The Psychoanalytic Situation

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXX=")[= ~~THE PSYCHOANALYTIC SITUATION~~ [[Begin]]

You are entering a diaroma of life, a theoretical life, in inspired fashion. You are an insertion from outside the contiuum, a signal of otherness in a system of working parts. Moving world, breathing world, living world, still-going life. Crack open one still shot in this frame of moving agents; undo this knot of a digitized existence. [[...->begin01]]

(set:$typout to (macro: num-type _pgsection, [(output:)[{ (if:_pgsection is 1)[(change: ?p1's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 40)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s))] (else-if:_pgsection is 2)[(change: ?p2's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 45)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s))] (else-if:_pgsection is 3)[(change: ?p3's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 30)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s))] } ] ] ) ) Semiotic observer in detatched embrace; you witness the living world through a smokescreen, peeking temporal-underglimmers in passing glances of your every day. The world beyond, the land away; an ancient castle stands against rock, shaped and splashed by tempest and sea; a castle stands by the sea, ancient with the rock. Minds probe the atmosphere's surface and undulate the grounds with their wonderances. Hear me, hear me and enter. [an ornately carved pit in the middle of a dense forest leads down to a young imprisoned girl, further on in the earth's time. surrounding the girl were care packages, which reccuringly every few days had been lowered down to her by a pulley system, then dropped just out of reach. she used industrial-era propane canisters, kept warm with dense handmade blankets and ornate robes, and used hygienic products by a stream that ran through the cold stone ground... one day a figure cloaked in a red robe would free her, and claim no basis. [?]<word| ]<p1| [A prisoner held in a place of the mythic's revival. An agent of purpose, to prove humanity not the effect of mad exuberance. Tumultuous history on either side of the fence and a personhood that gives directive; a mass of force locked like a bull in a pen. They who act after the death of the mass-connect; the death of network. What to call it? I'm not sure what to note here.]<p2| [[...->begin03]] (click: ?word)[ (append: ?word)[ There would be another, in a time of a returned mythic and wine drunk wonder. To guide and nurture destined death to his final resting place. Ephamy Bellevet; ...herein lies my one enduring glance of the world. A longer tale that wraps around the living world, undoing its fabric. Yet the prisoner's genesis must come first.] ] ($typout: 1) ($typout: 2)

Semiotic observer. Fold your attention through a hazy fog. Enter; enter and see this world in its moment; of dead connections, chain failures, the death of homogeny. Take on experience, take on responsibility, take on a being. Tune through the flickering imagined elsewhere until you reach what holds: [..this looks like entering a closed box..feels like a fish swimming in stone. thrown wildly into a torrent of time, place, person, meaning; rising sights and encounters pierce the atmosphere of this brain-space, leaving imprints of memory in its form until you find the needle to pierce the film. the point of information in a genetic-spatial matrix where the outside signifier may enter. [[Glimpse code tumbling through fog->begin04]] ]<text| (change: ?text's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 40)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s) )

[hey. say hey.... ummm say hey.. my name is john pork. say hey to me. say hey to me now..... meow meow meow [[test]] ]<hey| [your section of text]<p1| [meow.... meeeooow! mrow!]<p2| (change: ?hey's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 30)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s) ) (set:$typout to (macro: num-type _pgsection, [(output:)[{ (if:_pgsection is 1)[(change: ?p1's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 30)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s))] (else-if:_pgsection is 2)[(change: ?p2's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 30)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s))] (else-if:_pgsection is 3)[(change: ?p3's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 30)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s))] } ] ] ) ) ($typout: 1) ($typout: 2)

I have nothing to [fear]<word|. (click: ?word)[ (append: ?word)[ but my own hand] (set: $somevariable to true) ]

(set:$typout to (macro: num-type _pgsection, [(output:)[{ (if:_pgsection is 1)[(change: ?p1's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 40)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s))] (else-if:_pgsection is 2)[(change: ?p2's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 40)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s))] (else-if:_pgsection is 3)[(change: ?p3's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 30)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s))] } ] ] ) ) [an archivist toils under lamplight, his spindly fingers rustle through aged prints from old databases... feels like dry skin on papery edges, a migraine behind the eyes, light and word pressing in. he reflects on the shutdown database systems of the now collapsed network, how efficient microtechnologies were, with a defeated annoyance...this slips away..]<p1| [a group in irregular formation trudges through the snow, a film of white over their distant bundled furs. as one would near they would see a woman in the center of the group, clutching a baby; small chimes held aloft by the walkers would sing in the wind, faces painted, the mother humming along... the ritual of celebration slips away...]<p2| [an industrial freighter slowly drifts across bleak waters, treading near run-down production facilities, forgotten trainyards, and wild landscape. an old mariner sits leaning against a railing of the bow, a mechanical hum emanating from inside the ship, he hums and mumbles to himself; it's an old old world, and it slips away.]<p3| [?]<word| (click: ?word)[ (append: ?word)[ This is the moment where it happens; where what's floating takes root. [[...->begin05]] ] ] ($typout: 1) ($typout: 2) ($typout: 3)

You are a prisoner being held in a dank cell. ...A prisoner first? You are Nev of Ankh'scourt. You have an anklet branded onto your wrist, melded with skin, attatched to a chain in the wall. The anklet holds your hand in a rotten stasis, alienated from the body; a rod drilled through parallel plates that extend over the hand from the base of the anklet. You have been lowered to a grimness, but you recall having had every intention of putting yourself here; you have always done what you thought was necessary, which is why you have an option. One choice, but any choice at all. You turn away from a blank stare at a ray of light coming from the barred window of your cell that your chain does not allow you to reach, and bring your attention to a brick in the wall, a lighter adhesive coating surrounding it than any other. [Its been long enough...]<text| You produce a file from a slot in the bedframe, and begin to dig around the loose brick with your free hand. The brick is quikcly removed, and from a hidden slot behind, you procure a burlap bag, containing a small knife, bone saw, and an assortment of cloths and fastenings. You have only one option; it will be no loss. (text-style:"shudder")[[[CHOP IT OFF->begin06]]] (change: ?text's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 100)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s) )

(set:$w to (macro: num-type _waitlength, [(output:)[{(float-box:"x=====","=xx")+(opacity:0)|wbox>[ (if:_waitlength is 1)[ Pause] (else-if:_waitlength is 2)[ Pause Pause] (else-if:_waitlength is 3)[ Pause Pause Pause ] (else-if:_waitlength is 4)[ Pause Pause Pause Pause ] (else-if:_waitlength is 5)[ Pause Pause Pause Pause Pause ] ]}]])) [I see a memory of my childhood,($w:1) a recurrent memory that fades back into view like waves,($w:1) seen in passing glances,($w:1) absorbing me and playing over and over like a loop.($w:2) I'm in the forest, I'm small, stumbling forward in an early run across a trail;($w:1) green light filtered from lush foliage encompassing above,($w:1) blurring in my vision.($w:1) I run under a gnarled log that forms a small tunnel,($w:1) wrapping over the trail.($w:1) I'm running after someone,($w:1) an older boy,($w:1) our parents somewhere behind us. ($w:2) He looks back at me... ($w:3) [Move Closer]<word1| ]<p1| (change: ?p1's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 40)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s) ) (click: ?word1)[ (append: ?word1)[ [I try to move my body from its sequential path of motions that take place in the memory and instead move something else;($w:1) folding inwards through layered memories,($w:1) details and senses blending,($w:1) morphing,($w:1) taking shape until something else emerges and takes over the whole landscape.($w:3) I always end up returning to the lack of faces in my early experience,($w:1) an anonymous childhood,($w:2) this fact consumes me again;($w:1) then I am in another memory,($w:1) myself prepubescent,($w:1) a bland office with a man sat across from me.($w:3) "I can't tell you anything you haven't already heard Nev,($w:1) I'm sorry,"($w:1) the man says, hint of concern,($w:1) "Finding your family through any official registers just isn't possible anymore."($w:2) I stay silent, and stare at the floor.($w:2) "The accelerated division will do great things for you;($w:1) your family would want you to take the best opportunity for yourself,($w:1) and this is it,"($w:1) he says in a tone that defeats itself.($w:1) But again,($w:1) it was the only option I could conceptualize as possible for myself;($w:1) yielding my care to the authority that seeks.($w:3) I don't want to see any more of this.($w:4) One impulse of a thought and in the flash of a second the scenery morphed again around me,($w:1) taking me somewhere I unconsciously wanted to be.($w:2) Back in that old house with Tenny,($w:1) in the dark with the windows wide open,($w:1) distant chatter from the villa and her hand on my back.($w:2) I need to focus...($w:1) need to focus....($w:2) [[Return to yourself->begin07]] ]<p2|] (change: ?p2's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 35)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s) )]

This world breathes through you. You have just cut your hand off with a saw. [[...->begin08]]

I'm back in the cell. It's done; the act bleeding loosely before me, the alienated part lying on the bed in its anklet, my chain severed. I still feel the sawing of the bone, a cacophonous pain reverberating through the wrist. This sticks with me as I begin to fashion my bandage and tourniqet. I think about that memory... I can never recall his face. I sat there lost in thought, gazing out of the window of the cell for the first time. The cold wind pressed against me, distracting my ragged feeling. Across the bay the city of Medeuti was moving, mass to and fro of an early morning, alive. Against those iron bars, my thoughts took me away from my senses. In the eyes of Medeuti's people, the Keep of Abaci was an inaccessible and ancient secret of nature like any other. Once a holy ground, now suspended in sacrilage; self-infliction is the holiest thing that can happen here. The wind pulls me in and enraptures me; memory and experience lapses into a dream. [[...->begin09]]

Time passed like that, gutteral breathing, gripping a bar of the window with my remaining hand. This was until I began to hear the metallic progression of the cell door's locks clicking in disengagement. My interrogator was returning, and I knew I had to awaken to action and begin a progression that would follow throughout the entirety of the Keep. [[a. Hide the evidence of the act with your body->Main01]] [[b. Wait near the door->Alt1.01]]

I slink from the window and cover the severed anklet and all other evidence from view of the door with my body, hunched over on the bed; I slide my hand down the anklet's chain and give it slack two feet down as the door swings open. "Rest easy," the interrogator says, entering the room in a stride and meeting a halt in motion somewhere behind me, "I have no questions for you today." I cant see him with my back turned, but I hear him matching my stillness, unmoving, likely confused by my inaction. [Stay away...]<word1| (click: ?word1)[ (append: ?word1)[ I shift my demeanor in response to his hesitancy, "You should stay away..." I speak in a raspy skipping voice. "Why?" the interrogator questions, "What do you have?" I tense up, and raise my voice in response, "...Leave!" I cry out. Immediately I hear a shuffling noise, the low hum of electricity, an electrobaton unsheating, and heavy footsteps approaching from behind. I wait a moment, then wheel around with the anklet in a swing, releasing slack as the interrogator tries to back away in a last second; my pent up fury lands, sinking against skin of the target's head. The interrogator yelps, loses his balance as blood pours from the new wound and the anklet falls to the ground in a clatter. He tries disorientedly to retreat back to the wall, but is not quick enough, and I follow forward in a leaping motion that knocks the interrogator of his feet. A long thought plan falls into place; I kneel down over the already gasping fashioner of my bindings and lock my grip around his throat. He squirms and kicks, the struggle weakens and the interrogator's body jerks a final few times, then he fades completely. After a few seconds, I move off the dead man, panting. I gaze at the interrogator's still body and the wide-open cell door. Though he died in them, and they are slightly bloodied, I could take his uniform and replace my own tattered apparel. [[Take the clothes->Main02]] ] ]

I shoot up from the bed, and stumble, almost collapsing on my way to the wall; I press myself as out of view as I can, and just another moment passes before the door opens. I hear a shuffling noise and then the low hum of electricity, my interrogator unsheathing his baton upon not seeing me chained to my usual spot. He begins to timidly poke his head into the cell; pressing myself against the wall, I wait until the last second, and the moment he treads ever so slightly into the cell, I leap out with my arm extended, reaching to grab. My interrogator reacts quickly, seems to expect me, and slams the crackling baton into my ribs; electricity radiating pain. In the next second I'm on the floor and he slams the cell dor shut, locking it again as I cry out in pain. I'm left there for a long time, my sensations lapsing out once again... WIP - Nev is taken to The Scientist [[temp back->begin10]]

After quick consideration, I begin to unbutton and remove the dead man's clothes. Donning a uniform is an old familiarity... "Wearing fatigues is a death and rebirth, a renewed self..." I mutter to myself as I begin to put on the uniform - Let these instead mark a new purpose, set me into my path of liberating this old place humanity has forsaken - I think, finishing the sentiment. I make myself as presentable as possible, then slowly exit the cell having taken all of the interrogator's tools, closing and locking the door behind me with his naked body held within. I exit from a door at the end of a winding hallway of roughly-trimmed stone, a straight yet bending path with detatched rooms; a smaller holding section of the Keep. I move at a crawl, peering into rooms as I pass; empty cells, an interrogation room, a gaurds lounge. Everything put in this place feels so out of place with the ancient stone, even the metal fittings of the doorways and windows. I reach another bend in the hall, and hear muffled voices coming from a closed door up ahead. The voices are audible just a few feet away, after scuffling nearby, I sit still to hear the ongoing conversation. "...You contain a leadership position within this combatitive group, yes?" a low voice with a strangle garble behind it asks, waiting through silence for a response. After a moment, he breaks the silence, "Your terrorist cell committed a massacre at the Kle'ith dam just in the past month, have anything to say about that?" Left waiting once again, he speaks this time more impatiently, "We'll string some of you up for this, I could let you choose?" Listening closely now I grew more and more confused, this voice sounded unnatural, alien. A film coated over every word spoken, that even with all the emotion and cruel emphasis, sounded innately wrong; a light voice responded, its familiarity to me confirming my already-formed suspicions of who it might be, "We have no leaders, we are nothing within our ranks; we move across the territories of the Oldrange killing and pillaging because you serve a dying behemoth. We seek nothing but a showcasing of the death of power, your crucifixion would be accepted with open arms." Tenny! Her words brought a smile to my face; they were ours, over many conversations and a long companionship, and she was holding out in the face of her own interrogation. I had to do something to get her out of this. [Enter]<word1| (click: ?word1)[ (append: ?word1)[ I swing open the door, and meet Tenny sat at an interrogation table, the chair across from her empty, her interrogator a spider-like bot that is cradled on the back of her skull; an apparatus of devices that controls her senses, collecting like data her words she does not realize shes speaking into open air. A chromic intruder probing her mind, spindly metal legs balancing it's data processing body, casting lights into the eyes with a sense-interpreter cable up her ear. "Fucking hell!" I blurt out, taken aback by the scene. Tenny's face picks up, looking around, hearing my voice but unable to see me. A horrible feeling creeps up me, processing what's happening. I drag the empty chair over and sit down right next to her, "Tenny... it's me," I say. "You have some variation of an SS-88 mimicking your senses; we've learned about this, remember?" She nods her head slowly, the large processing unit balanced atop her emanates the simulated voice once again, "What are the tenets of The Wind?....What are the tenets of the Wind?...." which begins to repeat over and over behind the rest of our conversation, stuck on a loop. "You have to find its user, and isolate him; he knows I'm here now but you're stronger Tenny; you can kill him from his own simulacrum," I confide in her, trying to help her recenter and focus. She nods again, and finds my invisible arm with her hand, resting it there as she seems to focus; even at the whim of the projected lights and what her impulses are tricked to percieve. A minute passes in anticipation; What are the tenets of The Wind?....What are the tenets of The Wind?....and suddenly a spirtzing noise began from the spider-bot, and the voice garbled then cut off. A series of loud pops and then sparks out of the venting seams along the processing unit; the wire coils itself out of Tenny's ear and she breathes in a shrill gasp. I pry the spider down onto the floor as it dies in more robotic cries; like its controller's soul crying out in a seperated death, the body forever asleep in its unit. Tenny's eyes dart around wildly, then she looks at me, smiles, and embraces me, her heart still thudding. I'm proud of her, I'm not sure if I could've handled what she just managed. [[...->Main03C01]] ] ]

I keep my right-arm stump close to my chest, Tenny pulls back and gasps as she sees it, "Oh my god Nev," she says, gently holding my arm, examining it, "Did this just happen?" "Yeah... I know it's bad, but we don't have time to worry about it right now," I respond as gracefully as I can, downplaying the horrid feeling about me. "We knew this could happen right?" "Right," Tenny brings her hands to her face with a sigh, "we have to find the others and the assets." Tenny has a logistical and graphical mind; in her focus I see her replicating studied blueprints and maps perfectly in her mind, every detail with even her own notes in exact image. [[a. We have to find our party we came in with->Main03C02]] [[b. How close are we to the assets?->Main03C03]]

"We have to find everyone else first, can you find your way there?" I ask. "Definitley..." Tenny replies, slightly unsure, "As long as we find a stairwell, I'm not sure where we are." "The contained section, don't what floor though; let's go get our bearings," I say. [[...->Main04]]

"How close are the assets?" I ask "Sig told me everything's gathered up in Technology and Innovation, that's the unit room, no way we're taking it on our own," she replies. "Have you heard from Sig at all?" "No, he's probably dead," Tenny says bluntly. [[We have to find our party we came in with->Main03C02]]

Tenny follows me into the curving hallway, we move carefully, yet reach the door of the enclosed holding space without meeting any other individuals. I unlock the door with the interrogator's key, and slowly open it for Tenny to peer through the crack. She looks up to me and nods, and we exit to an intersection of two large hallways forking straight ahead and to the right. I look at Tenny and she shrugs. [[Left->Main05A01]] [[Right->Main05B01]]

The two of us head down the hallway straight ahead. Placed evenly along the span of the left wall are little slotted windows, open with air flowing through, a view across the bridge that spans to the city. As we near the end of the hall, where it forks again to the right, we begin to hear chatter from somewhere up ahead. WIP [[temp back->Main04]]

The two of us head down the hallway to the right. A couple of odd doors dot the wall on our right, all the rooms empty and dead, then a hallway opens, cutting into the wall. I walk up to the door in the hall and peer through its window, "Stairwell," I say, looking back to Tenny. "Sign inside says we're on the sixth floor." "The cellar's at the bottom, then we just head in the direction we came, everyone'll be in the floor's own walled section," she responds. "Alright, let's go," I say and open the door. We enter the stairwell and begin to descend floor to floor down the spiral. Fifth, fourth, third floor, then I feel something strange, and instinctively stop near the door. Tenny gives me a confused look as she slows to a stop down the stairs, before asking, "What?" "You don't feel that?" I say, tracing my hand on the wall. I feel something in the walls of this floor, a pulsing informatic, web of membrane behind roughly-trimmed stone that beats inwards. "...I don't know Tenny can't you hear it?" I speak again, "An incoherent babble..." Tenny interrupts me, "You already know this place isn't right." [[a. We need to investigate the third floor->Alt2.01]] [[b. We need to continue down the stairwell->Main05B02]]

I try to shake off the feeling as best I can, "Let's continue," I say. We head down the stairwell; second, first, cellar. I approach the door to look out of the window. Tenny puts her hand on my shoulder, "Slow down, you're going to wear yourself out." Suddenly, looking back at her, I feel the perspiration coating my forehead, a light veneer of warm sweat. Tenny brings her other hand to my face. "How do you feel?" she asks. "Honestly Tenny?" I speak in a heavy exhale, swallow like theres a lump in my throat, "Like I'm fucking rocked." "You sawed off your hand and now you have a high fever, god knows what else," Tenny replies. "This isn't a normal fever...a normal anything..." I say, lapsing off as I can't find words to explain. I lean back against the wall. Tenny stands there, looks at me for a moment before speaking, "We need to change clothes. You obviously can't pretend to be a soldier." [[a. Swap clothes->Main05B03]] [b. We don't have time for that]<word1| (click: ?word1)[ (append: ?word1)[ ["I'm not fucking around Nev," Tenny gives you a hard glare.]<p1| ] (change: ?p1's chars, via (t8n-delay: pos * 5)+(t8n:'instant') + (t8n-skip: 0.2s) ) ]

"Tenny, we have to follow this..." I see her forming a dejected reaction and speak more urgently, "atleast to check it over, we don't know until we see." "Okay," Tenny says abrasively, "if you truly believe something's (text-style:"italic","superscript")[calling ]us that can help." "I really do think that Tenny, but call it off whenever you want," I respond. Annoyed at one another's inability of demanding full control, we continue from the stairwell room further into the third floor, which still beckons me in some distant yet familiar voice of feeling. [[...->Alt2.03]]

We spend a moment at the bottom of the stairwell, undressing and redressing. The uniform is much more of an ordeal than the prisoner's rag-like gown. By the end of it, I move Tenny's hair to cover the dribbled blood of our captor, and she finishes tightening her belt, fixing the holster. "Let's go, like they walked us in," she says, letting my face rest on her hand. I nod, and turn around, bring my wrists together behind my back; then Tenny tells me to let my other arm hang, and as we exit into the hall she guides where I walk. Being walked down that hall, I slipped deeper into a feverish high. My feeling for the world around me was submerged into the lore of the walls by which I walked; Suddenly the moment of which I existed felt redundant and small, I saw me and Tenny there from outside myself like comic characters in a divine tragedy. Enclothed in rag and uniform, another saintly cast of the same situation. The walls could circuit through me, speak in impulse: More to transmute... More to enlighten... More failures of revelation... "Nev...? Nev...?" I hear Tenny calling in a whisper, my sight confined to blotted images passing over each other of a secured doorway and two militants we were approaching. I stumble, losing my balance, then fall onto the floor. In my flashes of sight, I see Tenny look down at me with worry, then focus on the approaching soldiers who were saying something to her. I look up at the three of them above me more clearly now, and start rolling with laughter. One of the soldiers loosely holds a repeater rifle by the barrel in his off hand, at ease; in the impulse of a thought while the soldiers gaze down at me, Tenny rips the rifle from his hands, cocks the lever and fires a round into his friend. I roll onto my side, groaning, the soldier curses and ducks into a side control booth room for the doorway, Tenny's next shot sparking off a metal frame. Alarms start blaring across the keep, recurring beeps from old horn sirens: Tenny dissapears into the control room and another shot fires. A few moments later shes above me with the rifle slung from her shoulder. Tenny picks me up, puts my one good arm over her other shoulder, and walks us forward through the open airlock doors into the cellar holding section. As we approach into the hall, a chorus racket of yelling against metal clanging grows louder, harmonizing with the beeping alarms. "Tenny," I gasp, "give me the baton," I say, as I pull myself off of her and begin walking on my own. Tenny unsheathes the baton and puts it in my hand, "I'd prefer you just stay safe, I don't know what's going on with you, but you can't go on like this," she says. "Won't matter soon, I'll stay behind you," I grunt in dismissal. We continue forward into growing noise. [[...->Main06]]

The hall follows forward, and eventually forks off with two sets of double doors and an open hall, three seperate divisions. The chorus of noise comes from the open hall, alone on its wall. Tenny approaches the hall, scanning from the entranceway, she looks back at me and then enters cautiously, rifle drawn. I give her a moment, then follow behind; the hall has multiple forking sections on the left and right, Tenny walks down the first on the left, a row of cells, each with a few prisoners gathered at the edges, banging on the bars, shaking the doors, screaming. There's way more people in these cells than just ours; I'm distracted looking at the faces and a shot rings from Tenny's rifle down the hallway at a guard ducking for cover. "He fell!" a prisoner further down the hall cries out; multiple voices start crying out at once; "He has the keys!" "Kill the fucker!" a garble of all kinds of exclamations of which Tenny heeds. She wraps around the corner and fires another round, before ducking back into our hall in which i am close behind. We sit at the corner of the hall, using a cell for cover, the bodies of the prisoners blocking ours; one speaks from behind us, "There's three other armed guards, be careful." I'm still in a daze, Tenny holds at the corner, thinking, and my vision tracks back watching the way we came, catching on a figure standing still in the shadows of the junction hall. I focus my vision on them, I don't recognize her at first, in the gown of a patient with her hair buzzed, but it's one of our people who got taken into the Keep with us. She steps forward, and I see her bruised face and body in the light; she smiles at me, then I hear something rising up in the back of my mind, another sense of 'hearing' abstracted from the cacophony that surrounds; in the knowledge of something spoken, she speaks, "I know your secret," then ducks away further down the junction hall, out of sight. I look to my right, and Tenny has already left, treading further down the hall towards the guards body with the keys. [[a. Follow the patient->Main07A01]] [[b. Follow Tenny->Main07B01]]

WIP [[temp back->Main06]]

I shake off the strange encounter and follow behind Tenny into the next hall. This section follows straight, but the cells end halfway and are replaced by stone walls with doors to utility rooms; then the hall turns again to what must lead back to the main junction. The guard had gotten nearly to the halfway mark before Tenny had finished him off, that's where the keys remained, hands extending from the last cells on either side of the hall, attempting to grab anything. "Guard coming!" a prisoner behind us calls out Tenny looks back from the far-end of the hall of which the guard was running towards, "They're trying to pincer us," she says. I compose myself the best I can when I look back at her, "You'll have two, I'll have one," I say nodding my head the way we came. A moment passes before she nods and turns away to the far-end, rifle raised. I turn back and hug the inner wall of the turn, now the prisoners are quiet, eyeing me as I pass. Once I near the corner cell, I duck and hide under the cover of its captives intentionally swaddled at the edges. I hear Tenny's rifle fire out behind me, I try to grab a bar of the cell with my left hand and I can't; a wave of nausea, or fear, blinsides me. A coat of fuzz covers my vision, now I'm on my knees, leaning onto the bars with my other arm for support. One of the inmates of the group blocking me from view through the corner cell, kneels down beside me, "Nev... Forget the baton, all you have to do is shove him," they whisper. Something in the back of my mind echoes this, ...all you have to do is move... "...Tell me when to go," I groan out, bringing the baton to the ground, lightly leaving it there, preparing to will myself forward. As I wait, that something in the back of my mind grows a little louder; I feel for a moment that I can feel all the movements of every little person, in still anticipation, or frantic movement; I didn't quite understand how, but I felt their hearts pulse in their throats, their lungs expand and cave, and I felt them feel my presence watching, like a breath on the nape of their neck. I leap forward in the moment before the prisoner speaks, vision blurred around me but another sense guiding me to the shape of a timid guard moving tactfully in the middle of the prison aisle. Their packing of the cells would be the death of them. My body slams into the shape of the guard before he can turn his aiming pistol, that was the last of me; I collapse back and the guard is shoved back in the division line between two cells; sat against the bars behind me, I see the blurry fading shapes of arms and hands jutting from the cells, pulling the guard against it as he screams, yet somehow I feel even more clearly the excitement of their liberation; the excitement of bending their imprisoner's gun beneath his own neck, and pulling the trigger. I pass out against that cell. [[...->Main08]]

WARNING This is an alternative path, your agent will not fulfill your destined path. Do you still wish to continue? [[a. No->begin10]] [[b. Yes->Alt1.02]] (WIP)

WARNING This is an alternative path, your agent will only recieve one more chance to return and fulfill your destined path. Do you still wish to continue? [[a. No->Main05B01]] [[b. Yes->Alt2.02]] (WIP)

WIP You've reached as far as the story has formed thus far.

Immediately upon exiting the stairwell, still hidden in a small side hall, we hear conversation and the more distant typing of keyboards. Tenny gives me a look, a moment of thought and then we get into the guard-prisoner formation similar to how we were led into the Keep. Then we warily tread further into the active floor, further into the pulling sensation. Peering from the access hall, I see the conversation is from a group of three walking down the hall to the left, none dressed like the militants we've seen before. "These must be the employees," Tenny asserts quietly. I nod, "Technology and Innovation," I say in response. Leading her the other way, Tenny walks before me with her hands behind her back, imitating cuffs. We pass by a room with two people gathered around a screen connected to a large drive. As we continue, a soldier suddenly bursts out of an open hall further on in the inside of the hallway, he walks towards us yet pays us barely any mind, only giving a nod to me as I lead Tenny further on in the direction of which he came. As the soldier walks away, I feel the empty weight of my missing hand on my stump, hidden behind my back as the soldier does not turn his eyes at a chance to see it. I feel delirious, small, inconsistent; maybe a wave of emphatic nausea, but a feeling of that membranic informatic behind the walls digs its claws into my mind, and as we walk forward I feel myself wrapping further into it. We stop and look down the hall which the soldier had come from; it's screaming in my mind now, and I look down into an orifice of something incomprehensibly larger than myself. Heavy metal door of an ancient safe, slid wide open for the labor of the Keep's most essential inhabitants; those who disguise themselves under the demands of their keeper's social context to attempt and be the one to understand it, this center. This is why we're here, to steal the assets of commerce built from the essence of this once hallowed place, and to produce them in front of the people. But here, now, my first glimpse of just one wall of the giant, chromic, ancient computer through the open doorway of Technology and Innovation; I knew something larger was at play. My stump was leaking from my bandage, blood droplets falling onto the floor. [[...->Alt2.04]]

WIP Pre-revolt Computer/Hand interaction with possibility of escape back to main plotline or death/ending. [[Temp back->Main05B01]]