Chapter Text
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THE VOID - It is dark. A beautiful, cloying blackness that encompasses you like a thick blanket. It strokes your hair and fills your eyes, nipping at your fingertips like a thousand crawling insects. It breathes with you, in and out through your lungs, waxing and waning as you do, fills every crevice of your soul, trickling through your veins, cupping your cheeks and whispering to you.
"You belong here. It's so much safer. So much easier. What more do you need than this? Perfect peace and quiet. All-encompassing and beautiful. No noise, no chatter, no distracting color. Just peace…"
YOU - Peace and quiet sounds pretty good right now. (Keep floating in the void)
THE VOID - Isn't this nice? The world, without any of the messy bits. Completely stress-free. No rent to pay, no paperwork, no annoying coworkers or prisoners…
YOU - …Rent? Paperwork? Coworkers? Prisoners? What do you mean?
THE VOID - Nothing to worry about. Idiotic trifles, from a world you don't need to worry about.
THE SIGHT - lies.
THE VOID - All you need to worry about is taking a deep breath in and relaxing. You've earned it, haven't you? After everything.
YOU - …everything?
THE VOID - The general everything. The vague everything. Doesn't even matter. It's boring, anyways. Long, and repetitive, and dragging, and pointless. You never should've gotten involved in the first place. You should just rest. Let it all pass you by…
YOU - I want to know what this "everything" is.
THE HUNGER - Gone…
THE VOID - Everything? Everything is annoying. And it hurts. You're not missing much, honestly. It's better off now that it's gone. Shattered to pieces and swept away.
THE SIGHT - No!
YOU - I'd rather form my own opinion on the matter. Give me more detail.
THE VOID - Fine. You want to know about how dreadful everything is? I'll tell you about it. Do you know what a body is? A job? Therapy? Family reunions? headaches? Gender?!
YOU- We've already gone over the fact I don't.
THE VOID - Well, they're all painstakingly tedious.
YOU - Just tell me what they are!
FLESH - In order to be a part of this "everything", you must parade around in a puppet made of squelching meat and porous bone wrapped in the shell of splotchy, fraying skin. Bits of bone stick from some parts, while pads of fat suffocate others. It aches, and protests, and falls apart constantly, mourning the fact such an abomination could exist in the first place. Demanding constant upkeep and sustenance to keep its fragile state moving. And it produces so much mucus. Every little problem it has, it drains every bit of liquid you consume to sustain it on it's one idiotic solution: Make. Mucus. How could one being need this much mucus? That is a body. And you can never leave it, or change it, or do anything except follow the whims of other souls trapped in splotchy, mucus-y bloody shells as you pretend to function in a "society".
YOU - And this society is?
ARCHIVE [Trivial: Success] - Ah, society. The collective hallucination of billions of melting minds stuck in slowly decaying bodies. This is where you take your shambling flesh-prison and put it to "good use". You can beat it into oblivion working forever in a job, for the betterment of this society. And this job gives you currency, which you use to pay rent.
YOU - What happens if you don't pay rent?
MISERY - Death! Slow, torturous, and miserable death! Starving alone on cold concrete, forgotten, while society continues without giving you a second glance… before you cease to exist, utterly and completely.
YOU - Well. That doesn't sound particularly fun.
MISERY - It isn't! It sucks! Really bad!
YOU - So I need to do a job, to pay rent, so I don't die. What does this "job" entail, then?
ARCHIVE - Nearly anything you can conceive of, really. Unfortunately for you, your job has already been picked for you, and it's the worst job of all.
YOU - What? Who the Hel gave me such a horrible job?
DEJA VU [Success: Easy] - You did.
SYSTEM - They're exaggerating. Really, it's not that bad.
YOU - So what do I do, then?
MISERY - The most disgusting thing imaginable.
SYSTEM - You help people.
YOU - Oh. Well, I like helping people.
JUSTICE - It's a noble cause. We're all miserable, parading in these dumb flesh suits. Why not make it even slightly more manageable for your fellow fleshy beings?
TRIUMPH - Other flesh suits are pretty neat, you think. It's amazing the things an incomprehensible mind stuck in a heap of chemicals can do. Sometimes, those chemicals are actually pretty good, too. Helping people isn't bad.
THE SIGHT - People are beautiful. Flawed, and hurtful, and messy, but kind, too.
MISERY - Incorrect! Idiotic! All of you! You help no one but the shambling flesh bodies that made this disgusting society in the first place. Ones that make more and more chemical lumps of people suffer!
SYSTEM - Society really isn't that bad.
THE HUNGER - Seize it, and obliterate it! It's only truly beautiful when it falls apart, piece by piece. A feast for the waiting maws of our true gods!
YOU - This is stupid. It's either I go back to everything, or I stay here, right? And here is just full of all of you grumbling at me. I thought this was supposed to be peaceful.
THE VOID - it could be. Just ignore them all… quiet can return. Cease these thoughts of disgusting society and living. Just… relax…
THE DEFIANCE - Don't listen to it. They need you, Inspector.
YOU - Who does?
THE SIGHT - All of them.
THE LOYALTY - People you love. People who love others. Beauty, and peace, and joy, and glory. You can save them.
THE HUNGER - Ha! No you can't. But you may as well try. Your frantic scrambling will be entertaining to watch. No one can stop the end…
YOU - The end? Of what?
THE HUNGER - Everything.
THE VOID - As we've been over before, "everything" isn't that much of a loss. There's far better things than everything. Like nothing. Don't you like nothing? It's great. Screw "everything". Nothing is where it's at.
THE SIGHT - How can anything be in nothing? How can they be here if this is nothing?
WORLDVIEW [Medium: Failure] - What the Hel are any of them talking about? This existential talk is hurting your head. You don't like thinking of this much.
YOU - Well, I'm not a big fan of this nothing, at this point. You're doing a horrible job selling the whole thing. How do I get out of here?
SHAPING [Difficult: Success] - You're dreaming, Inspector. Just wake up.
YOU - (Wake up).
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