WEEK 1 - Online

[al2955]

the pygmalion. . . ONLINE CAPTAIN'S LOG: WEEK (1)

monday (41) survivors It had been three days since you had awoken. The ship was still quiet, except for the low hums of enigmatic machines with no apparent purpose. You awake, like usual, to dim lighting and poor rations. Perhaps being on the ship had grown monotonous — it was, perhaps, amazing how little anything seemed to happen in space, a final frontier of malaise. That monotony is crushed by a voice echoing through the narrow hallways. Reformatting . . . Reformatting . . . Reformatting complete. The Pygmalion is online. Welcome, travelers. Please assemble in the meeting room. Your presence is mandatory. Silence falls once again. A minute or so passes, and the lights around the ship finally brighten, the walls looking more alive and more unfamiliar — as if you must relearn the ship's interior once again. The robots on deck begin to make rounds, nudging and pushing at the ship's passengers to make their way to the meeting room. You hear the doors behind you lock. It seems there is only one path to take. ENTER COMMAND_

Comments

[unasking]

For what it's worth, I take care of those taken under my wing. Your powers interest me - and they'll be important for deciphering how we got into this mess if they're properly tapped into.

[he's actually a pretty benign mad scientist if you don't piss him off]

[parodeity]

It's worth somethin'. And if I could get my powers back in full and help out...well, of fucking course I'll do it, even if I'm not a huge fan of time travel.

[ because it is BULLSHIT and he's done it so much. ]

[unasking]

Good.

[Congratulations Dave, you're the first new experiment of a guy named Frankenstein.

This cannot end poorly.]

Ideally, you'd only have to travel in time once and that'd be the end of it. Or perhaps stopping the beginning?

[parodeity]

I'd say that should be a last resort. I mean, unless everyone is fine with being stuck in a doomed timeline. Time travel isn't really go back, fix everything and nothing ever happened. All of you would still be stuck here, it's just that the versions of you that were on the alpha timeline would not be. Because I looped back. So...it's better to try to fix the problem without time travel, basically.

[ time travel sucks ]

[unasking]

[Time travel does suck.

There's a moment of contemplation - so Dave's version of time travel doesn't erase the existence of the current unfortunate timeline, does it? Perhaps if it's worked in conjunction with Elizabeth's ability to manipulate worlds, then something could actually come of it.

He'll ruminate on it further.]

What an annoying limitation.

[parodeity]

You're tellin' me. By the way, the version of me who loops back also gets the lovely prize of being doomed to die in the "fixed" timeline, so. Basically it is a last resort of "things to do if you have nothing to lose and want at least one version of history to not fucking suck". That's unstable timeloops, mind. Stable timeloops won't kill me, but they also have to have always happened to start with, and obviously this one did not, so we'd be talkin' unstable loops only.

[unasking]

[Immediately:]

No such sacrifices shall be made on this endeavor, understood?

[parodeity]

Roger that, captain.

[ for serious though that's why dave didn't recommend it. it's fine as a last resort when everything is fucked, but...he'd prefer everyone got out alive? like holy shit. ]

I'm all for findin' a happy ending.

[unasking]

[that would be the best possible scenario, wouldn't it?]

That'd be highly preferable - we're both in agreement in that regard.

Now it just depends on what types of things our captors have planned for us.

[parodeity]

Probs nothing great.

[ like. just saying. ]

[unasking]

An astute observation. I'm amazed detective work isn't a skill of yours as well.

[parodeity]

Hey, who said it isn't? I can scooby with the best of 'em.