TO994M | day 4 | morning | audio

[cactusy]

[There's the sound of footsteps on sand; she's walking as she talks, heading away from the beach and up towards the scrubby jungle.]

So I got got by what I think was a crossbow bolt. Kinda hard to tell for sure; it all came at me pretty fast. Got an arrow to the leg not long before that, but the one that came for my head seemed bigger in the point-two seconds of reaction time I had before it hit. And it did hit. Should've been difficult-to-impossible to survive, but here I am. Which tells me some things.

[She relays the news of her almost-certain death matter-of-factly, in the same flat-ish tone as her previous radio contributions. If anything, she sounds a little more upbeat here: it's not by much, but having (what she thinks are) answers is a relief. At least now she (thinks she!!) knows what she's dealing with.]

Look, guys; this isn't real. Fifty-fifty odds whether you're a part of it or not - maybe you're all artificial constructs and I'm the only real sentient person here, or maybe we're all hooked up to machines in a lab and we've been tossed into this simulated... thing together. Gonna be nice and assume the latter, for now. Point is, signs have been pointing to this for a while, and this proves it. But this is good news, kind of. It means that whatever happens here doesn't really matter. We die, we screw up, we do something our monitor overlord doesn't like - we just reset. I fired off three bullets, and they're back now, because the gun and the bullets are just lines of computer code that can be rewritten in whatever way the people running this want.

Priority number one shouldn't be escaping the island or long-term survival or whatever. It should be figuring out how to get out of the simulation. Then the party can really get started.

Comments

[cactusy]

Anyone heard from him since he texted me?

[ichoosefight]

Not that I know of. If you're looking for a guilt trip it's in really poor taste.

[cactusy]

[For the first time in this conversation, she sounds genuinely surprised, unsure of where that conclusion is coming from.]

I-- what?

[ichoosefight]

This is all about you, right? The rest of us are just props.

[cactusy]

[Shaw decides to turn down the volume on her walkie as she takes her mid-morning break, leaning her back against a tree and staring daggers up at the sky. If John or Harold were here, they'd handle the people and she'd handle the firepower, and none of this annoying crap would be happening.

If John or Harold were here, her brain reminds itself, Samaritan would make you kill them. Just like it's probably going to make you kill this stupid, bullheaded girl. Maybe she should give up her gun. Maybe she should toss herself at a drone and get herself locked in a cell. What would the simulation do if she just plain refused to play?]

Not to me.

[She says tonelessly, ten minutes later, after she's started walking again.]

To them.

[ichoosefight]

You're sending a 19 year old girl into the jungle alone, blind, with almost no supplies.

Tell me again how much you care.

[cactusy]

Are you-- seriously? Now who's guilt-tripping.

[Your stupid choices are your own, she wants to say.

It would be nice if it were that simple.]

I thought about it. If VL1's right, and she probably is, you're owed an explanation. So you wanna talk? Let's talk.

[ichoosefight]

Yeah, I am. It's called 'people skills'.

[ You shouldn't be proud of this victory, Steph. ]

Say you're right. What's the point, then? Of all this. What's the big plan?

[cactusy]

Getting me to cave and give them the information they're looking for. Bargaining didn't work, bribing didn't work, trying to trick it out of me didn't work; I'm guessing they're going with full-on force now.

I don't know why we're still doing this in a simulation. Maybe shooting innocent people in front of me in real life is the step after this one.

[ichoosefight]

What's stopping them from shooting us right now? They clearly have the power. Why so much effort?

[cactusy]

Probably still banking on a looming threat being better leverage than dead bodies. "Give us what we want, or all these people will suffer" is more persuasive than "All these people suffered, now give us what we want".

[ichoosefight]

If that's the case why aren't we suffering more? False memories, that's a lot of work, a lot of room for error. And why a tropical island? The nights don't even get that cold. Why bother with all of that when they could easily resort to physical torture? Are they usually so sloppy?

[cactusy]

They were at the beginning. They've gotten better. But these simulations are different, so, uh-- new learning curve, I guess. Or maybe they just figure sinking more time into it will produce a greater investment.

[ichoosefight]

[ Steph positively leaps on that. ]

If the simulations are so different, why are you so convinced it's the same people?

[cactusy]

Because there's only one ultra-powerful tech group with the motive and resources to do something like this. Either they recaptured me, or they had me all along, and I never actually escaped--

[Which, maybe, means that Root never actually died.]

[ichoosefight]

There's definitely more than one. But what makes you so special? Why you?

[cactusy]

[Shaw snorts, a tired chuckle lurking at the edge of her voice.]

I'm not special. I'm just the one they have.

Why do you think there's more than one?

[ichoosefight]

Experience. Nothing you'd believe in.

But you're not the only one they have now. So what's so special about you that the rest of us don't have?

[cactusy]

My connections. The information I have.

[ichoosefight]

[ She is increasingly unimpressed, though she isn't sure if it's with Sameen's logic or her enemies. ]

So they have the technology to implant memories, but not extract them? No, before that, they have the ability to completely fabricate detailed, convincing memories of entire worlds, and they couldn't just fabricate a world in which you tell them what they want to know?

[cactusy]

... Fabricate a world where I just tell them what they want to know. Seriously. This isn't magic, it's--

[She cuts herself off, biting her tongue until her frustration ebbs.]

I don't think they stuck you with new memories in any easy-peasy kinda way. I think they tortured and brainwashed you until you didn't know what end was up. Maybe it got so bad that you retreated into a fantasy world where superheroes exist.

[ichoosefight]

Okay, that's just insulting. I mean, if you're going to invalidate someone's entire life at least be subtle about it.

If they were going to torture me anyway, why wouldn't they do it in front of you? Seriously, what's the point? Why make everything so difficult for themselves? If you're right, then these guys are incompetent morons.

[cactusy]

Oh, they're morons. But they're not incompetent.

Guessing there's a bigger picture that I don't know about. They've had me for, uh-- probably at least a year, by this point. A lot can happen in the outside world in that time. I'm putting together a puzzle when I only have a quarter of the pieces.

[ichoosefight]

I don't get how you can fail to see how desperately you're reaching for ways to make this theory work. We might be in a simulation, but the more we talk the more convinced I am that it has nothing to do with you.

If it's taken them a year to reach this level of idiocy, I'm calling that incompetence.

[cactusy]

Because the only alternative that even begins to make sense is that I'm in a science fiction movie, and that's just lazy.