Day 57: Sun Room

[bodhiandspirit.livejournal.com]

It figured that night would end before Rita and Taura could progress any further. Rita wasn't particularly disappointed to wake up abruptly, as they had reached a dead end. Really, the institute was doing them a favor by bringing them back to the starting point, where they could regroup.

What she didn't appreciate was the loss of valuable time, and the fact that her equipment had been confiscated once again. Rita didn't have time to mess around... which was precisely why the cheery voice broadcast over the intercom only served to grate on her nerves more than usual. In fact... how was the Head Doctor even giving that announcement? She doubted he'd managed to take the institute back in such a short amount of time, though the broadcast itself was suspicious for a number of reasons. Even though she could clearly hear the man's voice, it didn't necessarily mean that he was there. She had to look at things critically.

Still, it seemed almost as if everything had returned to normal... with a few exceptions. The different staff was one, and her lack of possessions was another. It didn't seem like the staff was expecting to fool the patients into thinking this was the same old institute, so why...?

Even as she went about preparing for the day and walking to her first destination, Rita kept her most pressing questions in mind, coming up with multiple hypotheses to explain what was happening. Since she didn't expect that the Chapel would hold anything of interest to her, Rita opted for the Sun Room instead. She was interested in seeing the bulletin board, for one.

When she entered the Sun Room, Rita brought a pen and her journal with her. If no one approached her, she would at least have a chance to document her discoveries from the previous night. First, however, she checked the bulletin board, only to find it completely empty. That confirmed a few suspicions of hers. Content to see evidence supporting her ideas about the strange occurrences, Rita sat down on a couch, opened her journal, and began to write.

[Free!]

Comments

[fourstonewalls]

That hadn't been how she'd seen it at all, no. Hmm. Dent's opinions were usually well-founded, so she couldn't dismiss it out of hand, but it didn't seem to hold up.

The military's long-term purpose might be to win, but if they were looking for foot-soldiers, a bunch of lawyers, at least one of whom was badly wounded, would not have been her choice. They weren't that stupid either, so there had to be a reason.

"I'm not so sure. There are limits to what people will do, even if convinced it is in service to a greater cause, but those only come into play if they're given a choice." The trick was making choice look like none at all; maneuvering defendants towards plea bargains, letting a secret swallow her whole, it was all a part of the same game. Landel had liked it, but Aguilar hadn't seemed to. No nudges to or from anything, aside from allowing that radio broadcast to proceed.

Harvey was playing Landel's game; she would search for what Aguilar's was.

"Perhaps they simply don't need our active cooperation for whatever comes next."

[dualistic]

While part of him was annoyed that she was disagreeing with him off the bat, his more rational side knew that it was good. The more they discussed this, the closer they might get to reasoning it all out. "I don't think choice matters to them," he pointed out. "They don't have to have our cooperation for any of this, do they?" They certainly hadn't asked before bringing them here, and they also didn't ask before sticking needles into them or messing with their heads. Why should they need to ask to get them to fight?

The real question was why they were being kept here instead of used for their real purpose, whatever that might be. Why did they need to be contained? It was almost like they needed to be released slowly, one at a time, hence the slow trickle both into and out of the institute. But once again, he was left to ask why.

"And either way, they have to need us for something. If you don't think it's that, then what? As raw materials?" That was a more gruesome train of thought than he ever wanted to go down, but there it was. Either way, Harvey seriously doubted this was all for fun and games. There had to be a purpose for it. He might have believed the sadism theory when it was one man running a torture show, but not now, not when a whole military force was involved.

[fourstonewalls]

"I was thinking more of what these men might be attempting to demonstrate. If it's the effects of their manipulation on our intellectual capacities, our investigations are cooperation. In a sense, at least."

She stood up, and turned, looking out at the room full of patients.

"If, however, fighting is all they want, why the elaborate artifice. No, I don't think that's the goal. Or not the only one."

She took a deep breath, and turned back to Dent.

"Let's see. Alterations to senses, memory, and induced psychological conditions, both temporary and permanent. More on memory, if we assume that we're returned to our own homes rather than being some sort of duplicates. It's even possible that the effects while in this facility are only side effects, and the true impact is on the societies of hundreds of worlds, when people with at least some amount of influence are returned." That was a far-fetched theory, but sometimes it was worth throwing one out and seeing where it lead.

"Physical fighting, mostly against humans turned against each other -- our fellow patients, the townsfolk, plus some altered animals. There are supposedly much worse out there, but I haven't seen them, and luck isn't usually something I can rely on." True, they hadn't gone outside, which might account for some of their relative safety.

"Third, the population has been selected for a variety of interpersonal conflicts, though that might dovetail with the theory that our home worlds are the targets. None of us from Los Angeles are more than minor legal officials." Gant was the one with the most influence, and his was past by the time he'd arrived. Hmm. "Any other theories?"

[dualistic]

Oh, Harvey had already gone down this road. The one where everything they did was in the end only to help their captors. It pissed him off, but he knew that it was possible and he didn't need to go through the thought process again. Luckily, Lana didn't give him much time to comment on it anyway, as she stood up and started to throw out theories.

He could concede that fighting couldn't be all of it, but as he listened to what she had to say, he wasn't sure if any of her guesses were right either. Of course, part of that was because he was pretty sure that this place could pull people from different times and dimensions. The time thing he had seen himself, when he'd seen where Jones was from; the dimension part came from the fact that he'd met at least two people here who knew of him but who he had never met. And it hadn't seemed like some overcomplicated prank, either.

Honestly, he didn't think that much of a stink would be kicked up when he returned home. He'd probably already been written off as dead by now, if time really was progressing the way it should be. It was frustrating in its own way, to think that Gotham could forget about its White Knight, fallen or not, so easily.

"There's definitely some pretty bad stuff out there," he said after a pause, in reference to her second theory. "Things that will make you hallucinate vividly, the most horrible kind of stuff that you can imagine." That had happened back during his first night here, but the memory hadn't left him and it likely wasn't going to any time soon.

She was passing the baton to him and so took in a deep breath as he tried to come up with something feasible. "It seems like either way, messing with our minds seems to be the real point here. The brainwashing, the way that people are sent out into the world thinking they're someone else, the memory wiping... Maybe they're testing all of this on us so that they can eventually use it on an entire population." It was a serious conspiracy theory and he knew that, but what else did he have access to at this point? This was all so insane.

[fourstonewalls]

"A society in microcosm? That's not a bad theory." It explained pulling in groups; you couldn't build a social hierarchy overnight, not and have it be functional. The structure, too; asylums weren't universally the same, but most of the patients described a world where they weren't too out of place, and that would normalize it for the rest.

"Unfortunately, it doesn't leave us with very many viable methods of fighting back." Reacting badly, but without knowing what their captors wanted the net result to be, it would be difficult to manipulate the data. If, indeed, that would provoke anything other than further manipulation. "All we can do is keep digging." Her expression showed her exhaustion, but not defeat; she was in this for the long haul.

It was odd, how much the initial trial system had turned her life into a clockwork beast; she'd been here long enough to have run two trials and be almost done with the third -- not counting Sundays. Even as a detective, most cases were done before the ink was dry on the initial statements; the system, when it worked, was a marvel of efficiency. This place, by comparison, was sloppy. Hmm.

I hope you're okay with ending things here?

[dualistic]

"I can keep digging," Harvey responded after a pause. He realized how much the odds were against them, but when there were people like Lana around who continued to think and theorize, it reminded him that they still had some chance of cracking this. It was a very slim chance and he might just get sick of it and put a bullet through his head at some point, but for the moment he was hanging on.

He didn't really know what he was hoping to get back for, other than revenge. It was a petty thing to fight for, but it was venomous enough that it took hold inside of him and gave him the energy to keep going. He didn't care that his goals were impure. He'd tried for too hard to live on the straight and narrow and had received nothing in return. He was allowed this.

It seemed that they had exhausted their ideas, so it was for the best that the intercom went off then. It was more of Landel's copied drivel, but it got the idea across. It was time to eat more of that pink oatmeal that attempted to pass itself as food. "Looks like that's it," he said as he stood from his seat. "I'll see you around, Lana."