text | day 008 | HE412T

[timaeus]

[This text post comes after a few hours of radio silence following Dirk's first messages.]

Surprise, I survived.
"I told you so" etc etc.
Turns out the locals are pretty chill, all things considered.
I've learned their language and they have accepted me as one of their own.
By which I mean I'm cooling my heels in one of their longhouses for the rest of the night after they explained their whole Lost-adjacent dogma to me.
And I learned some shit you folks will probably be interested to hear about, judging by the fat wad of nothing y'all were able to tell me.
Key takeaways:
One, this particular group of natives speaks Morse code.
Tongue clicks for dots and hums for dashes.
Might wanna brush up on it if you don't feel like getting speared should you have a run-in with them.
And two, the people responsible for whatever this is are somewhere to the southeast, presumably on another island.

Comments

[timaeus]

If I get taken out by people wielding makeshift spears then, frankly, I deserve it.
It'd be a just death.
My karmic reward for sucking harder than a pornstar while the cameras are rolling.

[ichoosefight]

[ That makes her snort loudly. ]

idk, does that deserve a reward or a punishment? it's impressive either way

[timaeus]

We clearly have different definitions of impressive.

[ichoosefight]

Clearly? I can't help but be impressed by a certain degree of failure.

[timaeus]

Guess my standards for laughably stupid deaths are just a bit too high.

[ichoosefight]

..."Laughable" is really not the word I would use

[timaeus]

What can I say?
Death kind of loses its gravitas after the second decapitation.

[ichoosefight]

that's an alarming number

both of decapitations, and your limit for caring when people die

but it's better than 7,000 so I guess you have that going for you

[timaeus]

I care when people die.
But I'm talking about myself, not people.
And 7000 seems extreme enough to earn another exception to the rule.
At a certain point, numbers cease being tragedies and start being statistics.

[ichoosefight]

That's comforting on the one side and alarming on the other.

Granted I've only died once, and it was only for a couple of minutes, but it seems like it would be really bad to stop caring.

[timaeus]

I'm admittedly leaning into the self-destructive shit for the sake of humor, but it doesn't seem like an irrational progression to me.
Death is a one time thing for most people.
If a person comes to terms with their own death only to unexpectedly wake back up, the state of being at peace with it doesn't necessarily disappear.

[ichoosefight]

I guess it depends how much you're really at peace with it.

It may be natural, but it could still get you killed permanently. Or at least really mess you up mentally.

[timaeus]

I've never claimed to not be messed up mentally.

[ichoosefight]

I think the goal is to avoid getting more messed up.