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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!

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Part of Lillian realized she probably should've expected that. From the way the woman was standing, from the way she held that sword, the edge in her voice...she wanted a fight. Not that Lillian was going to be much of an opponent. She'd had lots of memories about fighting, but that wasn't the same as fighting, was it?

Her eyes went wide and instincts she didn't really realize she had kicked in, as she took a step back and raised her hand to block the sword, a useless gesture really...

Except, the hand that came up to stop it wasn't her normal tanned hand. No, it was the gauntlet hand from her memories, from her dreams, made of metal and armor and actually capable of catching the blade, deflecting it on her metallic palm. She shoved it backwards and away from her as she jumped back more to buy herself some room. What?

And the Knot whirred to life, writing new information to lillianAust() that A2 would figure out what exactly to do with later. Was it just a quirk of the drea▒sc░▒▓ code or was it an actual sudden transformation? Had Lillian gotten a gift from Retrospec at the last second? Interesting.

"So you can do something," she said, tilting her head and letting her weight shift to her back foot once she'd finished staggering to a stop a few steps closer to the Knot. "I guess you aren't just a sickly little girl after all." Anna would have felt miserable about even bringing that up, much less using it as an insult. A2 clearly didn't give a shit.

Lillian's eyes narrowed at that insult, it was enough to pull her out of the shock of robo-hands. "I ain't never let it stop me before, why would I now?" She said, unable to hide the anger in her voice.

And it seemed that whatever transformation was taking over Lillian, it wasn't restricted to her hands. Maybe it was just being in a dream? The mishmash of memories and the way anything seemed possible coming together to give her some kind of chance.

Either way, she felt the weight in her body shift, the way her whole stance was suddenly adjusting to support something strapped to her back, the way her feet felt more stable than she was pretty sure they had ever been. She was afraid to look down, almost certain she knew what she was going to see. Fake arms, fake legs, built for movement and combat. Built at all. Not human. But maybe that was necessary right then. By the time it stopped, it was hard to see what parts of her had even been human.

But she'd had so many memories and dreams about feeling like this, at least it wasn't foreign. Just...frightening. But also freeing, in a way...

She smirked at the robot in front of her. "And if I could survive a decade of dying, what chance do you have?"

A2 laughed. No, she wasn't the kind of person to charge in during a transformation sequence, insofar as Lillian had gotten one, but her voice was dark and full of a foreign type of anticipation. Her body straightened out and her elbow bent to bring her sword up across her chest.

"I'll just have to finish the job." Yikes. But even then, if Lillian wasn't human anymore, that meant that A2 could go even harder on her. And the one thing she knew she was good at, the one thing main() knew she was absolutely an expert at, was killing machines.

She ran forward, dead-on, predictable as always, but slashing wouldn't exactly cut it now, would it? She needed more force. Her arm moved, her shoulder and elbow bending to hold the sword out to a point in front of her. When she got close enough to stab, she would, but for now it looked more like she was jousting at Lillian. It was the best way to see if she had actually gotten any better with the hardware upgrade.

Okay, well, being a robot was handy but it wasn't going to do much if the robot Anna managed to rip her head off or something. And she had caught that sword but it wasn't the same thing as fighting back. She needed a weapon. The other her, Labrys, had one...

So if this was a dream, then maybe. Maybe.

Please work...please work...pleasepleaseplease...

Lillian reached behind her, feeling the heavy weight of the grip near the base of her spine. Come on. RoboAnna was charging now, if this didn't work...

She yanked, hard, and felt the weight on her back suddenly give way to one in her hand, and she spun it around, trying to remember the way the her from her memories had done it and...with a series of fast clicks and metal rolling against metal, her hand was suddenly full of giant axe.

Just in time for the flat of it to catch the edge of RoboAnna's sword, deflecting it up and away from her. Oh thank god.

The sound of metal clashing with metal in the least expected way possible brought what looked like—but could only have been a simulacrum of—joy to A2's face. Twisted, broken joy at the knowledge that this was going to be an actual fight with somebody who could fight back. She'd still win, of course, but this equally broken little girl was going to make her work for it.

She laughed again, a cacophony of stuttering hard drives and dial-up modems, and jumped backwards to give enough distance for another strike. Her left hand gripped what could have once been called the hilt of her sword, but the line between hand and hilt had been blurred and melded too close together for any meaningful distinction to exist anymore.

And while she would've loved to taunt Lillian further, all she wanted to do was cut to the fight—and to a few other things. With both hands ready, she rushed forward again, blade poised to strike at and through the pommel of Lillian's axe, where she would probably have the most difficulty turning the blade to deflect it properly. Nobody said A2 was completely stupid, after all.

Well, Lillian hoped she could fight back, anyway. Did having the memories of fighting make her a fighter? She supposed this was the worst possible way to find out but, hey, no time for regrets.

When A2 darted forward again, Lillian's eyes narrowed, just for a second. She couldn't block that, not really, not with her axe. So she didn't try. Instead she jumped to the side, feeling robotic legs propel her further and faster than she had ever moved before. She hit the ground in a sliding-stop and swung the axe out into the space where she had been, and where A2 presumably was now.

A2 skidded to a stop millimeters ahead of the enormous axe blade; she hadn't been expecting someone with a weapon that big to be able to move so quickly, or to swing it that quickly from such a position either. The momentum she'd built up in her path blew her hair forward, and the blade of the axe sliced off several strands—and caught the tip of A2's nose, tearing that off in its entirety and leaving her face mostly flat.

The joy on her face faded into a serious expression now that she knew more about what this girl was capable of. Taking another step back, forcing her to come closer if she wanted to attack again, A2 stared down Lillian with mechanical parts (tubing and part of the framework keeping everything in place) clearly showing through the hole in her skin where her nose had once been.

"You're fast," she said. Faster than she had any right to be. The Knot kept writing data to Lillian's file in the background while A2 tried to figure out her next steps. "For scrap metal."

Holy shit. Lillian had not been expecting to make contact, and now she was staring at an Anna that had a hole torn in her face with bits of robot visible inside. Jesus christ.

She slid to a stop, holding the axe warily. "Funny, I ain't the one who just lost her nose to an amatuer, am I?" She managed to say, putting confidence in her voice she didn't quite feel. This robot Anna was fast. Faster than Lillian was really prepared for, and she was sure that hit had been luck. So she needed to find a way to get past her, get her out of the way. If she could go hit that terminal thing, maybe that would shut the dream Anna down...

It was better than risking getting stabbed.

"How come ya ain't attackin', huh?" She managed after a second. "Gettin' nervous?"

"Figuring out the best way to spite your face."

Don't worry, she thought she was incredibly clever. She couldn't think as quickly as she might have wanted while the Knot's processing power was tied up with writing this new data, but she didn't need a lot of flops to figure out that she needed to attack again. Going for the pommel wasn't going to work; that blade was way too heavy to be moving that fast, but maybe lillianAust() was just that damn good.

Her sword arm out, she decided to forego strategy and run forward again to attack higher up, just short of Lillian's neck. That seemed like a good enough solution to her dumb, too-clever problem.

Lillian couldn't actually win this fight, she was pretty sure of that. But maybe she didn't have to. She braced as the woman charged, not bothering to come up with a retort, and instead started to swing her axe to try and meet that blade.

Except, as she swung it, she felt it turning in her hands, her grip loose enough to let the large blade shift from the motion, until instead of a the blade, it was the entire flat of the weapon being swung at the android woman. Like a baseball bat the size of a car door.

Jesus christ it felt like a fucking freight truck just ran over her. A2 went flying off to the side, landing and skidding right to the edge of the platform before an invisible wall stopped her from plummeting to her certain death. Alarm bells blared inside her own head not just from the damage but from how she was... untethered from the Knot, at this distance. She couldn't get there fast enough before someone else who was closer could.

This was dangerous. This was a problem and A2 couldn't even bring herself to get to her feet. It was unguarded, it wasn't safe, she wasn't safe... she couldn't disappear. She couldn't be deleted. She didn't want that for so, so many reasons, and against all odds she felt something like desperate hope rise inside her beaten chest. Hope that lillianAust() would just find the way out and leave her.

But androids didn't have hope. They couldn't rely on it even if they did. They had programming and they had code and they had orders. So A2 would be taking this time not to beg for something to change but to struggle to her feet and make something change. If her legs wanted to listen.

Edited 2018-09-09 15:17 (UTC)

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