Report 008 [Action of Various Kinds/Voice] | AU Post, Backdated to Early Morning of the 24th
[The night of the twenty-third of April was punctuated with the most terrifyingly, impossibly detailed dreams that Robert could ever recall having.
He could see himself in a world made of shining, glimmering metal; sweeping fields of glistening epoxy, wiring and circuits like frost on snaking clear tubes that ran through them like veins through some complex bionic organism. Worked into this incredibly foreign-and-yet-maddeningly-familiar scene were sprays of flowers and trees and other flora that looked as if they had been as painstakingly wrought as all the metal had been, as if they were part of it, as if they lived and breathed in the same way this not-city did.
It was too ridiculously real to just be a dream, and yet Robert knew, knew in the lucidity of this insane dream that it could not exist, could have never existed...
Then he felt himself in a crowd, with people he knew he'd never seen before in his life except for Benjamin, and he could feel the pricking kisses of needles sliding into his flesh - only he'd never had a needle in him there before, how did he remember doing this when he'd never done it at all? - and then suddenly his vision was full of colours that had no name, and his ears sang with sounds that had no notes, and he felt like nothing and everything at once...
Just as quickly he felt himself wrenched from this, into some mockery of Luceti Valley, and he thought he saw familiar people, familiar faces - Helios, he saw Helios but his gaze was different and there was no trace of that malice that Robert thought he could feel in those green eyes - and he remembered Rupert but only vaguely, and suddenly he remembered Ami who was the friend he had done wrong to (how was that possible? He barely knew her beyond a few cursory words that he and Rupert had exchanged...) and he remembered Vivi was supposed to be his foster daughter instead, and most importantly he remembered people WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO FIGHT VIOLENCE IS WRONG WHAT AM I DOING...
...
And Donatello.
The only thing that remained the same was Donatello. His love for Donatello. But his dream self knew, or thought it knew, that they were not brothers, had never been brothers.
Like any other time Robert had a strange dream, when he was a child, he wanted to run to the arms of his foster brother (not-brother?) and cling to his smooth plastron and wait for everything to be fine. So this is exactly what he wanted to do now, as soon as the terror of these dreams had woken him in a sheen of his own sweat.
So he pulls himself up, his eyes bloodshot, and after a quick glance at Vivi to make sure she's still asleep, without even bothering to put on proper clothing - his loose, familiar bedclothes are fine in this situation even if a little, strange voice he's never felt before says "unprofessional" - he goes over to Donatello's door. The door next to his apartment.
Suddenly it feels wrong for him to be there.]
D-Donatello... please... I need t-to talk to you...!
[Later on, perhaps after he's calmed a bit (if he has at all), he sends a few filtered messages to certain villagers. He has to talk to them, make sure this isn't just him. Maybe this is just another crazy Shift. He's always been good at collecting evidence, and he needs all the evidence that he can get.]
[Filtered to Rupert Giles and the rest of his family, 100%]
... R-Rupert... [Why does it feel strange to call him that now?] I'm sorry if I woke you, but there's something important I need to say.
[He steels himself with more effort than necessary.]
... You and I both know that I'm not usually the type of person to think irrationally, but... have you been having... strange dreams? [Is it just a coincidence? Or is there a correlation, and would that correlation be enough to justify a causation...?] It might be some sort of strange Sh-Shift, but...
... If your brother or sister, or anybody else, had strange dreams... p-perhaps we could talk together or something... if it is a Shift, perhaps there are... correlations that can be studied...
[/filter]
[Filtered to Daisy (Sierra-23), 100%]
[She's one of the few people he can call a friend enough to talk to like this. Even if he feels like he should be afraid of her now, somewhere in the back of his mind...]
D-Daisy... ... have you... b-been having strange dreams?
I... I'm thinking there may be some kind of strange Shift, but... I need more input first, before I c-can come to that conclusion.
[/filter]
[After this, Robert goes out to the village in an almost-daze to try to do something constructive to get away from his own fear (which doesn't work), disturbed enough that he may consider calling in sick for a day (he rarely does this) just to organize his thoughts into something coherent. Anybody who wants to talk to an extremely-distressed looking scientist who may or may not be wringing his hands in anxiety and staring at Luceti Valley like it suddenly doesn't seem to make any sense is welcome to. Or one could catch him furiously scrawling out various disjointed hypotheses on tortured-looking pieces of paper somewhere, or something like that.
He probably won't mind. He's completely out of it, as it is.]
(OOC: Keeping things vague in case anybody wants to run into him beyond who he specifically poked via the journals. Timeline is somewhat-exploded so don't worry about it too much.)
He could see himself in a world made of shining, glimmering metal; sweeping fields of glistening epoxy, wiring and circuits like frost on snaking clear tubes that ran through them like veins through some complex bionic organism. Worked into this incredibly foreign-and-yet-maddeningly-familiar scene were sprays of flowers and trees and other flora that looked as if they had been as painstakingly wrought as all the metal had been, as if they were part of it, as if they lived and breathed in the same way this not-city did.
It was too ridiculously real to just be a dream, and yet Robert knew, knew in the lucidity of this insane dream that it could not exist, could have never existed...
Then he felt himself in a crowd, with people he knew he'd never seen before in his life except for Benjamin, and he could feel the pricking kisses of needles sliding into his flesh - only he'd never had a needle in him there before, how did he remember doing this when he'd never done it at all? - and then suddenly his vision was full of colours that had no name, and his ears sang with sounds that had no notes, and he felt like nothing and everything at once...
Just as quickly he felt himself wrenched from this, into some mockery of Luceti Valley, and he thought he saw familiar people, familiar faces - Helios, he saw Helios but his gaze was different and there was no trace of that malice that Robert thought he could feel in those green eyes - and he remembered Rupert but only vaguely, and suddenly he remembered Ami who was the friend he had done wrong to (how was that possible? He barely knew her beyond a few cursory words that he and Rupert had exchanged...) and he remembered Vivi was supposed to be his foster daughter instead, and most importantly he remembered people WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO FIGHT VIOLENCE IS WRONG WHAT AM I DOING...
...
And Donatello.
The only thing that remained the same was Donatello. His love for Donatello. But his dream self knew, or thought it knew, that they were not brothers, had never been brothers.
Like any other time Robert had a strange dream, when he was a child, he wanted to run to the arms of his foster brother (not-brother?) and cling to his smooth plastron and wait for everything to be fine. So this is exactly what he wanted to do now, as soon as the terror of these dreams had woken him in a sheen of his own sweat.
So he pulls himself up, his eyes bloodshot, and after a quick glance at Vivi to make sure she's still asleep, without even bothering to put on proper clothing - his loose, familiar bedclothes are fine in this situation even if a little, strange voice he's never felt before says "unprofessional" - he goes over to Donatello's door. The door next to his apartment.
Suddenly it feels wrong for him to be there.]
D-Donatello... please... I need t-to talk to you...!
[Later on, perhaps after he's calmed a bit (if he has at all), he sends a few filtered messages to certain villagers. He has to talk to them, make sure this isn't just him. Maybe this is just another crazy Shift. He's always been good at collecting evidence, and he needs all the evidence that he can get.]
[Filtered to Rupert Giles and the rest of his family, 100%]
... R-Rupert... [Why does it feel strange to call him that now?] I'm sorry if I woke you, but there's something important I need to say.
[He steels himself with more effort than necessary.]
... You and I both know that I'm not usually the type of person to think irrationally, but... have you been having... strange dreams? [Is it just a coincidence? Or is there a correlation, and would that correlation be enough to justify a causation...?] It might be some sort of strange Sh-Shift, but...
... If your brother or sister, or anybody else, had strange dreams... p-perhaps we could talk together or something... if it is a Shift, perhaps there are... correlations that can be studied...
[/filter]
[Filtered to Daisy (Sierra-23), 100%]
[She's one of the few people he can call a friend enough to talk to like this. Even if he feels like he should be afraid of her now, somewhere in the back of his mind...]
D-Daisy... ... have you... b-been having strange dreams?
I... I'm thinking there may be some kind of strange Shift, but... I need more input first, before I c-can come to that conclusion.
[/filter]
[After this, Robert goes out to the village in an almost-daze to try to do something constructive to get away from his own fear (which doesn't work), disturbed enough that he may consider calling in sick for a day (he rarely does this) just to organize his thoughts into something coherent. Anybody who wants to talk to an extremely-distressed looking scientist who may or may not be wringing his hands in anxiety and staring at Luceti Valley like it suddenly doesn't seem to make any sense is welcome to. Or one could catch him furiously scrawling out various disjointed hypotheses on tortured-looking pieces of paper somewhere, or something like that.
He probably won't mind. He's completely out of it, as it is.]
(OOC: Keeping things vague in case anybody wants to run into him beyond who he specifically poked via the journals. Timeline is somewhat-exploded so don't worry about it too much.)