animus_network | 3. Knowledge [Video]

Entry tags:

3. Knowledge [Video]

[[OOC: This is backdated to the 16th, after the Nyx Avatar battle. I meant to make this post earlier, but so it goes. Better late than never!]]

The video opens up on Jade Curtiss, picking up and slipping on his glasses, then looking at the camera while smiling his usual unconcerned smile and wearing his usual military uniform.

"Forgive me my abruptness, but I'd like to conduct a little survey," he says pleasantly. "My name is Jade Curtiss, and I had the fascinating experience of my first death yesterday--at, apparently, the hands of Death itself, no less. When I awoke this morning, I couldn't help but wonder, what sorts of deaths have you all experienced thus far? If you wouldn't mind indulging my curiosity, please leave a response in whatever format you prefer with as much detail as you feel comfortable with giving.

"Please be aware that I will likely ask follow-up questions. This is, of course, completely optional. For those of you who do participate, thank you in advance for your cooperation."

He nods his head politely, then reaches forward for something off-screen. The video cuts there. ...Morbid much?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[It's Lorelei! He's missing his scarf-cloak and seems to have acquired a great deal of mud on everything else.]

What a terribly morbid topic! But let's see.

[He hrms a bit.]

Well, I haven't died as much as some, but Jason killed me recently, and before that the ... plague doctors killed me a few times.. [There is a brief but obvious flash of annoyance. He was going to get revenge one day.] But that's about it.

My apologies. I'm a terribly morbid man.

[But despite the mild humor with which Jade says that, he pays attention to Lorelei's answer.]

Ah, yes, the plague doctors. I'm afraid I spent my time in the infirmary working as a nurse when I realized that I was completely useless against them.

Fascinating, though. It must be a strange experience for you to die, being an aggregate sentience.

It wasn't much dissimilar from what I'm already used to experience. Consciousness temporarily ends, then in a little while you're right back the way you were before. I admit the lack of a death that seems actually relevant may be part of why I still have difficulty with the idea of permanent mortality. It seems so implausible.

[He rubs his chin a bit, getting another little smear of mud there.]

It might be stranger for me if it actually stuck, but it hasn't yet, so it fits with previous situations well. It's so much messier now I'll admit that.

Yes, if any sufficiently large enough fonons is all that's needed to take on an aggregate consciousness, I imagine that death as we humans know it would be rather difficult for you to grasp. Has that caused you many problems here?

[Messier. Yes, Jade can imagine that it would be much messier than what he's used to.]

Strictly speaking, if death stuck, there wouldn't be any 'you' left to find anything strange anymore. Incidentally, and I realize this is off-topic, but how did you get so muddy?

A few. Xehanort understands my trouble with it, which seems odd for a human, but he's fairly understanding all around. Mostly it's been with the people who seem to want it to be permanent. Everyone else either doesn't notice or just seems to find it weird. The actual dying part's just a minor annoyance. Sometimes by the time I get back to doing what I was before, it's all messed up.

[Lorelei blinks owlishly when asked about the mud, then glances down, pulling a bit at his shirt. Oh hey mud.]

It might not be 'me' they'd find strange, but enough seventh fonons and sooner or later they'd get another me to wonder at. I found a puddle.

Xehanort? I haven't heard of him. Though, yes, I imagine it would be tricky dealing with those who want permanent death. Heaven knows I find them tiresome. What do you mean by 'messed up'?

[Jade smiles slightly at the way Lorelei seems to notice for the first time that he's splattered with mud, then shakes his head.]

How adventurous of you. May I ask how precisely the change from 'you' to 'another you' works?

You'd appreciate his mindset, I think. He's very much interested in the acquisition of knowledge. All kinds. And since death isn't an issue here, he's used it as a means to an end with those studies. He's also fond of invisible, intangible candy.

[Lorelei could accept that maybe the candy was actually there but he was sticking to his first assumption; it's not real!]

Well, as you know there's monsters.

[He sits down. There's a distinct squelch from the mud.]

And they like to rampage. And sometimes that means when they're rampaging they break something I'm working on. It's annoying, but that's how it goes. I just have to start over.

[That last bit takes a bit more thought, brow furrowing. How to put this?]

I can't get precise. I'll do my best. It's like going to sleep, but when you wake up you're different. You remember everything you did before you went to sleep, and all your wants and desires and plans, but now they're a bit different. Maybe you liked strawberries the most before you went to sleep, but now you like pears more, or now you want to make Rugnica into a nice smooth bowl shaped crater instead of a plain. You're still you, but you're not the same you that you were before. It doesn't matter if I'm the way I am now or different, I'm still me. My song is the same.

[That might also explain a bit why he has trouble accepting Luke and Asch aren't still part of him somehow.]

[Death as a means to an end. That raises several flags.]

Exactly how does he utilize death for his studies?

[The matter of candy goes unremarked upon. Jade gets what Lorelei means; most of the food here is just a glamour.]

Ahh, I see what you mean now. I imagine there's no lack of human interference as well. Urban development and so on.

[As for the explanation, Jade listens closely. He's aware that this is not something the aggregate sentience can translate well into human terms. What he does describe is... curious, to say the least. The remark on making Rugnica into a nice crater is downright chilling. This does explain why he doesn't differentiate strongly between himself, Asch and Luke, though.]

I see. I'll have to consider this further. For now, may I ask how those 'deaths' compare to the deaths you've experienced here, in terms of character shift? I haven't noticed anything different myself, but...

For example, a few ... a month or more ago, to Tower calendar, he wanted to know what was below the cloud line you can see about midway up. So he planned to jump off. I don't know if he ever did but the idea of dying just doesn't bother him much. He knows it's not going to stick.

[Not the sacrificing of others sort, it seems. Just willing to kill himself for his own curiosity. Lorelei didn't think it was a big deal.]

Humans tend to poke at things a lot more, as opposed to randomly destroy it, at least. It's worse here though. Nothing stays for long. [There's a brief pause.] The deaths here in the tower aren't the same as losing back home. They're not killing me, just my vessel, so everything remains as it was before. The dissolution of my being into its component fonons never occurs.

I'm sorry, for my part in what happened. I wasn't in my right mind.

[Yukiko bows her head.]

More on-topic, two of my deaths here were during a Tower event where my body was modified. It resembled the creature you saw me summon yesterday. The two deaths were at the hands of people who were also under Tower control, and...let's just say they were violent.

The third? I was fully in control of what happened. It was in a confrontation with someone else here. They were trying to take something, and I was trying to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. I came out on the worse end of it.

[What she means: Sephiroth stabbed her.]

[Ion doesn't check the Network terribly often, and replies to what he sees even less, but it felt terribly rude to ignore a post from Jade, so he sets up a video response right away. Sure, it might be easier to go track him down in person...but, well, there was that issue of how terribly tall the Tower was.]

Hello Jade, [He greets with a smile, as usual, though it of course fades to one of sympathy shortly thereafter.] I'm sorry to hear that you've had to experience dying. It's not very pleasant, is it? Though, I suppose it happens to all of us, here, eventually.

[More to the point, though, niceties aside, as Ion's well aware Jade can surely appreciate.]

If I remember correctly...I've died, I believe, four times. At least, technically speaking. [He didn't want to have to count the July incident.] I died twice in the poppy field on floor 87. The first time was on my first day here, when I was with Guy. We didn't realize that their powers were so deadly, and thought it would be a good place to rest while I regained my energy--I had gotten rather tired after traveling for so long up the staircase. The second time was my most recent death. I hate to admit that I, well, collapsed again after overworking myself. A nice young man tried to help me, but ended up taking me right back onto that floor and I was too far gone to warn him of the danger.

[Ion shakes his head, sad at the memory. Their newest Luke had been there, too. In fact...that might have been the last time that Ion had seen him before he disappeared.]

Other than that, I died once with the Luke that's currently in the Tower when we went down as a group into the Administrative floors and got cornered by retrieval units. Before that, my second death was by the first Luke that was in the Tower when I arrived. We had both had our minds altered by Jason at the time, so...it wasn't really his fault.

[The touch of sadness that affects his eyes disappears all at once as Ion remembers himself. He smiles again.]

I hope that helps? I, of course, don't mind answering any questions.

[Even if Ion hadn't responded, Jade wouldn't have been offended. Really, he wouldn't have been offended if he'd gotten no responses whatsoever, though he would have been disappointed. This is the kind of topic most people would prefer not to discuss, and Jade's well aware that he's not the easiest person to whom to confide emotionally sensitive matters. Still, his response is polite--though, really, he's always polite to Ion, even when he's being stern.]

Not especially, no, though from a scientific point of view it was very interesting. I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to avoid, but you'd have to be a shut-in to accomplish it. Those of us who aren't content with such roles run that risk.

[The poppy field... He'd seen it in passing, but he hadn't been aware that it was deadly. Good to know, that. The retrieval units getting nasty was something he'd heard of already, at least.]

Which young man was this? I assume you would have mentioned his name if you knew it, but if you could give a description, I'd appreciate that. As for the last death you described, you say you and Luke had your minds altered? I understand this must be difficult to talk about, and I apologize, but could you explain that in more detail, please?

Edited 2014-01-28 00:44 (UTC)

You certainly weren't. Still, you seem to have recovered your senses, and Nyx was apparently defeated since I woke up the next day despite its promises, so there's no use in dwelling over the past. May I ask what exactly happened there? If you aren't counting yesterday's events as one of your deaths, though, I take it those two young men succeeded in neutralizing you without killing you.

The deaths themselves, though... They sound highly unpleasant. This Tower event, as you call it--how widespread was it, and how long ago did it take place? Also, have you ever noticed any differences about yourself when you woke up afterwards, if I may ask?

I see. That's acceptable, then.

[It also sounds like something Jade himself would do, which doesn't recommend Xehanort very highly, but at least he's not getting anyone else involved in his experiments.]

That is true. Strictly speaking, assuming my understanding isn't incomplete, we aren't truly dying in this place; our vessels are merely being broken and swapped out. I'd love to find out how exactly the administrators do it.

Twice. It was utter bullshit on both counts.

[Waver could not possibly look more done with everything up to and including existence itself. He was visibly exhausted and by all appearances utterly emotionless.]

I make a point to avoid it when I can.

What happened to get me down there?

[That gets a bit of nervous laughter.]

...you saw Nyx. You didn't see its other face. That other face belongs to someone named Ryoji Mochizuki. We're from the same world, and we started dating when I was here before. When I got back, well, we picked things up where they started. That's why I was a target.

I got put under a nasty bit of magic that turned me against everyone, and made me want to protect Nyx above everything else. As for the rest? You could certainly put it like that. What actually happened was kind of embarrassing, but they knocked me out before I caused a whole lot more damage.

[Read: in the middle of a serious fight, she got knocked out by a frying pan to the head.]

That event...it would be a year ago, in March. It affected a pretty large proportion of the Tower's population.

Besides the sleep paralysis getting longer and more frightening each time, I haven't noticed anything different about myself, though.

The physical trauma sounds like it's about the same, and if memory serves the pain is similar.

[Not Lorelei's memories. But those particles got everywhere.]

I'd like to know how they do it too. It could revolutionize a whole lot of things if I could figure out how to reproduce it. Terminal illnesses wouldn't be anymore. Then people like the little Fon Master won't have to die so young.

Oh, my. You drowned to death in shit? Twice? What a terribly embarrassing way to go. No wonder you look so enervated.

[...Despite the shit that Jade's giving him now, though, he has a pretty decent guess on what has Waver looking like that. He'd spotted both him and Diarmuid on the battlefield last night while engaging the healer.]

Hi-fucking-larious, Jade.

[:|]

Once was a likely accidental suffocation, the other was more deliberate and much less clean.

...I see. That makes quite a bit of sense. It's fortunate that that was only temporary. I haven't met this Ryoji; may I ask what became of him or her?

[Frying pan or not, at least she didn't have to die. Dying is such an inconvenience.]

March... Pardon me; I'm used to a different calendar. If I recall correctly, that would make it... ten local months ago, correct? I've heard mention of this event before.

[Technically RIGHT before, if only because he responded to Ion's video response before Yukiko's, but it still counts.]

Hmm. I'd noticed that paralysis as well. I hadn't known what to make of it, but... How much longer and 'more frightening' does it get? My apologies for the basic questions, incidentally. I prefer to do my own research, but these sorts of things sadly don't seem to be written down anywhere.

Yes... That alone probably keeps most people from making too hard a distinction.

...The original Fon Master Ion, hm. Somehow, I have mixed feelings about that. It's a strange sensation.

My, you must have taken last night's events hard. Your face didn't so much as twitch.

A "likely" accidental suffocation?

[The boy that responds doesn't look like he'd know much about Jade's death, but appearances can be deceiving. He does show some very slight similarities to the monster, however, and looks quite melancholy when he responds.]

... I'm sorry. If you would like me to explain what happened, I will. I would prefer not to do it on the network though.

[Sharing something like this so publicly is what got him into that mess in the first place.]

Both of them. It is the same affliction that weakens the younger of the two. If he had his full strength, then what is to occur would not. Were the elder not afflicted as he was, then the seeds of his nature would not have been poisoned by hatred.

Edited 2014-01-28 02:31 (UTC)

I'm not in much of a mood for witty banter, no.

[Obviously.]

The situation was complicated.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 4

3. Knowledge [Video]

videos

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

video;

[video]

no subject

no subject

no subject

[video]

filtered, just in case

no subject

no subject

no subject

counter-filtered!

no subject

no subject

[video][private]

no subject

no subject