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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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[as much as A2 would like to have something else to say, something else bitter and untrue to goad Rose into pulling the sword out and attacking until she's in pieces, she realizes that it's too late. these thoughts, all the hatred and vitriol that Anna hadn't kept inside but had instead dealt with over years and years of repairing her friendship with Rose—they were just memories. awful, bitter memories that fueled A2 as her will to fight left her and replaced itself with spite. they didn't matter anymore. they were... part of her past, as A2 is part of Anna's present.]

[but Rose is right. she's more than that. no one else in the city would know better. no one else in the city knows Anna better.]

[there's a quiet shuddering sound from deep in A2's throat as she falls to her knees. her eyes fix on Rose before the light behind them finally goes out, and her body becomes frozen in place. not to be rebuilt by the Knot when the time comes, but for good. it's found somebody who can actually disentangle it, and the first thing it does is show Rose the folder with her name on it. the massive directory contains a list of dates and times on one screen and shows a blank video feed on another.]

[she has all the time in the world to go over every single memory Anna has made of the two of them, from the moment she first saw Rose to the two of them getting fucked up and watching Sharktopus together and absolutely everything in between. each memory is first-person, each one comes with text readouts of the conversations taking place in the silent video, each one has Anna's emotional state clearly indicated—it's more data than any one person could ever need.]

[but there's no way to delete individual memories. if Rose navigates up in the file tree, she'll see that she's under the Anna Lehmann directory and she only has two options if she wants to do anything to it: to move her folder into a second file tree labeled Annalise Amarande Lehmann, or to delete it entirely. the consequences of either should be clear.]

[A2 was the only one here operating on code. the choice is Rose's to make.]

[Rose lets out one long, quiet breath as she pulls the sword back out and tosses it to the side. She doesn't need it anymore. A2 is nothing but another body along with the rest of the corpses here now. It's just her alone in Anna's head.

That doesn't really make her feel any safer, honestly, but at least she can do what she came to do.

When she approaches the Knot and sees the folder, she clicks on the very first file out of curiosity more than anything else. She expects something like a few images, maybe a line of summary of the event, but when she sees the amount of detail and insight on Anna's thoughts during it—she rushes to exit out of it. It's such a massive invasion of privacy, no one has the right to see Anna's feelings exposed to so clearly aside from Anna herself and whoever she might choose to share them with. This isn't Anna choosing. This is not sharing.

For a moment though, her hand hovers over one specific file: the day they broke up. Neither of them held back on nasty words that day, but she almost wants to reconfirm it, see it from Anna's point of view. Just to see how much she deserved Anna's anger, and maybe to see if she still deserves it now. Instead, she squashes the urge and scrolls farther down. The past is the past, they've both made their peace with it, and if she has this opportunity... It's selfish, so selfish, but there's just one thing she has to know. She clicks on the latest file, tries to skim through it as briefly as she can while still finding the confirmation she needs.

That for everything that's happened, their friendship is still worth something to Anna. It's worth a hell of a lot for Rose.

Which is why she ultimately leaves the file alone, doing nothing. Part of her still can't help but think that Anna would be better off without any memories of her. But after spending months with barely anyone remembering her the way she remembered them, her family included—it's selfish and she knows it but god damn does she want her friend back.

So she sets her focus on the Knot instead, reaching out to start untangling it.]

[actually untangling the Knot might come almost as second nature to Rose. the terminal isn't especially complex, its keys and the commands they execute clearly labeled. (the biggest challenge is behind her, after all.) it's almost like the Knot wants to help Rose sort everything out, move people to where they should be, bring experiences held only by Annalise back into Anna to remove the division between the two. there's no reason they should be lost, right? everything that happens to her, and these file trees should bear it out, has shaped who she is pretty drastically.]

[it might not be clear what happens when Anna comes back with two months of memories from someone who shouldn't exist—if that's even how this works—but as long as it gets Anna back. right?]

[it will take Rose steady, consistent, but not necessarily difficult work to sort everything out. glorified data entry, effectively. once it is untangled and the Knot is satisfied with the work Rose has done, a rectangle of golden light will open behind her, at the top of the stairs. it couldn't more clearly be an exit if it had a big glowing sign above it. if Rose decides to walk through, it won't lead to the end of the dream quite yet, though.]

[instead, it opens up into another all-beige data construct, but this one looks much less plain even if it is largely just textureless rectangles. they're arranged identically to Anna's room, the one she hasn't had for the past two months, and on what should be the couch-bed is Anna herself. she's got a weary sort of smile on her face, but she's definitely alive and it's actually, 100% her—half-android and all. she raises two fingers in a lazy wave as Rose enters.]

Someone finally killed her, huh?

[The rest of this is almost painfully easy in comparison to the struggle before it. Rose could laugh at that if she had the energy, but she doesn't, so she works as quickly and efficiently as she can, for once not being lazy or half-assing a job she has. This is too important to fuck up.

It really is too easy though. Weirdly so. She has to wonder if some part of Anna, or Annalise, or whoever this is supposed to be—if she wanted things to be resolved some way, somehow. Maybe it didn't have to be her to untangle things, maybe this dream would've reacted to anyone else similarly... But she can't shake off the feeling that it's not that simple, and she doesn't know how to feel about that. Rose doesn't think she should have that much power over anyone. It's not like she can ask anyone to confirm or deny the thought though, and she heads up the stairs once she's sure things are done, ready to just get out of here.

But of course things aren't that simple.]

Wha— [And there's Anna herself, looking as fine as ever aside from the tired smile and this weirdass room. There's shock and relief and confusion and worry, so many different and conflicting feelings all at once that all she manages to say is:] It's not like I wanted to!

[But she throws her arms around Anna all the same, hugging her for dear life. This might be a dream still, but this has to mean that some part of her friend is back now, right?]

[it's still definitely a dream, and there's a certain physical warmth that's missing from Anna when she gets hugged, but she's still smiling and barely containing laughter at feeling Rose's arms suddenly around her like this.]

Gay.

[which, of course, she says while returning the hug. it's enough to make her wish she weren't also data in here, a gestalt of herself created from the memories locked inside her soul, or some metaphysical bullshit like that. this is as close to Anna as Rose is going to get while she's still asleep, but it's better than nothing.]

I know it sucked. I tried my best to make the whole thing suck less for you, but I could barely do anything from back here. She was the one in control most of the time.

[not the most encouraging thing in the world to say. or to hear, probably. she'll switch tacks.]

I don't know when the hell I'm gonna wake up, but you'll be good as soon as you walk back out that door. I know that much.

[She gives a short laugh, pulling back.] I had a feeling honestly, but thanks. You have no idea how much you helped.

[Since she's pretty sure she'd be dead if Anna hadn't been doing what she could to help out. Her own qualms about killing a dreamscape construct of a person—well, she'll just have to figure that out on her own later. What matters to her now is that for as awful as it was, ultimately, it paid off.]

You're just stuck here until you wake up then? [Sounds kind of shitty tbh, but it makes her wonder:] Actually, are you even gonna remember all this once you wake up?

[she has some idea, but it's not important. it's just nice to see Rose happy for once. she deserves that; even as code, Anna can appreciate the way Rose looks like this.]

Everything we do has to matter, yeah? Otherwise we wouldn't be spending all this time doing it in the first place. [weirdly deep, but sure, whatever, go for it.]

So if I wake up out of this not remembering the shit my best friend did to help get me out of it? I'm gonna be pissed. And you're probably gonna be pretty pissed, too. I mean, I'll believe you if you tell me about it later, but... fuck, dude. [see, she was watching the whole time. she knows what happened.] I ain't gonna make you relive all of that for me.

[What they do has to matter, huh? Honestly, she's been wondering about that as of late, but she keeps that to herself. Rose can only see the senselessness of it all—Zero's killings, what Retrospec does to all of them.

But she's sure Anna's been through a hell of a lot with all this, she's not about to dump her existential crisis right this moment.]

I'd be fucking pissed, yeah. [She says it with a laugh though.] We'll just have to see what happens when you wake up, I guess. But if you really don't remember, I'll be sure to let you know that I saved your ass.

[and that gets a laugh out of Anna.]

I'd believe it. Just means I'd have to pay you back for it, which, like, oh no, now I gotta save Rose's ass and make sure she doesn't... I don't know, get fucked up by some weird Retrospec monster. I'd never do that if I didn't have to repay you for saving my own ass.

[sarcasm feels so, so good to be able to use again. she fuckin' hates Annalise and everything that's different about her.]

I don't know when I'll be back for real on the other side of things. Like, out there. [the place she's still vaguely aware of.] But if you run into some chick with glasses who looks like she's about to smack someone's knuckles with a ruler for not paying attention in class, I guess that's what I look like for now. So don't be freaked out.

Joke all you want, but I'm already sure that my ass'll need saving from something sooner or later.

[Retrospec just makes their lives so fun and safe, right..... She snorts at Anna's description though, having a hard time picturing it since she did her damnedest to avoid seeing "Annalise," and the incongruity with Anna just makes her laugh.]

Fuck, that's what you look like? Tell me you're gonna ditch the glasses at least.

Dude, they make me look like a third-string clown in the asshole circus. As soon as I get back out there, I'm setting the whole thing on fire.

[she's got this dumb lopsided grin on her face the whole time she's talking about it, though. maybe it won't be quite that drastic, but she's this comfortable around very few other people, and she's needed familiarity so badly lately. so she's slipping back into hyperbole and swearing and all of this like she never left, and it feels amazing.]

I don't even think she knows you. She's this... super studious bitch who never dropped out and just keeps kissing her parents' asses and now she's going for her PhD. Just thinking about her feels wrong.

What the fuck? [SHE'S FUCKING HOWLING AT THIS and maybe that's a bit much, but god, she's needed a laugh, and she's sure Anna won't take any offense to it. Honestly though, even if she did, this is really too funny to imagine.] A PhD in what, studying? Ass-kissing? Fuck, I almost forgot you were even in college before I dropped in.

Can you do an impression of her?

[jesus christ. she should've seen this coming. while Rose laughs through all of this, Anna sits up stock straight, puts her legs together, and folds her hands in her lap. putting up one hand to her temple, she constructs the glasses all for the sake of committing to the bit (they flicker into existence in a white and blocky burst of data) and clears her throat.]

My name, miss Geteilt, is Dr. Annalise Amarande Lehmann. And I will thank you not to disparage the field of military history in this way.

[she can only keep this together for so long, but she'll hold it until she's satisfied with Rose's reaction because god knows they both need to laugh as much as possible right about now.]

[Well it looks like Rose still might end up dying here because she thinks she might actually be close to suffocating from laughter.]

Who gets a fucking—PhD— [She's wheezing so hard she can't even catch her breath to get her whole sentence out.] in military history? Fuck, I didn't even know that was real!

[After her laughter FINALLY starts to die down, she gives a back sigh, steadying her breathing so she can say:] Oh my god, I'm glad you're not actually like that.

[holy shit? holy shit, Rose. Anna can keep it up for, like, five seconds before she breaks down laughing, too, and for a second it's easy for her to forget that she's just data, the same as everything else except Rose. it's shit like this that makes them such good friends, and it just... it means that Anna made exactly the right choice. she's proud of Rose, even if she'll never be able to say it.]

I mean my parents were pushing for it, so, like, who even fucking knows with them, yeah? But, like, hard same on dodging this whole bullet. Best I can figure, it's all because you and I never really met. Which... christ, if that's what I turn into without you, can I go back in time and meet you earlier?

[the idea of changing anything about the history between the two of them hasn't been sitting right with her since she ended up inside this wack-ass data prison. there's a lot to dislike about Annalise just because of that.]

[If they had a bong between them, she'd seriously believe they're back in Anna's apartment for her birthday rather than some digital data space where she's the only real person here.]

So we could terrorize this city as a gay menace for even longer? [Okay they weren't THAT bad to the city. Probably.] But man, this might just be my biased opinion, but if meeting me is what kept you from being that straight-laced military history freak, I think I'm glad I swept in to fuck things up a bit.

[Which is what Anna's told her already, she selfishly concluded for herself anyways, and hell, even literally saw in Anna's thoughts and memories. You'd think that'd be enough confirmation for someone, but... Well, their turbulent past was hard enough, not to mention all the memories Retrospec keeps piling on her, so realizing that she doesn't just completely ruin all of her personal relationships is still kind of hard to believe. It's as relieving as it is scary in some ways.]

No, I'm with you. A hundred percent.

[they didn't do nearly enough terrorizing in Anna's opinion, but the time for that has come and gone and they're older, more mature women now anyway. they're women who would never do anything like get double fucked up together and call each other "bitch" affectionately.]

That's why I knew you'd be the person to get rid of her and get in here. And honestly, the app can keep throwing whatever weird bullshit it wants at us. [she glances over at the door again, trying not to focus on how she's not real and is probably just comatose outside in the real world or something right now.] End of the day, it's what, eight years without this thing versus one with it? I think I know which one matters more.

[Their time without the app versus their time with it. Rose honestly hasn't thought of it like that, but as she mulls it over, she likes it. Even if Retrospec made them closer like before thanks to forced circumstances, she thinks they would've gotten to this point on their own regardless. Hell, she's survived twenty-four years' worth of life's bullshit before the app came in. Maybe the bullshit's crazier now, but what's one year compared to everything else she's seen?

This time, her smile isn't so tired, isn't just from their dumb jokes. It's small, but it's genuine. It might even be hopeful.]

Y'know, you have a good point. We've got our whole lives from before this nonsense, no matter what it tries to do to us. It's not like it can actually take that away.

Nothing can take that away from us.

[it's who they are. they're more than the people they're turning into and they always have been. the room itself seems like it's growing brighter, and Anna lets her pretenses melt away, disappear like she's still the hopeful, doe-eyed girl she was when they met and she's still absolutely head over heels for Rose, and it feels. freeing. it won't last, and none of it's going to last as soon as this dream ends, but for now she's more than happy to accept it.]

Hey. [she pulls Rose into another tight hug and keeps her voice down so only she can hear her, even if there were anyone else here.]

I love you, okay? [and she lets Rose go (but never too far) and gives the same kind of smile right back at the best friend she's ever goddamn had.] Get out there and keep kicking ass. I'll wake up soon. Promise.

[There's a growing lump in her throat that she can't quite swallow past, and goddamn it this is getting embarrassing for her. But Christ, if she can't accept a bit of love and kindness here in a digital headspace where no one else will ever know about it, where can she? So she hugs Anna back just as tightly, nods at her words with a tremulous but brilliant smile.]

Love you, too. I'll see you on the other side. [It doesn't sit quite right with her, to just be leaving Anna all alone in this place while she walks out so easily, but she knows there's nothing left for her to do here. Finally, she steps away and heads to the door, looking back one last time before stepping through it.]

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