[text, anonymous]

[jurisimpudent]

One's memories of home begin to fade. One remembers certain things: the sound of the ocean, and the nighttime city, and a sky that isn't formed from sheet metal. One remembers, perhaps, the path one took to get home. One might remember the tune of one's favorite song. But the finer details slip away.

You know this place far better. The ship may be a mystery; it may shift without logic or reason; yet by this point is easier to grasp than our homes. We know the number of paces to get to side of the room to the other. We know the feeling of waking up from the Jump. We can't even hear the engines any longer because we know the sound too well. We can't remember the faces of our parents or our siblings, but we can summon the taste of those protein packs without any effort.

Is that why we continue on? Do we want to get back there? Do we want to see the sky again, walk the rooms of the homes we chose instead of the home we were forced to? Some might say yes, but there will be no real pleasure to it; when we wake up, if we wake up, it will be like any other day. Do we want to return to the good works we left behind? That's a fallacy, though, because there's evidence enough that everything continued on without us, uninterrupted. Time either froze, or time never missed us at all. Things progress as though we were there.

When I go back, I will turn into someone despicable. I've learned that from others. I'll forget everything I learned here, and I will bloody my hands. I will become a wretched man. And as soon as I arrive there, as soon as we're freed, that's where my life will begin again.

I've spent a long time trying to determine what unites us all. Perhaps it's a single, defining character trait: we're all brought here because we are irrational survivors. Because in spite of the fact that there is nothing for us here save dreary suffering, and in spite of the fact that whether we return home or not all things will be the same, we continue on. Against reason, against logic, we continue to struggle - for the sake of the memories slipping away from us, or for the sake of some absurd misplaced sense of duty, or for the sake of simple habit.

So. Why do you keep on?

Comments

[jurisimpudent]

What benefit do they derive from it?

[dopples]

From keeping me alive?

...I guess I don't know. Is love for me not enough? Does there have to be benefit in it too?

[jurisimpudent]

No. What benefit do they derive from you continuing? When they are not here to be with you?

[dopples]

Oh. Well, none, in that case. But just knowing how much it would hurt them if they knew I had given up is enough to keep me from doing it.

My parents were here up until a couple jumps ago, and my boyfriend is -- or maybe was -- here too. All I have to do is remember the way they held onto me when I came back from the bridge and I know that I can't give up. Alaric and Jenna and Damon wouldn't want me to.

[jurisimpudent]

[The response takes a long time before it arrives. Finally:]

And that's enough?

[dopples]

It has to be.

[jurisimpudent]

Or what?

[dopples]

Or I do increasingly reckless things in the hopes that one of them might kill me. I've been down that road before, I know how it goes. I go looking for my own death and it finds the ones I love instead. Living doesn't seem so hard when the alternative is losing more family.

[jurisimpudent]

That's illogical.

[dopples]

You say that like anything about this ship, or the people on it, or life in general, is logical. There's no rhyme or reason to the way things happen in the world, they just... are.

[jurisimpudent]

And that is utter nonsense. Of course there's logic in the way things happen. Saying there isn't is common, foolish defeatism.

[dopples]

You can find logic in the way this ship works? Clearly you're more intelligent than me.

[jurisimpudent]

It's not as though its intentions aren't clear. It operates always along the most sadistic lines.