Scene #7883: Fifty-First Subject, cont.

Owner	Pose
Persephone Kore	Some members of the party have expressed an interest in the Ominous Door at the End of the Hall. Vague comments have been made about what's behind it: "they", "Emery", "the inside-out case". As Lilian gears up to do her thing in the Decompression Chamber, Dylan begins walking towards that door and gestures ambiguously over her shoulder: 'follow me if you want'. One can either remain here with Lilian, or proceed through the door. Marc, Carpathia, and Phony are staying. ---- Dylan opens the door. It's dark on the other side; she taps a switch to turn the lights on, but that only changes it from "dark" to "dim". There are wisps of dark smoke that curl and twist endlessly, but like oil in water, never dissipate or mix with the air. It's hard to see very far inside without entering. "Just... keep your voices down, okay? And don't break anything. Pretend it's a library. Or a cemetary." Dylan's arms are crossed; she shifts her weight from one foot to the other restlessly, mildly uncomfortable about the idea of going in. But in the end, she does. "We're here," she announces softly as she crosses the threshold. It isn't clear if she's talking to you, or to something else. There is that otherworldly presence again. Of course it's stronger closer to the source. It isn't hostile, but it is welcoming, maybe in a way you don't want to be welcomed. Like the yawning mouth of a cave. It isn't like a haunting; more like a stain, an indelible imprint of psyche on spacetime. The presence is not a pressure but an absence of pressure. It pulls on your skin, gently, with an unnatural lightness. Water boils instantly in space, and in this half-vacuum of the heart, it feels as though you might do the same: expand and sublimate into a new spiritual state of matter, and utterly leave the old behind. Coral and smoke and endless rivulets of water have claimed many of the surfaces here, like a deep-sea smoker vent environment. These are the fossilized remnants of an inside-out mindscape, a psyche projected on the world by force. At the end of the hallway is the remains of a Decompression Chamber: "remains" because it was destroyed, peeled open by an explosion from within. The presence is strongest there, within that empty cavity. But Dylan stops short of entering the blown-out chamber. It feels sacred somehow, a place it would be blasphemous for people to trespass. "I knew you wouldn't be satisfied unless you saw it. Unless you felt it. ... Nobody really comes here. Except for Phony, to commune sometimes. And Marc, to pay his respects." But what "it" is really isn't clear.
Persephone Kore	Persephone enters the chamber with Lilian, visible through the observation window. Marc grimaces a little; Persephone tries to wave him in, and that sways him a little, but he still looks indecisive. "You should know why not, Phony." "It's not anything like that!" "... Maybe. But still." He could maybe be convinced anyway. "I'm surprised you wanted me in here, Lily-R. I thought it'd be a private thing. You really have gotten fond of this place, haven't you? To even share something like this with us." About the fruit, Lilian had said: "I think it should be here. There's no such thing as an object with a Jungian-Newtonian tidal field in of itself, right?" "Then it's not an object," Persephone replies. "That's what the theory should say. If it has a field like that, it's a person." A little pause. She touches her cheek thoughtfully as Lilian takes it. "Or people. Or a part of people. Or a part of what people could be, but aren't." The experiment begins. Carpathia starts to turn the chamber's reality-pressure towards zero: low enough that the tidal impression of the strange fruit can become 'more real than the world', and reveal itself in the chamber's weakened reality. Persephone wobbles at her edges when the display reads 0.7ca. A red-magenta smoke sublimates from her in places, full of twinkling stars. She shuts her eyes and takes a deep calming breath to halt it, but Carpathia's already alarmed. "Persephone-" "It's nothing, doctor. Please keep going." "It's not nothing." "Don't worry for me. The worrying makes it worse." "... Alright. Going to zero point one."
Darren	Roswell nods his head at Dylan. He'll be quiet. The little alien, and his human friend, fall in line behind her. There is a sense that they are both being welcomed. The pokemon keeps close to Darren, hovering to peer curiously over his shoulder. Darren Spears isn't afraid of the dark, or of what's in it. These things instead carry an appeal. Discovery, the unknown. He closes his eyes, lets the pull work upon him for a moment. When he opens them, he notes where Dylan's chosen to stop. "Would it be okay to do that?" asks Darren softly of Dylan. "To commune, if that's something they're comfortable with."
Raziel	Raziel walks with Dylan as she leads the way, when she says to keep their voices down, he does so by simply nodding to her and simply walking ahead quietly. What he feels here is...strange, but not unfamiliar. A presence, without a body, a feeling without a form. Even with the number of times he steps into the underworld, he feels it keenly, and this isn't too different. 'What I could feel was...a place, where the world was turned upside down in regards. The rules changed here, despite what reality says is true. Something the same, but very much /not/. It is very much like the Underworld to me, where flesh becomes spirit, where things twist and change, and where water holds no presence. However, what is really different is 'why'' Where Dylan stops, Raziel watches. Persephone goes in, and Marc only pays respects. Raziel, wordlessly, abandons his flesh. To those watching him, he seems to blow away like smoke. As if he was water that just evaporated. Here, he steps forward in this form. 'I am not sure if it was curiosity or kinship that pulled me forward...but I had to see. Whatever was here, or whoever was here, it drew me forward to understand it better.'
Staren	So that's the exhuman... Staren wonders, watching the others open the door and go in. She's not sure what she expected to see behind it... actually, yeah, she's got this weird mental image assembled somehow of bits of floating structure and colorful, fungal-like organic growths in a void. But there's only dimness and smoke that the others disappear into. Staren isn't sure what to do there, though. Also, psychic experiments with whatever came from the Antegent, the wish that humanity couldn't choose, is much more interesting. Although, I suppose it's kind of the same thing, isn't it. [Emery Heller] also had a wish unreachable by humanity... So she's staying here, even if it means staying around Lilian no no no she's being nice now, we can do this, we can all be friends! Staren takes up a watching position by the good doctor, or steps inside if invited. "Why can't an object have a Jungian-Newtonian tidal field?" Staren's mind thinks over the weird and wondrous things she's seen in the Multiverse: worlds and physics shaped by human expectations and concepts, and magical artifacts that continue to function in such a manner long after their creators are gone. "A person?" She echoes, and looks at the fruit as Lilian holds it. Ah. People-stuff, but outside of people. Like Souls and Humanity... She imagines the group assembled here doing a similar experiment with that strange crab-monster. Wait, what's happening to Persephone? What is Carpathia worried about? A flicker of concern crosses her face, but... If Persephone says she can handle it, I believe her. She wouldn't lie.
Cantio	Cantio's curiosity can't be stopped by small things like anxiety, safety, and (sometimes) good manners. She joins Dylan in heading through the Ominous Door at the End of the Hall, taking slow steps so as to not make too much noise should the person inside be a skittish sort. She's heard of and met her fair share of heavily introverted people back home, so she's carrying a lot of those preconceived notions of what this person might be like already on the way in. "Got it. We're visitors here, so it'd be rude if we did any of that, anyway." She raises her hand in a brief thumbs-up as she replies quietly to Dylan's warnings, and she practically shuffles her feet to keep her footstep volume to a minimum. The first thing she notices is that presence. There's a slight shift in Cantio's posture, hunching over a bit as if she's deliberately trying to look less threatening than she already doesn't look. She can't tell if whoever inside knows she's there, but she's not going to risk alarming them more than she might already. Then again, Cantio herself might be even more alarmed than whoever's inside. The feeling is unlike anything she's felt before even knowing where she is, and it takes her several moments to gather herself before turning to Dylan. "Have they... Respects?" That's making things even more confusing for Cantio, and she struggles for a moment to try and make sense of being able to commune with someone who may or may not be dead. She furrows her brow for a moment, then turns to Darren as he asks about communing with... "What.. Is inside, anyway? Is communing the only way to communicate, or to... Is it alright to move closer?" She asks while looking towards those remains, looking like she's both taking a step forward and stopping herself. That sacred feeling and her boundless curiosity are warring within her mind already, one pushing her back while the other compels her to approach to actually experience whatever's there. The latter wins out, and Cantio starts approaching the shell of a chamber gingerly. "Hello? Is it alright if I come in?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel has his sunglasses. He has his safety goggles over his sunglasses. He has, at some point, gotten a backpack with about a half-dozen small rotating dishes and antenna. Cables run from it to a large scanner in his hand, and from there to a pair of bulky headphones (with their own rotating eliptical dish). When Persephone walks by, the little indicators go up to max (at 1% volume) and then all of the dishes short out. Some of them fall apart. So he just sets the gear down, outside the threshold to the stained hallway. Here, inside the observation room with Phony and Lilian, he watches, because while he's interested in Emery, it would probably be wise to keep up with the plot thread with these two. This time, he'll observe with only eyes, and ears, and all his psychic senses. Clairvoyance is set to passive, no grand psychic pulses into the environment so as not to interfere with things, but to still pick up what comes next. No gear, beyond a notepad where he scrawls notes.
Lilian Rook	Lilian, hanging around the entrance to the Chamber, holds the black object close to her chest. The way she cradles it is as if . . . her heart had been ripped out of her chest, but was still connected, still pumping blood, still alive, and she doesn't know how to put it back in, the best she can do is keep it warm and protect it. "Heller . . . Marc. Please. I know I, most of all people, have no right to ask anything of you, but . . ." Lilian grimaces. Squeezes her eyes shut. Licks her lips. Her voice strained. "I'm scared. You weren't there when we found this. I need Phony here, or I'm afraid I might not be able to convince myself to stay. And I want-- I need you here, or I might not be brave enough to face it. You know more than anyone but them, how it pulls, and anyone but Phony, how important it is to stay. It's . . . It's close enough, Marc. I need to borrow your virtue, for a moment. I don't have any. I was raised without." The thin, faint scar, across the bridge of her nose, and under her left eye, broken up between, tinges gold as the pressure lowers. A little bit of the colour creeps into her eye, the black rim of her iris expanding. She reaches out and squeezes Persephone's hand, and the encroachment stops there. "Instrument check." Lilian utters, tensely. "Please calibrate accordingly, doctor." She may or may not be the only subject not simply cooperative, but preemptive, about this. "Things were . . . impromptu, last time." As the pressure drops, Lilian snaps her fingers a few times and throws off little sparks of magic, to test that there's no reaction. Motes of colourless energy, flecks of silvery dreamstuff, embers of red fire, droplets of white frost, crackles of blue lightning, blots of black-gold ???. "Please tell me when it registers." Her meaning is fairly plain; a split second later, the 'fruit' is already, instantly, placed down, atop her thick bookbag so it doesn't touch the floor itself. She remains fine with that, unless someone suddenly approaches it. "You have a habit to getting to what's likely the truth when you keep talking, Phony." Lilian finally replies to her inferrence. "But if we're all something that people could be, but aren't, even to a small extent, doesn't that make it part of us? This thing came from somewhere else, but it used to be here." "Space isn't fundamentally alien; Earth used to be a part of it, before it was Earth. But it came before people, and people aren't designed to touch it. Mingling the two together, blurring the horizon so the earth and sky run together, I think, is what let just enough of it creep in to stain. Enough for me to notice. Enough for Sakura to notice too." "How do you do it?" That exhaled utterance seems to be pointed in Marc's direction, though Lilian won't meet his eyes. "I dreamed of it since I was six, and gradually, the dreams got quieter, as I became more of this. But then I saw it. It was like their chamber, but just mine, and it happened while I was still here. And when I saw it, I couldn't get it out of my head. All over again. Worse this time, because now I know what it is. I know its name." "How can you stay here when someone you love already went on before you? It'd only take one anchor to come loose for me to go there too, I think. Some sooner than others. I don't understand how you can . . . will yourself here. How you could care about the whole universe. Or even just this station. Yourself. Never mind me."
Staren	Seeing Lilian like this... being scared of anything... it makes her more relatable. It's humanizing. No, that's not how she wants me to think of it. I'm not the judge of what's human, or not. Still, Staren relaxes slightly from a tension she didn't notice she was holding since Lilian walked over earlier. Why didn't she bring Cecilia, though? ...Not my business. She looks briefly at Marc for his reaction, then back at Lilian when she asks for the instrument check. Wondering what the visuals mean. Aaand Lilian keeps talking, and it goes from philosophical musings to personal. Staren looks away, ears splaying, feeling like she's intruding on a private moment. I guess they really are different. (Thankfully, thoughts are inextricable from the precise, or imprecise, attached meaning.) [We three are a mix of human and not-human], but the idea of going further from human doesn't call to me so. I've accepted my not-human parts as not flaws, or at least tried to, but... that train of thought gets fuzzy. Is there something different about me from others, who expire, or go rampant, or otherwise self-edit into something else? Or have I just not experienced enough yet? Staren lifts her gaze to the experiment again. Imagining a future where she and Persephone and Lilian are all friends. It's nice. She'd like that. Imagining a future where Persephone and Lilian ascend. It's lonely. She'd miss Persephone... and if one or the other left, each would miss the other, wouldn't she?
Persephone Kore	"You can try," Dylan answers Darren, her tone equally (and uncharacteristically) subdued. "There is... something there, to be seen. What's impossible is knowing if it sees us back. If it's really them, in some way, or just... their last imprint." To Cantio: "The chamber is empty. Nothing is left of them- nothing real, nothing physical. But at the same time, it isn't empty. You feel it, don't you? That impression. Even the adults can feel it, so of course you can too." She shifts uncomfortably, staring into the chamber's yawning hole where metal and plastic blossomed outwards under the impossible force. "I wouldn't go in. But you can." "Phony... meditates with them? Honors them? She visits almost every day. Honestly I'm not really sure what she does. But I think she's closer to being like Emery than anyone else here." However one attempts to perceive, commune, or communicate with the empty chamber where Emery once was, the imprint of narrative on reality is strong enough that the attempt succeeds. It finds something. Whether that something is still a person, or just an echo, is unclear. Their hands are pressed up against the glass. Their expression shouldn't still be readable, but the human brain recognizes a teary smile. They are evaporating but the smoke does not diffuse. It pours off them, coils, and winds in trailing ribbons. Blue water and black smoke, and then vibrant coral like a crown or antlers, like a spine to droop in relief or arch in excitement, like fingernails to grasp or tear or sculpt. Their human form empties out like a river. It is draining, losing shape, gaining shapes. There is more water and smoke and coral inside them than should fit. This is no longer a body but a symbol, conveying something that can only almost be received. They could no longer survive being recompressed; they have overreached, and the world does not want them back. It is going badly. It is going as planned. Frantic researchers and terrified children crowd around. But to pull the plug now would be to kill them. And I don't want to go back. I can't stand being human like this. I'm unfit for this world; unwanted, but not unwanted enough to be special like the others. Just an old crippled stray. I'm not patient or strong enough to wait for them to change this world to suit me. So I'm leaving for the new one early. Don't leave me lonely for too long, okay? I'm sorry I couldn't make it with you. Emery turns inside-out. They become nothing, become something less-than-real, become a story and a heart and a feeling. And in that moment the chamber explodes.
Raziel	Raziel was prepared for something otherworldly, but a story imprinted on reality like this was not one of those things. He was forced to watch, to feel. He could not see exactly, but he would still try and reach out. He imagines that despite everything... 'It was not so different than my...remaking. Though in a lot of ways this was far kinder. That, and a choice both made willing, and happily. The realization that one could no longer live as they did, and decided to go first. The imprint of this decision was made on this place. No...it was a bittersweet parting and a hope for the future. A hope that one day they could live in this world again. That they would make it so..' Raziel forces himself back into the material world, back to where he was before. His eyes close, letting him for a moment remember some things. Was his remaking out of jealousy? Did Kain mean to kill him..? Remembering their first conflict, and the shattering of the Soul Reaver, something...fell into place. 'I did not forgive that bastard for what he did, but for the first time since I came out of the abyss, I truly questioned his motives for the first time. What did he want? Or was what he wanted something that I could only beat out of him?' Opening his eyes, he speaks softly, "A coin tossed.." he says, calmly.
Persephone Kore	It's Carpathia who answers Staren, not Persephone. "Objects are stories at rest; they are acted upon. People are stories in motion; they are acted upon, but they also act. And feel, and think, and create culture, and determine meaning. These are essential to the possession of a heart, of reality, of tidal forces. Thus humanity is elevated unquestionably above the material universe." She spares a glance back over her shoulder, self-consciously, at the less-human members of the group. "For a broad definition of 'humanity', at least. Simply, a universe with no people in it would have no stories at all. Only history and facts." Marc stares at Lilian for a good long moment. No, through her. Normally he would affect dissatisfaction, or distaste, or vaguely impatient tolerance. But for a moment, all that is gone. He looks softly shellshocked. "Yeah. I guess it is close enough. If you know it that well." He opens the door, steps in, and primly shuts it behind himself with a grimace. "How do you do it?" Lilian asks him. She meets his eyes, but he can't stand to meet hers. In the barren emptiness of the Decompression Chamber, there is nothing to do but stand awkwardly. He crosses his arms self-consciously; his voice isn't far above a murmur. "I think about it. Every day. Where they are, how they are, whether they are. The idea that I could just... fuck myself inside out, like that, and be dead if they're dead, or be with them if they're not. The thing that stops me is... I think I'll get there anyway." He finally manages to look up at Lilian; his posture is straight, but his fingers squirm restlessly with tension. "When the project is successful, and we remake humanity together. Or when I die. And if it's just a matter of waiting a little longer, instead of saying no forever... then I can hold on. For my responsibilities. For my friends." "Thank you, Marc. For staying with us. I really mean it." "You don't get to say that, Phony. I should be thanking you." "... Well. Leaning on each other is easier than doing it alone." "And thank you too, Lily-R. Even if it's just me being selfish, I really won't let you leave!"
Staren	Staren nods at Carpathia's explanation of humanity -- in the broad sense -- being more important than the material universe. She smiles, to hear someone get it. 'a universe with no people in it would have no stories at all. Only history and facts'... "Rocks, flying in curves." Staren agrees. "There is no meaning, and no morals, written in the laws that govern the interaction of atoms. The beauty and horror of the universe, the rightness and wrongness... it's all in our perception." She raises a hand and looks at it. "But we're stories with a physical presense, however frail. And so can we reshape the universe..." Staren glances back at the observation viewport, and then at Carpathia, smiling. "You -- and everyone here -- have achieved truly amazing things. One day, the rocks won't be able to decide anything for us anymore." She reaches over to give the doctor a friendly pat on the back, although she hesitates, unsure whether Carpathia's the touchy-feely type, and simply withdraws her hand if Carpathia looks displeased at the gesture.
Darren	Darren doesn't nod at Dylan--more like he bows his head. "Thank you." If she doesn't know whether this is really Emery, then there's no way Darren would. The point isn't knowing for certain--it's in taking the plunge and being immersed in the unknown, and coming back different for having done so. Darren, for his part, kicks his shoes off and enters the chamber, taking a seat in the lotus position, eyes closed. His breathing is done rhythmically, intentionally, to lower himself into a trance--to put his active thoughts upon the exercise and in so doing, drive out those thoughts not conducive to the communion. Throughout the experience, Darren's face conveys tranquility. Tears nevertheless creep through the corners of his eyes, rolling down his cheeks to splash upon his lapel. Are they his, or theirs? It's hard to tell if there even is an Emery at this point. if he's being shown something, or if he's just looking at a footprint long since left behind. Hey. We haven't met. ...shoot, I hope I can reach that new world from this one. Or I hope you got your phone on. In the chamber, another of Darren's deep breaths keeps him grounded. He smiles in spite of himself at the joke, even as another tear stains his upturned palm. My name's Darren. I'm a friend of Phony's, and, I hope, one day soon, a friend of Marc's and Dylan's. A friend of yours, too. Roswell waits for him at the edge of the boundary. Darren's brow furrows. Emery, if you can hear this, feel this... I hope one day I can step into that new world and meet you there. I know, like I know, like I know, that wherever you are, you're human in the way you wanna be, and that way is beautiful and good and free. I know that Phony's gonna take care of you, keep you company until we can all be there. But if it was at all possible... I wanted you to know that every day, we're trying for that world. That, for however much it's worth from a total stranger, you're hella special. Darren's breath is, for a moment, shaky. He remains seated, centering himself--or perhaps, collecting himself.
Cantio	"That's why... The inside-out thing that was mentioned before." Cantio murmurs as pieces start clicking together, and there's another moment of hesitation as she looks into the chamber prior to heading closer. She nods slowly at the question about feeling something, rubbing her arm a bit as she struggles with that continued hesitation. "I can't blame you. But since we're here... I have to know, you know?" She's lying to herself a little at the end there, but it's the only way Cantio can get herself to keep moving in. Just because she's never been deep in metaphysical anything doesn't mean she can't dig into what's right in front of her, although this is much more of a mental digging rather than a physical one. Not that she'd want to dig in physically, though, considering that there's already something there stopping her. It doesn't stop her physically, and it doesn't even register as something Cantio can see in right front of her, feel by grasping something, hear by listening for ambient noise, or any other conventional senses. The fact that she can feel anything, however, is what's stopping her. She starts to detect more even though nothing in the room is changing. She only sees the smoke at first, but there's thatsmile. The sense that something's changing, falling apart, becoming... Inhuman? There's still a person in the vague sense, but they're not there in the conventional sense anymore. "Unfit...? Unwanted? What does that-" Cantio shuts herself up, not because she realizes she's not talking to anyone physically present, but because she's choking up. At least some small part of her can understand the feeling of resenting her own existence, but it's not quite the same as it probably was with Emery. "You were different too... Soon? Not in the 'right' way?" Cantio unconsciously clenches and unclenches her hand, as if trying to grasp something she isn't sure is actually there yet. She sniffs once, her gaze focused on the scene happening in front of her and not happening at all. After the explosion, she keeps on staring, and she opens her mouth before covering her mouth to clear her throat and wipe her face off with her sleeve. I don't know how much it means for a stranger to say this, but I know there's people here that miss you and never... Didn't want you around. I never knew you, but if there's ever a chance for us to meet, I'd like to do that. I wanna learn what kind of world you'd like to see so I can know how to make it better.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel briefly ponders the idea as he scrawls down initial observations of the fruit. "The relationship between stories in motion and stories at rest," He says. "Reminds me of a theory. It doesn't hold much water in the Psychonauts community, but the theory goes that thinking beings like us, with those Jungian-Newtonian tidal forces, are sort of a central nervous system for the universe. The idea is that we're supposed to be the brain that operates the universe's body. We make it self-aware and we make it healthier, sort of." "There's the theory that psychic powers -- ours, I mean, but hey, maybe yours! The theory goes, those powers shift the influence from physical to more arbitrary command relationships, like the difference between cells changing chemical signatures in a colony, and nerve cells controlling muscles in a body. The idea is that, eventually, after a while, things evolve so that the universe changes from an ecosystem to something like a body." He doesn't scrawl much in that notebook. Not much has happened yet. "That's roughly the shape of that 'evolution' of things, right? A supremacy of the stories over the substance, like the supremacy of the brain over the body. And I don't know if that's right, but I do wonder how it lines up here." He taps his chin with his pencil for a second, frowning. "I wonder if that theory holds water! Maybe there's some insight there about what Emery, and this phenomenon of the inside-out, all represents. Because everything else makes sense. Your telepaths, the Type Reds, communicate internally. Type Yellow forms self-awareness. Type Blue, that's like the motor center, right? Type Green and Type Purple, systems for pain, survival, or healing. Type Orange, a kind of learning and adaptation. All important parts for a brain. And maybe this fruit's... ganglia? Exterior systems with their own interiority that we're acclimating to?" "And maybe next door, what we're seeing is the first parts of the universe of stories opening its eyes. Something outside of and totally beyond the stories and beyond the universe's interiority. Like occular nerves forming. And maybe that's why it seems inside-out from our perspective. When it's more like, we're inside, they're out." "Or maybe that's just crackpot stuff. Usually people don't like things I read from those magazines, ahah."
Lilian Rook	"An object can't think of a story. But we can project one on them. Like a rock, or a tree, or a fruit from that tree." "Thank you, Marc. I really owe you. When we're done, please name something I can do to make it up to you." Perhaps Lilian hoped for something more helpful than Marc's admission that he thinks about as much as her. More than her, maybe. Maybe she'd really hoped that he had something to share, about processing it and moving on. About putting it out of mind. About thinking of it positively. She must have, for the way her face gently falls, her eyes growing a little wet even while her gaze itself hardens to steel. "I really hope you're right. That we'll all get there anyway. I'm doing better than I used to. Better than ever before. But it's still so clear to me, after no time at all, that I know how to act human, but only really be here. The idea that this is a choice that I could miss . . . That there's a limited time to take it, and I'm just closing my eyes, until I'm stranded here forever . . . I can't stand that. I can't take it. I really hope you're right." "But then I'm scared too, that one day I'll finally go away, and I won't be able to take someone precious with me. I don't mind losing old friends and making new ones. I like it when old things are over. Throwing away a name you had since you were born and picking a new one. I like moving on, in any way I can. But I'm scared too, of this, that if I go over there, and it's everything I ever wanted, I won't be happy there either, because I'll be thinking about the things I learned to want just as I was getting good at it." Lilian sighs, deflating with the escape of a breath held too long. She thumbs her lashes to wipe away beads of moisture, and her skin tinges just a little black. "But you were right about me, even when I wasn't. So I'm certain you're right about this too." She smiles, faintly, a little painfully, at Persephone. "I think I want to wait a little longer anyways. There are things I wanted that I've still never got. It'd bother me forever if I just skipped them and went on to the next thing. Even if it's so much bigger and more perfect, it'd nag at me to know that I passed up my opportunity to at least feel what it would have been like to finally hold the things I wanted first. I'm selfish like that. I want everything. Anything else feels like quitting. I want a perfect body before I want something better than a body. Does that make any sense? That kept me from dying when it was the way out I wanted, so I'm sure it can keep me here through less." "I never knew Emery, but I think I got within inches. I think I was supposed to be like them. I don't know. Sometimes it feels like someone got in the way. Being unwanted, but not enough that the universe wants to help. Deserving something, but starting too late to catch up to it. When it comes calling from outside, when something hears you and reaches out its hand for you, it's too hard to say no. I wonder why it never reached me? Maybe if it did, I'd have found them. Met them on the shore there."
Lilian Rook	A the pressure lowers to as little as it can go, a sound starts to stand out in the chamber. It's not clear when it started; certainly it was once audible to no one, and becomes louder by infinitesimal fractions as normality leaves. Anyone would notice at different times, all, when the mind, rather than the ear, catches on. It's coming from the 'fruit'. Like a metronome. Like an engine. Like a heartbeat. A soft, delicate, silver on glass ticking. Exactly one second per second, with atomic precision. Tick. Tick. Tick. A sound that has been counting forever. Lilian, eyes drawn to it, fixated on it, her whole being quivering in its direction like the needle of a compass, utters thoughtlessly, "Linearity is unfair. It insists that I sit still and suffer what I know will already come, but it dangles all the things I want in front of me and snatches them right back up while it makes me wait. Good things vanish in an instant. Bad things are just bad indefinitely. I hate it. If I stop moving at all, even for a moment, it'll overtake me, and drown me, but then I'm not allowed to pull ahead of it either, not allowed to catch my breath." "Why is it that I'm too slow? Why is it that I'm too late? Why is it that I can't go back and get it? It was right there. Why is it that my reasons don't count? Why is it that don't I get to have them? Why do all the things I've missed forever keep growing and the number of things I have keep shrinking? Like an hourglass, everything trickling through my hands into 'loss'." "Why is it that everything has to happen at the same rate, one second per second, one thing at a time, in linear sequence, for everyone, everywhere, forever and ever until the end of time? Who said it has to be that way? Who set the rule? It just makes everything predictable from the beginning; those who started with everything stay ahead of those of us with nothing for the rest of eternity. Why do I have to follow it? I hate it. I shouldn't have to follow that rule. Out of all the rules, I at least don't deserve to have to follow that one." There's an answer, too. It isn't verbal. It doesn't come from anywhere. It appears somewhere other than the mind --within mere comprehension-- of any of those who can hear her words. It is voiceless, but it feels like Lilian's voice. Not something wearing it, but truly hers. "That's right. I don't. I never did. I wonder how come nobody ever thought of this before? Were they hiding it from me? It's so obvious. No wonder it seemed wrong. No wonder it didn't make sense. It was fake all along. A story they made up. A lie they told me. 'They' decided it, to hurt me. So I could never be good enough. Well, it's mine now."
Lilian Rook	A moment later, the pressure hits zero-point-one. The ticking becomes a subtle vibration, rippling out, like the rush of blood through living veins, but the veins are the curve of spacetime, and blood is something that exists only in the flow, shared and exchanged and unable to withstand being kept to just one shell. A deep shadow rises off of the Fruit of Crisis as if it were boiling away. It blooms like flowers, rises like smoke, swirls like ink, crackles like restless lightning at its edges. In the space-adjusted confines of the chamber, it towers nearly forty feet tall, and yet hunches over into ten. Knelt. Asleep. Half-real. Flamel, Staren, and Phony watching, might briefly be given the shock of seeing All The Time In The World Is Mine. But it isn't. Not that. That was a warped mirror of this. An imprecise reconstruction, put together out of damaged bits and pieces. This has a humanoid shape, and a sense of titanic mass, but somehow even less half-reality than the everted psychohazard, as if it were only real so long as everyone agrees it is. It is dark and black, but like shadows and outer space, and not black metal; the hardness of its skin is the flow of time that keeps it contained, gives it this shape, as the only container that can hold it from moving an instant out of phase and disappearing into potential and story and feeling again. It seems armoured, but without any care for the mechanics of deflecting a blade, made of slender curves and feminine ratios that gender it more effectively than a face; there is none to see beneath its exterior, like the un-shining suit of a fairytale knight and the hard shell of some creature that might someday exist. Curtains of black ink silently pour from its shoulders and hips, pooling onto the floor and fading away, like a mantle flecked with gold ribbons of light. They are the same colour as the designs that burn faintly, subtly, across its breast, not unlike the etchings of Night Mist, but as if remembered in a dream, reduced to their most platonic and personal form, being the only true detail that can be glimpsed. Its arms still terminate without direct attachment to its hands, but by splitting up, over and over again along their length, breaking into myriad smaller and smaller fragments, their exposed insides glittering liquid gold, which hold each other together in mutual orbit. 'Behind' it, though that is a matter of perspective, the dim illumination of a faraway, redshifted un-light filters weakly through the gauzy shroud of a tenth of the thickness of normality, similar to the psychohazard's 'halo', but far more grand, more precise, all of its pieces moving around and between its other pieces, and impossible to make out while there is still a wisp of pressure in the room. The light, brighter, softly glows from the four slits where eyes should be, but trying to look into them directly --trying to steal that look-- is instantaneously, debilitatingly blinding, like staring directly into the sun. A weightless bonfire of soft black shadow blows gently away from the back of its head; voluminous hair caught in a breeze imperceptible to 'here', but perfectly real 'there'. A just one spot on its face, the black-armoured facade has scraped away, revealing a slash of something soft and warm and white beneath, though there certainly is no such thing as 'beneath'. Though every other aspect of it is like a shadow, an inverse, a notice-by-absence, that part alone seems somehow 'more real'.
Lilian Rook	Lilian can't help herself. She reaches out and reaches up, laying hands on the sides of its head, hanging over her, yet knelt before her. "Yeah. This is it. This is how I was supposed to be born. I'm sure. I can't see all of it -- it's still too 'real' here -- but I know it. I can feel it." "'Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.' Isn't that right?" Just touching it, though her fingers sink through it intangibly, Lilian sighs with something approaching bliss. "It's tough. And hard. And warm. Good. I was worried it would be fragile." She turns her head over her shoulder to look at Persephone. "Each power is a wish, right? I never said this before, but I thought it a lot. You're the only one with all six, aren't you? You wanted every other wish so badly that you got them, and despite that, somehow you could find it in your heart to wish that everyone else could have what you did. You had the most to change, the most gained, you had it the worst, and became the most special, and you still felt like you needed to give it away. Isn't that right? Why? When?"
Persephone Kore	Dylan had said that nobody- not even Marc or Phony- knows whether the presence here is really Emery, or just the imprint left behind. So of course it can't unambiguously hear and respond. If it could there would be no mystery. But, ambiguously, it does. Diamonds are static, nonliving, but if you turn one over in your hands, its brilliant fire seems to shift and move. Clouds don't put on a play for humans on purpose, but the human mind is very good at reading into their shapes anyway. It's in that manner that they're answered; not a shift, but a facet being recognized that was already there. Too soon and too late. The oldest subject the project had ever adopted. All subjects were unwanted once, but Emery's brain was too numbed by enduring a universe not meant for them, their thoughts too calcified by the need for survival. Every psychic power is a wish, but if you're hurt for long enough, badly enough, all the wishes get beaten out of you. What place does someone broken like that have in a paradise like this? Seemingly in answer to Darren and Cantio, a feeling rotates into vision from years before Emery's drastic plunge. I feel awful. I feel transgressive. Guilt-sick. I've been here a month, in this perfect place, and it never stops feeling wrong. I see how the adults look at me. I think I can see it: that little flinch every time, just behind their eyes, that they try to convince themselves they didn't feel. If I can't even pretend I'm "normal", how can they? But being normal almost killed me the first time. Trying again, in this place where everyone else gets to be themselves, would kill me for real. It's the children who make it almost bearable. They don't know any better. They don't flinch. They haven't learned, yet, the ways culture teaches us it's acceptable to be human, and the ways that it isn't. They know 'good' and 'bad', but nobody ever taught them 'normal', so nothing can be 'abnormal' to them. I want to live in the world that they'll create. That's what I'm hanging on for. "Hey," Dylan says, sort of uncomfortably. She's leaning against a coral-encrusted wall, arms crossed and eyes a little wet to match. "You're, uh. Are you guys okay? It can get a little intense, I know. If you... engage with it, the wrong way. Or the right way." She tilts her head back towards the door, where Carpathia and Phony and the others are still conducting Lilian's experiment. "You wanna go? Or stay?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel is scrawling page after page, rapidly. Over and over and over. Sketches from multiple angles as he paces. When he needs to mark the eyes, he simply punches slits through the paper. Line after line of observation. His speech is rapid under his breath, without punctuation or pause: "...imprecise implantation into a human brain of a high-grade psychic construct designed for implantation into a universe-brain like an alien arrival in its incomprehensibility and incompatibility but the receiving psyche and the arriving construct each had too much durability and so a semi-corrupted iteration was created on impact in an atemporal acausal retro-reflective impact and creates a unified psycho-chimeric structure tied directly to the exo-universal exo-narrative systems while being rooted in conventional reality..." Where punctuation should be, the notepad flips pages instead. He's taken another pencil and is scrawling more with telekinesis, two lines at a time, or one illustration and various descriptions simultaneously.
Raziel	'It's the children who make it almost bearable. They don't know any better. They don't flinch.' Those feelings hit Raziel harder than others. He was there when neither Dylan nor Marc flinched from his appearance. In fact, they asked if he were alright. That is what they were hanging on for, though the wish was cast, and the coin toss...it was still a very sad thing to be, a state in which one could not be with the world they shared but wished for one to be made. What was there to say..? Right now Raziel had neither the words nor the frame of mind. For a moment he had considered similar to himself, but there was one stark difference...in this comparison it would be Kain who would be this cloud, but he clearly did not turn himself inside out. Raziel lowers his head. It's all a bit much. "Yes, I'm ready to return, thank you, Dylan."
Darren	Maybe this is just a story that Emery left behind. Even if it is, stories are meant to be told, and heard. Darren cracks an eye open when Dylan speaks up. Smiling serenely at her, both eyes now open, shakes his head. "I'm good, Dylan. And thank you for asking. Some stories make you cry, but that's not a bad thing," he says to her. Roswell floats over to her, holding both arms wide--he's offering a hug, looking up at her with his strange little green eyes quietly asking if she needs it. Though he faces Dylan, Darren remains seated when he continues. "He's good with those, huh? Hah... nah. If anything," he intones lightly, still wishing to respect the peace of this place, "It can be a good thing, when a story has that effect on you. It means that something about that story reached out to you and touched you." He wipes his eyes with a sleeve. "It -is- a little intense. Can't lie. It..." He sighs as he trails off, pausing, searching for words. "I'm not sorry that I met Emery, if I met them just now. I wanna stay, a little longer. Hear more of what they have to say. Keep 'em company, if that's what I'm doing. They deserve it." He returns to his meditation. Roswell is silent, too, but this is because he has no way to mimic human vocal speech non-telepathically. He is, however, very good at asking things, saying things, with his eyes and his body language. The downward tug at the hem of Dylan's shirt is gentle, so meek that it might be easy to forget this creature is at least Darren's age. His eyes quietly ask: Are -you- okay?
Cantio	Not everything that Cantio witnesses of what makes up Emery's piecemeal existence here hits her as much as it could have. The parts that do, however, are what keep her practically glued in place as she continues trying to make sense of it all and understand what kind of pressure must have been surrounding Emery for so long. I really can't imagine how that must have felt. It's... She squats in place just to remind herself to actually move every now and then, giving herself a brief respite from feeling her face get wetter. I wish things could have been better for you. I've seen some of the results of this place's work, though, and... Cantio wipes her face off again. Children can be so much more observant than adults think. They'll pick up on things we might not even notice, learn things we never though about, and create futures we never could have imagined. Some of those children are grown now, and their world's going to be... Can she offer empty promises without some kind of concTheir world's going to be better. They're already learning... Not learning certain behaviors. She glances at Raziel briefly, recalling his encounter with the children. They'll have plenty of good people to work alongside with, and there's already work being done to lay out the groundwork for all of it even if I.. It might not be perfect yet. I know you'll see it one day. Cantio jerks up slightly as Dylan speaks up, glancing around quickly as she returns to that physical reality. She doesn't answer right away, choking out a quiet noise before nodding her head quickly. "Y-yeah. That was..." She draws in a loud, gross breath through her nose, then stands back up. "I felt a lot of... Learned..." She's visibly shaken, but still managing a smile throughout it. "I-I think I'm done here for today. I'm ready to go see what they're doing now."
Staren	Flamel has theories. Staren comments, "Huh. That's interesting. I wonder if worlds with magic and psionic powers are doing such a thing... and, by virtue of unifying them into itself, so is the Multiverse." The idea that what happened to Emery Heller is the destiny of all of humanity, though, sits rather uncomfortably with her. I once thought it was my duty to become beyond-human if I got the opportunity, so I could wield greater cognitive capabilities and power, but... I've had the chance twice now, and I balked both times. 'My friends will miss me' was an excuse to make my refusal okay, but it isn't something I can really want anyway... It isn't me to want it. ...Does that mean that if this is the fate of humanity, I'll be left behind...? Alone? Lilian really wants it, and is only staying for her friends... And afraid of getting trapped like this. So that's what that looks like when it's real and not an excuse. Wait, does that mean one day Phony has to leave?! Sadness starts to well up in her. Just like all my other close friends do, eventually. I'll survive. No, I... I really will, though. That I could lose that part of me and survive... That I rather would, than move on... So that's what they meant, earlier. Time... ticks. The fruit is a clock? Or... an awareness of time? Or...? Lilian remarks on the unfairness of it all. "Why couldn't I save them...?" Staren finds her thoughts dragged along the same track. And then there's a sharp swerve at the end that she can't follow, and... that... is in the chamber, shockingly. Staren stares. She doesn't look right into the eyes this time, even looking close is bright enough to keep her own reflexively averted. Lilian sounds like she's making a choice. Staren is... concerned, but... why? The moment she considers that concern, the thought that she needs to be happy for Lilian, that Lilian deserves whatever this is, is stronger.
Persephone Kore	Don't be scared, Staren! We won't all become like Emery is. But... we'll become strong enough to make a world where people like you, and people like me, and people like Emery, can all exist at once. A world that's big enough for so many different ways of being. Where they don't have to be a phantom, and reality can accept their perfect self-made self. Until that world is real, I promise I won't leave. Even if I want to. Marc draws in a breath and steps back from the shadow, but can't tear his eyes away. Persephone gasps softly to match him. She steps forward as if she intends to lay a hand on it- to touch Lilian's very truest body, unconstrained by the world- but she stops short, because it's yours, and you deserve to keep that to yourself. "It's beautiful, Lilian. I really really mean that. Do you think you could live in it? Do you think you could wear it forever? ... Seeing something so perfectly 'you' helps me understand you better. Because, knowing that it's perfect... I can feel the shape of the person it would be perfect for. It means exactly what it is." The question that follows- about wishes- gives her solemn pause. Marc averts his eyes. He knows the answer she's about to give. "You're right. At first... I was totally selfish. I had all these completely unfair things, and I didn't even feel guilty about having them. I guess I still don't." "It was Emery. They were too old to get any powers. Even though they deserved them the most out of anybody. I already knew the world was awful and unfair, so I'd made up wishes to defy it. But... then wishing, itself, and who gets to wish, turned out to be unfair." She laughs, just a little. "So I made up a wish to defy that, too. A wish to give wishing to everybody. To stop being special, not by becoming less, but by making everyone else more."
Lilian Rook	"If you don't want to come with me, I won't stay for you. Not you, not any of the humans who won't change. You've all had more than enough time to decide how everything should be. How I should be. It's my turn. Everyone hated the smallest ways I changed myself, to make living more bearable, and the smallest ways I wanted to change them, to make it easier to understand them. At least that taught me, as early as possible, that I shouldn't moderate, shouldn't censor, shouldn't limit myself; because if I can make nobody happy, or just myself happy, why shouldn't I just be me?" "Humans are strong. Even the weak ones have so much power, to decide what's real and what isn't. Humanity will be fine either way. I don't have any worries. And if they aren't, well, they can be the ones to figure something out for a change." Staren only thought it, but Lilian heard it, and she answers it out loud; trying to project it through the glass would be too difficult at this point, with how her attention is eaten. Even now, she's halfway talking to herself. The cool moonshadow and distant light of her intentional mental eversion is functionally almost pointless to read; she thinks everything she says, and says everything she thinks, in these moments. She glows at Persephone. "How couldn't I? What I'd give to be this. Tall and strong, so no one can look down on me. Hard and tough, so nothing can hurt me. Angles that defy purchase, flesh that defies discomfort, wearing time as my skin, so I set the pace, I choose the timings, not others. Too dark to see into, detail hidden from their eyes, but bright with the designs I can be proud of, so they see those, and not everything else. It's as . . . feminine as I am, without being framed in someone's expectactions, knightly as I am, without being framed in someone's code, and that wish . . . you can all see it, and that's fine." "With these hands, I could touch someone without having to let them touch back; hold without being seized or hurt or gripped or defined in return. With these eyes, I'm sure I could see another person's heart, and nobody would get to stare back into me; no one could stare at my soul for the crime of looking at them. With these bones, I wouldn't have to put myself back together, worse every time; a natural state of being broken and whole, where a piece never goes anywhere. With this flesh, I could be hard and real, or light and shadow, here or there, present or invisible, now or then; I wouldn't have to choose, but walk between, a 'Lady in Black'." "It's . . . safe. Irrepresible. Hiding nothing. Obeying no one. Not needing to. Touching and holding, seeing and hearing, taking and keeping close, without compromise, without weakness. Utter freedom. A bulletproof heart." Lilian's hand strokes over the contours of the head, and arrives at the soft white portion, exposed like raw skin, through the scoured break in the hard shell. "This wasn't there before. It's new. But I get it. It's . . . a place to touch, warmly, gently, if I allow it. It's amazing, isn't it?"
Lilian Rook	A tired smile crosses her lips as she lowers her hands away. "This was going to be me. This is what would have happened if I touched the Tree of Crisis, I'm sure. It'd be hard to be this, all the time, and still have everything I have in this world. It's not made for living as a human. But it's finished, and it's mine." "Like . . . clothes, maybe, waiting to be worn; something to put on, something expressive of 'me', to be seen and to feel and to change me just a little. But still inert. For now. I don't think I could make this my skin, my blood, my breath, just yet. But I'd . . . I think I'd like to try putting it on, some time soon." "Thank you Marc. I feel a lot better now. I got to see it, and I know it's everything I could imagine. I hope you can feel this way someday." Lilian turns and seats herself between the giant's slender point-feet, resting her hand on the semi-tangible object from which it'd functionally sprung, or perhaps 'been projected'. "So that's why. Phony, I thought anything that made you more comprehensible would make you seem less kind; you can't be a myth and make sense at the same time. But I think I understand you better now. And that's such a kind thought it hurts a little to hear. Hah." "But, shouldn't you get it too? I don't want to apologize. The fact that you'd give those things --things that girls like us deserve-- to people who already have so much? I won't try to change your mind at all, and I won't blame you. It's my problem to get over. So I suppose I'm just thinking out loud, now. Walking myself through it. Why I had all those awful ideas in the first place. And why I want so badly to be a part of your world now."
Persephone Kore	Dylan gives Roswell a delicate little hug, unsure of how much he can take. She doesn't seem like the type to ever turn down physical affection. Looking up at Darren, she puts on the best smile she can. "It touched you, huh? ... Yeah. It got me pretty bad, too. It still does. Phony's teared up sometimes when she comes out of here, and she's visited a hundred times." "It's valuable, though. Whenever I start doubting, or I get tired... I just remind myself that Emery's waiting for us. There's a lot more Emeries out there in the Multiverse, too. And I don't just mean ghosts. You know?" Cantio's reassurances, and Darren's peaceful meditation, cause a shift in the presence. The diamond, so to speak, reflects a different color; the clouds form a different shape. There is a feeling like the warm ache of relaxing after a hard day of labor, like coming down from a fever, like the enervating coziness of relaxing by a fire in winter, but all with a sense of easeful coolness instead of crackling warmth. Emery, or Emery's echo, has spoken their piece. They have been Heard enough that they can now simply Be. And it is a pleasant, if still otherworldly, being. It makes sense why Phony would choose to meditate here. In the calm, little glimpses and hints come through, foggy like a dream or a memory. Sky-blue nails, a long blonde ponytail, a dark sports bra worn to catch the eye under a loose or half-buttoned shirt. They looked a lot like Marc, back then, but more of a rakish disaster. A high, clear voice with a rattling fry. Eyes like a cornered animal's, sometimes, but when they finally relaxed you could stare into them forever. I am sitting in the arboretum, under the willow tree. A younger girl with curly hair is sitting next to me, because I seemed lonely and 'sad'. "This isn't bad. I never minded being alone. But thank you for thinking of me, anyways." Roswell isn't sending, but Dylan is receiving; she's not unlike those kids who were beating him at cards. It's a quieter kind of communication, even if it amounts to almost the same thing. It's better suited for a reverent place like this. She smiles a smile that says 'I'm fine', and halfway means it. Her hand comes down- tentatively, giving time to object, to pat the top of Roswell's head. "Well, let's go, then. Turn off the lights when you leave, alright, Darren?" Dylan, and those following her, emerge back into the main hallway in plenty of time to see Lilian's ethereal other-self.
Persephone Kore	Carpathia presses a button on the Chamber's control panel. With a series of mechanical clicks, it retrieves a tidal-holographic plate that was housed somewhere in the Chamber's walls and dispenses it through a slot. She catches it and holds it up: it is tinged with the lens-flare spirograph rainbows of Persephone's passive presence, and the fine-etched sharp-angled azure patterns of Marc's. But they weren't using their powers; merely existing in the Chamber. And so the dominant color on the plate is black. It's not splattered recklessly like the plate from months ago, when Lilian fought in the Chamber; it shows organization, like paintbrush ripples radiating out from some motion too abstract to guess at. "The other plates, at different angles, will give a better picture all together. But it is already beautiful, isn't it?" Carpathia smiles. "I like this one so much better than the last one." "I'm not sure I hope I do," Marc answers Lilian evenly, "but I'll take that in the spirit in which it was intended." "Aw. Lighten up. Would it kill you to be nice to a girl, just once?" "I'm nice to everybody, Phony." "Except Dylan." "That was implicit, yes." Persephone, despite the ribbing, regards Lilian with a serene smile. "Now you know how I feel! That everything I learn about you somehow makes you easier to like. And makes me want to mess you up even worse." "... Oh. But that reminds me, ahaha. I really can't have you feeling like you don't belong." Earlier, some fraction of the subjects had been wearing bracelets with colored stripes: most red, some green, some blue, sometimes yellow or purple. The bracelet that Phony pulls out of her pocket has only one stripe on it: black. It zips over and snaps itself around Lilian's wrist before she can object. "You are part of this world now. And disagreeing is utterly, completely illegal! You hear me, Lily-R? Ahaha~"
Darren	When you traverse the unknown, you come back a little different. Where other people are concerned, Darren is gregarious, talkative, vibrant. He stays in the silence, thinking of Emery, for a few more minutes. The Darren Spears who walks out, shoes in hand, is not the same one who entered. He has, now, an appreciation, for simply Being--touched by the peaceful, otherworldly way in which Emery, or their echo, can Be. Any time, blood. See you soon. Roswell is waiting for him, as he slips the dress shoes on. He'd been hovering near Dylan--it turns out he didn't mind being pet at all. The little alien hurries over to meet Darren as soon as the quarterback's got both shoes back on. "Hey," he quietly says, as his telepathic friend comes in for a hug. They're still a little close to the door--so Roswell is still quiet. But Darren picks up, as Dylan had. "I love you, too." He smiles. "C'mon. I'm tryna get at some decaff, and I wanna see if them bad-ass kids beat me half as bad as you." Twice, actually.
Staren	A world for all! Staren is relieved. She tries not to think about whether it might be hurting Persephone to stay, she doesn't want others' concern after all... Lilian, though, is understandably excited about her ideal form. The things she praises... some are relatable, others alien, and some sound like things she once thought she wished for but didn't, truly. But of course, it's her wish. I've been such a dumbass. I'm sorry, Lilian, I projected onto you to try and relate, but... "I'm sorry for projecting before, Lilian. I was trying to relate to you better, but... I was so focused on that..." You thought you knew her better than her own words? You asshole. Staren winces and shivers. She really fucked up... No... It's not that I really thought that. It's that I look at others and I see scripts and [if I strain myself to look deeper] mirrors. (And of course I could never understand Lilian-who-is-so-different-from-me as a mirror.) That's part of my own... me. But I knew that, and don't do enough to work around it. I don't need to understand your wish. I'm happy for you, but you don't need to hear that. "...What a wonderful world it will be, one day, where you can be you and Phony can be her and Emery can be Emery and everyone can be themselves without having to leave anyone behind." I know it doesn't mean anything to you coming from me, but: "It's good that you get a chance to see this and try it before then." She puts as much emphasis as she can on the thought that the world is better for this getting to happen in it. And then Phony says and does things that will be much more meaningful, and Staren pulls her thoughts away from that. It's not her place to form opinions or judgements or comments on that. Instead she focuses on the plate Carpathia is holding, and wonders what the others will look like, and what plates from future experiments she wants to collaborate with the doctor on might look like.
Lilian Rook	"Apologies, Marc. It's hard to explain why." says Lilian. "But seeing it, touching it, knowing it's perfect, puts my mind at ease. Some of the pain is taken out when the mystery is revealed. The monster is less scary when you've seen it, and the present is easier to wait for when you know what it is. I feel relieved. I know what's there for me, mostly. I know how to find it again, by feel if I have to. And I know I'm strong enough to stay here, for the time being. I wish I could give a little bit of that peace to you . . . Well, I suppose I could share it for a little while, right?" She tries her hardest not to snort when Persephone brings up Dylan. "Dylan loves it when you're mean to her though. When it comes to that, she's as graceful as can be. It's just a shame about everything else." Lilian gingerly removes the 'fruit' from its position, and in her hands again, the towering projected shade flickers into nothingness again, like she'd turned a mirror just slightly and removed a reflection from view. "You don't mind if I keep this now, right? It is mine, after all. And I don't think you have to worry. Next time, I'll let you touch it, I promise." Her face turns a tiny bit red at the next part. Somehow she's worse at her usually perfect poker face while putting in the effort to be read. "Don't say it like that, or people will get the wrong idea." Though she doesn't actually need to look at the deck or the comm to be heard, Lilian does it anyways. "Thank you doctor. I really hope this helped. And I'll be back as often as you need me. I hope you don't mind sudden visits. I even promise I'll knock next time." A tiny, glowing-proud grin twitches irrepressibly at the corners of her lips, despite her very best efforts to keep it down. She half-manages, but it's still unmistakably trying to be the smile that comes from 'mother saying she's going to put your drawing on the fridge'. There's a moment where she's really deeply tempted to be spiteful to Staren, in this moment of triumph. Lilian begins, fully, with the intent of making her victory, that feeling of satisfaction and warm accomplishment, complete, at her expense. "No that long ago, you said I doomed Carpathia's dream. That it was doomed when Phony first met me. How does it feel to be so wrong?"
Lilian Rook	A bated-breath instant later, Lilian's imperious expression wobbles, and a tired little exhalation escapes as it collapses. "Because I'm really glad you were. I was afraid that might have been true, even before I got to watch those tapes and hear you say it. Everything could have, maybe should have, gone so very very wrong. And now I'm just so glad to be here now. Maybe Phony really can do everything; solve everything. Or maybe I was just always meant to be here, and I sort of knew it." "But it somewhat seems that the spirit of being someone better is rubbing off, the tiniest bit, on you too. So I'll let it slide this time. If you already know the words to say, and can say them, then what use is there in me repeating them louder? I believe you. That you really are happy. Even under the mountain of other, less laudible ways you feel. I'm glad that you learned at least this much. And if you can get over yourself, I'll start trying to get over you a little too." Persephone calls Lilian's attention back. She looks over to her expectantly. And yet, for someone with the notoriously phenomenal reflexes of Lilian Rook, it takes her an embarrassingly long period of dumb staring at the little wristband clipped shut around her wrist to get the slightest peep out of her. Her brain locks up. The gears stick and struggle to figure out their new train. A second goes by, and the ends of Lilian's sleeves are damp with recently absorbed moisture. She's wearing a fractional volume less eyeliner. She can't seem to stop touching her wrist. "Well, we all know I can't go breaking the law." She laughs, a little unevenly. "I . . . I love it. I really do. Thank you. For everything." "So try letting me carry some of that 'weight' with you, okay? I'm pretty strong you know." This time, Lilian succeeds, flexing and patting her bicep, and straining the blouse sleeves a little in the process. "Forget being normal. Let's be something way better than that!"
Staren	Lilian asks Staren a question, and the catgirl smiles genuinely, "It feels great!" She clasps her hands together low in front of her as Lilian continues, tail forming a question-mark shape behind her, slowly twitching back and forth so the ? is curled to one side or the other. As she nears the end of her speech, Staren's brain autocompletes the phrase: 'And if you can get over yourself, I'll start trying to get over myself a little too.' She can't help laughing a little when Lilian ends the sentence differently, that's just how brains are. Thanks! I'll keep working on it. After that is when she focuses on the plate while the two girls have their moment. What colors will they see in the future...?