Scene #9471: Show Me Your Brainwashing Machine

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	Petra hasn't been to Mesmer's world at all before, but she's relatively familiar with its premise, between Matilda, Regulus, Schneider, and what Lilian's said. It's not as though Laplace doesn't want psychically-scientifically-inclined Concord Partners swinging by for visits-- a category that mostly just includes herself and Flamel Parsons, which doesn't make Petra happy to think about-- so the process of requesting passage through the warpgate is... pretty much painless? It's the kind of place where walkin through the hallway leading a girl by the wrists while she has a burlap sack over her head like a livestock animal is hardly even remarkable. Somewhere in this building of tile and chrome, there's probably a patient getting similar treatment to Qetra, so Petra is challenged far less than she expected-- which, considering her ultimate goal in actually being here, is probably a first ding in the 'red flag' column. Fresh from campus in San Francisco, Petra is wearing a cropped tee that says 'PLEASE DO NOT GIVE ME A CIGARETTE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES NO MATTER WHAT I SAY', with olive green cargo pants that bunch up around the ankles of black combat boots. She's got a headset around her neck and a mother-of-pearl inlaid compact mirror case dangling like a pendant, though in the chrome machinery, she has no reflection at all. Her double looks exactly like her in height and build (maybe less athletic), down to her own crop top being identical to Petra's, except for the mirrored text-- and, of course, her head being totally concealed, by a burlap sack. Following Mesmer's instruction to the 'testing' (execution) room, Petra drags her pleasantly compliant reflection behind her without comment. Once she's there, she just sort of leaves Qetra by the door after closing it, lifting up a hand in halfhearted greeting to Mesmer. Compared to the wave, the way she looks at Mesmer isn't halfhearted at all, the skin around her eyes twitching and narrowing slightly as she looks her intently up and down, seemingly scanning for something. "Yo. I don't know if she'll really work for your thing, but here she is." Though, with exposure to Petra's presence, all of Mesmer's equipment immediately goes dead or only reads violent static noise.
Foundation Scions	Laplace Scientific Computing Center has a critical dearth of suitable places to drown. Fitting for carting someone with a burlap sack over her face, the 'execution chamber' is on a deeper basement level of the facility, where concrete, plumbing, and myriad spinning turbines fill in gap left in the facility's aesthetic, where glass can't exist. As an institute for science and research, it would be too much to hope for a swimming pool, and instead, an open, echoing chamber filled with an industrial wave pool will have to do. Mesmer Jr. herself, here on the tail-end of a shift, and looking appropriately worse for wear from it, stands in foot-tapping impatience along one edge of the pit, wall-console controls for the wave contraption currently only serving as a spot to lean. The room smells like chlorine, mildew, antiseptics, and fresh tobacco smoke- despite Mesmer being the source of the latter, she's hidden the other evidence before Petra's arrival. More of interest, a glass-encased rolling... contraption? Has been hauled in, much as one would a cathode-ray television for a lecture. Coiled wires stick out from it, to a bundle of headbands, sensors, and electrodes, with a spinning hard-drive disk visible underneath the bell-jar shrouding of the cart. By any means of inference, it's either Mesmer's means of recording what will happen to Qetra, or a horrifying torture implement. "Is the sack necessary? I find it quite morbid. No, no, it's no matter, it's good that you're finally here." Mesmer doesn't look up from her clipboard until she's seen, corner of her eye, Petra's wave. "Still. It can't stay on, as we'll specifically need the memory of watching the surface of water from below, for this to be useful and believable. Drowning, as if at sea, not 'being drowned', or 'being waterboarded'. That's the aim, and it's an important distinction." "Bring her here, we'll-" As Mesmer switches a button on her headband-wired sensor, she immediately scowls, winces, and disengages. "Unaccounted for electromagnets aren't permitted in LSCC experimental facilities, as I'm sure you were informed? Whatever you've dragged with you in your pockets, put it outside the room, now. This equipment is sensitive." Mesmer Jr. actually taps her foot in ire this time, clip-board set aside to cross her arms. Is pre-(basically)-execution really the time to get an embarrassing level of cross over incorrectly-presumed interference? Apparently.
Petra Soroka	There's really no shortage of places lately that echo Lobotomy Corporation, to Petra. The Rehabilitation Center upstairs, sterile and florescent though it may be, was too shiny and futuristic, but down here in a damp concrete room with the smell of antiseptic and cigarettes, it's practically nostalgic. Exactly the opposite of Mesmer, being down here improves Petra's mood a little, with a quiet sigh to ready herself for business rather than bracing herself for an unpleasant interaction. "Yeah, yeah, I can take it off. I just wanted it for the walk over, so no one'd see her." Petra tugs it off, revealing what could very well be her twin. Small differences, more the longer Mesmer looks, but the most notable are the purple highlights in the underlayer of Qetra's hair, and unusually, the sickly black veins creeping up her neck like she's deathly infected. Qetra blinks vacantly, smiling and looking around like a bird that's just been woken up by the cover being taken off of its cage. "Oh, Petra! There you are! I was wondering, ahaha. Woah, where are we? I don't recognize this Abno cell at all...." "Different fucked up science facility. Did you forget that L-Corp's, like, gone?" "Ohhh...." Qetra trails off, in ditzy wonder at the idea that there might be two buildings that exist. After having passed glassily over Mesmer multiple times, her uncannily unresponsive eyes finally seem to see her, and her head droops forwards and to the side to stare at her. "Oh! That's the girl who was leading Lilian on with all that slutty sneering and whining, isn't it?" "How did you even recognize-- I've never seen her before. Just-- whatever, shut up for a while." While Qetra airily goes "Okayyy~" and Petra pushes her to the poolside, she looks up at Mesmer in confusion. Checking her pockets, "Electromagnets...? I don't.... Oh, wait." Petra sits down and crosses her legs, right on the mildewy concrete. She closes her eyes and puts her hands on her knees, softly breathing in and out. "Since it's psychic stuff, I've just gotta get my brain in order. I'm psychic too, just... er, there's stuff wrong up there that I've got mostly under control. And I work with tech that interfaces with the human mind and stuff too, actually..." While the static gradually eases off of Mesmer's devices, Qetra obediently doesn't say anything or acknowledge her at all, cheerily rocking back and forth on her feet while looking around the room, standing at the edge of the pool where she's about to be drowned.
Foundation Scions	'Oh! That's the girl who was leading Lilian on with all that slutty sneering and whining, isn't it?' Mesmer is glad that Qetra is going to drown. Not hesitant to go back on her statements at all, "I see why you kept her in the sack. 'Leading on'? Incoherent, inane, imbecilic. How did you wind up with an identical twin to volunteer for this? I'm not interested if the answer is as plain as 'cloning'." Late, embarrassingly self-tattling, and quieter, "I truly don't appreciate how such a mischaracterizing set of rumors like those have spread. It's unprofessional, and I would appreciate it not come up again." 'Electromagnets...? I don't.... Oh, wait.' Mesmer watches Petra check her pockets, and then sit down, apparently to start meditating. Empty glares and ungenerous thoughts bubble up at the concept of brain-clearing mumbo-jumbo, before Mesmer just kind of starts rubbing her knuckles into the side of her other hand's wrist. "Just say when you're done. We don't have a replacement for this mobile inscriber, if whatever you were doing is capable of depolarizing any of its flux transformers. They're altogether too fiddly for their own good, no doubt a scheme to profit on replacement parts," An exhale. "Which simply don't exist now, nor will they, for around sixty years." Oddly, Mesmer pats the top of the glass shrouding, like it's a pet. Despite no one asking, she adds, "I've grown irrationally fond of this one, no doubt a misattribution of credit for the convenience it poses." When the coast is clear, Mesmer cliks her own personal equipment back on, bracing for the sensory bombardment of using a tool that exits purely as a mockery of her own innate talents- but if Petra is dead-set on saying 'psychic, too', there isn't a chance in hell she'll bother relying more on an actual arcane skill, here and now. 'And I work with tech that interfaces with the human mind and stuff too, actually...' "Do you now?" Disinterest bleeds from her. "Well. With that out of the way, we'll begin. Firstly," Wheels squeak as Mesmer carts the Artificial Somnambulism recording device closer, untangling cables, and producing a wreath-like array of electrodes. Assuming she simply doesn't have to engage with Qetra at all, she slips it around the crown of her head, as she stands by the poolside. "We have a few cables of meter to work with, I imagine that will be enough. We only get one shot at this, correct?" Mesmer doesn't know what Qetra's deal truly is, beyond her being offered as a sacrifice casually enough that there probably won't be long-term issues here. "Hm. Either way, I don't want to waste time resetting. So," Actually addressing Qetra directly now, "Try not to pull this headset off while you're down there? Swimming isn't allowed in this test pool, I won't dive in to fix it." Mesmer double-checks connections, pressing down segments and tightening twist-screws on the wreath, until each of the quietly-whining electrodes press up against Qetra's head, before Mesmer as much as taps a finger against the reflection's temple, trying to scout out what kind of psychic landscape could possibly exist in there, before she throws the switch on the machine- the answer, no doubt, will make her scowl. "Well? Do you want to do the honors, or should I?" Impatiently standing behind Qetra, it's only now that Mesmer expresses any action and sentiment to distance herself from the action of drowning Qetra.
Petra Soroka	"'Leading on'? Incoherent, inane, imbecilic." "Ooh, nice alliteration." Petra is predisposed to dislike Mesmer anyways, so despite her own mockery of her reflection, every word Mesmer says starts to annoy her more and more. As soothing as the weird fucked up murder basement is, Mesmer's irritation at the implication of sexual harrassment in the workplace is just a step too far for Petra. She scowls, and a fresh wave of neuropathic itching burrows under Mesmer's skin from Petra's presence before she settles it down again. "I didn't put a bag on her head because I think she's wrong. Just because she's stupid. If those rumors are 'mischaracterizing', then what's actually your fixation on her? What are you trying to get out of her? And don't say 'nothing', because I know a million times better. You are winding her up." "How did you wind up with an identical twin to volunteer for this?" "Found her on a train." Petra considers elaborating more than that, and then decides not to. "She didn't exist before that." "I've grown irrationally fond of this one, no doubt a misattribution of credit for the convenience it poses." Well, a machine hasn't done anything wrong. Petra can't hold any malice towards anything made out of glass, metal, and wires. As if that's what it took, Petra takes a final slow breath, and the psychic interference fades away entirely. "Okay. We're good now. I'm probably more mentally stable than anyone." "Do you now?" Meditation is inherently a state of emotional vulnerability. Even from someone whose opinion she actively disregards, Petra winces. "Try not to pull this headset off while you're down there?" Qetra softly oooohh..s when she's given a weird little hat. She doesn't feel any need to touch it or adjust it herself, letting Mesmer secure it uninterrupted like she's strapping it on a mannequin, but she turns her face towards Mesmer from uncomfortably close, glassily smiling with an unflinchingly piercing stare despite not meeting Mesmer's eyes. "Okayyy! And that's okay, I can't swim, probably..." She tilts her head. "Do you hate this, or are you having fun?" Qetra's internal psychic landscape is more similar to the inscriber machine's itself than a human being. Where Mesmer could typically trace the messy evolutionary pathway of fear back from the highest order conscious thought, to the flood of cortisol, to the electricity jolting through the hindbrain that forces a drowning person to thrash to survive, Qetra's is one dimensional and hollow. A crayon drawing of a human mind, tissue paper expressions layered over the void, she feels like she's already operating on a 'copied memory' of lived experience. "I figure I'll hold her arms while you hold her head down." Petra starts pressing down on Qetra's shoulders to force her to kneel at the poolside without bothering to ask her. "She's not that strong, but we'll still probably need two sets of hands."
Foundation Scions	The itching makes Mesmer visibly react- and her efforts to try and not to are transparent. Mesmer often fiddles with the cuffs of her sleeves, and the skin of her hands- by the pressure she squeezes her hands together, in what is obviously meant to be a subtle action, she's trying to override it with some other sort of sensation, and failing, even as the called-for response to the itching feels more like she'd need to peel her skin off bit by bit to get rid of it, dirtied through and through. It's nauseating, a mainlining of awareness of myriad disgusts and discomforts, with no antidote except to wait it out. Mesmer doesn't say anything on it. 'What are you trying to get out of her? And don't say 'nothing', because I know a million times better. You are winding her up.' "What cause do I have to even give you an answer? Excuse me. You're a visitor, volunteering someone for data collection. This isn't a personal call." It is, kind of. Mesmer's hands stay wringing one another. "Regardless. She's the fixated one," She says, fixatedly, "So it hardly matters what I say if it's to be placed on such a bed of assumptions. Maybe I'm just an irrational freak, and my behavior is out of my own control. Maybe it's purely out of boredom, or a grand and evil scheme. Everyone comes to their own conclusions about everything, it's hardly my business to interfere with." Loser loser loser loser loser. 'Okay. We're good now. I'm probably more mentally stable than anyone.' Mesmer raises an eyebrow- the expression isn't actually very judgmental. Is that her tell for finding something funny? 'Do you hate this, or are you having fun?' "Don't look at me like that." Mesmer's voice is breathier, to the point of sounding distressed just in that moment. Steadier, "This is for medical work, in order to help treat a struggling patient, among future applications. Your cooperation is appreciated, but your fraternizing isn't. It isn't fun, and it doesn't matter if I like or hate this." That probably means it's 'both'. Mesmer expects to be repulsed by Qetra's mental landscape- and she is, but far less than she anticipates. It's just an alien sort of calm, for her to be so far from the usual patterns of human and arcanist minds that she delves into, and a relief to come away without feeling she'd been elbow-deep in filth. Hopefully, the recording device will come away with a fitting result- even a recording can be copied off-of, if you just ignore compounding artifacts. Qetra being made to kneel is uncomfortable- like there should be a gun up to the back of her head. It reminds Mesmer that she does have a gun- her K-tope callibrator finds its way into Mesmer's (slightly shaky, near-invisibly so) hand, pointed at Qetra's back. 'She's not that strong, but we'll still probably need two sets of hands.' "I didn't have a chance to dress for getting wet. So-" Mesmer, slightly in surprise herself, squeezes the stun gun's trigger, the photo-flash-esque beam pulse zapping Qetra in the small of her back- on a normal target, such a shot would cause convulsions, muscle-jerks, and dull paralysis, Mesmer hopes that here, with Qetra far stranger than a normal target, it's at least enough to have her fall face-first into the pool, and unable to swim. As if avoiding looking, while the coil extends to connect to the recording headpiece, Mesmer turns to pull a lever on the wall, and start the wave pool's sequence, the ozone-sizzling raygun still in hand.
Petra Soroka	"What cause do I have to even give you an answer? Excuse me." "The obvious reason, I'd think." Petra gets up to pace around and look at the inscription machine, bending over at the hip. Even though her focus is on Mesmer, psychologically, her expression looking through the glass case of the machine is like it's a terrarium for a fascinating little animal that she can watch scurry around while Mesmer readies it for use. "If you don't want anything to do with her, I can make it happen better than anyone, even Lilian. If you want the rumors to change or stop, I can do that too. I didn't ask because I don't care about the answer. I don't work on assumptions, and fucking everything is in your control." Petra folds her arms and straightens up to pout at Mesmer. ""Not answering is in your control too. The only motives that come to mind for that are ones that piss me off. Unless your goal's to be seen as a psycho lesbian stalker, then you can really only benefit." Qetra lifts up her head from where she's politely kneeling beside the pool, hands behind her back like she's waiting for them to be tied there. ansi(159,"But Petraaaa, isn't that good? If she's just totally clueless and, um... directionless, then you--")] Petra dips down into a squat and scoops her hand in the pool to fling a handful of water into Qetra's face. Like a startled cat, she goes suddenly silent, confusedly shaking her head. "A? Wha?" "Your cooperation is appreciated, but your fraternizing isn't." "Hmmm~? Cooperation for what?" Qetra's blissfully uncomprehending smile wanders off of that thought in record time, burbling to herself. "And isn't it soro... soror... sororiz..." "I didn't have a chance to dress for getting wet. So-" "Oh--" Petra blinks, squinting her eyes and rubbing the afterimage of the flash out of them. Qetra drops like a wooden marionette, limp and rigid in all the wrong ways, without any of the expected electrical twitching or noises of pain. Petra hastily plants her foot on the back of Qetra's legs so that she doesn't limply roll off the edge of the pool. "Huh. I mean, isn't a lot of the memory of fear rooted in physical reactions? I feel like struggling's a core component of it, and thrashing around while the life drains out of your limbs and stuff. Not to question your expert opinion, but I'm kind of an expert on this too." Petra squats down again, getting a more secure grip on Qetra's shoulders so that her head stays firmly underwater without dragging the rest of her along with. She looks up at Mesmer from that position. "So, if you'd hit Lilian with that thing back then, what was the next step you had in mind? Something like this?"
Foundation Scions	'If you don't want anything to do with her, I can make it happen better than anyone, even Lilian.' "No, this recording is favor enough. That won't be necessary from you." Sure doesn't sound like she wants nothing to do with her. 'The only motives that come to mind for that are ones that piss me off.' "Elucidate me." 'Unless your goal's to be seen as a psycho lesbian stalker, then you can really only benefit.' Mesmer wrinkles up her nose. "Benefit? I don't see how. Forgive me, but you're a stranger to me, and I don't abide gossip." Liar liar liar, she loves to gossip. "What reason would you have to not use anything I say, anything I don't say, or anything you make up, in some petty manner of rumor-spreading yourself? It's in fashion." Mesmer exhales. "No, I handle myself just fine. That will be the end of that. Let's get on to the work at hand." 'Hmmm~? Cooperation for what?' Mesmer grimaces. Did she forget? Was she just never told? Mesmer has some idea of the state of existence Qetra is in, but that doesn't really map to gut-level disgust of, far too late to figure out another plan, and far too late to explain, subjecting someone to torture in order to record the horrors of it. She should stop and brief her, she should, but she doesn't. Mesmer faces away from the pool, as waves pick up, until, the pit of water used to test integrity of scaled-down ships, constructions, or other matters of hydrodynamics, turns the pool into a roiling sea, heavy thumping noise by heavy thumping noise. The smell of chlorine, with the further aerosolizing of the water, becomes nearly overpowering. Mesmer takes a long breath, eyes open and fixed on some random dial on the wall, before mustering up the courage to turn, and watch, as the limp Qetra has her head held underneath the water. Her gaze stays there, turning to a scowl. 'I mean, isn't a lot of the memory of fear rooted in physical reactions?' "I need the sensory memory more than emotional. If the patient this is for wasn't already scared of drowning, I'd use something we had on hand already. Imagination will fill holes, easily explain motionlessness as shock, and, obviously, I'll be doing my share of editing work for this." Mesmer exhales, shaky and uncomfortable. "No, it would be better for her to have more natural movements and reactions, but it's too late now. There's no room for criticism, I said why I wouldn't be touching the water." Mesmer turns away, and goes to look at the inscribing machine, watching moving-needles on indicators underneath the glass, and waveform readouts on a backlit screen, as the disk spins and spins. "It's recording. There will be something to show for this at the end of the day." She doesn't sound relieved, just a neutral affect. 'So, if you'd hit Lilian with that thing back then, what was the next step you had in mind? Something like this?' "Of course not. That was in self-defense, pure and simple, but I'm sure you knew that, and chose to ignore that detail." Mesmer's jaw sets, and only then does she remember to re-holster the sci-fi zapgun. "That's absolutely unimaginable. A type of slander that would discredit anyone. I'd appreciate you stop speculating. If this-" A gesture to Qetra, "Looks like anything but an unpleasantness for the benefit of another, then there is utterly no reasoning with you."
Petra Soroka	"What reason would you have to not use anything I say, anything I don't say, or anything you make up, in some petty manner of rumor-spreading yourself?" "Tch." Petra clicks her tongue disdainfully, relatively-neutral expression curdling into a sneer. "So not just an obsessive freak, but a noncomittal one too. You're like a beached whale." "I know your type. Everything you can be accused of is either something you can vindicate your self-disgust with or petulantly refuse by accepting or denying it, completely reactionary, throwing up your hands or turning up your nose, starfishing. You want something or you don't, you hate it and you couldn't care less, and you'll limply drift along until people get bored of you and you'll say how it'd have happened no matter what." She scoffs, frustrated more than this should warrant. "God. Nothing comes to you for free, you know. 'You're a stranger to me'-- we're gonna be crossing paths more, you know that, right? I made the first impression I meant to. Did you do anything? At all?" Watching Mesmer's expression when Qetra professes her complete lack of knowledge why she's here, Petra suddenly realizes how bad that sounds coming from her. It's easy to forget that other people don't intuitively grasp Qetra's particular brand of vacancy, but... when Mesmer just ignores that to blast her unconscious anyways, Petra blinks, and nervously adds another tick to the 'Doesn't respect consent' column in her head. "There's no room for criticism, I said why I wouldn't be touching the water." In the short silence that follows, Petra stares over at Mesmer, contemplating the impeccable blend of confabulation with actually backing down. She's not dressed for getting wet either, but she's got short sleeves, so it's only a small amount of water that soaks her shirt rather than quickly wicking off of her skin. She pats Qetra's back reassuringly, or to knock a few more bubbles out of her lungs. "That was in self-defense, pure and simple, but I'm sure you knew that, and chose to ignore that detail." "I didn't, actually. Does it benefit you at all to assume I did? It's not like I got a full play-by-play." Petra says, while casually holding two fingers to the side of Qetra's neck, though she can't tell clearly whether there's still a pulse or not. "You've never thought about what it'd be like to hurt someone without consequences? Or yourself?" It's not particularly hard to tell that some of Petra's exposed scars are from herself, but she's actually thinking more about Lilian being placed into the same role that Petra was for Audrey. "Anyways," Satisfied that Qetra's dead, she drags her out of the water by the back of her neck, laying her down on the concrete surprisingly gently, all things considered. Petra straightens up and wipes off her hands on the back of her pants. "I do actually want something in return. I told you I know how to work with machinery like that, yeah? Mind showing me one of them upstairs?"