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technicolorcrows · 4 months ago

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Memory Drive

Another gift fic for @opal-owl-flight! Thank you again for letting me bother you with a thousand-million questions about your wonderful ocs. i hope this is sufficient payment!

“Agent Four.” Is this what a pinned moth feels like?

“I had not accounted for your presence. This will be corrected immediately.” Her soul, grasped and shuffled like a hand of cards - “I am Order itself.”

- her memories, laid bare - “A consciousness generated from the processes of many who yearn for stability.” - her mind, flayed and pinned like a specimen on a microscope slide, shuddering under the great lens. “You have been sent here to address security concerns.” A blank white expanse stretches out into clean, sterile nothingness. What’s under her feet feels solid enough, but there’s no visible difference between it and the space around it, no discernible dividing line between ceiling and floor, presence and emptiness, no reassurance that a single step in any direction won’t send her plummeting into the unknown. It’s a void so complete that it feels almost like a solid thing smothering her, blocking her in from all sides - A single object appears before her. A black box, stark against the blinding white, eye-level but just beyond her reach. It flickers briefly, like a computer screen - and then there’s something looking back at her. It’s the vaguest approximation of a face: two white circles and a further white dot for what must be a mouth. It’s almost comically simplistic, like it was drawn by a child - and yet, wariness spikes in her ink, setting her skin to crawling. Though there is only one set of eyes on a single screen, she gets the distinct feeling that she is being viewed from all angles, scrutinized for the smallest of imperfections. It’s an uncomfortably familiar feeling. In what new and exciting ways will she be found lacking today? “You wish to prove yourself. This is amenable.” The crude face’s mouth animates in the rhythm of speech, but the words seem to emanate from all around her and yet from nowhere at all, like they’re being spoken directly into her head. “However, in your current state, you are not compatible with security protocols. Your programming requires attunement to the ideals of Order.” Not compatible…? What does that even mean? There shouldn’t be anything wrong with the programming, Marina wrote her in by hand. She’s already been here once before, and it didn’t go anything like this. Laika trusts Marina implicitly, and through the course of this mission, Rain has started to see why - the memverse’s creator had run her through an exhaustively thorough playtesting session. Though that creator is now conspicuously absent. “Where’s Marina?” Her voice sounds strange, like there’s a layer of static in her throat that she has to push the words through. “Marina is currently occupied. She has not requested your presence.” Simple. Concise. Dismissive. She has to consciously quiet the urge to put her fist through the screen. Deep breaths. Count backwards from ten. She’s on a mission, here. She’s Agent Four again, and Agent Four is supposed to be polite and helpful and palatable. She can manage that, can’t she? She can’t go fucking things up this early, Tanara would sideline her so hard that her ass would have a permanent bench-mark pattern embossed into it. This was already a concession, a scrap tossed her way to keep her occupied - if she fumbles this chance, she probably won’t get another. Just the thought of those once-warm eyes hardening into chips of glacial ice, disapproval tightening their once-smiling mouth into a sharp, steely line - it’s enough to make her flinch even now. This is an easy mission. Rookie-level stuff. She can’t fuck this up. She can’t. And if she can’t pull this off, where will that leave her? Pacing like a beast in a cage, letting fury use her tongue as a biting whip, brandishing her impotent despair at anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the blast zone? Desperately chasing down memories, trying to cling to a person who’s so thoroughly spurned her? Torturing herself with want, begging warmth to re-kindle in cold eyes like a wound wants to retain the shape of the knife that made it? “Alright. Fine. What do you want from me, then?” "I require control of your vessel in order to integrate you into standard security protocol."

It would be so much easier if every single word out of this thing’s robot mouth wasn’t making her want to snarl in its stupid little face. "What does that - what does that even mean?"

"A world of perfect Order does not require your input."

The screen in front of her crackles with static - and then it multiplies. In a rippling wave of creation, blank screens appear in perfect, orderly rows that curve to wrap around her like crawling tendrils. In less than the space between heartbeats, she’s encapsulated in a sphere of little black boxes gazing in at her like a thousand watchful eyes. As one, all the screens illuminate. Each one plays a different scene, a bombardment of light and color after so long spent staring into empty white space. The sheer number of them makes it difficult to pick just one to focus on, but she makes a valiant attempt- -only to realize with a start that all of them are familiar. In each screen is a moment of her life, seen through her own eyes. Her memories, trapped like so many insects under glass. Every failure, every setback, every struggle, every private grief, all casually put on display in vivid, agonizing detail.

"However, compensation for your cooperation can be provided. Your desire for stability can be accommodated."

Compensation? Her stomach churns. Does she even have the power to be sick in a place like this? "You’re not making any fucking sense. What, are you offering to show me my own memories? You can't pay me with something I already have-"

"You are being offered the opportunity to experience what the cruelty inherent in chaos has denied you. A world of perfect Order, free from strife and conflict. You are being offered harmony between desire and reality.” That doesn’t clear anything up! She wants to scream, but before she can do so, the images in the screens abruptly shift. A thousand small kindnesses are paraded before her. Soft words and idle afternoons in the sun. Triumph and fulfillment. Laika’s earnest delight and Tanara’s subtle humor. A smile they weren’t quick enough to hide while on-duty. A shared meal in a cluttered, homey kitchen. A clumsy compliment. Each one that catches her eye impresses a ghost of sensation upon her body: olive wood under her palms, laughter in her throat, a hand, warm and steady, on her shoulder. “Simply put: you are being offered a chance to experience what you want most.”

It's a lie. It has to be a lie. Nothing that good is ever free.

It's a terrible idea to put any sort of trust in the word of a being with this much power over her, even if it was made by someone Laika trusts. This thing has picked apart her brain and examined her like a specimen on a dissection table - of course it would know how to tempt her into listening to her hearts over her head.

Of course it would know. Why else would she be so tempted?

"Why... why would you...? What can you possibly gain from this?"

"Your voluntary participation in security protocol is preferable to any available alternatives. And moreover, I am a being created by desire. Fulfillment of that desire is paramount to my existence. It is my purpose. Your desires have long gone unfulfilled, have they not?" Don’t patronize me! A wrathful response forms all-too-easily, singing her tongue - but before she can let it loose, the screens change again. Gone are the ambient pleasantries of lazy halcyon days, replaced instead with memories from the not-so-distant past. Eight, wide-eyed and stress-pale in the face of her anger slipping its leash, flinching away from her attempt to apologize. Coming home to an empty house and a cold bed. Disappointment quickly hidden behind a passive mask. A frown that means a lecture. The wavering barrel of a weapon in her exhausted grip after yet another drill deemed imperfect. A mirror in an abandoned room reflecting two bright figures embracing against a clear blue sky, jubilant smiles on their faces. Her own hand touching the glass, hoping in vain to feel even the faintest echo of their joy, no matter how fake it is. “Stop.” She tries to demand, but her voice cracks down the middle of the word. She tries to look away, but the screens take up the whole of her vision. Everywhere she looks, there’s a new memory that greets her eyes. Are you… okay, Rain? You promised me you would stay away from here. Watch your form. Take it from the top. Again. You should go home. Again. You don’t… you haven’t seemed like yourself, lately. Again. Why would I be happy? “Stop!” She snarls, rage igniting in her chest, tearing through her like dry tinder. “Enough!” “You need only accept. Your desires in return for your strength, to protect a world of Order.” Before her, an object unfolds into existence, written into being by lines of light - a mask. The metallic surface is totally featureless except for large, round eyeholes. It feels like she’s being offered the keys to a cage. Fury roars in her ink, pulsing in her ears, hot under her skin - she reels back, ready to throw her strength into razing this place to the ground - In a shimmer of light, a familiar figure appears, obscuring the mask with their bulk. Yellow-gold, ringed with teal; the summer sun above the ocean. No cap, no cloak, no mantle of authority - Tanara. Just Tanara, ink vivid with apparent health, bright eyes looking at her with such beak-aching warmth. Just Tanara. Happy, just like they ought to be. “|It doesn’t have to be this way, Rain.|” “Don’t - don’t call me that, you’re not real -” “|But I’m here, aren’t I? I’m right here with you.|” A gilded, pretty cage is still a cage. She doesn’t want to look at them, but they’re surrounded on all sides by memories of pain and guilt and anger - they are the only safe place for her gaze to rest. “|I missed you, you know? When you were gone.|” A gilded, pretty cage is still a cage - but in it, there’s a sweetness the waking world found her unworthy of. “|I should never have sent you away.|” The apparition raises a hand towards her - spellbound, she stands stone-still as their knuckles brush her cheek ever-so-gently. “|Let me make it up to you?|” Her hearts howl in tandem, lurching like they’re trying to burst free from her chest and right into Tanara’s hands. Their wail rings in her head, louder than her doubts and fears, louder than her caution, louder than the quiet voice in the back of her mind insisting that she doesn’t even deserve this much. She leans forward and buries her face in their chest.

It’s colder than she remembers it being. …. … .. . "...Rain?"

Tanara's quiet, raspy voice calls her back to herself. She jolts, startled, blinking owlishly at them - but they only smile, soft and warm.

"|Bored of me already?|"

"No! No, I must've just... dozed off, is all. What was I... where did I leave off?"

"|You were telling me what you wanted to do to celebrate your return.|"

Somehow that... doesn't seem quite right. But they're smiling at her still, bubbles of her orange rising in their ink at the tips of their tentacles... and she has no reason not to trust them, right?

"You're not gonna give me a budget? Limit my use of explosives?"

"|No.|" Their eyes crinkle at the corners, spots gently fluttering with their good humor. "|You're worth celebrating.|" A broad hand rises, set gently on her mantle, a fond, easy touch. "|...Even if I have to supervise the use of a moderate amount of explosives.|"

She laughs at that - and once she starts, it's like she can't stop, and the two of them fall to giggling like giddy hatchlings.

Tanara's hand doesn't leave her. Her hearts are light and warm, and Tanara is laughing.

I wish...

it could be this way

forever.

---

>> ???

def askGoToThisFloor(question):

GoToThisFloor = ""

while (GoToThisFloor!="YES" and GoToThisFloor!="NO"):

GoToThisFloor = input(question).upper()

return YesNoAnswer