@all | before the event

[industries]

> ts@abraxas-proxy:~$ wall "People's memories of this place"

[ Anyone unfamiliar with computer terminals might be taken aback at the mechanical font that scrolls across their vision, though the jumps and starts in typing speed leave no doubt that a very human brain is behind the text. ]

> Broadcast message from ts@abraxas-proxy (tty/1) :
> People's memories of this place
>
> Don't normally crowdsource, but
> has anyone out there ever heard of someone who got home and actually
> remembered their days here at the renfaire?
>
> Not looking for peer-reviewed analysis.
> I'll take crumbs
> or
> whatever else we've got here on Mind-Reddit.

Comments

[sorser]

[Well. Now Tony's made it really difficult to know how to reply. Sniping at each other is such an easy habit to fall into, despite his declaration of handing over an "olive branch". Now that he's faced with something more sincere—and given the nature of this post, what did he expect, really?—he finds himself fumbling over what to write.

It takes an almost equally long minute to respond, then.]

What is it about, then? What’s the point of this post?

[If he’s not returning home, if he can't, then—?]

[industries]

[ The question of the hour. ]

> It's

[ To say goodbye. Give closure. Let them know he's okay.

But the thought dies somewhere along the way, before it even gets far enough in to project any pre-speech-cortex shimmering text. The resolve that burned so fiercely three conversations ago shifts like ashes in the pit of his stomach.

Because it's empty. A lie. Viktor said it himself, a million times, brick wall truths to Tony's screaming locomotive before he ever made his shot in the dark of the network. Time is relative. Circumstances infinite. There will always be a wife who grieves, a daughter who hurts. That's the objective truth, and Tony knows it better than most.

And the subjective. Would it – would it really make it easier? For them to know. ]

>
>
> Do you
>
> did we make the right call?

[sorser]

[To Stephen, that's the real question of the hour. The burden of he's carried since that day he swept through a million different timelines, all of which ended with untenable losses. All except one.

Did he make the right call? No, Tony's wording is precise, and it makes something wrench in his chest, the use of it, like something finally shifting -- Did they make the right call?]

It was the only call we could have made. All the other outcomes were worse. I know. I lived them.

[But he knows, too, this is barely a comfort.]

That doesn’t mean we have to like the hand we were dealt or the hand we had to play to counteract it.

I don’t think I will ever see it as the “right” decision. But I’ll always believe we made the best one we could. I've accepted the consequences of that. I don't have a choice.