Mid-late Week 3

[brokers]

[The broadcast goes out in the latter half of the third week of mass markings. Liara's voice is likely familiar, but where her telepathic communication is usually crisp and clear, this time it has an odd, echoing quality, almost as though she's livestreaming a recording of speech. There isn't much by way of inflection - it sounds, perhaps, as though she's reading from a screen, or repeating something over-rehearsed.]

I am certain that by now, most of you have seen the media room that makes up the third stage of this iteration of Liminal Space. It is a reproduction of a portion of a place we refer to as Moebius, and the location of the first Jaunt the oldest of us remember.

The computer banks within that room do not hold information about the Jaunt itself. They do not hold information about our captors. They only hold records of our own deaths. I would...

[There's a brief skip, as though the connection has faltered, though there's no evidence of disruption.]

I would strongly advise everyone to leave them alone. And whatever you do, do not attempt to Interface with them. The accounts are quite intimate.

Comments

[morethanashadow]

Everyone always talks about how terrible Moebius is all the time. And... I get it, but I also really don't? [It's hard to explain why Harrogate was the worst, partly because he and many others just refuse to talk about it, but that feels different.] And if there's anything we can learn from it, then... I want to.

[itsananimalthing]

There's stuff to learn. There's deaths from before Moebius, of people I don't even really remember anymore.

[This will help. This will help a lot, even as fucked up as it is.]

Ain't sure what all somebody who isn't from back then, but that's up to you, not me.

[morethanashadow]

It probably can't hurt to try, at least. [At least, not for him. He understands that it would bother other people, hence the warning.]

[itsananimalthing]

It could hurt to try. You may think death's no big deal, kid-- these days, neither do I, really. But feelin' it over and over again kinda is.

[It was a good reminder of what mortality actually feels like, anyway.]

Aw'right, you ready? C'mere.

[morethanashadow]

[Phillip shrugs- he feels like his situation is different, but he doesn't much feel like arguing.]

Ok. [he'll move over to riddick, hand up for an interface to get the information.]

[itsananimalthing]

[Riddick meets his hand with his own bigger one, eyes flickering briefly with Crypto green. The interface is brief, gentle, and results in a neatly packaged file of names, approximate dates, and partial video-audio feeds. All emotion and sensation has been scrubbed clean, leaving behind something that could come out of the Blair Witch Project or some other found footage horror movie rather than a living-- dying-- person's mind. There are more than fifty of them, all told.]

Enjoy, kid.

[morethanashadow]

I feel like this is a weird thing to tell someone to enjoy. [Phillip doesn't enjoy death, he just accepts it as a thing that happens. He'll take the package of information, though, and if Riddick doesn't shoot him he might stay right where he is to shift through it all.]

[itsananimalthing]

That was sarcasm, Phillip. I wasn't serious.

[He doesn't make him leave, though, so if he wants to stand or sit or whatever on the catwalk beside him while he does his analysis, that's okay.]

[morethanashadow]

Oh.

[Well at least that makes more sense. Phillip settles quietly, sorting through it all. It's very... well, academic, to him. Having the emotions stripped from it means Phillip can only supply his own, and though seeing people he cares for clearly experiencing pain as they died bothers him, the rest of it doesn't. He wouldn't have held up as well with other people's emotions, certainly, but... maybe that would have at least taught him a lesson.

Either way, he's largely unaffected by the time he finishes, looking back at Riddick.] Why was the goal to kill everyone? Do you know?

[itsananimalthing]

[Not a lesson Riddick would like him to go through in that particular manner. Maybe he'll learn it some other time, without having to be traumatized by experiencing death directly more than fifty times in a row.]

In Moebius? No. I have a guess, but that's all it is.

[morethanashadow]

What's your guess? [Hey, if it's all they've got, he'll take it.]

[itsananimalthing]

Far as I can tell, the thing ended when we killed the last infiltrator. And every infiltrator was somebody who knew at least part of what was goin' on, was in on the little torture experiment gig. So I think what happened was, we had to kill 'em all in order to stop the little torture experiment gig.

[So in other words, it wasn't kill-all-your-friends for the sake of it, it was kill-all-your-friends to stop future killings.]

[morethanashadow]

Ah. ...That seems like a terrible scenario to put everyone in in the first place. [The dying is whatever, but torture? Yeah, that he has more problems with.]

[itsananimalthing]

It was pretty terrible, yeah. Why d'you think people don't like to talk about it?

[Riddick is one of the few who doesn't mind so much, but then, his life has been one long shit-show, so while it was pretty awful, he can mostly deal with it. Exhibit A, him intentionally rebuilding every memory he can from it. Exhibit B, him talking about it right now.]

[morethanashadow]

I dunno. I guess I kind of assumed most things at least couldn't be as bad as Harrogate.

[but then again, Phillip was one of the more traumatized coming out of Harrogate thanks to certain things.]

[itsananimalthing]

It was bad in a different way. Less end-of-the-world scary and more personal scary, and for everybody not just a few people who were in the know.

[Phillip was, indeed, a special case when it came to Harrogate. Phillip and Alcuin probably came out of that Jaunt the worst, poor kids.]

[morethanashadow]

I guess that makes sense... [It's still a little hard for him to get his head around, but... it's probably not important if he understands the why, just that it was.]