video ; backdated to the 26th (before the scouts' departure)

[khajidont]

[Last time Jaime posted as Blue Beetle, he kept to text. This time, he thinks that people might need a face - masked as it may be - to match to the words. His voice is put through a technological filter, just distorted enough for him to keep from being recognized. He's in the VR room in the most professional looking room he could think of, which is essentially a large table with wall-to-wall windows behind him looking out onto San Francisco - potentially recognizable to some canonmates as a loose copy of the Titans Tower meeting room, which is fairly generic anyway.]

So... hi. I'm Blue Beetle. A bunch of you already know that I've been trying to dig up as much info on the Chimera Project as I can - those are the cloned children, for you new guys - and I think I've got enough information to get going. Thanks to everyone who helped me out with this, by the way - you know who you are. I know everyone must be really tired of hearing people give long speeches by now, so I'll try to keep it short. [He smiles at the camera for an instant, a flash of white, human teeth behind the armour]

[He's making an effort to sound professional, but he's not used to public speaking. Sometimes, he looks down at his lap instead of the camera (consulting his notes as if he's giving a speech for class if he's honest about it) and he's stiff, uncomfortable, but his voice is even and steady. Small victories, and victories born of actually rehearsing.

Are you ready for a fun history lesson, Transports? Because you're sure as hell going to get one.]

If we're going around in time, then that's the way we've gotta look at this: as a timeline, not just something that popped up right before the nuke did. Most of you will have already seen the guys people call the Masked around here. They're clones too. Not clones of us like the new ones are, but they're proof that the UE had the tech for them long before they had our genes, like dozens of years ago. This round of testing is what they call the Chimera Project. According to the data we've got, most of the UE's funding went into messing with genes of people who were born normally and clones so they could adapt to different environments for colonization and for soldiers. They wanted to use people from different worlds first, but they couldn't work it out like the Initiative could. Everyone they brought from our worlds died. Before you ask, we don't know which worlds, or even how many people. I know you want to know. I do too.

[He is silent for a moment, letting that sink in.]

This project started after one of us got kidnapped, way back before Elmer's world was destroyed. He had powers, and the UE - well, the UE has eyes. They started getting ideas. It seems like they started getting obsessed with creating, like... the perfect human being. That's why, when they introduced the supervirus back in June, they went ahead to target the children directly in the hospital.

Once they knew one of us had powers, they wanted more. Most of you will remember when the UE kidnapped a whole bunch of us, right before we came up here? After that, they did a bunch of tests on them, and they made clones of them. Of us. They worked, but not that well; they've got a whole morgue of the ones that didn't make it. When the rest of us went to go rescue the guys who got captured, the clones broke out of their tanks and fought us. They couldn't have been more than nineteen days old, but they still looked around eight or nine, something like that. It's only after we fought back against the UE - and their new clones - that they decided to nuke Exsilium.

I know some of you are gonna suggest just wiping out cloning period, but before you do, you need to understand that there are a couple problems with that. One is that they've been using cloning for a long time for food and for organs, before the UE even came into power. We get rid of that, who knows how many people will die? The second is that the clones are people too. Children. They were attacking us, but not because they wanted to. Inside - [and here, the professional veneer wanes a little, but he covers it up by glancing back down at his lap, as if consulting his notes, before looking back up at the screen] - inside, they were begging for help, for us to get away from them. I know just by going back in time, we're erasing people, but this would be actively doing it. And if they do end up getting erased... they deserve to be remembered as more than what we saw. They do.

So that's what I've got. If you want the more detailed lists of powers and all that, let me know and I'll send you my notes. If you've got more info but want to share it in person or whatever, or want to meet with a bunch of other people to talk this out, I'll be in the VR room.

[If you had previously ICly requested to receive a copy of the notes before now and haven't gotten a note from me in your inbox by now, let me know as Jaime ICly sent them out prior to making this post! Please feel free to respond via action or network - and if there's enough interest in sort of a mingle group log, I will toss one up!]

Comments

text

[crocodilesmiles]

Some things they can't clone. Like me, even if I could walk. They wouldn't get anything out of it.

But -- I hate saying this here, but! What makes you think any of them still exist right now, when we haven't heard back from the scouting mission yet (they go soon right)? Normal radiation levels means no bomb, Beetle. No bomb kind of implies no us being rescued, or kidnapped, in the first place. It's not the first time the world has changed so big and only we remember the things that happened before, though it hasn't done that as much since last like... November, and the last big change we did was with the virus becoming a bacterial infection.

People who died then un-died. We're the only ones who know what happened, really know, like in November last year, when the monsters killed almost everyone and we had to set that right because it was from something we messed up.

We might be looking at stopping this Project before it ever gets started. We just don't know yet!

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[khajidont]

[He doesn't respond for a while to Collette's message - mostly because he doesn't know how to respond. He hadn't even considered that they were already wiped out. He is glad for the moment that this is text, because for a little while, he looks every inch as devastated as he feels.]

Then we have to check. To make sure.

How have things changed this much? And what happened last November?

[He's been on exactly one mission, and that was to raid a Home Depot. He had been underneath the impression that others were doing very much the same thing for this past month: some food here, equipment there, nothing much.]

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[crocodilesmiles]

( She's sorry, Jaime. Having gone through this particular kind before, with people she knows, doesn't make it easier. Makes it worse, compounded with things like the bomb, with what this different landscape miles and miles below them might mean. )

I don't know. I'm told it's like time travel isn't about the big things, but enough of the small things. Change one thing, and you might have the domino effect. Something we did on all these runs, or maybe all these runs together, changed how history happened.

Like... last November, we went to Russia, okay? We were coming in after this army, and we had to fight and salt the field of this place where a bunch of the mineral things the UE uses in part of their drug manufacturing process come from in like, major quantities. (I think that was part of it, but it's been a while.) Anyway, we left there, got back to Exsilium, only it wasn't the Exsilium we left. Mutated animals had been dropped on the island for a long time, really big ones, vicious ones, packs of them, single ones, it was like a monster dumping ground for the UE. We had 500,000 people on island before we left on that mission. There were estimated at like... 50,000 left. Just like that. We came back to a place that was more broken and hurting than anything we'd left, and until we sent people back to scout for what there could tip things weird like that, that was the world we were living in.

It's not nice. It's scary. How do you plan for that from the start? One thing can change everything, and it's not even a big thing. I think with Russia it might have been something as dumb as a spoon.

infojack! feel free to not reply

[speakveryclearly]

I Dont Know If It Was A Spoon But My Understanding Is That A Literally Small Object Had Been Left Behind
The Presence Of Which Alerted The United Earth To Our Past Appearance
Leading To Their Retroactive Selection Of Monsters As A Fitting Exsilium Element
It Was The First Major Event After My Own Arrival So I Have A Pretty Clear Memory

I Have To Ask What We Would Intend Happen To These Children Besides Being Living Weapons
Some Appear To Intend They Continue Living
Where
Are We Sure They Can Be Housed In Exsilium Now That Conditions Have Changed
Because They Cant Exactly Continue To Live In The Clutches Of The United Earth
A Place In Which They Have One Purpose Only

[crocodilesmiles]

Why do you think they definitely still exist?

Arriving last November was a trip all right. Octobers are bad too... June was gross!

[speakveryclearly]

Thats A Good Point Sorry If I Was Unclear
Throughout I Was Entertaining The Notion That They Do Still Exist
My Opinion Is That Should Their Mass Erasure Occur
Unintentionally Or Otherwise
Reversal Would Be A More Dangerous Undertaking Than I Would Endorse
What If They End Up Making Twice As Many Clones With Only Half As Much Genetic Material

Now Im A Little Terrified Of What Storm Before Which Next August Will Be The Eerie Calm

[khajidont]

That's a good point. That's something else we'll have to consider if they are still around.

[speakveryclearly]

Correct Me If I Am Wrong As My Primary Knowledge Of This Matter Comes From The Content Provided Within This Post And A Handful Of Others
However My Understanding Is That These Individuals Number In The Hundreds At The Very Least
So If The Conditions In Exsilium Have Actually Been Miraculously Restored By No Concerted Effort Of Our Own
It Doesnt Seem Too Implausible To Repurpose A Few Abandoned Apartment Buildings As Dormitories
And Ashraf Has Quite A Few Good Points About The Potential Virtues Of Welcoming Them Into The Fold So Rejecting A Rescue Out Of Hand Seems Hasty
On The Other Prong
Should There Simply Be A Non-Radioactive Wasteland Or Even United Earth Dominated Territory Where We Hope For Exsilium To Be
That Does Not Seem To Be A Situation In Which We Could Presently Stage A Productive Intervention
Considering The Delicacy Of Our Current Lunar Sanctuary
Either Way I Dont Think Even The Most Gratuitously Bleeding Hearted Human Being Is Insisting We All Abduct These Children Before The Month Of November Ends
The Scouting Mission Will Provide Crucial Information But Youve Done A Great Service By Posting This In Advance Of That Decision

[khajidont]

The Masked are probably in the hundreds but unless the UE's been working doubletime since we've been up here, there aren't nearly as many of the powered clones. I think they're harder for the UE to create.

Apartments are a good idea. A space of their own. If the Exiles are back, then I'm not sure that they'll be any happier to see the clones than they usually are to see us.

And you're right, nobody's saying we should be doing something this minute. If we just go into this blind, it'll be bad for everyone.

[speakveryclearly]

In The Highly Unlikely Circumstance That This Completely Succeeds And Results In An Actual Influx Of Refugees
I Have A Sufficiently Favorable Combination Of Powers And Friends With Powers That The Refurbishing Job Would Not Be As Difficult As It Sounds
However I Do Feel Obligated To Disclose That Sollux Captor Expressed My Kneejerk Reaction To This News

[khajidont]

[You trolls!!!]

Good to know.

text

[khajidont]

[Yeah, that's sobering news. Terrifying too, if he's being honest about it.]

But you guys changed it back? And everyone who died, after you changed it, they were the same people you came back to?

[crocodilesmiles]

We changed it back, but not everyone came back. The same thing happened in June, when everyone got sick? Some people still died after the virus was made into an infection (or whatever happened). It's always been hard to have friends in the Exiles, 'cause you don't know what they'll forget, or if they'll always be there. Even without time changing on us like it does.

I mean, it's worth it! And there's a lot we can do, to make sure bad things like this won't happen all over again. I just -- I just think we need to keep that in mind, that's all.