[AI] Time Loop

4/2/15 10:20 pm
timeslipping: (thoughtful)
[personal profile] timeslipping
It wasn't supposed to happen again.

Rina had been glad when she'd regained her powers, a good while after being at the epicenter of the power-nullifying bomb of the Dire-wraiths. It had happened not long after the Stamford explosion and after such a horrible thing had happened to her old friends, she'd hoped that having her powers back meant she'd be able to help avert that kind of catastrophe in the future.

Especially since she'd found that, after her powers had finally come back, they worked differently. Some of her visions were preventable. Sometimes the people dying in them could be saved in time, because now, instead of seeing the catastrophe itself, most of them them showed the lead up to something horrible happening rather than the event itself.

Maybe if her powers had come back earlier she would've been able to see a vision of the lead up to the Stamford catastrophe. Then those innocent people wouldn't have been killed by Nitro. Namorita and Night Thrasher and Microbe wouldn't have died.

And Robbie...

She remembered what he looked like on the news, shot on his way to testify at Congress, head shaved, already battered and beaten down with a dead eyed gaze even before the gun fired off. Robbie had always been so light-hearted and cheerful and happy so to see him like that had broken her heart.

Her powers had kicked on right after that, almost like some sort of cosmic insult. Then again maybe it was the action of seeing all that horror that had triggered their return. She'd heard the story about Night Thrasher tossing Rich off a building to reawaken his powers. Maybe just the sight of something she wished with all her heart she could have prevented was what brought them back in the first place.

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iamresponding: (bucketless - out of it)
[personal profile] iamresponding
Something had hurt him. He wasn't sure what. He had been doing something. Something something. Getting something for someone. Home. Getting something for home?

He remember crumpled flowers in a puddle in an alley. Broken brick. A fight. He'd staggered around and fought. A suffocating feeling over his face. Energy pouring out. Molten brick, burning the flowers, vaporizing the puddle. He'd gotten free but the world had shattered into a million confusing crystalline shards. So many voices, perspectives, alien images and words in his head.

Crumpled flowers. They were important. They'd belonged to someone. After that, the voices told him to hide. They were broken like him, all of them.

SYSTEM FAILURE +++ ERROR ERROR +++ WORLDMIND GESTALT DATA CORRUPTED +++ REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.


They tried so many times to fix themselves to fix him but something was wrong. So the voices told him to hide, to survive. It was still looking for him, trying to take him. The star.

"Star tryin' t'take me," the man said to the older woman doling out soup at the soup kitchen. "Told me to hide. Voices tol' me to hide. Starfish, bad starfish."

He trusted the old woman. For some reason. Something about her face. White hair, reminded him of someone. Another older woman. Flowers.

"I lost the flowers, ma, I'm sorry," he said to her. "But the star - the star got me. Now the voices're saying to hide. Voices."

"Oh, you poor dear," said the woman. "Why don't you sit over there, young man? I'm going to get someone to help you, okay? We have someone on staff here, they're going to talk to you to get you some help."

"Help," he echoed back, taking the bowl of soup gratefully, going over to sit where the woman had pointed him. "Help. Help me."

Someone could help him. Faces. Floating spheres and pink light. Fire. Winged feet. Black and red. Faces. There were people that could help him, good people, but he didn't know how to call them. Couldn't remember their names.

"Help me," he said into his bowl of soup. "Wish you were here, Pete. Always know what to do when things are broken."

They were stuck like this. Surviving. Him and the voices. They didn't know what to do, how to get help. All of them were too confused, too addled, splitting and blending.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.


"Restart. Need to restart," he said, in between spoonfuls of soup. "How? How do I...? No button. Can't use a button. How? Why can't you tell me? Brother. Brother could. Where's my brother?"