hey mom, dead mom, i need a little help here

[nothingcanstop]

[ ...All of that happened, huh. That's the sentiment each and every week, and it's no different this time. Except, this time they've lost more people than before. Five.

The gathering invitation is slipped under everyone's doors, but it specifies something a little different. ]



[ That's a good two hours or so of difference. Enough time to wander around, for sure.

But, in the garden, at the appointed time, there's a variable arrangement of fresh-cooked food. A good amount of beef stew, some Chinese hot pot, and...watermelon? Just, an absurd amount of watermelon, cut up and set on plates. All the food's set on tables that seem to have been moved from the library, and the ground is littered with blankets, for those who don't want to sit on the grass.

And yes, she did not lie. There is, indeed, a variable fuckton of alcohol. (And coffee, for our underaged.)

This has become routine. But, we're still here. We're still alive. ]

Comments

[mouflon]

[ Well, if he's going to be like that.

Rin reaches over, plucks something right off his plate, and pops it in her mouth.

Hers now. ]

[bolderfell]

Hey.

[Scandal! Thieving from a thief! He pulls his plate away from her and leans over it, boxing it in with his arms.]

Did I say I didn't want it?

[mouflon]

[ She laughs, letting him wrench the plate out of reach without complaint. ]

Sorry. [ But not, like, too sorry. ] Are you actually worried, or are you just... not hungry?

[ "Not hungry" is a code word for "sad", but she doesn't want to put him on the spot about feeling emotions. God knows she wouldn't want someone to do that to her. ]

[bolderfell]

...Could be both. Not exactly easy to break old habits. And I don't usually eat supper this early.

[He's hardly ever out and about before noon, and his mealtimes shift late accordingly. Rin isn't the only one who's not a morning person.]

But... yeah. Not much of an appetite today, as good as this all smells.

[mouflon]

I haven't eaten all that much, either, to be honest. Just a bite here or there. [ She's still smiling, but her expression starts to drift away into something distant again. ] Plus, Radeucan kept asking me to taste-test her stew...

[ That's her excuse, anyway. ]

[bolderfell]

[Ah, that look. It's both familiar and strange, seeing it from the outside.

Well, they've all got to do their part in keeping one another afloat, don't they?]

Oh, no. A terrible fate. Forced to eat the efforts of someone who knows how to make a meal work.

[As he dryly drops that, he picks up a bit of his own food and puts it in his mouth. There, Rin. Happy?]

[mouflon]

[ She huffs, but she sounds amused. ]

Hey, I didn't say I was complaining. The stuff's pretty filling, though. So, maybe my appetite isn't the greatest right now, either.

[bolderfell]

Maybe we'll be hungry enough later to stay conscious through... whatever happens tonight.

[Six weeks and that still unnerves the hell out of him.]

[mouflon]

...Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but if it were that simple, we'd have heard about it weeks ago. Not everyone here sleeps normally, remember?

[bolderfell]

[Sigh.]

I know. I'm trying everything I can think of to figure out what happens. But it's like my memory just... cuts off.

[mouflon]

You don't think we're just being put into stasis or something like that? I know that [ ... ] I know that Fugo thought we were being moved a day into the future, but I've always figured it was more likely that we're being frozen in time instead.

[bolderfell]

...Okay, I'd just been thinking we're drugged somehow, but I'm starting to wonder--maybe it is our memories more than anything else.

[mouflon]

I mean, that's a more grounded assumption to make, but think about it. Rhea said today that poisons don't work on her. That's just a roundabout way of saying she's immune to chemically-induced altered states. If it were just the Professor gassing us through the vents, it wouldn't have affected her, never mind... You know.

[ Jasper. Rose. ]

So that leaves us to consider other options. With what we already know he can do, a stasis field or something like that seems downright unimpressive in comparison.

[bolderfell]

I'll take your word for it, since I don't know what that even is. But we also know someone's messed with Angel's memories in a way that made her much easier for the Professor to control.

[mouflon]

...You know, Therion. Suggesting that we have our minds tampered with every week opens a lot of doors that I'm not sure I want to explore.

[bolderfell]

That's my job. Opening things no one wants opened.

[mouflon]

Okay, let's say you're on to something, then.

How do we know that any of our memories are real, in that case? Or at least that ours haven't been tampered with by the Professor, to make us more viable as test subjects?

[bolderfell]

We don't. They're all we can rely on until we find something that holds water, though. It's why I don't ask questions like this at the meetings; don't need everyone wandering around questioning the reality of this place. Not when getting it wrong could kill us all.

Still... apparently, we were "processed" for a while before we were brought here. How do we account for that time? Were we out for all of it? And has he really been observing us so closely--for years, it seems--to craft such personalized executions for our killers? To threaten us each week? Or did we tell him ourselves.

[mouflon]

[ But he'll say it to her, personally. Maybe that says something, but the fact that it might is exactly why Rin doesn't point it out. ]

That's a good point. The ability to pull us from our separate timelines doesn't necessarily imply the ability to observe them, after all. But... On the other hand, the ability to alter or remove specific memories does imply the ability to know what's being targeted. We might not have needed to tell him anything, if he spent that processing time watching our lives through our own eyes.

Hey, did Birkin talk to you about this last week's incentive? About how it worked, I mean.

[bolderfell]

Birkin? No. Why?

[mouflon]

He told me that the motives we got are just a projection, based on our lives up to this point. There's no reason for that to be the case unless the Professor can't actually check, right?

[bolderfell]

[That deserves some thinking over. Eventually, he nods.]

I guess it makes sense. Could he do that? With the pictures--the photos? He can just make those up?

[mouflon]

[ Rin nods. ]

Imaging technology like that exists in my world, and it's not exactly a new thing. Even without accounting for all the crazy technology he's gotten his hands on, spoofing a photograph wouldn't be hard.

[bolderfell]

...Would that work for things that move, too? Like the movies everyone's been watching?

[More importantly, like the executions?]

Ema already told me about voice changers.

[No wonder Therion questions everything, so much can be made up in these "modern" worlds.]

[mouflon]

That's harder, but still doable. It helps that with the way the human brain works, we'll fill in what we think we should be seeing, even if it's a little bit off.

[ Just wait until Rin tells him about virtual reality! ]