[but even so, the space between doesn't have much time to fill with casual communication that has nothing to do with memories at all, because it's the next morning when she texts him again.]
[(Very) late to bed, early to rise. Such is the life of Ardyn Izunia, and so naturally he's well awake at the hour in which Grell texts him in the morning.]
[how he does it, she can't understand. it's like some hidden talent.]
i was headed somewhere, in a city i can't place, feeling more exhausted than i ever have. and i was carrying a notebook, some kind of dossier with profiles in it. i've seen those kind of things before, but never one where all the dates were from the 19th century.
[that had been weird, when she woke up, but at the time, it had seemed perfectly natural. but fair is fair - he told her about magic, she can tell him about what vaguely strikes her as some research project of the dead.]
now i have fifteen more questions than i went to bed with. but i feel like i knew exactly where i was going.
[and now she's still tired. at least it's Sunday and she can text and not have to go anywhere today.]
[Less a hidden talent, and more of a bad habit that he never bothered to break. The body grows accustomed to dumb sleep hours when given no other choice. (Probably not the healthiest lifestyle choice, but not one he's ever had a reason yet to stop.)]
Then let's try and delve into more detail, and maybe we can narrow down fifteen questions to twelve. Or even ten.
The first obvious one is this: do you remember any of the names in the dossiers? Or faces you would recognize?
none. the faces weren't remarkable, the names nothing familiar. even the causes of death weren't outstanding in any way aside from being a usual variety.
[if there had been a note of murder or something that might have shed more light. but it had been so clinical that it was barely anything. heart failure, illness, a broken neck by accident. no remarks.]
it was only one set of pages i looked at. a glance, that's what it was.
Causes of death? Were all of these profiles medical records?
[Is it too bold for him to maybe assume that her current career path might be reflected in her memories, as well? Maybe, but still a reasonable question to ask.]
A long day at work, perhaps? Or not enough sleep? One or the other may be a reason for your perceived exhaustion.
[Exaggeration or otherwise, it gets the point across. Not the same sort of tired feeling from a normal, mundane day at work, at least.]
Then what of the dates? 19th century. Research? [The next part he debates typing, before ultimately sending it along with the rest.] Or maybe you were living /in/ it.
I healed people with magic, and you tell me that living in the 19th century is impossible?
[But he perhaps understands the finer point of what she's getting at.]
I've had this conversation in passing with someone else before. It was a superfluous notion at best, then. But recently, it's been brought up once more, and the thought has lingered in my mind since.
[He doesn't blame her for the pause. It's... an interesting theory to wrap one's head around.]
I'll be the first to say that it initially sounds like a bit of a stretch. But with everything that's been happening, it's something to consider.
Everyone I've spoken to, everything I've /read/ from the posts on Retrospec -- there's something easily overlooked, but noticeable enough if you pay close attention. Never have they been about someone other than oneself. Never strictly empirical. Even the ones about objects, they are always followed with, "It sounds crazy, but /I/ know it was real."
"I", always "I". All very personal, all very certain. Is it not odd how right they feel, even when they give us pause?
You're more than welcome to tell me I'm wrong, and to remove my tinfoil hat, of course. As with everything else, this can't be proven. But it's a thought. A lingering one.
let's entertain this for a moment, putting aside my inner skeptic.
[another pause now, but that's because Grell's moving from her phone to her laptop to type out what she thinks. there's more words than she cares to use her thumbs to write, and Ardyn shouldn't mind if she's going to get a bit wordy.]
it would be more likely to be a shared hysteria and confabulations if people remembered similar circumstances, piggybacking off each other. but have you heard of a single person who remembers the same moment as someone else? we're radically different, the things that i've heard. and there's, like you said, a subjective point of view involved, yet even when confronted with certain impossibilities, just as easily they become impossibly certain. i know i was wielding a chainsaw as if i was born to use such a weapon, i know i do not possess the level of strength to do so as freely as i was. you know you were healing people. you know that a simple touch cannot cure the sick.
the only things we know together are the changes in the world that confuse us all. the chocobos, the fruit. that does beg the question of if we should now consider horses to be part of a past life, but that's a philosophical question i'll have to take up at a later date, as to what defines a past life and can life be past if you're currently living it. that's semantics and points of view.
past lives. it's as likely as something in the water or some government intervention. at this point, is there much we can truly discredit for what's happening? at least that idea gives an explanation for the remembrances and how true they feel.
[He doesn't mind at all. "Wordy" describes both his life and himself very well. He'll not shirk away from a couple of paragraphs, else he never would have made it out of law school. He sticks with using his thumbs for now, though, and so Grell has to wait a minute or two before she gets a reply.]
In the end, no, there's nothing we can discredit, just as if there's nothing we can prove. As entertaining as it is to sit about and toss theories back and forth between each other, the sad reality is that nothing has changed. Speculation doesn't arm us with more answers, nor more tools to take action against whatever is conspiring against us. It's completely and utterly frustrating.
[Ardyn, who does like to have at least some semblance of control when it comes to various aspects of his life, perhaps allows this to bother him more than anything. It's the equivalent of feeling useless and stagnant, while a storm swirls around him and everyone else.]
But I digress. You're right in that it explains why there's a certain level of investment in these memories; at the same time, this theory may be one of the most disconcerting. It goes back to what we had spoken about before: If you remember something less-than-pleasant, what will you do? How will it change you? /Knowing/ that they were once "real" may be enough to tip the scales towards an existential crisis proper, as opposed to believing they're merely implanted.
[god, does she understand the frustration though. the most they can do right now is speculate, theorize, deal with the results. short of storming a building that might as well be haunted, what is there? waiting. waiting, patience wearing thin and constantly demanded. the most she can do is keep herself busy to offset it. sometimes that wrapped around to thinking.]
if you remember yourself being someone that you think you never could be, then what does that say? do you consider you there and you here two distinct entities? of course, that's an extreme scenario, but i'd rather start from the largest scale and work my way down. and if you've done something, does that make it real enough that you should consider that you've done it? that is, assuming that you consider then and now to be the same person.
questions i don't expect anyone to answer. merely consider.
Best to consider it now rather than later. Before the piling up of memories becomes too much to bear.
[Or rather, it's all they can do. Consider. Perhaps their perspective will change with time, but it's difficult to say.]
Do you think yourself a separate entity from the Grell that wields a chainsaw? Is it so easy to draw a line between the two, when you've quite literally felt everything your counterpart did? Elation, sorrow, pleasure, pain, all of it? In those brief moments of "experiencing" these recollections for the first time, do you feel one and the same with them?
Or do you feel like a trespasser, treading into territory in which you're not welcome?
in the moment, i feel as though that was me. everything is my own, and it's only when i wake that there's a distinction. that's why it's difficult to say.
what about you? when you remember, can you draw a line between yourself and what you're experiencing?
No. It's the same as you, then. There's no distinction at all, so much that you can even say that I've temporarily forgotten who I am, and believe my counterpart to be... myself.
Needless to say, I'm nothing short of relieved when the memory fades.
then that's even more confusing. it's not as though we'll automatically accept this strange incidents as things that happened in "our" lives. and if it's our lives at all, if we can't remember them.
i could dive into the purely philosophical off that point, actually, something about asking if no one remembers something, if it happened at all.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[but even so, the space between doesn't have much time to fill with casual communication that has nothing to do with memories at all, because it's the next morning when she texts him again.]
speak of the devil. i had one of those dreams.
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Another? Do share.
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i was headed somewhere, in a city i can't place, feeling more exhausted than i ever have. and i was carrying a notebook, some kind of dossier with profiles in it. i've seen those kind of things before, but never one where all the dates were from the 19th century.
[that had been weird, when she woke up, but at the time, it had seemed perfectly natural. but fair is fair - he told her about magic, she can tell him about what vaguely strikes her as some research project of the dead.]
now i have fifteen more questions than i went to bed with. but i feel like i knew exactly where i was going.
[and now she's still tired. at least it's Sunday and she can text and not have to go anywhere today.]
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Then let's try and delve into more detail, and maybe we can narrow down fifteen questions to twelve. Or even ten.
The first obvious one is this: do you remember any of the names in the dossiers? Or faces you would recognize?
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[if there had been a note of murder or something that might have shed more light. but it had been so clinical that it was barely anything. heart failure, illness, a broken neck by accident. no remarks.]
it was only one set of pages i looked at. a glance, that's what it was.
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[Is it too bold for him to maybe assume that her current career path might be reflected in her memories, as well? Maybe, but still a reasonable question to ask.]
A long day at work, perhaps? Or not enough sleep? One or the other may be a reason for your perceived exhaustion.
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[maybe she's exaggerating. but it feels appropriate.]
they weren't indepth enough to be true medical records. more like the basic information on people. like some kind of reference list.
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Then what of the dates? 19th century. Research? [The next part he debates typing, before ultimately sending it along with the rest.] Or maybe you were living /in/ it.
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[says the woman who'd been so quick to pull out the label of magic.]
i'd more easily buy that i was doing some sort of research than living there. that'd make me exceptionally old indeed.
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[But he perhaps understands the finer point of what she's getting at.]
I've had this conversation in passing with someone else before. It was a superfluous notion at best, then. But recently, it's been brought up once more, and the thought has lingered in my mind since.
[(Thanks, Prompto.)]
What if this was a you from a past life?
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a past life? could that really be an answer to this?
[there's no scientific basis for reincarnation. the same way there isn't for magic.]
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I'll be the first to say that it initially sounds like a bit of a stretch. But with everything that's been happening, it's something to consider.
Everyone I've spoken to, everything I've /read/ from the posts on Retrospec -- there's something easily overlooked, but noticeable enough if you pay close attention. Never have they been about someone other than oneself. Never strictly empirical. Even the ones about objects, they are always followed with, "It sounds crazy, but /I/ know it was real."
"I", always "I". All very personal, all very certain. Is it not odd how right they feel, even when they give us pause?
You're more than welcome to tell me I'm wrong, and to remove my tinfoil hat, of course. As with everything else, this can't be proven. But it's a thought. A lingering one.
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[another pause now, but that's because Grell's moving from her phone to her laptop to type out what she thinks. there's more words than she cares to use her thumbs to write, and Ardyn shouldn't mind if she's going to get a bit wordy.]
it would be more likely to be a shared hysteria and confabulations if people remembered similar circumstances, piggybacking off each other. but have you heard of a single person who remembers the same moment as someone else? we're radically different, the things that i've heard. and there's, like you said, a subjective point of view involved, yet even when confronted with certain impossibilities, just as easily they become impossibly certain. i know i was wielding a chainsaw as if i was born to use such a weapon, i know i do not possess the level of strength to do so as freely as i was. you know you were healing people. you know that a simple touch cannot cure the sick.
the only things we know together are the changes in the world that confuse us all. the chocobos, the fruit. that does beg the question of if we should now consider horses to be part of a past life, but that's a philosophical question i'll have to take up at a later date, as to what defines a past life and can life be past if you're currently living it. that's semantics and points of view.
past lives. it's as likely as something in the water or some government intervention. at this point, is there much we can truly discredit for what's happening? at least that idea gives an explanation for the remembrances and how true they feel.
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In the end, no, there's nothing we can discredit, just as if there's nothing we can prove. As entertaining as it is to sit about and toss theories back and forth between each other, the sad reality is that nothing has changed. Speculation doesn't arm us with more answers, nor more tools to take action against whatever is conspiring against us. It's completely and utterly frustrating.
[Ardyn, who does like to have at least some semblance of control when it comes to various aspects of his life, perhaps allows this to bother him more than anything. It's the equivalent of feeling useless and stagnant, while a storm swirls around him and everyone else.]
But I digress. You're right in that it explains why there's a certain level of investment in these memories; at the same time, this theory may be one of the most disconcerting. It goes back to what we had spoken about before: If you remember something less-than-pleasant, what will you do? How will it change you? /Knowing/ that they were once "real" may be enough to tip the scales towards an existential crisis proper, as opposed to believing they're merely implanted.
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if you remember yourself being someone that you think you never could be, then what does that say? do you consider you there and you here two distinct entities? of course, that's an extreme scenario, but i'd rather start from the largest scale and work my way down. and if you've done something, does that make it real enough that you should consider that you've done it? that is, assuming that you consider then and now to be the same person.
questions i don't expect anyone to answer. merely consider.
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[Or rather, it's all they can do. Consider. Perhaps their perspective will change with time, but it's difficult to say.]
Do you think yourself a separate entity from the Grell that wields a chainsaw? Is it so easy to draw a line between the two, when you've quite literally felt everything your counterpart did? Elation, sorrow, pleasure, pain, all of it? In those brief moments of "experiencing" these recollections for the first time, do you feel one and the same with them?
Or do you feel like a trespasser, treading into territory in which you're not welcome?
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what about you? when you remember, can you draw a line between yourself and what you're experiencing?
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Needless to say, I'm nothing short of relieved when the memory fades.
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i could dive into the purely philosophical off that point, actually, something about asking if no one remembers something, if it happened at all.
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We'll all be philosophers before this is through.