IC contact for lastvoyages

[cactusy]

[If I don't have an active post up, feel free to use this post to have your character call, videochat, text, or knock on Shaw's door.]

Comments

[abrightboy]

Oh, good. I mean. Probably not least because I don’t think I had the game to get that far no matter how long the Breach lasted.

[cactusy]

My brain might be screwed up, but it's not that screwed up. None of us are on the hook for any of that crap, as far as I'm concerned.

[abrightboy]

They’re different people from us. The people we inhabit there.

[cactusy]

You know, I had no idea how popular that theory was until Belova's post.

[abrightboy]

…There are other ‘theories’?

[cactusy]

Simulations. None of it's real, it's all in our heads.

[abrightboy]

…Like the Matrix?

[cactusy]

Like the simulations I told you about.

[abrightboy]

Oh. Does that make Breaches easy or hard for you?

[cactusy]

It makes them harder to distinguish from reality.

[abrightboy]

Even though the environment is completely different? Or is that how you do sort them out in your head?

[cactusy]

Yeah, the environment being completely different helps, it's more the mundane stuff. It's not hard to remember I didn't spend my whole childhood in Texas. It takes a second to remember I wasn't adopted as a baby. That kinda thing.

[abrightboy]

Is that because of the computer thing that happened to you at home? That you have trouble holding on to yourself?

[cactusy]

[Her first instinct is to correct him; to tell him that she has trouble holding onto reality, not herself. She knows exactly who she is.

But then again, if she sometimes struggles to remember which basic life facts actually happened to her and which were artificially implanted into her brain - does she really? After 7,000 simulations, it's only logical that some of your old memories have been replaced by new ones, Lambert had told her. Now the two coexist side by side.]

Yeah.

[She says, after a pause.]

Because of that. And all this Barge stuff makes it worse.

[abrightboy]

You know what might b…

[She didn’t ask him for help or advice. He stops abruptly. Hesitates. Comes up with something much more milquetoast.]

That sounds like it would make Breaches extra rough.

[cactusy]

You can say the other thing if you want.

[abrightboy]

I just thought… it might help if you write down your facts on one page and then for each of your Breach personas and it might help you sort them and also give you something to refer back to.

[cactusy]

Yeah, I know somebody who does that.

It's usually not major confusion, you know? Just a few seconds of disorientation. Still sucks. But I can deal.

[abrightboy]

It might help with more than Breaches. You have the… the thing where you question reality just… on a normal day sometimes, right? Not to the degree that you did with the sword curse, but often enough that you recognized it that day.

[cactusy]

Are we talking questioning reality, or questioning my memories?

-- The answer to both is yes.

[abrightboy]

Journaling can help in either situation.

[cactusy]

Every time I've tried, it's just felt like a waste of time. Especially the reality stuff. You ever tried to prove something that can't be proven? It's like...

[She pauses.]

Are you religious?

[abrightboy]

No. But I grew up around it.

[cactusy]

[Oh good, that makes this a lot easier to explain.]

And so you were expected to take a lot of stuff on faith, right? To believe, and to be sure of that belief, even without proof. Even when there were things around you that seemed like evidence against what you were being told was true.

[abrightboy]

That’s what they expect. Yes.