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From:

heyboss

You're not freaking me out.

Does it worry you to talk about it?

Edited Date: 2023-06-09 02:49 pm (UTC)

From:

cactusy

Just makes me kind of tired.

I have experience with people trying to mess with my sense of reality. It's, uh-- look, you know the Enclosure? I spent about a year in something like that, being run through a bunch of scenarios. All of them were designed to make me think they were real, and all of them were designed to get intel out of me.

From:

heyboss

You hinted at that when we first met.

So you think this might be the same thing?

From:

cactusy

Yeah.

From:

heyboss

Can I tell you a story?

From:

cactusy

Uh-- sure. Yeah, if you want.

From:

heyboss

There was a man named Andrew. He had done something terrible, something so bad that his mind refused to even acknowledge that he did it. Instead, he created an entire world. A new reality where he was a hero and he could solve a mystery that would save people. He didn't have to be a monster. That was his reality.

What makes his reality less valid than the one I perceived for him? It wasn't the truth, but it was his truth.

Point is, even if you're right, even if this whole thing is some sort of dream or illusion, the choices you make, the relationships you form, the things you do, are no less relevant here than they are in someone else's perception of reality.

From:

cactusy

[She listens all the way through, without interruption. When he finishes, the silence continues on her end for a few beats.]

Okay.

[And then for a few beats more.]

Can I be honest?

From:

heyboss

I hope so.

From:

cactusy

That's bull.

From:

heyboss

That's alright.

From:

cactusy

Real is real. I don't want to live in a fantasy world, especially one they're controlling. I won't make their simulations my truth.

From:

heyboss

Then don't. But these people are real. They have feelings and thoughts and wants.

From:

cactusy

I get that I need to treat them like they do, just in case.

But what if they don't?

From:

heyboss

Then the worst that happens is you've treated people like people, and they don't turn out to be real. But you have still acted decently.

From:

cactusy

And I wake up in my lab and don't get my deal.

[It's a possibility she's been thinking about a lot, lately.]

From:

heyboss

You're focused a lot on that potential future.

What about right now?

From:

cactusy

Live, laugh, love in the moment isn't really my thing.

From:

heyboss

What do you think it might be like if you did take some time to simply be?

From:

cactusy

What, you mean like meditating? Yoga? Mindfulness activities?

From:

heyboss

It can look like that, yes. It can look like grounding. It can look like journaling.

From:

cactusy

You know, I actually tried journaling? Kind of. Didn't help.

Doing my tattoos does, though. Guess that kind of counts as grounding.

From:

heyboss

I think it does.

What's your most recent one?

From:

cactusy

I got a few that I always do every time I die. My dead partner's code name, the slogan of one of the organizations I worked for, stuff like that. There's a couple I'm not sure I'm gonna do anymore, which is a decision that I'm sure a therapist would love reading into, right?