lostcarnival | ⇨ MAINFRAME

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⇨ MAINFRAME

Who: EVERYONE.
When: Day 92 - Day 105
Where: Mainframe, the city inside a computer.
What: The carnival stops at its next location, a computer world full of computer people. Except, this time it's not the Matrix, don't worry.
Warnings: Nothing inherently suspect here.

THIS PLACE, MAINFRAME↴

After the Nightrunners have done their search, you will be welcome to enter the tree portal into Mainframe. There is no loading room this time - instead, any alternations will occur as you pass through the portal. Remember to wear your icon buttons! If you aren't wearing one, you won't be able to pass through the portal, and during your stay you will not be able to remove it. The portal is currently opening into a forested area of Mainframe, filled with a bunch of sort of low res trees.

A large section of a residential area has just been nullified by a Game Cube. A large quantity of former sprites and binomes are now wandering the city in the form of null worms, and the rest of the city is generally in a panic. You'll be able to learn about the details of what happened if you ask the locals, though they will act incredulous if you behave as if you don't know what a Game is. Just tell them you and the others just arrived from a different "system" in the "Net." Yeah, that seems to allay their suspicion. Nailed it.

Here is a convenient map of the Mainframe from the original cartoon, which this setting is more or less based on. This Mainframe is larger and lacking areas dedicated to specific characters (no Megabyte or Dot's Diner), but is laid out basically the same, for reference's sake.

► LOW RES: Your glamour will come into affect as soon as you cross through the portal, and while you are here your body will function like a weird mixture of its original self and the formatting of a program. You can eat their food and use their amenities, but if one of them were to look at your coding it would be obviously foreign to them. Also, maybe your skin has turned blue, or green, and your clothes are suddenly way more 90's scifi? Maybe you look like a giant number 7 to other people. This place is weird, aesthetically speaking.

► RELIEF EFFORTS: For the altruist out there, you can offer help to the locals that are trying to recover from the recent Game loss. The buildings that were caught within the Cube's range are twisted and burnt out, as if the energy has been sucked right out of them, and it sounds like all the losers were transfigured into slugs. You might want to avoid Game Cubes if any show up. Just an FYI. (As if that will happen.) In the meantime, you can console the programs whose family members are now works, or help try to clean up the buildings that are now falling apart. Or, you can ignore all of this. That's cool, too.

► VIBRANT CULTURE: Despite being weird computer program people made of boxes and spheres, the people of Mainframe seem to live their lives much the same ways humans do. They have TV programs, restaurants, and other shops that you can buy weird 90's computer world bullshit from. There's even a Hollywood inspired area, where you can go to shows. They also have some neato hoverboard things you can fly around on. As usual, the Ringmaster will be giving people an allowance to buy any modest souvenirs or necessities during their stay. Feel free to be creative about fleshing out sections of the city! The mods barely remember the details of this show, either.

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What he's not good at?

Caring. Reality. The difference, sometimes. Pick one.

He narrows his eyes--essentially at Steven, but the sentiment is not especially directed at him. "People care about a lot of things that aren't real. That don't matter. I hate it." His address clarifies a bit more, and the next sentence is very much directed at Steven:

"If you die in a video game, you don't die in real life. It doesn't matter how much you care."

If Steven knew the term, he'd think that Foster was kind of moving the goal posts here. Instead, he folds his arms over his chest, expression sombre.

"Sure... but you do die if you die here... so it's not really a video game like that anymore."

Foster is not, for once, specifically asking that someone die. He would encourage it if it were presently an option, but what he really means is more...

"Isn't it?" He sounds pained. Honestly, it's hard for him to tell. His body isn't his body. His skin isn't his skin. It is, but it's not. And he has no idea how to explain that at all. If he cut off his arm, would he bleed? Would it even be real blood?

Whether or not you can die like this, he's not really convinced that it's--

'Real.'

"..............has anyone tried?" he asks weakly.

Edited 2017-05-17 04:59 (UTC)

Maybe you just lose the capacity for this kind of existential dread when you already know you're half made of light. He is just confused at first, but then his frown deepens.

"No... and you shouldn't, either."

"I wasn't planning on it," Foster replies.

Then, in a disconnected, hollow voice, he adds: "Not here."

He wouldn't even be here if he had a better choice--normally he'd know better, would stay away from someplace so intrinsically, repugnantly fake (as he did once already, spurning the Matrix's siren song of a false, created 'self' in favour of ~~stealing a video game system from Chiaki~~ exploring the limits of his new, actual reality.)

But right now, there's something arguably worse than this.

Which is the Carnival grounds.

But he's not doing so great here.

"I can't... feel anything. Even if I died, it wouldn't... it's not real." He's repeating himself, looping, frustration--

He had it, just a second ago--he had it, and already it's gone--

This has long been a problem for him, but it's worse now. Worse here. Communication is futile. Thought is a form of violence. Even the most simple concepts are... not solid, not there. He can put his arm through them, be unable to touch them as his fingers pass through. And the instant he tries to capture something, it ceases to exist to be put in words.

But he can feel it--he has the feeling, and it's just--it's not--it's... he just had it--!!!

But even if he's going in circles still, slowly... he's circling closer and closer to the point. "Nothing can be lost because it doesn't exist! I can't touch anything because it doesn't exist! It's not real! I'm not real!!" His gestures get more agitated, more violent.

Then, abruptly, he stops.

"--how can you just ignore it?"

Edited 2017-05-21 05:18 (UTC)

It's somewhere around this point that things finally click for Steven - aided by the feelings of Foster's agitation, though bent to the mirror of Mainframe's reality. He can tell that Foster isn't just being difficult (at least, not entirely). The argument isn't one of pedantry, it's of perspective. Foster is feeling something Steven doesn't understand.

But that doesn't make it less real.

He's caught off guard because of how visceral it is, with his empathic abilities clicking over to code along with raw emotion. Unfortunately for Steven, he only really knows how to react to feeling pity for someone else in one way. His face falling, Steven sits on the bench next to Foster, placing a hand on his arm with an element of urgency. This is overwhelming, and he feels like he needs to try to make it stop.

"Hey, hey," he says gently, his brow creasing with concern. "You're okay. You're still real."

Foster fixes Steven with a startled look. Surprise is matched by disbelief for the first few seconds--literally seconds, two or three of them, as what Steven just did really sinks in.

Steven has made three mistakes.

The first mistake is caring. It's the first one to process; not the action, but the feeling. He knows what Steven is doing before the specifics of his reaction truly register. And he hates--it? Hates him for it? It's a raw, unwanted response immediately.

The second is touching him. Foster has never been especially fond of uninitiated touch. The sentiment behind it only makes it worse. But Steven's hand rests on Foster's glamour, and through it, on Foster's arm. Steven's insistent touch is met with a physical tension, discomfort and displeasure simultaneously. It's not just the point of contact--suddenly his whole body is on fire, or dissolving, or--none of the above, just an unwanted gesture with a sickening motive. It makes his skin crawl.

The third--

The third is reassurance.

In those two seconds--maybe three--Foster blinks twice: mostly incomprehension. Swallows. His mouth twitches, and then on the other side of it, his lip curls upward--slightly at first, then jerkily. In disgust. In contempt. In futility. But it can't last.

His face cycles through multiple expressions--struggling, as it were, to find the one that expresses his absolute--the total--

It's probably a bit horrific to see, his features creasing and collapsing like that in polygonal virtual space.

But it converges into a single syllable.

"No." It's sudden, and so forceful that it's not a reply, it's an attack. One both on and from Steven's response.

Is no an emotion? Is it a feeling? Or is it a constant? An action?

"Real? Real?" He sounds like he's on the verge of panic--until his voice goes flat. And cold. "I hope not." He looks, sounds almost haunted.

"Okay? Like this?"

His voice is rising again, not quite in hysteria but definitely in intensity. "You shouldn't even touch me." There's a peculiar blend of disdain and sincerity in his voice; as though being touched is the most repulsive thing Foster can imagine, but it's repulsion as equal part reaction to Steven's gentility and distress at the thought of how profoundly mere contact with Foster could have tainted him.

"Imagine if something like this were... actually real. If I were real. Living in a world where someone like me actually existed? Someone so... so heinous. Whose existence was such a wrong, such an offence, such a disease, imagine...! Imagine me being real."

There's a lot there to process, and Steven probably doesn't catch all of it. It's mostly just the broadstrokes of emotion that he can be sure of - in particular, the revulsion at being touched that has Steven pulling back his hand. He did it without thinking, really, because in his family touch has always been so important. Sometimes it's hard to remember that others might be different, but he does want to understand.

He isn't sure he understands what Foster is saying, but this might be one of those situations where it can't be expected to make sense. It's not the first time Steven has heard this kind of thing from Foster, either, on the radio or elsewhere. Still, it manages to catch him off guard, by the sheer aggression of it.

"...Why do you hate yourself so much?" Steven asks, utterly genuine in the pain seeing someone talking like this, feeling like this, seems to cause him. He doesn't know what has brought Foster to this point, but Foster is right about one thing - it feels a lot more like a disease, or an illness, than anything else.

If only this was the kind of sickness he could heal.

Foster just.... stares at Steven incredulously. It's not even a good reaction or a bad one for the first picosecond, before disgust crawls over his face like a particularly unpleasant, thin-haired spider.

"Have you met me?" he asks. "I'm not the only one who hates me! Everyone does. Everyone should. I nearly killed you, you know. You were aware that was me, right? I didn't care what happened to anyone during that... I don't care at all!!"

He's torn between laughing and something like sneering, his hand fisted viciously in his wild, artifacted hair.

But it turns out that even a polygonal glamoured face can still drool. Unfortunately.

"It doesn't matter what I feel! Hate myself? Of course--haha, of course I do! I deserve it! I know what I am! Just trash! Garbage! A dead end! You think anyone wants this?! I don't even want this!!"

By the end, the laughter is matched with a kind of raw ferocity, a savagery of seditious affect.

That probably wasn't a super great question to ask, Steven.

Well, okay then. That's something. Steven stares back at him, confused but not actually all that incredulous. He's never had someone drool while talking to him before and he isn't really sure what to make of it - does Foster even realize he's doing that?

It's upsetting, but... well. There's not much to do about it, at the moment.

He remembers his experience with the snow mushi, and it makes Foster's assertion sting a little. It is personal for Steven, isn't it? He'd been hurt as much as anyone else, hadn't he? That'd been one of his worst nights in recent memory. But, yet...

"If you don't care... why do you hate yourself for doing it?" Steven asks, slowly and carefully, as if navigating through a dark room. The emotional feedback is all stress and mania, which gives him an idea of what he's dealing with, but not much else. "You don't have to be something you don't want to be... even if it seems really hard. Not to be a certain way."

He doesn't know exactly what's wrong with Foster or what made him this way, but this isn't the cold calculation of someone being horrible for methodical reason. There doesn't seem to be any motive - not anything obvious, anyway. Does Foster really feel that out of control?

Right now? Yes. Yes he does.

But Foster experiences time--or experienced time, until very recently, only in the immediate sense. He still does, technically--the moment he is in is the only one that exists; being able to recall the rest of his life only makes him feel more in or out of control, at any given moment. It doesn't change the moment itself.

In that sense, he's always looking for absolutes. The absolute means of control--whether it's the absolute means of control over fate or that someone or something to bring him under absolute control.

You don't have to be something you don't want to be?

Then prove it to him. Show him, make him, make him into something else, show him your power over him if you have it!

You can't? Why not? Why not?

~~What are you so afraid of!~~

".... no." It comes out... oddly measured. Levelled. His eyes are flat, and he actually looks up from Steven, staring out at... nothing, possibly. There's a certain combination of Steven's age and calm response that helps him bring it back in a little, but he's still not 'in control' except in a superficial sense.

"I don't get a choice." He refocuses on Steven again, but all the eye contact in the world can't disguise his vitriol.

He didn't get a choice. To 'be' a certain way...

The only choice he got--he had to take it from them, actually, even that was a theft. Stealing it from the hands of others when he was younger. Who and what he is--that he is at all--that's not a choice.

And on some level, he's still waiting for fate to validate him for it; to prove that there is a purpose in him existing at all. That there's a justification for him in it. That's a lot more insight than he can put into words, though--at best, it just feels like boiling resentment and impatience.

"Some things can't be changed. What I feel, what I want--it's all nothing! It doesn't matter! What could that inspire but hate? I'm something irredeemably loathsome. Worthless! Disgusting! My choice doesn't matter." A beat. "And you shouldn't worry about people who'd let you die."

If it's still not clear whether he's saying he doesn't have a choice in what he is or if he's saying he doesn't have a choice in hating himself, here's a hint: it's both.

Edited (I'm so sorry lmao this tag was????) 2017-05-25 16:35 (UTC)

It's an odd combination of admissions, from Steven's perspective - but not without a minuscule point of brightness. Foster has claimed that he doesn't care what happens to other people, but is simultaneously trying to assert that Steven should be caring for himself. It's distant, and sort of confusing, but that's not someone who was truly beyond all of this would say.

Even beyond that, trying to tell Steven that he shouldn't worry about people who would let him die (or more likely actively kill him, in his case) is almost funny to him. Just one of those things, he guesses.

"Eh... a bunch of my friends have tried to kill me, back when we first met," he says, shrugging his shoulders a little. "I guess that's just kinda how it goes, sometimes!"

".........." Foster stares down at him sideways, his head angled up and away from Steven, so the Gem is getting the full effect of that stare. Then he looks away.

Of course, Foster's eyes are currently yellow (to go with the purple skin or something) so it's sort of a weird effect.

But the message should be pretty clear regardless.

Steven laughs briefly and uncomfortably, looking away, too. The emotional feedback is not particularly encouraging, and if anything it just causes his gut to stir with some kind of misplaced shame. That is kind of stupid, isn't it? It's probably kind of stupid that his life is like that.

He frowns and stares at the ground, falling silent as well. It's a while before he manages to find words again.

"I just... don't think because something is bad now that it has to be bad forever. Maybe... Maybe sometimes it is, but you can still try. Can't you?"

Edited 2017-05-29 21:53 (UTC)

Silence is... a language Foster is much more comfortable in, frankly. Which means Steven gets all the time he needs to think. In the meantime, Foster actually manages to untangle his thoughts a bit and collect himself with the pressure of trying to communicate relieved, even if only temporarily.

But when Steven speaks up....

"....." Foster.... doesn't know what to say to that. In fact, he really doesn't want to say anything, because if he does...

He'd have liked to believe that too at Steven's age. He might even have liked to believe it now, were such a thing not disgustingly false. But at least for other people--for other people, maybe it's not. And there it is. Resentment swells in his chest. But he swallows it--that nastiness that fills him, clogging his insides--and of course it's just bitter.

"It sounds nice, doesn't it?" He manages to sound only a little derisive.

Then he smiles, bright and cheerful, as though nothing had actually been wrong at all.

"I wouldn't know!"

Edited 2017-06-01 03:05 (UTC)

Steven does seem a bit wearied under Foster's wordless derision. It feels a like trying to climb a cliff face, coating in ice. You can't really gain any ground, and trying harder just means that you hurt your butt more when you fall.

Except this isn't something he can just super jump to the top of, or whatever. This has been happening to him a lot, it feels like. There's so many problems that he can't seem to fix with people.

Also that smile is creepy, Foster.

"I guess you don't always know what it will be like," he says, after a few more moments. "Before it happens. I think sometimes it can feel like there's no way it will ever be better, no matter what you do."

"Not everything can be fixed," he replies bluntly, accidentally adding the unkind weight of his unspent anger. But Foster's smile was not insincere. For better or worse, he was actually trying to encourage Steven to disregard whatever sentiments Foster possessed on the matter. Or any matter. Really, his emotional experiences were fleeting and largely superficial--outside of those brief flesh of bitterness or anger, he didn't really feel anything at all. Like a lightning bug, a spark of sensation that immediately extinguishes. And once it was gone, it was effectively as if it had never been.

It's... frustrating. Because on some level, he thinks he can understand what Steven is saying--being a kid, and dealing with unfair situations, things you can't control. But there's still a fundamental difference between them.

Because he has to assume other people's problems can be fixed.

"But it probably can, if you have to ask at all." The words are somewhat cruel, but reluctantly sincere.

In his mind, those so-called problems are fake. It's part of why he's unable to tolerate other people. A real problem is something you can't fix. Otherwise it wouldn't be a problem. Watching them spend their lives obsessed with temporary, fixable problems... they think their problems are real because they so vehemently avoid any real problem that exists.

But he never had any choice.

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⇨ MAINFRAME

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Mobile tags from the garden, freshly picked

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I FIXED IT

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