theairlock | the final week

[Eight weeks. Eight weeks of friendship and love, death and loss, hope and despair all muddled together in a cocktail that's too sweet on the tongue and leaves an acid-y pit in the stomach. With nine of them left (ten counting their dear but lone surviving host), things look darker than ever. Come Sunday morning the last of the Champions missing memories will be returned to them while they sleep. For some of them this will reveal answers, for others it might just be a fate worse than death. They could even be death.

But how does the song go? "It's always darkest before the dawn"?

There are no announcements from PAL this week. Not even morning and evening announcements.

Sunday Monday Tuesday

[ooc: Welcome to endgame, everyone! We're all very proud of you for making it all the way to the end. As you can see this is going to be a short IC week but we promise things will not be going down until this weekend (7/7-7/9). On Tuesday we'll be unveiling the OOC post for what to expect during the final investigation. There is no official AC this week, just a check-in and as mentioned above characters will be at their true canon points on Sunday morning.

Buckle up, kids, the ride's not over yet.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's not--it's not--there's a lot. I don't know where to start. I couldn't tell Ardyn because it was--there was too much? And it's still a lot.

And it's not even a lot that I experience, but it also is?

I...okay, um... So last time. Last...Sunday, I remembered getting talked into some wild shit with a Freelancer, Wash, because they found Tex's ship, but she wasn't there, and then there's this big fucked up bad guy stealing Freelancer AI and tech and we have to stop him, or Wash does because I don't give a shit, and one of the AI we found before he got taken tried to leave a message through me to Wash that memory is the key, and Wash figured out what it means, and I don't know if any of this is going to make sense, really?

Project Freelancer was one of humanity's last ditch efforts to find a way to end the war. A bunch of soldiers with experimental tech and an AI to help run their shit and try to make one mega super soldier. They had a bunch of AI, like Omega who's an angry piece of shit, or Delta who's logical, or--there's a bunch of them? I don't know--I didn't know how many.

But the project--see this stuff is coming from Wash, so I can't even really verify--they only had one AI. One full, smart AI. And smart AI, they're based on people, on a person's mind. So they only got one. But they needed more for their experiments. So you've got the Alpha, the original, the full blown person-type AI, and you can't copy an AI, so you have to break it another way. You fracture an AI like you fracture a human psyche.

[He's distant, or more distant, the longer he goes on, hands balling in his pants and smoothing them out again.] I'm not making any sense, it's complicated, it's not as complicated as time travel but--I don't know that I'm going to make any sense.

Just--give me a second.

[No, Church really isn't making any sense. Maybe this would be easier of Junpei were writing things out--he's a visual thinker--but that is not the cool, sensitive friend thing to do, especially when the things Church is saying are--

He's not going in order, but as Junpei backtracks, as he slides pieces together--Church is an AI, Church ripped himself apart for experiments, no moral code--an ugly, chilling picture emerges.]

You're saying... this Project Freelancer, they... Are you saying you're--that full person AI, and they...

['You fracture an AI like you fracture a human psyche.'

'You have to beak it another way.']

[It's a disgusting slithering disconnect, because he wants to say I'm the Alpha, but it doesn't...it doesn't want to happen, it doesn't want to come out. Because it's not him.]

The Director of Project Freelancer had an idea. [The words are his, the voice is his, but he can only hear Wash's version of it. It's the story he's got.] He wanted more AI for tests. He only had the one. You can't copy a smart AI. But he figured he could...make them himself. You fragment a mind. You... [He grimaces at the fact that he's going to say it word for word.] It's like reverse engineering a personality disorder. It...compartmentalizes aspects because it needs to shed it or it'll go crazy and won't survive. And these...aspects, they become the AI fragments that the Freelancer agents got to use.

...Jesus Christ.

[Junpei's never known Church to be anything but a real, warm, solid human being--good for giant bear hugs or petty-ass mock fights, for the casual, fleeing contact of guys being guys, for bodily carrying him out of danger, he's not heavy, he's my brother. So even as Church talks about this in third person, distancing himself from a reality he doesn't remember, Junpei can't help but see Church suffering, the man next to him shattering himself for military experiments--

'Have you heard about the Ganzfeld Experiment?']

You--they did that to you? So they could... What the fuck?

[Another realization pops into his head. By now, he's fisted his hands in Church's bedsheets, as if he has to anchor himself there or else fly off to punch an entire branch of the space Marines.]

And they kept you in combat? After--after what they did to you? Making you break pieces off and... I'm gonna kill them.

[HE'S GOING TO FIGHT EVERY SHITTY OLD MAN IN THE UNIVERSE!]

Edited (I'M GOING TO FIGHT HTML!!!!) 2017-07-05 23:14 (UTC)

It's not--okay. I'm trying to figure out--

[Breathe. He can breathe. He's trying to breathe.]

The Alpha got--that happened to him, to it, and it kept shedding things, logic, anger, creativity, I don't know, but then...memory. He ripped out his memories because he couldn't deal with it. He literally couldn't keep his sanity and his memories of the torture-- [Shit, there's that word.] He couldn't.

And then he got moved. Epsilon was put in Washington's head, but he was the memories, and it drove them both crazy, so they stopped trying to break the Alpha. Things went nuts, the Project started breaking down, I don't know. And then they sent the Alpha away. Hid it. Where nobody would find it.

So.

I guess that's me.

Or what's left of me.

Church...

[Torture. They tortured his best friend and hid him away, and he didn't even know it. He forgot what they did to him.

Sitting beside him, being there, isn't enough. Junpei wraps an arm around Church's back and holds him close. He's not heavy, he's my brother.]

You're you. All that shit that happened to you, that's--that's such bullshit that they did that, but you--all I've ever known is you the way you are. And even--even after all that, you still...

[How can that be right? Shedding logic, all right, maybe, but anger? Creativity? How does that make any sense, when Church is right up there with him and Yuuri and Ardyn for wrath, when he's the one making lube slip 'n slides out of the dance studio and letting Cece tape him to a wall and being their friend?]

Want me to fight the space army? I'm gonna fight the space army. You're the best of us, Church, and I'm going to make them know it before I'm done.

[The touch is...good, it's good, it's grounding. It's going to be what grounds all of them, when the need it. And Church is still...here, mostly here, not when he first woke up and was still in Wash's head, still in the Meta's head, still digital and ghostly. He doesn't mind the idea of leaning against Junpei, because if he can't rely on Junpei, who the hell else can he?]

I didn't believe him. I mean, obviously. Tex, uh, Tex is one, too. Part of me, I guess? I don't...I don't know what that means for everything I think I remember. Everything before Blood Gulch. It can't--none of it can have actually happened, and only some of it could be residual memories from whoever the fuck I'm copied off of, and that's just a big chunk of my life that just doesn't fucking exist!

[Wow that got...steadily louder and louder and ended in loudness.]

And--and the--I had to--I had to distract the Meta because all these pieces he was collecting were looking for me and nobody but Delta even knew what I was, and then while the Meta's distracted, Wash had to trigger an emp! [...wait did he just--] To erase us all except for Epsilon, because the Reds and Caboose needed to get out with that fucking tin can full of memories and get it to the authorities so that everyone involved can get arrested or whatever! All because he fucking guilt-tripped me into finding out about myself and everyone the hell around me!

Like--like what the FUCK, okay, why did they--why--they just shoved me in a robot with a bunch of FUCKING MORONS and let me think--

I...jesus, I don't know how--all those pieces and holes--

the final week

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