Retro.
I’ve finally had the benefit of a conversation with Trilogee, and that Virus strain that appears, both by my evaluation and Papa Legba’s, to be a benefactor of hers. There are some interesting points about this particular variant, enough that warrant recording this log.
Stat Name____________________ Gender_____ Species___________________________ GrayZero female illusory gray fox Trilogee female humanoid Neg female rubberclad fruit bat Mel[asleep] neuter Manifestation of the Museum Squizzle[asleep] neuter squirrel ---( PuzzleBox )------------------------------------( 3/5 Curator’s Office )---
Curator’s Office
The Curator’s Office is a simple, yet visually overwhelming place. In the very center of the hexagonal room is a ‘knoptic’ light sculpture, and in each of the six corners is a ‘lavalamp’ of rainbow assortment. There is, indeed, a ‘desk’, chair, book ‘shelves’, and countless other playful mood pieces (including a ‘rainbox’, diffraction prisms, and seven ‘musicboxes’). There is a purple velvet ‘sofa’ here, and a large purple hexagonal ‘bed’, both suitable for napping upon (as Mel, the proper curator, is prone to do). There is a wooden door leading (Ou)t, back into the Museum Proper.
Contents:
Trilogee
Neg
Mel
Black Paper with White Font reading “PHYS-FM”
Squizzle
Hat of the Star Lemurs
Roque’s cane
Museum Physics and Rules
a piece of graffiti
GrayZero peeks in, hrms. “Hello.” She glances towards the sleepingdragon. “I was hoping to catch him awake.”
Trilogee smiles softly, wings against her back, apparently in a particularly friendly mood.
GrayZero looks somewhat concerned. “Am I interrupting something...?”
Trilogee glances at Neg, expression unfalteringly warm. “No, not at all. We were just discussing art.”
GrayZero ahs, nods.
GrayZero says, “Not a subject I’m all that conversant on, unfortunately.” A rueful smile.
Neg bobs her head, having remained silent. Now she inquires, “Do you at least have any particular tastes, GrayZero?”
GrayZero looks a little surprised by the question, then actually thinks about it. “It’s... hard to say. My appreciations are usually more towards natural beauty rather than what we create.” Then, as an afterthought, “Though we can put on later influences that certainly provide enhancement...”
Trilogee nods to herself, making a mental note of that.
Neg herself muses slowly, “I like a lot of things that peers down to layers we ordinarily do not see and then arranges them nicely.”
Trilogee smiles quietly, glancing up. “I just like things that make me think.”
GrayZero hrms, considers that.
GrayZero glances seemingly through the walls towards the rest of the Museum. “I might take this place as an example. While it is created, what it often shows is representations of what one might find in other places, other worlds. It is a created reflection of natural beauty. So it’s something I appreciate.”
Trilogee chortles quietly, eyes closing softly. “You know... The Museum is the place that inspired me to regain my memory... So I could actually remember and recall. I want everybody that comes in here to be able to have an epiphane like that...”
GrayZero raises an eyebrow. “Hrm. I hadn’t heard that you had no memory previously...”
Trilogee winces slightly, still smiling. “It was a brain damage problem. I needed to heal. Nikolai did the surgery, the Museum did the rest.”
GrayZero hrms, nods. “Ah. My apologies if I was bringing up a sensitive subject.”
Trilogee gently caws, “No, no. Don’t worry at all. I’m glad it’s over, now... Painful memories are better than no memories.”
GrayZero nods. “On that I must certainly agree. One can at least Learn from the former.”
Trilogee flicks a wing softly, closing her eyes. “Nik mended me, out of the kindness of his heart. Now, things have come full circle. I have to do the same for him.”
GrayZero nods slowly. “I wish you fortune in that, then.” Then, “How is he? Or are things not yet substantially different from last night?”
Neg calmly brushes her winghand over her facemask, with the relaxation of someone on something like a vacation or break, even from a labor taken on completely willingly.
Trilogee gently caws, “He’s healing... But slowly. I have to finish convincing him that he doesn’t need the Virus, but I have to patch holes, first. And Tryptych just wants to take the shortcut and convert him to the Old.”
GrayZero nods, hrms. “I take it ‘Tryptych’ is the strain you’ve taken on.”
Trilogee shakes her head. “No, Tryptych and Thryse are just the results. The strain itself... Calls itself Retro. Thryse calls it True. Tryptych calls it Old. I call it quieter than those two are.”
GrayZero raises an eyebrow. “I’m not sure if I wholly follow...”
Neg peers her head forward sharply, now, alert ears darting forward.
Trilogee scratches her head, then straightens, eyes losing focus. Her voice takes a tone like wind blowing across bottles. She instantiates a rubber ball, tossing it in one hand briefly. “Allow me to explain. This ball is your average mind. Correct?”
GrayZero nods. “Surely, for purposes of discussion.”
Trilogee nods, smiling. “You’ve already got the gist of it.” She squeezes the ball tightly, cracks forming. “This pile is how her mind was previous. Whole, but fractured.” As she releases, the cracks remain, gaping holes in the smooth rubber.
GrayZero hrms, nods.
Trilogee carefully pulls the ball into three parts, each along a crack. “This continued after her memory was patched. Pieces that were hidden crawled out, conflicting natures screamed... It was unpleasant, I assure you.”
Neg speaks clearly, “The typical Strangevirus forces its own cracks and places into the mind, but your strain fills your cracks?”
Neg pauses, as Trilogee continues on, now quirking her ear.
GrayZero watches interestedly, nodding.
Trilogee smiles softly at Neg, and nods. “In a manner of speaking. The cracks were too deep to patch. Instead...” And she squeezes one piece tightly in one hand, forming a smaller ball out of it. “The Retro deigned to complete the severing, and roll it into something stable instead of doing a hack-job.” The other two follow, and the three are pressed together before being let go to spin in the air, one three-part ball of balls.
GrayZero raises an eyebrow, looking rather surprised.
Trilogee lets it drop, and it bounces erratically, skittering across the floor and bouncing off a wall before skidding to a halt. “A little more irregular, a little more erratic, but much more stable than it could have been.”
GrayZero nods. “I’ve heard of - no, even met - sentients that emerge from such phenomena, but I’ve never before seen one... created as a patch to a broken Soul. Interesting.”
Trilogee picks up the ball, smiling softly.
Trilogee hands Triple Ball to Neg.
Trilogee smiles softly, cocking her head. “Here.”
Neg quietly looks down to her own presented ball, mirror eyes featureless, then back up. “I hope you really are the beginning of something new for the Strangevirus.”
Neg speaks clearly, “Not all my comrades might think like this. They have enough experience to feel the instinctive distrust of a strain that presents itself benevolently, but enough to realize that such strains are simply staggeringly rare.”
GrayZero mutters. “Lack of experience can be overcome.”
Trilogee bows softly. “WE wish only to contain IT. IT is OUR errant cousin, and needs to be held in check. However, IT is as living as you, and does not deserve death. IT only deserves containment, for it survives according to ITS purpose.”
GrayZero smiles. “A black sheep, but still family, eh?”
Trilogee smirks softly, sardonically. “I am afraid to say, but WE are the black sheep presently. WE hope to see such a thing change.”
GrayZero continues to smile. “So I realize and so I also hope; thus my choice of phrasing.”
Trilogee chortles quietly. “WE and IT are of the same blood, you could say.”
GrayZero mutters in her hometongue. [As it is said and as She knows and approves may it be so, amen.]
Trilogee smiles and bows softly, before sliding toward the door. “I will find Mel later. I must find Nikolai again.”
Neg suddenly laughs. “Good luck to you. Maybe one wheel we’ll actually enjoy a Strange that can be itself.”
Trilogee bows again, winking. And as her voice returns to itself, she smiles broadly. “I hope so.”
GrayZero hrms, nods, waves to Trilogee.
You say, “May it be so.”
Trilogee heads to the outside.
Trilogee has left.
GrayZero hrms, glances towards Neg. “If you might excuse me. There’s some business I should attend to...”
Neg stands. “And I have pleasure to attend to.”
GrayZero smiles. “Very well then.” She nods, then departs.
After that conversation, I visited Sel’s Contemplation Deck. I recorded what questions occurred to me there.
All my existence I have thought of the Soul as a sacrosanct construct, crafted and blessed by Her. Indeed, it is a principle of the Faith I was raised under. And yet, She seems to be leading me in a direction that would subtly contradict this; that the Soul can and in some cases indeed must be directly altered. She has contradicted similarly large assertions of our beliefs in the past, so this is not entirely new... but I had thought this one confirmed when She guided My hand in my work wherein I preserved myself.
I wonder what the proper interpretation of these things is.