007. Text // shoot here and the world gets smaller

[manufactured]

This month certainly has been interesting so far, hasn't it. Joanne - I know you're not going to reply, dear heart, but you might want to place a moratorium on calling things "exciting" for the next short while, seeing as apparently it just curses the entire situation.

Though perhaps I'm biased in some way; after all, my body doesn't exactly play nicely with fire anymore.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not one for bolstering one's spirit; either you'll find your own fortitude in times like this or you won't, and bluntly put the direction you choose to take is of very little consequence to me. However, that isn't to say that it doesn't hold my interest; whether you've run screaming into the flames or avoided them, my question is one of progress. Not physical, as I have no doubt that we'll receive updates on whether what we're doing is truly enough or not – but rather internal.

Consider it a question of morale, I suppose. How we're holding up, how things are looking for the days to come. Whether we all hate ourselves a little less, if that's the sort of thing you have to report.

If nothing else, it seems an acceptable concern to have at the moment.

[...That is literally the most stilted "how is everyone doing, hope you're all having a happy crisis and not literally dying in a fire" that has ever been written, but you know what, it's going to have to work for now.]

Comments

[frostythehitman]

[ God, if that ain't the fucking truth. They just go about it in different ways, he supposes. ]

is that all it takes to be able to live with yourself

[ It sounds judgey, but he means it genuinely--James can't fathom doing something like this himself. Just...thinking about it and deciding to pity the guy and call that enough to assuage his guilt. He asks partly because he's curious if that's as far as it goes for Albert, and partly because if it does go further, maybe it's something that can help James better too. ]

[manufactured]

If you want the nice answer, it works well enough. I haven't forgiven him but I've tried to make peace with the situation; I've found things worth living for in this life, and it isn't fair to myself to deny myself of the opportunity or the ability to live fully in this life because of what I did in my past life.

If you want the honest answer, however - I still haven't found a way to make the constant awareness that I deserve to die for what I've done subside. The fact that it was in my past life and not this one honestly matters very little to me; countless lives were destroyed because of what I've done, and no matter how I've changed or what has happened in the time since then, I don't deserve to forget that. I don't believe I deserve the second chance I've been given, and I've told Retrospec in exactly as many words that once they're done restoring my world they're welcome to destroy me if they so choose, because I'll have no further purpose and perhaps the act of restoring the world in this life can serve as at least partial atonement for everything I did to it in my past life.

I think the reality of the situation is that I know that if I were to die, or remain guilt-laden and self-flagellating for the rest of my life here, however long that life may be - it isn't going to change anything that happened in my past life. It won't bring anyone back, it won't fix anyone's lives, and it won't make anything better. The most that may happen is that I'll die on behalf of a world that will neither know nor care that I died in the first place. For now, I just settle with the knowledge that if that world can be restored, I'll do so. If certain people from my world turn up alive here, I believe they have a right to decide what happens to me beyond that point, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, I have people that would apparently be very upset with me if I died, and I see no need to cause them pain for no reason other than I decided I couldn't handle living with the memories of things I technically didn't do.

[frostythehitman]

huh
i didn't think about the part where we're technically restoring our worlds
i guess that is one way to make up for the crap we pulled when we were actually part of them

you're real open about all this

[ He says, as if James didn't ask for it, or isn't pretty open about his own BS too. ]

[manufactured]

I see no reason to not be, at this point.

[frostythehitman]

i guess not
not much point in hiding it when all the reasons worth doing that are on some other dead world

[manufactured]

Of course.

In my own case, I also believe it to be only fair to allow people to know, given how objectionable my past deeds tend to run.

[frostythehitman]

even though you're not actually him and didn't actually do those things?

[ Which is a bit of a devil's advocate question--James doesn't fully believe it himself but he wants to hear how Albert would respond. ]

[manufactured]

That gets into the philosophical side of things, I think, which has never been my area of expertise.

So before I respond with my own thoughts, I suppose my question to you is this: if we suppose for a moment that all of the soul business that everyone is talking about is entirely legitimate and true, then we possess the same ontological makeup as those individuals that we apparently used to be. If I'm ontologically the same person as the individual that did all these things - if I possess his soul and recall his memories and have shared in his emotional experiences - then can it really be said that I didn't do those things? Maybe I didn't at this point in time. But can it be said that I truly never did?

Where do we draw the line between "him" and "me", to put it another way.

[frostythehitman]

yeah that's about where i'm at with it
some people [ cough TOGUSA cough ] keep saying we're not the people we remember, we're totally different but idk
if i'm the one who has to remember and live with this shit i might as well have actually done it
and besides i don't think i get to play the 'it's not me' card
not after some of the shit i've done for real

[manufactured]

I haven't carried out any actions that are similar to the ones I'm remembering, but that's... Well, it would be incredibly obvious if I had, let's put it that way.

But I can't say that I haven't noticed recurrent urges and thought patterns coming up from time to time, either. So I find it difficult to say that we're entirely different people.