un: @cid text; with a photo

[levindicated]

[There’s just an image at first, without preamble or explanation. ]



Anyone know who this fucking kid is?

Comments

[levindicated]

I could have sworn I saw a little froth. We might have to trap him out back with a snare and a bit of raw meat.

…There certainly could be. He was acting like a guard, but… Well. I suppose anything is possible.

[sortie]

If it's some kind of condition, we should find a medic. No one should have to live like that.

[ Too serious for this world. ]

Might be a uniform then. They don't make them like that where I'm from, but where I'm from's not like anything I've seen people talk about anyway.

[levindicated]

Not sure if there’s a cure for whatever’s wrong with him. Maybe an attitude adjustment, but I don’t feel right hitting children.

I can just imagine an entire battalion of them.

No, no I can’t. Isn’t it more likely he’s just one kid playing dress up? Though the craftsmanship is impressive, I’ll give it that.

Where are you from?

[sortie]

[ The mystery of the masked boy endures. ]

Ever heard of the Cage?

[levindicated]

A Cage? Sure.

The Cage? No, you’ll have to fill me in.

[sortie]

It's here the records of humanity are stored.

Mankind was wiped out thousands of years ago.

[levindicated]

I see…

[This is not unfathomable to Cid, but it is unfortunate.]

You’re not a man, then?

[sortie]

Would you like to rephrase that?

[ Excuse you, stranger on the internet??? ]

[levindicated]

What, Mankind’s not been wiped out then?

[sortie]

It has, but don't call me that.

[ When a guy has been treated like the runt of the unit for much of his adolescence... ]

I don't know how exactly it all works, but we all lived at some point in time. And it feels real enough to us, the lives we led, people we met, all that. But we were preserved, I guess, in the hope it could be changed.

[levindicated]

I see. So you… were once a man? Still a man?

[And whatever the hell the rest of that means.]

[sortie]

All that remains of one. I actually have no idea how I can be here like this. Wasn't exactly tangible before I found myself in this place. Not outside, anyway.

[ Oh the funny places technology can go. ]

[levindicated]

I see…

[Sort of. He gets it, he’s piecing it together. A man like him isn’t lost for long.]

None of us really know how we happened to end up here. So you have that in common with everyone else, eh? So what were you… A machine’s memory? Something encoded from a man who once lived?

[sortie]

My weapon. That's what I'm linked to, I think. And that was added to the Cage, somehow.

What happened just before I got here... One of us made it out. Reborn, or something like it. So it's not like it's unprecedented. But so far as I understood it, she was a special case, and the rest of us were in for a wait.

[levindicated]

[Nevermind. You lost him again.]

I see…

[He does not see.]

So what’s that mean for you?

[sortie]

[ That happens. ]

Beats me.

Wish we had the means to just do this so simply. Be remade this way. Shame none of the others are here to see it.

[levindicated]

Who are the others?

[sortie]

There're about a dozen like me.

[ Ones capable of safely leaving their stories are few. He doesn't know how or why. ]

Doubt you want a whole list of strangers.

[levindicated]

No, no. Of course not. Who were they to you? Friends? Comrades? Just some fellows you had to work with? You were doing a job, right?

[sortie]

Didn't meet most of them until things went to hell.

One of them was the captain of my unit though. We're...from the same time and place. Originally, or whatever.

[levindicated]

Are you a soldier, then?

[sortie]

From the earliest age I could enlist, yeah. Never really been anything else.