Fifty-third Spell

[courageous_wit]

This hasn't happened in the castle for a while, but people are arriving who share faces with other people. It can be very unsettling. Especially if... if one of those faces is someone who was a very unpleasant person. You know these two people aren't the same but you can't help feeling uneasy.

[she's honestly still a little shaken up about it. She's told herself over and over that this is the Doctor, who is a dear friend of hers]

Anyway, I don't know if anybody's read it, but Dr. Saunders wrote a report some years ago detailing this phenomenon.

Comments

[dog_eat_dog]

[She pauses. What the absolute fuck is this?]

Do you have any specific example? Is there anyone here like that right now?

[courageous_wit]

No one is here now like that, but my friend Cloud has a double also named Cloud. I met them both personally.

[dog_eat_dog]

And they look the same, act the same, and all that shit?

[courageous_wit]

There are some differences... The same person initially, but somewhere along the line different choices were made and a different path was taken.

It's sort of like what we experience when the castle gives us false memories, I suppose.

[dog_eat_dog]

So it's some science-fiction... thing.

[Holy shit, she hates being new. She thought she had it figured out, but now it's just getting more and more complicated.]

False memories?

[courageous_wit]

[sob, she's so sorry, Tess]

Erm, yes. The castle sometimes gives us fake memories of alternate lives. It did it quite recently when we visited my original world, making people believe they always went to school there.

[dog_eat_dog]

[Tess is so very displeased.]

Look, I'm not here to shoot the messenger, but that's incredibly fucked up.

[courageous_wit]

I agree with you. It's been happening more and more frequently lately. I don't know what it means yet, but I'm doing all I can to find out.

[dog_eat_dog]

It's happening more frequently lately yet there's no one here right now like that?

[courageous_wit]

Sorry, I meant the false memories are becoming more frequent. The doubles were more frequent in the past, which is probably what prompted Dr. Saunders to write that report.

[dog_eat_dog]

Christ.

The second that happens to me, this whole damn place has it coming.