[ popping by the medbay at some point... ]

Hey... you done being dead now?

[ he is hanging out of a pod, dead.


no he’s not. ]

Well, breathing’s not an issue and I ache all over so… probably.

Good. [ presumably not to the aching part, but. ] Congrats on the revival.

It would have really sucked if all of you had died off schedule. Can you imagine having a trial for three deaths that happened in a different world?

We'd probably have been considered casualities of circumstance. Or something like that. We killed the people who were attacking us anyway, so...

[ would they be on trial? would the ship even care? ]

I mean, you'd hope so, but. I think almost everyone's planning to stay at the hotel tonight instead of on this shiphole, so who knows how desperate it might get if it doesn't get its weekly murder trial fix.

[ they're sure going to find out!!!!!!! ]

[ they


sure are! wow! ]

That'd be kind of a dick move, you'd have to vote for a dead person and I'm not even sure they let you do that.

Would it really be that much of a shock, though? Might as well be its middle name at this point. Eudora Dick Move Shipperson.

I'm saying it because it's more likely you'd be banned from doing it, because they'd rather you voted someone innocent incorrectly. It'd be an unwinnable situation if we were counted as needing investigating -- no evidence, the culprits for our injuries are dead...

Nothing to vote for.

Oh yeah, I think they'd absolutely make us vote for an innocent living person.

Yup.

I'm not sure what happened in there was related to anything that the Eudora is or isn't messing with.

I don't know, at this point I'm kind of feeling like everything's related and we just haven't quite figured out what the connecting thread is yet.

Yours wasn't a scheduled mission, was it?

[ flashback to me going the moon can’t be that important last game when the moon was, in fact, so important. ]

It does pull from people’s — memories? Experiences? Something like that. So it’s definitely using us for these non-planned missions at the very least.

[ hmmm. ] No, I didn’t get a message about it. I’d have let someone know if I was taking a mission, after what’s been happening the past few weeks.

[ i think about that conversation a lot ]

Yeah, that's what it seems like. For both the planned and unplanned ones. [ ... ] When it happened to us that first week, we didn't know that was a thing. Kazuki-kun and I didn't really have any reason not to think what we were all seeing was real.

[ i have never claimed to be smart in this hobby that involves reading and paying attention ]

But now it keeps happening, so there must be some purpose behind it. Even if it’s just accidentally pulling from our memories.

… It sure felt real though.

Yeah, it realllly does. It'd be great if we could harness whatever power's doing that and use it for fun VR experiences instead of for emotionally tormenting a bunch of jerks on a spaceship.

Kinda like they were doing on Rodin? [ he tilts his head. ] Yeah. It doesn't have a practical purpose, but not everything needs to be practical and improving something, other than your sense of fun.