Camp: private conversations

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Respond here for a private conversation with Red! All comment threads are screened.

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Of course. Timing is everything for a musician.

[She knows you were in her mind and saw that concert, Ren. Get rekt.]

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[He looks even more embarrassed - he's not used to being rekt gdi]

Maybe I should learn an instrument or something. You know, expand my horizons.

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It's always good to expand your horizons. You might have trouble finding an instrument in camp, though. This isn't band camp.

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... why IS it a camp?

[That's the question that's been bothering him for awhile, honestly]

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Why do the metaverses you travel take the shape they do?

[It's a relevant question she swears.]

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They're how the rulers see the world around them. Kamoshida 'ruled' the school, so he was a King in a Castle.

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Exactly.

So why might this all be a summer camp?

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Because it's how it's viewed... because we're all kids?

Fuck. You said before it works slower the older you are. Is that why we're all teenagers?

[He feels a little ill]

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[HAVE FUN FEELING ILL THERE]

There has to be personnel on-site in case things go awry. What is the best way to make sure that the 'right' people are 'taken' first?

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The only other place I can think of where you have adults watching a big group of kids would be a school. And that'd be way harder to fake.

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Exactly.

That's why it's a camp.

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...but you didn't even try to convince us that it was real. Stan thinks it is, and the...ones who died. But the rest of us know we're kidnapped. I mean, tch, a little memory tweeking and I'd probably buy that my parents shipped me off again - if it wasn't right before school starts back home.

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But who is it that we're trying to convince here?

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The only other people here are the hunters. I'd hope they wouldn't try and shoot us if they thought this was a legit camp.

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You aren't trying to convince the hunters, the campers, or the counselors.

So who are we trying to convince?

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... the voice...?

[He looks very Concerned]

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[Now you're getting it Ren.]

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[And this is before Kitten Time so he has no name for it yet but still, he looks pale]

It would go for a place that has a lot of kids normally. You have it contained here, don't you?

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The higher-ups have decided that a couple dozen lives is a small price to pay for keeping this thing here in northern Michigan, far away from other people.

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While you search for a cure... We really are sacrifices - just not in the religious sense like Dan kept hinting at.

[He looks... both mad and sad. Because honestly, what else could they do?]

Keep it from trying to search out new hosts. Bringing people from other worlds is 'easier' then having to give up your own kids. I can guess that's why the hunters are okay with all this. 'Better some alien than my kid."

...even if we did escape, we'd just be spreading it to others.

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Why do you think I keep coming back here, year after year?

If you do survive, you will be watched carefully. Your best option would be to make yourself useful to the organization and work for them. That's what I did, that's what Archer did.

There's ways to suppress it and keep it from spreading to others. That's why we're allowed to leave the camp at all. But only employees get access to that.

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...

[He stares down at his now very pretty hands, face pensive. Help find the cure. Save this world and maybe others, if people are being recruited from all over reality like this. It'd be the 'right' thing to do.

Finally he looks up, eyes sharp]

All we have to do is figure out a way to stop it. Purge it. Without starting the whole thing over again. I get why you're doing it, but I'm going to find another way.

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If you think you can, then I encourage you to try.

Though I must also ask you not to give the other campers the details you have figured out. Most of them would not take it as well as you have.

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[at first his face twists with rage... only to crumple with realization.]

They'd lose hope.

[Without something literal to fight, without a goal of freedom, everything would devolve into chaos.

More than the dog tags around his neck, more than Usagi literally giving him the responsibility of a god- this knowledge hangs on his shoulders like a weight. Suddenly Ren knows, in a way that has nothing to do with age, what it means to be an adult]

...okay. For now.

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For now.

[When it gets closer to the end, and the surviving group is more obvious? Maybe that would be the time to share. But not now, not when people would take that information in the wrong way and lose hope.]

It's a lot to bear, I know. This is my eighth year doing it.