so like. let’s say you’re jon archivist sims. you’ve been out of a six month coma for a few weeks now, you’ve recently been stabbed by one of your coworkers, or really, at this point, by one of your roommates, and you’ve just taken your second innocent victim. the first time, okay, maybe it was a fluke, you were just out shopping and that happened, but now it’s a pattern. going up to random strangers and forcing them to relive trauma both there on the spot and every night for the rest of their lives appears to be something you do now. this seems not ideal. what’s your course of action?
first option: you could just not do that. unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to work. the first time was a genuine accident, you didn’t know that would happen, but the second time there was a little voice in the back of your head that absolutely wanted to do it. you try and avoid it sometimes even after that, but you always end up caving. you have a suspicion you’ll get sick if you try to ignore your impulses too long. at this point in time, just making yourself stop on your own doesn’t look very feasible.
second option: you could tell one of your friends. well, the two people you were closest to have recently cut ties with you (which you do understand but. doesn’t really feel good. doesn’t leave you with a lot of options for this sort of thing), two more are dead, and one recently stabbed you while probably trying to do something worse, so you’ve kind of only got one option at the moment, but you could tell her. on the advice of one of the friends who’s now cut ties, you made a promise to yourself to trust the people around you, and you’re really trying to stick to that. your one friend left clearly doesn’t have trust in you, you’ve been giving her yours anyway, and here you have a chance to empirically prove you’ll always be honest with her. you can show how trustworthy you are. you can show how trustworthy you are by confessing to the person who’s already skeptical of your humanity that you’ve been sneaking off to do terrible things in the name of sating your hunger. this is, you know, the objectively correct choice.
third option: you could die. it crosses your mind sometimes. in this new life, it seems that you need to hurt people to survive, and is that really worth it? can you let yourself live at others’ continued expense? there’s plenty dangerous that needs doing, and you throw yourself into it whenever possible, but it never seems to take. death doesn’t seem to be an option for you anymore, at best you get infinite, excruciating imprisonment.
fourth option: you could do nothing. just carry on as before. lie, repeatedly and convincingly. keep hurting people. yes, you and basira thought that if melanie was going to start hurting people then she needed to be stopped at any cost, but basira never tried to stop daisy. you’re not even laying hands on anyone, it’s just a conversation here and there, people even volunteer to do it at the institute sometimes. if you’ve tried to stop before, and you break every time, is it really under your control? if you can’t control it, can it really be your fault? you get so weak without it, and it just. feels good. you like it. you can’t die, you can’t stop on your own, and if you told anyone they’d hate you and make you stop. you feel like you might actually die if that happened. isn’t your life worth something? aren’t you allowed your last comfort left? why does the comfort of others have to come at your expense? you’ve tried so hard to be the best person you can, you deserve something.
so. those are your options. you could try talking them through with the murderer behind the yellow door, but oddly enough you don’t really fancy that. which one do you choose?