esoteric_rose | Record: 51 /Radio Memory

Entry tags:

Record: 51 /Radio Memory

[begin transmission.]

The ticking of a clock, the soft rustle of paper, and a sigh.

A man's voice, not anyone in Edensphere. "Sutcliffe...yet again you disregarded every rule there is to the book. This is the forty-fifth time that you have been cited for breaking regulations, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Juliet's voice. "Not every rule, William, only the ones which shouldn't be rules."

"Do not be ridiculous, every rule in the rulebook has a reason to it. Contacting humans for personal reasons is forbidden, you are wasting time and we're already short on staff." There was a slight click, as if someone tapped metal to metal.

Another sigh, from Juliet. "You told me at least a dozen times." Her voice became a mockery of the other's. "'We can't afford to fall behind. Remember your place, Grell!'"

Those with sharp ears would hear a rush of wind, more metal clicking. "Yet none of my warnings leave a lasting impression on you. It is not part of reaper code to encourage interactions with others outside of our race. It is our job to only gather souls silently and judge whether the souls are destined for heaven or hell. That is all."

"Where's the joy in that idea? Becoming racist, are we?"

More clicking. "This has nothing to do about being racist, Sutcliffe, it is about being a proper reaper. Your irreverence is why I am always going into overtime. Do not waste my time and effort in reciting every rule you've treaded on."

Juliet chuckled. "Irreverence, that's new. You always mention being a proper reaper, but you never say what makes you one."

William sighed. "I will only humor you this one time, Grell. As a reaper, you must claim every soul and pass judgement with a complete and utter lack of emotions. Human emotions only cloud our judgement; the repercussions of making an error as large as sending a soul to the wrong section are too severe to think about."

"So you say." Her voice got serious. "But if you truly have no emotions, wouldn't that make it impossible to decide where to send the souls?"

"No. Lack of emotional attachment makes it perfectly clear. If you so happened to make a friend on Earth and you had to collect their soul, you would be biased and try to send them to heaven, or if you became jealous of someone you would reap their soul and send them to hell."

Her voice rose, a touch of agitation evident. "If you lack emotions, you can't care about their actions! Are they right or wrong-feeling tells you that! Are good and evil now defined by textbooks?"

"Right or wrong feeling?" William's voice betrayed his stress. "This is exactly what I mean, Grell, you cannot judge it all based on feeling! All actions are strictly based on what upper management deems morally correct. You cannot judge their souls on a whismy or gut feeling instead of what is strictly written down."

"Hah! So am I to chain my heart to words spoken by those recorded ones? If you had to kill to live, a life for a life, the regular code doesn't apply!"

"Thoughts like that are what keep you from moving higher in the work force. You must follow ever rule that is written down."

"Maybe I don't mind not moving!" A loud sound, like someone had just slammed their hands on a desk. "Are they so old they're blind? It doesn't make sense! Living however long to mindlessly follow...I can't accept that!"

"You must accept it! It has has been written down and you must follow it!" A sliding sound, like a chair sliding out. "Perhaps a punishment would help enforce the rules inside your thick skull."

"Tch. What do you have in mind? I'm not afraid of you."

[end transmission.]

[[ooc: This is revised audio from this memory.]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

...Oh. Funny. I've been here for a year and three months.

So. Ah. Reapers. I don't even know what that means exactly. I mean--you don't look you go around in a black hood and a scythe.

Congratulations.

[She folds her hands in her lap at his question, sitting up straight.]

You're right, I don't. But thinking of the Grim Reaper, you're on the right track. The best way to put it is...reapers are a race that have the collective job of the Grim Reaper.

Yeah I don't know if that's an accomplishment I can take credit for but thanks anyways.

Ok. Say I believe you. Which, BTW, is still incredibly hard for me, but as my brother says, my best man friends can walk on water, my pet is a hairball with giant teeth and my best chick-friend has two hearts and is a very human looking alien, so I have to kinda just suspend my belief at some point.

If that's all true and you are what you say, as a grim reaper...what do you collect? What is a soul?

The soul.

[She has to think for a while, to phrase it right.]

A soul is you, in the purest sense. It remembers everything about you, even if you forget, it is linked to the conceptual heart and mind. If you are born with one, and lose it, you will die. Medicine may keep the body alive, but the soul is its own domain. It is both energy and a void, knowing and unknowing. Each soul is unique, shaped by the person it belongs to and everything they've ever done, said, experienced. Certainly it's capable of being corrupted or purified, so it's also like a substance...How best to draw an analogy...the best one I can think of is that water is to physics as the soul is to metaphysics.

You asked me how one world can have science and another reapers. The truth is that they coexist easier than you would think.

The purest...you? I don't understand--what does that mean? And how can be both a void and an energy? Specifically one that science can't trace. At least in my world...maybe in your world, what you interpret as a soul is something that doesn't exist in my world. Like chakra. Gai and Bell have told me that they can't sense me or Derrick in the same way they can sense others from their worlds.

I'm beginning to think that the only ones who don't coexist is me and Rick.

It's all of you, without words or form to get in the way. And about sensing it...I'm not sure. Maybe it's something in the blood, the brain, the physical makeup of reapers combined with the supernatural? I know we're the only ones I've seen with these eyes. Maybe my science is going a different direction from your science. If I could figure it out, show you rather than try to put words to it, I would.

I think you do coexist. You just feel different because you're of different worlds.

If you're the only one that can see it, then what does it look like? The purest self I mean. Can you tell if that purest self is good or bad?

There's so few people here that are just normal. My definition of normal of course. No powers, no magical senses. Just...normal. It's lame.

So I'm guessing if you can see a soul then you can take a soul, as a Reaper. Can you do that here?

The way we judge whether a soul is good or bad is by memories. We can access them, watch them, and decide from them where they go. The saying that one's life flashes before their eyes at death, that comes from reapers. You've heard my feelings on the matter of emotions in the job.

[The waitress returned with their order, and she waits until they're left alone again to continue.]

Normal's...a lucky thing to be, really.

[She took a sip of the coffee, thinking.] I never tried taking a soul here. Doubt it would go over well with anyone, you can't just walk up to a person and ask if you can attempt to take their soul. But I can still access memories, that I know for certain.

Memories. So you're another person that thinks the soul is connected to experiences.

So what, do infants get a free pass? The mentally ill? What gives a reaper the right to make a call of what's good or bad, huh?

You'd think so. 'S not.

I think I should...go. I ah...have ah...a food...in...the oven. And I'm late. For...food.

Edited 2011-02-01 02:34 (UTC)

[At the mention of all three of those put together-any of them would have hit her hard-she flinches, as though she was struck. She shrinks, unable to move, her mind bringing up her own memories. She could normally act, but this...this goes beyond her ability.

No. He can't go. He can't. He's not listening and damn it all she doesn't want someone else to not understand!]

Genius. [The tone is not the polite one of before, it's almost shaking, a plea. It takes her a moment to get the next part out, with a bit more stability. She hopes he will stay and listen.]

Didn't you hear what I was telling him in the memory? I argue that there are special circumstances, many of them, that inflexible rules are wrong. He's an uptight slave to form, I know this because I saw him before, and who knows when that was? Progress could have easily been made since then.

Children cannot be judged like adults, no one's morality is black and white, those whose minds betray them but they still try shouldn't be treated as though they meant to do the things they did. Because they don't...

I said the soul records experience. Not that the soul is made from them.

I was kinda stuck on certain ideas. You know. Reapers. Souls. I didn't quite follow...

It sounds all well and good and maybe that's the way you ...reap. But most people never bother to learn the truth about anybody. Maybe spiritual Reapers have some inhuman ability to suspend judgment, but humans...nobody knows anybody. Not fully. It's too messy. So the thought that someone can stand there and judge someone for something so important as passage to heaven or hell? Is terrifying. They didn't live through that life! They weren't there making the decisions! And they're not the one who lived with those decisions.

So what is a soul made of? If you just stuck your hand in my chest, can you honestly tell me you'd pull something out?

No. [Her tone is softer, and she slowly sips at the coffee again.] They aren't the ones who would wake up day after day facing the reality of what has happened, what they did, what's going to stay with them for the rest of their life.

It's no less terrifying to think that you're the one who has to do that, watch all of it play out. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a choice to be this. Even though we exist in a different space, I know that reapers still feel everything-even if they try to deny it. They laugh, cry, love, hurt, get scared, struggle with problems...and it doesn't quite make sense that something so similar to humans would be the ones there at the end. [She looked down at her hands.] It's not something I like about myself, but neither is it something I hate.

...I wish it was easier to explain souls. Like if it was located inside your ribcage, easy to diagram. If I reached into your chest I'd find internal organs, nothing more. And if I pulled those out, like if I could magically pull a soul out, you'd die. You wouldn't die the same way, but you'd just be...a shell. Breathing without a purpose, not thinking, not feeling, none of those things that define you as you.

Or be the one who has to take all the memories away.

This place captures everyone and puts them together in the same circumstance. Reapers, ninjas, death gods. Of course you feel the same way we do.

A shell.

Do you remember if you can put a soul back in? Can someone not a reaper remove a soul?

I bet if I could remember, I'd remember that...

[She thinks hard on the question.]

Yes, soul removal is not limited to reapers. And if I'm envisioning this right, yes, a soul can be put back. If you can take it, you can place it-seems balanced.

Makes sense.

So if someone ever removed someone's soul here...whatever it looks like...if it stuck around you could fix it?

That's reassuring I guess. Although I don't know how any of this works in a place where even death is temporary. It's...are we trapped here? I mean are our souls trapped here--God.

What am I doing? I didn't even believe in any of this days ago. Now, here I am talking about the impossible with someone who looks like Death's librarian, not an actual Reaper! Over coffee!

...No offense.

I'm...ninety-five percent sure I could. Since I've never taken nor placed back a soul in Edensphere, I'm not sure how it would go.

[Juliet blinks, then gives a genuine chuckle.]

None taken. It's actually relieving to know I give off more the "librarian" perception than that of a reaper. I could bring out my scythe as evidence, but this doesn't seem like the right environment for weapons. And as for this being impossible...we hatched out of pods with a memory loss. Edensphere bends space, time, form. There are so many things here I considered and still consider so. How can I find a book that was written over fifty years after my time next to one logic tells me I saw the first publication of?

What happens if you remove a soul and quickly put it back?

Yeah the last time someone brought out a weapon in the bazaar it didn't end well.

...Is there something wrong with me if I think the time wrap aspect of this place more believable than gods, reapers and souls?

I think it would just give the person a pretty big shock if done right. I mean, first you're there, then you're not, then you're there again. [Could she even take a soul in Edensphere? It was unclear.]

I remember that vividly.

No, time is a more concrete concept to grasp than the soul. It's something testable, more constantly there in a life and in thoughts.

What if someone was critically wounded? Could you hold onto them until medical help could be reached?

I mean I don't know, how would you even--I'm just thinking...it just seems like there's so many super powered people here that there should be something we could do to...ya know.

Heh. You have a really cool way of thinking. Very ...refined. Or something.

I...never thought about applying it that way.

[She looks at the tree as well, so innocent if you knew nothing about it.] I don't know if I'd be allowed.

Refined? ...Thank you. [She smiles again.] Maybe it comes from reading half the time.

It would be useful.

Probably not. Doesn't stop a lot of people these days.

It's the best word for it! Thank you for answering my questions. This has been...very helpful.

It really would.

They're brave ones. [Yes, Grift's is the most recent in a string of things.]

Thank you for coming and meeting me. It was my pleasure. If you ever want to again, just say the word.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Record: 51 /Radio Memory

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject