"Sometimes, the people on those shows get married. Or off the island, or a lot of money. But that's not the point, is it? There are better ways to find someone to marry you, but the point is to make it as entertaining to watch as possible. I believe that's what's happening here."
"Who knows? Maybe there's not much to do up in their dimension. Maybe they just don't think we're that important. Or maybe there's another purpose to putting us on this boat. It was one of the things I was hoping to ask them when I tried to break into their world earlier this year."
"It's true that I don't know how a Barge under an effective Admiral is run," says Ford. "I'd like to compare notes with someone who's been on board another one, but the last time we were around other Barges, I had other things on my mind.
"The ship we're on is stolen," Ford continues. "The last time the Admiral was brought in for a performance review, the Authority declared him incompetent and was going to decommission the ship. However, rather than accept his demotion with professionalism, the Admiral chose to run away, stealing another Barge and pulling us all on board against our will. He's either made us all accomplices to his plan, or the whole thing was for show, and we're in the same situation we've always been. The Authority doesn't seem like the kind of beings it's easy to steal from."
Ford sits back.
"I'd like to bring the ship back to them. Get some answers about why things happen like the haunted house and the mistletoe. Possibly get us all a competent Admiral, one who doesn't let five-sixths of us fall through the cracks. Or possibly end the game they've been playing with all of us."
He thinks there's a way to reach the Authority. He just doesn't know how.
"Some time ago, I made contact with a being I have reason to believe is one of them," he says, "through a magic mirror in a port. I didn't catch everything she said, and she couldn't hear me, either, but I'm positive I saw her say, I'll be waiting."
And sorry, but boy howdy that apology is NOT accepted.
"Could be," Ford says. "I don't know, Rose. There are too many things about the Barge that don't add up. Too many unanswered questions. There was a time I would have done anything to make it a better place, but when I actually tried to do it, most of the ship didn't seem to think it was worth trying. So, I stopped.
"I'm working on smaller projects now. Safe things, like quantum-entangling pets with their owners, and studying why people on the Barge disappear so that maybe I can find a way to prevent it. But I still believe we're being used for something, and I think it's for someone else's fun."
"I tried to go right to the source," he says, heavily. "Bill Cipher and I secretly built a portal, a wormhole that we could use to reach the world he believed the Authority was in. He told me it was in the same place as the people who created him, and I believed him. Unfortunately, we were wrong about their location, and the mission was a catastrophic failure."
He looks at Rose tiredly.
"I don't recommend trying to escape. Even if you make it to an entirely different plane of reality, the connection that tethers inmates to the ship can't be deliberately broken. The ship followed us through the wormhole, but because the tunnel began inside the ship, the whole thing sort of....turned inside out. It was a nightmare, and I had nothing to show for it."
"Still, I'm sorry you were brought here," Ford says. "The Barge isn't a good place. You undergo a lot of reality-altering events that you don't have a choice about. Often, they're painful, or humiliating, or just plain dramatic. For some people, it's worth it to have a chance at life. But for the ones who would rather die, there's no escape. And not all the wardens understand what it's like to be trapped here."
"I thought that was me," she says. "At first I thought I wouldn't mind if I
stopped existing like I chose, but the thought of meeting my son - and now
I know how people here are suffering..."
"It's a complicated situation," Ford says. "And changing it isn't easy. My mistake was taking the whole thing on myself, and not asking anyone else on the Barge if they wanted to be involved with my Authority search. Some of them don't! Some inmates want to go back to their own worlds and don't care about anything else. Some wardens come from worlds so terrible that they can't go back. Others need their deals badly enough that they're willing to gamble with inmates' lives. And some are just along for the ride, because they don't mind if inmates are miserable because they're having fun."
Whoof, someone is still bitter.
"And I have to respect that. Not everyone wants the ship to change. So I'm stuck working on projects for people's pets and hoping I can make sense of the data from disappearances while the Authority watches the whole thing, and no one does anything about the inmates who can't get out."
His family died in multiple breaches. Thankfully, that shit has stopped, but he suspects it's because it stopped being fun to watch after the first two times.
"Ah," Ford says, waving a hand. "Barge became a chaos labyrinth. Nightmares turned real. The West Coast of the United States will probably never be the same. You know. The kind of thing that happens when you mix magic and science and dimension-warping technology.
"I built in protections so that nobody died or was physically hurt. But some of them were frightened pretty badly, and I had no right to put them through that."
He pauses, his feelings about this complicated.
"Still, it feels sometimes like most people on the Barge would rather work under a dishonest Admiral and ignore the inmates who hate it here than have anyone disrupt their plans."
"That's so selfish. If people are suffering and wardens don't care,
because they're getting their deals - if the Admiral is allowing that -
it isn't right. Something has to change."
"It does," Ford says. "But so far, only a few people have been able and willing to do it, and it's always ended badly. Steve Rogers got demoted for trying to get to the bridge, and as for me..." He sighs. "I almost got a good friend killed permanently."
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"Oh - yes, a couple times. Greg liked them."
And Amethyst, and Garnet had tolerated them and Pearl would find something better to do. But she's trying not to think about them too much.
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Rose looks uncomfortable.
"But why would someone or something that powerful play with people's lives and deaths like this, just for entertainment?"
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She supposes, glumly, that the Diamonds wouldn't care about playing with mortal lives if that kind of thing was what they found amusing.
"Maybe they want to help us as a whole but the Admiral's just...really bad at it?"
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"The ship we're on is stolen," Ford continues. "The last time the Admiral was brought in for a performance review, the Authority declared him incompetent and was going to decommission the ship. However, rather than accept his demotion with professionalism, the Admiral chose to run away, stealing another Barge and pulling us all on board against our will. He's either made us all accomplices to his plan, or the whole thing was for show, and we're in the same situation we've always been. The Authority doesn't seem like the kind of beings it's easy to steal from."
Ford sits back.
"I'd like to bring the ship back to them. Get some answers about why things happen like the haunted house and the mistletoe. Possibly get us all a competent Admiral, one who doesn't let five-sixths of us fall through the cracks. Or possibly end the game they've been playing with all of us."
He thinks there's a way to reach the Authority. He just doesn't know how.
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Rose thinks about that, then frowns.
"Do you think there's a way? To go back to the Authority?"
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This is said with absolute conviction. It isn't just a guess; there's something that's made Ford believe it.
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And she doesn't fail to pick up on that.
"How can you be so sure?"
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And sorry, but boy howdy that apology is NOT accepted.
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"I'm working on smaller projects now. Safe things, like quantum-entangling pets with their owners, and studying why people on the Barge disappear so that maybe I can find a way to prevent it. But I still believe we're being used for something, and I think it's for someone else's fun."
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"What did you do to change the ship?"
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He looks at Rose tiredly.
"I don't recommend trying to escape. Even if you make it to an entirely different plane of reality, the connection that tethers inmates to the ship can't be deliberately broken. The ship followed us through the wormhole, but because the tunnel began inside the ship, the whole thing sort of....turned inside out. It was a nightmare, and I had nothing to show for it."
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"I would never try to escape," she says, with passion. "I'm not going to abandon everybody else here when they're suffering!"
This doesn't rule out a large amount of other stupid shit she might very well still do.
cw: suicide ment
blanket cw from here
"I thought that was me," she says. "At first I thought I wouldn't mind if I stopped existing like I chose, but the thought of meeting my son - and now I know how people here are suffering..."
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Whoof, someone is still bitter.
"And I have to respect that. Not everyone wants the ship to change. So I'm stuck working on projects for people's pets and hoping I can make sense of the data from disappearances while the Authority watches the whole thing, and no one does anything about the inmates who can't get out."
His family died in multiple breaches. Thankfully, that shit has stopped, but he suspects it's because it stopped being fun to watch after the first two times.
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Rose sits with this information for a while.
"So...it's not a good idea to do things that will change the Barge, or the system, because people trust the Admiral more than anybody else?"
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He really does feel bad about that. The lesson was learned. He's not trying it again.
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"What happened?"
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"I built in protections so that nobody died or was physically hurt. But some of them were frightened pretty badly, and I had no right to put them through that."
He pauses, his feelings about this complicated.
"Still, it feels sometimes like most people on the Barge would rather work under a dishonest Admiral and ignore the inmates who hate it here than have anyone disrupt their plans."
Ford's accepted this, but he doesn't like it.
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She frowns thoughtfully.
"That's so selfish. If people are suffering and wardens don't care, because they're getting their deals - if the Admiral is allowing that - it isn't right. Something has to change."
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