This plot is open for participants right now! If we get more people than we can handle, we'll go into more detail here about what we want out of it. -- Alba (and Haruki by proxy)
SUMMARY
Alba has been enrolled in an intensive psychometric readjustment program in Upwarp, as the last stage of her transition to life as a feline. She's been spending most of her time inside an instructional pod, ears-deep in a bath of smartgel, pumped full of neurostimulators. They've been making her unstable, to say the least. She's been having nightmares about her species dysphoria and her relationship with her mentor Haruki. She's also been hallucinating conversations with surreal alternate versions of her friends that don't exist, and losing her ability to tell reality from fantasy. As if the poor kittybun weren't confused enough, she's been finding evidence that other people are remembering her "dreams"; even items from them are beginning to persist.
DEVELOPMENTS
- Alba's first sleepwalk took her through the Puzzlepark, in a reasonably normal body on a reasonably normal day. She complained of a persistent sense of deja vu, popped out of existence, then returned to the Park minutes later with no memory of her actions. She also met Yarah, whose existential status was already in question. It has not been confirmed, at least to Alba, whether others have memories of this incident.
- Alba's second sleepwalk involved a very awkward encounter with Amanita, who appeared dressed in an insectoid costume and behaving with an unnerving cold propriety. Having been absent for most of the events of the Neke revival, she assumed the vision of the transfigured shiny was conjured up by her own brain, as a metaphor for her own fears that Haruki was exploiting her transition and retraining for his own gratification. She panicked and tried to attack Amanita, but found all her feline traits were reverting to lapine as she watched. She awoke in her pod in the psychometry labs, still feline and very upset. It is not known if the real Amanita experienced any of this, awake or asleep.
- Alba's third sleepwalk took her to the Secundus Bathhouse, in the form of an angelic, levitating rabbit with a glowing halo. This version of her was unable to wake up from a trance state, and was very suggestible. She apparently came looking for sabina for information about Amanita, but all attempts to communicate with her were a failure. Kehari? brainscanned her, revealing that the angelbunny's brain lacked all structures that would allow full consciousness. She had only fragmentary memories, relating to Haruki, her transition, and her other dreams. Just as Kehari and sabina were discussing how to return her to her owner, her halo enveloped her and she disappeared, leaving only a record of an instantiator decompile in the Mess's public transaction records. It has also not been established that anyone else remembers this incident; Kehari made no mention of it in a subsequent casual encounter with Alba.
- Alba's fourth major incident involved an encounter between her and Haruki in Puzzle Park. Once again, she said she was having deja vu and a sense of detachment, as if "the people she knew and the people she didn't had flipflopped." She saw Twin in insectoid gear, just like Amanita had been, and this convinced her she was having another lucid dream. She couldn't be persuaded she was actually awake, even after Haruki visited and reassured her. This resulted in a lot of uncharacteristically cruel behavior as she acted on a series of impulses -- like biting Frostbyte, insulting Twin's appearance, wishing out loud it were her friends who were crazy and not her, and telling Haruki she'd developed a grain of mistrust towards him. He offered to set her completely free of his training collar and help her reverse her transition, but she declined and decided she was satisfied his intentions were good. She joked with Haruki that if he was really real and really cared about her that much, he owed her a bouquet of flowers.
- The next time Alba emerged from her training pod, there were not one, but two bouquets of flowers awaiting her, one from Haruki and one from Twin. The training logs showed that, just as she'd believed, she had been sealed in the pod under heavy electromagnetic trance for the entire time the encounter in the Park was supposed have taken place.
POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS
- Could this be linked to Amanita's dream about sabina seducing her to submit to the Neke? Could other people be doing similar dreamwalking, and something about her neurochemical makeover is just making hers more intense?
- Could one of the Mess's heavy spiritual hitters be inducing these states in her, for some specific end? Are they using her as a pawn consciously or unconsciously?
- Alba used to be conditioned by her training collar to avoid memetic hazards. After her confessional to Haruki, most of these compulsions have been removed. Now, might she be bold enough to seek answers on the Neke grounds... or visit Strange for the first time?
PARTICIPANTS
- Alba: Going crazy under the pressure of her metamorphosis?
- Haruki: As if caring for an increasingly uppity catgirl weren't hard enough, suddenly he's up to his stylish vinyl belt in an existential crisis.
- Amanita: Other people seem to have a habit of showing up in her dreams, since she got captured...
- sabina: Another submissive cat who seems to get around on other people's heads. How did Alba know to ask her about Amanita?
- Twin: Was her parting glare at Alba an act of wounded Neke pride, or something more?
- Kehari?: Overwhelmed vixen trying to tie off her various plot threads into something far more manageable currently bemoaning another missed opportunity.
- Mew. It's OK! Jump in when and if you feel like it -- I just wanted to catalog Kehari's moment of involvement. A quick public, "Huh. Alba's apparently not a lobotomized angelbunny. WTF!?" sometime is all I might ask of you. =:) -- Alba
- Yarah: Has anybody else even seen her? Is she bystander, conspirator, spirit guide, or McGuffin?
FACTIONS INVOLVED
- Given Alba's ramblings about one of the Neke's slaves in the Secundus Bathhouse, the Chitin Queens have fallen under suspicion. But then, don't they usually? Of course, electronic manipulation of perceptions is much more the Szjna-Cyvani's cup of pollen.
- The Mooncats? are involved, in that Haruki, Alba's mentor, is one, and he's been grooming her to pass the Lunar citizenship test.
- This would all be right up the Tweeners' alley. Would they even notice anything unusual with her?
INSPIRATIONS
- Donnie Darko (any comparisons of Frank and Alba will be summarily punished!)
- Philip K. Dick's Ubik (and everything else he ever wrote)
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Waking Life
- eXistenZ
COMMENTS