savetheearth | Second Message [Text

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Does anyone know this story?

A Roman soldier travels to a desert ruin, questing in search of a supposed artifact carrying otherworldly power. He finds the artifact, but as soon as he touches it, the god whose power it holds possesses him. Borrowing its unnatural abilities and turned immortal, he begins preparations for a ritual to summon that god onto Earth.

A thousand years later, a slave dancer in a temple in the forest is left alone and desperate for adventure, and explores. A secret passage takes her to the place where the temple's deity hides, and where she is given another artifact that she is told she needs to hide from the deity's enemies. Somehow, the artifact is magically absorbed inside her. Before she can go back to the surface, the soldier appears and demands to know where the artifact is. When she can't answer, she is killed on the spot.

[A short horizontal stroke.]

That doesn't sound like the end, but that's all that I know. I've tried to look it up in several places, but I haven't seemed to have found anything at all.

I know that it probably doesn't seem important. However, it feels important... I remembered it just after watching what happened on April 5th, though I can't remember where I might have possibly heard it or read it.

Thank you.

[He starts to sign his name - but no further than "Anth" thinks better of it on remembering Davin's propositions and rubs it out.

After Capt. Mass responds, he reconsiders again and signs "Anthony J."]

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[ On a whim, and also because he needs a distraction, Casval decides to sit down at his desk and mirror the format of the original message... all with penmanship flawless enough to make even the strictest of schoolteachers jealous. ]

It's not a tale I've stumbled upon, but it's interesting regardless. And even though it may not seem important, if it feels important, it probably is.

[ Casval has been in the same boat before. He doesn't doubt what he says. ]

Is "Anth" really your name? The network is secure, if you're concerned about that.

[Make no mistake, Anthony is impressed by his penmanship.]

I'm sorry. I was a little concerned, but you are probably right.

My name is Anthony.

I do guess it may be essentially the same as the "visions" that most of us have had, or the objects that some of us have been finding ourselves with, but this felt more like remembering something I forgot than the two I've had. I didn't see myself doing things I couldn't have ever done... I just remembered a story.

[ In return, Casval signs his name for Anthony, crisp and in full: ]

[ And then he goes on, with the same sort of fast, elegant flourish. ]

Stories comprise the fabric of who we are. How the world has imprinted upon us. But from what I can tell, it's more of a shove than a nudge. And that means something.

Don't disregard it. [ Says the man who tried desperately to. ] In time... maybe, it will come to make sense.

[ But even he knew it was an awfully big maybe. ]

Edited (ENDLESS EDITS) 2013-04-11 06:28 (UTC)

Sorry, never heard that one before. What do you think these memories or whatever, are? 'Cause right now, I got nothing.

That's all right; I have to admit that I don't expect anyone to.

I'm sorry that I don't have any idea that makes enough sense to share. The first one I had was of being told to bring a message to Charlemagne. [He would've felt slightly embarrassed to share that before it was as clear as it is that no one knows where to start on understanding what the visions mean.] If they're not suppressed memories, or even strange psychic visions of things happening somewhere else, what else do you think that they could be?

Hey, never hurts to ask.

If it was just me, I'd say I'd lost my damn mind, but with this many people involved? I dunno. Maybe it's a government fuck up? Like, some sort of chemical weapon got away from them, or something?

[Kenji's obviously watched too many disaster movies.]

What about the objects?

[There's a lengthy pause before he gets a reply]

Aliens maybe?

Seriously though, I could come up with lame scenarios for all the stuff that's happened, but no one explanation that covers everything all together.

So yeah, I've still got a whole lot of nothing.

Edited 2013-04-12 06:40 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with it.

But if these incidents keep happening, I suspect the end may come to you sooner or later.

That's true. It may.

If only we knew what they are for and from. Though in all times, it was like "remembering" something I couldn't have done or learned to begin with, remembering this story was nothing like having the two "visions" that I've had.

Edited 2013-04-11 14:35 (UTC)

I don't think most of these memories - or visions, whatever the case may be - will be of much use until we've gotten more context.

A little. But I don't know what it's from either.

[[Mostly, it just makes him think of that dream-catcher like object he keeps doodling, and that one memory where it was imbedded in his chest.

...Egypt when there were pharaohs had contact with Rome, he was pretty sure. Maybe that was where those items that him was talking about wound up afterwards.]]

Reminds me a little of something I don't know why I remember too.

If you don't mind my asking, what is it? [After a moment.] It isn't also a video game, is it?

Edited 2013-04-11 16:01 (UTC)

Not a video game. I'd have remembered a game like that.

No, this is something I only started remembering once this number started working. Something that I said in that memory. I can't remember it very well....

[It's written crisply, neatly. You'd never guess his age from the look of the writing.]

What is it that happened April 5th?

[Though the question at least indicates he's new to the network.]

[That it does - and this is quite a thing to be prompted to fill a new connector on, only a week after it happened and yet not close enough to it that they can see for themselves.]

Did you hear about the house fire that night?

[Face it; there's going to be a lot of sketchy and downright terrible news shared on this thing. He's poked around a little bit, but hasn't gone far back.]

I heard about it. [Not his neighbourhood, but it'd been hard to miss the news reports, even without looking for them.] What's it got to do with what's happening to us?

Edited 2013-04-11 22:26 (UTC)

Paul Ben tried to go to the police about it. He was killed.

Because he was using the network at the time a lot of us watched it happen.

They burned down his family's house to disguise it, almost definitely.

[Describing the fact of the fire after everything else gives him a shiver with good refreshed haunted regret. The fact that Paul hadn't been safe had been one that even his parents and five poor little sisters over...]

[He takes a few moments to reply to this, after some internal debate over whether to look that particular broadcast up, just to make sure this information is real.

[... Well, if it is, surely he'll be able to tell it's going in that direction before he actually sees it happen, right? Right. So he looks it up -- and yeah, he's getting out of that before he actually sees it. The lead-up is confirmation enough.

[Just . . . damn. The guy getting killed is disturbing on its own, but there's something that bothers him a lot more than that. The house fire . . . that had supposedly killed multiple people.]

His family, too.

Yes.

[There's no way those aren't connected. No way on Earth. Too much of a co-incidence. It's bad enough that he's aparrently in danger himself, but -- but Granny.

[It's a good thing this is text, so the worry in his eyes can't be read. But the handwriting does get a bit shakier here.] Terrific. What are we supposed to do about this?

No one else seems to know yet. We assume that we can't talk about these things with anyone expect each other, and that's all. Everyone is counting on the answers being in why the things that are happening to us, are happening to us. [How he wishes he knew well enough himself to be reassuring; he's been oh so quietly scared of his own shadow the past week himself.

A thought comes rising out of a blank space in several seconds' worth of nothing.] Maybe we're being prepared for something.

Like what? I don't see how what I "saw" or "remembered" or whatever it is can be useful for anything.

Maybe it'll go with something else?

In my case, I know that the three thoughts I've gotten have felt like they could've been meant to be warnings. Some of the others have said that they've suddenly learned to do things that they couldn't before. Others have found real objects.

[He's normally not quite so open, but all he can think of is that Granny is in danger if he doesn't figure this out.]

It's only happened to me once. I was yelling at someone for being hungover on the job. Like I was in charge, but I don't know what of.

[There are also those strange terms in his head, but he doesn't know how to bring those up.]

Are you in charge of something?

No.

[Sheesh, he's eleven. What can he possibly be in charge of? Oh, right. He's not blabbing about his age.]

I've got a weird ancient artifact stuck around my waist. I can absorb it back into myself.

I'd rather just the weird memories.

[He's not sure who this is, but there's no point in being secretive since so many people were there at Lyall's meeting when the stupid belt showed up in the first place.]

I was there when that appeared. Hello, sir. I'm one of Mr. Lyall's students.

Do you think of them as memories?

Which one were you?

[The shock of the belt combined with Hajime's normal pre-meeting aloofness made it a bit difficult to remember everyone who was there...]

I'm not sure. The one I saw felt too vivid to be a dream. But I know I've never been in that situation. What about you?

I was the taller one in the brown jacket. My name is Anthony. I'm a freshman. [He half wonders if it would've done for identification to say even just that, for the weight grade seems to have among students.]

I know that I can't have been in the situations I've seen in them, either. In my first one, I was told to deliver a message to Charlemagne. In the second one, I saw a dead body in an old wooden coffin with its chest blasted open.

Ah, right. I remember you. My name's Hajime. I don't think I ever introduced myself to the group.

[No, he much preferred skulking around the back of the room, avoiding notice...at least until the belt had made that impossible.]

Second one wasn't because of what happened to that kid, was it? After that happened, I saw some guy in weird armor who wanted to shoot me.

[Which isn't quite what he saw, but it's easier to explain. Killing makes more sense than the "sealing" the vision had gone on about.]

No... I'm not familiar with that story. I'll keep it mind. Someone somewhere may know of it.

Thank you. I know it's not likely, since it only came to me in the same way as those visions, but without a memory of seeing or reading anything.

Still, I appreciate your minding it.

Maybe not. But if it feels important enough to you to talk about on this network it's the least I can do. Either way, eventually all of these happenings will have to make sense somehow. There must be a reason for what's happening to everyone.

[ Banagher had simply been scrolling through the network late at night, unable to sleep, eyes nearly glazing over trying to parse through even half of what he's seeing. New people everyday, news pouring in left and right, enough to make his heart want to bury itself in the pit of his stomach. It's when he encounters the handwritten story that several words catch his attention and hold it, making him stop, read more carefully.

...Artifact carrying otherworldly power... possesses him... summon that god onto Earth...

Killed.

It happens again. The panic that surfaces when everything he feels that makes him himself empties away, and a pulse sweeps through him, a heartbeat. A name bursts into his mind. A name to put to an object he craves in all his bones to find, to chase.

Laplace's Box.

It takes several moments to calm himself after the occurrence, wanting to respond in kind but finding that he's still trembling too much to do so. So quietly, he opens up an audio channel, trying to make himself sound more steady than he actually feels. ]

I work at the library and I've never heard of it. If you can't find anything, it must be special to you. Like these things we can't keep ourselves from experiencing.

But... there's something familiar about it.

Your story is not familiar to me. But I have a tale in my mind too that won't go away.

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