sixthiterationlogs | i'm done being a pawn

WHO: Desmond Miles
WHERE: Fountain; around the village,
WHEN: 12/3
OPEN TO: Anyone!
WARNINGS: Swearing for sure

Fountain arrival; ota

His hand was going in slow motion as it reached for the key to saving humanity and releasing Juno. Despite knowing it was right, despite saying goodbye to the remaining people in his life, he was afraid as he took a deep breath and prepared for the end. His eyes closed ... and then suddenly he was opening his eyes surrounded by water. Desmond flailed, shocked and horrified, this was not the way he expected Juno to take him, and was he supposed to just wait until he drowned? No, this can't be right. His feet kicked and he broke the water into air, gasping and scrambling for the side of ... what the hell was this? His eyes hurt from the water and he dragged himself out, immediately shocked by the cold of the air around him. It hadn't been cold before, why was it cold?

Desmond shakily tried to stand but collapsed hard onto his knees, his hands catching his weight. He should be dead. Maybe he was dead. Or maybe this was something else. He sat back on his haunches, breathing unsteadily, and dropping this strange pack from his back to toss it aside. Who put that on him? Juno's face hazily appeared in his mind's eye, and his confusion turned into rage. Maybe he failed. Maybe this was Minerva, furious that he disobeyed. Frustrated, he did something very stupid and dove right back into the water, going as far as he could. He had to finish this. He couldn't thwart fate. He reached around of any sign of what to do, but it was dark and he sprang out of the water again, colder and more exhausted than before.

"Juno!" He yelled, searching the sky. "Minerva! Which one of you bitches did this?" Desmond spit out water, shaking from cold or shock. "Juno! Goddamnit."

Around the village the next few days, OTA

Desmond was unnerved by everything so far and deeply suspicious. It was an elaborate lie, it had to be. A trick. He went to the inn just because there was no where else to stop freezing and not starve as far as he could tell. He sat by himself in the furthest corner away from others, making certain nothing was at his back but the wall in case of stabbing. Occasionally he ventured up to the records there, reading it but skeptical.

Later on he can be seen in the bunker trying to make sense of what was down there and if his hacking had any use. He was wandering around the village, admittedly being a little creepy as he glanced at the houses and cased the joints. Eventually he claimed House 46 and sat outside, staring off into the distance, scowling.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Desmond was not like being looked at too long, this was true, at least not sideways. He was in a half-paranoid state at the moment and he never was very comfortable with a large amount of attention. The funny thing was, he was a fairly extroverted guy in the right situations. He used to like being a bartender and meeting a lot of people. He had the small talk amiable conversation down pat once. Maybe he could get there again, once he stopped freaking out.

Nida's laugh actually startled him, but he smiled at it. His friends used to roll their eyes when he tried to make jokes. So it was cool. "Uhhh. Right. Not the same worlds, which isn't at all suspicious as hell that this is either a delusion or the afterlife." He was 85% sure it was one of those things. "Google is a search engine on the internet, on our online network. You can use it to look up pretty much anything you want information on, such as where the fuck are we Google and how do we get out."

"Oh, Garden had an internal search tool for our localized online network. I guess we didn't bother naming it. Though we didn't have 'anything we want' available on it. Just access to whatever was on the network. Though maps of major metro areas would have been there I guess."

Because Nida wasn't capable of understanding the scale of Google. At all. Sure, his world had gotten to fiberoptic cables and digital service far earlier in their timeline than Desmond's world had, but that had been a practical thing, because of the fact that radio signals hadn't worked for 17 years. There had been a drive to achieve something, and they'd managed it.

"No, this is an online tool that's available to everyone in the world. There are some internal things you can do for groups and all, but anyone can Google anything. And they do." Desmond doesn't think this is necessarily a great thing, but he does think it's a useful tool. And okay, sometimes he liked to google random shit too. He does get slightly more animated when talking about something he knows, relaxing off his tension slightly.

"There's this thing they do called auto complete, it's kind of hilarious. So Google opens and you start typing in what you're looking for. So if you were like 'where the hell are we' it offers ideas like 'where the hell is the remote,' 'where the hell is Carmen Santiago,' 'where the hell is my life going.' All based on the most popular search options." This was a normal not crazy subject from his world, so that was nice. "You can find anything on there."

"That sounds a bit weird, having that sort of connection to people far away like that," Nida frowned. Optic cables didn't really connect a network of things where he was. It was primarily phones and television.

His world was isolated in ways that really didn't strike Nida as weird.

"There is a kind of disconnect, sometimes. When you can get everything on the internet, and talk to everyone on the internet, and date on the internet, yadda yadda, there's not a whole lot of actual people-ing going on." Desmond loved computers and the internet, and he thought it was seductive, constantly having everyone at an arm's length but still getting interaction. "I love computers, I'm a hacker, sort of." Not the best one; he thought he was doing pretty damn well at Abstergo but it was a tick. "But yeah, there's downfalls too. Like any tech."

This was already more that he'd spoken with a stranger in a long while, and ... so far not that bad. "I guess we don't have phones either, these pass as some version of text/voice, right?" He tapped his wrist band.

“We don’t have anything like this internet you are talking about,” Nida shrugged. “At least where I am from. Radio signal interference.”

Where else could the internet possibly be? Strange how he didn’t know. But dating online?

“How do you dare someone online?”

How do you even date someone.

"I guess it depends on how you go about it. You can sign up for these websites and answer some questions about yourself and who you want to meet, and they match you through an algorithm of sorts. You talk online for awhile and decide to meet up in person for a date." Desmond shrugged. "Or you meet people there to hook up and don't bother with dating." He may have tried both at one point or another, to no real end.

"I worked at a bar so I saw people meeting up on dates for the first time a lot. Break ups and marriage proposals too." Desmond smiled a little. These were easier things to talk about, and he was starting to relax more. "There's a kind of safety in dating on the internet, because you can get to know someone before you meet them. Instead of just taking a chance with a stranger you see across a bar."

None of that makes sense. Which means Nida is paying more attention to Desmond than he is to the road and trips. Tumbles. Rolls immediately up to his feet with a spring and ease that says there is some serious training in the kid. Which he'd maybe been hiding. Whoops.

"Can you really get to know someone without seeing them? What if they lie?" Nida asked, clearly intrigued.

Desmond's startled that he trips and almost tries to reach out to catch him, but the kid managed a pretty good roll. It's noted, of course, and stowed away. "Bro, I know I'm fascinating, but don't break something." It was said in jest. He was kind of fascinating, but not in any of the ways that he was comfortable showing to a stranger.

"They do lie, a lot of the time. Mostly about their looks, which makes sense. You think maybe someone will like you enough for your personality that they'll let some things slide." Desmond was pretty easy going about that himself. He got why people did things sometimes. "Sometimes the anonymity is freeing though. It's possible you might never meet this person, so you could say things to them you wouldn't normally." He snapped his fingers. "Oh and there's a lot of cheating."

"Yeah, I get that," Nida said. The anonymity, not the cheating. Can't cheat if you've never been in a relationship. But now he's interested.

"Seriously, don't things on the net tend to last? That's literally asking for trouble."

And look, they're almost at the bridge and before that the large structure of the boathouse. Soon Desmond will be free of prying young Nida.

"It is. It's now a part of a lot of divorce proceedings, I guess. I had a few drunken bar conversations about this. From people who were cheated on or did the cheating or was the other person in the cheating." Desmond smiles wryly. "That's being a bartender for you. People talk and talk." As someone who never had much of a normal life, he found it was great to listen and learn more about it. It was shallow and foolish, yeah, but sort of nice, if that was the worst part about your life and not death and murder.

"If only this place had a bar. I make so many great cocktails, you have no idea."

"There is a bar in the inn, just... no alcohol to get there," Nida shrugged. As for talking to bartenders, well, Nida had never been in a bar so he didn't really have an opinion there.

What a thought, people whose lives were ruined by the whole 'internet' thing. Subtly was an art that seemed to have been lost in Desmond's world. Or, perhaps, had never been there. Then again, it wasn't as present in his own, so he accepted it as a sad fact of life.

"Alright, well, there's the boathouse up there. What say we go explore?"

Desmond glanced at him and was surprised that ... yeah he actually wanted to go. "Alright. Let's go."

i'm done being a pawn

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May be able to tie this off.

Perfect!