Lingering Worries

[standalonehuman]

Hitori Togusa 10/2 near Recolle Police Station

I've got a question, and I don't mean for it to scare people, because what I'm really looking for is proof that I'm wrong. If these other people, the ones Retrospec is giving us the memories of? Retrospec is also slowly giving us their bodies. A piece at a time, it seems. What if they were sick? Is it slowly going to happen to us, too? How can we help each other out if it does start happening? So that I'm not wasting everybody's time with this, though. I've been asking about Dr. James Halliday, a memory researcher a bunch of us came across the name of in August. Despite the fact that Retrospec seems to have been interested in his work, I don't think they're using it. It specialized in deep-brain stimulation, but I personally had a check done to see if there were any changes to my brain from being on the app for eight months now, and there's nothing. Just so we can rule that one out.

Comments

[explodosafe]

Hmmm. Maybe it's the same thing that got people lost outside of time and space in August?

[standalonehuman]

Keeep on that idea. Hang on.

But people didn't forget when they left, so those areas they went to were still inside Retrospec's idea. Oh. I hadn't thought of that.

[explodosafe]

Could be that they didn't end up out of bounds like they do when just the memories are gone, but instead they just ...like ...fell a floor deeper than intended and ended up in the garage of realities?! Or the broom closet?? And whatever caused it also made them gone in both mind and body rather than one thing or the other or maybe the other way round I'm just confusing myself!

[standalonehuman]

Wait. That might be close, though. A few of the groups said that Retrospec had probably been to the areas they ended up in. One was even a library, something that had been used a lot?

Shit. Retrospec could peek into those areas. Maybe they weren't as 'outside' Retrospec's influence as we thought. Just not the network.

God damn it, I feel like an idiot because I'd been defending them again.

[explodosafe]

Huh? What do you mean?

[standalonehuman]

Because a bunch of Retrospec employees got swept up in all that, too. So I thought they were just victims and didn't know what was going on.

But if Retrospec's already been to all of the places that people got sent to, that's suspicious, right?

[explodosafe]

I'm not sure. It seems like they were aware of those places and had teams explore them when it happened, or at least that's what it sounded like with Cavendish. They also never said that they didn't hear about the places some people got tossed to before.

Just that they lost all contact and have no clue wtf when or where everybody was.

[standalonehuman]

Strike that theory, then.

Some they did, some they didn't. This is frustrating. Maybe we are doomed until we get another chance to talk to them.

[explodosafe]

Doomed - that's not a word I wanna think of in that context.

Talking to them is like playing 20 questions with a bratty toddler whenever they're on the network. It'd be nice if we could just catch one of them in real and sit them down for a nice chat.

[standalonehuman]

Is now a good time to point out that even a face to face chat didn't help that much? Maybe it was because the whole city was under siege, but I can confirm that Joanne actually exists. But she still couldn't answer much. And from these comments, I wonder if it's just because they aren't allowed to.

[explodosafe]

Noooot really, but it's true anyway, isn't it? I'm not sure I'd feel better or worse at the idea that they're just as clueles as us for the most part. Better, probably.