blahblah THOUGHTSSSS // Voice.

[stopthat_destro]

If you're on the Barge for long enough, you'll almost certainly have your identity altered so completely that you become a different person-- temporarily, of course. Complete histories and personalities, memories, experiences, relationships that aren't really yours.  And yet, despite their artificial nature, they certainly feel real.  They feel,

Comments

Private

[mrs_persson]

[This probably would have gotten under her skin at the best of times, but right now she's more vulnerable than usual, while at the same time trying rather desperately not to show it. So Rex gets a response from someone who doesn't know him very well, but who couldn't let this slide.]

I've wrestled with that problem for most of my career, before I even came here in the first place.

Paradoxically, I believe that the more one denies the validity of those other selves, the other identities-the harder it is to find one's own true north, so to speak.

Private

[stopthat_destro]

I can see that for some of our identities. Like who we became on the alternate Barge. There was some grain of truth in it for just about everybody.

But then there are the utterly ridiculous breaches or ports where the person we become has no bearing on reality, anyway. Like the planet we crashed on when the Master and Iago escaped. Or... the space station port. [Not for himself, but he remembers how completely altered Wichita was.]

Private

[mrs_persson]

Yes, I got my identity shuffled around for that one myself. A tragic, femme-fatale survivor. [She's amused by this.]

It's not unlike something that happens to the likes of me in my usual line of work, though. It's part gift, part instinct, and part curse-the ability to step into another life in another time and place so wholly that one forgets that one was anything else. Retaining any sense of identity in the face of that is a never-ending challenge.

But I think that even in the most ludicrous of ports and floods, you can find the needle that points north all the same. Earlier this year, I woke up and found myself a highly religious widow running a boarding-house. Couldn't be more different to me than if I'd tried to work it out with both hands for a week-but there was a fortitude in her, and a passionate devotion to her friends and family. She wasn't entirely a stranger.

Private

[stopthat_destro]

Do you think the particular changes to your selves have been deliberate, intended to show you something about yourself? Or just... chance? Because in my case, my other selves have all had abject failure in common. It's... troubling.

Private

[mrs_persson]

I never really thought of it as being especially deliberate. But I think...

[Hm. How to put this diplomatically.]

It's suggested that it's like some old tale-there is nothing in the cave but what you bring with you, and that sort of thing. Which is a discomfiting prospect, to be sure.

Private

[stopthat_destro]

Extremely discomfiting, when I consider all the men I've become.

Private

[mrs_persson]

You mentioned failure as a recurring theme. Is there anything else?

Private

[stopthat_destro]

...

Kindness.

Private

[mrs_persson]

In your own-in the nature of your other selves?

Private

[stopthat_destro]

Yes. My other selves had different priorities.

Private

[mrs_persson]

Is that so very disconcerting?

Private

[stopthat_destro]

It's like I'm being pushed to believe that everything I've ever been passionate about is wrong. Like I'm here because I wanted to surpass history's greatest scientists. Like-- like my only options are to be a kind loser or a cruel success!

Private (somewhere out in the Multiverse, the Rani's ears are burning.)

[mrs_persson]

Do you really see no middle ground between those two paths? Ambition in and of itself is no bad thing, anyway. It's all in how one pursues it.

Private (ha! He misses her)

[stopthat_destro]

If I compromised, I wouldn't have been able to create everything that I had. Sometimes progress demands casualties. I don't see how I could have succeeded in life, pursuing the middle ground.

Private

[mrs_persson]

You sound like an old acquaintance or two of mine from back home.

Private

[stopthat_destro]

Would they have been inmates if they came here?