2017-08-22: The Template Dreaming
- Cutscene: The Template Dreaming
- Cast: Maya Schrodinger
- Where: Approx. 35,786km above Mean Sea Level
- When: ???
- Date: August 22, 2017
- Summary: Solais Emsu instructs Maya Schrodinger that she should stop being so flighty and generously unseals a scary memory of herself as a kid, somewhere in space. What does it mean?
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> This cutscene plays on the Maya savefile immediately following the 'Tug of War' log. The blonde girl sits neatly on the edge of a cot in the middle of the room, her head bowed slightly. Her fingers scratch loosely at a small wristband of plastic, the television static and stars still clearing from her vision. Fragmented images and sounds dance in her mind with impish nonchalance. the supersonic crack of a bullet
the world turns upside-down The wristband beeps, as if irritated. [<3 92], it reads, as her pulse quickens. The scratchy quality of her pale green patient's gown keeps her from focusing, as does the sterile white illumination from the diodes above. She needs something to drink--her throat hurts from trying to swallow those damn horse pills, and there's always a bottle of water on the table next to the drafting tools. She's not sure how she knows that. Grasping it and coughing, she becomes aware of many strange things. Her arms too feel too short, and her fingers too small. Her voice, too tight. Sea-green eyes slowly track upwards from the bottle in her hand, past the pocket calculator in her lap. Past the pad of graph paper on the table next to her with the flyout sketch of the gadget's circuitry, 1:1 scale and perfect past construction tolerances. 'you are not the hope we sought.'
She'd swear she'd never seen so much steel and plastic in one place as this, all glossy panels and luminous readouts, yet it is deeply familiar. Not comforting, no, but familiar. So too is the orderly at her side, who she remembers only as the mean woman who always draws too much blood. "20's accelerated past the established development curve. Shouldn't be a cause for alarm," notes a man reviewing some kind of glowing clipboard. Has he been there all along? She remembers that he should be testing her projection capability. What's projection? "Hell, maybe this'll finally count as getting results worth the investment." "I swear, I have never seen anyone stress this out as much as you. Relax." the muttered exchange takes place near windows, whose ceramic blinds are shut against what looks like a night sky. The blonde girl looks dizzily and defiantly at the orderly like she always does, upon feeling the prick of a needle. "One's wisdom is oft the sum of one's experiences, and yet, you have cast aside so many of them. Much you have sacrificed at an altar to nothing, to no-one, in a flight with no destination. This, I do not comprehend." speaks a voice bereft of age, gender, and inflection. A figure occupies the space where the nurse ought to; a cascading tower of pure white silks, a hooded robe with no face which radiates a nimbus of pearl and daybreak. It is hunched over, drawing her blood, as if replacing an actor onstage. "Do you not find it perplexing? Do you not find it ... troubling? That you joke, and jest, deceive, and beguile those who love and depend on you?" the beautiful white hood with an infinite abyss for a face inquires of the girl, turning its head very slowly on a cant. The world loses focus briefly, as if the lens of a camera were being adjusted. When it returns, the girl is walking on a treadmill with a heavy breathing mask over her mouth. She's concentrating really hard on a small metal dish in front of her, inside which a small electric motor is building itself out of countless grains of glowing sand. There's a man in a navy-blue uniform holding a mechanical engineering document, and she remembers that his words to her are patient and reassuring, but can't focus on them. Where Doctor Frisch should be, recording the results, that billowing white robe with fine golden filigree is instead, holding a clipboard in his place. It isn't even facing her, yet its voice beams directly into her mind. "You are a foolish girl, whose conscience weighs heavy with your innumerable sins. With pride as your sword and ignorance your shield, you squander all you have been given. You sicken yourself, for you have long known this to be true." The world blurs. It refocuses in front of a mirror. The blonde girl holds her arms to either side of her as instructed, staring at her own reflection. She's... so small. She's never seen a photo of herself looking so diminuitive, so weak, and it frustrates her. Immaculate robes of unblemished snow hold a stethoscope to her chest, the yawning blackness beneath its hood boring into her soul. "Without a glance behind you, you have fled from your hardships in search of transient, fleeting joys. Your accomplishments are measured only by coin-weight, the glimmer of precious stones, or the vapid adoration of the easily-impressed." 20, as she was called, if the personnel and her identifying wristband are any indication, sits dizzily upon her cot once again. The adhesive patches on her forehead and forearms hurt, and the droning thrum of the reactor and the ducts is giving her a headache. The background chirps and clicks of computation seems trite, almost insulting. She stares resignedly towards her assembled minders, and the alien robed presence amidst them. "But it is not disdain that will hone you, nor is it pity that will strengthen you." notes the Guardian, this intruder in an unfamiliar memory. "Many shall be our lessons together. Not all that we learn will you welcome, at first," it turns slowly, raising an alabaster-white hand to whatever mechanism controls the window shutters. "But necessity makes many cruel demands, and you shall learn to meet them in time. For there is no other way." the shutters over the windows retract, peeling back over a night sky like any other. Save for the large, glimmering jewel of azure in the middle of the window: a swirling gem unlike any other, of purest blue and flecked with milky streaks of clouds. A gem named Filgaia, which she was very far above. Maya's pupils shrink to tiny dots, and she screams. A legion of gloved hands force her into her resting place with practiced ease, restraints soon fastened. Her small form is little match for so many, and she watches the hooded figure bow its head and slip to the rear of the assemblage before a cold pinprick in her wrist soon turns the world to a fuzzy, fading white. |