010; (VIDEO) forward-dated to late on the 25th

[andblockbuster]

 [What you are seeing is Topher. Topher looks a little like hell. Someone may or may not have been avoiding dealing with one of his empathy links for SCIENCE (the first one worked out fine- that's how he knows enough to figure this out, but the second one...) ... Also, it's possible he's been occupied running scans and trying to figure out if he's wrong, which... he's still not convinced he's not.]

I've been working.... [He pauses, plants a palm on his forehead, and sucks in a breath.] I've been working on a theory. It's not entirely sound yet, but I was trying to run through every logical possibility before entertaining the notion that it might actually be... that, and... no dice. None. And it was bad enough when it was just memories, but now- now. Oh, it's much worse. 

Whatever this is, it's on a synaptic level- whatever one person feels, the other person feels too. Observe. [He picks up something sharp and pricks himself, which makes him hiss in pain.] Now someone out there felt that. That means that we are doing some serious groupthink weirdness without the whole "all of us are Borg" BS- SO FAR. Who knows what it'll be in a few weeks. Or days. And what was the last thing 90% of us experienced that involved groupthink? Anyone?

[YEAH, TOPHER'S HAVING A BAD DAY. HOW ARE YOU?] I think we might be in trouble.

[He rubs his face.] And is anyone who was fully assimilated on Strela even still around? 'Cause that'd be a start to maybe possibly proving me wrong. Or right. But let's err on the side of blind optimism and assume my fancy medical degrees in neurology mean nothing and I'm just talking out of my... bottom area. Whatever.

[Maybe you should deal with your link first, Topher. MAYBE. There's science to do, okay.]

Comments

voice

[humanistic]

Eggs and milk. Right.

[All of that will be incredibly worrying in just a moment, but first things first--]

Did you seriously just get hungry from describing brain cake?

voice

[andblockbuster]

There are people who look at severed eyeballs and probably think "gee, I could go for a grape." It's not that unheard of.

...Maybe not specifically that example, but in general. Is that really the issue right now?

voice

[humanistic]

Yeah, and there's words for people like that.

[He says that mostly to himself, and all right, yes, willing to concede the point--]

But fine, all right, keep your brain cake. What would the point be, in making us all one big collective?

voice

[andblockbuster]

I don't know. There's some new government ordinance in this neck of the universe that says functioning individual consciousness is bad? Maybe someone wants us to run this ship without all of our piddly little baggage making us not play ball. Anything.

voice

[humanistic]

Anything. Yeah. So you're just-- trying to freak everyone out.

voice

[andblockbuster]

No. I'm proposing a valid theory so we can approach this reasonably, which is more than anyone else is doing. [HE IS A SERIOUS SCIENTIST.]

voice

[humanistic]

One point for science, then.

So in your theory, is it someone that's doing it to us, or is it-- [All-encompassing handwaving here, even if you can't see it.] --the ship.

voice

[andblockbuster]

Who put the tattoos on us when we showed up here? Who's responsible for the nanites? We just don't know. It could be the ship, it could be whoever is running the ship. Hard to say.