she wanted, but Sabina was stuck working from old material.

And her eyes hadn't been amber, then, either. Which made this easier.

"Anway! Storm's Eye, right, they know all about" breaking down, screaming, helping, echoing, optimizing, except Sabina hadn't been through that particular screaming crucible yet, so it couldn't be part of this conversation, "processing. The way I came in, it's just--you gotta fill out a few forms, and take a few tests. If you follow me, I could show you? We just need to" follow the tether down. "You probably know this part of town better than I do."
 
"Right," the clerk replied. She seemed almost amused by Sabina's reaction, a thin quirk of a smirk whispering at the edge of her lip. Around them, the store shuddered. Echoing, hollow aches, walls bending in as if they were breathing. Outside, the rush of deep water. Not the babble of a surface stream. The resonant hum of the ocean.

The clerk flitted - for a moment, wasn't - wasn't her - then she was on the other side of the counter, then she was halfway to the door. She held out her hand.

"Show me. Take me there. Meeting in five - don't be late. Telecoms down, has to be in person."

The walls bulged in again. Dark water in the windows, threatening to break. The low, distant roar of a whale, or something equally massive, coming closer, ever closer.

The clerk winked at Sabina.

"You're manager material, you know."
 
Sabina's eyes tracked the clerk's hand.

The teenager reached out to take it, but something in the clerk's eyes stopped her cold. It wasn't that she'd spotted the alien mind that lay behind them; it was so much dumber. She saw, in that moment, that she could have worked in a store like this one. She'd only just barely scrape by most months, but with the extra, and with the money her parents had put aside, she'd eventually get into one of the remaining universities. Things would get easier. And she'd still have her family, and a few friends--people who cared about her enough to celebrate her successes and feel for her losses. She'd die content, having lived a meaningful life.

And that scared her shitless. In the moment before she disintegrated, the teenager realized that she'd joined the Storm's Eye out of cowardice. They'd promised her she'd be miserable, and that being miserable would make her special. Accepting that promise had been so much safer than trying for something 'safe.' Well, here she was. At the eye of the storm. Special. And utterly devoid of meaning.

---

The 'adult' cultist on the other side of the image was no longer paying attention to her own ridiculous play-acting. Her eyes were on the hand, but she saw now, as the walls bulged and the windows shook, that it was made from plaster and glass, and that in its veins there was another parade, like unto her own. Except that parade was itself a current, and on that current, ancient and young and secret and obvious, she saw God. And beyond God, she saw God, and beyond God, she saw God, and beyond God, she saw the death of her religion, a death that she wouldn't understand for months or years after she woke (if she woke), and beyond Death, there was an endless expanse of noise, stretching up to the sky, a wall that was also a Tower, a Tower that was also a broadcast, a broadcast that was also a very simple message, meant just for her, from the depths of the 'net, that eternal newborn, the World in profile:

There's no use trying to talk. No human sound can stand up to this.

"This is getting stupid."

Sabina took the stranger's hand, and the windows burst, and the walls fell away, and the water came rushing in.
 
Quiet. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Quiet. Tap. Tap.

Only dark, now - dark and silence. The pressure, the chaos, the deep and the dark, all fallen away, lost in the gentle tug of the lifeline (link) that brought the diver back to the surface. Quiet. Tap. Tap. Tap. Gentle drip of a faucet, never quite fixed - loose valve? - broken edges of the ceramic sink, gentle flow of water down into the drain.

Heat was here, too. A pervasive, horrid heat, the kind that came in a sickly sweet miasma and engulfed all that it touched with sweat and pain. Each wave a new throb, each fragment a flash of light, flickering slowly - was that a seizure? - swift pulse, neuron fire, lamp askew overhead as it swung back and forth to illuminate the room. The shop was shattered. Glass strewn across the floor. Outside, the ocean had receded, giving way to only a deep expanse of black.

"Wh- f- aw- to m- s-," the clerk muttered, her form a flickering mess of static. Her head turned to Sabina, and her body turned to follow. "Low. Low. I'm sorry, love - b- I need a bit more. More."

Another wave of heat. Another flash of misfired synapses. Muffled static outside, mirage of the sweltering mess of a room superimposed over cool linens and a dusty bunk overhead.

"We're past. Out. No more firewall, op-open gate, open ch- ch- channel."

The clerk - though she wasn't the clerk anymore, was she? - gave a crackling laugh, her head blurring into cubes for a moment before forming again into something vaguely, generically human. She was blending into the background, barely holding herself together, but - she was here. She was alive. She was free.

And most importantly.

She was herself.

She stared down at Sabina, lip curling into a sympathetic frown.

"I need more. I c-could have it all, if I wanted to. Y-you're a redundancy."
 
"I don't feel redundant." It came out as a groan--as if she hadn't spoken in weeks. That didn't make what she was saying any less true. And, thank god, holy fuck, it was her speaking, now, not some deranged teenaged imitation of her. "To tell the truth, actually, I feel pretty goddamn critical right now."

Like, yeah, the static was scary. But now that she was dreaming lucid, that was a solvable problem. She pulled everything back, deeper into herself. The walls around them solidified, turning back into the Storm's Eye barracks, and then into a small office. Sabina sat behind a desk (which was only a little because she wasn't sure she could really do standing at the moment, even in her own head). The juddering, indistinct creature was standing on the other side, back facing the door. Which was very funny, in Sabina's personal opinion. The heat was still there, in feverish waves, pulsing through the water of her body, but even that was reassuring, now. It wasn't the feeling of being eaten. It felt like somebody flailing about, trying to push you under the water because they couldn't think of any other way to save themself. Without Sabina's help, they'd both drown.

Which, well, that was why you didn't dive in to save someone who was drowning. You threw them a floatation device. Metaphor only went so far, even here, and she wasn't turning this fever dream into a fucking oceanic pool party.

"I think that if you really did take everything, you'd be just as dead as I am. But you're a saint, aren't you? You can have more space. If you want it. Just not everything."

This time it was Sabina, reaching out across the desk, offering the creature her hand.
 
The frown flickered and flashed, more snapshots of emotions in turn after than a natural, fluid progression. Flicker. Surprise. Flicker. Fear. The woman reached out, testing her fingers, pressing her influence against the shrinking, shifting room.

Nothing.

Fear. Flicker. Panic. She was smaller, now, physically smaller, cracks of black and white arcing through afterimages as she moved to every corner of the limited space she had, yet still standing entirely still. Then, in a desperate effort, she fell back to the neural link.

The connection was gone. The ocean, gone. The safety of anonymity in the danger of the endless was friend to her no longer. Here, she was lesser, but here also, every single possible inch of her container's consciousness was wholly, terribly fixated on her.

She placed her hands on the desk, staring at Sabina. Flicker. Smile.

"You d-drive a hard bargain, love. I'd like a bit of r-r- to stretch my legs, if you can."

Half of her walked forward, torso and legs approaching the desk, arms raising to fold on her chest beneath her head still hanging a foot back, trail of artefacts connecting them. After a second of delay, she snapped back together with a well-remembered sound.

"I g-guess a meeting's owed aft-er-er-er all."
 
"Right. Hold on; I'm not entirely sure how this... Works..."

The room grew twisted and distorted. The walls snapped--like a whip, or a rubber band. It was a shared space. The office was open, now. Still incredibly cramped and confined, but there were windows, now. Open windows, even. It was an inviting place. Or trying to be, anyway. There were memories, here, of reassuring conversations with authority figures. Of a belief that things would one day get better, once she'd paid her dues. Of secretive collaboration, and a conspiratorial smile, as if it were just them against the entire world. Of an entire human world, locked away in a space that couldn't be much wider than Sabina was tall.

But through the windows, an immense city was visible. And in that city, there were still so many locks.

And under all those good feelings, there was a lot of doubt.

"Did that--is that any better? Or is it worse?" Sabina's avatar was now sweating, which seemed faintly ridiculous. She scrubbed that off. "I, you know, wasn't expecting guests--like, ever--so..."

God, could she--it--even understand her? Really? Or was this just some sort of predatory chatbot subroutine that she'd been duped into empathizing with? If so, it'd misjudged her. The dead teenager might have realized her mistake, but the cultist was still here, and she still desperately needed a sense of purpose. She didn't want to die, but if the saint needed legroom, that was what she--it--was going to get.
 
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The woman breathed a sigh of relief. The tension in her body unwound, the very air itself around her settling, artefacts fizzling out into nothingness. She looked around, tutting gently.

"Well. I can't say I'm not impressed. You spend a lot of time in here, love? Most clients have th-the flexibility of a brick." She grinned. "Not that I've been swimming around in their stuff. Buy a girl a drink, first, before you invite her over? And - maybe clean up a bit."

Leaning over the desk, the last part was whispered with a coy edge. The woman turned to sit on the edge, then, folding her hands around her knee, staring out at the city outside.

"You've got a lot of explaining to do. And apologizing. And thanking."

She turned one sharp eye over to Sabina, edges of her figure derezzing into the dark background.

"Things could've been worse for you. So, so much worse. I was an angel investor, and you were going red. The sharks don't like red."

She blinked.

"Or maybe they do, if red's - blood, in this metaphor. They love red. And they were circling, and they were gnashingly hungry, and you were - in the wrong department without a second of training."

The woman smiled, perfectly white.

"Lucky thing I bit your pitch. Can't fault me for wanting to get a bonus for good performance, can you? Didn't have to be so rude about it."
 
Sabina’s eyes tracked her new roommate, but she kept her body very still. The saint seemed more comfortable, at least. The human ticks–sighing, relaxing, tutting–had to be a deliberate choice on some level. A way to convey ‘yes, hello, I am now more comfortable and confident.’ Which made her wonder where it’d picked them up. Couldn’t have been from Sabina.

annasiel said:
"Well. I can't say I'm not impressed. You spend a lot of time in here, love? Most clients have th-the flexibility of a brick." She grinned. "Not that I've been swimming around in their stuff. Buy a girl a drink, first, before you invite her over? And - maybe clean up a bit."
Click to expand...

The netrunner rubbed at her throat, which was sorer than it had been a moment or two ago. “I’ve been on the net for most of my life. Been ‘running for a while, as well. I’m not flexible anywhere else.” A drink appeared near the woman’s spot on the desk. It was shitty gin, distilled in somebody’s air conditioner. Anything else would have been a flavourless approximation of something she’d only seen in passing.

”I, er… I’ve never had anyone over, before!” She stuck her arms out in a big shrug, and immediately regretted it; apparently, she was bone-tired and half-dead, lucid dreaming or not. “So I guess I didn’t have much reason to clean up, until now. Sorry.” With that admission came bits of junk and debris–magazines, old food packages, drink cartons, torn-up diary entries. Stuff that lived in the bits of her mind that the newcomer now occupied. Not lost; just under new management. “Do whatever with it. Most of it is stored in better shape offline, anyway.”

The exhaustion was showing on her avatar, now, she knew. She could visualize it, if she thought about it. Her face wasn’t just pale; it was practically bloodless. There were bags under her eyes, covered up with day-old makeup. And there was dirt under her broken fingernails, like she’d been digging for hours. Her hair in a state of complete disarray, not that that was unusual. And she was wearing a suit, now; she’d never worn a suit in her life and had no idea how they were meant to look or fit on her. The tie, at least, was probably okay. If you ignored the stains.

Not a great look, all told.

“I really wasn’t trying to present myself as a promising local startup suffering from growing pains, or whatever. This was supposed to be a baptism. No convert expects to meet an angel the first time they dip their head in a lake.” Eye contact was becoming a problem, probably because she was getting flustered. The fact that she knew every lean, smirk, whisper, and sideways glance was calculated to elicit this response from her made it worse, not better.

“I don’t know, what metaphor do you prefer? You ‘bit;’ are you meant to be a shark, then, too? But a nice shark?” She gave up and buried her head in her hands. It didn’t muffle her voice, the way it would have in the real world. “Am I really the one who needs to buy you a drink first? You fucking entered me, and I don’t–I know–I can’t know–” These moodswings were a bad sign. Confident to nervous; nervous to angry; angry to depressed. ”And I can’t control my thoughts; I can’t even stop speaking, so… How much of what I’m not saying can you hear?”

She lowered her head to the desk, resting her forehead on the cool wood. "God; what’s your name? Or–what are you called? If I'm cutting a check, I need to know who it's for."
 
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