Quoted By:
You do, attempting to commune with Casey, but it's no use: his mind really is hollowed-out, and you're not feeling well enough to do a deep search for remnants. You pull out, planning to come back later, and are confronted by Us-- well, a multi-faced, human-shaped fragment of it, the first of Pat's experimental project. The Us-person informs you that a metric ton of Headspace employees have been dumped into Us proper, and it wants you to sort this out. Also, it wants Claudia back. You admit you haven't made any progress in that department, but claim you'll give it back soon. As for Us proper, you tie a rope around your waist and dive in.
You find yourself in an auditorium, but rapidly realize it's one of Us's dream-constructs, especially when the whole audience starts talking at once. Us isn't aggressive, but it is deadly serious: over 5,000 people have been absorbed by the goo, enough that they've formed their own separate hivemind. This separate hivemind is apparently in agony, given the screaming. Us attempts to impress on you how horrible this is, but you resist, refusing to believe you've done something so terribly wrong. Instead, you promise to heroically fix it.
The other hivemind is a mountain of babbling, weeping, screaming bodies, apparently generated from their subjective self-perception. Nearly overcome with guilt, you break yourself, forcing yourself into a brittle, unflappable 'heroic' persona. Unfortunately, this persona is useless at helping the hivemind. Out of energy, you drop it: far from rescuing the hivemind, all you can do is paralyze it, hoping it'll calm down.
Gil rescues you with the rope, but you're too distraught to function. Richard appears, and you pass out in his arms.
You awaken in a facsimile of your tent (really your manse), feeling a little better, though trying to discuss the Headspace expedition with Richard makes you cry. You're conflicted about whether you did the right thing, and, worse, you fear that you've destroyed any goodwill the expedition could've generated. Richard interrogates you about how you link accomplishing things with being liked, but hits a wall when you're unable to acknowledge your previous snotty behavior. You ask him whether he's going to exposit like he promised.
Richard demurs, telling you that he'd rather not depress you before Game Night. He permits you one question, though, and you ask what his real relationship is with Management. Richard tells you that he strongly suspects Management was a project by the "snake"s' R&D department, which apparently develops new snake technologies. Richard knows of them, and vice-versa, but Richard isn't part of R&D-- he's a Correspondent, which you already knew.
Speaking of snake technologies, Richard installs the thingy ("microstick") you got from the BrainWyrm-- though you only tell him it has information on it, not your memories. After a painful install, you're ready for Game Night.
(2/3)
