*ding dong ding dong!* The first incentive is live. You have 24 hours to complete it and submit it to this channel. The prompt will be a range between 100-500 words, and the question you will be answering is as follows:
What is a happy memory your passenger treasures? Has it remained pure in its happiness, or has time and knowledge tainted its colors?
Completion of this Incentive will grant 2 points.
This Incentive expires on 03-20 at 4pm PST.
The war is over. Neurogen and ATLAS have finally come to the negotiation table, after a conflict that scorched half a continent and left millions dead with millions more without a home. In the shaded backrooms, the rest of ABATTOIR curses bitterly and bemoans the end of their "market niche." But one of them is ecstatic. One of them is laughing until it cries, until it pukes, until that secondhand voicebox it chipped finds its upper limit. Maria the Bloody Mary simply cannot contain its joy at hearing that things are *OVER.*
No more black-bag operations without body cams. No more coming back with most of its body destroyed by enemy fire, only surviving thanks to its brain resting in an oxygenated, heavily-armored box hidden somewhere in its body. For the first time, the haze of warfare clears, revealing a future that doesn't involved being a mad dog for corporate interests. In that moment, Maria the Bloody Mary realizes something: it wants to cancel its contract when it comes up for renewal. There's enough money laid up in its "demilitarization" fund to buy a new body, one not crammed full of perception accelerants and concealed weaponry. And said contract is up in a week's time, too. This is the most perfect act of timing it's ever experienced!
It can be Maria again. It can be called "her" again. It can wake up late, work a normal job, and stop killing its fellow man for a paycheck. This hell it's been through...has finally ended.
But of course it doesn't end there. You only leave ABATTOIR in a body bag, it knows that. The exit strategy is one final hurdle - but just one more challenge is more than worth its freedom.
The burnt remains of this frame against the wall of the cabin. A name that means nothing written for nothing. There was a similar frame before Echo once, and a picture in it.
A round, smiling face, with freckles, or maybe a sunburn, or maybe both. A wild cloud of coppery, curly hair that is just too short to be weighted down and too long to stay in place. Creases at the corners of the eyes and yet youthful joy coloring the irises in vibrant browns and greens. Thin lips stretched into a smile. A memory of a beautiful portrait.
And the portrait is hanging in a frame unlike this one, expertly carved into leaves and flowers and painted gold and so polished it is reflective.
And the picture moves and smiles and the eyes trace something in the air and the person in the picture makes faces for fun.
And the surface of the picture is polished too and the picture is not a picture but you, Echo. A memory of you. In a mirror.
Echo looks at the empty, burnt frame and there is nothing. A blank, featureless square of cabin wall. Echo thinks that maybe, if this was still a mirror, it would look just the same. An empty wall with nothing in front of it.
A small village, nestled into the country side. A clear river runs through it. On a hillside nearby, a cottage, alone, yet still part of the community
The people here are friendly, if cautious. They may not know how the arcane works, but they know she means no harm. Still, that caution keeps them from being overbearing, she enjoys the quiet while she studies.
On occasional visits, they bring her food, and more exciting, ingredients. But the most exciting is when someone goes to one of the big cities, or somewhere else far afield, and brings back a new book for her. New spells, new knowledge. Learning. One can never learn too much
...or can they?
One person, their face unremembered, perhaps deliberately forgotten, brings her a tome. It is dark, in aura and contents. Her curiosity coaxes it open one night. The memory becomes fuzzier. Dark things come from it. Shadowy figures descend on the cottage in the night
She must flee. Not here. Anywhere else. To nowhere
The train to nowhere
fly into the night
Watercolor. Hand-painted stokes that bled into itself, pride in its imperfection; a renewed 'trust in the process' once staring at the finished piece.
She was in a field of black velvet gowns, obelisks rising one by one towards the center to be sanctified before returning, fulfilled. She thought that she would feel suffocated in the noise, but despite the barest distinction in the presentation of her peers, she could read their stories on their paint-washed faces. Relief, excitement, contemplation...there were thousands of different ways that people saw this moment.
And to her relief, she knew perfectly well what this meant to her.
Swept up by the wave of practiced motion, her row all lining up to follow tradition, her eyes travelled far past the few faces she recognized between graduates and instead to the outer horizon of people crowded to watch the turn of the new. Families, friends, people of sentiment and meaning. She knew exactly where her foster parents were going to sit.
And there they were.
It all felt so permanent. A radioactive core surging with overwhelming energy. Proof. Proof that this is where she was meant to be. Proof that it was possible, that she was good enough, that it mattered.
Semantic satiation. A word said so many times that it loses its meaning. The colors look the same now. The sounds haven't changed. There is still the burden of hope in that key moment. A battery being leeched from.
But something can be incomprehensible without being infinite. The fire was not out, but it was choking on its own fumes. This has an aftertaste now, not of going bad but of losing your sweet tooth. Of feeling the jarring realization that the world hasn't changed since then, but your perception of it has.
She can't tell what style she sees the world through now. Just that the watercolor strokes feel like they bleed through the paper. Sickness in its idiotic innocence, or overwhelming yearning to be real again.
