animus_network | 3rd Spell - [Text]/[Attempted but botched filter against Tower Staff]

I'm sorry. I know this is a bad time, and everyone's minds are on their friends, and how to fix things, and so is mine, but I need to ask. If you want to answer, great. If not, I definitely understand. No hard feelings.

I keep trying to sort out how to ask this, but I can't, so I'm just going to write down a list here. But, mostly?

I need to ask about death.

I know this might be a touchy subject for a lot of people, so just answer whatever you want. However many or however few or none. Filter it, if that helps, or make it anonymous. I've seen people do that, and that's all okay with me. But anything you can tell me, I'd really appreciate it.

[She's got a theory, and it's a doozy.]

1. Have you ever died here? How many times? Do you think the time you couldn't move changed from time to time? If you died back home, too, I guess that counts.

2. Have you ever had to deal with an empty collar? Or be dragged in to have it refilled?

3. Have you ever had your collar removed?

4. Have you ever seen someone die? What happened if you did?

5. Have you ever been killed by one of the people who control this tower? Or faced them at all? I guess what I want to ask is, have you ever seen their powers or their methods firsthand?

6. Do you believe our worlds still exist? Why? Or why do you believe they're gone?

7. Do you have any friends here from your home world? Do you have any friends from a world that's almost like yours' but different?

8. Have you ever gotten something from home besides what's in your trunk? Also, what kind of things are in your trunk?

9. Have you ever asked for something in the suggestion box? What kind of thing, and how quickly did you get it, and did it work?

[And, finally, a question near and dear and terrifying to Tara's heart:]

10. As far as you know, have your memories ever been altered or changed while you're here? Or have you noticed that a friend should remember things that they don't?

I'm sorry. I know that's a lot of questions. But I have a lot of questions. Like I said, though, you don't have to answer all of them. Or any. I know everyone has a lot on their minds right now, and this probably doesn't help.

But, if you can, thank you. [She hopes you prove her wrong, fellow prisoners.] Really, thank you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I guess they do seem kind of specific. And they are - I had some ideas, after talking to someone.

They're just bad ideas, and I didn't want to worry anyone. Besides - it seems like a lot of people don't know anything for sure about this place, besides the people who control it. I could be wrong.

No I don't think you're wrong.
I haven't talked to a whole lot of people yet, but that was the general feeling I got as well.
What sort of bad ideas though, if you don't mind sharing?

[He had a few of his own that have been mostly disproven already so he's curious for new theories. Because the tower just baffles him.]

You don't even know what my idea is. Trust me - I really hope I'm wrong.

[...a pause, as Tara musters her thoughts and remembers her conversation with Kido.]

No one seems to know what happens to us, after we die. No one knows how things get here, or what's in the rest of the tower, or why we have these collars.

I started wondering how they could keep bringing us back, time after time, no matter what's happened. I died in a pretty gruesome way - there would have been a skeleton and some messed up internal organs left of me, but I woke up in my bed. And that was when things were going wrong.

So I was wondering [...] what if we're not really ourselves? What if our real selves died, with our worlds, and we're just clones made from some data they managed to save?

I hadn't thought of that, but it kind of makes sense.
Like I said, dying was literally the last thing I did before I woke up here.
As much as I would like to think I am actually myself and was brought back through some kind of magical science or something, I can't deny the fact that that's a pretty sound theory.
But with some of the technology that I have seen here, I also wouldn't be surprised if that was how they can bring people back over and over again for deranged experimentation.

I've seen some really deranged experiments in my time here. I mean, I was lucky - I wasn't on the receiving end of the worst of it. But I saw the ones who were. I've seen a lot of awful, cruel, terrible things in my life. What Jason did to them took the cake.

Maybe it's the only way they can make sure we're even capable of surviving the dranged experimentation.

Jason?
Is that someone here or someone from your own world?

Again, it's possible.
They say in order for a teleporter machine to work, you have to constantly destroy yourself at the molecular level and be sort of made anew in your new destination.
You are still yourself, you still have the same memeories and personality and everything but you can no longer really say that you are the "original."
Maybe a similar principle is in the works here.

Jason. That's someone here. He's one of the people who seems like they control the tower - the others are Riki and Dax. There's also a girl named Ruana, and a boy named Zo, who runs the tower when they can't.

[She'll leave the second point until she's filled the guy in to the best of her abilities.]

Oh huh.
Good to know, I guess.
So only five of them?
To be honest I was expecting a whole white lab-coated, syringe-holding brigade or something.

[...despite herself, Tara finds that she's trying to hide a smile as she types out her reply.]

Mostly just them. I think there is a whole white lab-coated, syringe-holding brigade, but mostly they work in the infirmary and they're not that bad. They're just [...] not that there, either. When things stopped working, a couple of months ago, they all disappeared, too.

Oh good, I was going to be a little disappointed if they were missing that particular trope.
What do you mean by "when things stopped working"?
When I said I was new, I wasn't exactly kidding. I have only been here for a few days.
Which is why I am asking so many questions. Just trying to get a better feel for what I am dealing with here.
So sorry if I'm a bother.

You'renotabother. [This reply is typed out very hastily. To someone who more or less always feels like a bother, Tara never wants to make anyone feel like a bother.] Sorry. I didn't know. I mean, I didn't recognize you, but there are a lot of people I don't know here. Besides, I was still calling myself new after a few weeks.

Over a month ago, everything stopped working - the power, the elevators, the food stopped appearing, the people with the grey and red collars all disappeared. Some of us were rounded up in a group and distributed to three of the people who control this place - Riki, Dax, and Jason. They were competing, to see who was the best at controlling the tower. Ruana oversaw the competition. Zo was left with [...] I'm still not sure, but I think it was his responsibility to look after everyone who was left behind.

It lasted all month, and everyone here was kind of just left to fend for themselves.

So like a month-long, tower-wide battle royale then?
This place just gets better and better.

Less people died. Like [...] not everyone died. [It was a major defiance of the laws of nature that Jason's group hadn't, but they hadn't.]

Mostly we were kept in our own pods. We only saw one another at the end of the week, when the results were tallied.

[...but it had all still been depending on other groups losing. The difference being, of course, that Riki and Jason's pods had been hoping to lose.]

A little while ago, they snatched up more people. But I think we're all back now.

3rd Spell - [Text]/[Attempted but botched filter against Tower Staff]

Re: text;

text; wow did i really type "hear" instead of "here"? go me.

I saw nothing!

oh good ;w;

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