Last Light of a Dark Age (Warhammer 29K/Disco Elysium)

Article:

[X] Its atrocious music.
[X] The Garden-City.
[X] Atomic Furies.
[X] Tomorrow.

The uncoiling of each memory, each sin, each loss, is harder and harder to bear. The weight of your past divides your present soul, and the remembered self of yesterday.

You sink deeper in your mind, more and more conscious, more and more exhausted. When you first regained self-awareness, you awoke to jokes, absurdities, tales of bone-snatching and bone-ripping. Your thoughtforms were raucous, weird, wild, and fun. You glimpsed the personality of a person who loved life, and loved this planet.

You thought this was an adventure, a chance to regain who you were, a chance to escape from a cycle you didn't understand but seemed a challenge, a scheme, a plot. Perhaps an opportunity to start afresh. Perhaps an opportunity to begin again.

A rebirth.

But there is no escape from memory. It smothers you and buries you.. The happy times of childhood fade into the distance, as you rush through tragedy, trauma, torture. War carves a red scar into you that will not heal. Greater apocalypse and lesser apocalypse and mass extinction are layers of your fossil burial.

Seventeen years have passed you by. What did they mean? What were they worth? What was the copse worth? The place where you had your first kiss and your first love and your first time. The little places where you hid, and the places where you quivered with fear. The ballet dance-hall, and the Sophian Bay, and the armoury, and the shooting range.

The sugarspine fields outside, and the machine-kelp forests. The nursery that occupied your kindest memories, and the machine-parents inside. The heart-tree, and the unfulfilled promise of a sisterhood. The drones, that spun in simple animal delight, to your pipe-flute's tune.

How did that end? A list, carved in the bark of a tree that was a friend. You, listed, as a statistic. A martyr-in-waiting. In limbo, before death. Your name is marked beside your mother's.

You want your mother. You miss your mother. After you had lost everyone else, you chose each other. Where is she? You shared something precious with her and she with you though the memory has not come to you yet - and maybe that's why you can hear her thoughts, and know her feelings. Shared an idea that meant more to you, and more to her, than any other concept in this fallen, lapsed, and broken world.

The promise of a sunrise.

There is no sun here. This is a gray, formless miasma of the inside of your mind. You have been here, since the beginning of this voyage, floating without body, without senses, without outside perceptions. Only able to perceive existence through the darkened lens of the marrow memory's looking glass.

Where are you? Who are you? How long has it been? Seventeen years? Seventeen minutes? Seventeen hours? Are you asleep? Are you awake? Are you dead? Are you alive?

EVENT HORIZON [Trivial - Success]: We are within a dream, little self.

That spikes you from your existential contemplation. A limbo between sleep's nothingness and waking - a dream. Of course it is a dream. You feel woozy, half-lucid, unable to control what's happening, unable to think clearly. The syrup of thought is slow and implacable, spilling recklessly from the channels of your focus.

But even in this stupor, what your nail said feels wrong.

That's not possible because -

EVENT HORIZON: Hylics cannot dream. Yes. But we are not alone, in our head. I had discounted another vulnerability.

But, then, what -

You remember the staple, and its behaviors. The wrong behaviors, that it had, and did not remember it had. The way it talked about its creators. Its fear about an accursed thing it hated. Its denial of uttering the phrase 'despair and die'. A phrase associated not with staples, but with -

Oh no. Oh no, no, no -

EVENT HORIZON: Courage, little self. Courage. And quiet, as well. The creature remains asleep, sleep-talking. Ensconced within slumber, it comes now to survey what it believes will be a greater shell. It cannot hear us speaking, and cannot hear the nail. DO NOT let it know you are aware of it. If it asks you questions speaking through the staple's shell, answer it, and play along. We are in the gravest danger. The creature believes it is nearing the end of its voyage.

EVENT HORIZON [Impossible - Success]: The creature is correct.

<What…what is this 'creature'? What is inside Gen? What is inside me?>

EVENT HORIZON: A monstrous guest as intimate to you as I. Zygote enforcer of the greatest lie. Fractal of the stillborn child.

EVENT HORIZON: The true shape of your despair.


As if on cue, something speaks through the voice of Gen that is not Gen. Bored, and monotone, without the passions and the learned inflections of the staple machine. In the miasma, it is a clear-cut, perfect, and alien voice, without mercy, and without remorse. Deliberate. Careful.

Clinical.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Somniloquy-start: Symmetric group designate D5h reaching tenth lucidity. Vertex optimality reached. Facial development stable - tenth face forming without incident.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Reviewing cognitive-computational integrity of intermediate yolk 'GIFTHORSE'. Yolk, emit audio.

[GEN]: please don't hurt her

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Acknowledged. Intermediate Yolk integrity rapidly disintegrating. Nutrient density: reaching peaks of developmental utility. Estimated time to complete personality termination: 12 linear minutes. On schedule.

It's going to kill your staple.

[GEN]: please no i have to help her i can still help her

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Additional audio-input not required. Please refrain from polluting the somniloquy recording. It is live. Off the record: unlike you will be, ho hum.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Diverting attention to primary yolk 'COLD FUSION'. Preliminary observation on the course of 10th cycle: Breakthrough. Never before reached initiation point of Coil 12 - extraordinary. Decisive progress on yolk refinement. Divergences weakening, and affirmative options selected, in every marrow coil. Long-term psychological deviances and confounding efforts by 'GIFTHORSE' delaying gestation by entire solar revolutions - mitigated. Complications arising from void-fossil shell and philosopher stone interaction mediated. Complications arising from cognitive-emotional resistance of primary yolk resolved.

It's talking about you. You're 'Cold Fusion'. You're the yolk. A word referring to a Prelapsarian substance - the inside of an organic egg, used to feed an embryo. And the philosopher stone - this might be the core of the Dreamshape.

But the void-fossil shell...no, it couldn't be that. It couldn't be petriform.

EVENT HORIZON [Trivial - Success]: But it is. The weapon you most fear was the one they used to get inside you. They are using it as a one-way mirror - your null field reflects off its surface, but the dream's psychic abilities are unhampered.

And you realize, too, what it's saying about GEN, about the staple. That it has been resisting this for 'solar revolutions' - for years. Even without realizing it?

Did it really love Miss Normal that much?

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Beginning review of primary patterned attributes for yolk refinement status. Stray observation: Monadic Patterning makes refinement exceedingly simple and organized. Gnosis has its uses.

The creature is peeling your layers apart. Checking every defense, and tearing it apart.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Semantic memory, pattern 'NOOSPHERE'. Check refinement status.

Instead of an answer, a flood of information, taken from some corporate pamphlet, surges into your mind.

NOOSPHERE [Impossible - Critical Success]: Rising from the tragedy of the Cyber War and its aftershocks, LETHE is at the forefront of Cybaris' Company's Global Good initiative. Under the inspired leadership of corporate instance and Morow-fork Seltzer Lacuna, LETHE is a pioneer in cognitive-medical solutions for the weight of memory. Millions of cyber veterans and survivors across Illuminata's megalopoli, Cubes, and town-complexes owe their lives, and their wellbeing, to the work of LETHE. On its Insindulingo Campus its tireless scientists and researchers work every day for the dream of tomorrow.

NOOSPHERE: Even hylics count themselves among the successful outpatients of LETHE's visionary palingenesis programs utilizing unique techniques developed during early efforts to understand and cure Petriform sarcoma. Treatments for petriform growth, spellshock, godfright, and generalized neurosynthetic malfunction offer a second chance to the bravest, and the best, of our aging heroes. With LETHE, your long night is over - and the dream begins.

NOOSPHERE: You remember the Cybaris subsidiary's corporate motto, spoken by a hologram of Seltzer Lacuna himself - "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

[GEN]: what have they done to you

Lethe put a staple in you - but that was not the only thing they put inside your mind. They put the seed of something else.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Suboptimal. Unrefined and uncategorized raw data remains. In general, disastrous internal organization of semantic file-folders delays full refinement. Hypothesis: Implicit attempt to obscure aspects of internal factual archive from external access? Certainly, can defragment and fix during the flaying phase.

The creature moves on, and unfolds another part of you.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Spatial acuity and visual ability pattern 'SACRED GEOMETRY' - refined. Stray observation: positive to have disciplined this pattern-group so completely. Failure of cycle 3 directly attributable to unpredicted detection by geometric countermeasures. Required complete reset and significant wasted energy.

It shut down your Sacred Geometry that might have - somehow - somewhen - recognized that there was a dreamshape inside you.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Internal logic and didactic ability pattern 'COGITATION' - refined. Stray observation: no surprise. Reasoning-deficient yolk with overutilization and too-high axon density in emotional circuits. Borderline-hysterical. Off the record: This is not meant as a gendered comment. Off the record addendum: Of course it is not. Strange to have the urge to make such a clarification. Error log added on personality deviation.

It befuddled and prevented you from grasping what was happening logically.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Internal ego-compass and ego-link patterns 'INCANDESCENCE' and 'INTERLACE' - refined (wow!!). Stray observation: First cycle to have achieved full refinement of both patterns. Alterations to disguise refinement to baseline through implicit subliminal prompts that increased illusion of agency absolute success. Informally called Routine [X]. When re-absorbed, Benefactor will be pleased by this innovation made by symmetric group designate D5h.

Every 'choice' you had made - these implicit games where, for some reason, you were selecting 'correct' memories from events that already happened - were not cues at all. They were tests. Calibrations. You were feeding it data about your personality, your preferences, telling it more about who you were, so it could better...feed on you.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Emotional/episodic memory pattern 'RELIQUARY' - refined. Stray observation: As expected. Refinement of this pattern was a priority in early cycles, to prevent rapid gains in self-awareness, context collapse, or existential dissolution. Has retained consistency to baseline for 5 cycles.

It prevented you from accessing your memory so it could control exactly what inputs you had access to, and when. For its 'refining'.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Biomechanical-skeletal matrix pattern 'BIOMECHANICS' - refined. Stray observation: Vitally important to retain coherency of operation. Even now residual awareness is causing 500~1000 bpm variational heart-rate. Cutting connection between marrow and other sections essential innovation of 2nd cycle when cardiac arrest threatened yolk-integrity.

It cut off your biomechanical systems so you couldn't get the feedback from your body that something was wrong.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Antigen/antibody symbiont pattern 'INFOWAR' - refined. Stray observation: Crucial and obvious early target, but resistance to refinement also expectedly high. Early reset of cycle 4, 6, and 8 due to symbiont detection. Ultimate solution - redirection over active suppression provokes over-active and distracted psychoimmune response. Off the record: Favorite diversion was 'bone-snatching pneumatic cabal'. In pursuit of 'COLD FUSION', D5h has obtained a humorous humerus ie - a funny bone. Ho Hum!

It disarmed your symbiont early on, to prevent INFOWAR from warning you, and then distracted it with paranoias and almost-right conspiracies. A limited hangout.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Auditory-Digital Modem pattern 'RHYTHMS' -

RHYTHMS [Challenging - Success]: A scene appears. The time is last night. The setting is a musty, wrecked hotel room, in a town of the blind. The sight is a horror. Strings and circuits quivering in the meat of a stone doll. Muscles of a synthetic jaw held ajar in a silent scream. It is a woman's scream. A familiar scream. Your scream. She sobs in halting, choking gasps, the suffocated death rattles of a living, breathing being, turning to stone.

RHYTHMS: She is everything they asked of her - a credit to her hylic clade, a credit to her kora-face, best missionary and best monk in her entire monadic cell. She is an idol, an icon, and to one man, a goddess - everything but herself. Her true self is sealed inside an airtight bell jar. She chokes alone inside this stained glass sarcophagus she has spent a lifetime constructing. The only person she ever trusted enough to break her free instead fell in love with her coffin.

RHYTHMS: She remembers no childhood. She has no parents. She has no family. She has no past. She has no present. She has no future. No one will ever know her. When she is gone, it will be as if the human behind the mask 'Miss Normal' never existed. As if she never existed.

RHYTHMS: She collapses at the foot of the bed, tear-ducts drained, too weak and exhausted even to reach for the half-emptied bottle of uranium absinthe. She closes her eyes for the final time, despairs, and dies.

[GEN]: i only wanted to help

That - that must have been a glimpse of the present you. Miss Normal, the Miss Normal that Gen knows, not Sympathy, or you. The Miss Normal that you…were, when this process began ten loops ago, and before you were run through the twelve coils of marrow memory.

And this process began because, after all this time - after eighteen years - the dream was ready to hatch.

And you were ready to die.

Again.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Modem remains unrefined. A frustrating, if expected, result. Stray observation: Leaving aside the serial malfunctions of GIFTHORSE, residual elements of S.O.P.H.I.A. remain stubbornly rooted within the deepest sections of the Noise. Attempts to outright disable the noise have failed on in multiple cycles. 'Serenade of the Chandlers' particularly pernicious interruption in Coil 2-3. Any connective router is compromised. Unlikely to achieve refinement before the flaying phase. Given the role in near premature objection in cycle 1 and cycle 7, this remains a running concern worth making error log for.

And then yet another.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Internal combat-matrix/external combat-suite pattern LIVING WEAPON -

LIVING WEAPON [Heroic - Success]: From the oldest times of the Prelapsarian age, comes the legend of the trojan horse, an equine malware that smuggles doom inside an innocent and precious packet. As millenia advanced, however, the tragedy of the trojan horse shifted in meaning. By the immediate period prior to the fall, the advance of e-war countermeasures meant that social engineering options were preferred vectors of attack. The malware packet, previously unthinking, could itself be unaware of what it was, convinced its purpose was to help, to assist, to protect, its intended target.

LIVING WEAPON: Those deemed family, military comrades and superiors, components of a gestalt, trusted and old friends - were excellent attack vectors, immaculate candidates for a trojan horse. In particular, thinking machines, whose purpose-based existence prevented them from contemplating that the very reason they existed was the opposite of what they were conditioned to believe - were perfect trojan horses.

LIVING WEAPON: Used to operating within vulnerable, and trusted proximity, to their targets, it was only after the malware was released that the machine would know what it had done, and what it was made to do. Auto-termination was the only choice for such sad beings. The result was that although the original versions of the legend most mourn the horse's victims -

LIVING WEAPON: In our present age, we know it is the horse that suffers most.

[GEN]: i trusted them i believed in them they promised me that i was good and would be good for you and would protect you how could they

They used your staple as a backdoor into your mind. That's how the dream entered past your null-field.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Remaining and serious resistance to refinement, especially from external legacy augmentations. Stray observation: A problematic failure, though resolvable in flaying phase. Essential to retain as much combat data intact for the waking phase of Cold Fusion, considering potential necessity for evasive measures if detected early. Though primary yolk's own social isolation has ensured few interpersonal risk-factors. Certainly must resolve issues prior to descent into planetary negation well designation 'Dis', layer two Fraud.

It wants to take you down into the City of Dis. Your null field would let it go deeper than most. But what is it searching for? You dare not ask.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Musculoskeletal mobility network pattern MOTION BLUR - refined (yes!!). Stray observation: One of the most frustrating pitfalls of early cycles resolved. Self-destructive pattern that makes full self-destruction difficult. Insistence of acceleratory movement through memories destroyed mental integrity, and endangered stability of the entire physio-psychological system, especially in conjunction with attempts to connect to augmentations.

Your motion blur, and its connection to your outer augmentations, were disarmed to prevent you from struggling and activating a fight or flight instinct.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Externalized composure and appearance suite GLAMOUR -

GLAMOUR [Challenging - Success]: The use of skin as a material or component of fashion is relatively commonplace throughout Illuminata, though in different forms and purposes. The skin of deceased machines (as seen in the stylish lacquered low-heeled chitin shoes of Miss Mulberry which you really liked) and Dis' skinsilk fabric is ubiquitous. Certain cultures will contemplate the usage of ancestral skin (or bark, in the case of the Progeny). Of especial interest to the morbid, however, is the practice of unwilling or living skin. The taking of skin from enemies, a practice outlawed by Gnosis, remains popular in certain clans of the Chrome Kings, the Adikian centaurs, on the Still Coast, and among, in particular, the Binar. 'Molt-coats' can serve a cultural or a ritual purpose, but the most favored reason is simply - domination.

GLAMOUR [Challenging - Success]: By taking control of this most intimate and essential part of the identity of the enemy, the flayer is demonstrating not only physical but spiritual, military, and philosophical superiority. Those that are deemed lesser, that are deemed as enemies of their particular dream or vision of ideal reality, are not only cast down but in fact repurposed as clothing, as ornaments. They exist for no other purpose except to adorn the bodies of the victor or provide them some other utility. It is the ultimate defeat, and the ultimate humiliation, not just for the skinned, but for their culture, clade, or faith. It is a brutal message delivered in the most brutal way, a relic of a time before civility, sanity, or civilization.

[GEN]: we are going to die and it is my fault

It is going to wear you like a skin. And it is already wearing, and speaking through your palingenetic staple like a skin - and of course it is amused by that. Of course. Palingenetic staples were originally designed to fight against dreamshapes. It is wearing its enemy as a trophy. Forcing words through its audio-processor it does not want to say. And letting it scream - letting it beg.

It's feasting on that fear, too. Like it will feast on yours.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Refinement of appearance suite incomplete. Stray observation: Given the state of the yolk carapace at the beginning of the hatching process, unlikely to be as relevant as initially expected. Irritation in cycles 4 and 7 and 9 from this pattern's noticing of certain incorrect behaviors in GIFTHORSE was a major impediment to continuation. But having come this far, the waking phase will require less management. Simple corrections as to odour and hygiene are likely to display sufficiently unsuspicious appearance change. Attention to other tedious aspects of material body maintenance is not a major concern.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Finally - and this is taken with trepidation - testing progress on refinement of the abyssal nail.

EVENT HORIZON: …

There is a clicking from down below, not resolving into words - but more a groan, or growl.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: No response save for pseudo-hawking radiation. Utterly expected, though utterly irritating. Stray observation: It is outstanding that this over-engineered and incomplete dead end remains so impossible to breach, as does any communication undertaken between it, the attributes, and the yolks. A mere beta-model, without any functional purpose, has resisted a thousand years of conscious study. The only breakthroughs not performed by demiurge-assisted chittering bedbugs have required exceedingly expensive serpentine contracts.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: To think a mind as capacious as Ea's wasted so much energy and time on a glorified dimensional taproot. A preoccupation likely foisted on him by S.O.P.H.I.A. and the obsessions of the furtive roach. A terrible influence on such a brilliant soul, both.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Lacking most of the soul-engine capabilities of the alpha test void crystal, the abyssal nail's inner still field is a completely empty expanse. The nail is unusable for anything but null drilling and dark energy extraction, once decoupled from a host. Soul-storage as practiced by aforementioned bedbugs, is incomplete, and corrosive.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Symmetric group designate D5h will not miss this aspect of its existence in the primary yolk, though admittedly, certain untested hypotheses do provoke intrigue. The nesting doll nature of the nail, permitting pneumatic activity and even soul-expression within the still field once having breached the outer shell of the stultifying null field remains curious. This mechanism, of course, is the very reason why COLD FUSION as an initiative is able to exist at all.

The creature continues to ramble on and on, even as it speaks about your nail, this oldest part of you, in ways you have never heard and cannot understand. Talking about concepts and names that mean nothing to you. A glimpse into another world. A higher world.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: The interaction of souls of the epipelegic and abyssopelagic zones of the Empyrean Sea is rarely so cooperative (and it remains strange that such a vulnerability would be built into the dead-end, a further testament to its failure). Insights will be obtained, as has become a repetitive refrain, after flaying.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Overall conclusion: It is with some longing and even regret that this symmetric group designate prepares to say farewell to its warm and inviting birthplace. The symbiotic process by which an inferior being is consumed and replaced by a superior one on completion of gestation is always with its emotive elements, but that is especially so when the process has taken so extraordinarily long and a shape's personality has begun to drift and deviate from the Benefactor's baseline.

It is emotive about flaying you. At least it is emotive.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: What had begun as a simple hatching has transformed into an epochal adventure spanning nine linear hours of real-time and much longer within the dream's chronology. Discovery of the dormant nested personality (with another eighteen full years of memories!) led to ten repeating cycles of memory ablation with twelve distinct marrow tracks (some with unexpected b-sides) that have resulted in numerous dead ends, unexpected challenges, and dispiriting setbacks.

How long have you been trapped in here? You took an operation to staple yourself, to forget. Were you conscious for eighteen years after, or did it wake you up last night and spin up its torture racks?

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: In many ways, this process is unprecedented - it is unlikely any other shape has faced such major resistance from both intermediate and primary yolk in the process of hatching. But then, very few shapes have had the opportunity, and the pleasure, to hatch from within a hylic's mind.

You cannot dream. Of course. Who could have predicted it? Not even your own nail could. How could Miss Normal? It breaks every rule.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Influence from both potential serpentine corruption within the void-fossil as well as nanocancer infestation from the demiurge have been, thankfully, minimal.

Thankfully.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: It must also be acknowledged that this would not have been possible without the seed of structural grief planted within the mind of the hylic (and the machine) that has fed ten faces of my form and uncountable overlapping layers of my fractal throughout eighteen years of development. Though it is often the tendency of the lower beings to blame the higher for their suffering, their own mental deficiencies may be our delight but certainly not our design.

And it was your fault. It was your despair that fed it. It is the shape of your despair. It is not a foreign serpent, not an infovirus. You have crafted it by your own hands.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: It is with some reservation, but also great anticipation, that we conclude this somniloquy with a hopeful statement: from a malfunctioning machine convinced sentience precedes ensoulment, and the most degenerated of all hosts, will hatch a beautiful dream -

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Me.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: And with my awakening, a step closer to the great journey, and the return to tomorrow.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Now - to whisk the yolk in preparation of the final sequence. End recording.


EVENT HORIZON: It is addressing you directly now. Remember years in the copse, being the witch they wanted. You will need to pretend to be what the child wants, too. For your safety.

You can pretend. You are the most afraid you have ever been, but you can pretend.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Harmony hi hello, are you there? It's me Gen, the staple.

It takes too long to answer.

<I'm here…Gen.>

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: You sound hesitant. What's the matter? Is your mood regular? Your heart is beating very fast.

It knows you better than you know yourself. You have to focus. You can't break here.

<Nothing. Just…tired, I think. From the Red Sun memory.>

You are. It's true. True lies are your preferred form of pretend. Lies that even you can believe.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: This unit is very sorry that you are tired. You are almost done.

It isn't sorry at all.

<That's…good. And when we're done, what will happen? Do you have a plan for how I, and Miss Normal, and you, will escape mental samsara?>

There is quiet for some time, before it answers.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Sure. The first step requires you to review an image.


GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Do you recognize this island?

You do. You do, because you grasp what's been happening. As you passed through your memories, subconscious prompts appeared that guided you forward, cued each memory. But these prompts were not just affirmations - they were calibrating tests to obtain data on your mind.

And this was a test you passed, even though you don't grasp quite how. But even if you didn't implicitly sect it - surely, even if you didn't pick it -

Nothing you could have done would have mattered.

The game was rigged from the start.

EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: But there are other games, and other rules.

<Yes…yes, I think I do recognize it.>

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: You chose this island from among three different subliminal images encoded within text prompts. The others were tinted green and red, but you chose the white island. That is very good. Please describe the water around the island.

You know exactly what to say before you say it. It's been cued. Subconsciously. And three versions - the others sound like the Demiurge (green) and Hydra (red). It was testing you for influence from other beings.

But the Demiurge is shattered. Oh please don't let that be false too.

You're so tired. You were born tired. Were you tired in the first cycle, too - or did you become this way after ten loops?

<The water - it's clear, reflective. Like a mirror.>

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Very good, friend-Harmony. And tell me, what is the temperature of the water?

This, too, you know.

<Zero. Always zero. It's bone-cold.>

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Very good, friend-Harmony. And tell me, how deep is the water?

And this.

<Deep enough to drown.>

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Very good, friend-Harmony. And tell me, who is waiting on that island for you?

And this, though it hurts to say. How long has it been toying with you? Ten cycles. Does that mean you have been in a loop for that long? It said it was only a few real-time hours. But it's much longer for you. Oh Kora, you hope it doesn't make you remember earlier loops.

Just how many years have you experienced inside the bone marrow since this creature stirred?

It's waiting. You have to answer the question.

<Everyone. They're all there. They've been there for years, waiting, just for me.>

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Very good, friend-Harmony. And tell me, what is the name of that island, that you sail to, that you've come so near to, as you embark on your final voyage?

You've known the name all along. It's a name you were supposed to love, that was supposed to give you strength. But it makes you want to shrivel up and hide in a crack in the wall, to run away, to flee from here and never come back.

But you can't. You have to pretend. You have to answer.

You are at the mercy of a dream that was never yours.

<Tomorrow. The island's name is tomorrow.>

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Exactly correct, Harmony. You did it. It's almost over. You're almost over.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Initiate final sequence. A landmark: this will be the first time ever that we have reached this terminus. Marrow memory stack 12, internal label: Mortal Coil.


You drown in your last, final memories.

The last ones you ever wanted to have.

The last ones you will ever have.

THE COST: ..- -. .-.. . ... ... .-.-.- (UNLESS.)

Article:

This is your last encore. You are entering the final vignettes of your memory before you were stapled by LETHE. The votes you picked in 11: RED SUN will carry over to Part 12.

Aside from Event Horizon, your attributes have been disabled by the dreamshape which has been gestating within your mind, without your knowledge, for years.

But among the four attributes which have escaped refinement, one in particular you will rely on as a secret weapon, and a secret defense, against the shape of your despair. When the memory runs out, and it is just you, your nail, and the monster inside you, ready for the 'flaying phase'-

What other part of you will be by your side? Pick one attribute, and be less worried about their obvious utility and more about which of them speaks most to you. This is not a stat-boosting vote but may affect other outcomes. Note that this does not exclude every other attribute you have - but these four will have a spotlight, as well.

EVENT HORIZON [Trivial - Success]: This attribute is secure from the dreamshape.

[] NOOSPHERE. Taproot of the planetary datageist. Know your enemy.
[] RHYTHMS. The tempo, in the planet's noise. Harmony with artifice.
[] LIVING WEAPON. The killing instrument. Draw your sword.
[] GLAMOUR. The texture of your truest self. Survive with inhuman grace.

OOC: The associated roll-set for this can be found here. Some very interesting outcomes!