Memory #14

[identityformations]

Significant Negative - Black depression in solitary confinement (MD 455) * overeating as stress response

Regained - Game #86, Cheshire/Jabberwock, betting our feelings (in which Amethyst won for not getting hurt :|a)

Shareable - Yes, six extra uses.

S-so this is the first memory that is, in a sense, more than just a memory. He's already got the groundwork for re-developing the habit he develops in this memory: binge eating as a rather masochistic coping mechanism. It hasn't happened yet in Aather, largely because he got hiatused to Firebird's realm almost immediately after taking this memory, but it...probably will soon...sob, so many sea apples.

This is probably a case where I just type in a couple pages wholesale because so much foo. It's pretty clear in context that this is after he tried to rape Maree, after Miles' death (?!), so this is pretty much the most miserable part of his life. And I realized while typing it in that this also gives him the key information that somebody got Miles into a cryo-chamber and there's a chance he was revived since. So at least something good comes of this!

Mark spent the first three days of his solitary confinement lying in a depressed huddle. He had meant his heroic mission to save lives, not destroy them. He added up the body count, one by one. The shuttle pilot. Phillipi. Norwood. Kimura's trooper. And the eight seriously wounded. All those people hadn't had names, back when he had first been planning this. And all the anonymous Bharaputrans, too. The average Jacksonian security guard was just a joe scrambling for a living. He wondered bleakly if any of the dead Bharaputrans were people he had once met or joked with when he'd lived in the clone crèche. As ever, the little people were ground up like meat, while those with enough power to really be held responsible escaped, walking out free like Baron Bharaputra.

Did the lives on forty-nine clones outweigh four dead Dendarii? The Dendarii did not seem to think so. Those people were not volunteers. You tricked them to their deaths.

He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities.

I didn't mean it to come out this way.

And the clones. The blonde girl. He of all men knew she was not the mature woman her general physique and particular augmentations so stunningly advertised her as being. The sixty-year-old brain that had been planning to move in doubtless would have known how to handle such a body. But Mark had seen her so clearly, in his mind, that ten-year-old on the inside. He hadn't wanted to hurt or frighten her, yet he'd managed to do both. He'd wanted to please her, make her face light. The way they all lit up for Miles?, the internal voice mocked.

None of the clones could possibly respond as he so ached to have them do. He must let that fantasy go. Ten years from now, twenty years from now, they might thank him for their lives. Or not. I did all I could. I'm sorry.

Somewhere around the second day he became obsessed with the thought of himself as brain-transplant bait for Miles. Oddly enough, or perhaps logically enough, he did not fear it from Miles. But Miles was hardly in a position to veto the plan. What if it occurred to someone that it would be easier to transplant Miles's brain into Mark's warm and living body than to attempt the tedious repair of that gaping mortal chest wound, and all the cryo-trauma on top of it? It was so frightening a possibility that he half-wanted to volunteer, just to get it over with.

The only thing that kept him from total gibbering breakdown was the reflection that with the cryo-chamber lost, the threat was moot. Until it was found again. In the dark of his cabin, his head buried in the pillow, it came to him that the face he'd most desired to see transformed with respect for him by his daring clone-rescue was Miles's.

You've rather eliminated that possibility, haven't you?

The only surcease from his mental treadmill came with food, and sleep. Forcing down an entire field-ration tray left him blood-stunned enough to actually doze, in inadequate snatches. Desiring unconsciousness above all things, he cajoled the glowering Dendarii who shoved the trays through his door three times a day to bring him extras. Since the Dendarii apparently did not regard their disposable-container field rations as treats, they were willing enough to do so.

Another dendarii brought, and shoved through the door, a selection of Miles's clean clothing from the sores on the Ariel. This time all the insignia were carefully removed. On the third day he gave up even attempting to fasten Naismith's uniform trousers, and switched to loose ship knits. At this point the inspiration struck him.

They can't make me play Miles if I don't look like Miles.

After that, things grew a little foggy, in his head. One of the Dendarii became so irritated by his repeated requests for extra rations that he lugged in a whole case, dumped it in a corner, and told Mark roughly not to pester him again. Mark was left alone with his self-rescue and cunning calculation. He had heard of prisoners tunneling out of their cells with a spoon; might not he?

Still, loony as it was, and on some level he knew that it was, it gave his life a focus. From too much time, endless hours on the multi-jump boost through to Komarr, suddenly there seemed to be not enough. He read the nutritional labels. If he maintained maximum inactivity, a single tray provided all the daily fuel he required. Everything he consumed after that must be converted directly into Not-Miles. Every four trays ought to produce a kilo of extra body mass, if he had the numbers right. Too bad they were all the same menu....

There were scarcely enough days to make the project work. Still, on his body, any extra kilos had no place to hide. Toward the end, panicked at the thought of time running out, he ate continuously, till the sheer gasping pain forced him to stop, thus combining pleasure, rebellion, and punishment into one weirdly satisfying experience.

+ Well that explains the whole over-eating thing, GOSH THERE'S AN ENTIRE REBELLION/MASOCHISM/SELF-DETERMINATION COMPLEX HERE.
+ MILES MIGHT NOT BE DEAD?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
+15 crap I actually liked the little shit.
+30 still a douchebag about Maree.
+40 depressive tendencies.
+100 likeliness to wolf down ridiculous amount of sea apples if stressed.