citynet | un: junpei

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un: junpei | video

[The video opens on Junpei in an office chair - in his Secret Club Meeting Room (read: generic office building conference room) although this is not a secret meeting. This is Junpei spinning slowly in an office chair while he holds the camera up, tilting as far back as he can without tipping the chair over. So it's going great.]

So, city-zens, [.....ahem,] I've got some miscellaneous questions for you.

First, time travel: real? Let me know. [......,] I mean, you know— Before you got here, that is. Like how experienced are you in the realm of quantum... quantum-y goodness? I just thought that maybe it would be real for somebody else by now, but I dunno... Let me know that one instead.

[Cough. Anyway.]

Second, are we all just, uh... hanging out now, I guess? Um, like— who's trying to clip through the weird fog and get out still? Anybody? I'm looking for group, or whatever you call it. We can do code names.

[Junpei is not a gamer.... don't believe this... he's just cringe and thinking about half-press-A-ing through the universe, to wit as he spins faster in his chair:]

Third, whoooo's all in for simulation theory? [as dryly as possible, womp...] Eh? Woooo yeah... simulation theory...!

[The video tilts as he lets go with one hand to hold up... a pinched-fingers hand puppet 🤌... it's still fine, he's doing great. He pitches his voice up higher for the puppet, because of course he does:]

But Junpei, how is this a simulation? Well duh, why else would this place be like a city that doesn't know what a city is supposed to be like? And all the weird loading fog? C'mon! Buuuut Juuuunpei, are we all full of tubes and stuck in goo pods like in that movie?— [Ah, ahem, cough. He puts his hand down.] Maybe.

Or uh, whatever else is in the theory pile. Half the people I was messing around with about theories went and disappeared, soooo... Well, I'm gonna get serious cabin fever if I can't figure something oUT—

[Local Man Tips The Chair Over and Totally Wipes Out, stay tuned for updates. The video ends when the phone drops face down onto the floor, bye.......]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Thanks buddy!! Junpei gives a thumbs up from where he remains sprawled on the ground, once he gets his phone back in hand.]

I'm good. Probably not concussed but still waiting. You know, you can just laugh like a normal person.

Haha.

[At least Junpei's a good sport about it. Brook might actually find him kind of tolerable, as a person.]

What other theories did you guys have? Besides the simulation thing. That's like a computer game, right? I don't know enough about stuff like that to have an opinion.

Well, simulation's the big one... uh, for me anyway. I ruled out "kidnapped so we all start killing each other" months ago, mostly because no mastermind showed up to take credit.

[He's still on the floor... he's not getting up.]

I guess it's still possible, though. And "fucked up experiment" is always a classic.

[Hey, if he's comfy, who is Brook to question?]

"Fucked up experiment" is the one I've heard alluded to more often from the people here. Also "maybe the City is alive" and/or "IDK, magic shit."

[As for "kidnapped to kill each other," the circumstances would have to be pretty different, he thinks. In the few weeks that have passed since his own arrival, all he's seen is people buddying up and touting the supposedly universal moral principle of helping one another. It's been wild, man.]

They're not all mutually exclusive, I guess.

You think we should mix and match? A little bit of simulation, a little fucked up experiment so they can keep running it over and over? Maybe, yeah.

I mean, you look kinda new... so you know we can't stay dead, right? Simulation experiment-a-rama.

[He shrugs, like, why not! And why not throw in the city being alive too, sure. He'll take all kinds.]

If this place is alive, that kind of explains why it fixes itself... like it's healing. So where are we? The stomach?

Mmm. [Yeah, he's new.] I did hear something about the coming-back-to-life thing, but that doesn't just exist in games.

Do experiments happen in the stomach? If it's learning about us, I'd've figured the brain... or maybe like, some kind of sensory organ. So it can take in the information. I don't know.

I was thinking more like... digestion. Supposedly we're not the first group here, either. You follow?

["The previous group is fucking dead" is his less insane theory about That, anyway. Ahem.]

As for the staying-dead thing... Yeah, I guess. Or uh, so I've heard. Back home dead is dead, unless you can skip out on that history and leave some other you to bite it.

[His response to the Horror Jamjar Gastric Juice Theory is mildly horrified silence. Thanks for the future nightmares, Junpei.

Anyway.]

...That's that kwanzaa theory stuff you were talking about, right? The time travel. I don't... think that's real where I'm from. [A beat.] There were places where time worked differently, but that's not the same thing.

[Glad to help!!!]

Going to other histories? Yeah, it's not turning out all that popular so far. Not exactly, anyway.

[But who is he to divulge someone else's company secrets, his lips are sealed. No one has yet to come forward as a quantum leaper quite like himself, so: it's bullshit actually. He needs to complain to someone who Knows.]

It's like, uh... Well, it's not working so I guess it doesn't matter, but do you want to know anyway?

...Sure. Why not.

[Tell this 100-year-old rabbit about ~~Homestuck~~ Zero Escape, Junpei.]

Don't get too excited.

[Ha ha.] Anyway, it's basically a swap. Imagine that there are infinitely many other histories where you still exist, right? If you're like me, you can send your consciousness into one of those other histories— if the other you is still alive, right? Otherwise there's no body to pop into. Which means that the other you gets sent back to the history you started in, but that you only remembers their history, and you only remember yours.

Cool? If we had movies here, I'd just show you a movie that explains it pretty well, but... [womp womp.]

Uhh... I guess I get it, if "consciousness" is sort of like your soul. I understand that going into different bodies, especially if the body's basically the same as the one you had. I don't know why there'd be more than one me in the first place... but if that's your premise, then sure, I follow the switch.

I guess you could call it that, but going with "soul" makes it way more complex...

[Are there infinitely many Junpei Souls? Much to think about. He doesn't want to.]

But yeah, that's the basic idea. The problem is that the other you doesn't have any say in it—it just happens.

["Soul" has at least like ten fewer letters than "consciousness," there's nothing more complex about it!]

So... if you think about it like smartphones, there's no way to decline the file transfer from the other end.

[The ramifications!! The rammys!!!!]

Uh— sure, I guess. Or like when you're at a restaurant and the wait staff start singing Happy Birthday and all you can do is sit there and pretend to enjoy it.

Like that.

[Yes, exactly like that, when words have fewer letters they make way more sense!]

...

Sure.

[This is definitely a reference that Brook understands fully and completely. He has experienced this exact experience.]

What, you've never been to a chain restaurant on your birthday, or the-closest-Saturday-to-your-birthday? You're missing out.

[.....,] Yours is good too. There've been a handful of other mes I've kind of screwed over without asking.

[Brook would rather not talk about what he has or has not missed out on re: his birthday, so he dodges that tangent by ignoring it entirely. Parkour!]

...Isn't that just life? Everyone's always screwing other people over without asking, or even thinking about it. Seems to me the difference is just, in your case, it's not other people.

[Get your ass to an Applebee's, Brook... or that welcome diner in town.

Anyway, he scoffs. Fair hit!]

Yeah, people are pretty terrible. I know— I've seen some shit that makes me want to give up on people forever. That's not entirely the same as my thing, though.

Yeah? What's different about it?

[Infinite screwed-over Junpeis, infinite screwed-over sinners... potato, potahto.]

Probably the quantum ability to fuck myself over and not even realize it until it's too late. I dunno, it's like...

[He stares off at nothing for a second, thinking perhaps about how to make this into another metaphor about American chain restaurants-- he's got nothing. He shrugs.]

It's just different. You'd have to do it yourself to get it, I guess. No offense.

Eh. I don't expect anybody to get my circumstances, either, so whatever.

[Shrug.]

For what it's worth, dead is dead where I'm from, too. It's just that dead doesn't mean gone forever. From what I understand, here, you just... pretty much reset to how you were when you died, right back here in this city. Right?

That'll work.

[He can embrace the whatever. Not trying to explain all the details is so much simpler, actually.]

And yeah, it's something like that. There's some memory loss of the actual, y'know, incident from what I've heard... I guess our mastermind doesn't want us to be too traumatized by anything. [ha ha.] But go back a second, what do you mean, you got ghosts or something?

Nah. Or if we do, I haven't seen any. I just mean that the souls persist. Eternally, even. Just, most of them spend that eternity stuck in heaven, hell, or purgatory.

That doesn't mean there's no way back to the world of the living at all.

Oh, an afterlife. Huh. I wouldn't know if that's real back home for me, but given some of us are sliding around spacetime... Prooobably not.

Still, what really matters is whatever's going on here when people die. Not that I'm gonna test it or anything.

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