{"id":11409,"date":"2025-01-23T10:14:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T18:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=11409"},"modified":"2025-01-23T12:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T20:24:09","slug":"outtake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=11409","title":{"rendered":"Outtake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Volbert\/Ghiordanescu, Watts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Hi.<\/p>\n

Yeah, I know. Last person you wanted to see alive. If it\u2019s any consolation, I might not be by now. Maybe I\u2019m dead, maybe payback arrived and you just slept through it.<\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t matter. Put your hatred aside for a moment. You want to hear this.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve picked up a\u2014a hitchhiker. Says it\u2019s Human, says it\u2019s what we turned into a few million years after we shipped out, but there\u2019s no fucking way. I saw<\/em> it\u2014pieces of it, anyway\u2014 over on Araneus<\/em>. (Oh right, we ran into Araneus<\/em> the other day. What\u2019s left of her, anyway. What are the odds?) The recorder data\u2019s severely degraded\u2014which is suspicious in its own right, she\u2019s been derelict for less than two million years as far as we can tell\u2014 but it shows something coming out of the last gate she built, something that reached for Araneus<\/em> like a falling man grasping at a branch. It shows something else too, coming out behind it, stretching and snapping back like a rubber band stretched too far.<\/p>\n

We tried to leave the fucking thing behind, but it followed us home. Rode the shuttle bareback. Chimp won\u2019t let us hurt it. Chimp thinks it\u2019s just another member of the crew\u2014 maybe even the most<\/em> important because it\u2019s more\u2014I dunno, recent<\/em>. It melted before we even got out of the shuttle: all those joints, all those limbs and slits, all those eyes<\/em>. Encysted into some kind of chrysalis. It\u2019s down in Med5 right now, turning into\u2014<\/p>\n

Well, we don\u2019t know yet.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m pretty sure it won\u2019t be emerging as a butterfly. I think, once metamorphosis is complete, our degrees of freedom go to zero. I mean, it\u2019s still just a puddle of organic soup and it\u2019s already got Chimp in its pocket. When it hatches, who knows? Maybe we\u2019ll be lemurs and it\u2019ll be God and there\u2019s nothing we\u2019ll be able to plan or say or even goddamn think<\/em> that it won\u2019t know before we do.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m bringing you back now, while there\u2019s still some ghost of a chance that no one else knows what I\u2019m doing. I\u2019m using back doors and secret tunnels from the old days. I\u2019m using Lian\u2019s bypasses so Chimp won\u2019t know you\u2019ve been moved.<\/p>\n

I know what you\u2019re thinking. I did what I did. I\u2019d do it again. But it was a broad-strokes deal, it\u2019s not like I told Chimp about every stitch and seam in the revolution. There\u2019s a lot he doesn\u2019t know. He doesn\u2019t know we can do this, for one thing. He doesn\u2019t know you\u2019re down here in the Black Forest and not snoozing away in C4B. So long as he doesn\u2019t start missing his favorite pet enough to try bringing you back for old times\u2019 sake, we should be okay. And yes, that\u2019s a risk\u2014but you two didn\u2019t part on the best of terms. I\u2019m betting\u2014I\u2019m hoping Chimp doesn\u2019t need the grief.<\/p>\n

So now you\u2019re wondering why take that chance? Why <\/em>me, out of all these thousands? <\/em>But I don\u2019t know how many thousands there are any more. Every thinking being within ten thousand lightyears is right here, buried in this fucking rock, and after sixty-seven million years I\u2019ve still only met a fraction of them. I trust barely a fraction of those. Most of them would probably be just as happy to see me tossed out an airlock. You\u2019d be first in line.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the point. I know you. I know the purity of your hatred. It burns pretense to ash. You\u2019re the last person I\u2019d ever trust with my life, but this isn\u2019t about my life. It\u2019s about everyone else\u2019s. It\u2019s about Eriophora<\/em>. You\u2019ll pick up this baton for the exact same reason you’d kill me if you got half a chance.<\/p>\n

So I’m sorry, but you\u2019re drafted: someone behind the scenes, someone Chimp thinks is safely out of play, someone this abomination, this parasite<\/em> doesn\u2019t know about. And I pray to whatever Gods may prevail over that one that, when it hatches, it won\u2019t be able to read my mind back to this moment and see what I\u2019m doing now, because if it can then all hope is truly lost.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s a foolproof plan, or even a good one. It\u2019s probably a terrible plan. But it\u2019s the best I can come up with on short notice. And I\u2019m already beyond forgiveness; I\u2019ve got nothing to lose by conscripting you. So wake up, wild card. Wake up, hidden variable. Watch from the shadows. Fight back against a god that hopefully doesn\u2019t know you exist. Be the blind spot in omniscience.<\/p>\n

Gods help us, Sunday, I think we\u2019ve got a gremlin on board.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volbert\/Ghiordanescu, Watts Hi. Yeah, I know. Last person you wanted to see alive. If it\u2019s any consolation, I might not be by now. Maybe I\u2019m dead, maybe payback arrived and you just slept through it. Doesn\u2019t matter. Put your hatred aside for a moment. You want to hear this. We\u2019ve picked up a\u2014a hitchhiker. Says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiblet","category-sunflowers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11409"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11421,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11409\/revisions\/11421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}