expiationnet | audio; un: spartan

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audio; un: spartan

[ It has been a couple of weeks now since the successful reset of the terminals. Now, the same voice that was heard trying to rally them all to that task, tired and thick with a Slavic accent, has come to speak over the network once again. ]

Greetings, my friends. Miller here. First of all, I wanted to thank everyone who assisted in our efforts to restore this place to its former self. If it was not for all your cooperation, I am certain things would have gone very differently. It is thanks to all of you that we are still alive.

[ He's proud, really. The change from when he first arrived in this place has been immense. ]

Which is why it is my hope that we can keep this spirit of camaraderie going. There has already been a lively discussion of the visions we encountered at the terminals. Now that it has become clear that there is truly no safe space to hide from the prying eyes of the "Council," I wish to propose a forum for us all to continue sharing information.

[ The creation of the Dark Web was an innovation, to say the least... but can one even really call that secure when the entire world they live in is simulated? Where he's concerned, it's time to be forthright. ]

Allow me to begin with this. I was summoned to the courtroom. Yes – the courtroom. I only recall the inside of the building, but I presume it's one and the same as the new structure in the city center. I have been part of this experiment for eight months now and it is my first time seeing this Jerry face to face. But I can't be the only one who, up until now, seemed to have forgotten that he even existed? So, please... I would like to hear all of your thoughts.

I don't know about all of you, but I didn't try to save that artificial intelligence because I wanted to go back to putting my head in the sand!

( ooc: so long as it's cool with both parties, feel free to threadjack to discuss amongst yourselves! )

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Right?

....Variety, hmm? That'd fit with my thought of this being a feeding ground. Tell me, have you heard of those ominous graves as well? I was told that there were some that belonged to people who 'vanished' here before, but that they were lost during the ...rearrangement? Overhaul? Whatever changed this place into something more modern.

[ A feeding ground? ]

I heard about it, yes... I wasn't here to witness it myself. The fact that there were previous cycles of Chosen has been confirmed by multiple communications and visions from the AI. I have to assume that those graves belong to people from some previous failed cycle. As for the people who have vanished... I cannot say. There are people who have gone to their homes and then returned here. I would like to think that anyone who vanishes has simply gone home for good—but it can't be confirmed.

[Just his personal pet theory slash calling it by something that he's familiar with.]

No, they were from this cycle, according to my source. But that's the problem, isn't it? Finding out how much truth any information we get entails.

Is there a way to confirm that those who left and returned are really the same people?

[ He pauses for a moment. ]

No, I suppose not. Their memories align as if they were... but that is still not completely definitive.

[ And this is leading down the rabbit hole of wondering what constitutes being an individualized person in this place. It's deep and, frankly, it stresses him out. ]

How did your source know that? Did they see something?

It's a first-hand report, according to her. She said she found and interacted with them directly before Aldrip "renovated" itself into a more modern version of the town.

It might be insensitive of me, but the thought that somebody decided that there should be graves for the people who went missing seems more ominous to me than the sheer number of the people already lost.

It still isn't clear who decided that. They may have been just as in the dark as us. There's no guarantee there were any bodies buried there either.

[ Unless interacting with them means...? ]

But to be honest, I would almost prefer knowing there was some finality waiting for us than this endless dredge of forgetting and remembering, and cycling in and out of different realities. At least then there would be some way out.

Well, they probably didn't just grow out of the ground like mushrooms.

[He shrugs his shoulders, even though it can't be seen by his conversation partner.]

Oh? That's the first time that I hear anybody hear preferring death over countless what-if scenarios. What an unexpected draft of fresh air.

Look... it's not like I have a death wish, but we can't just go in circles here forever. That's not living.

[ At least not to him. If it meant saving Anna, would he just keep going like this forever? Maybe so, but there's no guarantee they are gaining anything from it at all. ]

We need to figure out some way to bring this to a conclusion and that may involve accepting some risks.

Very true. I wonder what would happen if this place were to 'lose' all of it's Chosen ones, by, say, group suicide.

.....Not that I'm encouraging that sort of idea, of course. [But maybe something that would make the system 'think' that that sort of thing'd happened- ]

[ The swiftness of his reply really shows how instinctively it comes out. ]

Some thoughts are best left inside your head. [ And then, with a little more consideration, ] Is something like that even possible?

Mmh. I know it's a little too bloodthirsty. But even I can't help thinking like a youkai sometimes.

[That has actually zero to do with him being a youkai, and all with Douman being Douman.]

Why wouldn't it? You can trick humans, gods and animals. Tricking a computer shouldn't be much different on a base level. [You just need some hackers whose skills are up to the task.]

[ Easily believable to someone who is none too familiar with either! At this point he feels he can assume youkai are generally flippant towards human life. That tracks for the concept of undying beings. ]

It sounds quite different to me, but who am I to know? I suppose the real question is what we might stand to gain from a stunt like that. Or are you just shooting the shit at this point?

[Well, considering that they are just the Japanses pendant to demons, monsters and fairies,.... That's not all that off to assume. Especially since eating others has long been a staple even among the different species of them. Douman's sense for what can and can't be said has just been worn down by ~~manga comedy violence~~ living so long among them and getting used to how much they can actually take without dying.

....and maaaaaybe he's also pulling Miller's leg a little by now.]

I'm thinking of unorthodox solutions. The best way to break a system is to confront it with scenarios it hasn't been prepared to deal with. Kind of like how there can't be a war if just everybody refuses to participate.

[ Yes, all assumptions made about youkai aside, he's quite suspicious of the possibility of that last bit! ]

So this is where the risk comes in, right? Because there's a very distinct possibility that we would be broken out of a broken system for real and there's no telling if we'd still be conscious to experience it. We already went through this dilemma when we decided to go through with this last mission of ours.

Yes. And we saw what the decision to play nice resulted in.

Are you implying this was a bad outcome?

Would you look at the situation we're currently in and call it fine? We're all still stuck here, exposed to the whims of whoever is running this simulation.

Being powerless to get a word in while others make the decisions for you has always been a Bad End in my book.

[Oops, he's getting a little too close to revealing personal information here. But really, being too weak to make any difference is the root of all of his worst memories.]

....it's better to have a fighting chance and struggle, than not to fight for yourself at all, 'is all.

There is a difference between "fine" and unsuccessful. Nothing about this is fine, but we were hardly presented with a better option. Being powerless to the whims of these creators... that's not new.

[ That was happening long before the AI went rogue, so it's really no consequence of that. ]

I'm not giving up. But it bought us the continued chance to keep fighting. That is how I see it.

Okay. Then you're being unsuccessful rather than "fine", and insisting that this is the way everybody should be.

You might be satisfied with a next time and then next time and then yet another "next time" again, but I say that's how you'll get yourself and everybody who believes in you eaten. Slowly. Like a life rabbit inside the stomach of a snake.

[He has seen it happen before. People, whole small villages and clans, who had gotten so stuck on the status quo that they had eventually failed to see the looming sides and had gotten buried by the landslide consequently. Arguing with them had never worked. But that doesn't make it less frustrating to him.]

Tally up how many people have already been here and gone and how many are currently around, and then tell me how well taking it slow and safe is holding up so far. What's the rate of "vanished" lives that you consider tolerable per month?

[ His first inclination is to get angry with this response, to dismiss it completely as simply some attempt to stir the pot — but as Miller grants him the opportunity to keep talking and make his point, he settles into a more affected silence instead.

Is it wrong? The Chosen have died or disappeared again and again. Who knows how many there were in these previous cycles before them? And it's clear that their decisions were incorrect time and time again. They were doomed to become amalgamations of this simulated world, completely losing their former selves, or simply to cease existing at all. But what decisions had led them to that point? That's what he finds himself desperate to know, unwilling to do something less "safe" while that remains inscrutable to them. ]

Whichever choices we make, there is no telling whether more lives will be "vanished" in the process or not. Who's to say if we try to break ourselves out by force if it won't simply happen all at once rather than gradually, one by one?

[ Not to say he didn't take anything useful from that... ]

But okay. I admit that you have a point. If there's no telling one way or the other, then we would be remiss to let the assured disappearance of lives continue. I don't want to see this continue either.

You're right. There is no guarantee. It might as well make things worse, rather than better. For all of us.

[He is positively surprised at the other's calm. Most people couldn't take it when Douman lets loose on them, and in this case it's even a topic that's bound to be hitting close to home, too.]

That's why I think that keep sitting on our hands or try to smash things like loons are both nonsense approaches. Hell, even just talking about it on here might already be as stupid as it gets. The way we see it we have roughly two paths left, and both will include getting our hands dirty in the process.

[ It's because it hits close to home that he's calm. He has made a similar mistake once before. There is a balance that must be aimed for between making changes and keeping your people safe, and it's not always easy to see where the target is.

So he's trying to get better at opening his ears when others are talking with conviction. ]

Oh, it's stupid, but I've given up on tiptoeing around. It was unproductive. And I have my doubts that anything we do or say here can truly be kept hidden.

[ Maybe they don't disagree in an irreconcilable way after all. ]

So if you're willing to tell, I'd like to hear what these two paths are, in your opinion.

[Giving no damn about what's considered acceptable within societal norms and just putting his foot down and saying what he thinks needs to be said frankly is both one of Douman's best and worst traits, depending on who you ask. Abe no Seimei and a certain other who shall not be named certainly enjoyed it. Or maybe that was only because he had told the Emperor himself in no uncertain terms to quit acting like a sissy and making their work more difficult once. In front of the whole inner court. Nope, he has no clue how he got away with that one, either.

As it is, he is thinking about he wants to say right now.]

In a nutshell, we either do something incredibly stupid ourselves, or we convince a group of irredeemable experts to stick out their necks and risk taking one for the team instead.

I'm for the latter, personally. Let's just enable a small team of elites, and keep enough in the backhands to drag them back out if things go inevitably to hell in some means along the way.

[ It's a shamelessly callous plan, an admission of hoping to outright use others for the ends of the greater good. It goes without saying that's not something he would normally wish to consider... but what you wish for is rarely what is realistic in desperate times. Miller is, after all, very much acquainted with making hard decisions. So while this somewhat brutal aspect of it strikes him, he isn't exactly aghast at the thought.

In fact, he's still calm. ]

I would challenge you to take that one step further. Join the team and there is no trickery required. If you expect others to follow you off a cliff, you must be prepared to jump as well.

[ That isn't a direct challenge to Douman, however. ]

If there are reliable people who would wait on the other end — and there are, I know many of them — I would join this group of "experts" myself.

Who said anything about trickery? I'd expect those experts to know very well what they're going to be in for, or the whole thing about sending them would be as pointless as asking a sniper to shoot while wearing a blindfold.

[In his experience there's always plenty of people who'll know that something is stupid or risky and want to do it anyway. A certain Ascian would be a prime candidate for something like that, for example. And heroes. Beating the odds and helping the people is what they do best, right? You only need to secure some possible routes, point them that way and tell them 'go!' and they'll be off like good herding dogs.]

Sadly I'm not the type of youkai whose powers enable him to fight, so I'll have to pass on joining the team myself. The best I could do is to not be a liability and maybe hand somebody a wrench or hold a flashlight. Staying back and using my powers to help create a quick getaway is way more efficient.

[Douman has often played the safety net for his people, but he's both an old man and only ever had human levels of strength and stamina to begin with. His guerilla tactics won't do much good in an outright confrontation.]

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audio; un: spartan

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