mothmansplaining | [IC INBOX

"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."

Rose tips her head, curls bouncing lightly.

"What did you do to change the ship?"

"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."

"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.

"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.

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?"

"They certainly trust him more than they trust me," Ford says. "Not that I can blame them. The side effects from the portal were terrible."

He really does feel bad about that. The lesson was learned. He's not trying it again.

"What happened?"

"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."

Ford's accepted this, but he doesn't like it.

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."

"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."

"I'm sorry," Rose says quietly. "But there might be another way, right? Something nobody's tried yet?"

"There certainly might be," says Ford. "We could get on the bridge and pilot the ship. I know it's possible -- someone took the whole boat to a vacation planet before I ever got here. I suppose, if we couldn't think of anything else, we could fly the stolen Barge back to the Bargeyard. That was actually my original plan, before Bill talked me into trying to break into their dimension."

"But if you tried anything else, you'd end up as an inmate again. Right?"

"Not necessarily. Supposedly, the only thing that can demote a warden back to being an inmate is being responsible for someone else's death. Seems an arbitrary thing to penalize, considering it's not permanent and there are far worse crimes a warden can commit with impunity, but that's the Barge for you. That's what happened to Rogers -- when he tried to break onto the bridge, he destabilized some systems by accident and, as a result, a few of the passengers died. That's the official reason for his demotion.

"But the timing is suspicious. In fact, my own graduation came not long after I gave up on making any big changes to the Barge and started my smaller projects."

Ford, no, it was because you realized you needed to let people opt out of your projects and respect their right not to be pulled into your plans that endanger them. Ford. Ford please.

"So, in theory, it would depend on if anyone were seriously harmed in the attempt, accidental or not." In practice, well -- it'd depend on if the Admiral decides to follow his own rules.

She nods, processing.

"But you wouldn't try anything again anyway? Because it's not a small project?"

"Oh, I'd try it, all right," Ford says with conviction. "If I were reasonably sure I could do it without collateral damage to the passengers, or getting them involved in trouble they didn't agree to.

"It's a pity the Admiral doesn't show us the same respect."

"But you don't think he'd demote you just for...defying him?"

"Not as long as he follows his own rules," says Ford. Which, you know...odds of that are pretty wigglyhand. But Ford would be behind it, just...not if it would do more harm than good.

"He sounds terrible." Rose is frowning thoughtfully. "Does anyone really trust him?"

"They trust him to make good on their deals," says Ford. "I don't know. I suppose someone on this ship has to like him, statistically."

"Of course."

She sighs out a breath. Lots to think about.

"So - anyway. What is this month going to look like for us?"

"I don't know," Ford tells her honestly. "Like I said, I've never been assigned an inmate who wanted to have anything to do with me. I'm sort of unpopular on this ship, and I've got no idea how to be a warden.

"I suppose it would be a different story if you were one of those loose-cannon kill-for-fun types. But unless you're a very good liar, I don't anticipate having to rein you in to protect the ship."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: suicide ment

blanket cw from here

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject