audience: emma perkins

[cyclists]

Comments

[cyclists]

[...Sol tips over and lands on their back in the sand to stare at the sky.]

That question could mean a lot of things, Emma. Where do you want to start?

[foodbin]

We could start with how I had a horrible nightmare about one of my friends getting brutally murdered, or we could start with the part where my partner touched me and saw something I remembered.

[cyclists]

On the bright side, I have answers for once. [That's not a bright side.] ...the day of that trial had a lot happening, but do you remember something that the final scroll said? "Participants who placed votes for themselves, the guides, or failed to write a name in protest be warned: you were not invited here to be sacrificed, but failure to participate in weeks to come will be answered with removal."

Sometimes...the universe gives warnings like this. And like we said before, you and your partners are bound together. Sometimes that means you have a connection you don't even know you have.

[...] What did you see?

[It's an open-ended question which can be either about the nightmare or about the memory.]

[foodbin]

Yeah, I got the warning the scroll had, so why exactly did I need this extra fun surprise?

[She sighs.]

Let's just say she got lucky she didn't see something that could have really messed her up.

[cyclists]

To make sure you listened, if I had to guess. Nobody ever said the universe was fair.

[There's a hum and for a moment they listen to the waves instead of speaking.]

...is this about the aliens?

[foodbin]

And let me guess. There’s nothing you can do to stop it or fix it.

[She takes a seat on the beach, sighing. There’s no answer to the question.]

[cyclists]

Believe me, if there was I'd stop it by now. [Discontent.]

...which one's worse? The nightmares or the memories?

[foodbin]

Why does it matter? They both suck.

[cyclists]

I've answered a lot of your questions. You can at least answer one of mine.

[foodbin]

Mine weren't that personal.

[...But, anyways.]

The nightmares.

[cyclists]

[Understandable.]

Dreams...are a really weird thing. [That's pretty obvious.] But at least they're just dreams most of the time.

[foodbin]

Yeah, well, you're lucky that you aren't getting these. They don't feel like dreams.

[cyclists]

...what do they feel like then? [They seem weirdly interested in that.]

[foodbin]

I mean, considering we had a vision about how someone actually died... You get how it might be hard to tell the difference, right?

[cyclists]

[The long lull of silence basically indicates that no, not really.]

Yeah.

[foodbin]

You say that, and yet I feel like you don't.

[cyclists]

I haven't really had dreams for a long time. [They sound sort of embarrassed.] And the ones I did have were definitely dreams.

[foodbin]

Well... Here, let me explain it this way.

[She pauses.]

Imagine you had a dream of something really awful happening, and you woke up and found out it was true, because it was some kind of vision, and the next few days made it seem like it would happen again. Then imagine that you had a dream that was almost exactly the same just a few days later. Wouldn't you be unsure about whether or not it was real?

[cyclists]

Ohh...[That somehow makes more sense.] I guess so, yeah. Because then it's more like a memory than a dream. Remembering something you've seen before, but with different people there.

[There's a long moment like they'll say something profound.]

...the universe kind of sucks.

[foodbin]

[With a small exhale of amusement:]

If there's one thing I've learned in my lifetime, it's that the universe sucks so much.

[cyclists]

But why? [They're still on their back staring at the sky. If Emma looks down, she'll still see a black void where their face should be. The hood is large.] I get that the worlds all have different ideas and stuff but the order of things doesn't always make sense.

[foodbin]

The order? What do you mean?

[cyclists]

Why certain worlds are affected by stuff and others aren't. That's the thing I'll never really understand. What really causes those worlds to have the potential? Why were your worlds the ones this universe contacted to bring you all here?

...not that I expect you to have answers, but it's stuff I wonder. Why dreams as a punishment instead of something else? Why...her? [Her, of course, being Mary.]

[foodbin]

Well. You said the universe feels like a 'them' instead of an 'it', right?

[...]

Maybe they're just an asshole.

[cyclists]

Yeah, that's looking more and more likely. [Sigh.] But how we fix that, that's where I'm stuck.