hadriel_logs | Event Log: Memories Past

Event Log: Memories Past

Who: Everyone
What: Memory Share Event!
Where: All around the city
When: November 14th-20th
Warnings: Please remember to tag all warnings for memory shares!

Have you ever looked through someone else's eyes? Heard through their ears, spoken with their tongue? The gods have tried to teach some of you empathy, but it's time you learned the hard way, exactly what the others here have been through. For a week, every time you brush skin to skin with someone, you'll experience a memory of theirs: happy, sad, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that it feels real to you.

The first touch may come as a surprise- it lasts only for a split second but may feel like an eternity, where you're trapped in someone else's memory. After that, it could be more expected, and some may even figure out how to control it and share specific scenes from their past with others. Or, you might wear gloves and long sleeve shirts for awhile, nobody's judging.

Maybe curtail the handholding for awhile- or go right ahead, if that's your thing. After all, you never really know somebody unless you've walked a mile in their shoes, right?

► This log covers November 14th-20th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you die in a memory, you don't die in real life, but if you do die in real life please let us know here.

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One moment, Wash is stepping aside to let a stranger pass him in a narrow shop aisle, and the next he's on a planet he's never seen before, observing aliens he's never encountered. He's somehow aware that this isn't his experience, but it sure feels like it is. The other species proves to be hostile and whoever he's seeing through the eyes of reacts just like he would -- fast and efficient taking them down to save a comrade.

New galaxy. Not the Milky Way. But he tries not to worry, because these aren't UNSC soldiers either. The armor's way too different. He just has to ride this out because as familiar as it feels, it's not his world.

When his vision blacks out Wash can feel himself tilting, and he stumbles into a shelf as he comes back to himself. Back to the shop, where the stranger who brushed past him is down the aisle giving him a funny look. Wash straightens back up and wonders if he should even bring up what he just saw at all... it's clearly some Hadriel bullshit, maybe a memory the guy doesn't want brought up. But. It's so familiar.

"Hey, uh. I just saw -- what's the "new galaxy"?"

Scott isn't even sure what happened; he did notice something odd, though. How the stranger paused when Scott squeezed by him in the aisle. For a second he thought maybe he just really doesn't like being touched — maybe he's one of those types that absolutely freezes on contact or something, even if it was just a brief brush of the shoulders. Either way, he's glancing back at him once or twice as he continues on his way when the guy just stumbles like he lost his balance.

His brows furrow in confusion but he doesn't hesitate to walk back over, a few cautious steps, just to see if the guy was alright. He doesn't have much time to question him, though. "New galaxy" — where did he...

"What?" he asks at first, sounding completely dumbfounded. It takes him a moment to piece together what he's asking, the fact that something just now didn't feel right, which prompts him to give an answer after all. "...Andromeda galaxy?" There's a pause. "Did you just — you were going to say you saw something?"

"I don't know, I said-- you said it wasn't the Milky Way. I saw rough terrain, a crashed shuttle, and aliens. Not like any I've ever met, and someone called it a first contact?" It's confusing, having been in the memory rather than just viewing it from outside like those dreams, over a year ago now, but that's what it felt like. Real as anything but not his.

Wash sizes the stranger up, trying to confirm what happened. His voice is the same as the one in the vision and he's the right size. Okay then. This'll be a fun week or two.

"You fight pretty well," he comments offhandedly, and there's the instinct to offer his hand to shake but Scott can see the moment he decides that's a terrible idea right now, with what just happened, and yanks it back awkwardly. "I'm Wash. Are you new?"

"What?" he repeats again, brows furrowed further and lips twisted in a look that's stuck halfway between being confused and a little freaked out. But he shakes his head a bit to rid himself of those feelings so he can assess what the hell is happening. It's the attempt at a handshake — the quick withdraw upon some realization that makes things sort of click for him. They brushed shoulders, the guy froze up, stumbled, and now spoke of things that he probably shouldn't know. Somehow, he saw it.

"Uh, shit. Thanks?" He laughs awkwardly, nodding his head a bit in greeting since yes, a handshake is a terrible idea. "Ryder. Just got here a few days ago so you'll excuse me if I'm having a little trouble understanding how literally anything around here works."

He makes a...vague gesture, indicating things like this right here because honestly.

"You'll never really understand it, nobody does, but you can figure out what's happening and learn to tell what's god bullshit. They mess with us on purpose, seems like right now we're sharing memories, which..." To be as polite to his new acquaintance as possible, instead of screaming 'fuck you' at whatever god decided this was the new game to play with them, Wash just flips off the ceiling.

"I've seen worse, at least. So where was that, exactly?"

Scott's eyes trail up to the ceiling as Wash flips it off, offering a small nod of understanding. Everything, predictably, all goes back to these beings claiming to be gods. He can't blame the guy for being sore. And at the possibility that people's memories can just be viewed by complete strangers...well, he's glad it wasn't anything after that little incident. It only got so much worse from there. Or something really embarrassing. That would have also sucked.

"Habitat 7," he answers with a bit of a sigh, not for lack of wanting to talk about it, but just because the whole situation still stings like a bitch. "It was supposed to be a lush world with a tropical region and everything. One of the worlds we surveyed for a potential home when we left the Milky Way. Too bad the planet and everything on it tried to kill us. 0/10, would not recommend."

Yeah, Wash is. Not a fan of this trick, but that's about par for the course and he'll have his meltdown over it later, when not around a newbie. Probably when it settles in that he can't touch anyone he cares about until it's over. For now he's at least interested enough in Scott's answer to be distracted.

"It didn't look very lush, but I guess you could've landed in the wrong part. But uh... why did you have to leave the Milky Way? Just wondering. My world hasn't colonized all of it, even with the Covenant and everybody else taking up a huge amount." Before Scott can ask who that is, Wash fills him in -- he's used to no one knowing. "That's a sort of alien UN, a whole bunch of different species that encountered each other first and made an alliance. And then declared genocidal war on humanity."

A lot of this conversation is missing context and Scott felt his head completely empty in an attempt to keep himself from trying to explain any of it, at least for a split second, hence his pause. It was all still overwhelming to him even if he had direction when he left Eos. Or, tried to leave Eos. Thanks, Hadriel.

The bit about the Covenant was explained so easily Scott's brows raise more than a bit in surprise. Christ. "Well, we didn't have to leave." And that fact alone is the reason for his hesitance as he speaks. They didn't have to leave. "The Andromeda Initiative was supposed to be a chance at something new for a lot of people. A resource rich galaxy where you can start fresh, explore, find excitement. A 600 hundred year one way trip. A lot of people either left behind old lives they wanted nothing to do with or left family and friends to be part of something they thought would be great. Annnnd then the Kett happened. That's, uh — the Kett are the aliens you...saw." That is very awkward to say. "We kept running into them after that."

What, is that not a universal experience, genocidal aliens? It sure seems to be around these parts, Wash thinks when he sees the raised eyebrows.

"We get along a little better now... the war ended a few years ago." And they kinda won? They won, but. It's hard to say such a long war ever really has a winner. It had been happening for as long as Wash had been alive. He listens to Scott's explanation, though, seemingly interested but mildly confused.

"This is going to sound cynical, but why didn't you anticipate that kind of trouble? Nearly every species I've ever heard of tried to kill the first new one they found. And usually, in their history, had tried to kill each other for whatever differences they had along the way. It's basically a fact of sapient life, where I'm from that if they don't know what you are they're going to try to kill you first thing." Just how advances is this guy's world that they thought that kind of adventure would be fun and great for whatever species decided to partake? Wash would consider at least a 75% chance of death. He shrugs a little, apologetic now. "Sorry. I guess there have always been explorers, they just also mostly died horribly. Are things any better with the Kett when you're from?"

"Don't get me wrong," he starts with a raised hand. "We knew it would be hard no matter how much they tried to sell us on utopia. It's not like humanity hadn't had experience with first contact turning into all out war either. That's just the kind of...thing the Initiative kept pushing to the civilians." In other words, Scott in no way thought it would be all sunshine and rainbows. He was one of those people who left because he had no reason to stay.

"It just...we couldn't anticipate how bad things were going to be. They blew all our expectations for 'bad' out of the water." He sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets. That sigh is an answer itself, really. "The Kett are, uh...still very much a problem. I — we, were still dealing with them before I got here. Hadriel has some impeccable timing, but I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone here that."

Wash winces a little, visibly. "Yeah... that was the worst speech ever. Of all time. The Initiative sounds like they had an ulterior motive or something, I'm glad most of you were sharp enough to have a clue but it sucks that it got even worse than you did prepare for."

He's also. Very familiar with Hadriel's sense of timing.

"You're not wrong, the Door doesn't care if you were busy. I was in the middle of a firefight, I woke up here back when we were still living in a cave, and thought I'd been killed and this was hell or something. Apparently that's not the case, but. Until my friends started showing up to prove that the time-space continuum doesn't matter, I was sure I'd left them in the shit."

Edited 2018-11-17 23:14 (UTC)

The thing about Scott is that as soon as he's down it's not hard to bring him back up. He chuckles a little at that, if only because he's sure he could give Wash a run for his money in terms of bad speeches. He can't even end a meeting without it sounding lame. Though with that comment about ulterior motives Scott feels a knot twist in his stomach. But you know what? He's going to ignore that. He's going to ignore it and pretend as if it wasn't a thought that had been expressed at all. Ever. Not a thought that had ever crossed his mind either.

He's so very fortunate that Wash managed to say something that caught the rest of his attention.

"Wait, whoa — doesn't matter? That's a hell of a statement there. Care to elaborate?"

"Oh, uh... time is made up and space doesn't matter, to the Door. It pulls people from the same home world but all different points in time, and by all accounts you go back to the second you left." Without remembering Hadriel, but Wash never knows how people are going to take that and he took it terribly himself, so. Not gonna mention it to this guy, not yet, not when he's trying to sound uplifting.

"I've never gone home and come back like some people, but I've got friends here from before me and after me. The one from before, he went back and continued with how I remember, and the ones after remember me being there for that whole fight. So at some point, I must go home, right? I don't know how this shit works but I think that's some kind of paradox if I don't. The them that's here wouldn't exist if I never went back?"

Scott's features grow noticeably more confused towards the end there, but overall he seems to get the general idea. A wave of relief washes over him, escaping in a sigh that seems to release a ton of pent up and forced back anxieties. His people were starving, arks were still missing, and Kett were sure to be spreading their numbers around the longer he stayed away. At least, that's what he thought.

"So, things are going on as they should be right now...somewhere, even with me gone. But at the same time if the Door suddenly decided it hated my face and sent me back tomorrow, no time would have passed at all?"

"No, it's more like.... are you familiar with slipspace? I think it's really more like we're in a stasis pocket. Time passes here, but barely if at all at home. So we can go back and time dilates again, we were here for ages but we didn't miss anything, like someone stuck in a slipspace pocket. And since the Door seems to be access all possible points in time at once, it can drag us back from any time and the time distortion looks inconsistent."

He worries that didn't make sense. Better to just ask. "Does that make sense? I'm not even sure I'm right because the gods call it magic, I've just thought about it a lot."

Slipspace? Like FTL? That's what Scott is gathering from that explanation at least, so he follows it a lot easier than the last thing Wash explained. "Yeah...I think I get it now."

He laughs a little, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Easier explanation to digest than 'magic', honestly."

Wash nods, looking glad that Ryder understands it. "It makes sense to me but I'm using my world's mechanics, you know? Pretending the Door is a teleporter I don't understand. Slipspace isn't FTL, it's more like a hole in time and space."

"Hey, that's what I've been doing." Excuse him for sounding a little too excited that someone else has been pretending the door is just a teleporter. It's the little things that make you happy sometimes, okay?

"A teleporter advanced enough to grab you from just about anywhere but not advanced enough to make sure you don't come out the other end looking like an abstract art piece, apparently." He just assumes that was some awful malfunction.

"Oh, that -- those things weren't normal at all. I think it's because the gods have been messing with the Door. Awhile ago we went out on expeditions to find the physical pieces of it and put it back together to try and control it. So like... the command interface was broken but the portal it controlled still works, and now we're repairing it so we can program coordinates again."

Since putting things in his world's terminology seems to be working for them.

Edited 2018-11-18 22:03 (UTC)

"Okay, I'm really glad that's not normal."

Like, really, he just made a joke of it because that's what he does but it was honestly depressing as all hell. But yes, it's working like a charm. This is the least confused Scott has been since arriving.

"Any idea how the repairs are looking?"

"Well enough I think they're going to use it to move us next time. It's just a guess, but this?" Wash waves a hand between them to indicate what just happened. "We're moving soon and usually before a move we get a Fear trick because he moves the city. This doesn't feel like Fear. It's... well I'm not sure whose it is, but I saw Hope tell someone that Confusion would be the one to try and hide the city after the move. So it's a guess but I think this is her, and they're going to use the Door. But we'd have to ask Sorrow for confirmation."

He's still following, but it's clear that talk of the gods just makes him feel all kinds of weird. Fear, moving cities, memory sharing...Scott runs a hand down his face. "Right."

At least it seems like this Door will get fixed again. Yay?

"Well, this is definitely a confusing experience, so I'll take your word for it." Or his word about Hope's word? Whatever.

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Event Log: Memories Past

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