video | t.crawford

[sanctus_dei]

[Hello, good morning. Theo has Some Opinions to share about what occurred this week and he's loudly going to tell you about them. Once the dizziness and nausea wear off, anyway.

While the more minute details now escape him, a few key events stand out in his mind, that particularly of his death in Area X. He's probably one of the first ones to return from the sim as well, not very well equipped either in his real life nor in the sim for wilderness survival in such a hostile environment.]

Hey, Navarch? What the fuck was that?! How fucking dare you pull something like this with little warning and no choice! Did you people think this was going to be done kinda cute trip through the woods or something? What was the point to any of it?! Just to mentally torture us?

I hope you fucking choke. And same goes to any wardens who thought this was a good idea and went along with it. Fuck all of you.

Comments

[sanctus_dei]

don't you have any say in this shit at all? you're just going to let them do this to all of us? they said this is the first one, implying they're going to pull this stunt again sometime.

[omniavincit]

[ This response comes almost two days after the post—William himself has been noticeably absent from the dorms (and the mess hall, and, for that matter, anywhere else except the SIRE). ] I wouldn't have graduated without them.

[sanctus_dei]

the fact that you've probably been through many of these and decided to join up to be a warden after graduating absolutely boggles my mind. the fact that anyone would willingly sign up for this is insanity.

exactly what we went through lead you to graduating?

[omniavincit]

Have you read Invisible Cities?

[sanctus_dei]

what? I haven't heard of it.

[omniavincit]

[ A pause as he contends with an inexplicable flush of self-consciousness. ] It's wonderful. An explorer regaling an aging emperor with tales of cities not on any map.

But you asked for a point.

"Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places."

[sanctus_dei]

[It's from a few decades after his time, unfortunately.

There's a long pause as he processes this, and formulates an answer.]

from a third-person perspective maybe i would have appreciated it. i'd be lying if i said Area X wasn't fascinating, at least from what i remember of it now. and i probably would have even appreciated it from a first-person one if i hadn't felt so

[Grief-stricken. Guilty. Terrified. Alone.

There's a pause.]

overwhelmed by everything. it pushes out everything else i can remember and makes the whole experience just one long nightmare now and the only thing left is how awful it felt.

it seems cruel.

[omniavincit]

Somewhere there's a world that's all Shimmer. [ And the part of him that can't resist reading into things, casting an ant or an untied shoelace into metaphor, thinks maybe this simulation was meant to show them what to do: setting up a confrontation with a refracted self in a place of otherworldly beauty and terror. ]

I write everything down as soon as I get back. Not the good parts: everything. The things that bother you are what you learn from, most of the time. Things that are uncomfortably close.

I can help.

[sanctus_dei]

[Another pause. Theo looks at that last line for a a bit longer than he realizes.]

i guess i can try that.

i still don't like this. and i am not looking forward to the next one.

[William, you may have just got through to this kid. Even in the tiniest way. Consider it a victory.]

[omniavincit]

I won't tell you how to feel. But don't shut it out, all right?

And I am really curious. I don't think we met.

[sanctus_dei]

i don't think i have much choice about whether or not i have to go through them, do i?

in that sim? i didn't meet very many people. i had been avoiding them since i want supposed to be there in the first place. i had snuck in to find someone.

[omniavincit]

No, but you choose what to do with it. Some people have very tidy notions of who they are. Is that you?

Who?

[sanctus_dei]

[He's not sure if he doesn't know how to answer that, or just doesn't want to.]

there's nothing tidy about who i am.

a family member.

[nineteenfortyfive]

What would you like done?

[sanctus_dei]

how about we don't get dragged off into a vividlyrealistic hellscape where our memories and past are used against us and then we die violently? i sure would like that shit to not happen.

seriously. what was the point to this?

[nineteenfortyfive]

Perspective and enlightenment, I imagine.

[sanctus_dei]

what perspective?! wow sure glad i didn't actually visit Area X! dodged a bullet there!

[nineteenfortyfive]

It's over now, Theo.

[sanctus_dei]

but i still remember it. parts of it. just what seems like the worst parts. like how i died, slowly. or how i could have sworn that i

[It stops there for a moment, and it appears as if he writes and deletes something another couple of times.]

anything else i try to remember is already gone. like i just dreamed it or something. is that supposed to happen? i don't see the point to this

[nineteenfortyfive]

You could have sworn that you what?

[sanctus_dei]

i had been looking for someone they're and i thought i found him but i didn't. it doesn't matter since it wasn't real anyway

[nineteenfortyfive]

I was looking for someone, too. It's a strange feeling.

[sanctus_dei]

was it someone you know in real life?

it's unfair of them to drag that kind of shit into this. it's manipulation, pure and simple.

[nineteenfortyfive]

No. Someone in a similar role, I think.

Are you going to be okay?

[sanctus_dei]

yeah it's like they were the same, but different. same person, same role, different history to fit their narrative.

[There's a pause again as he thinks of a way to answer that. That's not a question he gets asked often in sincerity.]

i'm already starting to forget parts of what happened so hopefully that will happen with all of it soon enough