come_sailaway | are you out there? can you hear this?

Entry tags:

are you out there? can you hear this?

Who: Cassandra de Rolo & OTA
When: November
Where: Around the Serena Eterna
What: on all levels but physical/literal, shouting into the void
Warnings: Game-typical angst, canon-typical angst, others to be added as they come up

A. what's the future, who will choose it

She's ... anxious, she decides, is the right word. Anxious about the Voyager plan. What if it gets discovered and stopped, what if it proceeds as planned but fails to break out of the demiplane, what if it reaches the outer world and is discovered by something only interested in taking advantage of whatever it finds --

The anxiety never gets anywhere near the point of making her want to call a halt to it. Not this time.

Still, she does find herself wandering about near the signpost and its accompanying book, to see who's writing in it. Not that it makes any difference, but ... it's something she can keep an eye on.

B. you never know who's still awake

Cassandra is rarely if ever to be seen around the buffet these days. One might spot her in the kitchens, though, usually very late at night, usually making something involving potatoes and/or cheese. Sometimes, similarly late at night, she might carry a snack to eat elsewhere around the ship; usually more cheese, with crackers, or cured meat, or a little jar of jam or relish of some kind. Usually somewhere that doesn't attract a lot of people, as though reluctant to eat in company with anyone.

Are you up very late and avoiding company too? You might run into her.

C. play the madmen poets

She's aware that it's unwise, perhaps now more than ever, to do anything to shut out or dull her awareness of her surroundings. Nonetheless: it may also be something she needs now more than ever.

As a compromise, she's only using her music player when she's got a good view of the rest of her surroundings, or when she's otherwise fairly sure nothing can get close to her without her knowing. So 'while flying' is a good option, as far from the ship as she can get while still able to make it back before her wings fail; another is perched on a high roof or crows' nest, some spot she can only get to by flying. And occasionally, very occasionally, in the library while seated with her back to a wall

There's so much music in this little box, and she still hasn't heard all of it. This month she's working her way through the repertoire of a bard with a rough but compelling voice, and trying to make out what his verses are talking about. (You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows is possibly the first intelligible thing he's said in this song, and she still isn't sure what he means by it.)

D. wildcard

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Tayrey's there today. Subtly capturing her images of the pages, the ones she will soon send beyond the false sky, with hope. This work is undertaken when she thinks she's alone, but in case she's seen by the book, she adds another iteration of her little NEVER A PASSENGER line.

They may think her compulsive about it. Let them. It's in her interest. Tayrey who hasn't been right since the labyrinth, badly wounded last month. Excuses for unusual behavior. Reasons to evade suspicion.

She's startled as she turns to see a figure by the signpost, but it's only Cassandra. Coming to stand by her own little sign, her message of hope, she gives the other woman a nod.

'All's well?'

"So far," she says, with a small crooked smile. "And with you?"

'As expected.' Better than usual. Hopeful.

She looks up at the signpost, those little reminders of where people came from, sullied in her mind by the occasional contribution from a person who wants to stay right here on this nightmare ship. Which exemplifies everything about this place, really. There's nothing good here that isn't spoiled by the fact that she's a prisoner.

'We should examine some of the material together,' she mutters. 'There's enough for that.'

"That's a good idea. I have a suggestion, when we have a moment."

A moment in private, she means.

She nods again, understanding, speaks in that same low voice.

'If you aren't busy, I planned to head back to my cabin. I'll be there a while.'

"Might I accompany you? I think I'm finished here for the time being."

It has occurred to her, vaguely, to wonder who has noticed the two of them repeatedly going into Tayrey's cabin and not emerging for some time. And if so, whether that's led to any speculation that they might be romantically linked.

It would be unkind in the extreme, she thinks, to bring that up to Ari.

'If you like.' She says it casually, as if she were indifferent, when of course little could be further from the truth. Then Tayrey turns, starts walking quickly back.

She could have reassured Cassandra, had she known, that she wouldn't care. Tradeline propriety fell casualty to Tayrey's ruthless prioritising, and she'd sooner tell them all that Cassandra really was her overnight partner than risk the truth getting out.

At some point, perhaps, they'll need to talk about that.

Once at Tayrey's door, Cassandra does glance surreptitiously up and down the corridor to make sure they're relatively unobserved before ducking in.

"Do you remember Steve Harrington?" she says without preamble, the moment the door closes. "He's back."

'That shouldn't be possible.'

She hadn't known Steve well, but she does know that he disappeared a long time ago. Long enough that whatever remnant of him still existed should have been freed from this place when all the glass containers were smashed.

'Did he talk to you? Did he tell you where he went, after?'

"We spoke, yes. He doesn't seem to have much memory of wherever he's been, but he does remember his time on the ship before. This isn't a -- a new version of him." She shakes her head, in some exasperation. "Or if it is, he's somehow gotten the memories of the previous one ... I don't know."

Her expression darkens. 'A new version... given the memories of the previous one? Damn, Cassandra, is that the kind of ridiculous theory people are putting about? He's a human being, not some kind of... replacement computer because the old one got broken.'

She hates it. Hates it every time anyone suggests that their lives are so worthless. That they're somehow less than people. She expects it from their captor, but not from anyone else. If someone said it about her directly, it'd take all the self-control she had not to hit them. The young lieutenant scowls, and goes to sit at her slate computer, powering up the display. There's work to do. Best to focus on that.

'I have images of all the messages. Some are unusable. Some we can use selectively.'

"It's not a ridiculous theory," she says, a touch stung. "If he were a different Steve Harrington, with or without the memories of the one we knew, that wouldn't make him any less a human being. It wouldn't even make him any less Steve Harrington."

Ah. So Cassandra's not going to move on to business. Fine.

'If he were Steve Harrington from a different universe, he wouldn't recall being here before. Talking about giving one person the... the memories of another is talking about him as an object to be programmed. Not a person. It's not possible. It's disturbing. No, it's disgusting.'

Not that Cassandra is. But the very idea sickens her. Imagining someone tampering with her mind like that. It's not possible. Not in that sort of detail. Not memories from a dead person.

'I don't know why anyone would assume that, and not that he returned.'

"An object?" She's visibly baffled. "Objects don't have memories. People do."

And then she shakes her head. "I apologize. If this subject is upsetting ... I don't think it makes a practical difference to what we intend to do, if you'd prefer to discuss it later. Or not at all."

Sometimes Arilanna Tayrey suspects that people just don't think their ideas all the way through. She sighs. 'Objects have memories. Computers. Databanks. The communicator device you own has a memory; it remembers the messages you wrote on it so that you can look at them again later. And you can delete that memory, or overwrite it with something new, and it doesn't matter a bit because it's only a machine.'

Tayrey turns, looks at her plainly. 'I am of the opinion,' she says slowly, 'that whatever physical harm I suffer here, whatever is done to me - at least my mind is my own. They cannot have that. My thoughts and my hopes and - yes, my memories of home. I want you to imagine what it would be like to learn that your memories were not yours. They were someone else's. From some other timeline. They had been placed in your head by your captor - leaving you no way to know which were your own memories and which were false. What would that do to your resolve? To your very idea of self?'

The young lieutenant shakes her head. 'I see no reason to believe Steve Harrington has been subjected to that absolute horror, and if I thought he had I certainly wouldn't speak of it as if it were inconsequential, even if he were a total stranger from another universe.'

"That's not --" She frowns, shaking her head. "Objects can store memories, but -- but those aren't their own memories, are they? A, a computer doesn't experience the things it stores, does it? Or have I misunderstood?"

She wants to address the rest of it, but this part is unnerving to her and she wants it clarified first.

Tayrey is faintly surprised that of all she's said, that's what Cassandra chooses to focus on. She blinks. 'A computer like mine, no. Where a machine becomes capable of experience is more of a philosophical question. One my people chose not to run into, but you could-' she waves a hand, 'ask Security. Or Maximilien. Except that a machine that advanced, we want to think of as a person, yes? And it suddenly seems morally wrong to tamper with their... storage.'

"Yes," she agrees, with some vehemence. "Of course it's wrong. Of course it's terrible, to be made to doubt your own understanding of yourself. But having your memories tampered with wouldn't somehow -- it wouldn't make you no longer a person. It wouldn't turn you into an object. It would make you a person to whom wrong has been done."

And she's suddenly, vividly remembering one of her earliest conversations with Security.

"Indefensible, yes, to treat a thinking being like an object. But far from impossible."

Ari, in her frustration at this idea - in her horror, her sheer revulsion at the casual way Cassandra first spoke of it, asks a question that she perhaps should not ask.

'How, then. Say I am dead and gone somehow, finally free, and you drag in here some poor unlucky innocent Tayrey from some other universe. Tell me. How do you put my thoughts and my experiences of this nightmare in her head and make her believe they are her own?'

A huff of not-quite-laughter, somewhere between tart and bitter. "Gods, I couldn't begin to tell you how, any more than I know how one would go about creating a bubble universe like this one. I know there are spells to modify other people's memory -- I've seen it done, I have feared for years that I've had it done to me without knowing, and believe me I don't want to know how it's done."

And she's said more than she might have intended, in her own suppressed horror.

From most people on this ship, Ari would have dismissed that as nonsense. Not Cassandra. Cassandra has earned her trust.

It's a problem. Tayrey had been trying to back her into a corner of logic, to prove her point, but who is the trapped one now? It feels like something tearing. Only a friend could have breached that defensive wall. Her own mind. Her own mind isn't safe.

Every time she thinks there can be no more horror that will hurt her...

She feels her breath come quicker than it should. She's fighting down panic, and it might be a losing battle. The tightness in her chest. Her mind, poking at the seams of her memories. The cherished ones and the unspeakable trauma both.

Maybe they were right, her enemies. Maybe she's nothing after all. A copy. A programmed thing that exists to be tortured. How would she even know?

'Leave me.' It sounds imperious. Demanding. But that's the only way Tayrey can force the words out. She's absolutely, unnaturally motionless. The battle goes on behind her eyes.

Cassandra takes a half-step back almost involuntarily -- but oh, she knows that particular feel of imperious demand, and she can guess what it means.

"I'm going," she says. "Tayrey -- this does not mean you're not a person. It doesn't mean you're not you. Believe me."

For the space of a breath, no more, she meets Ari's eyes, putting all the weight she can bring to bear behind the words.

Then she turns away, saying "I'll be right outside," and steps out of the cabin.

She goes into her little bathroom. She stares in the mirror. Tayrey has her spacer pallor back. There are dark circles beneath her eyes. And that bright cloth over her hair that conceals another truth: that Tayrey is flesh and blood and bone, that she's real.

Cassandra is not infallible, she tells herself. Cassandra is susceptible to the lies of their captor and his allies, the same as any of the others, and that she believes horrific and convoluted explanations for things doesn't make them true. There is no proof. No proof that Steve is anything but what he appears to be, let alone anyone else. She cannot let herself fall apart over this. She cannot. She's mission commander, they need her, she's not allowed to be that fragile. She shuts it out. Her subconscious takes action to protect her. Better a closed mind than a broken one.

Arilanna Tayrey is not a passenger. Arilanna Tayrey is not a copy. Her mind is her own. She's real, she has a home and contracts and people who care about her. Value. Worth. A history. A future. She turns on the tap, splashes cold water on her face, wills herself to be calm.

Then she goes back out, slides open the door. It didn't take long, after all.

'I think we should focus on our work, if you're willing,' she says quietly. 'It's the most important thing right now.'

"Of course," she says, no louder. "My apologies for leading us off on a side issue. I intended to ask something more practical."

And it's not until she's back inside the room with the door shut that she'll say it: "If you agree to it, I'd like to bring Steve in on part of the plan. Specifically, to tell him that we will need a distraction at a particular time. I ... am not certain, but I think he would be willing to participate without knowing the actual mission."

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are you out there? can you hear this?

A. what's the future, who will choose it

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