[ text ] un: aragaki; like 4 am

[petsthedog]

[It comes on the network like an intrusive thought -- because it is. Because Shinjiro can't sleep, even with all the talk of distracting activities like movies and pumpkin carving and costume parties. (Where do you even get costumes on a spaceship, anyway?)

Because he can't stop thinking about what Olexa said in that building, at the end. Would you die trying to get that stone back? Cheri's motivations were selfish, but then, aren't theirs too? So-Yeon's hadn't been, and while she'd surrendered the orb, what if she hadn't? What about the next mission?]

do you think the orb is worth killing people for

Comments

[petsthedog]

viveca said there ain't a way back on the station without the orb
we woulda been stuck in gyeongje the rest of our lives
you fine with that too?
say you are
you'd still have to convince everyone else
if you can't, you'd either have to fight em or let em take it
we can do the best we can or whatever, but it dont make the people we get killed less dead
or their deaths less our fault
that's what i'm askin
is it worth the fucked up parts?

[unclesam]

you might wanna direct the pointed questions about the fucked up nature of our indentured servitude at the entities we're bound to. just saying.

listen, I see what you're doing, setting up a couple strawmen like that. it ain't as easy and simple as you're tryna make it, and it shouldn't be when other lives are affected. so, you looking to appease your own guilt over how screwed up the nature of our work here is, or are you looking to find out who you gotta cross if you wanna indeterminately cut your way through every person holding the orbs?

[petsthedog]

we don't exactly get a chance to talk to 'em
already tried with viveca and got a bunch of "we're the good guys really" platitudes and bullshit

tch
i ain't tryin to appease shit

[He is tbh.]

but i ain't interested in pretendin our hands are gonna be clean at the end of of this either
we're in a situation where it don't even matter what we would or wouldn't do
because we still benefit if other people cross our lines and we don't or can't stop em

[unclesam]

of course. viveca's an AI - she'll give you the company line.

[ no two ways about it, really. ]

yeah, I don't think the goal's pretending we're rocking the moral high ground on a universal scale beyond all question and doubt here, man. the moment you start thinking that's categorically the case, you stop looking for ways to do better. and that ain't better than throwing in the towel and scorching the earth come what may - or letting others do it in your stead.

what are you really asking here?

cw: ref to passive suicidal ideation I'M VERY SORRY SLKDFJSF

[petsthedog]

[Shinjiro's not sure he agrees. Aigis seemed to have her own free will and all that, but there's no guarantee Viveca is the same.

What he's really asking is how to be okay with the possibility of casualties. How to think what he wants is worth letting someone else's life be ruined. Cheri might be a terrible person who didn't care who she hurt, but what if she had children? What if she had a young sibling who depended on her? When he'd first woken on that spaceship, he'd thought of the orb quest as little more than a glorified scavenger hunt. He hadn't anticipated the idea of needing to hurt anyone. Of looking the other way again because he was just that desperate.

It's not something he really knows how to verbalize, though. He just thinks of Amada, all alone in the world at eight years old because of him, and thinks of the team creating more, and he feels sick. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to choose.

It was easier before, when death would've been the end of things.]

i'm askin what i'm askin
you keep talkin about doin better and shit but all this ain't outta the goodness of our hearts to save the multiverse or whatever, it's to get somethin we want
so what makes it worth it?

[unclesam]

[ It's the question Sam's been trying to answer. Would answer more of, if he wasn't aware of how Shinji was painting people like Sam as cowards, as if any of them were close to what he thinks of them. Wounded, Sam thinks. Hurting. Young, too, if he had to hazard a guess. Not beyond sympathy, but that doesn't mean Sam's gonna be a blank canvas for the kid to project whatever he wants onto. ]

I think you need to consider that not giving you a simple answer to a complicated question ain't cowardice, no matter how hard you need to convince yourself and others of it.

[ Yeah, he's seen what Shinji's said to other people. ]

you wanna talk more, come find me in the kitchen. if we're both sleepless enough to talk about this, then we're also awake enough to do it in person and do some food prep while we're at it. might as well put in the work. the company might do both of us some good.

[ It's the end of the text conversation. Shinji can take Sam up on the offer to have this talk eye to eye while putting in some of the necessary station work, but Sam's not gonna keep engaging this via text where it will only tilt the kid further. ]