Vox Mentis

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Spoiler

i don't have a question coming to mind right now, but can we have one last nod to classic action movies and have danny blow up the roof with explosives rigged earlier

Stay tuned... ;)

We are now heading for the end. I'll update every 45 minutes-ish today until it's over - strap in for the finale of Vox Mentis!

>Who were you, before you were Eliot?

"Honestly, nobody. I got into the Academy fairly young, so I don't remember much about before. I was grateful to them, though - my parents, my father especially, were not... ideal. The Organization got me out of a bad situation. Atwood saw something in me that I couldn't see myself. I am- was- grateful for that."

What if I told her to delay another order? Say, for a thousand years?

What if I told her to delay another order? Say, for a thousand years?

"Only continue to follow Thoreau's interests after you have personally walked on the surface of Alpha Centauri"
"Do not kill anyone before personally visiting every star in Andromeda"

what if... you told her to remember? Get her back to something resembling the her that was her, the her that loved you?

"The problem with all of those options, Nick, is as I've said: You would only create a conflicting instruction. Nothing would get overwritten. She can be under orders to not kill anyone, and simultaneously, to kill everyone. She could remember you, even love you, but still be under orders to kill everyone. Which order she is executing at any given time comes down to how she's feeling at any given time. It's unpredictable, it's not safe, and it's not worth risking. Not for you, not for me, not for anybody."

>If I can't be compromised, how was I told to forget?

You sigh. "I have no idea. I have guesses. One guess is that something fucked up the language center of your brain at some point in some way we haven't seen before. People are far more susceptible to compromise via words rooted in their first language. Arabic speakers need Arabic morphemes, Japanese speakers need Japanese morphemes, et cetera. Maybe your first language is something else, something you're not even aware of, and she somehow tapped into that and compromised you. Another guess is that you're just a fucked up motherfucker with brain damage. Maybe she dropped an anvil on your head. Just guesses, mind you." You hear noises overhead. "Shit. This is not how I thought I was going to die."

>The guy you were with when we met. He wasn't a poet. Who was he?

>Until we ran into Austen, uh, ended up in the cattle yard, you still thought there were members of the Organisation you could trust, yet you've all this time Thoreau was behind it? How?????

“Who gives a shit?” you say. “Honestly, Danny. At this point, who cares? We are going to die. There won't be time to ruminate on these earth-shattering revelations. They're not going to take us alive.”

Danny rubs his chin, a gesture you haven’t seen before. “Under the mattress.”

“What?”

“I got you a pistol from the armory. It’s under the mattress.”

You stare at him.

“You want to maybe get it out?”

“I maybe want to shoot you with it, if it would make any difference.”

“It’s going to be all right, Eliot.”

“No,” you say, “these guys are going to kill us while Woolf watches from a distance. Sometime later, an unimaginable number of people are going to devote their lives to shifting dirt, because Thoreau has developed a hankering to dig a very deep hole in one place and pile it up in another. That’s how it’s going to be, you asshole. That guy when we met? A poet, by the way. Sebastian Brant. Those guys on the ranch? They were the ones I could persuade to leave the Organization. To leave Thoreau and Woolf. I thought Jane was one of them, I thought I had persuaded her to leave, but it has since become abundantly clear that she was compromised by Woolf, and feeding back information, such as your existence, what we were planning, and so on, the entire time, and then she turned Jane against me and I had to shoot her! I had to fucking shoot her, Nick!”

“Just get out the gun.”

“Why bother?” you shout. “Since Woolf is coming only to shower us with chocolates and kisses?”

Danny paces.

“Oh,” you say. “Oh, oh, are we having regrets?”

“Shut up.”

“Thirty years,” you say. “My entire adult life, I’ve guarded every word that’s come out of my mouth. And you know what? I’m done. I am finally, completely fucking done. So hey-o! Fuck you, Nick Parsons! Danny Walker! Whoever you are! Fuck you very much! And fuck you, Thoreau! And you, Elise Woolf! Fuck you the most of all!” You throw back the blanket. You slide a hand beneath the mattress and find metal. “Let’s go!” Your body hurts everywhere but your mind is soaring. “Here we go, hey-o, diddle diddle!”