third round :: written (backdated to start of Tokyo!)

[reengineered]

This is Earth, right? I've never been there here before.

[Yet it's somewhere she always thought she'd see.]

Are any of you from Earth?

Comments

[encryptedlock]

I'm from Earth, yeah! Although this is probably just Paradisa's representation of twentieth-century Earth and not the real thing.

Close enough for me, though.

[reengineered]

I didn't think it would look like this.

[encryptedlock]

Yeah? How so?

[...Besides the missing space elevator and the other marks of the twenty-sixth century.]

Kelly

[banshee_rider]

Not from Earth, but I'd been there a couple times for debriefings.

[Didn't really get a chance to site-see.]

[freeslider]

I am. A different part of it, but still Earth. Why do you ask?

[lonenoble]

It does seem to be. A nice change from some of the world changes we've had.

[reengineered]

I thought it would have more tech.

[reengineered]

It makes me realize how many pleaces I haven't been. I wanted to see it someday and now I can.

[reengineered]

Usually they're bad, aren't they?

[reengineered]

It seems kind of old.

[indirectcause]

Sure, I'm from America. This place here is Japan...a really retro eighties Japan, but still.

[banshee_rider]

I think we're a few hundred years too soon for that, really. It's a little disconcerting though, isn't it?

[freeslider]

I know that feeling.

So you're from a place where Earth exists, but you've never been there yourself? Where are you from?

[reengineered]

Eighties?

[2480...?]

[reengineered]

[Where is she... from?

She thinks hard on that, delaying the response by several minutes. While it was mostly trained out of her anyway, she still had an inkling before she came here. But now?]

I don't know where I'm from.

[reengineered]

Creepy. I don't like it.

[freeslider]

[She thought she lost the girl for a minute there and wandered off, so her response is slightly delayed as well]

You don't? Did you forget? Is that your loss or something?

[reengineered]

[Another long delay. This is too confusing and it hurts her to think about, makes her brain go places she doesn't want it to go, this kind of silent screaming from the inside out.

Not being able to remember is a whole other level of dissociation she doesn't want to deal with.]

I don't remember any of it. I think I knew before but I don't know now.

[freeslider]

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry.

[Softly, even know it's hard to read the other person through text, the long delays speak volumes for her] You can make new memories here, though, right?

[indirectcause]

Yeah, you know, the 1980s? It's a decade.

[reengineered]

[There's a scribbled out section of letters that's not visible, then a question mark that's also crossed out.]

not

Can I?

[reengineered]

[WOW THAT IS A LONG TIME AGO.]

20th century.

I'm from the 26th.

[freeslider]

I don't know about remembering. I guess that could take time. But I meant more like...staring over.

[reengineered]

[Whatever she's fighting for... she can't remember. It's terrifying.]

I'm not a civilian.

[As if that explains everything, why she needs purpose and drive and something to do that isn't making friends and trying to remember things.

A weak answer, to be sure.]

[freeslider]

[Not a civilian. So military of some type. Maybe that's all she knows about herself]

That doesn't mean you don't have a right to a life of your own.