01 ❆ Text

[needlebearer]

[ It's taken Arya a while to figure out how to use the phone properly, let alone consider posting to the network. But there's a question that's been on her mind ever since she arrived, and she figures it's about time to get it asked. ]

someone told me that people who have died in their own world can come here and live again. have you known anyone that's happened to? have they been happy to be alive again, or angry that they can't go home?


[ A moment later, another text. ]

i dont know what any of the machines in my kitchen are supposed to do. can someone help me out?

Comments

[needlebearer]

so if we kill all the null, we can leave?

[ It sounded a little too simple to her. Surely the gods wouldn't just let them walk out of here, no matter how much they helped them. ]

and i'd be able to go to a different time? to change my own past?

[so_dark_a_road]

That's my plan. I've been trying to persuade the gods that this is feasible, but they aren't convinced. So far. I haven't given up.

[ A concern that Curufin also has. He has seen the gods keep promises rather than break them, but he doesn't completely trust them. Sometimes they withhold information, and Curufin wonders if there is a reason they haven't made any promises as regards the Hadrielites being able to leave once the former hosts are revived. Still, being a pragmatic man, he works with the situation as it is. And he forms a back-up plan, just in case. ]

I can't be sure that the Door would make time-travel possible, but considering the way I have observed it to work, I think it's likely. The Door can seize the same person from different points in his or her history, so why wouldn't it be possible to deliver people back to other points than they were taken from?

[needlebearer]

what if the null kill the gods? would they let us go back?

[ Because Arya for one doesn't care who wins their war, so long as she gets to go back to Westeros. ]

even if it's possible, what's there to guarantee we could choose the point we wanted to go to, rather than just being spit out at random?

[so_dark_a_road]

The Null finagled their way into our network and communicated with us a couple of times before they finally attacked and tried to kill us and the gods. Those benighted droids made a number of promises to various people, as regards what would happen if the Hadrielites cooperated with them and helped the Null win. One promise was that they would send us home. But they kept blatantly contradicting themselves, and they aren't very good communicators in the first place -- they weren't able to conceal their contempt for us. They kept threatening us and repeating that they had no use at all for "organics" -- us, that is! -- and they let us know they would just as soon murder the lot of us, along with the gods.

So, almost none of us believed their lies. We chose to fight on the gods' side, not because we love the gods, but because we figured we would live longer and have a better chance of getting out of here in the end, if we fought the Null.

As to how the Door works, and whether it could possibly meet the needs of all of us, there is no guarantee. The gods don't seem to understand it very well themselves, and they have little interest in exploring it as a technological phenomenon. They aren't going to work on it. If the Door is going to be any use to us, we will have to be granted access to it, so that our scientists and technicians can work with it. I am less worried about whether we can jimmy the damned thing to our purposes than whether we can persuade the gods to let us try.

And they certainly aren't going to do that if we are their only food source. Hence, the need to neutralize the Null and create a safe place for the gods' former hosts to be revived. Once that happens, I think we have a chance of getting out of here.

[needlebearer]

if the null wanted to murder all the gods, why did delight help them?

[ She's aware there's a lot she's missed out on before she got here, that she needs to understand. ]

[so_dark_a_road]

That's rather a puzzle. She says she betrayed her own kin because the genocide and the perpetual running for their lives had taken its toll, that she had despaired and was sure that the Null would kill them all in the end. The Null apparently promised her that if she cooperated with them, they would only kill Hope, the god who has the power to resurrect the dead -- including dead gods. The other seven gods they would keep imprisoned forever, but alive. She apparently had begun to believe that eternal imprisonment was better than permanent death. Except, of course, that her brother Hope would have been permanently dead.

I believe her, actually. I know from experience that despair can distort not only a person's rational viewpoint, but also their emotional understanding of the world. Betrayal of one's kin is not such an unusual response to such distortion.

[ And he'll do his best to fill her in on what's happened, insofar as he understands it himself. ]

[needlebearer]

betraying your family is the worst crime i can imagine. i'm surprised they dont all want her dead.

[so_dark_a_road]

It's the worst crime I can imagine, too. And yet I myself was guilty of it, in my world.

[ Sigh. ]

It's a good thing I regained my sanity, and that my family has been so forgiving. But Delight isn't half as crazy as I was, and I do not see why she should not recover her hope, as I did. That's why I don't want her dead.

[needlebearer]

some things dont deserve forgiveness. but its not up to me, i didnt have to go through what she did to you all.

[so_dark_a_road]

Maybe you are right, and forgiveness is not deserved. But my experience has been that if there is no forgiveness, then there is no renewal for the community. It splinters and disintegrates. This was true in my world, and I believe it to be true everywhere.

I also think it's important to remember that it wasn't Delight who created this whole mess. The Null did that, by attacking the gods without warning or any real rationality, and by pursuing them through the universe with genocidal intent. They killed the gods' former hosts, and they'd kill us, too, without a qualm.

I know that Delight had her part in this. But everybody that I personally fought during this recent war was a Null! It is them I hate, not her. They tricked her into cooperating, using her despair against her and making a bunch of lying promises which she, in her desolation, believed. I would like to kill every one of them. But her, I would not kill. I want to reclaim her from despair, as I myself was reclaimed.

[needlebearer]

the null look like theyre easier to kill, at any rate. i wish i didnt have to come in when everything was all done and dusted, its difficult to form an opinion with so much having happened before i arrived.