Martha was home, in her home, washing her hands
Rossin's hands, still red
Martha Crisp
"Those won't go away?"
Rossin
'Not if you think they should not, I am but thought: remember, think them clean and they will be.'
He raised his hands
Clean of all blood
Rossin
'Well, look at that.'
She could still see faint bits of red
Martha continued scrubbing her hands
It was a long while before she spoke again
Martha Crisp
"What if the police come?"
Rossin sighed, and waved his hand to the door
Rossin
'If the police come busting in, all you have to do is say a few magic words and they go away.
Simple as that.
They are not prepared for, equipped, or in any way capable of dealing with what you can potentially do.
Not that you can actually do that yet, but you can let me take over and I can speak for you.'
Martha Crisp
"Speak for me?"
Rossin
'Through you, whatever.'
Martha Crisp
"Okay, that sounds like a cult induction speech, what do I have to do, give you all my property?"
She continued her scrubbing
Rossin
'Hardy har har, no - but I know the world you are getting into. Hold on, let me get an update.'
It was a few seconds later and he continued
statusQuo=>{_
_placeholder for all data for foreshadowing purposes,
meant to be a long list of dramatic-ironic statements __}
Martha Crisp
"And that was what?"
Rossin
'Information, particularly about the leaders of the awoken, basic affairs really.'
Martha Crisp
"When you say current?"
Rossin
'Current from the perspective of one Felix Danabrus.
A year out from his last visit to the academy in New York.
His was the closest, most are in a meeting in Romania.'
Martha Crisp
"Why Romania?"
Martha stopped scrubbing
Rossin
'Some thoughts originated there, need to be kept in line every few years...
Bad things happen otherwise.'
He walked up to the kitchen when she closed the faucet
Rossin
'You must got to learn quickly, they already know about you.
I took care of some things otherwise Felix was going to come kill you.'
Martha Crisp
"But I was going to kill myself, I mean that thing was going to make me?
So why send Felix?"
Awoke=>(Aware of linked-cognitive processing,
Able to transmit and receive data along the link)
Martha Crisp
"So linked-mind information processing… like psychics?"
Rossin
'Think like mind melding on star trek, but at any range.'
Martha Crisp
"So we're wireless?"
Rossin
'More or less, yes.'
Martha Crisp
"I didn't learn that in science class, pretty sure we don't have wifi in our heads."
Martha was growing worried
Martha Crisp
'Was he talking about a chip...
Did the government put a chip in her brain?
No, that was a ridiculous thought though, right?'
Rossin
'Not wifi, linked mind-information processing.
A functional quantum information transfer method.
Requiring only special thinking to formulate the proper chemical reactions in the brain to make it work.'
Martha Crisp
"I think that's literally insane."
Rossin
'Well, I mean, you can not argue with results.'
Martha Crisp
"Right, you're a figment of my imagination."
Rossin
'The imagination of my author, and well, a part of you does leak in too.
Nothing is generally water tight like that...'
Martha sat at the table.
Martha Crisp
"Am I going to get those memories back?"
Rossin shifted
Rossin
'If you do, that thing will come back and get you.
I will not be able to stop it.
You will not be able to fight it off...
Not right now anyway...
Maybe in a couple of months after you study what it could have been...
Carefully, would you then maybe have a chance of unraveling it.
I only know what my author wrote in.
Apparently there were revisions after I was written...
But if in a couple months you face it down, the memories should come back...
They, well: they will not be good memories: buried deep for a reason.'
Martha sat in silence for a time as she watched Rossin shift back and forth.
She wondered where he was physically in her brain.
A discrete location,or a disruption of particular patterns of neurons that fire across the brain.
She wondered if she cared.
He was here.
And offering her what?.
Power, in exchange for bringing down a corrupt society.
Well, the author saw it as corrupt, but was it really?
She would have to see
But the idea of namshubs still worried her.
If her brain could be so easily programmed to see Rossin, it could be arbitrarily programmed to see anything
The possibilities rolled out in her head.
Impossible before now nightmare scenarios played out in her mind - each one worse than before.
And yet - she also thought of the possibilities to fix everything, to remake the world whole.
To stop pollution, and all the terrors that could be fixed if you didn't have to worry about free will
Martha Crisp
"Teach me.
I think I need to know everything..."
Rossin
'Good that you are willing.
And if Felix comes and sees you are not amazingly skilled he will probably just disobey and erase you...'
Martha Crisp
"Well, that's great, thanks for telling me so early /s.
When's he going to be here?"
Rossin
'He should be here in a day or two...'
Martha Crisp
"Welp, if he wipes my memories..."
Rossin
'I die, and you go to prison.'
Martha Crisp
"Can't convince him to fix that before he wipes my mind?"
Rossin
'I mean, you can try, but I am not going to incentivize you to do that, that would erase me as well...'
Martha Crisp
'Welp, he preserves himself. One for the biology is it alive test, only a few more to go...'
Martha Crisp
"So teach me."
Rossin
'Do you have a housemate?'
Martha Crisp
"I thought you were in my head, don't you know?"
Rossin
'I exist in your head, but I am not you, I only know what I know.'
Martha Crisp
"No, I don't have a housemate."
Rossin
'Your neighbor then, we will put them right back when we are done.
We just need a subject.'
Martha Crisp
"What are you going to do with him?"
Rossin
'I am going to show you the scope of what you can do...
He will be good.'
Martha Crisp
"Which is what exactly?"
Rossin smiled
That of a father knowing their child was about to discover christmas
He walked up to the front door, Martha followed.
Then He paused
Rossin
'Let me take over, I can run through a few examples.
And you will be along for the ride - grab the qualia of this experience.'
Martha Crisp
"Take over?"
Rossin
'Right, let me just...'
And it was there in her head, knowledge of a switch.
Not a literal one, but once flipped would swap her consciousness with Rossin's.
Martha paused, almost ready to flip that switch
Martha Crisp
"When will I get...
My body..."
She really was considering
Martha Crisp
'No, not without a way to assuredly come back.'
Martha Crisp
"How can I take my body back."
Rossin paused, thinking
Rossin
'This should do: but there is no way I can make this particularly comfortable...
You will be fine.'
And just like that the switch moved.
Instead of the vague idea, it was a solid pin attached to her consciousness.
A stabbing point she noticed just behind her right eye.
It started to fade, but she remained aware of it.
It was pinned to her consciousness, how could she not be.
But at least this way she wouldn't be trapped in
She agreed
Rossin
'It will get less painful, and it connects in...'
She flipped it, and felt a ripping sensation.
It stretched from down her forehead to her navel.
An unzipping sensation as her consciousness rolled in upon itself into a wheel.
Martha felt herself rolling through random electrical signals in her brain to where Rossin had just been.
He was making a similar journey himself
With the feeling of a great stretch, she unfurled into a human shape again.
A room, her front hallway where she had just been standing- lay before her in a shaky ghostly image.
There was a cone of clear vision emanating from the entity at the center.
The center being herself: Rossin in her body
Everything was distorted outside the cone of clear vision, wavy and disintegrating into darkness.
The process was like gushing waves of blackness flowing over the shape of all things remembered.
Slowly smothering them with time
Even the clear vision was distorted.
Bowled in and fuzzy at the edges - no lines - seen or unseen were truly straight.
And perspectives did not converge
She walked into the ghostly image and Rossin turned her body to see where her consciousness had entered
Martha Crisp
'You can see me?'
Rossin
"Aye, you are not physically where you are, just...
Imagining yourself into existence from your own imagination which you put yourself into just now."
She flipped the switch back
Immediately feeling that ripping sensation.
She wondered exactly how this was working in her brain, or if this was real
She looked down at her own hands.
She stretched
There was something off
She stretched again
Her pinky had been numb, but now it was fine
She shook her hand awake
Martha Crisp
"That's going to happen every time I do that?"
Rossin
'That will not be often, now to your neighbor?'
She opened the door, and walked over to her neighbor's house
The one she liked less.
The one that had been pedantically complaining about trees blocking her view to the street.
The one that even paid people to come on to her property and cut down those
Martha knocked on the door and flipped the switch
After the ripping sensation subsided and Martha was again looking at Rossin in her body
The door opened and Rossin spoke without words
hooks.follow=>{Self}
And proceeded to walk inside.
Martha as an ethereal entity followed
Martha Crisp
'What was that?'
Rossin
"So, everyone has hooks.
We, I mean, those in power, the awoken, put them there.
A set of simple commands that almost all humans have.
Run, jump, fetch and the like."
Her neighbor was directly behind Rossin, without any expression, without anything
Martha walked around her neighbor
Martha Crisp
'How did they implant them?'
Rossin
"Television, and the internet, certain memes, implant individual hooks.
Follow, run, chase, protect, kill, nurture, spoil...
There's the whole gambit - pretty much any verb you can think of."
Martha Crisp
'So I can make anyone do anything?'
Rossin sat down in the chair in the corner of the room
Rossin
"More: you can make anyone, be anyone or anything.
You can change what they believe to be true, including about themselves.
You can change how they react to anything, you can change what they love...
What they fear...
And the only limit, in the end, is your own creativity."
He said from her body
Rossin
"And that's just the beginning...
Let's just start there for now, this is...
Pedestrian..."
Martha Crisp
'Pedestrian?'
Martha paused
Rossin
"As in you'll get bored by this quickly...
This is a ground floor.
Just what you can do in this world..."
Rossin waited in the chair
Martha Crisp
'...world?
How many...'
Rossin
"Just two...
Well, two that we have access to.
But the second world is infinite...
The second one, isn't physical...
It's almost like the internet...
So it's not just awoken whose brains are linked.
Everyone's brain is on a network.
Always has been.
There has been a global subconscious network since life has been even remotely conscious.
Each human runs a little bit of it in the background when they sleep...
And most animals...
Some insects...
Or when they're awake sometimes too - but it's a persistent network.
The awoken are aware of it, and can visit and control it."