Participants:
| Scene Title | Seascraper |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | After trying to stay awake forever to avoid a nightmare, Elliot joins Asi and Wright for a game of chess/checkers/45s. |
| Date | June 17, 2021 |
Skyscraper
The Flooded Timeline
Elliot’s eyes flicker in and out of comprehension for a moment: wall/black/peeling paint/black/water stain/black/ turned to rust/black/evoking blood/black. He blinks purposefully and with force, taps the hallway wall with his fist, repeatedly, in irritation. He isn’t an idiot. He knows things will get worse in the waking world soon if he doesn’t get—Hey, Wright says, in a way that shouldn’t hold a slur but projects vod
Fuck.
He slumps back against the wall, scrubs at his face forcefully. “What the fuck?” Wright says from the safety of standing next to her bed, looking at it but not on it. “I was… Was that a hallucinatiofrom the floor, blinks his eyes in confusion, reaches for something above him to drag himself upright, then begins walking forward, walking into his exhausted lean. “Black box,” Wright says, anxious that any effort on his part to stay in her perspective will waste what energy he needs to get
shoulder collides with somebody, a man? He’s swearing, Elliot thinks he waves, maybe apologi
bed
Seascraper
The ocean roars, unending, insistent, a clock of pitch breathing through the open guts of the building blasted to shreds by the patience of the sea. High tide, low. High tide, low. Breathe in, one, two, three, four, breathe out, one, two, three, four, five, six.
Seagulls can be heard crying for attention amongst those shattered ribs of steel, in the rust and the barnacles and the coral coming to condemn these structures, this last bastion of hope for the survivors of the end of the world.
The sun warms the skin of Elliot’s face, he can’t remember the last time he looked upon the sea and was rewarded with the light of the sun. With the feeling of being as awake as he is right now. Elliot and Wright sit side by side on the stones by the river. Not Wright, merely the idea of Wright; a projection unoccupied. His feet are cold in the icy water, ripples obscuring the target of Ames’s attention. Her drawing of that rippled anemone is morbid, towering, shadowing. Closed against company. “Gone forever,” she sings, “Gone forever.”
Elliot cries, but doesn’t disturb her or her song. She’s right, after all. This is where they live now, in this decrepit monument to the ingenuity of humanity crumbling one wave at a time for its hubris. “Can you sing a song for me?” he asks.
“No,” she says happily.
He nods, wishes he was dead. Wishes he could die without making things so much worse. For Ames, for Marthe, for Wright. She doesn’t deserve the hell she’ll endure over there if he dies over here. Even though she might be safe. Even though Ames will be here will be here when it happens. Ames will be here when it happens.
He gasps in blinding panic, grabs at Ames’s arm (her drawing ruined with a slash), doesn’t register her wounded cry of pain, of alarm. “Please,” he begs her, “Please go home, you can’t be here when I die.”
Not Ames, merely the idea of Ames; a projection unoccupied. He covers his face with his hands and hyperventilates for only a moment, so happy she’s gone now. Gone forever.
Gone forever.
Pawn moves and sets with a click exactly like pine, without a felted bottom, tapping politely on stained oak. “Predictable,” Wright says as the clock is clicked, as it becomes her turn, as she begins to lose. “At least it’s a nice day for it,” she agrees.
Elsewhere and elsewhen, someone who was once feels the indescribable sensation of wanting to be ill without a body to be ill with. They wake— she wakes— in a panic. No. No. It is and isn't her. This has and hasn't happened. No, I don't— I don't want—
Asi hushes her gently as her eyes flicker open. "Shhh," she whispers to herself. "ここにいるよ。 安全よ。1"
The panic subsides slowly in the dark, and Asi feels herself drift backward and down, the single red flicker of light in a sea of blue fire returning to its own space. At rest. Her head tilts back and eyes close
eyes open, lying nearby Elliot on a couch in the Bastion. One leg is dangling off the end of the couch, one arm bent behind her head as a pillow. Sunlight streams through the windows, the hanging lights on overhead to cast a soft warmth of illumination to combat the darkening of the evening sky.
"Sorry," Asi apologizes into the air. "I dozed off."
Wright chuckles, tapping her plastic checker piece, red, down on Elliot’s side of the board. “King me,” she says insufferably, “I told you sleeping was a bad idea,” then directed to Asi.
“Why,” Elliot asks his partner, “did you go through her wallet?”
“No,” Wright chides him. “You’re the pickpocket snoop.”
“I’m a mere novice at sleight of hand,” he corrects, sending something on a flicker of his fingertips as he plans his next move. “Asi, I feel like you should be good at chess, what with being good at computers.” He moves a second pawn, to the side and behind the last, both black.
Asi scoffs and levers herself up into a sit. "What, is that supposed to imply that as a coder I must be an…" She puts on an affectatious air, more expressive than normal. "expert logician?"
One corner of her mouth curls back in a grin she only thinks is surreptitious, eyes down and gleaming blue in mirth. "I don't know," she sighs in her normal voice. "Deal me in. I'll see if I can't pick this up." She gestures across the table at a second version of herself, one who has pinpricks of red light in her pupils. "I've got an excellent partner to play off of."
“Forty-Fives is not a game for the faint of heart,” Wright warns, stacking checkers, “and also is impossible to remember.”
“Impossible for you to remember,” Elliot gripes. He turns his eyes to Asi to offer an explanation. “It was a local staple for nickel-dealing old folks across the Merrimack valley. When gin-rummy just didn’t make you want to slap an old person enough.” He imagines the common room of the retirement community to which they weren’t permitted but frequently invited. It’s where they’re sitting now.
Wright happily welcomes Asi to the table either way, shifting the checkerboard to make room for the deck of cards. “It’s a teams game though,” Elliot says, getting his knight into play as soon as possible. “Will your friend be joining us?” Wright hits the timer for him, for which he mumbles some small noise of thanks.
Asi rolls the queen in her hand, looking across the table at herself. "For as long as she can," she answers diplomatically, an understanding look being given to the version of herself across the table who slowly shifts the hand on her thigh, fingers curling into a ball. "If she goes back to rest, I'm sure one of these jokesters around here can stand in and partner up with me." Asi grins, and her double, slower-moving, finally sets her hand against the side of the table. The red-eyed version looks to Elliot, while the blue looks to Wright, only the latter smiling. "Maybe they're used to your tricks enough to help give me an advantage," she suggests.
Elliot smiles at the unfamiliar Asi, Wright at the only one they know. Elliot shuffles a deck of cards casually, worn in a way that makes them easy to use, not unusable. “So I’m not going to lie,” he says, cutting the card deck and riffling it back together without looking, “this game uses a really weird value system based on suit and color.”
“It’s fucking absurd,” Wright adds helpfully.
Elliot deals to everybody at the table, three cards each counted on on top of the other. “So, basically, from highest value to least:
| V | IV | — | I | II | III |
| T r u m p d i a m o n d s |
T r u m p h e a r t s |
O f f - s u i t d i a m o n d s |
O f f - s u i t h e a r t s |
T r u m p c l u b s o r s p a d e s |
O f f - s u i t c l u b s o r s p a d e s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5♦ | 5♥ | 5♣ | |||
| J♦ | J♥ | J♣ | |||
| A♥ | A♥ | A♥ | |||
| A♦ | A♣ | ||||
| K♦ | K♥ | K♦ | K♥ | K♣ | K♣ |
| Q♦ | Q♥ | Q♦ | Q♥ | Q♣ | Q♣ |
| J♦ | J♥ | J♣ | |||
| 10♦ | 10♥ | 10♦ | 10♥ | A♣ | |
| 9♦ | 9♥ | 9♦ | 9♥ | 2♣ | 2♣ |
| 8♦ | 8♥ | 8♦ | 8♥ | 3♣ | 3♣ |
| 7♦ | 7♥ | 7♦ | 7♥ | 4♣ | 4♣ |
| 6♦ | 6♥ | 6♦ | 6♥ | 5♣ | |
| 5♦ | 5♥ | 6♣ | 6♣ | ||
| 4♦ | 4♥ | 4♦ | 4♥ | 7♣ | 7♣ |
| 3♦ | 3♥ | 3♦ | 3♥ | 8♣ | 8♣ |
| 2♦ | 2♥ | 2♦ | 2♥ | 9♣ | 9♣ |
| A♦ | 10♣ | 10♣ |
“But trust me, it’s easy to remember once you’ve played a few hands.” Wright shakes her head discreetly, eyes locked with Asi’s, as he continues. He then deals two more cards to each player, one atop the other, bringing everybody’s hand to five cards.
“We play to forty-five points, hence the name.”
Asi arches an eyebrow slowly as the explanation beyond words blurs and then takes shape and then goes beyond her again. To Wright she mirrors the slight shake of her head. "We'll see about that," she answers calmly enough. Her red-eyed double takes the challenge seriously though, eyes narrowing in the categorization taking place.
"You're going to let this simple system best you?" her other self challenges coyly.
"If it were important to memorize, I would," Asi answers herself with a tinge of pride rippling along the edge of her words. "But alas…"
"But alas," the red-eyed version mocks her slow and piteously.
"You see what I have to deal with?" Asi asks with feigned exasperation, looking between Wright and Elliot both.
“What did you expect?” Wright asks playfully, gesturing from Asi to the two pedestals across the table from her, one bearing the Metal Chair Restraints and the other the Handcuffs. “There’s so much less than a whole person’s worth of memories to work with here.” Not enough to be Relevant to something even so simple as the Gymnasium they’re in now. There are others behind them: the Red Hoodie, the SUV, the Blood Drops on the Floor. Those aren’t associated, however; merely nearby.
“Sorry,” Elliot says, eyes moving from that Asi back to the one they know, “I still feel bad about how that all happened. I shouldn’t have said anything out loud. I thought I was being helpful.” The feeling of knowing he gave away Asi’s secrets haunts him like a letter that he’s been waiting for her to send to him.
That shift in perspective, however unintentional, is jarring. It's a reminder of a reality, dark and gut-churning. Asi stares, seeing only the Indexed items for a long moment. When she blinks them away, her other self is gone.
Her own eyes darken to brown hues, lacking the blue glow she's never had in as long as he's known her.
"Hm?" she asks, distracted. Several blinks pass before she lifts a hand in a placating motion. "No— no. You were helpful. I was just…"
She is still
"Embarrassed," Asi admits. "To have so many people watching something deeply personal play out. It…" Uncertainly, she smiles reassurance. "It wasn't your fault. It was those damn others, inviting themselves where they weren't welcome or wanted. I knew it was going to be messy."
"I…" Her breath arrests, and she realizes she doesn't remember how she got here. Something pulls at the fringes of her awareness, tied to the realization the Red ON1 is lost to her without her technopathy. "What were we doing, again?"
Elliot seems poised to continue his apology, then stops, eyebrow hitching in confusion. He lifts his hands from the table to stare at his fingers where the light no longer falls across them like a curtain.
“Already?” Wright asks, turning toward the windows where the sunlight had only just filled the room with its orange-gold warmth; toward where there used to be windows. She and Elliot freeze. Then, in short order, both quietly pull their chairs back from the table and stand. Wright turns to Asi to make a silent gesture of silence, then a gesture of calm but urgent removal.
Elliot steps into the air and glides for the opposite door of the Gymnasium, slowly and carefully pushing the bar to open the door quietly. His eyes stay fixed on the opposite wall, which seems suddenly antagonistic, marred in fluorescent shadows.
Asi remains seated for a moment longer than she should, coming to her feet slowly to look between Wright and Elliot both. Her head is a haze as she fights to remember whatever it is she needs to, watching Elliot rearrange the scenery while she tries.
The words are like marshmallows in her mouth, half-melted and sticky. "Da capo al…"
She's relieved when the Indexed Word finally makes itself plain to her. "Coda," Asi whispers to Wright, fully believing her to be present.
Wright’s face moves from confusion to a pale wash of alarm. Her head snaps toward the far wall, which lurches, growls with the sound of wood boards shattering and nails wrenching free. There’s no visual indication of the carnage other than the sudden glide of that wall gracefully across the disappearing floor toward them.
Elliot shoulders the door open, stealth abandoned in the wake of realization. Before the dream can take root he steps into the dark of a hallway, then onto the opposite hallway wall as he spins the structure around them. Wright and Asi plummet across the floor, now beside them, and fall into the hallway just before Elliot slams the door upward behind them.
He rights the tilted room and opens the door again—bleachers along the wall compress, slipping under the roaming wall—then closes it.
For being a dream, Asi's altered state of gravity sure feels real in the moment. She blinks her eyes hard as she comes up from a sprawl to elbows and knees, turns her head as Elliot
Opens the door again—card table crushed flat, it and the chairs shaking apart as they rattle into oblivion—then closes it.
Opens the door again—almost upon them, the paint on the walls streaming to the center into a shattered rainbow vortex—then closes it.
Opens the door again to a narrow stairway, old wood thick with chocolate brown paint. He sighs jaggedly and scrubs his face with his hands.
"It's okay," Asi tries to impress on him as, at last, she stumbles to her feet. She wants to believe that's true, too. "It's okay. It's… just a dream."
She takes in a breath that's not real, turns and looks down the hall they find themselves in now before looking back through the opened door. The Gymnasium missing at once feels according to plan and yet bad given its state of deterioration on those last few throws of the door. "We good?" she wonders, looking from Elliot to Wright to seek joint confirmation.
Wright takes a deep breath, opens her mouth to speak but vanishes instead. Elliot watches her go without alarm, then gestures Asi to silence again and motions her up the stairs after him. His feet never touch them, never step, he floats up and over. Yes, he signs, but we should be quiet for a minute either way. Sound echoes. The Gymnasium should be fine. The memories Indexed there.
While Elliot might not be alarmed, Asi is when Wright disappears. Unlike her recollection of her other self, Wright was very much real. Eyes that widen in a flash try to calm quickly anyway. Surely, if she left the dream, it was to safety.
Her head turns to follow after him, silently tugging that knowledge of ASL into her awareness. Down goes her gaze to the stairs, up to Elliot floating above them. She tells herself she can do the same, and her feet believe her. Hovering up in silence, she pulls at Elliot's pantleg before asking, Why the need for quiet?
It’s easier to move if you think about pushing against the world instead of moving yourself through it, he says first, splaying his fingers into the air and pushing himself back away from them.
I have a recurring nightmare where I have to be very quiet or somebody will find me, he explains. At the top of the stairs there is a hallway with stencil-painted plaster divided by a stained pine plank running its length. We just need to get outside, or somewhere with windows. Being found inside can be very unpleasant.
He stops at the first doorway, empty of a door, open to an empty room. He puts his fingers behind a trick of perspective at the outside of the door frame, pulling it, the opening, and the room beyond to the side as though it’s all merely a closed door. A faint breeze stirs, and he breathes easier. He gestures Asi through this strange opening onto a deck facing a sunrise over a freshly planted pasture.
Asi follows, if awkwardly. The suggestion to treat her unreality differently brings her to arrest in movement for an uncomfortable period of time before she practically skips through space to catch up. She tries not to think about the way Elliot pulls their way forward open in a way that doesn't make visual sense, and then
She passes from the discomfort and onto the deck space, letting out a slow breath of her own. A moment is taken to observe the greenery before she deems it safe enough to speak. "Riddle me this—" she asks without malice. "Why were you dreaming of the… the place where you Indexed memories?" The words to describe it are ones that come to her awkwardly. The question feels overly personal to ask, but they're here, avoiding his nightmares, so if there was a time…
"Is that… normal? Is it falling apart normal, remotely?"
Elliot crosses the deck to lean against the pressure treated wood railing overlooking the field. He takes in a breath that smells like spring plants but not the other scents of animal farming. He turns, leaning his back against the trail to look into the kitchen beyond the door he closed before answering.
"The Gymnasium? Probably a handful of dream logic factors. I indexed your recovered memories there, we were both actually sharing a dream space, and you added the Other Asi to the narrative," he says. "It was a retirement community common room before that, Wolfhound when you entered the dream. There's a lot of chaos when nobody is lucid. This is actually incredibly rare. The closest Wright and I came to sharing a lucid dream was when she knocked me out of an Angel dream." He doesn't linger on thoughts of her long lest she somehow show up here to be incredibly unhelpful.
"Way back when, in the Ark, one of the regular co-hosts to the network — Tala, I told you about her — used a memory palace mnemonic exercise to put all of her memories in order. And she remembered everything that she ever experienced, though I think she used the memory palace exercise before she manifested." He thinks because he can't remember.
"Anyway," he says, brushing off his digression, "She taught the exercise to me and that's how I created and maintain the Index. Think of a room, and fill it with the memory, items and things representing the parts you're trying to remember. And since it's all memories, my brain has access to it while I'm sleeping." He takes a deep breath when though that isn't really necessary here, tilts his head to see what he missed with this over-explanation.
"Rooms getting smaller is classic nightmare shit," he adds. "Great way to ratchet up the tension when your subconscious decides you're not afraid enough. It's not falling apart, it's just an asshole."
"I'd love to believe this is some kind of skill I've developed, but I doubt it," Asi says regarding their sharing a lucid dream. She frowns to herself thoughtfully as she draws her arms into a fold before her, the familiar comfort of a leather jacket studded with bronze pyramidal studs snug to her. It's a dream— she can still imagine her old jacket well enough.
"That's fascinating, though," she reflects. "That manner of storing memories for later use. If I remember any of this when I wake up…" Her thoughts are broken by a breath like laughter. "Well, I suppose I'll have to try it sometime."
Her concern isn't entirely washed away though, a glance given back to where they've been. "You've made me wonder now, though. If you're lucid enough to control the direction of the dream, who's to say the same wouldn't happen if we went back to face the nightmare?" Asi lets her gaze drift back to Elliot, calm and curious even if she keeps her distance. This is his dream, his fights.
As far as she can tell.
"There'd be two of us," she offers up in support. "Perhaps that might make a difference."
Elliot sighs, running a calculation in silence. "Lucidity can vanish as quickly as it's found," he says. "Or one of us can suddenly enter a different sleep state, which is what I think Wright just did."
Thinking about the nightmare keeps him on edge, so he motions with his head and takes the wooden stairs down and away from the house, where the concept of doors has less influence on the space. His feet sink into rich earth, then grass. "I already faced that nightmare,” he admits quietly. “And won. It’s been gone for years. I thought it was gone for good, since…”
"We confronted the source of the nightmare in the waking world too," he says with a shake of his head. "Dealt with it directly in a way that made it clear there was nothing to be afraid of. Apparently the stress of the jump rearranged the furniture upstairs. Brought some bad memories back to the surface."
He sighs before adding, “It’s not even my nightmare.”
Following after, not really feeling the sensation of feet to earth in the same way someone who's been here might, Asi sticks her hands into her pockets while she walks. The ground might as well be concrete to her, or not real at all. She cants her head slightly as she regards Elliot out of the corner of her eye. "It's Wright's?" she ventures.
“No,” Elliot says sadly. “Another one of the Ark co-hosts. His name was Bastian. He was twelve." Sadness nearly overwhelms him to even mention it, though he doesn't feel it in his body. It’s as if the environment around him is less real and passing that disconnection on to him.
"He was in his ACTS when we escaped. We couldn't get to him in the Site Zero warehouse," he says, knowing there are tears in his eyes but not feeling them roll down his face.
The land around them becomes indistinct, shadows fleeing to an endless plane of pure white. Elliot feels the need to run as walls set in around them, but it passes. These walls and this door have long since broken him. There’s a high-pitch whine like the ringing of his ears as there, on the floor before them, he appears. He’s younger, his head is shaved but a grid of black marks can be seen decorating his scalp. His fingers are clutching his scalp, drumming at random on his skull. He doesn’t look up at the ACTS standing against the wall beside him; it’s marked Evolved 0000.1.
“What the fuck?” he asks, the He of the Here and Now. How can he have a memory of events outside of his own perspective of them? Whose eyes are looking down? Where did this memory even come from?
He was twelve, Elliot says, and Asi's expression breaks from the aloof tenor she'd been presenting with. Her pace slows, and by the time she bothers looking at their surroundings again they've changed drastically. Her hands slip from her pockets, head turning back to search for the missing fields, afterward looking ahead to see the Once-Elliot who's joined them.
Only Elliot's perplexedness clues her in on the abnormality of this occurrence. "Have I started a trend?" she wonders, trying to inject a spot of levity into the otherwise tense moment.
She knows, knows this isn't real. The younger self isn't the real one. And yet…
Asi steps forward to get his attention. "Hey," she interjects softly. "Elliot." One hand lifts, signing from memory. It's me.
Elliot pulls his knees up to his chest, wraps his arms around them, lets his head knock gently back against the wall, eyes rising to Asi. “What’s the first thing you want to do when you get home?” he asks softly in the cavernous quiet, the He of the There and Then.
Asi's expression softens yet again at the question, one that challenges her heart. "I want to go everywhere I've been before, to feel and taste it like it were new again," she answers just as softly, reverent and secret. She finds herself slowly lowering down into a crouch, hands on knees as she lowers herself so they're better at eye-level with each other.
"What about you?" she asks just as gently.
Elliot's eyes come into focus just enough to let Asi know he hadn't been looking at her. He looks confused, blinking and shifting slightly away against the wall as he tries to understand who she is, what's happening. Dawning realization carries with it a deep and sudden terror.
His hand lashes out to grab the sleeve of her jacket urgently. "Wake up," he says, the He of the Where and When. "You can't be here when…" but his words trail off along with the sense of urgency. Hand still latched to her jacket he looks around the room, cocking his head to listen to the silence. He doesn't see himself because he's the only Elliot in the room.
Asi's brows arch up, body still under the urgent grasp. Her eyes shift back and forth over him quickly and she begins to frown. "We said we were going to face it, right?" she reminds him gently but firmly, no hesitation or actual question in it. Her eyes glow a neon blue. "Two against one. Beat it back."
She places a hand over his, insistent in her determination to provide support.
Elliot slowly lets go of Asi’s arm, trying to understand the distinction between the memory and her offer to help. It’s hard to separate both from the realization that something bad was supposed to happen, but didn’t. “I think I’m too tired to fight right now,” he says, eyes closing as though he might sleep even here in a dream.
His head leans back against the wall and seems determined to do it. “If this memory didn’t get its attention I think it’s safe to rest here,” he says. “I don’t know what it does when it’s not terrorizing me. And there’s nothing that can deal with it here anyway. I already killed him.”
His eyes open as slits, and he smirks about something. “I wonder if he survived here?” he asks before his eyes close again.
That Elliot is exhausted is plain to see. Not even his dreams will grant him rest.
Asi's eyes half-lid in sympathy, her hand not quite falling even after his does. "I wonder," she echoes in return. "Maybe he even grew up to be happy here. There wasn't an Institute to have wrought horrors, here."
There were plenty of other things, maybe, but she does what she can to guide his thoughts toward gentler what ifs. Far be it from her to antagonize his thoughts now. She lifts a hand, cupping his cheek momentarily. "Rest," Asi bids him before her hand falls and she yet promises, "I'll be here."
Whether to theoretically fight off the demon that might otherwise plague him, or simply to provide company, she leaves up to his interpretation. She does turn, though, sitting against the wall beside him, snugly shoulder to shoulder. "Get some rest," she encourages him again in little more than a murmur.
He does, and with his fear goes the composition of the space. Shapes go first, leaving the room indistinct. Light goes next, leaving nothing to understand as a room. All that remains between them is relief.