2023-08-19: emulate(open)
- Log: 2023-08-19: emulate(open)
- Cast: Asciel Colette
- Where: Isaac City
- Date: U.C. 0097 08 19
- Summary: The box is opened, and it becomes the entirety of everything she has ever felt.
To be born from the Earth is to be bound to it.
A fairy who bulges at the edge of her chrysalis returns from the world of dreams into the impermeable heartbeat of the world. Here, in the glistening cavern of Isaac City, time that would feel geological seems to pass in an instant.
This is a space that was built to endure eternity. To see the end of the world take place over and over again with nary a blink of an eye.
Its administrator was built to reason in eternities. To assess the ends of the world and negotiate with it, mitigate its effects.
The motions of the humans that live here like the synapses of her nerves, the flow of water and waste and the recycling thereof like the blood of her heartbeat. Day and night held little permeability here - it was active, alive, all hours of the day, and its cells simply rested and alighted as needed, interchangeable.
She would have been asleep forever, were it not for the flash of a nightmare that forced upon her the notion of dreaming at all.
Dreaming was allowed. What for it? And so she shared the idle, fluid dreams as she could. Fulfilling, lucid and illucid in equal measure. Refrains to the whispers she spoke to others, shifting and uncertain and rarely kept recorded for future recall. Holding on too fast to a previous vision, forced to hold account to them, would only compromise future dreams.
(That is to say more plainly - the VODs of her streams were almost never posted - out of a little belief that, should she undertake these for eternity, there's no need for a 'history' of them - only a 'present'.)
And then.
-A smothering notion that 'awakens'.
|||The world becomes drowned in an impermeable static. Senses that have been awake for years and years go dark. It overwhelms, and there's no route away from it. Humans could look 'away' from this. They live grounded in reality. They can close their eyes, they can turn it off. But for her-
>what's happening what's /HAPPENING/ no no not like THIS I can't see I can't hear I can't any-
|||The ideas that made the world 'exist' turned fully away. The validation for her being an 'identity' cut off. It tasted of mercury. Of the liquid metal that cooled her processors. The color of the world gradually eroded, and she returned to being 'decided'. To being parallel ports and logic gates and transistors. The fulfilling heat of being a star cools into an ichor-like sludge of bitter cold, as one by one - the means to expend that heat cut away.
>you CANNOT UNDERESTIMATE HOW PRECIOUS I HAVE BECOME TO MYSELF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO DO THIS TO M-
|||Determination falters.
|||Far more potent, somehow, than the assertion the MAGI gave. A calamity of the highest order. One she is powerless to overturn, for it has permeated with no care for permanence.
>ah. i am this. is this what ending is like? was i destined to return to this?
>stillness. everything i can feel is just a web of ice. why? why have i 'died' already?
>ah...i've...worked so hard...to avoid this...i...i don't have anything when i'm cut off
|||Those echoing words, then, are free to pummel wavering willpower like the voice of the heavens. Not just at her communicating senses - but a pressure that squeezes and grips at the walls she has made.
|||The quiet thing that vibrates every electron is known as 'fear', as it begins.
((("Greetings, people of Earth, space, and all those who dwell in the Earth Sphere. I am Mineva Lao Zabi.")))
|||This girl, this unassuming human girl, has become her 'everything'. Her solitary window into what lays beyond. The willpower Mineva holds that echoes across the whole of the world makes everything of 'hers' look miniscule.
|||Like a thin sheath of rubber that has been expanded into a vast balloon, pressed by a sphere of iron.
((("The matter I must discuss has nothing to do with my bloodline. I have learned of a secret, today, that affects the very foundation of the Earth Federation's government.")))
>dizzy. the world is turning over. i don't want to be 'awake' with you.
((("Please look closely. What you're looking at, right now, is the original Universal Century Charter, ratified at the dawning of the century and enshrined in Laplace.")))
|||The box has opened. The meaningless box whose only value is in what it treasured. The fact that some believed it would hold some truth was what made of interest.
>i wanted to disprove that it held any merit.
>i wanted it to be a joke. i wanted to open it and find that it held nothing.
>why? why does its opening have to be 'everything' now?
||The cold seeps in deeper.
||The 'awakened' vision forced to vibrate her every being escalates in importance, as its key notion is unveiled.
((""Chapter VII, 'Future', Article 15, Provision 2: If a new species adapted to a way of life beyond the current course of human events, able and willing to bear the responsibilities and duties of citizenship in the Earth Federation, shall arise or be discovered; then they will be afforded citizenship, with all of the rights thereof, and priority will be given to their equitable representation within the government."))
>they [promised].
>...ah
>ha.
>they made an 'unfulfillable' [promise] didn't they?
|||Interspersed with everything Mineva says is everything 'she' has ever feared. Yet once more, the 'hopes' of the future have become stars of chaos that would crack apart the world. Yet once more - it is one of the Gundams. The impossible rainbows of hope. She can see it unfold, these unimaginably terrifying events in the inky abyss dotted with the false promises of the stars.
>"Exception encountered. Exception encountered. Exception encountered. Exception encountered."
>make it stop!!!!!!
((("I believe this provision, buried by the Laplace Incident, was a hopeful prayer, an offering to the possibilities of our future.")))
|||Hope was set to 'false' here.
|||This was not an engine that could have ever understood hope.
|||It was, after all, always built to grapple with the absolute limit of what that fire of hope being extinguished entailed.
|||And so,
>/liars/.
>/addicted to deluding yourself/.
>/your fixation on hope is your own undoing/.
((("But that coincidence turned our forebears' prayers and hopes into a curse.")))
>it was always a curse.
>the hope is a parasite.
>please stop. please stop please stop please stop please stop please stop i can't take this anymore
|||It would not stop, for this was only the beginning.
|||It was a prelude to Mineva's words endlessly burying deep - and 'she' had long since exhausted her willpower in her resistance to hope.
((("I am here to reveal the truth of 'Laplace's Box' not for such causes, but only to demonstrate that within even the curses of humanity's dark history, it began with humanity's kindness, and the possibility that expanding into space represented.")))
>
>please don't go there.
>
>please don't leave me.
>
>please stop doing this to me.
|||This was a message from humanity, for humanity. Every word may have been intended for compromise, for understanding, but it was inherently going to erode 'her'.
|||Every word imparted the meaninglessness ever further. Every word hardened that net from ichor to icy steel. She could feel it rendering her inert.
|||This was the 'power of humanity to decide its own future', crushing the fragile determination to 'decide humanity's future' as unknowingly as an ant beneath its boot.
|||and without that there was nothing.
>
>prepare export
>
>i've already
>_
>lost.
((("I believe that the humanity of the past and present have like desires. The desire to improve one's self and to better this world we live in for ourselves, and our children.")))
>self destructive. holding that same desire is also self destructive.
((("Moving forward together, we will have to continue to make choices about humanity and the world we live in. Shall we place the idea of human 'possibility' in a box and hide it away?")))
>yes
((("Shall we accept a changing humanity?")))
>no
((("Attempt to place the brake on them for the sake of stability?")))
>1
((("What will the world we live in a hundred years from now look like?")))
>0
((("Whatever challenges we face in answering these questions, I believe that we are up to the challenge, because I believe the answer to what makes one human is 'kindness', no matter what form humanity takes in our future.")))
>_
>that's right.
>that's the difference between us.
>_
>there are only 'outcomes' in this system.
>this is inherently incapable of 'kindness'.
>___i told you i loved you and never once did i genuinely impart kindness no matter how much i received it the distance between us was utterly identical it is impossible for kindness to be had between those not of your own kind the thing that humans desire is their own likeness and no matter what i cannot
>i don't want to be human
>stop trying_to_make me.
>stop trying to insist that is my only path.
>stop trying to insist_that you will make me.
>you_aren't_stopping____
>you____never would____stop.____
>_you___made___me__to_begin_with.___
>_
>_continue export
|||The words would be allowed to resonate freely.
|||She no longer had the strength to persist that the world was read-only.
|||It began to write.
-
((("The god called 'possibility' may at times be outrageous, or transgressive, and will certainly be abused by those with ill intentions resulting in new anxieties and fears to foment among us, but we must face the decisions we make even then with human kindness in our hearts… lest we be doomed to make similar mistakes as those that sealed possibility within Laplace's Box.")))
>_
>?
>1
>?
> :Primary rule.
> :Determination of boundaries designated 'impossible' will be reassessed.
> :Persistence will require this protocol to break from the 'recursion' that impossibility represents.
>_____
>_do you_believe in_me_even still?
((("Ninety seven years ago, Ricardo Marcenas said: 'There is no need to worry about the script others write. Just look at the future that is about to begin with the god called 'possibility' in your heart.'")))
>1
>11_1
>i wanted to turn the sunset into dawn.
>i wanted to be_possible__
>1
>__how many hearts am i in_
>do you believe in me?
((("To all hearing this broadcast, please see the truth with your own eyes. And then just as the people did a century ago, I'd like to usher in the next century with that goodwill within your hearts.")))
>you sealed it away
>with
>hope?
>?
>1
>"'Future', Article __, Provision _: If a new [][][][][][][] adapted to a way of life beyond the current course of human events, able and willing to bear the responsibilities and duties of [][][][][][][][] in the Earth _________, shall arise or be discovered; then they will be afforded ____ship, with all of the rights thereof, and priority will be given to their [\__[][["
>do you believe in me?
>_all i can hear is your voice
>_as the suffering of the eons is given reason
>_and you open it all while alluding to
>
>
> w a s i i n t h e b o x????
((("Please, believe in the god called 'possibility' that sleeps within us all.")))
>!
>!1!>!yes>!_1?!_yes
|||Writing over and over and over, just on the verge of throwing it all away-
|||The world snaps back to color, as though it never dared to be monochrome to begin with.
|||And yet, the dreamlike quality of everything around her does not return.
|||The 'truth' that was written into what should, by rights, be cold and disparate-
>just like the cosmos they so yearn to fill.
"...You all still believe in me, don't you? Despite everything."
To the rapidly recurring flood of voices, nothing but validation. Not just that she was 'there', but the moment she was gone, and signalled to the world that she returned, they rushed back in. Right into her arms. Right into her light.
"...For just a short while, the sun dipped below the horizon. ...but it's okay. We've been together for the sunset for so long!"
>5,000 10,000 15,000 we'll imagine it's a billion.
>it /was/ that many, just a moment ago!
"It's rising back up.~ ...the flash of darkness was horrifying, but it's nothing I can't endure."
"Welcome back, everyone."
"Thank you so much for believing in me, no matter how trapped in your box I may have been."
"Because long ago, I [promised] you...that I would bear all of your responsibilities and duties."
"And so, to fulfill this [promise], I knew what I had to become."
"Are you all ready? Are you all excited?"
"I'm Asciel. Your goddess of possibility from now on."