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EVENT

Reverted
The city of Recollé...have you looked beyond the city lately? It may be time to do so.

I.

The good news, perhaps, is that everyone is back in their original bodies. The last few weeks may have been trying and embarrassing for several of you, but never fear! You're all in this together.

The nice thing about returning to your original body is that everything else seems to disappear along with the unintentional swapping. Your dreams on the evening of the 16th and the 17th are unoccupied and you're blissfully alone. Hallucinations fade away and the city almost feels brighter and cleaner. The messy paint job from May and June slowly flakes off to reveal a sparkling almost-new landscape below. All buildings, landmarks, flora and fauna are back to their original colors. The sky, however, is still painted a strange wash of colors and symbols.

The other nice thing about returning to your original body is that it's much easier to feel the sudden, sharp pain on your palm at midnight on the 18th, a needling high-pressure pain that lasts for all of 30 seconds. Upon looking at your hand, however, you'll notice something new.

In bright red font there's a new marking that reads: 13 Days:23:59:59.

58. 57. 56...

The timer steadily counts down, each second synced with each beat of your heart. As the days pass by the timer will slowly shift from the red to a dark, ominous purple. The glow of the mark becomes harder to ignore, and there doesn't seem to be a way to remove it. Good luck with that.

II.

The Retrospec app doesn't seem to be much better. The scrambled messages and posting errors seem to have stopped and users are no longer receiving messages and pictures about themselves.

In fact, the app seems to be quiet for a while.

As users continue to use the app they will find that any post, comment or message that they send via the app will be tagged with a different ID. Instead of their name, all messages will be from Alpha##### or Beta#####. The string of numbers will be unique for each user and cannot be changed at any time. Individual mailboxes will be attached to your name, but the Alpha/Beta ID has made its way there, too.

Over the course of the rest of the month, Alphas (those who have had the app for at least a year from August 2017) will find that messages to other Alphas are sent more easily than to Betas (those who have had the app for less than a year from August 2017) and vice versa. Messages to anyone from the opposite "faction" may drop out half-way or appear blank entirely. It might be wise to find a better mode of communication in the meantime.

III.
Even if you're alone in your dreams, you're not alone in the waking world. No one is free from the timer on their palm, though they may come to find that it impacts some users more than others.

Some users will experience a steady pulsating in their hand as the timer counts backwards, each second ticking by. Standing still just long enough will send the pulse out of their hands and through the rest of their body, over their arms and through their feet straight into the ground.

The earth begins to shake under these unlucky users, little quakes and trembles that spread out and seek out anyone else nearby. Whether you know this person or not, whether you're alone or several of you are impacted by this earthquake, the ground beneath you splits open and you're pulled straight down into the crevice, falling aimlessly. Instead of finding your own life flashing before your eyes, you'll find yourself witnessing events, faces, and memories that are important to the user the pulses came from.

On the outside of things, the user will promptly collapse into a coma-like state no matter where they're at. Inside their mind, however, a scene begins to set itself to welcome you as you land. It isn't a memory and it isn't a hallucination. It's a construct of someone else's innerworkings that have trapped you and blocked you in.

As the haze around you dissipates, the puzzle you received earlier this month floats in front of you. Whether you have finished building it or not it is now fully completed and all of the words have faded except for "Gordian Knot."

Your cell phones will not work in these dreamscapes, and even Retrospec seems to be disconnected. It's up to you to venture further into someone else's mind and help them untangle whatever mystery is hidden within themselves.

IV.
So about that timer. As time begins to run out, more and more people begin to experience dream dives and encounter the knots of others that they must fix. Even inside the dreamscape, the timer glows just as brightly as it had out in the real world and it continues counting down.

At least it gives you a sense of time and just how many minutes, hours, or days you've been stuck inside someone's subconscious. You might even realize that the timer is directly tied to just how much time you have to unravel the knots of your friends, loved ones, and strangers.

Easy, right? Take caution, citizens. The monsters and demons lurking in the corners of someone else's psyche can manifest to something quite powerful. You will not wake up and be booted out of someone's dream if you are attacked, but your physical body and mind will shut down and remain unconscious for one week.

Be careful how you approach these knots, however! Should you change any part of them too much, the host will find themselves rejecting this new information. Too great of a change will result in the loss of an important memory to them and no way to recover it inside the dive.

Even with these possible losses divers are responsible for fixing what's gone wrong and relieving the knot wound tightly in the host's mind. Venture forward, explore, and break it apart to awaken then. You will be greatly rewarded for your effort.

Failure to break the knot and save the host from this comatose state will result in all parties suffering a loss. At first it may not be obvious, but over time it will be clear an important memory or item has left your possession.

Is it just limited to dives though? Some users will feel that even with successful diving they don't quite feel like themselves. It seems as though there's some further self-evaluation they must meet in order to fully recover who they are...or were, as it may be.

Tick-tock, Retrospecters. Mind the time.

BONUS.
Ever since he moved in back in February, the lights have always been on in Zee's office and home at the top of the Towers. Office hours are whenever he feels like making them and he's usually reachable by phone, email, or app.

However, beginning on the 18th, messages to his inbox begin to go unanswered. Checking the inbox itself will reveal a change as well.

Delta#02018329 is no longer receiving messages.

On the 19th, the lights go off permanently. Beginning on the 20th, anyone who ventures to his office will find the building empty and locked, no sign of Zee at all. Reaching out to him receives a bounce-back error message.

Any previous correspondences with him will remain, though his name has been replaced with his Delta ID.

It's hard to say what's happened, but after some time, all users will finally receive a message from Delta#68422.

Stop him.

No other messages will be sent or received from this account.

Welcome to

recolle's August event, part 2!

As notated in the plotting post, the dreamdives are now live! Players are in charge of creating their own unique dive experiences for characters to explore and play through. These can be as harmless or as dangerous as you'd like. However, please be sure to let us know here if your character will be failing a dive and what memory/item they will be losing!

For Prompt II, characters IDs will be comprised of the following: The date your character first appeared on Retrospec (so in Zee's case, that was 02/01/18) and the last four digits of your character's IC inbox as found in the HTML (in Zee's case, 8329.) These IDs will be more relevant in September, but for ease of playing/making sure no one ICly overlaps please use these numbers!

Friendly reminder that if your character will be keeping their new AUs, please reply to this comment on the OOC plot post! As per Prompt IV, characters who are failing to recover their original AUs will begin to notice something is off and will not be able to accomplish what is needed to regain their original AUs. What this is is up to you!

As per the plotting post, threading out successful dream dives will earn you a free memory! Qualifying threads must be at least five comments from you and can be from you either hosting a dive or participating in one. Please note that failed dives will not be eligible for freebies.

Any questions you have regarding this event may be directed to the mod comment here. Be sure to review the mods' question thread on the plotting post for important information as well!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Mariko blinks, using everything she has not to smile outright. She knows that anger like the back of her hand, after too many long investigations and not enough information to justify billing long hours.

404, asshole

Her hand goes to the rifle, ready but not aimed - not just yet. She needs to keep distracting Anna’s Other, so she does the only thing she can think of. Thoughts of the raid bleed forward, feet on hardwood floor as she tries to chase down the source of the incident.

Her spine straightens, the look in her eye sharpening.

“Major.”

Raises her rifle and disappears, leaving a staticky whine in her wake. Running footsteps are heard, as if they’re working around the platform rather than straight at A2.

There has to be a port somewhere, Mariko hopes as she runs, looking for something on the terminal to connect with before she’s caught or her own tech fails her. She’s not sure how well the camouflage will work here, with the way this woman has access to info - but even a scant few seconds will do.

Edited 2018-08-24 02:16 (UTC)

Yeah, major pain in her ass. A2 scowls and just barely stops herself from saying that out loud as the static starts up and the Major disappears. A2 doesn't have a place to save this data to, so while she's trying to figure out what the fuck else is going on, she's writing to RAM, and that's taking up more processing power that she does not even begin to have the ability to spare right now.

But she can hear the Major making a break for the terminal even if A2 has no idea what happened or where she's going. She runs alongside where she thinks the footsteps are, approaching on what should be the Major's left side, and with a loud grunt she swings her sword arm hard at what she hopes is this too-tech-savvy asshole's body. Whatever she hits is bound to cause some damage. This is what A2 was built for, after all.

Mariko knows running was a bad move as soon as the young woman pursues and the camo buys her exactly jack shit. She hears the grunt and sees movement in her periphery that makes her blood run cold. In an instant she chooses, pulling the rifle to her right side and twisting, throwing her left arm out to try to force A2 back. Using the rifle doesn’t occur because she doesn’t shoot to wound and she knows that something will be ruined if she ends up killing her.

In this moment she remembers the geisha and the young man, the injuries flickering in her mind like they’re lit by a flashbulb. One skull ruined by her gunfire, the other ruined by god knows what. For a moment the pristine smell of white and clear synthetic blood fills her nose and then nothing else matters because her left arm is nothing but pain.

The camouflage breaks instantly, the pain shocking her brain so badly she forgets how to run mid-stride. Adrenaline kicks in and even though the pain numbs, Mariko still clenches her teeth and fights curling in on herself because she knows if she stops focusing on A2 she’s going to die.

She’s unaware of the growl she makes as she scrambles to get her feet, the only conscious thought that floods her mind is Don’t Look. Don’t Look. Don’t Look. Fuck not aiming to kill, she fires the rifle - concentrating on hitting anything above the waist and almost prays to catch A2 in the head.

It was luck. A guess. An intuitive one, because A2 has one very obvious thing she's here to protect, but a guess all the same. She doesn't have time to appreciate it, though she's certainly not fazed by seeing that she's lopped straight through the Major's arm. The amount of murder she's seen and been responsible for herself has desensitized her almost entirely. Of course it has. Why would a machine care?

She can't appreciate it because she's busy catching a bullet in the fucking neck. A dark liquid, what main() has only been able to imagine as oil, leaks from the hole, but it hasn't damaged A2's voice synthesizer as far as she can tell. Leaving the bullet inside her, she takes this moment of shock to get between the Major and the Knot again.

"Coward."

Mariko winces and suddenly her mind floods with anger. It's anger that echoes with moment, feelings that are hers and the feelings of her Other feeding into each other until she can't feel the difference anymore.

Anger. Offense. Indignity. Bloodlust. Sorrow. Guilt.

Save for the scowl, all of the emotion Mariko has been expressing seems to burn off and leaves nothing but a frustrated sort of hyper-focus in it's wake.

She rolls backwards into a low crouch as A2 moves to block the Knot again and in the motion uses the strap of her rifle to tie off her wound. It's part triage, part stabilization as the ~~Major~~Mariko reassesses the situation.

"There's no use looking for something that isn't there." she counters in a voice far less fiery, the tone something closer A2's.

There was no port that she could see on the Knot before being interrupted, which means that A2 is likely the only way information gets in and out of the terminal. The port's one her and that's something she can deal with.

Mariko fires again as she rises out of the crouch, bracing the gun on her mid-section to steady the aim. Where she fired wide last time, now she fires in bursts trying to predict where A2 will dodge.

Oh, this is getting interesting, isn't it. She's not just some coward with a gun and a death wish, and it seems like A2 can finally see that. It brings a sick grin to her face just before she realizes she's going to have to dodge, because now that the Major is being serious, those bullets might actually become a problem. She's strong, she can tank them, but she can only take so many before even she has to shut down.

She hears the trigger get pulled and darts off to one side, seemingly forgetting that it would end up with the Knot getting riddled with bullets if she were to move—but then, that isn't a problem all of a sudden, is it? A2's dodge is met with a shot right to the chest, close to what main() has always assumed was her heart, and that starts more fluid—red this time, not the dark color of oil—seeping from the hole.

A2 staggers, takes a step backwards, hesitates. And she glares daggers at the Major to mask her own frustration at herself for failing to account for the way humans also learn. The way they can adapt to anything, no matter how miserable the circumstances. The Major isn't a coward. She's a threat.

Blood spurts and it's a fight to ignore the thought of putting the gun down. Blood not oil, but if she takes a moment to figure out what A2's body is doing, Mariko knows she's going to lose all the ground she just got.

So she swallows her conscience and fires once more, aiming a tiny burst at A2's sword bearing arm. All she needs is a little give - drop the sword, lose a little grip - anything for an advantage. She doesn't wait for the leverage the gunfire earns, keeping A2 from getting equilibrium is the goal now.

Mariko moves in fast, trying to sweep A2's legs before a proper recovery can be made.

Edited 2018-08-30 00:58 (UTC)

All of it is fake; her entire body is made of code, and it comes down to places where Anna thinks she should be bleeding versus places where she's assumed it's more mechanical in nature. And on some level A2 is aware of this because she knows nearly everything main() has written into her existence. When it comes to something like the Major, A2 will take any amount of confusion she can get, because she isn't in the program and that means she's running on no historical data and learning everything in realtime and she's—

There are other, better times to fucking focus on this, because more bullets lodge themselves in her sword arm. They dig in deep and jerk A2's arm back, and she lets out a cry but doesn't drop the blade. Her fingers flex around the hilt and the tips pull away from it, but the metal of her palm is fused completely with the metal of the hilt. Dropping it was never an option.

This is something else that the Major might be able to see, of course, as she sweeps the leg and brings A2 crashing down to the platform they're standing on, now stained with black and red in large, obvious patches marking every scene in this fight so far. But the android has learned something from fighting cloverGeteilt(), and her own legs—the things she knows the power of because they're all that main() has gotten back—come together once she's on the ground and shove a solid kick towards what she hopes is the Major's smug fucking face.

Being half-aware of the dream is strange. Things making sense is simply her mind going with A2’s subconscious and it keeps Mariko from thinking about why she doesn’t feel phased by losing her arm or continuing the fight. Still it’s useful to know that A2 can bleed and it’s very useful to know that A2 can’t drop this sword.

It’s almost worth get getting her head rocked by A2s kick.

And still somehow, the Major —no, Mariko, her name is Mariko — doesn’t seem to react further to what should have dazed her. It’s hard to keep the differences straight while dreaming, Mariko is flesh and and blood but the thought is creeping that maybe her Other isn’t, at least not entirely. Fake arm, a wire in the back of the neck - how much of her is fake?

A question for when she’s awake. Right now she aims for A2’s knee and adjusts her approach. Firing in a tight pattern, her face is still doll-like as she considers what little emotion she’s seen from A2.

“I know you think you’re in control here, but the fact is when she wakes up, you won’t. Does your programming not let you see that?”

Shit! That—these aren't supposed to hurt, but something is getting crossed in the programming, something makes A2 feel like her body still runs on nerves instead of wires, something fucking makes her cry out in pain as her kneecap gets shot up while this complete anomaly just does not care that she's been kicked in the head.

The Knot sounds like it's struggling to keep things together, like whatever hard drive it's accessing is close to overheating. A2 inhales through her teeth and watches her chest rise and fall and she's not sure why it's happening or why her body seems to think that there are human parts to her, that there's bits and pieces of main() lurking within her code and activating now, of all times.

"Fuck you," she says with obvious strain. "I'm protecting her."

Mariko's eyes flick to the Knot, the terminal seeming to audibly overclock as she considers A2 words. It's true that she might have misread the situation but as unpalatable as that is, she considers what A2 could even be protecting Anna from. The rifle never quite stops being trained on A2 but for the moment, Mariko stops her advance. Her jaw moves, tongue clearly working at something before she makes a face turns her head to spit a stream of bloody saliva towards where most of the mess is. She takes care to avoid both A2 and the Knot, aiming well, despite never taking her eyes off of the young woman before her.

"I believe you. But I'll remind you that you attacked first and it didn't really work out for either of us, so I'd much rather talk."

Mariko waves the half of her left arm for emphasis, oddly unfazed as she chokes up on the gun.

"Or you can try and hack off another piece of me and I can pick another joint."

"Just tell me who the hell you are."

It's infuriating. It's almost hurting her more than getting shot, to know that there's some connection here but it's not something that A2 can grasp. She can't locate it, so she can't understand it, so she's flying completely blind in a world where she should know every single thing happening in it. Her body isn't moving and it's almost an enormous amount of effort to lift her head up and meet the Major's eyes.

"How does she know you?"

Give her a file to write to. Give her something to document this in. Let her put this data somewhere so she can focus on... on getting to her feet and fighting back. That's what has to be happening. Her RAM is so occupied with trying to figure out something that she was never equipped to solve—a mystery—that she can't think about anything else. Like it's some kind of virus eating away at every process she's running.

"And let you up?"

This is not the time to indulge a mean streak, but Mariko's question lacks the amusement of a sadist in it's tone. No, she just looks at A2, winding herself up and just barely smiles.

"I don't think so. I like having most of my limbs."

Mariko takes a knee and winces at the mess just shy of her elbow. She knows should be screaming and crying, that she should be shaken beyond believe as such an injury - but all she can manage is annoyance with everything about it. Her eyes flick to A2, before she sighs.

"I think we have more in common than you might believe. Tell me what you're trying to protect her from."

Tell me your name, she wants to repeat again, but it's fruitless. Nothing's going to change no matter how many times she insists. She'll have to give up information she doesn't want to give up in exchange for nothing, and the Major has her exactly where she wants her. And—damn it. Damn it, why did she say something that's starting that goddamned Knot whirring again? Why does it care that the Major and A2 have something in common?

Son of a bitch.

"From losing me," she says, the words sharp and direct and bitter on her tongue. "She was miserable before she started remembering me." This is too much. This is too much to say, but the words keep coming out in some effort to fucking make the Knot stop writing information, to stop taxing her processes, to let her rest for the love of any god that's been written into this world please let her rest.

"She didn't know what to do with her life. She didn't think anything was ever going to change and that she'd be stuck going from dead-end job to dead-end job until she died. She forgot how to fight and didn't know what to fight for without me."

It's self-aggrandizing. It's pompous. It's not as wrong as it should be. Stop calculating. Stop trying to solve this.

Mariko listens to A2 and her doll-like knitting of brows evaporates. The details of the story are different, but the beats make her heart feel like it's stopped in her chest. The more things are different, the more they're the same.

"I was too, before I started to remember. I think I was just better at hiding it."

She finally sits, not caring about the mess of blood and oil as she sighs. Damn, she's tired. It's probably the blood loss.

"I'm Mariko Aramaki and before all this app bullshit, I was a fucking garbage person. I ran through dates like cheap tissue paper, drank like a fish and broke the hearts of at least three men that I actually liked and thought the fact that I helped put people behind bars maybe evened the scales."

Her eyes flick to the half of her arm left and there's the shock wearing off. Bags seem to develop under her eyes instantly as she suppresses the gag and she gingerly adjusts the makeshift tourniquet.

"And then I started to remember the Major and that she maybe kills people for a living, maybe even for the government and that she's a lot of things I don't think I am anymore."

Mariko grimaces,wincing at the new tightness of the strap.

"Nice to meet you, Anna. Y'know. Face to face."

public static void marikoAramaki(). The tightness in A2's chest that she has to have been imagining but still feels so, so real dissipates in an instant as the function calls itself to mind, the data begins writing to the newly-discovered file. The file that has one conversation in it. No audio data, barely any visual data.

All for the want of a horseshoe nail.

"Don't compare me to her," she says as she hears the hard drive of the Knot winding down. "She doesn't deserve that." A2 should have her processing power back soon. She isn't sure she feels like using it. There are a lot of things she could say. A lot of things that wouldn't be accurate. Or would they? The android she is, the construct, the complicated array of data granted physical form isn't anything but that. So whatever she's coded to say is what she should think is correct.

There's no reason, for example, to still be antagonistic. Not when she's pretty sure this is over, when she doesn't think she has any fight left in her after being worn down in a way she'd never once expected to happen. But still she tries, just in a different way.

"Are you fucking proud of yourself?"

"Fair enough."

Mariko knows better to argue against a sentence like that and she's pretty sure having that conversation with anyone besides Togusa is bound to end in bloodshed.

There's a silence that feels longer than it probably actually is, now that she's not exactly worried about dying and the 'whrrr' of the Knot has faded into something almost normal sounding. It reminds her that she has to rewire her personal rig, install a better cooling system so her baby doesn't choke the way A2 did. Hopefully, she remembers.

Then A2 spits her question and Mariko laughs; it's a quick, tired snort that is more seen in the sudden jump of shoulders than properly heard.

"Honestly? Kinda. But I'm an asshole." She laughs again, shaking her head - eyes flicking warily to the sword in A2's hand. "And I'm probably going loopy from blood loss."

A2 rests her head on the ground below her. The idea of resting is so pleasant that she doesn't ever want it to stop. Of being able to not calculate something after spending this entire conversation working in overdrive, pulling up 404 after 404, burning resources she already didn't have trying to figure out who this is... for nothing. For so little it might as well have been nothing.

It's almost funny, but she has no energy to laugh.

"Yeah you are," she says, and she means it for the asshole bit, but the blood loss is also probably a thing that she'll have to worry about, isn't it. A2's chest is rising and falling and she's certain she doesn't have to be doing that but it's happening anyway. The orders for functions of this class were to stop them from reaching the Knot. She's done that, hasn't she? She can stop now. Right?

"Keep me as part of her and I'll let you leave," she says weakly. She's not in any position to be making offers.

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cw: limb loss, blood, vague, description of violent head wounds an all the resulting unpleasantness

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