thisavrou | (no subject)

[The camera shakes a little as it comes on, and for a moment Wanda's hand blocks half the picture. The other half shows a quilt hanging on a wall, a patchwork piece of artwork displaying a scene from a sport involving players leaping through the air with batons trailing different colored strands, weaving a maze-like pattern they must all navigate.]

[Then camera stabilizes on Wanda, sitting on a bed beneath the quilt and leaning forward with eager tension. She takes a deep breath.]

Not long ago, I went to a museum that had a display about the planet Aueia, and they gave me a gift of a carving of a whale.

[Another deep breath, and she opens a small box and gingerly picks up a carving of a whale and holds it for the camera. Her gaze moves sideways as she does so, eyes widening into a stare at something to the side. After a moment, she sets the carving down again next to her.]

Every time I touch it, I see ... someone. [She closes her eyes for a second, hand brushing against the stone lightly. When she opens her eyes again, she looks determined.]

But I don't always see him in the same way. He has moods... He seems to be involved in different situations, and sometimes I think he can see me... Sometimes I see more than one image of my brother, going in and out like one of those... like an optical illusion that can be an old woman or a young woman or a duck or a rabbit, depending on how you look. Back and forth, like flipping a switch of perception.

I went back to the museum, but they couldn't answer my questions. I want to know ...

How does this stone work? Can anyone tell me? Where does the image come from? Does it come from me, or does it come from...something real? Could it come from something in a ... world next door? Could it be true? Or is it just showing me...memory and imagination?

And when I see different things, does that mean anything?

[She stops, then stares at the camera, pressing her lips together.]

No, I know it means something. I want to know what it means.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

It doesn't show people as they really are.

[Nate sighs and looks away from the camera, briefly.]

They said the stone had psychic properties. I figured that means it's taking something from in us, thoughts or memories or...whatever. Because some of the people it shows are dead.

[Wanda looks quizzical and entirely unsurprised.] But it takes psychic properties to make someone see something, no matter where it comes from. And would you call it anything other than psychic to see other worlds?

I know. I know... [She slows down a little.] The brother that I'm talking about, in all of my memories, he's ... [For all that she's talking about it calmly, she doesn't actually say the word, just leaves a gap...] too. But there are other worlds. Why shouldn't it be possible to see them? Or more than one of them, even?

Seeing other worlds seems like psychic and then some.

[But shit. He knows that look, that lack of words, he gets it. And he doesn't want to stomp on her hopes, especially since he doesn't know better than she does, but he can't bring himself to prop them up, either.]

Wouldn't just be looking at another world for me; it'd be another time too. And I just...I know it's a memory, nothing more. But maybe it's different for what you saw.

Yes, that is true... But I have seen stranger things.

[Wanda tilts her head to the side.]

I think time passes differently in different worlds.

How do you know it's a memory?

[Wanda abruptly realizes that what she's asking about might be intrusive. How do you know? A good investigatory question, what are the signs by which to recognize a memory, but she also remembers when she kept her memories close and never talked about them. There is a reluctance here, and in her eagerness to find out more she might have rushed forward with questions without noticing or wanting to notice. But now that it has registered, she thinks she should respect that.]

Never mind.

[Wanda gives a tiny shrug.]

I think that if there are answers, I will have to look harder, and in more places.

[She still has some of that eager, tense look. Clearly, she's not giving up on this.]

Thank you for sharing your experience.

[He's wrestling with how to reply, uncomfortable with where this line of conversation has gone but not wanting to be a dick to someone who's suffered something similar. But then she relents and it's kind of a relief, something he appreciates.]

Good luck. If you find anything, I'd be interested in hearing about it. If you wanna share.

I have found many things.

[Wanda seems tired, though.]

Is there a kind of something that you are interested in? Psychic rocks? Memories?

[Oh, hey.]

Answers, I guess. How things work here. Reasons for the stuff we think is weird.

[That makes Wanda smile briefly, because those are the big questions.]

I want to know that too. Why are there so many holes in reality, Ingresses and Tesseracts and Rifts and Rips? And is it possible for information to pass through, non-physically, as I thought it might?

I couldn't find anyone who could tell me that. I don't know if most people here want to understand the Ingress nearly as much as they want to control it.

But I do know why I see what I see when I touch the psychic stone.

[Those are big questions. He's not surprised no one can tell her the answers. But he does think well of her for asking them.]

Yeah? Why is that?

[This is hard to talk about, but Wanda feels like she needs to tell someone what she's come to believe, as a way of forcing herself to accept it. And she thinks that this man understands loss, at least, and he seems to have a curious mind and interest in the world and its ways, so he might understand the rest. Or at least not laugh at the crazy ideas and situations she's about to try to explain.]

Did you know that every time you remember something, you rewrite that memory? You can't remember something totally unchanged... Time is a thief.

But somehow, the rock and its vision, it creates more clarity than most ordinary memories.

But if...if you have...extra memories...and extra memories of memories...and if there was someone that you never wanted to forget, not even a little, not any detail, but the memories got layered in ways that aren't entirely natural...because of the way you experienced memory in another reality...

Then something that was meant to be simple and clear, isn't.

And that is all that it is.

[There. She said it.]

You were right.

I don't...completely get what you're talking about.

[Extra memories, and memories of memories? Other realities? It's a little beyond him, and part of him wishes it wasn't.]

But I do understand not wanting to forget even a little detail. And things that should be simple. I'm sorry I was right.

[Wanda wonders if it would make more sense if she explained about having two sets of conflicting memories. But she has a feeling that it wouldn't make anything easier.]

Don't be sorry. You save yourself a lot, being right about that kind of thing.

Well, I'm wrong about plenty of other things. Just so you don't get an inaccurate impression.

[Wanda manages not to say the first thing that pops into her mind, a tired, depressed statement about being wrong, but leaves a bit of a gap before she nods.]

That's only human, I suppose.

For some more than others. But yeah.

(no subject)

video;

Re: video;

video;

Re: video;

Re: video;

video;

video; private; some days later

video; private;

Re: video; private;

video; private;

Re: video; private;

video; private;

Re: video; private;

video; private;

Re: video; private;

video; private;