text; un: aragaki

[petsthedog]

[It's been a long time since this username has been seen on the network. Shinjiro's rarely one for idle chitchat, but he does pay attention. He was at the diner the day that iteration debrief went around, and he's been quietly stewing in it since.]

so if all this shit is really a simulation, what's it supposed to mean when people disappear from here, anyway
if they could just delete us they wouldn't need to make us kill each other to end a round, would they

[Or maybe they're simply that twisted? He doesn't know. But Amada's gone, and until this latest development he would've thought that was for the best -- but now he's not so sure. It's been bothering him, despite himself.]

dunno if these are even our real bodies or if is this some matrix shit
or even if those documents were planted for us to find or any of it's true

Comments

[abit_ofboth]

I think maybe all of this is very real, at least for us. Even if everything here is contrived, do we not still have to live it? Are we not still meeting people, making friends and even new family? No, I’m afraid that for all intents and purposes, this is very real.

Still, you make a good point. You would think that they could just turn it off. What worries me is the idea that maybe once they take us, they cannot return us and they need to… get rid of everything. Now, why that must be in some sort of catastrophe, I am uncertain. Maybe they just like to see us suffer. Maybe it is part of the experiment. How does one deal with death?

The one thing I can say is it at least seems that they are rather methodical about all of this. I’m starting to think there is a method to their madness, though I do not appreciate it either way.

[petsthedog]

[If this were in person, Loki would've been subject to a very teenagerish eyeroll at the semi-philosophical tangent.]

i meant this place, not our lives or whatever.

[Though, at the mention of new friends and family he can't help thinking to himself that he's gone out of his way trying to avoid any deep connections explicitly for the reason that this isn't somewhere to build a life, and it'd be harder to leave behind a dead man than someone who can actually escape from this mess. He chooses to keep that bit quiet; the last thing he wants is to get into an argument about it, especially where Aki can see.]

if you decide a batch ain't good for studyin anymore, seems kinda weird to be interested in how they deal with death, but i guess that could be it

either that or the whole file is bullshit and making us think it's true and seeing how we deal is the real experiment

[abit_ofboth]

[The answer Loki receives at first also warrants a rather intense eye roll.]

I think our lives and where we live and what happens here are intrinsically linked. Currently, what happens to us here, what this place does to us very much is our lives, so I fail to see how they are separate.

Perhaps they wish to know so they can tweak something for their next batch,or maybe it could give them some ideas on what else to test. You can learn a lot from someone in a life or death situation.

Well, I cannot argue with that. It could all be a front to see how we might deal with such information. Everything here seems to be about how we might react. But it is likely better to err on the side of caution and assume the information we have so far is correct.

[petsthedog]

if you're playing a video game with other people, that's your life too, doesn't mean the things or places in that game actually exist out in the real world when you turn it off, even if the people you played with do

that's all i'm talking about, nothin deeper than that

but yeah i dunno
seems like even knowing this new shit we still don't really know anything useful

[abit_ofboth]

Video games? What are you talking about? The video game itself would not be your life. You're life would be you sitting somewhere with a controller in your hand. Just like if you were playing cards, the deck is not your life, it is the deck, it is the game. You playing is a small part of your life, but that is about it.

Now that is something we can agree on. I feel the more we find out, the less we know somehow.

[petsthedog]

[...

Yeah, no, he's really not in the mood to be arguing semantics with some random guy on the fake internet.]

whatever, forget it
nothin much we can do about it right now anyway

[abit_ofboth]

As you wish. My apologies if I was too harsh. This place gets to us all, I suppose.