photophobic | [IC CONTACT]

Reread page 13 last night. I think that's our favorite one so far.

Wondering which poem you would recommend for, let's say, dealing with the collapsing arterial wall of the multiverse?

You share a similar taste in poetry, then. You and your soulmate. I had wondered, considering the popular sayings on this world about opposites attracting.

As for your question. I haven't written any specifically on the subject, and I might have a different answer now than when I wrote the poems in that book.

Have you read any Dylan Thomas. A Welsh poet.

[And he's going to include a link to Do not go gentle into that good night. Because of course he is.]

I don't intend to go gently.

It surprised us too, considering our tastes ARE usually the complete opposite. Sometimes the most cliched sayings are the most true, annoying though it is.

And I hadn't read that before, no. [ And now he'll never be able to forget it either. ] Dying of the light is... horrifyingly apt. I've seen how these things go.

[Now that piques his interest.]

Have you.
Do you know how to stop it.

[Can it be stopped? There's barely a pause before he adds:]

I will do anything.

Edited 2019-10-29 06:34 (UTC)

I know.

Destroying all the weird things that cross through the Bleed into our universe was my day job back home. Essentially we need something (or someone) that can manipulate reality, like a shiftship, or an Earth Shaman. Or a century baby. Or just a really, really good reality warper.

>> LINK

Not that any of them would be able to do anything at the moment. We still have no idea what the source even is - if it's a person or a group, if it's accidental or on purpose or just some god awful side effect of us being here in the first place.

Fucking frustrating.

We can't use Ronan. The attempt would destroy him.
But I'm unwilling to leave my fate in the hands of the imPort "community". Considering the choices they've been content to make in the past. Their ignorance.

What would you do with one. If I could find it. Any of the things you mentioned.

No, you're right. And after what happened last time I wouldn't blame him if he was reluctant to help anyway.

And to answer your question... I'm not sure. With our shiftship, the Carrier, we shifted dimensions in the middle of a breach, sealing the breach in the Carrier's wake. If we have a person instead of a shiftship... then they just need to be good. Really good. Someone who can alter the fabric of reality on a quantum level and reinforce it through sheer force of will.

But we still don't know the source. Unless we can find out what or who is actually causing the collapse then my ideas are all painfully useless.

[A shiftship. Sheer force of will.
Kylo's just going to... store those concepts away for later. Though...]

Ronan's ability to create is limited by the amount of energy made available for his use. If I could find an alternative source of power he could draw from, he could make you a shiftship.

If you were willing to share with us your memories of it.

Of course, I'd share my memories in a heartbeat. But I'm not sure it'll be possible for anyone to create a shiftship, even from my memory. The Carrier is powered by a caged baby universe - the theory was that the Carrier uses the power of the caged universe's potential to cross through the Bleed, but we were never really sure how it worked... and the Carrier itself is huge, she's the size of a city 50 miles long...

Even if you found another energy source for Ronan, would he even be able to create all that? The power source would have to be pretty damn significant.

He could do it.

[This... might be the first time Kylo has talked about what happened at the end of that horrific week they all spent using Ronan to make their nightmares come true with anyone but Ronan himself. There's enough distance, now, that he can type out these words without pause, though they stare up at him from the glare of the screen balefully once he's done.

He stares back at his confession. Breathes.
Hits send.]

That's why I had to kill him. When he was tied to all of you.

I didn't know what would happen when I gave him access to the infinite connections of the Force and commanded him to use whatever he needed to stay. I didn't impose control. I didn't think. I gave him everything I could reach. But I didn't understand what it would mean. What it would do. I didn't see it. That without direction he would give, rather than take.
If I had been able to hold onto him. To be the sole voice, the will to wield his power. I could have made a new world for us with the energy of all those minds. But I didn't. I handed him over to be swallowed up in all your fears and desires. And you used him. All at once. And it couldn't be stopped. The longer he was your tool, your weapon, the more you feared what might be made next, the more the power grew.

I killed him because you could have done it. Because even when serving a hundred masters all at once, any one of you could have used him to make the end of all things. I killed him because he would have chosen to spare you from yourselves. If he had been able. But my failure. My inability to forsee the consequences. I had stripped that ability from him.

I killed him because it was the only way. He had the power, but you had the control. I had no other way to stop you using it.

[ Apollo doesn't know what the Force is, not really. And he barely understood what was going on back in May besides 'ImPort Bullshit, Subcategory: Tragic Ending'. But he knows enough to feel irrationally angry right now on Kylo's behalf, for no other reason that it's not fucking fair for anyone to have to do what he did to his other half.

He makes a conscious decision not to say 'It's okay, you didn't know, you were trying to help' because that... doesn't make it okay. None of it was okay. All that matters is that same thing doesn't happen again, to either of them. ]

So that's not an option then. There's no way you or he could ever be put through that again.

It won't happen like that again. Because it wasn't intentional. What I did. I was talking with Ronan, and I forgot. Just for a moment. I forgot the part of him that exists to grant wishes was listening.

But I don't regret giving him what he needed to stay connected to me. He was coming undone after we made contact with Atropos. Fading. Disappearing. If I hadn't acted as I did there might not have been anything left of him to return to me. We have a chance of being brought back by the Porter when we die, but Ronan wasn't dying. He was vanishing. And my mistake wasn't in giving him the power. He needed it, and he used it to give me what I told him I wanted. Do you see it? That was my failure. I didn't tell him how to grant my wish. Only that I wanted him to stay with me.

It isn't like that when we dream together.

I don't see it, no. How are you going to stop him from dissolving (not sure if that's the right word) again?

Because I wasn't trying to stop it before. Everything that happened. All of it. It was an accident. I didn't intend it. I didn't choose it.

[...and those are words that summon up an old panic, when he stares at them.
So he confronts them with a reminder.]

It happened because I wasn't in control. Now, I am.

[ All magic is, is change. How many times had he heard Jeroen say just that? Apollo had watched the Earth's shaman turn poison gas into Chanel Number 5, turn the burning debris of flaming shiftships raining down onto Los Angeles into gently falling autumn leaves. All magic is, is change. But there has to be something to be changed in the first place surely?

Apollo has to spell it out, literally. ]

Now you're in control. You mean now you can give him access to the infinite connections of the Force and not lose him, right? He takes, rather than gives.

Yes.

[Well, it's slightly more complex than that. But essentially.]

If he needed more energy than he has access to in himself. In his own world, he had a magical source to draw on. A "ley line". Some kind of localised concentration of the Force. He's cut off from it here.

These connections... you mean people, don't you? Creating a baby universe would surely need thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands, even.

The efforts of billions, possibly.

Willingly?

No.

[He should probably dress that up in something prettier. But he's Kylo Ren. Despising comfortable lies, this is the best he can offer.]

I could ask them to choose to submit themselves. But they would have no power over the dream. They couldn't. As you said. Sheer force of will. I would need complete control, to shape Ronan into what we would need to seal your Breach.

Asking if there's another way to do it is a pointless question, right?

We both know how it works. Don't we. The greater the gift, the higher the price.

Just as we both knew from the beginning the shape of the choice that will have to be made. There will always be other ways. But to prevent the destruction of reality? There will be no easier one.

I know what you mean.

[ Agreeing to something of this magnitude shouldn't be so simple. ]

What happens to those billions, if this works?

I don't know.

[But he does, really, doesn't he? They both do. If this was about billions of people falling asleep, dreaming and waking, there would be no hesitancy at all. They know. Not knowing the details is ultimately irrelevant.]

Nothing worse than what happens to them if it doesn't.

Good point.

[ Horrible point, actually, just well made. ]

What do you need me to do?

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photophobic - 2019-11-08 22:32 (UTC) - Expand