voice

[anklets]

[This query brought to you by a pretty handful of missing puzzle pieces, not that you'd know, since Lenalee has no intent to justify or explain that imagery, nor to keep picking at scabs until they fester.]

We've already seen how the smallest change made can rewrite the entire history of this world. People are unborn, warheads are undropped... because we've cut out the circumstances which led to their happening.

How do you think that it might be the same for us? Transports come and go so often here and no one knows why. Whatever we do, we are always altering chances, there is no reason not to consider they could also be our own. That someone arrived on a day no longer existing may suddenly leave, or return by new circumstance, or forget they were ever here before.

It may be that we don't "go home", just. "Never arrive".

[ about ten minutes after broadcast, through careful squinting and experimentation, the feed is locked from Gilbert Nightray ]

Comments

[selfequipped]

[Kate considers the meaning of this for a moment, and it actually ... makes sense.]

That lines up with what I've learned here. People don't remember anything when they go home, right? So it'd make sense, but the time loops would have to be tidy. Very tidy. I'm not sure they are.

[anklets]

[Aha. She'd hoped it wouldn't, so she takes a moment to get over the tight pang of disappointment.]

Nothing about this seems very tidy at all. It would be nice to know what we're doing to ourselves.

Voice; private

[maddeninghatter]

[ He sounds terse; annoyed. ]

Could you kindly lock this from Gilbert?

[ Not that he's in any shape to be monitoring the Network, but really. ]

Voice; private

[anklets]

[Won't kid herself into thinking she'd seen his name and expected anything different, with how quickly they always fail to match up. ]

Yeah.

voice, private, jfc!!!!

[overclocking]

[ Not picking at scabs? No, this is ripping open new wounds, to go with disappeared prophets, blonde idiots, sobbing young girls.

He doesn't mean for it to come out as an admonishment, but perhaps there's an edge of it, despite his best efforts. ]

Lenalee.

1/2 ha ha ha...

[anklets]

voice;

[permit]

. . .

[ in steady baritone, tempered and calm. ]

What other choice do you propose we have at our disposal?

voice;

[anklets]

[ weakly: ] I don't know.

[Doesn't know how to do much that isn't painful in some way.]

I'd hoped someone might say "that isn't how this works", but no one really seems to know how it does, much less how it cannot.

[That's why this scares her.]

video.

[debtor]

[He's never been sure what to make of time travel and timelines and he's only became increasingly wary of the way they've taken to casually mucking about in history, the longer he'd stayed in this world. He's at fault, too. He's definitely at fault. And what they've done now, what they've "accomplished", is unthinkable. It frankly makes him ill.

They erased the city they were trying to save.

...What she's said makes sense. It's terrible, but they have to face the possibility. They're part of the timeline here as well, after all - are they really immune to the alterations they've made? But it doesn't line up entirely, either, with what he's seen. Heard. He still doesn't know what to think; he only has one counterargument.

And he sounds calm enough when he responds. (It wouldn't do not to be.)]

It's to do with the Transporter, I was told.

It snatches us up, but it can't hold on forever, sometimes it loses its grip. When we return home, it's all... reset.

[And isn't that what happened to him?]

None of us really know, but...

[But troubling time-hypotheses aside, it's what prompted this that concerns him the most right now.]

Private.

Lenalee, where are you now?

voice forever

[anklets]

[She won't be showing her face today, not even to Allen. Particularly not even to Allen. There is too much in her face which she cannot mask and it is making her ill, iller than she has felt in months.]

We need to know what makes it lose its grip so fast on some, and so slow on others. [ that's all she says, at first ] I'm in the castle. I'm alright.

audio

[werewolfing]

Way I heard it, we can change things here because we don't belong. If we did, we'd change along with everything else. This time isn't our time, this world isn't our world.

[a pause.]

But people still go home, don't remember, live parts of their lives, come back and do. Fuck if I know how that works.

[anklets]

[Her heart is throbbing. It poses quite the challenge to swallow around.]

It can't just be coincidence, can it? So little of what happens here is.

text;

[thorny]

[OH LOOK SOMETHING OF A SENSITIVE TOPIC FOR ROSE]

More likely their actions have made them unacceptable for intended events. That's how the universe worked in the one I resided in before being pulled here, and I don't see any reason it should be different here.

Mistakes create multiple timelines, and there's only room in existence for the correct one. It's a simple concept.

text;

[anklets]

[Simple? She is sure she has never been this nonunderstanding.]

multiple timelines? what do you mean by "the correct one"?

[onehundredswords]

Ouch. That's pretty grim thinkin' you got goin' on there.

[And it's something he's considered a lot. It worries him.]

Maybe there's just more than one of us.

[anklets]

[Heartstab.]

Don't.

Voice

[tergiversant]

[This one has no judgement, just detached interest.]

Hath ye found evidence to support this? Or be this a question of philosopher's debate?

[anklets]

I want evidence to denounce it, if possible.

[taggingwomprats]

[Luke's reminded of Han, of Leia, of his father, of the people who have vanished.]

I wish I knew.

[anklets]

I wish so, too. [ bittersweetly, because, well- with everyone's words filling her head, she isn't sure whether knowing would actually be any lesser an evil ] Not knowing is the worst.

voice;

[wilder]

[Kaneis is a little irritated to see this entry. He had figured out a little less than a year ago they were erasing people by their actions. It sickened him, he hated it. But he couldn't think of another way, and so he kept quiet about it. There was no need to advertise such a wretched fact to children like Allen who had even less ability than he did to stop it. It would only destroy them.]

[Now he can only hope everyone will keep being as selfish as Lenalee here, only focusing on the idea of Transports being erased instead of the millions already gone.]

If that logic was true, then neither of us would be here right now. The Exsilium we arrived in doesn't exist anymore. The circumstances and people that brought us here are already gone, but we're still here and we still remember.

So whoever made you think about this just went to wherever they were before, to no fault of your own. Stuff like this just happens, alright?

[anklets]

[It does happen.

Just- there had always been a driving force, Akuma, Noah, the Earl, shrapnel, gunfire, something, something Lenalee could grasp and hate. She can hate the not knowing, too, but it's so much more ephemeral.]

They aren't all gone.

video;

[braavado]

Are you talking about the way people forget they were ever here?

[She wishes there was a solid explanation for the things that happen here.]

voice forever

[anklets]

In part. Some remember. Some don't.

I can't... understand it.

[voice;]

[sorrowfulcry]

[he vaguely recalls this voice...]

Wouldn't that be better? All of us probably had better things to worry about than this war. [this war, like he expects everyone else to have been caught in their own conflicts and fights] Never arriving means never having some other world dump their baggage onto you too.

[anklets]

[She, too, and is strangely glad, after a moment, that he hadn't died.

Maybe hadn't died.]

It still happens, I think. But we don't remember it, [ sometimes ] sometimes.

text;

[quackery]

maybe

but then if we never arrived in the first place, how would you explain the people who leave and come back and remember being here before when they do?

voice

[anklets]

[By this point, she hasn't the energy to type (can't hold her fingers steady enough to type). Her first instinct is to apologise, because this is the very opposite of taking care of herself or anyone else, but she's worried what her voice might do if she starts saying sorry.]

Who knows?... [ a faint, tired waver ] I don't expect I make much more sense than anything else; I haven't the head for time-travel.

text;

[concealingeyes]

even if that's true, do you think we should stop fighting then? the friends that are gone... would they want us stuck in this rundown place forever instead of home? sometimes you have to move forward because it's what your loved ones would want. you can find your own reason to fight along the way. but if you want to honour their memories, you have to end this.

voice

[anklets]

You're right. If it were true, it's all the more reason to win this, isn't it?

[ text ]

[reassures]

Do you think that makes a difference?

[anklets]

for some people

[awarlock]

Are you asking if there are ways to alter our presence here?

[anklets]

In essence.

action

[devotedtothecore]

[ It's some time after most of the discussion's over, maybe the evening, or even the next day; after he's had the time to lay work aside and skim through the other things that have passed him in that time of immersion. It's in the knowing that she's still in her rooms, from a few quiet inquiries here and there.

Knock knock knock. ]

[anklets]

[She has been thoroughly defeated, wrung out. Conflicting information versus private fears versus the shame still churning in her gut. I hadn't meant... is a litany she hasn't stopped cycling.

She never means, and yet.

There is nothing about this war which she can grasp, so she doesn't try to grasp anything else until he knocks.

He'll hear the sound of a tablet hitting the stone, as she rolls over in her twist of bedcovers to face the door. Doesn't move to answer it.]

Allen...?

voice

[mallarkey]

Think that's possible? You mean "not arrive" or "cease to exist?"

[anklets]

[By now she has realised just how tenuous everyone's calm is, how easily she has made it for her words to be misconstrued, and it lends a tightness to her voice, like she's about one more argument away from breaking clean down the middle.]

We don't cease to exist. Our actions here aren't moot. But the moment we return home is in the same instant as we left it, so, doesn't that mean, to us, we never went anywhere, we never arrived in this place-?

text;

[limitstorm]

Good.

[ riku knows this kind of response is blunt and careless, but when regarding timelines and people existing or vanishing--he makes up his mind fairly quickly. if that's what they're doing, that's fine by him. he doesn't want people here. no one should be here, they should be in their homes. it gives him hope that maybe he's been doing his job in protecting all the worlds and the people within them all along. ]

text;

[reifier]

I have to agree.

[ More like, isn't that closer to how it should be anyway? ]

text ; as blue beetle

[khajidont]

[After a moment's consideration, he decides to field this one as Blue Beetle. It seems that he only ever talks to this girl underneath poor circumstances.]

I see what you're saying, but when some people return, they still remember this place. It could be that the people who don't remember are just from alternate worlds. I've met people from alternate worlds here and at home so it's not an impossible idea.

[anklets]

[She is made up of poor circumstances.]

alternate [ backspace backspace no type that out again ] worlds?
isn't that what this place is?

anonymous text;

[payback]

[A while ago, Rin got fed a certain script by someone - one capable of making her text messages anonymous. She doesn't use it that often but it comes in handy now and again and, well.

What a scary speculation.

She doesn't talk about this that much, but sometimes she feels like it.]

Maybe they wake up. Or just stop doing this. I don't think people stop existing.

[anklets]

[She had thought, once, that people only died. But there are new Exiles where old ones ought to be.]

do you think the transporter is susceptible to the changes we make with it?