thisavrou_log | A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

Who: Anyone and Everyone
When: December 19 onwards
Where: Avagi... and beyond?
What: Your past, someone's present, and potential futures.
Warnings: Body horror and an associated image in the second part. Otherwise, label your content.

While the Ingress may have been destroyed, the energy powering it remains alive and well. The residents of Avagi know this intimately: from their own arrivals, from the portals that have appeared, and the short-lived changes (as well as longer-lived possessions) that have cluttered the station over the last few months. Recently, whatever force is manipulating this has even gone so far as to revive the dead—demonstrating, perhaps, an unwillingness to relinquish those it has brought to this place.

To say this entity is seasonal would probably be a mistake. In the heart of Avagi's storms, there are no stars to mark the seasons, much less connect them to a certain planet's holidays—or the literature thereon. Still, from luck or from intention, the current fluctuations comes with a certain theme...

Past

It starts at the turn of the station clock's midnight. Flickers at the edge of one's vision. Indistinct whispers, ghosting through walls and down corridors. Those who are sleeping will be untroubled, but the wakeful and wary can watch the light build: from flickers to pulses, from pulses to pools. Over several hours, silver mist fills rooms and corridors, varying from a thin veil to dense, obscuring fog. If you step into the mist, you'll feel a sense of displacement; of sound and color, energy and a shift of life. Ingress travel.

Except... not quite.

Shortly after entering the mist, you'll find yourself free of disorientation and apparently free of physical form, unable to interact with your surroundings. As a quasi-ghost, you've been transported to somewhere and somewhen—a location from the past, back on a world of someone’s origin or from any place you've been since first arriving through the Ingress. While these experiences can vary wildly, some things remain consistent:

The past matters: These visits to the past are not repeats of idle afternoons—each has emotional significance to someone currently on Avagi.
The past cannot be changed: As real as any given scenario seems, you're fundamentally incapable of altering it. The past event will play out as it did in real life and dissipate when it reaches an ending.
Trying has consequences: Attempting too hard to interfere increases the emotional significance, and will consequently draw onlookers further into the scene. You may find yourself anchored to any participant in the scene: first physically (experiencing the scene through their eyes) and then emotionally (experiencing their emotions and thoughts). If drawn in too deeply, you may lose track of your own nature during the experience, drowning in the sense of being someone else..
You are not alone: While immersed in a scene, you'll see nothing but the history playing out. However, at the its conclusion, the fog will once again displace the world around. As it melts away, you'll find themselves back in Avagi's halls—and face to face with whoever else was also viewing that piece of the past.

Present

Whether through one memory or several, eventually, the fog disperses. Only a faint mist remains, gathered in corners of the station's halls. It's simple enough to avoid, and nothing obstructs efforts to return to your rooms, your friends, or any other destination. Nothing, that is, except finding them.

The layout of the halls has shifted. The clutter you so painstakingly cleared is back. The GPS on your ACE mistakenly reports that you are floating off in space far outside the station, and any efforts to locate or call your companions results in glitchy static. Something is interfering with your calls—more effectively than the distance between worlds.

Inference and intuition are all you have to put together the pieces. The layout has changed, but the construction stayed the same. You're still on the former Ingress station. But not the same area that you called home. This is a different section of Avagi.

An inhabited one.

Dank, warm air pulses in and out of the vents in odd rhythms. Water damage stains the walls, and some seep dark liquid. There's an odd symphony in the distance: four notes, hummed to a pattern that buzzes in the back of your head. It's possible to wait it out. But if you do explore, you might come across your friends. And together, you might find the source.

Further in, a wall of flesh fills the pathways, rising and falling with intermittent, massive draws of air. A fluid wash of features glues it to the bulkheads. Claws and eyes, hands and faces: half-made bodies shifting in and out of recognition with each pulse of breath. And always with the same gold glow beneath the skin. It's a familiar shade, to those who witnessed Thisavrou's destruction.

It's the being who destroyed it.

Those who flee will escape her notice. Those who wait may watch in secret for a time. Mother's focus seems to be elsewhere...or, perhaps, something else is hiding your presence here from her.

Any attack on Mother's flesh shape, or any overt effort to draw her attention, will meet violent, immediate reprisal. You'll experience an immobilizing psychic force before the flesh consumes you. But whether you hide or fight or run, your time on this section of the station will end in the same way: a burst of brilliant, clear light providing transport back home.

Future

You flash back to reality amidst a burst of light—but this time, you recognize your surroundings. You have returned to the Avagi you know, and the silver mist that filled the halls has cleared.

Over the next few days, most of Avagi will settle back into a state of normalcy. The ACEs are working properly, and station residents will have all the time they need to compare notes on their experiences—and, perhaps, on any plans to act on what they've learned.

Avagi is not as empty as it seemed. And one place in particular will remain changed in the wake of the event. The Ingress Memorial, once inactive, has come to life, emitting a swirl of silver light that shifts and flickers, like the light of the portal it once contained. For the next five days, it will offer a vision to anyone approaching it: a single, brief scene from their potential future.

Players have the following options:

Canon future: Your character catches a glimpse of their future if they were to return from Avagi to their own world. This consists of a canon event.
Avagi future: Your character catches a glimpse of their own future on Avagi. This can be a short-term future (i.e. an actual vision of a future scene you plan to play out), or a potential longer-term one in which they stayed on Avagi for months or years.
Storm future: Your character catches a glimpse of themselves as a Mirtos—a desiccated husk and incarnation of the storm's hunger. As seen in Thisavrou's destruction, these creatures are carried by the storms and destroy all they come across.

The visions can observed by any present when the Memorial is approached. And while the past is fixed, the future is always capable of being altered. What will you do regarding yours?

[OOC: Check out the OOC post for more information!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Rinzler slants his helmet a little to one side: ambivalence, flagged onto his response. He doesn't know himself—not with any certainty. But from what he has seen...]

Memory display. Or re-creation.

[Users aren't generally known for being able to see what's behind them—much less remember it in that kind of depth. But then, some of the replays have had much more personal perspectives.

He shrugs, sound rising in annoyance. Either way, he's fairly certain of the source.]

Ingress.

[She’s already shaking her head when he says “memory.”]

I don’t [A pause, as she struggles with that long, difficult word.] remember that.

[Everything she had seen in that vision had been new information. She doesn’t remember that man, doesn’t remember him saying those things. She certainly doesn’t remember that name.]

Could be a lie.

[This time, the program shrugs outright. Certainly, it could. But...]

Unlikely.

[Who would gain from falsifying replays of a dead man? As far as Rinzler knows, none of her editors are here, much less anyone who might oppose them.

There's a beat of lag, sound ticking softly to the silence. When Rinzler next speaks, the words are simple. Matter of fact; restatement of a truth they both know well enough already.

But not entirely unsympathetic.]

You were wiped.

[A low growl of frustration. Rinzler is right. In many ways, this “memory” doesn’t tell her anything she didn’t know before, or at least nothing important. She was a child born in Rapture, either given or stolen away to become a Gatherer. She knows how the process works. She’s seen it plenty of times before—even facilitated it on a few occasions. It doesn’t mean she likes seeing evidence of what she was before—evidence of a life she doesn’t know enough about to miss.

No. Evidence of a life not worth missing.

His statement doesn’t get as much argument this time around. Just a plain statement of fact:]

So were you.

[She remembers the glimpse she had into his mind all those months ago. She even remembers the word he’d used then: rectified.]

I don’t want to see old life. It’s [A long stall with her hand hovering over the keys, trying to think of the right word.] gone.

[Another pause—and then she looks at Rinzler, head tilted. She’s not quite willing to ask aloud, but if there’s one thing she grudgingly remembers from their mental exchange, it’s the feeling that he’s been “rectified” for far longer than she’s been.

The way she’s looking at him, she might as well be asking: Right?]

[And her statement receives neither comment nor response. The first one, at least. He was wiped. They both know it. For far, far longer than this user's been alive.

And still.

The direction of the program's stare is hard to track. Still, the mask at least is turned in her direction, and after a beat of hesitation, Rinzler nods.]

Can be.

[It’s not the answer she wants. She wants certainty. She wants “yes” or “no.” She doesn’t want the choice in her hands at all.

Now that it seems that it is, she could still let it pass—just walk away, as if neither of them had seen anything and leave it at that. Instead, she stays rooted to the spot, long fingers curling and uncurling at her sides as if she can crush her uncertainty in her hands.

She doesn’t know why it matters. She’s not that drug-addled child anymore. Is she?]

Do you remember who you were? [And did it make any difference?]

[Another lag. Another nod. More reluctant than uncertain, this time. It's not something Rinzler would admit readily: not to his allies, who wouldn't understand, or Tron's, who might. He doesn't want to know how they'd react. Whether Alan-one or Yori would be hopeful, hearing that he might not be entirely himself.

But this user has her own reasons.]

Enough.

[Another vague answer, but one worth considering. She’s quiet and still for a few moments, making no move for her ACE. And then:]

You are still you.[It’s somewhere between observation and question. She doesn’t know who Rinzler was before he was himself, but she assumes that he’s different than he was before—and that he stayed different. Whatever he had learned about his past hadn't reverted his identity, or at least, not completely.]

Not [A pause, considering again.] him.

[It's for the best, maybe, that text doesn't carry tone. That Rinzler doesn't have to hear the question in those words. He is still Rinzler, but what that means has changed. He isn't Tron, but he struggles—so often, and so hard—with whether he can change to anyone but that. He doesn't want to be the users' failure. But he remembers, and he wants, and so much of him no longer fits.

But Rinzler doesn't hear a question. He hears confirmation, tentative but steady, and enough to spark his own resolve. The up-down jerk of the helmet is quick and decisive, noise growling out behind his voice.

(~~Tron's voice~~.) ]

I won't be.

["Him."]

[The small misunderstanding works out well enough. It’s a relief to finally hear an unequivocal answer, to see someone else who has been through the same thing and still seems firmly himself.

She nods, and when she types out her next message, it’s a little quicker, a little more confident.]

I won’t be her.

[She’ll remember that name: June Rosenwald. But everything else—the man, especially—is from someone else’s life. She can remember, but it doesn’t have to be hers.]

[It doesn't need an answer. It's her decision, not his to qualify in any way. Still, the enforcer's mask dips slightly: acknowledgement. Acceptance.

Good.

...]

ID?

[He never actually learned hers.]

[“ID.” Identity. A fair question, given what they’d both seen. The Big Sister hesitates, but she knows there’s really only one answer. “June Rosenwald” is a stranger. There's just one name she knows herself by.]

Big Sister.

A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

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