TEXT ♞ INFO SHARING

[tarotcards]

Hey everyone, Souji (in blue) and Dave (in red) here. I know that some of us don't want to remember the events of last month, especially not so soon, but it's important for us to share what we found or did while it's still fresh in our minds. So, this is a general discussion post for everything that happened in August.

to that end theres gonna be an in person meeting later on possibly with refreshments
were not above bribery here even if i am personally above fancy capital letters
but info that maybe shouldnt wait for then is that team space jam found a dead dude who had a thing that said according to a sphinx
the recolle project is a thing that is like reconstruction rather than reincarnation bringing back stuff thats ours

Essentially, the Recollé Project outlines this stuff as memories, items, and abilities. Rather than regaining things from a past life like reincarnation as Dave said, it's more like regaining things that were buried - to bring them forth to us.

There wasn't much else in the report asides from a map of the city, but the sphinx (it’s a long story but it appeared to have knowledge about the project) confirmed that this was true.

so anyway bring yourselves and possibly snacks to the sandiego foundation on saturday
we will try to make sure at least one person from every team from last months little whatever is around
newbies and oldbies should both come to revel in the glory of information
and like seasonally themed snacks maybe we will have pumpkin pie because i want some
last but not least and speaking of newbies theres one more thing to go over here

It's clear that Retrospec is going to continue adding new users to their app so Dave and I thought it was best that we created a guide to Retrospec for all the future newcomers (and old users too). We're going to type something up really soon but we wanted to ask what you'd like to see in the guide. Frequently asked questions answered, what we know so far about the Retrospec team, how to change your font into a really cool colour like ours, stuff like that.

nearly as cool anyway
you have to do some serious training and animal spirit sensing to get a color as cool as this
but yeah talk at you all later
or like soonish when you reply

( ooc: this is an ic discussion and info gathering post that is open to everyone, so feel free to jump into other threads and whatnot! this takes place alongside the in-person ic info gathering post which can be found here )

Comments

[browbeater]

that's a lot more intense than i heard. but i'll be there saturday.

[tarotcards]

What did you hear?

[darkinferno]

wait what do you mean reconstruction

are you saying that we ARE the people in our memories

[tarotcards]

According to the report, yeah. The sphinx confirmed that the report was true. Of course, we don't know if we should trust her word on this but we can't ignore the possibility as well.

[tarotcards]

[ BACK TO NORMAL FONT BECAUSE I LIKE BEING ALIVE ]

I was teammates with: Dave, Carmen, Elizabeth, Emil, Juzo, Lucy, Penelope, Kaiba, Shouto, and Yato.

Asides from the Recolle Project report, we also found a doctor by the name of Dr. J. Halliday (he was a half-llama monster though). He specialized in neuropsychology and did research in the field of cognitive processes and how mental processes and mental stresses affect memory. I'm not 100% sure if this relates to the details of the Recolle Project but it seems important to note.

Also, here are some pics of me as a fox.

[ ... and just random attachments of souji as a red fox (team yzma was a Thing) with a sword in his mouth, posing with an eyepatch, and then a video of him singing the entire 'what does the fox say' song. yeah. ]

[daemonized]

I say it sounds as if it relates quite clearly. If this is all about memory, and apparently /reconstructing/ who we once were (if we are to believe this at all), then one must find a way to unlock what already lies buried.

Though it still sounds too much like mad science for my tastes.

Also, apropos of nothing, I'm still jealous you got to traipse around as a fox.

[Is he really? Or is he joking? Difficult to tell with Ardyn, as always.]

[prometheanflame]

Thank you for organazing this, Souji.

I know bits and pieces of the story behind this, but I'll just talk about what I know for certain.

* Last month, after clearing out the subway and before rushing off to fight more monsters, Ronnie (a Retrospec employee that works the current train lines), gave us a map of the subway system dated five years ago. If we are to explore the city for clues, I believe that following the lines will help

attached subway.png

* For those of us who just received the app, back in May I found a video playing in what I can only describe as a pocket dimension. I found a video of the first mayor - one of the First Founders - giving an acceptance speech nearly 100 years ago. For those new to the city, there were four original founders, but references to the other three were all but erased until recently. One of the other groups has found more detailed information about that. Other than that, I noticed that there are several people in the video's crowd that look unhappy. I wonder if they are upset about the other three founders or if there is something very wrong with the city's founding.

* Related to that, I have am completely certain that the government/founding of Recolle is related to Retrospec. A few months ago Chloe and Leo (with a bit of help from yours truly) found some photos in the history museum archives, some showing the construction of the Retrospec building. This was kept under high security.

The questions I have are these: What is the connection between the first founders and Retrospec, and what do they mean by "things buried within us?" I thought this was more of regaining things from an alternate version of ourselves, considering the topic of worlds was brought us as far as I recall.

[browbeater]

we should also bring up that weird conversation between ronnie and mafuyu.

[darkinferno]

[oh wait, hold on, he had something important about this--

put the existential crisis on hold for a moment, Dante--]

i've been talking to a lot of different people and it sounds like almost everybody who wound up outside the city found information and those of you on teams in the city had contact with retrospec's employees, right?

we should make up a list of the retrospec employees, what they do, who they report to, all of that

figure out who's in charge of this company that doesn't want us talking to them

before this all started we only knew about

jim halloway (r&d)
janet wiseman (now halloway) (hr)
maurice fitzwilliam (intern, reports to jim)

now we've got

wendy guo (security)
baroque (he's a cyborg)
dr mahoney

those are the ones i remember, there's been a lot going on so i don't remember who else has been mentioned

we've also got people related to retrospec that aren't employees

p spinnato
c vanderweele (according to emil he's a mad scientist)

add to the list, we'll see if we can come up with a full one

[freeskies]

My thanks for the list.

[windeity]

while i am not above believing a sphinx, did said-sphinx explain how they were getting stuff to reconstruct people...?

[parodeity]

not really but if i had to guess its just shit theyre either pulling in from ruined realities the longer were here
or it pops the fuck up and they just redirect it?
those seem like the two most likely options to me
however im completely guesstimating
everything ive ever gotten except the weirdass chest powers last month has been mine though

[mincingminuet]

[Quietly freaking out. Thanks Souji. She wasn't ready for this.]

I'm not willing or ready to accept that conclusion yet. That we are those people. Frankly that's not possible.

[parodeity]

guess it depends on the sort of place you remember
how easy it is to accept or not
?

[seeker]

by reconstruction, are you implying that our current memories AREN'T our own?

or do we have two sets of memories, for some reason?

[parodeity]

personally ive thought theyre mostly window dressing for a while now
but i know that upsets people so i only shared that opinion once
until now i guess

[commandertoolbelt]

okay cool what's a few existential crises after all of august

anyway i can be there on saturday so that's one for team absinthe

[belligerentwarrior]

guess i'll add that before spinnato's library went on its little feeding frenzy, there were books lying open. big complicated psychology things about erasing wills and changing ones. i think. only got glance at them. take from that what you want.

[freeskies]

I'll be taking notes, if you don't mind. I can't relate to what you say about "memories," and I'm still quite inclined to believe there may be a more mundane explanation.

However, I can't deny that for a time, monsters seemed quite normal, despite my initial misgivings upon arrival.

Names of Retrospec employees should be shared immediately.

[notyourutopian]

It's still ridiculous.
I don't know why people are so willing to just accept it.
We aren't them.
We're us.

[burningblossoms]

right?
We have a whole set of experiences that these people don't have.
The idea that we'll simply become them is laughable.

[daemonized]

Thank you for this.

Though this information will settle uncomfortably with most. I, for one, am not sure how ready I am to accept that these memories /do/ belong to me, and not some version that existed once in the past.

[This is a topic that gnaws at his own uncertainties, dredged up quite recently by a number of things. But he'll not dwell on that for now. Information first.]

Our team did manage to gather information regarding the founders. Clarence Vanderweele, Philip Spinnato, Georgia Mahoney, and Myrtle Cavendish are their names, as evidenced by what we experienced in the forest. They had, apparently, fought the "unreality" in the past -- for whatever that implies for the state of things now.

[standalonehuman]

Mail call with the notes from our meeting will come later when I don't have a headache.

Vanderweele's important, if you run across anybody that knows the name James Halliday, he has a connection to Vanderweele, supposedly a memory researcher. Ask everybody who went to other places if they think there was somebody specific that pulled them out? That one's just a hunch, but people kept mentioning that they talked to entities who knew what was going on and may have had something to do with them ending up in a place in 'unreality' instead of just 'no place.'

[Pause.]

And I'm with you, we're not the people in the memories. Even if you want to say it's a past life. Okay. But not us. And I'll keep reminding people of that if they need it.

[You know. Like. Including you, Ardyn.]

[openhanded]

[This is the kind of thing he would've liked to find out firsthand rather than reading about it. He isn't sure how he feels at the moment.]

Brandywine couldn't get anyone to talk so we don't have much to contribute, but I'd like to go anyway if that's okay.

thank you for sharing.

if you'd like me to write up a proper report about the ghosts I've encountered, I can do that. I heard people ran into more of them in the woods during August. they're usually not much for conversation though

[tarotcards]

If you could write up that report to share with us, I'd definitely appreciate it. I didn't know that there were ghosts in the woods.

[redarm]

tch.
way to drop an identity crisis on everyone with cheerful font colours.

reincarnation or reconstruction? whatever.
i don't give a fuck.
i'm still me.
and everyone's still themselves.
we're still the ones who create our own paths.
they might be trying to shove us to go a certain way
but we're the ones who decide what to do.

[That said-]

ill be working on saturday
so count me out from the meeting.

[browbeater]

hey, calm down. we still don't know if this is true.

[he doesn't want him getting upset like he did with Mahoney... Especially since there's some very big reasons to doubt this, still.]

you're not wrong.

[covenantal]

One thing I think that's important to share from Team Daquiri is that Retrospec employees apparently have protocols in place that, in normal situations, prevent them from talking to us or really interacting with us in any way. That's according to Maurice, the intern. It seems they're supposed to operate without alerting us to what's going on. Last month was an extraordinary situation where they decided to break the rules, apparently.

[freeskies]

Interesting. And why would they have protocols like that in place, I wonder?

[stopbleeding]

screw the memory bullshit. something's gotta be destroyed to be reconstructed. you telling me the people in my memories are gone now?!

[parodeity]

no
they might pop up still

[gunsandveggies]

[This is... a little heavy to drop on someone who's only been Aware for a few days at most. Haru keeps reading this over and over again, but it's still hard to process, or really accept.]

I'm sorry, I don't understand any of this.

[fiddlestick]

[Oh thank god, someone else admitted it first]

Yeah, I'm lost too...

[truedetective]

"Reconstruction" does make sense.
I'm still fairly convinced that this is a simulation either way.
Given that I spontaneously grew gills.

[liberal_arts]

Your simulation theory has some problems.

[strawberrypunch]

Is the reconstruction project only for the people who use the app?

What about everyone else?

[He's... Still not sure what to think about any of his whole life being evidently fake if he's to trust them (and he does, because it's Souji and Dave). But even more than that, he doesn't want to think that some people - some of his family might also be...]

[tarotcards]

It didn't specify.

[sunnymerc]

..........................

this is worse than homework
can someone give me the tl;dr

[belligerentwarrior]

fine. how much have you been told?

[me_matey]

man count me out i got other shit to worry about right now

-...-

but i guess keep me in the loop if anything game changing comes up.

[belligerentwarrior]

we've all got other shit to worry about. if the "reality storm"
wasn't a game changer, i don't know where your standards sit

[vendettastool]

So less matrix and more The Dreaming. Okay that should be even more confusing for the rest of the class.

[rygdea]

If this is nothing more than a "dream", then how do we possibly wake up? Through Retrospec?

Are they suppose to be our "allies" in all this?

[storytelleroftime]

Ah! I was a part of Absinthe, and while Ardyn gave an overview above, I think I should detail stuff a bit more.

They all had associated animals and artifacts.

Vanderweele: Staff and Wolf.
Mahoney: Sword and Rabbit.
Spinnato: Shield and Koi.
Cavendish: Bear and Book.

We met their ghosts proper, but before we saw them as these figures. Vanderweele was a shade, Mahoney was a Knight, Spinnato was a stone king, and Cavendish was this lady in green.

But for some more relevant details... While they fought unreality, they didn't really have any of the sort of memories or changes like we do. And, according to Spinnato, they got along for the most part, except for on one thing. And also according to Cavendish, Vanderweele was a pretty fucker and probably the guy who erased the other 3 from history. All of them were pretty helpful seeming, apparently. I know Spinnato was(he was the one I met). Only one who wasn't too into the whole "fighting unreality" thing was Vanderweele. So, make of that what you will.

Also Spinnato makes good cupcakes. I took some from his dungeon. I still have one, along with some chocolate.

But about Vanderweele. According to someone I talked to from Tarzan? He was a part of the founding of Retrospec. They got this letter to him which talked about Retrospec "settling its roots" or something.

On a bit more unrelated but still interesting note, Janet apparently has a sister. Her name is Joanne, and I don't know anything else about her. Maurice told Kashuu about her, and apparently Maurice is actually a helpful kid. He also was pretty much raised in Retrospec. Retrospec is a family business for some people, you see? Idk who exactly. And that Wendy chick who talked to us in the last post? Well, according to Zaveid, she's from another world entirely. A world that couldn't be saved. And if she dies, the "last ties of that world will be severed." So, I think that ties into that whole "Project Recolle" thing pretty well.

So yeah Retrospec has some weird people working for them.

This is, a general rundown of what I know. I got told about the Project Recolle thing at the end of last month so I've had time to internalize it. Anyways time to go back to being a hermit, but you all can ask for elaboration on whatever you'd like.

[prometheanflame]

Spinnato, Vanderweele, Cavendish, Mahoney. All names that we found today. Were you able to ask about their relationships to the four founders?

And does this mean "unreality" and "Retrospec" were not always intertwined, but the latter was founded to combat or utilize the former?

[kittycaterer]

[ Wait that's--

Noctis stares at this post for a good ten minutes before he can even begin to articulate himself. ]

so this has all been some elaborate manipulation?
that doesnt make sense i moved here from the u.k.
how could i have lived a whole other life elsewhere?

[standalonehuman]

Not you.

Some other guy in some other place and time and for some reason Retrospec is trying to paste their lives on to us. You're still your own individual.