reincarnesiac | (retired) etraya inbox

... They were abducted into one of Echo's city bubbles?

( She reflects that seriousness, imagining if she knew one of hers were in another bubble. She doesn't like the thought. She has so few people of her own back home that the thought is enough to make her skin crawl. She's maybe getting some people here, too. Imagining any of them abducted into another bubble... )

So you get in, to learn more about the bubbles. We get... help closing that tear after it's open, or at least more info than we had before if we have to endure the full two weeks of psychosis.

( A grimace. She doesn't want that, and she's been in enough illusions that go for the mind she suspects she'll even be able to figure out some of what she's enduring as it happens. )

You've already said things I haven't heard anything about yet.

( She breathes out, long and low. )

Okay. Alright. Mission's supposed to start on the 18th of September according to the calendar Aurora's keeping. It's the [ totally a date here ] right now.

( Alex regards him again, while he's back to his lighter air. You don't forget about what makes people serious. Has a way of lingering with you long after they're gone. )

Are people using other methods to address the multiverse unraveling?

[ Scylla doesn't feel like his skin is crawling. He's frustrated, angry, all the time. This isn't the right way to handle this, and his opinion doesn't matter, and that rubs him the wrong way like a cat with its fur stroked the wrong direction. He'd at least like his existence acknowledged -- but same as all the Etrayans, he's in the dark, just from a different angle.

Plus, Alex asks exactly the right question. Wow. He thinks he likes her. ]

Methods other than the Hunger Games, you mean? [ That reference is pulled out of her brain, Hunger Games or its equivalent -- who knows what Scylla really says here. ] I don't know any that work for sure, but it's not like we know this one works for sure, either.

If we save the concept of existence but I lose the person I care about most --

[ He gives a lopsided smile, his whole expression tight, and doesn't finish his sentence. ]

Yeah. I'll help you do whatever you want to do.

( Alex watches him with a gently furrowed brow, still considering the kind of hell she'd feel if her people were in other cities like this. Stranded without answers, just like this. Wanting to be home, just like this. Wanting a whole multiverse not to unravel right under their feet, like everyone here, dead or alive. )

No evidence that it's working, no evidence it isn't. But evidence that the multiverse is unmaking itself, yeah?

( Alex has no way to know that she's been that lynch-pin throughout thousands and thousands of reincarnations. Sometimes the one who loses who she loves most, whatever form that love takes. Sometimes the one lost by the one who loves her most. The thing is, she has seen what happens when you lose what gave your existence meaning. Has felt like she's been gutted when Caleb and Grandma died in that explosion. If he feels anything along the lines of what she expects a normal human to feel, then she knows a few ways that sentence can end.

None of them are okay. None are supposed to be, she supposes. )

If they're in these bubbles. We... Revival is a non-optional condition of our abductions.

( Just... saying. Even in the city where it was suppressed, it was only for as long as its AI was driven away form doing its work. His work? )

Past that, I'll see who I can get to listen to me when I say a guy projected himself into my head in my bedroom in the morning and started talking to me.

( A dry little smile, and a thumbs up from Alex. )

[ With a momentary flash of darkness: ] Oh, yeah. That is definitely happening.

[ Scylla does a good job keeping himself low key, personable and like he's having a friendly conversation. He tends to like people, likes socializing, isn't putting on a front in that respect. But beneath that is a simmering urgency he's been forced to keep to a slow roil. The universe is ending, and he's stuck spending all this time playing the long game looking for the person he loves.

There are some things he doesn't think he'll ever forgive Echo for.

He lets that thought go, scrubs a hand over his face, smiles ruefully. ] Sorry. Good luck with that.

When the nebula particles start coming in -- send out another signal again, yeah? I'll see if I can find my way in for real. And this time don't put yourself into a coma. I only need you to yell down the street, not across the continent.

[ When you're getting into metaphysics, allegorical concepts can be very helpful. As for how he knew she'd had fallout from her last attempt -- she'd mentioned something earlier, but more than that, Scylla can feel the residual impact on her brain chemistry. She'd really scrambled something. ]

( Great. So things really are unraveling. If being here, if jumping through Echo's hoops, can actually help, that's something. But they'd still need to know, and there's as much evidence this works as it doesn't.

At least having an outside voice confirm what's only been shared from Aurora via Echo means more than one perspective. And maybe ultimately a way to contact Echo, to get a read on what Echo knows that none of them do.

It's a bigger pocket universe out there than they know, either way. And an infinitely larger multiverse. )

I'll work with one of my friends here to make sure even if we get hit with power suppression early, that signal will still send fine.

( You know. Using traditional power sources, and not Alex, who has both eyebrows raised again when he mentions her and comas. She hadn't gone into one, but had been hit hard and needed sleep near immediately after. Question: how does he know? He's not on their network, is it... in... her head somehow? He's manipulating her brain enough to see him, so maybe it is. She's not a neurologist. She wouldn't know. )

... Yeah, well. When I know where I'm aiming, I don't have to go as hard. See you for real soon, Scylla.

You might not see me right away even if it works, [ he cautions. ] If I get through, I'm going to get real busy real fast.

[ He doesn't explain that statement further, just gives her a relieved, sincere smile. Finally he's getting somewhere. ]

Thanks, Alex.

[ And he's gone, completely vanished as easily as he'd appeared. ]

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