It's nice to watch people struggle...

The thing about a huge corporation which literally makes it's money by taking a pound of flesh from it's clients, is that you can't expect it to listen when you try to explain why you haven't paid it. It doesn't matter if we didn't buy the organs, or if we never had the surgery. We're all on file somehow, and I expect that's more due to the Admiral's design than any slight clerical error.

[Jim sounds calm, and there's a hint of gravel to his voice. The pretense of being a nice guy is slipping a little here, because it's just all so incredibly obvious.]

If there's time, and if you can find someone who'd take your case, then the best option for us is probably to find a lawyer and get our repossessions gridlocked into long legal battles. Clearly none of us will show any signs of having undergone surgery, and it would be impossible for them to find a doctor who'd actually performed it, so there should be enough evidence to at least delay this until we're back on the Barge. On a long enough timeline, that could even be a permanent solution to this. The only problem is how long it would take to find a lawyer willing to do it, file proceedings, and have the surgeons called off. By the time it all went through it could well be too late.

[His tone's low and unconcerned, he's a realist. He won't be looking for a lawyer.]

So failing that, I'd recommend that you make yourselves ready for them. Preparation is the mother of success, after all. And to the surgeon currently looking for me... [He pauses, very briefly, as if considering] ...I'm sure I'll be seeing you very soon.

[Video clicks on, and there's a young man who's clearly been yanked straight out of the trenches peering towards the screen. He's dressed in an American first world war uniform, encrusted with grime and mud, and clutching a rifle and bayonet to his chest. He looks uncomfortable, and a little twitchy. Clearly he's not taking being redistributed throughout history too well.]

Uh... so, it seems to me that we've all been brought here, and that none of us know quite why, and... whoever might'a been behind it ain't coming forward to tell us.

[He clears his throat, and looks directly into the camera.]

So, I think what we ought to do is collect ourselves somewhere, say who we are, and were we're from, and see if we can't iron out for ourselves how we got here, and how we can get back home.

[He pauses for a moment, fidgeting uncomfortably with his rifle. There's a slight quaver in his hands that he seems not to notice.]

My name is Private John Stakowski, and I'm with the 3rd Infantry Division of the United States Army. I seen that there's some other service members around as well, so if anyone needs any help or gets into any kinda trouble? Then you can come to one of us and we'll do all we can to help you. If anyone needs me, I'm gonna be in the dining hall on level one - which is where I'm proposing we regroup to try and figure this thing out.

[He gives an awkward little grin, as if he doesn't quite know what he could do to help, but he'd sure as hell try anyway.]

Don't worry, we're the good guys.

[ooc: Annnnd Jim/John is going to be sitting in the dining hall worrying, and open to anyone who feels like spam]

[Private to Flagg]

A kill for a wish. I've fulfilled my half. What I want from you is an audience. A face to face meeting.

I like to know who it is I'm working for, and I want the ear of whoever's capable of what you've done here.

That's my wish. I'm waiting.

[Private to Eddie, immediately after his incident with Flagg]

[Video clicks on, because Jim literally just grabbed his communicator and clicked onto the first setting. He's in Edward's room, his shirt wet with splatters of blood, and with black scorch marks on his face.]

Are you all right? Are you alive?

[His words are uncharacteristically halting. Like he doesn't quite know what he's just done.]

[Video opens to Jim sitting at his desk, he looks well groomed and comfortable, and opens by shooting a cheerful smile out at you] Does anyone have any recommendations for self medicating insomnia? [He holds up two small capsules so you can see them.] I've been taking Melatonin, since I'm guessing the infirmary was concerned about proscribing me benzodiazapines (which is a pretty valid concern, by the way, I wouldn't really want to be on them either). It was a very professional first course of action.

[He rolls the two pills in his hands, then places them down on the desk.] The problem is that it's a course of action running up against about twenty-eight years of conditioning, and I... am not entirely certain how much longer I can keep hiding the decline in my hand eye coordination on kitchen shifts. [He lifts his left hand, and there are little cuts of various depths lining one side of it, little wounds from a knife gone awry while slicing vegetables. He smiles and gives a helpless little shrug, such are the joys of gradual sleep deprivation.]

I'm starting to worry about this effecting my health, so right now I'd try more or less anything. [He reaches forward to switch off the camera, then pauses, smiles again.] Oh, and don't bother to reply with video. I still broadcast in it because it puts people at ease to being able to read body language, but I covered my screen up the day I get here, and I almost never look at it.

I don't identify with that other man, the one who I was during that flood. I'm sure we did have some things in common. Mannerisms, certain aspects of our outlook on the world, cultural interests perhaps, but the differences between us were decided before I had any control over my life. The experiences that formed him, I never encountered. I don't feel any desire to have lived that life, or any pity for a man who did, he and I were just different, fundamentally, and in ways outside of either of our control. I doubt it made any of us want to be those people.

If there's one thing that flood did force me to confront, it is that the people here who's behavior I can not abide, may have been made the way they are by forces as arbitrary and outside of their control as the ones that differentiated my life from that of my counterpart.

Which means that by whatever actions and forces still lie ahead of us, there's no reason to believe that our lives here can't be changed again, or that we can't change them ourselves.

"We are builders of our own characters. We have different positions, spheres, capacities, privileges, different work to do in the world, different temporal fabrics to raise; but we are all alike in this, -- all are architects of fate."

I'm wondering, Crane mentioned in his post that he doesn't know what is expected of him to graduate, which is a good question, but I was also wondering how other inmates approach being here? I understand that for a lot of us, it's easy to look at this place as a prison to resist against. We're here against our will, and a lot of what happens to us here is painful, intrusive, and demeaning. It's easy to look at it as an enemy, but has anyone here arrived, and decided to wholeheartedly devote themselves to the idea that they do need to examine their life, and that they can and should change on a fundamental level?

Obviously I can't speak for anyone else's experiences of this place, but I do wonder if people have the same troubles understanding what's required for graduation, if they're willing participants in the process.

( [Spam for Edward Nygma] )

[EDIT: Lol most of this post is now Private.]

( Cut for tl;dr and mentions of child abuse )

[Public bit, edited in later.]

Apologies for this, but one of the involved parties requested that post be taken down, so I'm obliging them.

[Audio clicks on, and there's a slight clink of glass on glass before Jim begins speaking. Dated a few hours after the end of Luke's 4th of July Barbecue, and... (brace yourself, because this does not happen often) Jim is a little drunk.]

I was talking to Dracula earlier, he seems very polite. [Not gonna laugh, he's not gonna laugh because that would be impolite, but I'm sorry, in no universe is hanging out with Dracula not funny, and... okay, he's laughing now.] I'm sorry, I just-- Last week Frankenstein asked me to play chess with him, and-- and today I met Dracula at a barbecue.

[There's a very, very long pause, while Jim covers the microphone with his hand to chortle a bit. Eventually he drops his hand, and when his voice sounds out again, it's distant and ponderous:]

"O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!
O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and
unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!"

[Yes, he's a mopey, pretentious drunk with a thing for Shakespeare, what of it?]

...I wonder what people would have made of this place back in the real world. I mean, all those priests and poets and philosophers trying to figure out the meaning of life. Where does this fit into all the things in heaven and earth that were never dreamed of in their philosophies?

They probably didn't bank on the afterlife being quite this ridiculous.


( Private to Eddie )


[Just getting this up before bed! Tagging back begins in the morning <3]

[Voice. Jim sounds quite calm and almost concerned as he speaks.]

Those who've been mentioned in Iago's recent post shouldn't be too hard on him. Obviously there's no way for us to know the details of what caused this, but what seems apparent is that he's been deeply hurt by something, and that he's lashing out at those who he's closest too.

I know that doesn't make it any easier, and it doesn't mean that this is an appropriate way to deal with your feelings, but those of you named here... he clearly cares about considerably.

People don't lash out emotionally at strangers. If you really want to damage someone, if you really don't care what they think or how they feel, then you do it quietly. They don't even need to know that it was you. You just disregard them, and you feel absolutely nothing about it.

[Brief, slightly awkward pause.]

And that's clearly not what's happening here. I'm sure when the air has cleared a little, people will make amends for this.

[Audio clatters on! You get to enjoy a thick southern accent a little way off from the communicator, and the sounds of someone rummaging through closets.]

Gawd, place this fancy, you'd think he'd be stocking something other than rabbit food and wine?

[A door slams, and the voice gets louder as she abandons her search of the kitchen and approaches the communicator.]

That's my Jimmy all over though, always tryin'a convince everybody everywhere that he's a nice, respectable adult. Not that I'm complaining of course. I mean, he done pretty well for himself after he cut me and his daddy loose, and who doesn't want good things for their boy?

[She laughs, and her voice suddenly lifts up a couple of octaves, becoming a slightly cartoonish impression of girlish femininity; as if the speaker just switched from cowgirl to southern belle.]

After all, what with Jimmy's daddy havin' passed away so quickly, I'm gonna need providing for one of these days, and it ain't as if I'm gettin' any younger here...

[She lets out another raucous laugh, and the cowgirl is back.]

Not that he can do that from here, I suppose, Jesus Christ for such a smart boy, he must have made some real dumb moves to end up in a hole like this one.

[and FINALLY, she switches to video, and you get to see a red headed lady, possibly in her late thirties or early fourties. She flashes the camera a smile.]

So this is supposed to be a prison, right? I ain't never been to one before, but I've known enough cons to know that there have got to be some folks on board who know how to show a girl a good time!