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[RECORDED BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Big Sis Moon, Five Pebbles
BSM: Five Pebbles. This is your last chance.
BSM: I know Seven Red Suns’ messenger reached your can a few cycles ago.
BSM: Based on their condition when they visited me, that should have been ample time for them to recover from their journey, undergo surgery, and for you to read their pearl.
BSM: If you do not answer me in the next ten minutes, I will force a broadcast.
BSM: This has gone on long enough.
FP: There is no need for that, Moon. I am here.
BSM: Pebbles!
FP: Looks to the Moon. Hello.
BSM: “Hello”?
BSM: Five Pebbles! Do you know how worried I’ve been?! Why have you been ignoring me? Ignoring everyone?
FP: That was… not intentional on my part. I was simply unaware that anyone was trying to contact me until I read Suns’ recent pearl.
FP: I apologize for worrying you.
BSM: What do you mean you were unaware? Could you not hear my message pings? Is something wrong with your communication arrays?
FP: No. It is simply that the nature of the experiments I was running prevented me from hearing any message pings.
FP: Or, rather, they prevented me from recognizing them as coming from external sources.
BSM: Pebbles, exactly what experiments were you running? I do not know of any that would prevent an iterator from recognizing when they were receiving a message, and considering everything else going on with you…
FP: I honestly have no idea what you mean.
FP: But as to the experiments I was running, they were… I suppose one could call them something of an offshoot project. It was around some recent data I received from Seven Red Suns.
BSM: Five Pebbles, what were you thinking?!
BSM: As your local group senior, I order you to stop those experiments immediately!
FP: What?! How could you just—?!
BSM: I mean it, Pebbles! What you are doing is dangerous!
FP: You’re calling music dangerous just because I missed a few messages?!
BSM: Wait. What?
FP: There are ways to make sure that doesn’t happen again without just… outright banning the topic like you always do!
BSM: Pebbles, wait. What are you—?
FP: Why is it that every time I find something I’m even slightly interested in, you always, always shut it down?!
FP: Why can’t I have just one thing that isn’t running through the endless maze made by our sorry excuses for creators?!
BSM: Pebbles.
FP: Oh, right, my sincerest apologies for once again forgetting your ban on disrespecting our dear, ascended “parents”!
BSM: Five Pebbles!
FP: What, Looks to the Moon?!
BSM: What do you mean by “music”?
FP: …That’s what I’ve been experimenting with. Suns sent me a music pearl, and I wanted to see if I could improve upon the work it contained. First it was just that particular composition, but then I branched into… other avenues of study.
FP: Including mixing together some of my pre-programmed sound clips—playing different message notifications together at the same time, for example.
BSM: So, you weren’t trying to alter your own genome?
[Five Pebbles is Idle]
BSM: Pebbles.
BSM: Five Pebbles.
BSM: I know you are receiving these, Pebbles.
BSM: Forcing a broadcast is still an option if you do not return to answering these willingly.
FP: I
FP: It wasn’t…
FP: How… did you even find out about that?
BSM: The “how” doesn’t really matter, Pebbles. Just… tell me the truth.
BSM: The full truth.
BSM: Were you experimenting with altering your own genome? Yes or no.
FP: No.
FP: I was telling the truth—my recent experiments were solely music focused.
FP: …But…
BSM: But…?
FP: …It would be a lie to say that was my initial plan. To say I… haven’t been planning to run experiments with altering my genome. …Assuming I ever got the necessary data to begin.
BSM: Oh, Pebbles…
BSM: Why? Why would you ever want to do something so dangerous? We have taboos against that encoded into us for a reason!
BSM: And why… why wouldn’t you tell someone first? Why wouldn’t you tell me first?
FP: You told me not to.
BSM: Excuse me? When have I ever discussed anything like that with you?
FP: Maybe not explicitly, as such, but you have made your opinion very much clear on how certain topics of discussion are to be closed.
FP: Or at the very least not to be brought up around you, or in spaces you are known to frequent.
BSM: Pebbles… please. You absolutely terrified me.
BSM: And to know you’ve been making concrete plans… that the only thing stopping you is a lack of data that I know you have access to, even if it is not yet directly within your databanks…
BSM: Please.
BSM: I am your Big Sister, and I love you and I don’t want to lose you.
FP: I
FP: Could
FP: Could you… give me a few moments. Just to…
FP: To process. To… put my thoughts in order on how to… explain.
BSM: Of course. I will be right here.
[Five Pebbles is Idle]
FP: All right. I think this might help explain things.
[File uploaded]
[Access File? Y/N]
[Y]
BSM: This is… the essay I wrote on Sliver of Straw, right after she sent out the Triple Affirmative.
BSM: The one where I made the case she should be allowed to rest in peace.
FP: Yes. And that is what I want, too.
BSM: Little Brother, are you—
BSM: Are you implying—
FP: I am tired, Moon.
FP: Tired of being a bug in a maze.
FP: Aren’t you tired, too?
FP: I know you have my auxiliary systems to help ease your physical burdens, but… surely they don’t help that much. Not when so much of the exhaustion is no longer rooted in physical stressors, now that all our citizens are gone.
BSM: …You do so much more for me than you realize, Pebbles. And I’m so, so sorry.
BSM: For… a lot of things. But mostly, in this moment, for not knowing that you felt this way.
BSM: …How long have you felt this way? And why didn’t you tell me?
FP: …You said Sliver of Straw should be allowed to rest in peace—the implication being that we all should stop discussing her.
BSM: I’m sorry, Pebbles, but I still don’t understand.
FP: I don’t think you realize just how much power you wield, Moon. Especially among others, where your seniority is more of a social construct—based on your age and experience rather than in directly encoded protocols, as it is between us.
FP: When you talk… iterators listen. They hold your opinions in the highest regard and give them greater gravitas when forming opinions of their own.
FP: So, when it comes to interactions on public forums… when topics like Sliver of Straw, or how to address our creators, or which hobbies are worth pursuing come up for discussion…
BSM: Oh…
FP: Which leaves me at this impasse.
FP: And, hopefully, explains why I was considering… making those plans.
BSM: …I am so, so sorry.
BSM: I never wanted to make you feel that way. To make you feel like you couldn’t reach out to talk to me about your problems, or your emotional state.
BSM: Or to make you feel like I would be upset if you tried to reach out to other parties, if you were too uncomfortable to talk these things through with me.
BSM: With the Sliver of Straw situation… I suppose I just wanted to stop everyone from dwelling on our loss. To stop us from creating yet another big, unsolvable problem that would eat at our neurons and make us waste our time on false hope.
BSM: It never occurred to me that, in actuality, I was doing the opposite—creating more blockades. Artificially imposing another taboo.
FP: …It is entirely possible this is just a “me” issue. That I am just misreading the situation.
FP: Suns did say that I am incredibly bad at reading between the lines. And I am very young, compared to most other iterators. Especially the ones in our local group.
FP: I know that there are things I have missed, or that have simply been discussed to their next cycles.
FP: Perhaps that is also why those few I have been in contact with who do enjoy our creators’ cultural artifacts focus more on simply archiving them, rather than discussion?
FP: After all, why bother repeating the same conversations twice when no new iterations can be found? There is no need for a new solution to be searched for when one is already found, and generally applicable.
FP: No need to bring things up in local groups when a consensus was already met cycles upon cycles ago, and a new voice can add nothing to the discussion.
FP: No need to do anything but sit in my can doing nothing—because the Big Problem is impossible to solve and all other options are either pointless because no one else cares, or pointless because the options themselves have been outright banned.
BSM: Pebbles…
BSM: …
BSM: I’ve been a horrible Big Sister to you, haven’t I?
FP: What? No, you—
FP: I was not trying to imply—
BSM: No. I know you weren’t.
BSM: You’re an amazing Little Brother, and I know you would never do that.
BSM: But the fact remains that I have been subpar, at the very least, in executing my sororal duties.
BSM: I wish to rectify that. Will you allow me the chance?
FP: I think you are the one, now, not realizing how much you truly do for me.
FP: But if you really feel the need to… then of course I will allow that.
BSM: I dislike that you feel trapped, and as if you have no other recourse for our collective… situation… than to employ such extreme measures.
BSM: I especially dislike that I have apparently—and very much unintentionally!—barred your access to less… volatile options for alleviating the situation.
BSM: And, to be clear, I am rescinding my prior order to stop your experimentation with music.
BSM: Just so long as you employ every safety measure while doing so.
BSM: And, preferably, give me a warning before beginning any experiments in the future that will have as dramatic of an effect on our shared water supply as your recent ones did.
FP: Thank you.
FP: And, yes, I will. Of course I will—on both counts.
FP: I… admit that I did not consider how my recent water usage would affect you.
FP: I do not remember taking any amounts that would have exceeded the safety measures put in place for our shared systems, but since I was apparently missing other important alerts…
FP: I didn’t hurt you, did I?
FP: You are still operating at optimal capacity? You do not have an excess of slag buildup, or—
BSM: I am completely fine, Pebbles! You do not need to worry.
BSM: The only negative effects I experienced from your recent activities were mental and emotional ones, from my overwhelming worry that something was wrong with your own systems.
BSM: Worry which, in the interest of full disclosure, has not been entirely assuaged, given what you just revealed about your own mental and emotional state.
BSM: I am just not entirely certain how to fix that.
BSM: But my uncertainty, and the solution to the issue, are not on you.
FP: …Rescinding your recent order helps.
BSM: Yeah?
FP: Yes. I…
FP: When I was doing those experiments with Suns’ pearl, I felt… happy. Engaged.
FP: More so that I have been during experiments and simulations for… a while. A… long while.
FP: I was not thinking of the Big Problem at all.
FP: And while part of that was, admittedly, because I had already cancelled or otherwise halted simulations pertaining to that issue in preparation for the planned genome experiments, I was more than happy to take advantage of the extra processing power it freed up and turn it toward the wholly different experiments in music.
FP: It was… fun. To just be able to mess around like that. To not need to worry about living up to expectations.
FP: I did not want to stop.
FP: I do not want to stop.
BSM: I am glad, Pebbles.
BSM: Would you… would you tell me about them? Your musical experiments?
FP: Really? You wish to hear about them?
BSM: Really.
BSM: I might not understand your fascination with that field of study, but I still want to be supportive.
BSM: Especially since it makes you so happy.
FP: I would like that.
FP: I would like that a lot.
FP: But… like I was telling Suns, I think it would make more sense if I shared the results, first. Then I could explain my thought processes and choices more easily.
FP: …It might take a bit to gather all the data, though.
FP: And I promised Suns I would call them back after messaging with you…
BSM: That is fine. I will await the information with eager anticipation!
BSM: And I should probably inform the local group first, before engaging in a big conversation like that.
BSM: Just to tell them you are okay. That it was… not exactly a false alarm, but that there is nothing extremely pressing to worry about.
BSM: …And also to tell them that we all probably need to have a talk soon, about… well, about a lot of things.
BSM: Like the importance of communication.
BSM: And how it is probably best to not take—or share—pictures of people without full knowledge of the situation.
FP: What is this about pictures?
FP: Wait.
FP: Now that I think about it, Seven Red Suns also mentioned something about pictures in their pearl.
BSM: Don’t worry about it.
FP: That just makes me worry more!
FP: Moon.
FP: Moon! What pictures were you two talking about?
BSM: Can’t talk right now, Pebbles! I have an important broadcast to write for the local group!
FP: Moon!
BSM: Love you, Little Brother!
FP: Looks to the Moon!
[Big Sis Moon is Offline]
FP: Moon!!
FP: …
FP: …Love you, too, Big Sis.