worthallthis | IC Inbox: In the Night

"The keyboard? Shimmy can make almost any kind of sound from those when he changes the settings." It's the wonders of electricity that his bandmate has managed to harness to create wild music. "The soundset he uses here is based off of an instrument called an organ."

"Oh. I know that. I know an organ." They pause, blinking at the music. "It doesn't sound like that. It's much bigger." Soldat may be thinking of a full pipe organ, like in a church.

"Like how big?" asks Duster, who hasn't seen a real organ in his life.

"I don't know. Bigger. Fuller. Rounder sound, more reverberation." Soldat doesn't have a memory of a physical organ, just the way it sounds in a big cathedral. Or on vinyl in a Christmas album in Steve's house. Something. They don't have much context, is the thing.

They pull out their own tablet, flip it open, and start searching through the music. "Here. Like this." And a Bach song on a full pipe organ starts playing.

That's a loud instrument. It sounds big, at the very least. He doesn't know how many speaks something like that would have to be hooked up to if it were the size of a piano.

"That's-" Duster can't think well when he's witnessing an incredible new piece of music. "Wait, I heard that song before. Part of it, anyway. What's it called?"

"The file name says the musician is Bach and the song is called 'Toccata and Fugue'," Soldat answers. "I know the song, too, but I think. I think I heard it on a record player, not in person. I remember there being vinyl noise."

"That's strange. I heard part of this in a symphony back home, written by a ghost. But...he said it was all original." His brow furrows. "Did he use part of Toccata and Fugue on purpose?"

Oh, Duster had no clue just how many classical pieces Lord Passion used in his work.

"I don't know. Either he lied. Or maybe he is the ghost of Bach?" They're not sure if Duster is even from Earth, to be honest, it might be a huge coincidence, some kind of someone-in-the-multiverse-must-write-this-music kind of deal.

"He called himself Mr. Passion and then Lord Passion. The only other thing of note was his hair." Most ghosts looked the same - white sheet, similar faces - except for this one that wore a suit.

"Passion." Soldat looks vaguely skeptical, not of Duster's story, but of anyone who would call himself that. "Are you even from Earth? Maybe there is no Bach on your world.

"I really don't know. All I know is that the world I came from used to be big before we all moved to the Nowhere Islands." He knows so little about his own history, and now that he's dead, he can't ever go back and ask Leder for more details like they had planned.

"Maybe an opal here would have a memory from when I was a kid. That's all I can hope for."

Soldat blinks at him once, over the continuing sound of the music. "You don't remember being a kid?"

Wait, wait. Just how many people are missing big patches of their memory, in this place?

"I remember...some of it. The rest, when I was really small...that was replaced with other memories." He tries to come up with a number, solely based on some rough ages. "Twenty years ago? Nineteen? Everyone had their memories re-written back then."

"Jesus." That's almost as bad as their own... issues. "I'm sorry. That's terrible." Possibly more terrible for Soldat than anyone else. Losing their memories now that they've started regaining them is one of their worst fears. "How did you find out the memories were wrong?"

"I mean..." It was hard to decide how you feel about something so big, so important, that meant your life had an entirely different meaning from the start. "We were happy, for a while. Some of us might've noticed something off, but I never found out that the town wasn't what it seemed until it was explained to me."

He fiddles around with something in his pocket. "By the one guy that kept his memories of the old world and could find out how to bring back those memories."

Soldat nods slowly. All these people with memory problems... it does make learning to empathize again a damn sight easier when there are so many parallels. "I understand. Finding out I had a life before HYDRA was. A shock. Still not really used to the idea. It must have been hard for you, too. Are your real ones coming back?"

"What's HYDRA?" A restart on humanity like Tazmily was? A school? "I...don't think so. Apparently, the town bell was meant to be a way to make sure those memory changes stuck, but after a few months, I don't think I remember much in detail."

Vague feelings that something was wrong, but no visions of a past life.

"Of course, maybe it's because I don't have too many memories of my old life, and childhood memories don't really pay attention to the world around me."

It's possible that only the serum's healing effects make Soldat's memories come back at the rate they are. Who knows how brain-frying works out in the real world, on real people. They nod. "HYDRA was. A secret organization. I was their assassin. They wanted to make everyone in the world follow them. They took my memories, programmed me, made me think I was nothing but theirs. Memories are coming back now. Slow and in pieces. It's been. A big thing. Thought maybe yours might come back, too, with enough time."

"They-" He jerks his head up. There was the memory removal of Tazmily, and then there was...Claus.

"I knew someone like that. He became an empty shell. They said it was like he had no heart."

"Yes." Soldat nods. "That. That's a good way to describe it. For a long time. Dying brought me here, and now I'm. Getting better?" It still seems a little awkward to call it "getting better". But everyone else has been pretty emphatic about it. "Not getting my brain fried every few days helps a lot."

"Yeah. That would do it." He scrolled through his list of music. "It wasn't that painful for me. I got all of my memories stolen the same way once, but all that did to me was make me confused."

"Good." The last thing Soldat would want is anyone else to go through the Chair. Seems like that would be pretty inefficient for a whole population, anyway-- have to do them one at a time, and they'd probably protest as soon as they saw the first person go through it anyway. Duster's world probably has magic or something for that sort of thing. "I. Hope you get them back sometime. If you want them."

He smiles at Soldat. “I hope. It’d answer a lot of questions about where I came from.” Unlike his close friends, there was more to his history than what he experienced on the Nowhere Islands. He could find similarities between himself and others if he knew what his world used to be like.

“We’ll just have to find the time.”

IC Inbox: In the Night

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