chiseler | Dying, everyone's reminded, hearts are washed in misery drenched in gasoline [Wed Week 10]

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!the cradle project

Dying, everyone's reminded, hearts are washed in misery drenched in gasoline [Wed Week 10]

[It's only Wednesday and already everything happens so much all the time. He should be used to this, but he's not. It's like another prophecy dangling before his eyes, bits and pieces of a puzzle he's receiving but not putting together fast enough and that he's being forced to participate in.

Frankly, it fucking sucks.

But it's Wednesday and now that he has his bearings back he's thinking. He's kept track of the most important people except for one. He wanted to give her a few days to calm down from the trial, but he hadn't forgotten. It's for that reason that sometime around lunch when most people are in other parts of the ship Luke heads back to the rooms corridor. Two sheets of paper in his pocket seemingly weigh way more than they should, but he's decided they should maybe be addressed. Maybe. Depending. As it is he also has a notebook and his datapad tucked under his arm, Backbiter strapped to his back, and a plate with a couple of sandwiches on it in one hand.

He's not even sure this will work, but she had told him where to find her. So with his free hand somehow he knocks.]

It's just me. [He's not sure she can hear him, but he's hoping it's enough.]

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[He nods at least. He would never tell anybody any of what she's telling him simply for the fact it's not their business. He wants to be a better person than that. Despite the fact she's on the older side of "teenager", she's still a teenager. He has to try and be good enough for her to rely on for now.

However, it doesn't stop him from frowning heavily and staring down at the top of her head, arm tightening a bit around her shoulders because what the fuck. What the fuck, who decides it's a great idea...but then he remembers the world information he found in the terminal. It makes sense then.]

...how did that happen? Why did they choose you guys?

The first nonary game was an experiment. [There's a certain emphasis on the last word; what does the word "experiment" mean to you? and that would have been the key to find the others when the chance was ever given to her. Any of them would have known.]

The morphogenetic field... It isn't really telepathy, but it lets some people called espers do something really close to it. [And she is one of them, of course; that goes unsaid if for no other reason than because it's been listed on her profile card all this time. For these few moments, her voice steadies as much as it can, because this is so ingrained in her as her normal. But as much as things have gotten easier, the experiment has always been the worst, and she is only one half of her own story.] But...to access the morphogenetic field, if you aren't trained, you need two things. The first is epiphany. It's that "aha" moment you get when you solve a really tough math problem, or...or a puzzle. And the second is danger. But it...it has to be life-or-death danger.

[He makes a face at the word "experiment." That usually doesn't bode well to stories like this, but he's quiet. He doesn't quite understand the idea of the morphogenetic field but he understands telepathy enough to figure it out. There are empathy links back home between some demigods and satyrs. Maybe he'll tell her about them sometime, but now doesn't seem appropriate.

She's calmer now, or at least capable of speaking more clearly and he's putting together answers about as fast as she's giving them.]

...are you trying to tell me that they put you and Light in a puzzle murder game to get your telepathy link to work? Is that really what you're saying? [What the fuck kind of logic is that?]

It...was kind of like that? It wasn't... [But she stops, starting to draw her knees up again. Long-rooted pessimism tells her the worst and of course the situation sounds ridiculous no matter how it's phrased, the words "puzzle murder game" almost sound silly.]

I'm not making it up. It happened. It really did. [Panic and desperation rise in her voice, edging towards hysteria again. All these years and she still almost never speaks of it.] You have to believe me, it did.

Clover, Clover, Clover! [Yikes, wait a minute. He's shifting to grab both of her shoulders and force her to look at him.]

I never said you were making it up. Have you listened to anything I've said since I showed up here? I'm not in a position to disbelieve something like that. All right? I believe it. [A deep breath, but he's also not letting go of her shoulders yet.] What happened then?

[She shuts up as soon as he raises his voice, cutting off with a hiccup and tensing sharply when he touches her. When she talks again, she's gone quiet.]

I'm sorry. I...didn't think...

[But as long as she's turned to face him, she lunges forward to hug him, face buried against his shoulder again. Apparently she doesn't give a shit about her own boogers.

The story goes on, though.]

The game lasted for nine hours. There were nine pairs of siblings but...there was a girl... She died there. [For someone who's dealt with death, almost easily early on, week after week after week, Clover sounds horribly solemn.] But when it was over, the rest of us...we went home. Got back to our parents. Never...never told anyone, just...tried moving on.

[Thanks for being gross, Clover. Nah he doesn't give a shit either seeing how he's immediately reciprocating and pulling her closer. It's...obvious that this isn't normal so if she needs a hug, she's getting a goddamn hug.]

That's...[Really terrible. That's incredibly terrible and the almost-sad sigh says as much.] Nine hours and nine siblings. And they didn't think of maybe doing something less dangerous? What made any of them think that you would escape alive?

[Is he mad? Of course he's mad. He's sick of people dictating the lives of others for their own means.] But that means you and Light...you accessed that field then. What about the second game? [He feels bad asking so much of her when she's buried her face into his shoulder, but you know what he's kind of also an opportunist. Understanding Clover is a very important goal to be sure she doesn't hurt herself and doesn't hurt anybody else. Simple, really.]

[She shakes her head; how is she supposed to know what they were thinking? But she shifts before she goes on, absolutely not pulling out of the hug but turning her face away so she can speak a little more clearly.]

It was nine years later. [have fun doing the math on that one, Luke] And it was the same, nine hours and the exact same rules, but with only nine of us together. ...Light and I weren't the ones who needed to access the field then. [Though she's settled some, between the comfort in the hug and how much less it hurts to think about the second game, she speaks slowly, mindful of each word.] I...still don't think I really understand, but... That girl was saved that way. The one who died. And the men behind the first nonary game were finally punished. That's why...why the second nonary had to happen.

[Honestly Luke would probably die playing a nonary game because math and puzzles are Annabeth's forte, not his. But he's aware that the second nonary game can't have been too long ago for her.]

If you and Light didn't need to access the field then there was no reason to be involved in the same game. [As far as he's concerned, anyway.] But the field...brought her back? Or she never died at all? There's a distinct difference. And if the guys behind the first nonary game were punished then--

[...hold on.] So the second one was a revenge game. Wasn't it?

No, it... [She instinctively sounds defensive, of all things, before she settles.] Only in part. It's... Do you know the Schrodinger's cat paradox?

[As much as the hug means to her, it's becoming increasingly difficult to storytell like this, so she pulls away to settle against Luke's side again, not wanting to leave completely.] The short version is that... Imagine you have a cat in a box with a vial of poison gas. If certain conditions are met within an hour, that vial breaks, and the cat dies. If that condition isn't met, the box opens in an hour and the cat lives. But for that hour, you don't know whether the cat is alive or dead. The theory is that the cat is both alive and dead.

[Explaining thought experiments at weird times is pretty much Clover's forte, this happens a lot, sorry about my canon, so she goes through this easily enough. It's only once she's done that she's slumping again, quiet and cautious.]

That's a really, really basic explanation, but the point is that June was Schrodinger's girl. ...My brother was on that ship. He was there when she died. I grew up knowing she died. But she was still right there during the second nonary game. And the second nonary game let one boy use the morphogenetic field to communicate with June nine years in the past to fulfil the condition then to keep her alive.

[...she looks confused, too. SORRY ABOUT MY CANON]

[Part of him wants to ask why it's a cat specifically and why you would shove a cat into a box with gas because that seems kind of cruel to the cat but he has a feeling that's not the point of the story. He lets Clover move to make herself comfortable and forces his brain to settle on one line of thought. Somehow this immediately lines up with the idea of a prophecy. If certain ideals are met, then the prophecy becomes true. If they aren't met, or they're met in their opposite, then all hell breaks loose.

("A single choice shall end his days, Olympus to preserve or raze.")]

In theory, that makes some sense. You can't know especially if you aren't entirely sure of what all of the conditions are. [A hand comes up to smooth some of her hair back in a placating kind of gesture, but he's very invested in this story suddenly.]

So on top of a maybe-dead maybe-alive girl, there was also some weird form of timetravel that essentially rewrote a bunch of history and solidify that June would be alive. [This is too much, and yet he sort of maybe gets it. (Okay no he looks confused, too.)] How does the story end, Clover?

[It's not even kind of the point of the story, but yeah when she's less distracted she's way more concerned about the poor theoretical cat. For now, she sighs when he smooths her hair and leans her head on his shoulder.]

Something like that. [Her tone carries a sort of "yeah, no, I've got no clue either." But she shifts, shrugs.]

It doesn't. Hasn't. [The second nonary game was not the last, and the story isn't over while she's still here.] But the second nonary game does end. Three men die, one gets jailed for it, and so the men behind the first game get punished. Schrodinger's girl is alive. She runs away with her brother and we don't find them. And the other five of us get to go home. [She almost smiles, thin and shaky, but she's tearing up again, too.] Light and I go home.

I would almost say it sounds like a happy ending. [Almost, because it's not. Almost, because he's aware that Light and Clover shouldn't have been pulled into this. Almost, because only one of them is still here and that's beyond okay.]

But...you mentioned a third game. Without Light?

[Almost, and that's what hurts the worse; that they were so, so close to having eked out their own happiness after the first nonary game haunted them for so long and the Pygmalion wasn't even the first place to take it away from them.

So it takes an extra couple of moments and a slow, shuddering breath before she can continue, voice thin.] Without Light. [And it's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair.] A year later, I got kidnapped with my best friend, Alice. [The name almost sounds wrong to say and that isn't fair, either.] It was...different, though, it still had to be life-or-death, but there was a prisoner's dilemma sort of thing to add to it...

[She shakes her head; that isn't the important part.]

If...if they're in the same place, a stronger esper can kind of...absorb a weaker one's power. So I—I had to be there. It was...almost that same weird form of timetravel. I had to be there so someone else could use the boost my powers gave him to go back in time to keep a disaster from happening.

[He's shaking his head pretty much through this whole explanation because that sure is bullshit! Everything in Clover's life so far has been bullshit and he sympathizes more than he should. Being used for someone else's gain doesn't settle well with him, and he wants to ask what a prisoner's dilemma really means but he's more focused on the second part.]

But what happens to you when your powers are drained out? When does the third game end? What if that disaster can't be stopped?

[That's a lot of big questions at once and Clover needs a second just to figure out where to start; she stalls by wiping her eyes and sniffling.]

The third game is over. It—it ended...it felt like hours before we woke up here... But it ended when that man's consciousness traveled back to before the disaster occurred so he could stop it. But...if it can't be stopped...the third nonary game happens.

[what]

...We were in the timeline that failed. The third nonary game happened forty six years after Radical-6 wiped out most of humanity. [what] The—the rhizome base on the moon we were kidnapped to was a...safe place, a shelter, I guess...

[THE MOON

SORRY FOR MY CANON]

[...

...

...]

So. You...were in the future...on the moon. [WHAT THE FUCK. If it were anybody else and in a period that was less serious, he'd laugh but he's genuinely too baffled to do much but blink at her a few times.] Okay I...okay. [Give him a second to just rub at his forehead because this has definitely entered "TOO MUCH!!!" territory.] Does that mean there's another timeline with another Clover that succeeded? How does anyone survive on the moon? [He asks. From inside a spaceship.] But you said the game ended and it couldn't have ended if the disaster couldn't have been stopped. [So...this is confusing, finally.]

[SHE KNOWS, MAN, SHE KNOWS. SHE LIVED IT. SHE LIVED THE MOON FUTURE

and she's back to the nervous tic of tugging at her hair, panicking now that Luke's starting to lose his cool, too.] I don't know, I don't know! They—they had me and Alice in cryostasis all that time, ev-everything happened while we were on ice, the outbreak happened on Earth and wiped everything out—Sigma went back in time at the end of the game and we were—all the rest of us were just, just left behind...!

[Without even really thinking about it a hand comes up to wrap around her fingers to pull them away from her hair. He's apparently had practice with this from someone else.]

Cryostasis…Roxy mentioned that when we were snooping around on the top deck earlier this week. I didn't know what she meant at the time but isn't that kinda what happened to us here, too? [Wait.] We better not be left behind because of somebody else screwing around with time, too. We know something happened to the planets and that's why we're here, but…[NO? NO THANKS.] You can't just leave people in a different timeline, that doesn't make sense.

I-I think so... If...if you cryogenically freeze someone, it basically just...stops everything, so you can set them aside and unfreeze them years or decades or...in theory, maybe centuries later and it's like they just...went to sleep for the night. So I'd basically been asleep all that time.

[Like with the cat problem earlier, apparently talking about nerd shit calms her down; she's quiet, but her voice starts to even out and she wraps her arms around herself instead of trying to claw at her hair again. Finding out she'd woken up almost fifty years ahead of when she should have wasn't any fun even before even she got to the Pygmalion, though, and she sounds tired and miserable as she goes on.]

It wouldn't surprise me if that's what happened here, too. But I don't know. ...I...know it doesn't really make sense, but...you have to believe me.

[…he's still sort of stuck on the fact that she was on the moon but okay you know what fuck it, it's not like he hasn't gone weird places before like. You know. The labyrinth! Or the underworld! And Olympus is in the Empire State Building so WHATEVER. SURE. THE MOON IS TOTALLY FINE.

He's fine letting her move into whatever position is comfortable for her and he leans back a little to give her space. The idea that they'd all been frozen doesn't sit well with him, but it's the only thing that makes sense.]

Most of it doesn't make sense, but me being here doesn't really make sense either and that happened. [A lopsided grin.] Besides, if you were lying you'd be able to explain it better so of course I believe it. [It doesn't hurt that he's incredibly Clover-biased.]

…on the other hand, kinda makes you wonder if there're some things we can reverse here, too. If we play and we win, what'll we get out of that? That's what I've always wondered about this place. [Maybe they could bring their dead friends back, too. Alice has apparently had practice.]

[WE'RE ON A SPACESHIP WHY IS THE MOON THAT DIFFICULT

but she's moving to lean against his side again, not especially wanting him to go anywhere. Talking about all this has tired her out horribly; she can't manage the effort it would take to act amused or express her gratitude. But he believes her. Long-rooted pessimism settles and quiets because she's sure, more than anything else now, that she can trust him.]

I don't know. I don't even know what winning is supposed to mean. [She shakes her head.] Maybe there's a way to send us back where we came from.

[Reversing that occurs to her before reversing death does, only because she's already thought so much about the latter and ultimately, she doesn't trust the AI to do it right. Even so, she sounds remarkably unenthusiastic about the idea.]

[Listen. A spaceship is easier to accept than somebody going through to trouble of actually building a base on the moon because who the hell has time for that? Though it puts the notes about her world in perspective and he wonders if Light's notes would be different.

Regardless, he understands how pessimism is and he understands on a base-level how complicated it is to tell people the unbelievable. Telling people he was a demigod as a kid had proven to be more damaging than helpful. People never understood, and he wouldn't be able to stay long anyway due to monster attacks. They're not quite the same, but…well, he'd be a huge dick not to buy it after watching her completely freak out about it. So he's fine letting her lean into him and he's resettling an arm around her even with a thoughtful hum.]

Winning, I think, would be giving us a choice in what we want to happen. Some of us don't exactly have places we want to go back to. So…they can pull us here. Maybe they can put us back other places and other times. The AI is running under somebody else's operation. Maybe those people are more competent than Alice is.

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Dying, everyone's reminded, hearts are washed in misery drenched in gasoline [Wed Week 10]

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