meadowlarklogs | ARRIVAL LOG 008

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ARRIVAL LOG 008

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: Night of October 5 to night of October 8
WHAT: The eighth arrival
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Coercion and loss of autonomy, alcohol usage. Further notes at end of log.

> ARRIVAL LOG #008

Awareness comes to you in blurred snatches, cloudy fragments of sound and light, color, sensation. Hazy and difficult to grasp on to, but slowly aligning into focus. A series of regular, rhythmic beeps. A medicinal, astringent smell. The sensation of movement, a low hum and accompanying vibration under you. Your eyes are heavy, hard to keep open, but in the glimpses between slow, dark blinks you see four people in black body armor seated opposite you, as well as a man in dark gray scrubs.

You realize there are others next to you. All of you in blue short sleeve shirts and ill-fitting jeans, hair recently cut but at various stages of growth, restrained by straps across your chests, arms, feet, holding you to the bench under you. To your left, an armored interior door, two more people visible, the movement of streets passing through a windshield. You try to open your mouth to speak, but it's as if your tongue is coated in tar, and you manage nothing more than an empty parting of lips.

The vehicle stops. The guard opposite you stands and comes to unbuckle you from the bench, helping you to your feet. Your limbs feel wooden and heavy, slow to move. One guard opens the back of the vehicle, and false, colored light, illuminating the streets in the distance will first alert your senses of being somewhere else, combined with warm air that's only cooled with the setting of the sun. The nurse moves to stand at the back, checking each passenger over one by one just before they're helped out of the vehicle, quick and methodical. He doesn't climb out after you, moving to sit as the last passenger is unloaded.

The guards keep their heads down. Their actions are quick, firm, but not entirely unkind. Once all the passengers are out, they climb back into the vehicle and close the doors. The engine powers up again, and then the bus is gone.

You're left alone in an alley, with no idea of where you are or why you've been brought here.

Around the corner of the alley, there is the smell of beer and a weird yodel-like sound – no, wait. That is definitely yodeling and beer. Further movement forward will lead to you finding yourself in a busy area filled with multiple people carrying reusable cups full of liquid. You've just shown up at a party with a bunch of people wearing nearly identical clothing. The good thing is that everyone is probably too drunk to notice.

◉ Though entirely capable of independent action and thought, new characters will find themselves completely, unquestioningly compliant to any verbal statement which could be taken as a command or request.

> OKTOBERFEST

The message from El comes the same as usual: insistent, not waiting for any active attempt to open it. Scrolling within your vision as if being written while you're reading it.

I'm starting to think that the arrests last month mean that our friendly delivery men have had to change up what they're doing. Either way - the group waiting for you this time is huge. The get up? Blue shirts, all around. Let's see how long that lasts. Anyway. Arrival #8. You know the deal, don't you? I bet you're all already out there having a good time.

Although New Amsterdam is a mish-mash of world cultures, there are certain traditions that took root in the city as it began to form its identity. Yes, one was Anime Naexpo. Another? Oktoberfest. Hoping to capitalize on the heritage of the region, businesses throughout New Amsterdam pushed for the continued celebration of Oktoberfest. In fact, the only time it wasn't celebrated was during the Xelkoven War, as the fight between humans and AI meant that any celebrations were put by the wayside.

Perhaps even more so than having to work during an anime convention, Oktoberfest is not a fun time for customer service workers. All around, various different cashiers, food truck chefs and drivers, rickshawers, couriers and more find that they don't have a choice but to dress up in Dutch costumes recalling times of the past. These costumes are typically pulled out of some back closest and generally assigned to the employees, so some of them won't fit all that well. The problem is that it isn't cool enough to be dressed in these as the days cool off, and the only saving grace is that they get to work at night rather than the day. The early parts of their shifts are miserably hot, and things don't get better from there. If your character is a customer service employee, they can expect some uncomfortable days ahead.

Somehow, the discomfort of the various workers doesn't come in the way of the loud and festive activities. All around New Amsterdam, various tents go up selling a lot of different wares, many of which are probably second hand junk that people are trying to sell off for a few credits. This is the time when the Black Market stops working underground, instead opening temporary store fronts in tents that are far too nice for the wares they're providing (but at least they're trying to be a less obvious money laundering front). If someone's looking to get in good with the underground or get a sense of how to find these places for some actually illegal goods, Oktoberfest is a prime place to start.

Otherwise? Oktoberfest is likely full of what anyone would expect: a lot of beer, funny looking Bavarian clothing, a lot of live music, and a lot of opportunities for drunken folk to put on a good show. If your character is the type to look for an opening to grab some attention, this is the place to do it.

◉ There will be a lot of beers available in pretty much every single tent. The drinking age in New Amsterdam is 18, but it's equally unlikely that anyone will be checking implants with how busy everything will be. The most popular beer this year? "We're Lucky We're Not Cyborgs," an extremely hoppy IPA made by the most popular brewery in New Amsterdam. All of the beers are available in bottles that you can return for more, as businesses no longer sell alcohol by the can. Think of growlers – but in a far more manageable size! Feel free to come up with the cyberpunk name of your dreams for the beer. Or people can just drink the New Amsterdam River – which is the name of the beer with a picture of the man-made river on it. It's cheap, but reliable. Oh, and for those of you that don't like the taste of beer, there's cider and mead on tap at most places as well.

◉ There will be various stages all over for acts to perform, but the schedules will not be full. Before long, the characters will know that Oktoberfest is where some people plan to get discovered. And … it's also a place where some people become social media sensations, in either good or bad ways. Need to propose to someone? Need to show off your abs? These stages are the place to be. If someone's not up there, take the chance and make it your time to shine. Or … go down in infamy.

◉ Most of the food throughout the festival will harken back to its German heritage, albeit without a whole lot of success. There are sausages, but much like the hot dogs of today, it's likely better that you don't ask what's in them. A safe bet is the large array of potato dishes around. These are delicious – and cheap!

◉ There are some competitions, too! Virtual fencing – albeit in a very, very amateurish way – and virtual crossbow competitions happen throughout the three-day event. And then there's yodeling. One of the stages will be dedicated to this the entire time. Yes, people practice to win big, but that doesn't mean that everyone has to practice.

◉ Like with Oktoberfest of the past, celebrities will have their own VIP tent right in the heart of the financial district. If you have a favorite music, film, or movie star and they have a penchant for partying, this is the place to be. Sneaking in will be hard – but not impossible. Though some will find that they might have to work this tent. These celebrities can't go without their coffee or beer, after all.

> SAFEHOUSE

Access to the safehouse is a hatch hidden behind stacks of empty storage shelves in the back of an abandoned supermarket in an outer district of the city. The immediate area is similarly abandoned, empty stores, flanked by several blocks of dive bars and clubs which cater to more niche tastes. A place where people can come and go unseen, or, if seen, not spoken of. A dark haired woman called Gaby is ready to greet the new arrivals and get them settled in, brusque and no-nonsense – she'll be open for in depth questions later, but will advise everyone to ask the people who brought them in for the beginning bits of information.

◉ The safe house is a large open space, filled with rows of basic cots set up to sleep a large amount of people. Basic, but outfitted with everything necessary for daily life. A few doors lead to back rooms for storage, medical care and a large communal bathroom, and past the long rows of cots there is a communal kitchen, fully stocked, and an eating area. Privacy is at a minimum.

◉ New characters will be asked to pick their beds, and provided with a change of (second-hand, mismatched and somewhat threadbare) clothes and basic toiletries.

◉ While there were previously also NPC occupants of the safehouse, natives to New Amsterdam, these people have now been moved on to somewhere safer. A few of their belongings remain, discarded or accidentally abandoned.

◉ Gaby will make it clear to all new arrivals that if they have any requests or queries, they should contact her or El.

◉ There will be shifts when Gaby isn't present in the safehouse because she's shorthanded following the UNA attacks in our January event. New characters will find that if they try to open the hatch to leave during this time, it'll be sealed shut for anyone without a registered implant.

◉ The drugs making new characters compliant will remain in their systems for a few hours after their arrival at the safehouse before finally beginning to fade. They will be gone entirely after a night's rest. In the meantime, they may want to be careful of what others say to them.

◉ New characters will be given rudimentary access to the network on arrival in the safehouse, but will not have their ID set up yet. They will be able to make posts and replies, but their messages will be anonymous and they do not have inboxes yet.

◉ New characters will not be allowed to leave the safehouse until OCTOBER 9. These 4 days are for them to adjust, learn about the world they've arrived in from their fellows, and for El to speak with them and work on setting up their IDs.

> WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

As everyone goes to sleep, a familiar stomp vibrates through New Tokyo on the other side of the world. The wall outside of the city is stable at first, holding up, but the vibrations continue. The creature this time is twice as large as the one that hit New Amsterdam – 800m high, yet not seen until right around when the vibrations began. It should have been, by all rights: New Tokyo is no less secure than the other cities around the world, with constant surveillance and a dedication toward maintaining an idyllic life for its citizens. Its behavior is similar: it slams its tail against the outer wall of the city before it gives way, the destruction nearly absolute. In a panic, New Tokyo's UNA forces and police force move into action to try to bring down the monster and protect its citizens.

At the same time, whether they're still awake or already asleep, something stirs inside of the displaced. Their chests will glow without anything to bring it about – no power drawn on, either innate or new, and no skin touching. This glow seems to fatigue any of them if they're still awake, and will send anyone already asleep into a deeper one. Once they're under, the stirring within will give way to unrest that foments dreams and visions for many of the displaced. If they had a dream while they slept, characters will wake up with a burning sensation in their chest.

As for New Tokyo: it will be left in ruins by the time the UNA soldiers there manage to take down the monster. Several sections of the city remain intact – almost out of luck – and the governor of New Tokyo reports that they believe this monster came from outside of the city, having been given life by the unsafe conditions outside of the megacity. Within a few hours, this statement will be revised, with the governor admitting that he doesn't know what the monster was or where it came from, only that their surveillance saw that it came from outside.

The three dreams below are what each character will experience, though you can feel free to assume they managed to jar themselves awake before the dream finished. To get a dream, please comment below to get an RNGed number for the dream that they'll be having. Since these are unnatural dreams, you can feel free to have your character remember it in its entirety – or not, if that's what you'd prefer.

If you have multiple characters, we suggest you only have one experience a dream, but it's ultimately up to you!

> DREAM 001

A blue glow illuminates the site – offering light on a foggy morning, with everyone having completed their journey to this final destination. A sense of fatigue and relief that washes over everyone there, but also an inner warmth that seems to radiate from the site itself. Huge rocks rise up on either side of the site, acting as shielding barriers for these followers and what lies ahead of them. Despite the lack of natural light cast through the thick fog, there's still a distant glow, leading them forward.

You find yourself among these people, well aware of the many miles you walked to get here, most of it on an incline. Around you, the clothes that people wear are worn, tattered, made from wool that's begun to wear down. How long have you all been traveling? It's hard to say – hard to guess, only that you know that you were all drawn here. No single story is the same. Some saw symbols: triangles that glowed when they saw them in the periphery, as well as bits of circles coming together. The tree of life. Perfect like nature in its finest form. Others could never put the words to what they experienced.

Each of you feel the draw now. It resonates within you, fills you up. Just ahead, there are structures that seem to float in space, and when you draw closer, a clear, light blue bridge appears. The walk forward requires a leap of faith – and there are some unwilling to take it. Afraid. They wonder if they've wasted their time.

But you haven't. You walk forward, and the bridge carries you forward. You can't tell if you're walking or literally carried, but eventually you come to an alcove where a strange circular structure stands. As you step closer, it comes to life, a mixture of lights and – no, not sounds. But the same resonating warmth.

You walk into it and –

– you find yourself somewhere else. Somewhere new.

> DREAM 002

– this is not where you belong where you've chosen to live – this is not it this is not it this is not it –

Your fingers spread, wrapping around the nearest metal instrument to drag it close. You test the edge against your skin, drawing out a sharp pain. You never asked for this particular experience. But every day, you feel it.

It's time to take back what you can. The walls around you are white, pristine. Somehow, you know that they weren't a day ago. One of the others you know got sick, doubled over after a bad interaction with a medication. You see them now, dark rings under their eyes, a shaved head. How do you know this? Your mind doesn't answer you. You just react. Someone in a coat as white as the room draws closer. Checking your vital signs. Your breathing picks up – your lungs hurt. You lash out with the instrument, cutting deep. A bright red spreads. A sick smile creeps over your lips. You know that color, deep within you. You know it.

And then there's nothing.

And then life moves on (your life moves on). Has time passed? The room is different. The person with the red splotch of color on their lab coat is gone, and your build is different. More gangly, uncontrolled. Deep down, you feel an unabiding frustration. You hear a shout: "Put them down!" It's too late. A fire erupts. The doors seal.

> DREAM 003

You recognize the walls. The building. But there's some barrier between you and it, a constant, subdued fog that lies between you and your surroundings. The lights are bright. Everyone moves in a single file, dressed in the same white scrubs. You're among them. The workers walk alongside you, occasionally checking your vital signs. Sometimes they make you grab each other's hands, noting the shift in reactions or responses.

The air here is cool. Stale. Your head is cold, recently shaven. Like everyone else, sans a few. It looks like it's been a while since they had a haircut. You don't recognize them, not like the others. You're certain that you recognize the others.

Thought is difficult to process. There's an IV into your arm. You try to make out more of your surroundings, but the fog encroaches and takes over. You're missing your chance. Your chance to know where you are – were? Who did this to you?

Distantly, you see a marking on a wall. Letters. P - R - O - PROJECT. You're certain of it. What else is there? Nothing. No. Something, but not another word. It's a symbol of some kind, or – an animal? There's a splotch of yellow, bright and prominent on its breast, with a dark V that cuts down. The fog obscures the rest.

> FINAL OOC NOTES

This arrival log is a little different, as it doubles as a prologue for our monthly event! Everyone's character can have one of the dreams, and it'll hit them anytime within a day of the attack on New Tokyo. This does include anyone new to the game! So, please go ahead and comment below to have your dreaming character assigned a number. All assignments will be random on our part!

Welcome to Meadowlark, newbies! You're now free to post to the network and logs comms. To reiterate, your characters will have no IDs or inboxes, nor be allowed out of the safehouse until OCTOBER 9 (MARCH 17). At that point it's expected they'll have gotten a good idea of their new situation from their fellow characters, and will have discussed their background and job potentials with El in order for their false IDs to be set up.

All arrival logs act as mingles, so older players can please feel free to top level for the festivities described!

If you have any questions or ideas about how you'd like to get your character involved in the world, please head over to the plot engagement post and drop us a comment! For questions specific to this log, there is a thread below.

Please check out our March calendar rundown for a look at things happening this month, as well as some additional notes from the mods.

As a reminder, AC for new characters accepted in March will be 10 comments across 2-4 threads, while current characters will need to provide the full AC of 20 comments across 2-4 threads. AC will be posted on April 1 and close on April 7. If you do not reply to AC, you will be considered idled and dropped from the game. We will not post a warning list.

> NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

arrival

[ It’s not like being scanned and uploaded, what he’d called waking up when it was more like being teleported, and having done something to trigger it. This is like actually waking up, except without ever having slept, somehow.

The last thing Simon remembers is the error message flashing on the Launch Dome’s terminal, white against black. The cold encroaching realization that this, ending up somewhere unfamiliar like a wayward science experiment, would never happen again — that he was in the last place he’d ever see, the bottom of the infested ocean, the sole remaining sapient thing on Earth, until his battery ran down, or the WAU died and took him with it.

No digital paradise. No Catherine— and at the thought of her the sudden stab of loss, and regret, and utter unmoored helplessness is enough to needle through the cottony wall of sedation. Sort of. It’s rounded the points on the rest of the confusion and anxiety, the crawling unease over the scar on his head. What the fuck is that about?

He doesn’t feel the weight of the Power Suit; doesn’t see a robotic exoskeleton. He’s human. Not exactly like he originally was, his missing-as-of-like-six-hours-ago forearm now healed rather than a ragged stump, but still. Human. He leans against a wall and turns his remaining hand over in front of him, looking himself over to a degree that’s probably unusual for new arrivals, at stuff that their mysterious kidnappers didn’t experiment on. ]

oktoberfest

[ and then he stumbles out of the alley, trying to get his bearings, and it’s totally oktoberfest

ok

???

Simon squints at the sun. That sure is the sun, and that sure is a crowd of people, both of which were normal components of his life what seems like yesterday, but suddenly feel bizarrely foreign.

Before long, two people have given the confused, poorly-dressed amputee caveperson beers insistently enough that he takes them, for some reason?¿?, holding them in the crook of his right elbow.

When he spots someone else dressed similarly, he finally asks: ]

This can’t be it. Can it? The ARK?

[ First of all, he remembers losing the coin toss.

Second of all, Oktoberfest doesn’t seem like a very Catherine thing to implement. Those are only two of the many problems with this possibility, but it’s the only thing he can think of. ]

safehouse(1)

[ In 2104, he’d asked Catherine if it had really been just one day — this, the longest day of his life, since he woke up in Upsilon, and that moment feels like it was eons ago, which it technically was, and somebody’s been doing surgery on his fucking brain. Simon heads to the least populated place in the safehouse and yanks at his shirt to see the thing in his chest, faintly luminescent and metal-parasite blue.

He can be found pacing the bathroom looking like sweaty ass, mouth a thin line and breathing fast through his nose in the typical manner of somebody trying to squelch a panic attack the counterproductive way. ]

safehouse(2-4)

[ The communal aspect of the safehouse isn’t terrible. It’s a little like a dorm... for abductees. It's an awkward collision of his human and not-human existences, to think that this is like a dorm all while trying to get the hatch open, then pacing the medical bay and storage rooms doing mechanical visual sweeps. The sort of searching that he wishes were for something in particular and is more socially acceptable in a zombie apocalypse where none of these things belong to anyone (some of this stuff clearly does, or did, once). Nor are they subject to any social mores saying you can't just rifle through them.

He has the wherewithal to half-cross his arms, right over left, though consistently hiding, or even consistently remembering, that he’s missing half an arm takes more focus than Simon has when he’s trying to do the “piece together how I time traveled to somewhere weird and horrible” thing.

He doesn’t like that this thing in his head... exists, but it’s better than doing nothing, especially in a place with no paper media, no personal affects — even missing his wallet is disorienting, now that it should conceivably be there and he’s not in a diving suit.

So, in the kitchen (the best place to stand around messing with your phone), he starts trying to sift through the deluge of information. One might assume that the hands-free nature of neural implants would be perfect in Simon’s situation, but every so often he reflexively tries to scroll on it with his finger like it’s a touchscreen anyway.

you know what else the kitchen is good for ]

You know, this is exactly what we were afraid would happen to books in 2015.

[ striking up conversations instead of thinking about how This Shit Again and how the internet is inside you ]

wildcard

[ or something else!! feel free to hmu at honchkrow if you want a personalized starter or come at me with another thing ]

Edited 2019-03-10 19:04 (UTC)

[ Catherine's not about to recognize Simon in his human form, as she's given to thinking of it, and it's the last thing on her mind to imagine he might be one of the new arrivals. She doesn't generally expect things -- she just puts her head down and keeps going forward, keeps working.

But she does stop to an abrupt halt in the bathroom, carrying a towel and a change of clothes, trying to gear herself up for what is bound to be an awkward social confrontation that she doesn't want to have.

Ugh. She just wants to take a shower. She can recognize a panic attack when she sees one, having just had one a couple weeks ago herself, but Catherine doesn't think it her business to either pry or comfort. So, instead... ]

Um, can you freak out somewhere else? [ She sounds more tentative than Simon's probably used to, but very unmistakably Catherine. ] I was going to take a shower.

[ Somehow it’s this, embarrassing himself with a public panic attack, that’s the most Human Simon he’s felt since he last was — last remembers — human Simon. Maybe because it was one of the most recent and most colorful additions to his daily routine. Or because in PATHOS-II, with a brain that took heroic measures to keep him from thinking about breathing, he never quite got to this point no matter how many great reasons he would have had. Not in this particular meatspacey way.

Underneath the out-of-body experience, it’s like picking up exactly where he left off as The Guy With Brain Damage, making people uncomfortable with his existence. The voice comes to him as if from underwater, familiar but distant, and his face burns. It occurs to like five of his neurons that that’s a rude thing to say to somebody, but Simon just answers reflexively, voice tight and breathless. ] Yeah.

[ He grabs the doorframe white-knuckled, already planning a route to the storage room, and here’s to hoping there’s no one there. And he turns, and stops, struck dumb, wild hope surging in his chest.

He blinks. Still looks like her. But— ]

Ca— Catherine?

[ Not for the first time, Catherine regrets her organic form and how scrambled her brain immediately fails, like the neurons are firing in slow motion. Which she knows neurons can't do. Nothing ever got this muddled and hazy with emotion when she was in a computer.

Nothing made her feel like her throat was tightening or made her fingers go limp, towel and clothes fluttering limply to the tile. ]

... Simon?

[ Because she knows his voice, the only human thing there had been in the rotted corpse of her home when she'd woken up. She suspected Simon thought of her that way, had latched on to her goal to launch the ARK just for that reason, but it went both ways. Catherine was great at staying together while she had something to do. She was always great at that.

But there's not such a clear goal here, nothing for her to try to get home to -- except that one last unfinished piece of business, the thing she hasn't admitted to anyone, not even herself.

Simon. She can't even begin to start unraveling her feelings enough to have a real reaction. ]

[ It’s her. Somehow.

Simon hasn’t had a lot of time to think about what he would say if he saw Catherine again, but when he did, he’d imagined her in the only form he knew of. The one he met first. ]

You’re here. I thought—

[ he falters, and swallows hard, and he can see her face, her real face, actually alive and emoting. He’s not sure what emotion. Maybe he can’t blame her for that, but being used to a voice and a static image, and seeing this, makes it all the harder to reconcile with the memory of lashing out at her until she shorted out. Died — if draining the second Simon’s battery was killing him, then snuffing Catherine out mid-sentence was killing her. Because she was the only person around, and he was relying on her to give him the answers he wanted.

And now there’s no human extinction, somehow. No PATHOS-II. Even the grief that was driving him was pointless. He was banking on something he didn’t even need.

The hyperventilating metamorphoses to hardly breathing at all. His eyes are bright and stinging, and this entirely new form of interaction with Catherine, suddenly right here and made of flesh and blood, lets in a fraction of the awkwardness about that fact that Simon would feel in front of anybody else. You know. Just a whisper of nonsensical investment in not crying in front of somebody who first met him when he yelled into a computer about being stuck in a power plant.

He takes a deep but poorly oxygenated breath, staring at the sink. This is where the useful thing or apology he imagined should be going. ] I mean... we lost the coin toss.

[ behold: it’s now officially a 500-year incubation period before information Simon hates is assimilated. better late than never ]

Edited 2019-03-11 07:01 (UTC)

[ There it is -- now she knows what she's feeling.

Anger. Frustration. Hurt.

Catherine takes in a shuddering breath, eyes squeezing closed for a long second, and then when she opens them again he's not less real. He's still there, missing an arm, which places him pretty conclusively as the Simon she knows. She's sure he would've mentioned being an amputee if that were normal for him. ]

Simon, [ she bites off, trying to find patience and failing against the avalanche of pain and loss she's been staving off, ] I can't -- I can't go over this again. We're here now. We're -- we're human, I mean, back the way we were originally.

I don't even know if there was a coin toss.

Edited 2019-03-11 14:57 (UTC)

I know— [ The answer comes quick, hasty, accompanied by a stab of guilt. He doesn't really want, or need, to have this conversation again, any more than she does. And she thinks he's still upset about it, about missing out on the ARK. ]

I know. That's not what I meant, I just don't know how—

[ It's not even just that he's human now, without it, or that there's an ARK's worth of people just in this building. When he'd put all his hope in it, he'd bargained with the WAU — it could have the Earth, what was left of it, if he could just launch the ARK. And he'd bargained again, senselessly, the moment Catherine's screen went black. The other Simon could have the ARK if he could undo what he'd just done.

He steps forward and puts a hand on her arm as he speaks, the words accompanied by a stab of guilt. It's supposed to be a comforting gesture, not broadcast said stab of guilt like a feelings picnic. Nor his desperate relief at her presence, the unanchored confusion and insecurity. The substratum of a massive grief, confused and nebulous, the loss he never saw the beginning or the edges of. Just the sudden absence of everything, the chasm it left behind. Like Catherine said time felt, in the Omnitool; omitted. Missing. Like a cage containing something he doesn't know the shape of, just that it's too dangerous to open. ]

[ That's not what he meant? Then what did he mean? Because it seems impossible to pretend nothing happened, much as Catherine would like to. Or rather, to pretend that they launched the ARK, and nothing else happened. She trusted Simon as much as he'd trusted her. Or... as much as she'd thought he trusted her. So much of their experience hustling through PATHOS-II seems like it's getting rewritten in her mind.

She hates the way her breathing is unsteady, and she looks uncertain straight up until he touches her arm, and then her eyes widen at the rush of guilt. Catherine doesn't feel guilt very often, largely because she throws herself wholesale at everything she does, and is more confused and hurt when things don't work out than anything else. The desperate relief, twisted in among everything else despite how they'd left off, that she recognizes. The confusion and insecurity -- she's feeling better now, a couple weeks in, but not great. The chasm of grief is something she hasn't managed to leave behind, either; she's just fighting it down better than Simon is. Its immensity and rawness as it rises up in her again startles her.

... Wait.

It's just a few seconds after Simon touches her arm that this all finishes processing, and then Catherine jerks away, taking a halting step back. ] Okay, well, let's try to use our words, because I'm having a hard enough time having my own feelings, Simon! I don't need yours!

[ She sounds as off-kilter as her breathing, frustrated and unmoored, but she's still quick-thinking enough to realize how little sense this makes to someone newly arrived. ] Look -- if you touch me, we can share feelings. I don't know how. Something with our neural implants, probably. So-- please don't.

[ At least she's still as plain and straightforward as ever. ]

simon jarrett | SOMA

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