week 9 - trial

[productions]

week nine trial



victim



suspects





Character Statuses
Setting
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Comments

[inthebones]

...So you didn't die.

How did you progress from there to creating this game? Are you teaching us the follies of creating plagues? Do you simply enjoy murder mysteries to an unhealthy degree?

[vytis]

It shouldn't work the way it did--there wasn't anything fair about it. I've heard it said a few times here that we consider our own lives more important, but it should be the other way around. My people are dead, and they were always much more important than I ever was. I'm nothing at all.

[inthebones]

You're an anthropomorphic. It's plainly evident no matter how you approach it - everything that comprises you came from humanity.

But you're not answering the question. How and why does this game exist?

[vytis]

I have certain connections. [Lithuania smiles, polite as anything all over again.] This sort of face is difficult to resist when the favor is so small. But they added up, and now we have this.

There was something--especially unfair about the disease. Sometimes I wonder if it was intentional, given how it affected Miss Doris.

[inthebones]

...It didn't affect Doris. She was perfectly fine Monday when I spoke to her both times and as a child as well.

[A pause.]

Oh. That's what you mean.

Why do you keep harping on 'unfairness'? The world is extraordinarily unfair; everyone already knows that without your interference.

[vytis]

Of course she was fine--she recovered from it some time ago. And she lived--longer than any human should live. She lived when all of my people choked on their own blood and their bodies burned themselves up.

[inthebones]

...Are you saying this disease confers unnatural longevity on those who survive it? That's absurd. It's altering natural laws; no Death would --

[She cuts herself off before continuing further.]

So that was the reason? Petty revenge against Doris for daring to live when your people didn't? How long have you been waiting to do this?

[vytis]

It wasn't something I started right away. For a while I just waited to die--I expected death, right? But there are rules for how you can die from this, if it doesn't kill you outright.

[He laughs, humorlessly.] When a nation's people grow ill, so does that nation. I survived the plague as well--my situation wasn't so unlike Miss Doris's was.

[inthebones]

I hope very much that you infected us with a modified version of this plague. I really don't need or want any more reasons to live forever.

So you need to be murdered or executed to die. Is that it? Is that part of what you've been waiting for as well?

[vytis]

A simulation, and nothing more.

Mm, there are so many rules. I had to learn them all by trial and error. Experimentation. At first--at first it was awful.

But... It got easier.

[inthebones]

Simulations don't cause healthy young girls to die from massive internal hemorrhage in the span of 24 hours.

If you wanted to die so badly, ask someone to pick up a knife and stab you. What other rules could there be?

[vytis]

It was still a disease, and one with similar symptoms, but not the ultimate end results. Except for death.

As for that, I tried that. I've spent centuries carrying on this way. Hopefully this one works. It should.

[inthebones]

Then we'll oblige you.

Plague may be a terrible way to die, but what happened to Lydia - what happened to Sonia, to Latvia, to any number of those here and no doubt others in the past was far, far worse.

Such selfishness is hardly even human. Perhaps you've outstripped the need for humanity in your own way.