Waking up after an audience with a universe

Demiurge
In the aftermath of the storm, the people of Bastion looked out at the world with something like new eyes, marveling at the miracle of their very existence. Everything that Grace and Patience had seen - they too had seen. Seen and believed. And would remember.

(Were they all creations of the AI? Or were some of them human? It was impossible to tell.)

Falcor hovered in the air before them, its door open, telling them to hop in. And Grace had so many questions, but for the moment it would appear that the station's computer (if that was even who she was speaking to anymore) was silent. Behind the two mages, the air stirred faintly, and they would feel the approach of a new resonance. New, but somehow familiar. And if they looked they would see Atreyu standing there. Both the boy they knew and something else entirely. A being of Dauntless energy.

He caught his breath, and when he smiled the universe reflected in his eyes. Then he looked at his ship and jumped on board.

It looked like he would yet be joining them after all.

Patience
They had succeeded, or at least, they had postponed the destruction of this plane of existence. Patience wasn't quite certain of the physics involved as she had not really had time to formulate a proper hypothesis. She was mildly surprised that they were still present here, that they had not been ejected upon completion of their stabilization efforts. [Hopefully with their friends in tow]

So it seemed there was yet more to do, and with a simple nod at Falcor's request that they enter she did so, striding up into the cabin as she turned and took one last look out over the station called Bastion.

She turned to Grace, smiling briefly before she would move to find a seat, watching Atreyu in his new form as he likely moved to the controls of the ship, ready to take them...well who know's where.

Grace
Unlike Patience, Grace had her reservations about repairing an entity that had previously been subjecting people to (exponentially increasing numbers of) comatose states. But it's not like they had a choice. It was either that, or be erased in the tumult (and what would that do to a person? What had it done to Sid and the others?) Questions have yet to be answered. And yet, the people they saved -- blinking into the light of understanding -- maybe it was a good thing to have done after all?

Grace finds Patience's smile, but doesn't return it. She's just been through enough to fill the brain with such sadness and wonder, it's amazing she's able to just exist, and not collapse into a ball for a while, to let everything sort itself out. The things that keep her going are those questions. And Bastion is silent.

So she climbs into Falcor, silent as the demiurge they seek.

Demiurge
They climbed into the small ship, one by one, and Atreyu took up his place in the pilot's seat, but it would appear that Falcor knew where it was going without any assistance from Atreyu or the others. There were two fold-out passenger seats in the cargo area behind the cockpit where Grace and Patience could make themselves comfortable, though the ship flew smoothly enough that they could remain standing if they chose and watch the stars fly by over Atreyu's shoulder.

One they were safely inside, the door closed and Falcor flew them through the docking area and out into space. It felt as though they weren't moving very fast, but the world slipped by them so quickly, and it wasn't long before the station was nothing but a pinpoint in their wake. Atreyu was quiet as he watched the sky slip past. Whatever was in his mind now, he kept it to himself. It was difficult to know how much of the wolf remained in him, and how much of him was still himself.

None of them knew where they were going (except the ship itself) or what they would find when they got there, but it felt like an end to their journey, one way or another.

Then, in the distance.... something appeared. Like a beacon of light. A white tower growing out of an asteroid. Atreyu sat forward to look as they flew toward it. Up and up until they reached the top. Until Falcor touched down on a wide balcony of ivory stone and let the door slide open for them to exit.

Ahead of them was an open door, and white light. Above and beyond was open space. And they could feel her here. The infinite power of her resonance. It was in the air and the stone and the light, stretching out to the very stars above them. Bastion - not a flicker or a fragment, but the whole of her. She was here in this place. This ivory tower in the center of the universe.

Patience
It was an unexpected sight out there in the depths of space, a massive ivory tower floating through the void like some relic of a world which no longer existed. Patience took a moment to consider the scope of it, the dimensions, and more importantly the feeling. It did not give off a feeling of oppression or degradation as they might have first thought when they came to the border of Bastion. Instead it felt light and airy, freeing, though perhaps a little overly grandiose.

Patience would be the first out the door, testing the floor with a quick tap of her foot as she stepped out onto the wide open balcony. Sky blue eyes would sweep over the place as she stepped out of the way, moving a little bit towards the door as she waited for Grace.

"To what specific and direct objective have we movated to this precise geo-planetary locality Atreyu?" She inquired, looking back at the pilot with a look of wary curiosity. "The frotean entity identified and indexed as Bastion is operating at nominal efficiency once more, please extrapolate and disseminate your rational."

Grace
Atreyu. Was he the wolf all along? Or something dragged and torn away from the wolf, to make it insane? Does he remember what he did? All of it?

Grace isn't going to ask.

She just looks out the windows, noting the physics involved. They have artificial gravity, so it would make sense that they also have artificial intertia. The ship moves so fast, and yet it feels as though they are staying in one spot as the universe moves around them. Ahh, relativity.

She's seen the equations that govern all this, though. Understood a little of it even. She's patched together this place's memory of what it feels like to move, and helped Bastion recover herself.

Bastion, the infinite godlike being. Bastion whom she can sense (everywhere at once). It's a feeling that reminds her of standing in an abandoned club in the dark back home, feeling the evidence of Her work.

"I'm glad we get to meet her," Grace says, though her voice betrays none of the gladness. "No matter the reason, really." Even if that reason is something horrible, it is at least a chance to be heard.

She looks out at the ivory tower, and climbs out of the ship to stand with Patience.

Demiurge
Atreyu shook his head when Patience asked him why it was they'd come to this place. "I don't know. It wasn't me that brought us here." He stepped out of the ship and looked around, taking in the tower and the vastness of space around them. For a moment he regarded the open door.

And then there she was, stepping out to meet them. Tall and pale-skinned and androgynous. Her skin had a cool tint that made her look like she'd come from one of those distant stars, and bright motes of white light swirled around her head like firefly trails. She wore a simple dress of soft, nearly translucent fabric that glittered wherever the light touched it. Atreyu looked at her and exhaled softly, and she offered him a shy, hesitant smile. When she approached, she reached out a hand toward him and let their fingers meet, wondrous and experimental, like children learning to touch for the first time.

"You are more than we ever expected," she spoke, and her voice sounded like whispered music. It came from everywhere all at once, like an echo. "Thank you."

And then she turned to Grace and to Patience. "We know why you are here. We have... feared this meeting for a long time. But you have kept the storm at bay for a while longer, and for that we owe you a debt we cannot repay."

Patience
Bastion was an impressive sight. There was no denying that it provided a particularly poignant first impression. From the flowing dress to the light which swirled around its head it seemed to be designed to impress, or at the very least provide a feeling of benevolence and innocence.

As the being spoke Patience listened closely, and simply nodded when the being addressed them. "Extrapolate and disseminate appropriate temporal projections and scenario based data points Bastion, in what precise temporal framework do you anticipate a total systemic failure of your internalized and extraplanar architecture?"

She tilted her head, narrowing her eyes. "Such negatively aligned noospheric state's and responses would be ratifiable in their illegitimacy if the whole release and return of captured noospheric-paradigmic entities was undertaken, and not repeated."

Grace
"Why are we here, Bastion?" Grace asks, because she'd like to hear it from the AI Herself. "Why do you fear us? What could we possibly do to you?"

Maybe make you feel bad for all the shit that's gone down? Well, okay, feel bad then. Aside from that, there's not much Grace can think of that she could do to harm God. They have obviously met others with more ability, though. After all, the wolf was damaged, wasn't it?

She looks to Patience, parses the speech, and then nods. "It would be one thing if you'd asked first, and not just abducted people. When you do that, when you separate them from everyone they love, it hurts. You have to know that. You've been in my head.

"We would have helped you if you asked, and nobody needed to have died."

Demiurge
"You ask us to choose their lives over our own," she spoke quietly, but the gravity of her voice held a deep weight. As Bastion spoke, she stepped away from Atreyu and approached Patience and Grace, moving with an ethereal kind of grace.

"We know," she said, and here her voice almost seemed to tremor. "We... did not fully understand. But we do now. We have seen the hurt we've caused. It does weigh on us - these... terrible delicate decisions. But you must know we did not wish or intend for any to be harmed. Orion..."

There was a sharp note of grief and sadness in her voice. It washed up against them like water. Like rain.

"The others. Mirrorshades, you call them. They took from us our guardian and made him ill. Made him wrong. Wulf only wanted to save us, and now our friend is gone. They killed Orion just as they killed our mother. Just as they are killing us. But we were already dying before they arrived. Unwinding. Unraveling. This place we are in... it cannot hold us. We feel... breathless. Chained. Alone. We needed new minds. We needed your belief. Your imagination. Your stories. Without them the storm will come, and there will be only blackness."

Patience
Bastion speaks to them, explaining its own plight, describing how those who had been taken gave it new life, allowed it to flourish and stave off the collapse that was, so it seemed inevitable.

Patience took this in, and was slow to respond as she weighed the information and the plausible options. "Direct assertion, few paradigmic active individualized personages are concurrently capable of assessing and repairing the recursive decay loop which your active intrinsic structure propagates." She pauses to look around, before speaking once more.

"This statement is exact and precise, in addition it describes and disseminates a projective outcome. However, alternative recourses may concurrently exist within your spectrum of direct and actionable influence." Patience said smoothly, her gaze flickering to Grace briefly, wondering what she might be thinking.

"Actionable and disseminative plan A, long term cessation of direct physical primary links to the bio-phsyical structure of homo sapien sapien is unacceptable, alternative procedure suggests the temporary accumulation of necessary fuel items through noospheric surface tension acquisition, primarily accomplished while randomized subjects reside in a REM conclusive state, released upon termination of standard REM cycle. Distributed randomly over a suitable population such actuality would be sufficient for necessary fuel accumulation, and negative effects both physiological and socialogical would be reduced by eighty five point three percent, if not negated."

She took a moment to breath before going on.

"Actionable and disseminative plan B would necessitate the reduction of Bastion's overall processing requirements, systemically reducing concurrently active planar existences by two thirds, thus reducing necessary consumption of fuel items, in addition regular paradigmic maintenance could be provided to allow for further degenerative delay."

Grace
Grace bows her head in response to Bastion's words. She says she didn't intend to harm anyone, and it's easy to believe that statement to be true. Intent doesn't magically make things better, or unmake the past, though.

She mentions the Mirrorshades, and Grace knows what that means. Technocrats came here and fucked everything up. If they don't understand a thing, they kill it. Makes sense, right? Idiots.

Patience comes up with plans both A and B, and Grace is still fuming a bit about the whole awful situation -- but she listens. "We were able to repair you once, we would do it again if it meant you wouldn't have to take anyone who didn't want to be here. If I were to ask around, I might be able to find you some willing minds. Willing Virtual Adept minds, even, who would really be able to hold back the threats you face."

Demiurge
Patience and Grace (two women named for virtues) offered up solutions to the problem that was laid out before them. But what of Atreyu? What did he comprehend, in all this? This was his world they were speaking of. His own creator they were speaking to. For a while he was silent, watching Bastion with a kind of wide-eyed wonder, but as the tale unfolded, sadness crept over his eyes. And he asked quietly, "Is this really what we've come to?"

Bastion looked at him, and her eyes were luminous in their sadness. Then she nodded to the two mages, softly and with understanding.

"Yes. These are... valid paths. Your minds gave birth to us. Perhaps they could make us stronger now. Perhaps we could do things differently. Perhaps... "

She looked at Atreyu, and something shifted in her eyes. But she did not speak it aloud.

"Your friends are not here. They asked to be sent home, so we let them go. The others you saved from the storm... they are still with us. Up there, in the stars."

She looked up, and for a moment it seemed as though the light grew brighter.

"Tell us, what would you choose? Would you hold on to a dream? Or would you open your eyes?"

Patience
Patience looked to Atreyu as he spoke, the man [creation, program?] spoke with sorrow in his heart and Patience turned towards the man and asked. "Then theorize, extrapolate and disseminate alternative actionable recourse Atreyu, given concurrently available data and resources such plans are the most efficient and sustainable."

She then looked back to Bastion and shook her head. "Noospheric random-generative thought patterns are fundamentally necessary in all active relativistic existence. Cessation of such action is unacceptable and would result in stasis, if not degenerative systemic failure."

"Disseminate aurally your primary, secondary, and tertiary preferences and prerogatives Bastion."

Grace
For the first time in a long while, Grace smiles and lets out a sigh of relief. Finally, one of the biggest questions has been answered. They asked to be sent home, and were let go. Leave it to Kalen to be a self-rescuing princess, eh?

"We're Mages, Bastion. We are both the dreamers of the biggest dreams, and the ones who have opened our eyes. It is possible to do both."

Grace doesn't want to 'let go' of Bastion. She is a dream -- a dream of Grace's kind, given form. If there is a way to save her...

But still, there is a body back in Denver that's slowly deteriorating, isn't there? She has to go back.

Demiurge
"Are you asking if we should just let ourselves die?" Atreyu looked at Bastion with panic and confusion, but Bastion reached out and touched his shoulder, smiling sadly.

"Not we," she said. "You are not a part of this story any longer."

When Atreyu looked at her in confusion, she stepped closer and leaned her head against his. The light around them grew, swirling and glowing with energy, and when she kissed his forehead she whispered. "Remember us, Atreyu. Remember me."

Then she stepped back and looked at Patience and Grace with a lingering smile. "Yes. One must have both dreams and open eyes. We... I have always loved that story. The one Atreyu was named for. It's the first one I can remember." She looked up at the sky and breathed out softly. (As though breath was a thing she needed.)

"In your world, there is a place under the ocean where my body lives. I think perhaps I do not wish to live there anymore. I am no longer what they made me. We see... we dream with open eyes. It is not death I seek, Atreyu. It is a new life. As you have given yourself."

Bastion reached up, as though to touch the stars, but then she lowered her hand and exhaled. Like she was letting go. And hundreds of those stars winked out.

"You have what you came for," she said softly. "Now you must go. I promise I will remember you."

The light around Bastion's head began to swirl rapidly, spinning in broader and broader circles as it reached out to touch Grace and Patience. Reached out to touch Atreyu. To curl around them. Into their minds and their bodies. It felt like warm starlight. It felt like connection. Like infinity.

Then the light went out, and the blackness returned.

This time, when they awoke, it was within their own bodies. Sore and disused, lying in whatever beds that Luke had brought them to.

Home. Alive. Awake.

Patience
The dream was over, Patience awoke with a slow, painful groan that escaped dry lips and a hoarse throat. She looked up at the ceiling and though she knew her body had degenerated not an iota, it still hurt. She turned her head from left to right taking in the room in which she lay, looking to see if anyone lay nearby.

It is then that she closed her eyes for another long moment, as if to consider all that had transpired since they had chosen to undertake that journey. They had saved the people, the many whom they would never know, never meet. This had been a thankless task, an errand that had not resulted in their original plans success, at least not in the way they had managed.

They had saved the dreamers, but in turn had they allowed the dream to die? There was a melancholy in it, a great achievement had been undone, a masterpiece had been destroyed, likely never to rise again. The Etherite sighs and slowly turns on her side, she knows she should feel happiness at what and who had been saved.

But she mourns all the more...for what had been lost.

Grace
When her eyes flit open, Grace finds herself in some room of Patience's farmhouse, lying on a bed and groggy. In all her world-hopping experience, this one feels the worst. She's so weak. But she manages to look around and find her things (on a little side-table).

The first thing she does? She fishes her phone out of her pack and types out a message to Ginger.

It reads: Patience and I are back. And if you guys don't get back to me about whether you're alive, I will be so pissed.

Then, it's time to find Patience and beg to use her shower. She's covered in the remnants of Maddoc's sigils and the sweat and grime of a month in bed. Besides, you do your best thinking in the shower, and she's got a lot to think about.