middleofsomewhere | The Endless River

The Endless River

On the morning of day twenty one of the month of Kazoo there is a message on the ICP screens around the train. Their SCA's will light up the colour of the Void and show the following information.

World #398050 is a void nexus known locally as Tshering. As a void nexus this world has strong links with the void and the connection through worlds. World #398050 is home to the Endless River. Legends speak of this river being powerful enough to send thoughts from one heart to another across any distance. All that is needed is for you to know who it is you wish to reach.

On-board

The dressing carriage is open, filled with clothing best suited to a pleasant spring day. Light, airy and in a rainbow of joyful colours and florals. One closet is entirely filled with wide-brimmed hats bedecked with ribbons, feathers and ornaments. A stack of picnic baskets and containers filled with an alarming variety of passenger-suitable foodstuffs and flasked drinks sits in one corner, next to rolls of thick, weatherproof blankets in the four team colours.

The large box marked Do Not Use Yet, filled with small, empty jute bags, is hopefully still sat in the Luggage carriage, ready for passengers to grab handfuls of its contents as directed by the announcement.

Upon landing (after an appropriate countdown), the train remains on the surface, its carriages partially curved to form a gathering site for the day. Welcome to Tshering, the eighth void nexus!

A Day for Picnics

Tshering, system #398050, is a strange place, only habitable by grace of the passengers' SCAs. The sky is shot through with colours, a cascade of sunsets, and through it, the void shimmering through it in seams like a child's painting of the milky way. Still, there's a beauty to the chaotic mash of colours that soaks through its landscape, and in the shelter of the forests of towering funghi that dot its surface, the Void can go unseen by its visitors.

The temperature seems mild, suitable for the provided clothing, and if there are weather patterns around the world they've taken the day off. The funghi are sturdy enough that what air flow there is doesn't disturb their stalks, and carved grooves and holds in some of the larger examples indicate that climbing them to sit atop their glowing crowns is eminently possible, and, in fact, encouraged.

the Endless River

The Endless River is a font of pure chaos, flowing from a multitude of small rivulets across the area to a central reservoir, from which it pours directly upwards, away from Tshering's surface and out of sight, beyond the world's atmosphere.

Anything bagged and placed within the Endless River will also flow upwards and soon be out of sight, passing, presumably, into the Void. Scattered across the surface of Tshering are small, glittering pebbles, as described in the announcement.

The stones are pleasantly cool to the touch, and all passengers need to do is feel. Messages can be in any form that the Voidtreckers wish. Perhaps words, perhaps feelings, perhaps an image from their mind into the stone. Perhaps a mixture. Once they begin their message the stone will glow slightly and continue to glow as they secure it in the bag and cast it into the river. They will feel, almost instinctively, that they need to focus as they do so, thinking of the person they wish to reach all the while.

There are plenty of bags and many more stones; passengers will not be limited in their sendings.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Nothing to apologize for." That's what tumbles out first, a little staticky, a little too much, because people thinking with an intent to be heard, even by themselves alone (plural intended), is just... loud.

The return to human form is sudden like a snap, and there's a clear expression of not-quite-fear on his face.

"...Which I guess answers your question, huh." Self-deprecating humor, yep, that's how we're going to get through this, if he can't turn into a mug. (A mug would be kind of obvious out here.) "Sorry. Most of the time I can escape hearing any kinds of details, but you're louder than average and I don't have any kind of buffer like that."

Soldat blinks a couple times at Ghost's reformed human face, but between half-expecting it already and the expression on Ghost's face, their own melts into something kind of sheepish and embarrassed. "Shit. Okay, no, I am apologizing. Because nobody should have to listen to what goes on in our head." (I'll, uh, try to keep quieter around this guy. No. Yeah, the Asset ain't quiet for anybody, though, sorry. ~~Or me.~~ Yeah, well, you're an asshole.)

"Guys." Soldat is clearly wincing. "That is not being quiet, Sarge. C'mon, pal."

Edited (html fail) 2021-04-19 07:25 (UTC)

Ghost, for his part, snorts aloud on the 'you're an asshole.' "I try to keep out of most people's heads because people generally don't like that," he says, with a little static on the emphasis because he's still not exactly settled. "And also basic privacy reasons. Not... because the content's likely to bother me."

Usually it's fine. Soldat... is maybe one of the people who could bring it into not-fine, considering some of how they've reacted to what he's said before, but probably not in a way he can't handle. Probably. "...Besides, Morgan and I were almost as bad," Ghost offers at the end, like someone offering a hand to a cat for forgiving after stepping on its tail.

(Sorry, man. Shutting up, now.)

"We don't. Do a whole lot of talking about. Like, the bad shit. Mostly it's bickering. And that's what nobody ought to have to listen to." They heave a long, heavy sigh, as things finally quiet down. The Asset doesn't normally have much to say anyway, even if when it does it says it loud, and the Pit is mostly urges without a lot of words put to it. So with Sarge aware, hopefully that ought to be enough.

Given what Ghost said about Morgan-- the template for his mind-- maybe the two of them really were like Soldat and the rest. All pieces of the same mind, stuck talking to each other. "Is that what you and Morgan were like?" they guess. "Bickering?"

"Bickering, me calling him on his shit, sometimes vice versa." There's a slight smile there. "It started with creepily dreaming whatever the other one was doing, because that's what happens when you mix psychic aliens and almost identical neurostructures, apparently."

He nods at - a point kind of over Soldat's shoulder - with a slight tilt to his head. "Nothing that constant, even when we were physically in the same place. Morgan's psychic defense is better than mine, not that I think he really realizes it. He started putting serious amounts of alien matter into his brain - shit, almost a year ago?" Time doesn't fly, it orbits, always returning to the same point. "By the time they decided to make me, he was at the point where he'd just conveniently show up when someone was really at the end of their wits and talk them down. I'm not sure how much he understood just how much he knew that because of noetic disturbances."

Aw. Sounds like there's benefits to being an alien hybrid of sorts. Well, they're pretty sure there's all sorts of benefits, but that's not one they'd considered: helping people out. Knowing where to go and what to say. "You were more like brothers, maybe, if he had alien stuff in him, too," they hazard.

Then, because it seems only fair since they really aren't any more of a person than their brain companions, they add, "They've all got names, too. Sort of. The one who sounds the most like me is Sarge. The loud, monosyllabic one is the Asset. The one that sounds nothing like me and is kind of staticky, that's the Bottomless Pit. If it ever matters for you to address them-- it probably won't." But it's still polite. (Aw, thanks, pal.)

"Somewhere just under half by weight, because he's an idiot and Alex is an asshole." Pause, sigh. "But yeah, we're brothers as far as I'm concerned, and I'll grudgingly let Alex and the cousins stay, but the rest of the Yu family sure as hell isn't my family." The best part of being the weird alien in the family is being able to choose that. There's a reason he doesn't have the name, with all its fames and infamies.

Ghost looks Soldat up and down, and then finally says, "You know, I'd guessed you were military, but there's definitely a theme there." The Asset, it sticks to his mind like reaching under a desk in high school and finding mostly-fresh used chewing gum there, gluey and a visceral reminder that other people could be absolutely fucking disgusting when they didn't care who might be affected by it. "You don't have to explain shit about it, but, well, I noticed."

"Sort of." Soldat shrugs a little, not quite awkward but maybe a little chagrined. "I started off military, designated marksman and then spec ops in World War 2. Then I was a POW. Then I was a science experiment. And then I was a weapon for a secret organization who wanted to take over the world." They huff out a little sigh, run the flesh hand over their hair, and finish lamely, "It's complicated."

A low whistle. Not a sound effect - an actual made-with-mouth whistle. "Damn. You've actually got over a century on me, then."

That's not the super important part, really, but a bit of humor is like, a processing break for the rest. The 'it's complicated' gets another small snort. "Yeah, because my situation's simple. Both my brothers were hoping to use me for a surrogate for the other one because they absolutely wrecked their relationship and can't communicate about it and meanwhile their cousin uploaded her brain into a robot and got assassinated by a saboteur from a corporate rival in the process, and neither of these is the most complicated or fucked up thing in my life."

He won't push, but 'it's complicated' isn't exactly not the story of his life.

"Okay, okay," they give in, holding up both hands in mock surrender. "You understand complicated. Mostly people just don't like to hear about it, is all. It tends to make people pretty mad to get the details." They've learned, after a long time of just dumping awful revelations on people at the slightest question, how to actually keep things back out of tact.

"But if we're going to start exchanging horror stories, we should probably sit somewhere. Eat some of that picnic of yours." They've got snacks tucked into their pockets, too, though some of them are probably a little smashed now.

"Oh, I'm sure I'll be pissed, same way you'd be pissed about mine." Soldat's already been pissed about his, and they've barely done scratching the surface. "It's got a bunch of human experimentation bullshit too, as fair warning."

He adjusts the basket and clips his phone back to his belt. "Pick a mushroom, any mushroom, I guess."

"Yeah, well, so does mine, so guess we're probably even. Mine's got a lot less aliens in it, though, I'll give ya that." There's a brief urge to throw the flesh arm around Ghost's shoulders, knock their heads together, and tow him along-- but Ghost is not small!Steve, or Sora, or Misty. And they know they couldn't keep in that much contact for more than a minute anyway, so of course they don't do it. But the urge is there.

Instead, they prowl over to a mushroom stalk with a broad cap and plenty of springy moss underneath to sit on. They settle, one knee up and the other out, not comfortable sitting cross-legged, and start pulling little bags out of pockets. "I have wondered before if the arm is alien, though," they admit, opening one and making a face at how crumbled the trail mix inside has gotten. "It was installed in the 50s, I'm pretty sure. Nobody had tech like this in the 50s."

Wow, rude, he's not that small! (He's absolutely that small.)

Ghost follows Soldat over obligingly - he swings the basket off his shoulder and just lets go of it, telekinetically setting it down before dropping into a casual seat on the moss. At the mention of the date, he squints at the arm in question.

"Well, if it is, it's not the same kind - Typhon weren't even discovered until the space race. America locked Russia out of the loop later on, and the whole thing shut down with a containment breach in the... early eighties? Somewhere around there, I think it was Reagan. Got shut down after that until a megacorp called TranStar bought the research station from NASA." He pauses, shakes his head, flicks the lid of the basket open with a gesture that doesn't actually touch it. Soldat now gets to suffer increasingly casual telekinesis. "Probably not the best starting place for the whole thing, though, since most of that history doesn't impact my life that much."

Soldat lived with a witch for a year in Beacon, and is good friends with a magic-user here on the train. A little mind-moving isn't going to upset them.

"I don't know who Reagan is," Soldat admits. "I was still in Russia at that point, up through the early 90s I think, and they never actually got locked out of the space race, so. Definitely different versions of Earth." They peer into the basket, wondering if it's appropriate to just start pulling things out. But if not, well, they're gonna start anyway, shrugging off their jacket and setting things down on it. "I'm still piecing the timeline together, to be honest."

"Well, not the whole space race, just the part with the top secret alien research." Ghost shrugs, and grabs a wrapped sandwich out of the basket without further ceremony before the whole thing tilts a little in Soldat's direction. Help yourself, buddy. "Reagan was one of the US Presidents in there somewhere. Most people kind of hate the guy.

"TranStar started fixing up that research station ten years ago or so; finished it in five. Officially it was for engineering research and neuroscience, and don't get me wrong, a lot of both of those things happened on Talos I. But the public sure as hell wasn't told about the aliens, or what actually happened to the 'volunteers' TranStar brought up from Russian prisons. Morgan's family was TranStar's corporate royalty - both parents on the board, Alex the CEO, rampant nepotism as far as the eye could see."

That's good enough on the historical context, probably. The question there is where the hell to start with all the rest.

Well, no time(line) like the present.

"The first words I ever actually heard were Good morning Morgan. Today is Monday, March 15th, 2032." The great thing about using a voice synth is that he can switch it off Morgan's voice setting for the alarm clock's line, instead delivering the feminine computerized 'personal assistant' voice exactly as he heard it. Ghost takes a deep breath. "The day that Morgan was hearing those words was actually February 23rd, 2035. The day I was hearing them was September 9th, 2035, because the fucked up simulation had fucking layers."

They take a sandwich, and find a little bag of cookies that aren't too crumbled to offer, in return. Their expression, though, is grim. "Simulation," they repeat, an obvious invitation to explain. Because they already don't like where this seems to be going.

They can guess what was happening to those Russian prisoners, too. (Technicians. Doctors. You said it, pal.) The Asset is going to take that personally, they can tell from the way it used two words, and all but growled them. It's the most Russian of the four of them. (I ain't thrilled, either.)

Can you really, Soldat?

"I understand why they did it."

Ghost closes his eyes, briefly, setting the sandwich down on the closed flap of the picnic basket. One of his arms goes Phantomy again - and then strikes at the mushroom behind the two of them, fast as a whip, the curled tendrils stretching and sharpening to at least eight feet of reach with a nasty point at the end, leaving a deep puncture in the mushroom stem.

It's not hard to imagine what it would do to human flesh.

"Not letting something that can do that as a starting point loose around humans until you know it won't immediately murderize everyone in sight is the smartest decision they could have made." Ghost pulls the tendrils back, curls them up into a hand again, his fingers balled into a fist. "But the way they did it was by throwing me into a simulation of Morgan's actual experiences during the Talos I containment breach to see what I did."

And it wasn't fun, needless to say.

"Good strategy, shitty implementation," Soldat suggests. Not gonna change their mind on that, buddy. Though their threat assessment of Ghost sure did just go up. It's probably a good thing they've already slotted him pretty firmly into "friend-shaped" in their head, and also managed to conflate him with the Widows into "needs protecting".

Friends can also be very dangerous, though, as can people who need looking out for, so it's fine.

They look down at Ghost's tightly-closed fingers. "What happened."

Well, Ghost sure isn't going to argue with that. The question gets a bitter laugh, a little helpless.

"What didn't happen? It was a recreation of the worst 48 hours of Morgan's life in perfect-memory-perfect detail, directly designed to trigger sense memories to make it seem like more than just wearing a VR headset. And it all starts Your memory is full of holes. I'm sorry, but it's permanent and You're not going to like what I have to say next."

He's quoting Morgan, but it's hard to tell, since there's no telltale shift in accent, much less in actual voice. Ghost takes a deep breath and continues.

"So the main secret research was centered around something called neuromods, which - well, you can probably figure out the purpose from the name. Used alien matter to artificially construct neural structures, gives people skills in a ten minute injection process instead of years of learning thanks to advanced brain imaging. 'Removing' them was a neural reset to when they were installed - memories included. Short version is that Morgan used himself as a guinea pig for alien psychic power mods and lost the whole three years he'd been in space as a result."

That's not the worst part, but, there's a lot of fucked up there already, so Ghost is going to take a break there and eat this sandwich, mentally watching for the reaction even if he's not looking at Soldat directly.

"Jesus Christ," is what they mutter, but at least that's all it is: a mutter. They have to look at their own hands, instead, and carefully set down the sandwich because they kinda just punched a hole through it with metal fingers. The flesh hand, still clean, goes up over their hair to still the shaking.

Memory loss is kind of a thing they're familiar with. And are terrified of. After their hair, that hand goes into a pocket, where one of their memory stones is, just a couple taps as a reminder that it's there and they can at least get those memories back if they have to. The only thing that's keeping them remotely steady is the knowledge that Morgan did it to himself. No Chair. No straps.

(Technicians. I don't know what you mean, Asset. Others.) The Russians that the Asset hadn't forgotten about. Given what Ghost said, and what Morgan was doing.... They put their head down in their hands. Hand. There's mustard on the metal one, which means there is now a little mustard in their hair, fuck. (I really didn't need you making that connection just now, buddy. No.)

Paper folding. That's a better idea right now. Soldat works their way halfway through folding a crane in their mind before they can pick up the sandwich again. They're not sure if eating is a good idea, so they just put it back on the picnic basket, themselves, for now, and only pause to lick the mustard off their damn fingers before saying: "Okay. Okay, go on, then."

"You sure? Because if you're fucked up about that part - look, I'm going to be honest. Whatever you're thinking? It's probably worse than that. Like, nine in ten, it's worse than that." He's trying to stay out, but the Asset is loud, and snapped one of the connections into place and - well, Pytheas, but just regressive neurotomy wasn't the worst of what happened to the volunteers, either.

Ghost does, however, pull a napkin out of the basket and offer it in Soldat's direction. "Here, you smeared the hell out of your hair."

"Give me five more minutes of dwelling on it, and I bet you I can get to worst case scenarios all across the board," Soldat says, aiming for dry, just coming out bitter. "I've got a damn fine imagination for a murder machine. I'll lock it down now that I know what to expect."

But they accept the napkin and untie their hair to start getting mustard out of the strands. "Let's just not talk about the other ones," they suggest. "It's your story I'm here for, not theirs." The Russian prisoners aren't here, and they can't do a damn thing for them. Ghost, maybe they can, even if it's just being a friend.

"I'll do my best." It's a weak smile. "Unfortunately, my story's Morgan's story for most of it, and Morgan was involved in this shit at all levels. It's the fact that he understands it and regrets it that makes him a better person than he was in the three years he lost."

The current Morgan is definitely an improvement, if you ask anyone but Alex. That's the problem.

"But so in October 2034, Morgan gets his memories pulled out in the sake of making himself a guinea pig to see if neuromods based on Typhon are a thing that can be done, to see if humans can get powers like this." He levitates his sandwich, spins it in the air, and drops it back onto his knee. "Entrusts his brother, Alex, with basically the sanctity of his mind."

Soldat can probably see where that's going, see why it's nine in ten worse than you think.

"The thing is that doing shit to your brain like that - cycling neuromods that much, putting that much alien matter in, all of the above - it causes personality drift. Makes you paranoid, but also makes you more inclined to empathy in the real 'understand what you're doing to other people is fucked up' way. Makes people blander, too, depending on exactly what's going in and out." He shakes his head. "I've got my thoughts as to why, but that's not the important part. The important part is that starting around December, Morgan decided he wanted out. Wanted the whole thing shut down, actually. Alex... wasn't a fan. Couldn't get it in his head that the 'new' Morgan was still the 'real' Morgan. I'm not sure he has even now, honestly."

He's maybe going the long way around it, but given how badly Soldat reacted at first... "So, in late January sometime, Alex tells everyone on the station that Morgan got shipped back to Earth. And Morgan started living that Monday, March 15th over and over until the Typhon broke containment right in front of his nose - literally, the first casualty was one of the scientists administering the Typhon mod tests. It's not a fun way to die."

Yeah, it's about on par with where their brain would've gone. They can keep their reaction to a nod and some grim feelings-- if this weren't in the past, and weren't clearly something Morgan was already free of if he was making alien hybrids named Ghost, they might be angrier about it all. And they're a little angry, as it is.

"No, doesn't seem like it. Given what you can do. He got out?"

"Oh, I'd way rather be killed by a Phantom than a mimic." Anyway, not the point.

"He 'got out' into the middle of a situation with killer aliens everywhere, his own failsafe robot telling him to blow up the station and everyone on it, Alex gaslighting the shit out of him, survivors hunkered down in whatever corners they could find, a dying ex-girlfriend he couldn't even remember, and oh yeah, his corporate bastard father sent a guy with your kind of skillset in to kill everyone so they could write the whole station off as a loss." Beat. "And he did specify everyone. Morgan's family does not have a genetic predisposition towards being decent people."

He sighs heavily.

"And that's kind of where it breaks apart, a little bit. Because what I went through was a simulation based on Morgan's experiences, but it wasn't designed to just be like, a movie. Morgan saved ... Well, everyone it was possible to save, I think, bundled everyone on an overcrowded shuttle and escaped just before the reactor blew. I'm not that good - not at saving people, at thinking ahead, at whatever measures the whole simulation was set up to measure. No perfect scores here." Ghost shakes his head, closes his eyes briefly. "Some of that shit I'm not proud of."

Not like Morgan's any better - but when you're friends with someone you remember shooting in cold blood, because you just didn't really get it at the time, it weighs on you. "After the simulation, I woke up to... Well, a lot of discussion of my performance like I wasn't even there, and certainly wasn't a person yet in their eyes."

Would you let it live?

"The whole thing was set up to measure just how human I was - how much empathy I had, meaning 'is the alien a decent fucking person?' ...Good enough for them at the time, obviously. But they didn't really break the 'you're not actually Morgan' thing gently."

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