text, un: lucina ( backdated to a day before their escape )

[tolight]

Hello, Audentes. For those of you I have yet to meet, my name is Lucina. I come bearing news.

I have spoken to a Zymandis agent. They are here, alone, and the jewelcomms are what notified her to our presence; she was willing to answer my questions, and in return, asked the same of me. The following is what I learned:

They seem believe that the Timeline is ill; the multiverse no longer has the energy to sustain itself, and will eventually meet its demise. Given this, their mission is to destroy everything, so that the Timeline will be reborn stronger. [ Those familiar with her should know there's a certain level of anger in her tone, text or otherwise. ] At least, this is what their Timeline.exe has told them— not only so, the original Timeline.exe, as well as its "update", were created by the same individual: Theodor Arbatel, their "Leader".

If anything requires clarification, I will try my best to answer them.

( ooc. the thread is here for the curious. while i've gotten a lot of info the thread is currently incomplete, so there may be delays in getting to questions from characters!! otherwise feel free to threadjack / etc. )

Comments

text; un: white_lotus

[pummelling]

Even if I didn't believe in the Audentes version of the mission, he's right.

What are we supposed to do? Line up and let them cull us?

[tolight]

[ Her attempt at being unbiased lasted like, two comments. ]

I agree. It's absurd that they believe they have the right to decide on the fate of another living being. Many living beings.

[fateality]

There you have it. I think the majority of us can agree on that.
Still, this is some pretty useful information. I don't suppose your informant was able to offer up anything else in terms of their way of thinking?

To me, it sounds like they're conditioned.

[tolight]

It was a brief mention, but... they have a stricter system of authority than we do — she mentioned that she believes what her supervisors believe are "correct".

[fateality]

Stricter, huh? Yeah, I'll bet it is.

Thanks for the info. I don't suppose we've decided on what we wanna do with her?

[He's thinking murder, personally, but he won't bring that up right now.]

[tolight]

Fiona suggested the possibility of the agent joining us. [ She's not entirely a fan of the idea, but she also knows that's her own emotions getting the better of her. ]

It could potentially bring us more knowledge about the enemy.

[fateality]

Or bite us in the ass. I don't have a problem with more information, but it sounds like a liability.

That's just my two silvers on it. The team can figure out the rest.

[tolight]

Do you believe that the information could be worth the risk?

[fateality]

...I don't know. Our past experiences have really told us that most of their members are resilient to interrogation methods.

But I guess that doesn't mean we shouldn't try, either. If the opportunity presents itself, better to take advantage of it, especially since it's felt like they've had the upper hand on us in a few cases.

It just seems too convenient to me to let her join us. But I know I'm not the best person to ask about extending a hand.

[tolight]

Even here — it seems she knew more about us than we about her.

... If an offer is made, it will not be done hastily. [ Or so she hopes. ]

[ofobedience]

Whichever way you look at it, we're still deciding the fate of other living beings. Such as the time we steamrollered in and killed the Goddesses of Nalawi. I don't recall any of us ever asking the people of that world whether that was what they wanted, whether they would have preferred to go down with their Goddess rather than live on without Her. What gave us the 'right' to take that decision from them?

[He never has stopped having a bee in his bonnet about that one.]

[tolight]

Unfortunately, I had been recruited during the mission in Perdition's Rest. However, if I could still answer the question—

Inaction would have taken the decision of life away from them. If one individual had wished to continue living without their Goddess — should their life be sacrificed for the rest of the population? Does that not mean we are regarding their life as "lesser" that of the many? Have we not robbed them of the decision?

We do not have the right to take any decision from anyone. However, ALASTAIR allows a world to decide their own fate by at least ensuring their continued existence. Zymandis does not.

[ofobedience]

Perdition's Rest was, in some respects, even worse. But I'm not going to go over that again. Not when I'm already aware that my opinion will be discounted.

And by your way of viewing things, it seems you're saying that the wishes of one should outweigh the wishes of the many. That makes no sense at all. Not every life can, or even should, be saved. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Life is not sacred, it's just an accident of evolution or - in my case - something artificially manufactured. None of us count for anything, ultimately.

Besides, it was less a case of inaction and more that their opinions on the matter were never sought out. We made those decisions on our own, without consulting them. And so taking a decision from them is exactly what we did. In the end they were a passive lot who didn't seem to care what we did or did not do. But if some alien troop came to my world and declared that they were going to kill my goddess, I would have reacted very differently, even if it did lead to eventual oblivion.

If Zymandis is right, and the multiverse must be destroyed in order for life to continue anew, and the alternative is everything eventually collapsing in on itself with no chance for life to begin again, then our actions would be destroying more lives than theirs will.

[He's not even against it, particularly. He'll do whatever ALASTAIR expects of him because that is the only way he knows how to behave, following the command of a higher power regardless of his own wishes. But from his perspective, the logic being used here is inherently flawed, and he doesn't understand it.]

[pummelling]

With you there, Lucina. Always have been.

[ofobedience]

If they're correct, and the multiverse will one day collapse in on itself should things continue on as they currently are, but it has a chance to heal itself through their way of doing things, then wouldn't we be culling far more potential lives than they are?

Ultimately, I suppose it doesn't much matter one way or the other, given that our side is already decided for us. But the possibility that their way makes more sense on a grander scale than ours still exists. That's all I'm saying.

[He expects to die long before any of this comes to fruition anyway, and has always been the sort to obey a higher authority which, for as long as he's here, is ALASTAIR, but that doesn't mean he necessarily believes it's a simple case of one being right and the other wrong.]

i am so sorry, this is real canon

[pummelling]

The last person who saw things that way was the ex-Elder god who nearly destroyed my whole world for that very reason, until my teammate stopped him by slamming her fist into his ballsack.

Doesn't matter, sure. But I'm still gonna respectfully disagree.

ahaha it's fine.

[ofobedience]

What I want to know is whether you're saying the eventual demise of all life throughout the multiverse would be all right as long as you saved your own life and the lives of people you know. Temporarily.

That's how it sounds, at any rate, when we're working with limited information and can't know for certain whether Zymandis are correct, or whether their leader just likes to destroy things.

[pummelling]

It's not that simple. We're going off hunches and wild guesses. We don't know whether destroying everything really is going to help anything... or if, like you said, Arbatel's just a fan of destruction. And say Zymandis breaks everything and wins. Who's to say he didn't want to make things "stronger" for his and Zymandis' benefit? What if the multiverse ends down the line anyway? I'm not buying it.

[ofobedience]

All right. But what I'm interested to know is, in a hypothetical situation where we have access to hard facts that Zymandis' plan to destroy in order to build again is the only way for the multiverse to go on functioning in some form or other, in comparison with a slow collapse that ends all life permanently, where would you stand then?

[pummelling]

Does it matter? Like you said. It's hypothetical.

[He doesn't know.]

[ofobedience]

It matters in as much as I'd like to know the answer.

[pummelling]

...

Fine. I don't know what it'd be, not yet. Happy?

[ofobedience]

Not happy, no. Only curious. None of you make any sense to me.

[pummelling]

All right. That makes us even.

[ofobedience]

Ha ha. I suppose I'll just keep trying.

[I mean, it looks like he's stuck with Audentes. So he may as well, at the very least, try to understand their perspectives.]