[NETWORK - VIDEO] CHAMPAGNE PROBLEMS

[aelwyn_aberration]

Who: Aelwyn Abernant
Username: Aberration
Warnings: Depression, teenage angst, drunken rambling, general jamjar grief, teenage drinking.

[The image that flickers open is very recognizably Aelwyn, her hair slightly more unkempt than usual, her eyes more heated with something that flickers between rage and sadness. She had a...bad experience with the playmate, to say the least, even if she didn't fall for them in the way that others clearly did. That, combined with the date, is hitting Aelwyn harder than usual.

Raising a bottle of wine into frame, which is now more recognizably the common room of Bonnie's flophouse, Aelwyn smiles, bitter and thin, just like her.]

So, in case you were all wondering, if a little girl or your long lost sibling or father or child or dog or whatever the fuck - speaks to you through a mirror, it's a trap! As always, it's a trap! Now, I hear what you're saying - "But Aelwyn, I really think it's real this time! My compulsions tell me so!"

And to that I say it is a miracle you haven't been eaten by something horrible yet. It's the same trick every single time, I swear.

[She laughs, drinking straight from the bottle, then places it down on the table with a thunk. Her smile disappears and for a moment she just looks tired.]

Sorry, that was mean, and I'm doing a redemption arc, right. It isn't a miracle, it's probably some meticulously crafted scheme keeping us all alive in this shithole of a town. [She grimaces, wiping her hair away from her face with a hum.] Then again, who says we are being kept alive. All the people missing - a lot of people for the record - may just be dead.

What do you think, co-workers? It's been a year, nearly, since I arrived and still nothing's changed except the faces. Think they're all dead? Back home? Trapped in a perpetual nightmare? Or does the ADI just slit their throats and bury them in their basement with the other monsters they're hiding from us? If I had full access to the full extent of my magic, I could actually potentially find out, too. But I don't, because magic - my whole life, by the way - is wrong. Would love to hear your thoughts regardless!

[She blows a kiss to the camera before signing off. She will regret this significantly.]

Comments

[aelwyn_aberration]

Ever heard of the trolley problem?

[It's a complicated one, much less neat and simple than the basic version which... when Aelwyn was scrolling through YouTube and watched a video about it (even played a game about it), she felt so easy and simple. Kill the one, let the five live.

Of course, in practice, doing something she might be scrutinized for was pretty much the opposite of her survival strategy. More likely, in that scenario, Aelwyn would turn and pretend like she didn't see anything, even as the five begged for their lives.]

I get your point, yeah, but like... [She purses her lips.] I think I'd be more inclined to sympathize if they didn't act like it was so fucking easy all the time, or like there's no scenario in which using magic could help enough to be worth it.

I just think ADI needs to let itself sink to the level of the people they're fighting if they want to actually have a chance at winning. Make them all feel real terror for once, the kind that they inflict on us without a second thought.

[Can you tell she would have loved Gertrude? The thrill of hurting Fenix beyond repair, burning down everything he'd worked for, even if he didn't value it, and then subjecting him to a fate far worse than death...

It felt nice. Cathartic, even. And she didn't even feel like a monster when she was pouring liquid nitrogen on his stupid smug face.]

[the_archivist]

I've heard of the concept. Of course, in an ideal world there would be a way to cut the power.

Or if it was an empty trolley, throw a log onto the tracks.

[Things are never as simple as philosophical thought experiments would posit.

They could sink to that level. It's ultimately pointless, of course. The apocalypse is unlikely to be coming from the direction they think it's coming from.]

If they do, they run a very real risk of losing many of their people to the power they're trying to combat.

And there isn't a win state. The only thing there is is... not losing. Repeatedly.

[aelwyn_aberration]

It's a stupid hypothetical, but the idea holds. Sometimes, there isn't a solution where nobody takes the brunt of your decision or lack thereof.

[She shakes her head.]

Maybe. They'll lose them anyway, if we keep disappearing. How many have we lost so far? What if Martin's next?

I think... from within this world, yes, there's no way we could beat them once and for all. But they opened the way to other worlds and brought us here. In my world... or rather, my universe. There was an incident tens of thousands of years ago, so long that there's no elf in Fallinel that remembers. But a mage from a dead civilization managed to kill and immediately become the source of all magic in the universe. [Nevermind that it backfired hideously...]

The problem, I think, is that we're stuck playing on their gameboard.

[the_archivist]

[That thought makes him freeze, coldness wrapping around his heart and squeezing. Martin... if Martin suddenly vanished... That would be bad. That was potentially dangerous. For other people.]

If Martin is next... I don't want to find out.

And you're making guesses. The energy needed to send them to another world would be astronomical. Impossible.

[And the rift had already been open. It just needed the tether to be broken.]

There is no other gameboard. The Web is probably ten steps ahead anyway.

[aelwyn_aberration]

[Yes, of course that gets to him. The one he'd do anything to protect, even stand by and watch an entire world suffer.

Aelwyn thinks, like she's not a massive hypocrite. Like she wasn't willing to doom the world twice over to fill the empty void inside her heart. Like she doesn't revel in the pain of her victims even now.]

You would make an exceptionally poor wizard, you know that.

There are other gameboards. There's the gameboard I came from. The fact that we came here means we can go back. The fact that they can reach us where we came from means we can reach them over there.

You say we don't exist on a cosmic scale, I say you suffer from a massive lack of an imagination, primarily because you're convinced you already know it all. Which, again, that's why you'd make an exceptionally poor wizard. Mortals have existed on a cosmic scale and tampered with the multiverse itself before. It's nearly impossible but not impossible, which is the exact sweet spot where magic shines the brightest.

[the_archivist]

It's a good thing I have no interest in being a wizard then, isn't it?

[He barely manages to avoid rolling his eyes at her explanation. It's so simplistic.]

When it comes to the Fears... I do know it all. As much as it's possible for something that isn't a vast inhuman entity that exists outside reality to understand at least.

They don't exist inside reality. And they aren't... aren't separate things you can just get rid of. They are our fears.

[aelwyn_aberration]

That's my point. You understand the fears, but you've never lived in a world where they had no power. You assume they're the most powerful beings in the vast expanse of reality as we understand it, but I think in attempting to comprehend something so catastrophically outside of human perception you're forgetting that there are literally always bigger fish in the sea. It's one of the fundamental rules in the study of cosmology.

If they don't exist inside reality, then they should have no bearing on reality. There are beings that are maddening to comprehend from worlds far outside reality as we understand it, but to influence reality they need to dip their toes in the pool. If they exist outside reality entirely, they are by definition not real.

A fear of spiders exists in my world, as well as the worlds that the majority of us come from, so in that sense the entities probably do have some bearing, but the fear of spiders doesn't just descend to terrorize and feed on people in extremely on the nose ways. That's something unique to this world. And yours apparently.

[the_archivist]

They can completely reshape reality to suit their whims if they get pulled through. A world turned into a factory farm of terror that will only end when they eventually starve themselves because Terminus claims all eventually.

[The Web had understood that. The others? No, they didn't think in ways that could comprehend that.]

They push tendrils in. Monsters, books. Manifestations.

...You don't know that they existed in my world. Maybe I'm just extremely well read.

[He says it wryly, close to a joke. Because he knows he can't deny it when she has seen too much.]

[aelwyn_aberration]

...In other words, they can die?

[That's much more of a weakness than she was expecting, even in all her truly insane hubris!!!]

If they don't feed, they starve, is that correct?

[She does smile at his half-joke, letting out an amused huff.]

Jonathan Sims, I hope you understand that if "extremely well read" is your story, you do just sound like a massive tool.

[the_archivist]

[Jon snorts, and can't help but smile a little.]

It wouldn't be the first time someone has told me that.

Yes, they can die. Probably. But starving them would require the death of literally everyone in the world to cut off their food supply.

[aelwyn_aberration]

You do sort of give off that impression.

[Aelwyn hums thoughtfully.]

Still, the fact that it's even theoretically possible at all is big... I wonder... By that logic, if even one of the rituals succeeds wouldn't that be the single fastest path to their death? Seems sort of counter productive.

[the_archivist]

They don't think like that. They're mostly instinct. Except the Web, maybe the End. And the End doesn't care.

And it wouldn't be fast. It would still be countless years of everyone in the world suffering, until they finally all died.

[aelwyn_aberration]

Hmm... I have more questions about this, but I'm going to save it until I'm sober.

[the_archivist]

I don't know. Being drunk might make it easier.

[aelwyn_aberration]

For you, maybe. When I get drunk I do things like commit treason, burn a house down or battle a relative to the death on the roof of that burning house.

Anyway, I'm better at planning when I'm sober. And much better at moping or - well, losing death battles when I'm drunk.

[the_archivist]

...alright, that is pretty bad and we probably don't want to set ADI on fire.

Fine. Find me when you're sober.