# TP4 - S3 - Sequences
40 Writing/Chasing The Rhino/TP4
Step Four
Leon enters the inner chamber and is cut off from the outside world. He locates his mother’s stasis pod, but it is submerged on roation in the pool of biological fluid. He struggles to connect to the source. He is distracted momentarily by a sense of his childhood memories, but uses his connection to the Jade Rhino to return her to her body. Leon is pushed from his connection and returns to The Real. Her body is barely recognisable as human, and fused to her stasis pod. He realises he has made a terrible mistake. An alarm sounds.
Sequence One
Leon is cut off from the team. He examines the chamber and finds out his mother’s stasis pod is submerged in a vast vat of biological fluid that powers the connection to The Abstract. The biological fluid is the link to The Abstract and it pulls him closer. He knows that if he connects to the The Abstract here, he risks being sucked in again, but he knows this is his best chance of returning his mother to The Real, and likely the only way to communicate with the team.
CDQ -
Will Leon be able to return his mother to The Real?
Sequence Two
Leon, although careful, is sucked into the torrent of The Abstract. He feels the ImpVerse deeply, and the biological solution slowly absorbing the consicousness of the founders. Struggling to hold on, he uses his new strength to contact Nort and the acolytes to tether him. He senses his memories, but he ignores them. He locates the fragments of his mother in the fabric of the ImpVerse and uses the Jade Rhino to drag her fragments back to The Real. He has achieved the impossible.
Sequence Three
Leon returns to The Real, to find Ms. Penumbra at the console. She chastises him, but can’t believe he has somehow managed to do it. His mother’s body emerges from the vat, but it is barely recognisable as human and is fused to the stasis machine. She is in agony. Leon realises he has condemned his mother to The Real. He has to find a way to free her from The Real and return her to The ImpVerse.
CDQ Answer
Yes, Leon is able to return his mother to The Real, but he has condemned her to an agonising existence in The Real.
Character Arc
Leon enters the chamber realising he has exposed too much to Ms. Penumbra, but hopeful and driven to return his mother to The Real — to — horrified that his blind desire to return her has resulted in her being imprisoned in The Real, in a tortured body.
Moral Dilemma
Returning his mother to The Real, even though he senses it is not what she truly wants. It is his inner child that wants her back, not the rational adult in his mind. That working so closely with Ms. Penumbra means he is getting more indebted to her. He realises that by doing so, she will continue to exert her control over him and make the team more vulnerable to her influence.
Ms. Penubmra Sequence One
Ms. Penumbra reflects on what she has leaned of Leon’s desire to return his mother. She has to make her way to the chamber to prevent him from tinkering with The ImpVerse. She has planned too long for him to ruin everything. Raking calls and she denies the assassination and explosions outside ImpCorp are hers. She asserts it is the Catholics and that in a month, she may have the names of who is reponsible. Rakin instead tells to enjoy her morning instead. She knows at that moment, the transition team are on their way.
CDQ
Will Ms. Penumbra manage to evade the transition team and prevent Leon from returning his mother?
Ms. Penubmra Sequence Two
At the end of a call with Rakin, Ms. Penumbra escapes an armed transition team approaching her office. She realises her transition will be violent. From a hidden walkway she watches as several of her traps inflict significant pain during their search. Her aggrovation triggers her and she feels another episode approaching, and she stumbles through the hidden corridore towards an elevator, but she is overcome by the beauty of a rainforest memory - Emmet, a rock pool, birds, butterflies, and a snake baking on a rock in the sun. She drifts off.
Ms. Penubmra Sequence Three
An explosion tears her from her vision and she just makes it to the elevator. She manages to delay the AI trace of her for ten minutes. Suunto confirms they have a way to make contact with Leon in the chamber. She enters the chamber and discovers Leon plugged into The Abstract and a rat, watching her from the console. Leon starts to stir - he is returning to The Real. She realises she is too late. He has already, somehow, returned his mother to The Real. She hopes he has not ruined everything for her.
CDQ Answer
She manages to evade security, but does not arrive at the chamber in time to prevent Leon from returning his mother to The Real.
Character Arc
Ms. Penumbra moves from hopeful of buying more time in The Real with Rakin — to — hopeful then alarmed at Leon’s success at returning his mother to The Real, as it may have disrupted her plans to free Emmet.
Moral Dilemma
Disrupting Leon’s plans to free his mother from The ImpVerse, when essentially, she is trying to do the same thing, but with far more complexity. It is the realisation that her selfish goal is destroying his mother’s safe return. She is comfortable with that though. She has destroyed more than that in her pursuit of being reunited with Emmet.
two He senses himself fraying, so he contacts Nort’s consciousness in The Abstract, and uses the acolytes to secure his tether to The Real, and to his mother’s body. He finds the thread of his mother’s conscious, woven through The Abstract, but he cannot secure a link to her - he only exists either inside or outside. She is inbetween. He calls to The Jade Rhino, who puches through the fabric, dragging his mother’s consciousness with it. She tries to say something to him, but she is a garbled collection of memories as she funnels past him to her body. He is overjoyed, but senses a melancholy and longing in his mother’s conscious for The Abstract.
Created:
Tags: #template #sequence
Links: Chasing The Rhino Masterlist
Sequence Four
Ms. Penumbra tells him he cannot return his mother. Her consciousness is too far gone in The Abstract. He gets a sense of her lying to him, as he has the imprint of her mind on him. He can sense all manner of things.
She withraws from his mind, and she knows everything about him, but admits there actually is not much there she did not already know. She has watched him for quite a while, and she is relying on him to get her what she wants. He senses the truth of her words as she removes herself from his mind.
She tells him he should not try and return his mother. She is too removed from her body and is unlikely to be able to return to it successfully. Leon knows this, but thinks he will have to try anyway. He has to remove her from the fabric. It he can do that, he will be able to draw her down and at worse, transfer her to the ImpVerse, where she can exist in the bubble she created.
It goes wrong of course. He draws her into her body, but her body is wrecked. She is not totally removed from the fabric either, and he has to figure a way of relieving her pain, connecting to the machine and freeing her from the tether. She is essentially split between three places by the end.
Ms. Penumbra encourages him to try, but he is wary of her. She is not telling him something. She wants him to do the job first, but she also knows that he is unlikely to do that. She will assist him, but he needs to start work on the lock to get her what she wants. He is fine to start doing that.
He enters the sealed chamber, but is cut off from the outside world, including Ms. Penumbra. She tells him this before he enters. He leaves the team to figure out a way of maintaining contact, likely through the rats. Without that connection, he will not enable Jem to open the lock.
Ms. Penumbra arrives physically. She enters by having her mind scanned again. She overrides the machine with a command, after it tells her she is already in the room. It delays her slightly, but she enters anyway. It is reaching an endgame, and she has started to get reckless. She is on the run in her own building. She knows this is the end for her. She will be transitioned if this does not work. They both need this to work.
Leon examines the chamber and Ms. Penumbra helps him to identify that his mother is there, while she creates a way of linking Leon to his team outside the chamber. She works directly with Hamelin and the rats, which she finds delightful. She would love to talk to Hamelin after this all about his research - cross species communication. The application of the technology is fascinating to her - she could spy on anyone, using their own pets. Then she remembers she wont be in the The Real for much longer, and tells him she will likely have to conduct the next meeting in The Abstract.
Leon connects to the machine and touches something vast, but restrictive at the same time. He senses the bubble of the ImpVerse as the tiniest fraction of The Abstract. He sees how far he has gone before and it is nothing compared to what is there. It is a universe inside a conscious inside a universe. He reaches out further, but is tugged back by Nort. He reacts this time and returns to himself. He has to free his mother and get what Ms. Penubmra wants. He reaches out for them and sees them scattered amonst the fabric of The ImpVerse, and deposited amongst the ImpVerse itself, in neat but scattered packages. It will take him time to find them and absorb them. He can feel them reaching to be reconnected, but he has other things to do first. He returns his attention to his mother, but then remembers that he needs to connect Jem first. He just has to get her stared and he can do what he wants after that. He locates the lock and summons a link back to Suunto. His channel to her is far more powerful than it has been before and he gets a strong flash of her thoughts and environment. She feels where she is and senses The Real in his contact with her. He realises that the connection between The Real and The Abstract is closer than he ever thought. One is part of the other, which is why his mother’s trapped conscious, and the other founders, worked so well in maintaining the link. He has an impression of Ms. Penumbra’s focus on Suunto and he shares that with her. He is unsure why Suunto would be an impression on her mind at this point of the job. It makes him feel uneasy and he shares that with her. Suunto tells him he should concentrate on the job, and tone down his connection to her if he can. She is struggling to contain him. Leon tries to pull back, but there is little he can do. He is already treading so lightly on her. His attention returns to locating the lock. He has been given some cryptic advice by Ms. Penumbra, but she has not been able to locate it precisely herself. He knows where The ImpVerse first grew from and she knows it has to be around there. Leon esablishes the connection between the team and The ImpVerse, although he is relying heavily on Nort to hold his connection to his body. They are enduring with it and are amazed by it all. Leon can sense the creeping biological barrier that is slowly taking over The ImpVerse founders. He knows he is runnning out of time. It is accellerating as it absorbs more of the founders.
Ms. Penumbra withdraws from his mind and tells him is it unlikely he will be able to return his mother to The Real. Leon is determined to. Ms. Penumbra establishes a link for Leon to use to connect to the team. He uses Nort to assist with his tether and he ports into the ImpVerse. It is overwhelming, but he manages to maintain his connection. After a few difficulties, Leon finds a lock that separates The Abstract from The Real and The ImpVerse and calls Jem in to start work on opening it, supported by Fix.
MS. P Sequence One Ms. Penumbra reflects on what she now knows of Leon. His mother as a founder certainly is a surprise that she was not expecting. Variel had always asserted that he was someone who had a unique conscious, as if part of it was hardwired to The Abstract. She, of course, had ignored his suggestion. He was always flirting with the more mythical concepts. And Leon wants to bring her back? It was an impossible idea, but if she could extort that idea some more, she will no doubt be able to ask him to do anything. She has to get down there to him. The chamber, being as tightly bound as it is, is unlikely to enable her to contact him. If he tries to reconnect her to her body, who knows what it will do to her chances of freeing Emmet. She has studied the ImpVerse for so long, and has planned this so intricately, that she does not want Leon’s tinkering to ruin everything.
Rakin calls and tells her that a member of Executive has been assassinated and that there has been a series of explosions to the lower levels of the building. He asks if she had anything to do with it, and she denies it, but he does say he knows that if she was responsible, that she would not tell him anyway. She agrees, but reassures him she is not. She asks if he has considered that it may be the Catholics, but he says it is a stupid concept. She tells him that thousands of years of religion are at stake, so they are likely the ones responsible. It makes sense and she did warn him of it a few nights ago. He says there are no reports of that. She tells him she will forward through her intelligence. She also sent her findings and predicitons through to him yesterday. He should check with his secretary. She will need a while to gather some more, and hunt down the perpetrators. She may have a definitive answer for him in a month or so. He will, of course, need to halt the transition a while. He says he cannot halt anything. He does not have the power to. She tells him to stay safe. Who knows who will be next? But in good faith, she will investigate up until the time they come for her. She will start her enquiries immediately. He tells her not to worry. Just rest up. Maybe break into a few of those top shelf bottles she has been saving for a special occasion. Live a little. It is then that she knows they are coming for her immediately. She thanks him for his advice. She tells him she is going to get cleaned up and go home. The office is a dangerous place to be at the moment, it seems. She will make some enquiries on the way there by squeezing some contacts. She might find out something. She cuts off the call. She gathers some necessities, and enters into her ‘official diary’ that she is heading off home. She rarely enters anything and they are likely stupid enough to believe she will be where she says. She knows they must be coming for her immediately. She had calculated that it would be later in the day. Her ruse to delay them with assassinations and assaults appears to have failed. It is an unstoppable process. She has to trust that Suunto’s ruse will work. What she knows of the woman, she assumes it will.
Ms. Penumbra sequence two
returns to the sound of a small explosion. He hidden hallway is filled with dust, and she quickly returns to her senses. They must have heard her. She shakes the thoughts of the waterfall from her vision, but sees the snake. It follows her to the elevator. As the doors close on the elevator, there is a muffled flash and bullest ping hallway. The transition team is determined to transition her violently. It was most definitely not what she expected.
She ruminates on her tenuous position. If her security clearance is revoked, then she will not be able to make it into the chamber with Leon. She tries to contact him, but as expected, she cannot. She makes contact with her security asset, who tells her she does not have time at the moment. Ms. Penumbra asserts that for any notice involving her, it should be pushed back to the end of the cue. There are far more important things for the security guard to be doing at the moment. She says she knows the one she is talking about, and that she will postpone the implentation for as long as she is able. But she wont have long. She tells her an hour should be enough. She says she will maybe have another ten minutes. The AI system is mainly automated now. She can only manually put in a delay. She will be able to hide it a while, but not for long. Whatever she needs to do, she needs to do it quickly.
She contacts Suunto, and tells her the transition team is after her and that she has evaded them for now. She is making her way to the chamber, but she will need a solution as to how to have Leon contact the locksmiths. The room is sealed. Suunto tells them that there is already a solution in play. The rats are searching for a way in. If they can get in, they will be able to find a way to link up and get a connection through. Ms. Penumbra laughs. Those rats seem to have been her exposure and saviour more than once in the past few days.
She makes her way to the room. She knows that he AI does not circulate in the room. Nothing is allowed in the chamber. If she is in there, she will be as good as invisible. She conducts the mind scan, and the scanner opens the door, thinking she is leaving, instead of arriving. It will be handy in confusing the security logs, just in case anyone is looking.
She sees Leon, attached to the machine. A rat runs along the border of the vat and another sits on the console. She leans close and gives one a pat and smiles. She makes a note to ensure that she contact Hamelin when she is reunited with her secrets. She neesd to have his technology developed. If she could use the animals to ensure that she is still in control when she is in The ImpVerse, who knows what more she could learn and use. She catches herself in thought. What she has planned means she will not need to exert control anymore. She is giving all of that up for him. If it works, she will have everything she needs.