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heyboss

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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?

From:

heyboss

I'm not a therapist.

But what do you think I'd read into it?

From:

cactusy

Avoidance, probably.

From:

heyboss

Would I be right?

From:

cactusy

Yup.

[She pops the p.]

I think my reasons are valid, though.

From:

heyboss

What are your reasons?

From:

cactusy

They're related to my deal. But if this place isn't real, then the deal is bull, and maybe I'd rather just move on and not think about it.

From:

heyboss

And that's thinking of the future. Living in the what if.

From:

cactusy

I guess. What's your point?

From:

heyboss

Does it make your life easier to do that?

From:

cactusy

Just putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to think about my deal?

["Easier" feels like the wrong word. She has fewer issues with her chest and throat tightening up on her when she does her best not to think about Root being dead forever. But thinking about her - her imagined presence - had been a comfort both in captivity and on the Barge, and now that she's trying to excise that, the loss feels like sinking into a deep, dark, empty ocean, just like it had in the day between her death and the Admiral making his offer.

There's a quiet thunking sound from her end of the line.]

I don't know. I, uh, I-- yeah, I don't know. I can still do my job.