take me with you! a game of transcendent madness

[SA]

There is a god. Ever since the dive I feel her all through my body. I'm like one of those dolls, those Russian dolls?

Matroyshka.

Yeah, just like that. All of me... I'm just a skin. Even my mind is just a skin.

take me with you!
a game of transcendent madness

There are twelve seconds of footage. The camera operator searches erratically in the dark for the subject. Frame-by-frame reveals:

a naked or almost-naked figure sitting before an unlit console with its head slumped

either a doll or small child partially dismembered on the floor

an unidentifiable angular mass in the far corner that changes position from frame 40 to frame 116

SUBJECT: do you... like it?
OPERATOR: very much, {classified}. It's beautiful.
SUBJECT: '¦ thank you.


Our race was preceded by the race of worms. They dreamed of God and sought her in the earth, but their science was corrupted by their natural goodness. God lay undiscovered in the dark.


In early 2010 an Egyptian scientist successfully self-induced a theorised state of immersive subconsciousness, known as the omega state. In the nethermost reaches of her inner self, vestigial memories and suppressed alter-selves awakened and claimed her mind.

A clandestine agency appropriated her research and resumed experimentation. The process was dubbed 'neural immersion'. Two years later the studies were leaked to the scientific community at large. Humankind had discovered the inner workings of the subconscious '" so was the belief.


Once there were mountains that we were forbidden to approach. A song rang from their peaks that shook our souls and caused the blood to burn in our veins. There were people in those mountains who did not fear the song. Their bodies glowed. Their thoughts gleamed with madness.


The process inevitably transforms the subject's perceptions. Therefore stringent protocols are placed on its use:

After moderate immersion subjects commonly experience transient visual and auditory ephemera and the perception of decelerated time for a period of up to four days.

With extreme or 'invasive' immersion subjects experience detailed hallucinations of widely varying character, time distortion and displacement, and false memories. These symptoms typically last two to four weeks but in rare cases (or as the consequence of misuse) can be rendered indefinite.

Traumatic immersion is the province of controversial government science and the 'dive' culture's lunatic fringe. It utterly and irrevocably transforms the subject's perception of reality.

There are also legends told among psychonauts, the hardest of hardcore divers. They say that rarely '" very, very rarely '" someone whose mind should have been destroyed by the immersion somehow comes back fully sane and strangely gifted.

It is 2084. Immersion has redefined culture, cosmology, the human mind...


A long time ago there was a beautiful queen who grew jealous of her daughter, for though the child was homely she was unfathomably wise. The queen commanded that a labyrinth be built and the princess be placed inside. 'Surely,' said she, 'you who are so cunning will find the path to freedom.' But the princess could not. One day an angel sought an audience with the queen. Though she feared God's retribution, she did not refuse. 'Fear me not, matron,' said the angel. 'The Almighty does not condemn you. Your actions are the justice of a monarch.' The queen later died, and the kingdom fell as kingdoms do. The labyrinth, though forgotten, remains.

[ooc]up next!

SINKING CITIES OF THE MIND[/ooc]

[Superfluous Crow]

Why would anyone undergo Immersion? The divers seem to consider it an euphoric, but what about more constrained scientists and the aforementioned agencies? Do they hope to use Immersion to access and manipulate the subconscious and perhaps implant suggestions? Or is it merely a tool to study the subconscious? Is the subconscious different from rampant imagination when it isn't influenced by outside stimuli? (if you unhook the consciousness, does the subc. have anything to relate to? Also, is there a difference between Immersion on a beach and in a windowless cell?)