R1 DEADLAND

[lockdownmods]

[it’s strange, for the people who were already dead, the shift in scenery is sudden and complete. For those who have just arrived? It’s like you’re back where you left?

How strange.

But if you ever need her, you can always reach out to the guardian of this place.]

LOCATIONS
Note: locations lag a week behind the living counterparts

Comments

[preconstruction]

[ it's a weird start - he's not sure what he's getting at first. then to hear his own conversation, the things he's saying about himself...mirrored back at him, he can see why viral would think it's not a good thing. and that's...it's strange. it's strange to be envied, and stranger still to feel such a strong sense of conviction.

it gives him warmth, which viral will no doubt feel. he knows others care about him and it's incredible and a little bit terrifying. but he wants viral to understand, too. so he shares - carlos ortiz's android, beaten by its owner and scared, two female androids in lingerie holding hands and one explaining how she'd murdered a human who had killed another friend during a particularly violent round of sex (and connor, hating himself but unable to shoot them, unable to do anything but let them leave), amanda's constant reminders of what his role was an his acknowledgment that he didn't matter, waver telling him he should just die. the overwhelming understanding that in his world, and even here, that humans were more important.

but underneath those memories is something else, lurking quietly. viral's conviction. hank's unwavering support, han's love, rebecca's strong belief in both of them. that for all of the awful things that had happened, he is learning. that he has been taught -- no, not just taught, programmed -- to believe all of these horrible things about himself, but that he is also starting to replace that code with better data. ]

[machrophage]

[The answer comes back in a memory, a voice not Viral's own but a young man's - evolving beyond who we were a moment before - but underlying that, Lordgenome's a beastman will never surpass a human, what he was made for, what his entire race was made for, static and maintaining the stasis quo, Have you finally snapped out of your thousand-year doldrums, Spiral King?, made by a man who survived without living and condemned his entire species to the same.

And the uncertainty that comes with being the one who was different, the one who chased the answers, who - they have a right to live where they please - wound up fighting the human government on the behalf of other humans. How it's impossible to know if he was (born, made, there's not enough distinction) different from the beginning, to know if he changed along the way, but the knowledge that he is different now. Out of place among his own kind - so many of whom, after humans moved in, have kept to the same jobs and roles that they were born for, and the prisons full of warriors who couldn't put down what they were made for, they just couldn't - and out of place among humans.

Humans, the axis around which the spiral spins.

But a tightening grip, because that doesn't mean that they're nothing just for not being human.]

[preconstruction]

[ connor's lips part and he sucks in a quiet, simulated breath. he understood all of this so much. it was so strange, to be understood by someone else. when so much of his experience here had been people asking but you look so human, why would you say otherwise? but to have someone who had experienced similar things, someone who understood what it was like to just want to be free... it touches him very deeply.

he shares the undying loyalty he had felt (how, he, too, had been made to fight and to maintain order and to keep the androids from having rights) and the deep conflict when he'd finally opened his eyes and gone deviant. markus, who had opted not to kill him even when he could have let all the deviants to their death. markus, who he was still mourning, his horror when he'd been told the humans had shot him down.

and then -- and then ---

connor has to pull away, if not physically then mentally. he can't share the way the story ends. he wouldn't want to hurt viral like that. ]

I -- I'm sorry.

[machrophage]

The hell are you apologizing for?

[The things Connor had said to Vivienne drift to the surface, at that thought about having your eyes opened - and with it, the impression of Lordgenome, skin tanned and scarred by countless battles, their lord, their king -

And Nia. Nia, the last princess, the doll who had learned to stand on her own, both a girl of fifteen and a young woman, unnaturally white-blue hair blown by a bullet, streaming behind her down a wedding aisle. Nia Teppelin, the Anti-Spiral's messenger, but first a girl who asked -

Father, why do I exist?

Lordgenome's hobby was creating children, but not ever raising them. Once they were old enough to think for themselves, they were discarded. Every beastman knows this, took it as proof that their lord cared nothing for humans even though he himself was one.

And that knits into that undying loyalty, and Connor's accusations that Vivienne had just created AI to love her, and it tangles.]

You're alive. That's the place you have to start.

[preconstruction]

[ there's relief knowing that viral understood that part, too. the concerns he had about vivienne, about her ai. seeing it play out from virals past just drives it home that much more. it was like he told vivienne -- he was lucky that kamski had never programmed the androids the love him.

but more than any of that, it's viral's words that are so important. ironic, when he'd pulled away to spare him having to experience his death, but important all the same. because for all he might have been dead back home -- ]

I am alive. We both are.

[machrophage]

[More and more ironic, given that Viral was supposed to watch and witness for all of history. Never to die, always to survive and tell history from the perspective of one who saw it happen.

And now here he is - ]

As long as that's true, we can move forward.

[ - Lordgenome even then, even in the process of making him something else, couldn't see anything but static. But when you're capable of change, your perspective changes moment by moment, experience by experience, and what you know and think about that history changes.]

[preconstruction]

Move forward and drill through the roof.

[ he hasn't forgotten. the most important part of all of this. ]

[machrophage]

[And across the connection that's still there, he'll get some of the context - Kamina, coming out of the prison to see the moon hanging so close in the sky and Kittan's hand snapping up to point at it, my drill is the drill that creates the heavens - but only in half-formed flashes.]

Onwards and upwards, but never backwards.

[preconstruction]

Thank you, Viral. For everything.

[ it's so sincere. this means so much to him.