TEST DRIVE MEME #1

[sailmods]

1. now it's fun to wake up in a strange chateau

[you wake up.

it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.

the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:

Dear Passenger(s),

As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.

At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!

See You Real Soon!

Sincerely,
Gal Friday

you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.

you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]

Welcome aboard! We're so glad to have you!

[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.]

2. messing with my mind was fun at the time

[freshly lei'd, your legs are forced to lead out onto the deck and towards your muster station. the same woman is there, carrying a clipboard. this time, she introduces herself as Gal Friday, the cruise director, before immediately going into the muster drill spiel. it is very boring, and you are not allowed to move, except when you are required to show you know how to put your life vest on. you could try to not do this, but Friday will move to stand in front of you very closely and just. look in your direction until such a time that you decide to do it. and I'm sure your fellow passengers want you to just get on with it, too.

but, once it ends? she reiterates her desire to welcome you aboard. and, then, you're free.

well, free to move about the ship at your own leisure, of course. which is a kind of free, and probably the best one you can hope for. you could try to escape, maybe, if you have the means to; Friday certainly won't be one to stop you. that's what the barrier is for, after all.

but, wouldn't you much rather have fun?

the buffet is full. the pool is open. the casino jingles and chimes.

welcome aboard.]

3. lots of mystery in the history of the devils I knew

[you were never alone.

a few days have passed since you first arrived on the Serena Eterna. perhaps you've made yourself a little routine, and settled in a bit. or maybe you haven't done that at all. either way, you're here, and it looks like somebody is pretty pissed off about it.

it starts small. sometimes nearby plates skid off tables, or a pool chair upends while you're walking next to it. and sometimes that chair is aimed right at your head. objects are moving with quickly increasing frequency, and a wide variety of styles: some are dropped, or pushed, and others and others are tossed, but a few of the items are thrown, with great force and odd accuracy. if Friday is around during the lighter moments, she simply titters and cleans up whatever mess is made. if a pot of soup sails off the buffet line and nearly drenches you in boiling minestrone, she simply walks away.

and then there's the voices. hundreds, maybe thousands, calling out. not all are intelligible English, but you seem to understand them anyway. some sound scared, or angry. some are screams, others whispers. some sound entirely strange, while others are achingly familiar. and they're all saying the same exact thing:

Get Out.]

Comments

[serialskiller]

"It can be." Murderbot is hesitating, trying to decide if it wants to elaborate more on its own nature. It probably sounds like it's hedging a little, and it seems to be looking only at the books, not even glancing toward Pal. It's a very anxious bot.

[hellonspectacles]

Pal notes the way the man shrinks into himself and considers him in silence for a moment, curious to know more but not wishing to make him uncomfortable. “How do you watch your stored serials?” That seems like an innocuous-enough question. “Is there some projection mechanism, or is the data sent directly to your optic nerve?”

[serialskiller]

"Not even the optic nerve. I run them through my mind most of the time. Though when I've been lucky enough to be around a display surface I'm allowed to use, I like to play them externally. I don't know why, but it's different that way."

Maybe it's because it's not usually allowed to use display surfaces. That's an act of rebellion just as sitting is. Something it gets to choose to do now.

[hellonspectacles]

"No, that makes perfect sense. The act of watching a story unfold is very different than downloading it directly into your brain, I imagine." He offers the man an easy smile, glad that his discomfort doesn't seem to have lingered. "I have to admit, I'd be curious to watch one of your serials, assuming it would be acceptable to play one externally for someone else as well as yourself."

[serialskiller]

"Find me a projector or display surface and an aux cord, and I'd be glad to show you. There's no wireless communications aboard this ship; no electronic signals at all. Which is the strangest thing about the whole thing to me--we don't even seem to have sonar or radar systems, as far as I can tell. No surveillance cameras."

Which, on top of not having satellite feeds to download new serials from, paints a very odd picture.

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes nods, pleased. "I'll see what I can hunt down. I have to admit, I'm as curious to see how your mechanism works as I am to watch the serials."

With a hmm, he takes off his glasses, fiddling with them thoughtfully. "I wonder if there is, in fact, somewhere on this ship where one could send or receive a signal--the bridge, for instance, which is mysteriously impossible to visit. But I take your point. It's a purposeful choice, isn't it? And why? To ensure we have no contact with the outside world?"

Pal finds that reasoning frightfully plausible--and it's familiar, too. "This ship reminds me a little bit of the place I was before I was brought here." A beat. "It's not a good thing."

[serialskiller]

"More of a kidnapping or imprisonment than a vacation. Some have even speculated that they're dead and this is an afterlife. I find that unlikely."

This unit is reasonably sure it doesn't have a soul.

[hellonspectacles]

At the mention of the afterlife, Palamedes brightens and grows excited. “No, no, not the afterlife. Certainly not. But a space that exists outside or between both life and afterlife? A bubble of space where space should not exist? That sounds quite possible indeed. The one thing I’m struggling with is that a person—or group of people—would have to construct and maintain the entire illusion of the ship, which would be quite an undertaking.”

“I could barely hold together the idea of a single room, and even that should have been impossible.” This last part he tosses off casually: yes, I did create my very own tiny dimension, it was pretty cool.

[serialskiller]

"What, like a virtual reality room? Those went our of style for entertainment in my time long ago. I never got to try one."

But Palamedes' certainty that this isn't an afterlife manages to (somehow) hit reassuring for Murderbot.

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes quickly shakes his head. He has never heard of a virtual reality room before, but it sounds nothing like a bubble in the River. “Ah, no. Not like that. Well, I suppose this ship could be like that—you’d know better than me—but that isn’t what I meant.” Always eager to explain his theories and delighted to teach, he puts aside his cataloging and goes to perch on the edge of the armchair across from his new friend. Congrats, Murderbot, you’re about to get full Palamedes Sextus Explains experience.

“So there’s the universe we live in—or maybe universes is more accurate, given the strange variety of this place. And then there’s…what exists outside the universe. Where I come from we call it the River, and we do talk about the souls that cross the River after death, though I’d be loathe to call it an afterlife in anything but the most literal sense.” He tents his fingers together. “Some time ago, I theorized that it might be possible to create a pocket of space in the River, or at least near its edge, that could function like our universe. Like blowing a bubble in a body of water.”

“I think that might be going in here: we’re in a pocket of reality outside reality, essentially. But I need more data. And I need to find out how they're doing it.”

[serialskiller]

"I'm not sure I understood any of that."

Well, at least it's honest.

"I mean, I processed the words, but I can't wrap my mind around the idea of anything being outside the universe."

[hellonspectacles]

“I get that a lot,” says Palamedes, who appreciates the candor. “Sorry.” He hums thoughtfully. “I suppose you could say it’s also a bit like your virtual reality room, assuming I’m picturing it correctly. Only the room exists outside time and space. And isn’t a room.”

[serialskiller]

The machine part of Murderbot's mind is still throwing error messages, but it begins to be able to imagine it with that clarification.

"Right. Okay."

A pause, and it asks a question that it's a little sheepish about. "Is it only the humans of your world that possess souls?" And it's asked so very neutrally, it's hard to tell where the emphasis lies, on humans or his world.

[hellonspectacles]

Pal tents his fingers again, considering this question as seriously as he would any other. “Religious occultists, who would claim to be the experts on this sort of thing, would say no. Souls are a blessing from the Lord Undying, and why would anything but a human being be thus blessed?” He wrinkles his nose, thinking of the insufferably pious Silas Octakiseron. “But I tend to believe that people who think like that are full of shit.”

“Where I come from, scholars talk about ‘the ghost in the thing.’ The traces left behind on an object as it moves through the world that can reveal its age, where it came from, how it has been used and what it has ‘seen.’ And is that so different from a human soul? Nothing I’ve studied indicates otherwise.”

[serialskiller]

"Ah." It lapses into an uncertain silence for a long moment, not sure what to do with even the possibility of a soul. That's scary in a way that almost nothing else is.

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes looks at the man for a long moment in silence. "Does that trouble you?" he asks finally, sounding genuinely curious.

[serialskiller]

"I've never really considered the possibility of having a soul before. I don't know how to feel about it." It's sure having an emotion though. It just...can't wrap words around it neatly.

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes lifts an eyebrow, taking in the implication of this answer. It certainly isn't what he expected, though looking back on their conversation, maybe he should have realized it.

"You're not human?" he says, his tone again one of polite curiosity.

[serialskiller]

“No. I’m a cyborg security construct. My organic tissue is cloned from human DNA, but I’m not human at all.”

And yet, it came to the library because it just wants new stories.

[hellonspectacles]

"Fascinating," Palamedes murmurs under his breath. Then, "My apologies, I didn't realize. We don't have anything like you where I come from. Our constructs are entirely organic and non-sentient."

Skeletons. He's talking about skeletons. Which, even on the Sixth house--not a powerhouse for bone magic--do most of the manual labor.

[serialskiller]

Murderbot's picturing fully-organic clone slaves instead.

"In my universe, that was past the line of unethical. If something is fully organic, it's a person. Bots are more machine than not, so we're not people."

[hellonspectacles]

"To be fair, trees are organic, and I don't think anyone would call them people." But that isn't the point, of course. Pal puts one hand in the deep pocket of his grey robe and takes out a tiny shard of bone, which he places in the palm of his hand. After a moment it begins to grow into the shape of a human skull.

"We use skeletal constructs for most physical labor and tasks too dangerous for human beings. And I've never had a discussion about the nature of the soul with a single one--or about anything else for that matter."

[serialskiller]

"If you constructed them with the capability to speak, do you think they might?" It's not sure if it's fascinated or creeped out by the skull-summoning trick, watching and keeping well away from the weird magic shit.

[hellonspectacles]

"No," Palamedes answers without missing a beat. "Even if one could make them speak--which is possible, but would require an enormous amount of skill and power--they could only say exactly what you told them to. They would be puppets, in essence."

He makes a gesture with his free hand, and the skull seems to collapse in on itself, returning to its former shape. Pal pockets the bone shard. "A revenant could possess a construct, but the construct itself would only be a sort of vehicle. Even that would be tricky, though." Brightly, he adds, "I've been working on three different papers outlining the theoretical possibilities."

[serialskiller]

"Then. I am not comparable to a construct from your world."

Because it speaks and thinks laterally and all that jazz. But it still knows it's constructed. Built. Not a person like everyone else on the ship is.