10. No way to know
Chapter 10 of Camera Obscura, written by Matt Boothman after Samantha Leigh
Day 247 310
Mods: it looks like the server time and date settings have got all out of sync. Not life-threatening, but could you fix when you have a minute?
Apologies to the mods and everyone I’ve argued with over the past 24 hours. As usual, this was not an admin issue but a PEBKAC situation.
I will have taken a lot of convincing because I didn’t want to believe you all, because you being right means I’ve lost two months. And one of them had Christmas in it. I would really love if just this once it had been an issue for the mods.
Can anyone point me to any scholarship on lost time, or offer any advice from experience? I’m inclined to assume temporal or transdimensional shenanigans, but I’m biased by my recent (not so recent now?) experiences. It could just as easily be a fugue thing, a suspended animation thing, a memory alteration/erasure thing, or probably a dozen other things that just aren’t top of mind for me.
In case it helps anyone piece it together, the last thing I remember before returning to awareness at my desk, looking at a date and time that didn’t look right, is doing a screening call with a potential study participant over the phone.
Transcript D247.1712
curzonRA001: Hello, you’ve reached Curzon Labs. My name is [unintelligible]. How may I help you.
$GRAGRAW: I, the feared and renowned [redacted], have considered the pact you propose, and it intrigues me.
curzonRA001: Am I to understand you’re considering participating in our current study.
$GRAGRAW: Yes. The terms enumerated in this epistle which my minions conveyed to me. I consider them acceptable.
curzonRA001: Was there anything on the flyer that you’d like me to clarify for you.
$GRAGRAW: No. The indefatigable [redacted] comprehends all.
curzonRA001: In that case, I’d to proceed to some pre-screening questions. The purpose of these questions is to determine whether there’s any reason why you couldn’t or shouldn’t participate in our study.
$GRAGRAW: Commence your catechism. I fear no tripwire tongue.
curzonRA001: Thank you. May I please take your age.
$GRAGRAW: I am as old as the thrill of the hunting horn and older.
curzonRA001: So you consider yourself an adult, and you’d be considered an adult by those of your close acquaintance.
$GRAGRAW: I was spawned full-grown and have never known the sour innocence of childhood.
curzonRA001: Thank you. May I please ask your dimension of origin.
$GRAGRAW: I hail from that realm called Hel by some, by others Tartaros, which unlovely names are distorted reflections of the pure name [unintelligible/corrupted] in my own tongue.
curzonRA001: Thank you. Can you please confirm that you’ve had no contact with any other Curzon Labs research assistants from parallel timelines or alternate realities.
$GRAGRAW: I have tasted your name and the pattern of your soul now echoes through mine. Its ring is deliciously new to me. No shadow of yours has yet strung the thread of their fate across my path.
curzonRA001: Thank you. I need to inform you that Curzon Labs is a working laboratory and an unsuitable environment for pets, children, or other dependents. Is this likely to make participating in our study a challenge for you.
$GRAGRAW: My spawn will fend for themselves in my absence. Those that perish will become fodder for the survivors.
curzonRA001: Thank you. Finally, and I appreciate you might not know this for certain, but is standard medical lab equipment like electrodes, finger clips, EEG caps, and so on likely to survive contact with your form.
$GRAGRAW: Immaterial.
curzonRA001: Could you clarify that for me.
$GRAGRAW: I will not be chained to base matter. I, the mercurial [redacted], cannot be encompassed, will not be bound or made manifest, refuse to fold away the diverse leaves of my multiplicitous being and crush all that I am into a mere five dimensions.
curzonRA001: I’m afraid physical manifestation is fairly crucial–
$GRAGRAW: Let us amend the terms proposed. Your soul sings to me of its truest desire–
curzonRA001: It’s just that some of the testing we need to do involves attaching–
$GRAGRAW: Exempt me, the munificent [redacted], from this torture, and that desire I will grant.
curzonRA001: So manifesting physically hurts you. It would cause you pain.
$GRAGRAW: It is a constant amputation. A peristalsis of frozen needles and shattering glass flowers. It razes.
curzonRA001: In that case, no amendment of terms, no recompense required, I can note that exemption on your intake form and you won’t be asked to manifest as part of your visit. If it’s to spare you agony as defined by the Institutional Review Board here, then it counts as a reasonable accommodation.
$GRAGRAW: You would spare me pain.
curzonRA001: It’s just a standard protocol we have here that I’m empowered to activate.
$GRAGRAW: And you exercise that power on behalf of a being such as myself.
curzonRA001: The nature of your being has no bearing on your eligibility for reasonable accommodations. And don’t tell anyone I said this, but we’re hurting a little bit for new participants at the moment. You’re the one doing us the favour, really.
$GRAGRAW: Nonsense [distortion/volume peak] actions this day, mortal, have earned you a boon. Name that it is which you desire.
curzonRA001: Weren’t you saying my soul already sang it to you.
$GRAGRAW: The mercurial [redacted] is known on occasion to exaggerate when it may improve a negotiating position. Yet your soul does sing a bitter truth I taste. Speak it now.
curzonRA001: This study is a trap and I want to get out of it even if that means breaking it open. I believe it would be best for me and best for the study. We’ve been floundering from the start and my involvement has made it worse instead of better. A good research assistant follows protocol. I’ve introduced confounding factors to the dataset. It’s a lab joke, so old it’s unfunny, that studies like this would be easier if we didn’t have to deal with the participants. But the participants aren’t the problem. Research would be more pure without the researchers. We’re the reason labs and studies need protocol, to stop us tainting the science, because without strict rules we would, we will, we can’t help it, we’re human, we’re biased, imperfect, messy, not suited for objectivity. This study needs results and it would get better results without me in the equation.
$GRAGRAW: You do not wish to witness.
curzonRA001: I wish not to observe. Observation affects the outcome.
$GRAGRAW: You do not wish to experience epiphany.
curzonRA001: I do, and that makes me a poor scientist.
$GRAGRAW: So will it be.
Can I trust data if I don’t know for certain how we acquired it?
This is why I need your help puzzling out whether this is a time travel thing or another thing. Did I travel instantaneously from the end of that phone conversation to today? Or was I here for those two months, working on the study, but now I don’t remember it?
Because – and I don’t want to jinx it – the findings from the past two months are really promising. After nearly a year of inconclusive analyses, clear correlations are now emerging. Clear enough to base a solid grant proposal on.
The audit trail is watertight. Suspiciously so. Have any of you ever known everything to go precisely according to protocol for two full months? Does anyone know a way to tell forged data and paperwork from the real thing?
I should be celebrating. I want to celebrate. The models are telling me we’re closing in on a discovery. But maybe it’s just telling me what I want to hear.
Camera Obscura is an actual play of Outliers, a single-player journalling game by Samantha Leigh, based on The Wretched by Chris Bissette, and published by the Far Horizons Co-Op.
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