[Week 2] Early morning day 320

[desperate_times_right]

[Chloe’s mental voice sounds weak and disoriented, as if she’s in shock]

Can someone come to the caves? I need help.

I think Hana’s dead.

Comments

Re: WHAT A WAY TO FIRST SHOW UP ONCE YOU'VE BEEN DEINFILTRATED

[youandyoualone]

You might be surprised. Elua's balls, Chloe--no one outside of Cabal should know how to make a cavosophia!

[desperate_times_right]

If it helps, I don’t think it worked. He didn’t seem happy with the results.

[youandyoualone]

Of course it wouldn't work. There is no longer any Overmind or rightthink to make them function.

[desperate_times_right]

Sounds like maybe it’s better that she died. Who woke me up?

[youandyoualone]

[There's a pensive silence.]

... I do not know if anyone did wake you, Chloe. Not as Naoki just did for me. It may be that once Hana's mind was scraped out, the mechanisms by which we Infiltrate realized that there was no one consciously piloting the body, and so you woke naturally.

[desperate_times_right]

Jesus. I feel like that ant fungus.

[youandyoualone]

Ant fungus?

[desperate_times_right]

Yeah there’s ... shit, I forget what it’s called. Some ants get this brain fungus that makes them climb up really high so the spores spread better.

[youandyoualone]

Ah yes. The overmind would have been that fungus.

[desperate_times_right]

And now it’s me.

[youandyoualone]

Yes. I am so very sorry, my dear.

[desperate_times_right]

What’s going to happen to her when we leave?

[youandyoualone]

Catatonia. Sooner or later, some variety of mercy killing.



... if you wish to use her death to accomplish some goal before that, I think we all might understand.

[desperate_times_right]

Shit. I mean, she wasn’t - it was like being Circe again, but she doesn’t deserve this.

[youandyoualone]

She does not.




Ghalib will be punished. If the Travelers do not see to it before the Jaunt is over, Cabal will.

[capital_asset]

Death used to be the most common way Infiltrators were restored.

[youandyoualone]

Cavosophic hollowing is a kind of death, yes, as Anaf is describing it to me. Just-- only the self dies. The body it inhabits persists on.

[capital_asset]

...And then the Overmind directed the body, or bodies?

[youandyoualone]

In a way, yes. That is to say that they acted accordingly to the Overmind's rightthink--to unconscious programmed responses based on societal expectations, which in essence is what rightthink was. Societal expectations psychically enforced.

[capital_asset]

How widespread was the practice?

[youandyoualone]

Rightthink or cavosophia? The former was... quite common. The latter, less so. I believe that many or even most were made from criminals.

Indeed, Anaf tells me there was some debate in Cabal when he was much younger if the practice ought to be revived for those who would betray their fellows by attempting to edit them during dreampushing.



It was not, thank the gods.

[capital_asset]

I was thinking more of cavosophia; rightthink is better known of in general.

That's... fortunate for Ghalib.

[And thus for Gil - waking up in the body of someone whose psyche has been torn out, via death or something like cavosophia, is something Raidou knows from experience to be deeply unpleasant at best.]

[youandyoualone]

... ah. I should say that the debate was strictly about Cabalists who would edit their fellows, not any other faction. Cabalists 'push so often for each other--and for no one else--that settling such a matter was... important.

[capital_asset]

I can see where it would be.

[youandyoualone]

Indeed.

I suppose, since Anaf cannot access the network unless I let him, that I should note for the record--and so that we have all the pertinent information at our disposal--that Cabalists, in fact, universally dreampush when they sleep--however, they also kythe when they sleep. They trust each other implicitly. And they can completely separate their psychic form from their physical body.

And because they are all dreampushing for each other, their powers of mind have no range or strength limits.

There is one other secret to their faction: for one who can separate psychic form completely from the physical, death is nothing to fear. Cabal only has enough power, even with its dreampushing, to maintain a dozen or so of the most useful spirits of the dead, but they do and have been doing so for a long time. Among Cabalists, flesh is considered temporary and unreal.

Anaf and Faris do not host one such, although the practice has allowed Anaf to quickly adjust to my presence. However, Qabil does. One, in fact, who was alive during the first visit the Travelers made. It is Qabil's spirit who has been urging him not to trust us in the least.