blahblah THOUGHTSSSS // Voice.

[stopthat_destro]

If you're on the Barge for long enough, you'll almost certainly have your identity altered so completely that you become a different person-- temporarily, of course. Complete histories and personalities, memories, experiences, relationships that aren't really yours.  And yet, despite their artificial nature, they certainly feel real.  They feel,

Comments

[stopthat_destro]

But who you can be reinvented as on the Barge must be jarring, right? If only because your Party ideals are stripped away.

[stopthat_destro]

I see.

I think you're right. They're too... deliberate, some of the floods. They say it's due to the Barge brushing up against other worlds, but the changes are too specific to us at times, what makes tick.

[Private]
Hm. And, of course, simply saying something doesn't make it reality. Every time I've said "I'm not that person," it's always felt so... impotent.

Private

[mrs_persson]

[This probably would have gotten under her skin at the best of times, but right now she's more vulnerable than usual, while at the same time trying rather desperately not to show it. So Rex gets a response from someone who doesn't know him very well, but who couldn't let this slide.]

I've wrestled with that problem for most of my career, before I even came here in the first place.

Paradoxically, I believe that the more one denies the validity of those other selves, the other identities-the harder it is to find one's own true north, so to speak.

Private

[stopthat_destro]

I can see that for some of our identities. Like who we became on the alternate Barge. There was some grain of truth in it for just about everybody.

But then there are the utterly ridiculous breaches or ports where the person we become has no bearing on reality, anyway. Like the planet we crashed on when the Master and Iago escaped. Or... the space station port. [Not for himself, but he remembers how completely altered Wichita was.]

Private

[mrs_persson]

Yes, I got my identity shuffled around for that one myself. A tragic, femme-fatale survivor. [She's amused by this.]

It's not unlike something that happens to the likes of me in my usual line of work, though. It's part gift, part instinct, and part curse-the ability to step into another life in another time and place so wholly that one forgets that one was anything else. Retaining any sense of identity in the face of that is a never-ending challenge.

But I think that even in the most ludicrous of ports and floods, you can find the needle that points north all the same. Earlier this year, I woke up and found myself a highly religious widow running a boarding-house. Couldn't be more different to me than if I'd tried to work it out with both hands for a week-but there was a fortitude in her, and a passionate devotion to her friends and family. She wasn't entirely a stranger.

Private

[stopthat_destro]

Do you think the particular changes to your selves have been deliberate, intended to show you something about yourself? Or just... chance? Because in my case, my other selves have all had abject failure in common. It's... troubling.

[Private]

[majorum_pride]

[Oh Rex, you've inspired all of the triggering today. All of it.]

Don't you know? They tell me it wasn't me, so it doesn't matter. So I shouldn't care what happens to my flood self, because it wasn't me and it wasn't you. Obviously if we care, there's something wrong with us. So we just shouldn't care.

[You can hear the twitch. Hear it.]

[Private]

[stopthat_destro]

[He can totally hear the twitch.]

...Ah uh. Well, people tend to react idiotically to floods.

[Private]

[majorum_pride]

[Dial it back. Dial it back. Try to broach it like a logical problem, and not a thing that inexplicably makes him angry to think about.]

I lived two different timelines outside of the barge. One shorter than the other. But they were my choices, and my paths to take.

These aren't. So I'm not sure whether to consider them any less me. ...Even when they share almost identical backgrounds. [Mirrors, mirrors.]

[Private]

[stopthat_destro]

It's easier to accept an identity when you're the one who created it. I don't know if it makes the others any less valid... in their way. Unpleasant, to say the least.

[championoftime]

I actually have a bit of difficulty with it. Just as your own identity is comprised of your own memories, suddenly you're subjected to someone else's and they become a part of your identity, too. But I prefer the insight later. Troublesome and difficult though it is, I wouldn't exchange it.

This isn't the best solution for many people, I know.

private

[stopthat_destro]

But sometimes it doesn't lend any insight at all. What's the use of suddenly feeling fondness for somebody you shouldn't?

private

[championoftime]

It's not. But I hope that other person learns something about who they shouldn't be.

I don't consider there to be much a specific point behind most of these nonsensical occurrences. I doubt there's much planning. So like with any other incident in life that you have to overcome, you have to learn from it.

Honestly, there is something that does concern me. It's related to my own health, however.

private

[stopthat_destro]

What is it?

Private

[lifeafterhope]

Someone told me we should write down who we are, what matters to us. Make it real and physical so that we can go back to it.

Private

[stopthat_destro]

[He considers that, realizes that all he writes down off the Network are plans and schemes and scientific notes, nothing about himself. Maaaybe his priorities are out of whack.]

Do you find it helps? Or is this just a precautionary measure for the next flood?

Private

[lifeafterhope]

I've never been changed into anyone else. Whether it helped him, I don't know.

Private

[stopthat_destro]

That's fortunate. Maybe you'll be one of the few who leave without ever experiencing it.

Hm.

I may as well give the autobiography a shot.