a farspeech announcement

[yourattention]

Emotions. [The lack of introduction is partially because Connor rarely bothers anyways and partially because he's trying to minimize the amount of speaking he's doing.] They were banned on Ai'tuoh and I couldn't figure out why then but that's - the more you bottle it up, the faster the flowers grow. Every. Single. Time. You say "I'm f" -

[There's a hiss of pain and then a slow, shaky breath. Yeah, alright. That was maybe not a great idea, given that he knows that's literally how it's triggered.]

Every time you lie about how you feel, something new grows. Every time you tell the truth, I think - I think that's how you cure it. That's why the robots didn't get it at first. That's why the rates of dying were all different.

[Should he take his own advice? Probably. But he's not gonna.]

I have fluro, if you want it. It makes the nausea worse, but it makes it easier to breathe.

Comments

[yourattention]

If "Ai'tuoh" doesn't mean anything to you, I have to start at the beginning.

[Mostly because that'll give him enough time to come up with cover story for "I noticed because every time I hang around my crush, my condition gets worse."]

[tuskenlancer]

Sorry.

[ She shakes her head, not that he can see it. ]

It seems like the welcome wagon skipped over a few things.

[yourattention]

Okay. Island called Ai'tuoh, with a city straight out of a dystopian novel on it. There were all these rules about how to live your life and we know they came from wherever the people that were on Umui are from because they also used the phrasing "draperies of our fiction."

[He pauses to let that sink in, and also because he's slightly out of breath.]

Anyway, I've been testing all the rules under the assumption that they might have been written to prevent the spread of Overgrowth - a lot of them had to do with emotions, so I started there. Lying definitely makes it worse. I don't know if honesty makes it better, but it can't hurt to try.

[tuskenlancer]

Okay...

[ She doesn't have to worry about winding herself, but she does close her eyes just to concentrate on what he's telling her, to force past how tired she is and how much her body aches. ]

And the people of Ai'tuoh - they survived?

[yourattention]

Yeah, but they also regularly sacrificed people, mostly children, to their god so.

[YMMV on the "survived," is what he's trying to say.]

[tuskenlancer]

Oh. Great.

Is that - did they do that to save themselves from this?

[ Because she's not really down with that. ]

[yourattention]

I think that might've been why they started. They keep doing it because they've forgotten why it's tradition.

[You know: if it's tradition, that makes it okay. It doesn't need to be examined or questioned.]

[tuskenlancer]

[ All right then. She does her best to put aside the question of child sacrifice for the moment. Not like that'll be an issue here. ]

But...if they banned emotions...wouldn't that make it worse? Everyone just bottling things up all the time?

[yourattention]

It means you can't hide it, though. [Which he really assumes is the important part.] So it's easier to find the problem and remove it by purging it in the Standing Water.

[tuskenlancer]

[ Something shifts in her understanding, all at once. She'd been thinking banning emotions as in banning showing emotions - making everyone control them, deny them, try to act without their influence. Like the aliens on that old Earth show.

Removing them entirely...

CT goes silent for a long moment, trying to wrap her mind around this new revelation, trying to formulate an appropriate response. ]

...Fucking shit.