STEP FIVE
Leon meets Nort and his devotees at the church with the contents of the skin’s Abstract imprint. He devolops an imperfect personality to use to infiltrate ImpCorp, based on the skin’a Abstract experiences. With renewed confidence in his control in The Abstract, he returns to the memory of his mother. He pushes to connect with his mother’s conscious, but the Jade Rhino appears. He wililingly abandons The Real: dismissing Suunto, the team and Impcorp, to be cosumed.
Sequence One
Nort will only dive with Leon, accompanied by his acolytes. Leon is fearful of the acolytes being involved in a deeply personal experience, and of the Jade Rhino returning. Nort explains the acolytes will secure their tether to The Real and enable them to work quickly and undetected. Leon must compile his skin and remain undetected by The Jade Rhino.
CDQ -
Will Leon be able to build a skin and remain undetected by The Jade Rhino?
Sequence Two
Leon, Nort and the acolytes dive deep, using the memory of his mother as an entry point. The chaos behind The Abstract, and a desire to work on the memory of his mother tempts him, but he knows he needs to create a skin. He delves into the skin’s Abstract Imprint, finding an unadventurous man, beaten down by the regularity of his existence. After struggling to maintain his focus, Leon finds the moment that defines the skin’s journey. An incomplete but workable skin takes form. It is far below his usual standards, and Leon hopes it will be enough.
Sequence Three
Leon convinces Nort to dwell awhile on his mother’s memory. Leon uses the broken tendrils to reach for other consciousnesses and deepen the memory. Nort warns him he is reaching too far, the acolytes are struggling and he needs to return to Suunto with the skin. Leon knows he should, but he senses a greater conscious, full of memory and reaches deeply for it. The Jade Rhino appears. He is terrified and reaches back to The Real, but he has lost his tether. He can see Nort, risking his own tether, stretched to breaking point in order to reach him, but he turns away. The Jade Rhino absorbs Leon’s memory of his mother. Lost, Leon reaches out, embracing the salvation it offers.
CDQ Answer
No. Leon is able to make a skin, but the Jade Rhino finds him, absorbs his mother’s memory and takes him.
Character Arc
Leon moves from nervous, slightly fearful, but also intrigued — to — terrified, experiencing a sense of inevitability, and hope for salvation and peace.
Moral Dilemma
The increasing his risk of losing his connection to The Real, the team and the job, and being taken by The Jade Rhino, vs following the temptation to dive deeper and finding out more about the memory of his mother and childhood.
Ms. Penumbra Sequence One
Ms Penumbra is exhausted and struggles to download her memories from an organic drive implanted in her brain to a machine. She is forced to shed an aspect of her past - a teenage relationship - that corrupts the present data. An Executive contact repeatedly calls. She senses his urgency, but she cannot take it. The machine sedates her and she slips into a semi-conscious state. She floats in memories that sustain her: Emmet, a rainforest, and a longing to be loved again.
CDQ
Will Ms. Penumbra find out why her Executive member needs to make contact so urgently?
Ms. Penumbra Sequence Two
Ms. Penumbra wakes, her memory cached and accessible. Ironically, Variel’s enhancements have worked. Was she too hasty in killing him? She calls her contact with her private mind pocket. The desperate contact negotiates a release from her blackmail before telling her the Executive plan to copy Ms. Penumbra’s mind and data vault when they transition her. Ms. Pemumbra is impressed by the ruthless audacity of the Executive’s decision. She knows that if they get access to her mind and secrets, they will permanently terminate her. She must find a way to prevent them scanning her as she transitions.
CDQ Answer
Yes, but she now realises that The Executive are prepared to deal with her in the way she would deal with them: ruthlessly, with little morality. The stakes are much higher than she anticipated.
Character Arc
Ms. Penumbra moves from exhausted and struggling to concentrate — to — concerned by the Executive’s audacity and lack of morality to invade her mind and terrified by their preventing her entering The Abstract.
Moral Dilemma
The discarding of her memory of a teenage relationship, one that was important to her, in order to protect the memories of the present day. The releasing of a valuable contact, so close to the end of her plan, in exchange for her information.
Their scanning of her mind during the transition is something she must avoid. Does she have to rely on Leon and Nort to help her transition outside of The Abstract? Maybe Ms. Penumbra and Leon have to deep dive together outside of ImpCorp in order to access the door they have left open a crack?
CDQ Answer - Yes, Leon is able to establish a tether to The Real, with Nort’s help, but The Jade Rhino .
CA - Leon moves from excited and nervous — to — filled with both fear and rapture at the presence of The Jade Rhino.
Moral Dilemma:
- Abandoning the impossible ImpCorp mission and protecting Suunto by taking on a high-risk infiltration, with little preparation.
- following his desire to dive with Nort and protecting the fragile trust his team has shown in him.
- Whether to trust Nort to help him tether to The Real, when he worships The Jade Rhino.
- Abandoning The Real when the Jade Rhino appears - he does without much struggle…
SEQ
Return to the memory of his mother. He calls out to her. He gets a sense. The Jade Rhino appears. He gives himself, despite Nort trying to hold him back. Something yerns for it.
He glimpses and feels his mother - sensory like a child, not the one in the memory, before being ripped back to The Real.
He is bound by ImpCorp security and very confused.
Nort is surprised to meet Leon at his church. They chat of the Jade Rhino. Both senses something in the last dive. Nort is hesitant to dive, but Leon insists. Nort counters with needed the protection and support of the acolytes. They can watch and they can draw on them to do what they need to do quicker. Leon knows he needs to work quickly, so he agrees. The acolytes assemble, Leon uploads the skin’s Abstract Imprint and he dives. He feels a web-like connection to the acolytes and an unnatural power surge within him and the rush of The Abstract fills him. His link to The Real wavers and he exists between heartbeats. He can feel time slow and he draws on the acolytes to analyse the Abstract Imprint. He feels the pull of the chaos behind the order. He is distracted and struggles to remember why he is there. He summons the Abstract Imprint and examines it by clearing his own senses. It has always been an advantage to not have memories of his own. He can slip someone else inside his own consciousness and let them permeate through him. His mind, and his AI, does the rest. He sees him though his memories. He feels the imprint of his thoughts, memories and emotions, starting with the present day and following the threads of the reactions and emotions back to where he first experienced them. He invades his mind and feels a short pang of guilt as he explores the more personal memories. There are no lovers, no close physical friends, just memories of a family gone, work colleagues and some sort of belonging to an organisation that provides the regularity he craves, and a life of no surprises. Even his Abstract Imprint is filled with no risk moments. Solitude, peace and family memories. He senses enough of the man to realise he is an introvert and only has the urge to speak if required. It will make it easier when he is inside, as no-one will be looking to have a conversation with him, but it will make him harder to interpret and to learn his dialogue. He senses a moment where he felt the world was more than it is now. When he was younger, when the world was waking to the possibilities of The Abstract. He felt something there that awoke the possibilities in him. In Albany of all places. A violent storm crashing against the rugged coastline, sea spray flying twenty meters in the air. He felt something there. He was alive and aware of the endless power of The Real. It scared and fascinated him. He longed for it though. He had spent the rest of his life in the city, in the circle of a few blocks between work and home and The Abstract. He ignored The Real and dwelt on The Abstract. He did not want to acknowledge the nature that made him feel something primal, although it called to him in some way. If he answered it, he knew something would awaken in him. He was not ready for that to happen. Leon knew that this was his time to awaken him. He tries to find out more, but he cannot find anything about his inner workings. He concentrates on his mannerisms, pitch and tone and the look of him. He feeds back to his AI in his body, after searching for the connection for a while, and enables it to start calculating what he will need to do to his body to enable him to look like the skin. They are closely resembled, so it should not be too much to create a passing resemblance. He just needs to modify his voice, have a few phrases and practice his gestures. He knows he has not got enough, but it will have to be enough. He has an idea of his inner psyche. He just needs to work on the external mannerisms. That can be quickly refined the help of the AI. He hopes it is enough. But given he has no other options, it is the best he can do.
Nort motions for him them to go, but Leon wishes to search for his memories. Nort concedes and they delve into Leon’s only memories. He can sense it, slightly narrower than before, and he pushes the boundaries of what his memory is, only to find the edges that were once sprouting, reaching tendrils, severed. He shifts his focus to the memory and pushes at the boundaries of it. He summons The Abstract into it, and he sees the tendril reform and start to stretch out into The Abstract. Nort is astounded, and he can feel the acolytes reach with him. His heartbeat slows even more as he merges more with The Abstract. He pushes the scope of his memory and the world around it starts to appear, based on what The Abstract knows of the time and place. Leon can sense the consciousnesses of other people who must have seen the room at one point. Fragments of their experience flow into the room. There are so many of them. It astounds him. Boom. Another heatbeat. He brushes it aside. Even his heartbeat is reminding him of a body that is getting in the way of discovery. Nort walks the memory with him as it solidifies around him. Their senses start to fill with a new reality. Leon senses movement behind him, and he sees a little hand on the doorframe of a nearby room. And another. Leon’s attention is drawn to them, but he cannot sense who they are, or a consiousness connected to them. He then thinks of his mother. If she is in this memory, then she will may also have link to her conscious. He returns to her and she starts to move. She starts to flow with life and Leon hones his abilities into her. He can sense her thought, her emotion and the essence of her. Nort warns him not to go too far, but he delves into her conscious somehow, and gets a sense of her. He can feel the thread of her spreading far back through The Abstact, to a faraway place, beyond ImpCorp, beyond his presence, to another place, further, deeper than he has ever known. His memory starts to tinge green. He has a niggling sensation that he should return. He has lost his heartbeat, but dismisses it. He does not need a heartbeat when he can be part of this. He can sense something pulling at him and he tries to cast it loose, but it is insistant. He follows it back, much to his disgust, to find Nort and the acolytes, struggling in a storm of green light. He senses an almighty coming of power. He tries to make sense of it, and flashes of Suunto and the team flow though him. He was here for a skin, to get his memories, but he can not remember why he cares for them. They are of The Real. He can be in The Abstract. Nort is yelling and pointing to something. The image of his mother has a pinprick of green light, twisting and churning. Inside it, pulling at him and offering salvation, is the Jade Rhino. He reaches out for it. It is time to transcend. He casts Nort and the acolytes aside. She appears before him, the mighty body imposing. He fears and loves her. He praises her and opens his arms wide. She nuzzles him, like a welcome child, before ramming her horn into his stomach and lifting him high in the air. - think size of the rhino. It must be huge and imposing. How to get that bulk in what it is?
Leon convinces Nort to dwell awhile on his mother’s memory. Feeling the security and power of the acolytes, he pushes against the boundaries of his memory, until it starts to reach out through The Abstract and connecting to the memory of others. The room in his memory expands to represent reality, and Leon becomes aware of spaces beyond the room in his memory. The Abstract becomes more real, infused by the memories of all that have inhabited that space. He can feel them all. There have been so many, and there are others in the room behind him. He turns, to see a small hand disappearing in the doorway. He senses more conciousnesses in the next room. So many. Why are there so many in his mother’s house? He feels the connection of his mother. He turns to her and she turns to face him. She notices him, not as a child, but at the height he is as a man. She speaks to him - hello my little one - you aren’t so little now, are you? He can sense it is her. Beyond her, he can sense a lifetime of memory, but they are beyond him.
Ms. Penumbra Sequences Flow She returns to her apartment and has another smaller moment stuck with her memory, but this time she has a sense of the present, which is never the way. It is as if she is living both places at once. He says he misses her. He has not done that before. He should have died after The ImpVerse, not before. She compares the size of her memory from when she was first diagnosed and took a scan, to now. She has lost so much, but retained the ones that matter. She curses Variel and the Catholics. But how would they have known? It would have to be the confesional. If it was The Abstract, she would know about it. She plugs herself in to a machine and starts to sort through the memories of her day. She runs an algorythm and automatically isolates the memories that have no meaning, and dispels them. There are too many frivilous memories to purge. At this stage of the game, it is all about the end goal. There are so many memories, so many fragments, and so few connections left. She has gained three percent of her total capacity. Maybe Variel was telling the truth about trying to help her. He still betrayed her though. His stupid faith led them know about her. She curses at the Catholics - whomever they may be. It makes sense to her though. Did she really think they would just take what she is doing without fighting back? She wonders how getting rid of her would save them though. She is not ImpCorp. ImpCorp is so much bigger than her and there will be another to step into her role when she is gone. There is too much at stake for them not to have someone grubby. It will likely be her first in command that takes over. At least, in the Real. Being dead won’t stop her from being in control. There are too many balls in the air, and she has not figured out how to get Leon into the inner sanctum yet. She has to hope they have enough nouse to figure that one out themselves. She can get them to a port, but after that Leon will have to figure it out from there.
She gets a call from her contact in the Executive, but she cannot take it at the moment. She should have told her when to call back. It would be too soon after the Executive meeting. It is risky - she would be watched. Then again, she has been doing it for years, and she has not been caught, yet. She calls, slightly drunk.
Tags:
#Chasing-the-rhino/second-draft
#Chasing-the-rhino/second-draft/
Links:
TP3 S1 -Seqences
TP3 S2 - Sequences
TP3 S3 - Sequences
TP3 S4 - Sequences
TP3 S5 - Sequences
Chasing The Rhino Masterlist