metacognition | pc catchall | homophonic

[ happy memshare week! fei du's just out exploring the new locations this week, impeccably dressed, and... holding a tiny baby duckling that's blue? anyway dont worry about that

out of nowhere a pig noise just RUNS BY at top speed right when he sees netzach! fucking pig noise.

and one second later, netzach is treated to a memory. ]

[ after zhou huaixin is stabbed, repeatedly, in front of you, after you speak with his brother, after you call luo wenzhou and he picks you up, after the entire debacle with him in your house, you finally, finally, get a moment to yourself and your thoughts.

and that's the thing about it - they are your thoughts. they've been drilled into you by the malicious and purposeful actions of your father, who showed his love to you by making sure you were his protege. countless lessons were taught in the basement of the home where your family spent the most of their time. countless images as you sat at a tiny, rosewood desk, and watched your father beat your mother. countless words, as fei chengyu placed a hamster as small as your palm in your tiny, tiny hand, and talked to you about what life and death were really were. countless lessons as he placed a band of iron around your neck, punished your instincts of kindness with the tightening of a band that made you choke. countless lectures on how life and death were yours to control, how they didn't matter, how if people needed to die they just needed to die. how you were going to be his perfect heir, as he tucked your hair behind your ear and you trembled strapped into a chair. a monster well developed.

but the furniture in the basement of the home has been replaced. you still own the childhood house, passed on to you. it's exactly in the condition it was when the woman who lived here died, except for this room.

now that you own it, the basement has been remodeled. in the center of the room is a chair, surrounded by floor to ceiling LED screens. a small computer sits on a table by the chair, and a small refrigerator sits beside it. the room smells faintly, just barely, of blood.

you make your way down the stairs into the basement, and you shut the door behind you. you can still see the images in your head: huaixin, dying in front of you, how you felt for a moment this was just an animal, not a human being. the blood, blood from his stab wound, blood on his shirt, on the ground under his corpse, how sick and nauseous you felt seeing it - but how numb you felt, how you didn't know what the people around you were feeling, how you should feel, the way it felt like you were split in two parts, your father's voice -

"Every moment is death. The only thing that doesn't change is the sack of skin made of carbohydrates. If you feel an emotional connection to the sack of skin, isn't it like anthropomorphizing the pork on your plate? It's a sort of delusional disorder."

that numb emotional disconnect is still there, uncomfortable in your chest, almost too comfortable. you drop into the chair, calmly, and you reach for the leather belts, and tie them. around your arm. around your chest. around your waist. strapping yourself in. you take the electrodes and put them on your chest through your open shirt. you consider the emetics in the fridge, and then decide against it.

(Clinical research says there are several disadvantages to the use of drugs: the cerebral depressant effect may interfere with the patient's ability to form responses)

you reach over your head for the headphones on the edge of the chair, mechanically, and you put them over your head. take a deep breath in the disconnect and lack of emotion. feel the lack of care. feel it pushing at the edges of your definition of self. your hands are shaking again.

you type something one handed onto the little computer and hit a button. the sound of electricity buzzes through the chair around you, and you loll your head to look at the screen, eyes open. you hit play.

the video screens flare to life as the music plays over your headphones - a hysterical scream breaks through the cutting of the music, and the screens flash on in front of you. it's a direct broadcast of a murder, the victim screaming like a dying farm animal as the man killing them stabs into them with a knife - you raise me up so i can stand on mountains -

the minute it appears, you push a button - violently, electricity pulses through your body, sends you jolting and shuddering. again. again, as the video continues - people being beheaded, executed by firing squad - every time you see the image, you electrocute yourself - it hurts, it hurts it hurts - you hate pain and pain is watching other people suffer, pain is knowing that other people hurt, people's lives shouldn't be taken violently and cruelly you won't be a monster, you will do this over and over to yourself until you can't anymore, you will throw up the contents of your stomach at the sight of blood because you won't be what fei chengyu wanted you to be, you won't

( The use of the apparatus follows classical conditioning technique. The stimulus to which aversion is to be produced is presented, and then a shock is administrated. This procedure is repeated throughout the treatment session of 20 to 30 minutes, which can be held up to six times a day. The strength of the shock should be adjusted so that it is as painful as the patient can bear. )

[ when the memory ends, fei du takes a sharp, violent breath, and holds very still. ]

[-it makes him feel sick, too, long before the end of it, unsettled at the memory of the way he was treated. of the things said, of thinking of other living beings that way and trying to pass it on; every moment is death, he hears, and it makes him recoil. it's no way to think of living. it's no way to live.

then there are the images, and while they keep him feeling ill and uncomfortable, he kind of hates that he can't be sick at the sight. that he's seen things like this happen so often he's... not desensitized, but he can handle them, by necessity. it hurts, but he can. it makes him think of stained facility walls, but he can. it's so, so senseless--

but it has a purpose in this, doesn't it. in the rejection of it all. in the insistence that yes, it's awful, it's painful (pain should be acknowledged as pain, and nothing else.)

he's just as still, at first, breathing a little shakily.]

...fuck, man.

[ ...

it's not the first time he's seen this memory, but it's hard to watch it, over and over. (but isn't that what he always does? he watches it. over and over and over.)

his hands flex uselessly at his sides - a spark, jittering over the tops of his knuckles - before he shakes his head. he feels strange. uncomfortable. seen, for someone who's so good at lying. someone who has done everything in his power to protect his soft, squishy core. ]

... Not much else to say, I'm afraid.

...I know I don't have to say he's all wrong. You wouldn't go that far if you didn't know it was, but I can't help but be mad about hearing it anyway.

[he shakes his head, reaching up to run his fingers through his bangs, still sort of calming after that.]

Every moment should be life. I can't wrap my head around thinking about it in that kind of way.

[ hearing the sentence repeated makes fei du uncomfortable, but it doesn't really show short of tensing a bit. he folds his hands back into his pockets, instead, and gives a little shake of his head. ]

I told you before. Sometimes humans aren't human at all.

It's an ugly side of humanity, but we wouldn't be capable of it if it weren't human at all.

[even if he considers himself to not be human-- that much, he thinks is probably true.]

...I think saying it's just inhuman isn't acknowledging that it's something we decide not to be.

Netzach. I am aware of that.

[ considering

the whole shocking thing. now that discomfort shows further, only for a second, before his expression closes off entirely. ]

My father is a completely, utterly, human being who made plenty of decisions and conscious choices.

I know. I guess-- [whatever he's going to say, he decides not to, with a little shake of his head.] That's probably why Language or Literature weren't assigned to me.

[he's not always made for talking about things like that, or necessarily for thinking before he says them-- it all still sits uncomfortably with him, images lingering.]

...sorry, man.

It's fine.

[ he waves his hand, off to the side. it's a topic that he's not comfortable with at all, and talking about the philosophy of it all rankles him when his tender underbelly's just been blatantly exposed. it's a lot different when he's able to be disconnected from it. he can talk philosophy all day when its not staring him in the face. ]

We've just already talked about this, is all. What were you going to say?

Nothing. I didn't really know how to put it, that's all.

[he's opted not to try to word what he's thinking, in case, because he knows when he probably shouldn't, or to ask if it's actually the same thing. this is also why philosophy is not his floor-- but he gets the sense that it touches nerves for them both in very different ways.

pigs apparently sense impending awkward silence on his end, though, because it's averted by something of netzach's own.

the first thing he sees is this scene. the lowest point in netzach's life, he thinks, out of all those cycles-- the one where he gave up completely. one of the times he did? he isn't sure. everything blurs, in thousands of years of loops.

but this is the time where something manifested after that conversation, twisted his metal form into something reflecting his awful emotional state. there are warnings going off that he barely hears- WARNING: manifestation of qlipha detected due to sephirah meltdown. core suppression is required for continued functionality, manager.

he doesn't care about this, or about the sudden shared recollection of his old self. why should he? why does it matter? what's the point of trying to save anyone's life here in this hell, just to watch them die the next day? he can't take it anymore, seeing nothing but suffering and death. it's hopeless. he's hopeless.

he lets himself drift into unconsciousness, and he hopes he doesn't wake up again.

but he does. netzach doesn't remember what happened, while he was asleep; he only knows he's awake again, standing in the same place once more. standing with the exact person who put him into his own personal hell in the first place. there truly is no escape, is there...?

but maybe he doesn't need one, anymore. if he could be saved, then maybe this time, the manager will finally succeed.]

pc catchall | homophonic | netzach

w4 monday

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