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[The ID reads Clark Kent, as always. Not the right time to try fooling the network yet.]

Sadly, Captain Holiday was put under intensive care not long before I ended up here so I never got to talk to him. But I was hoping some of you might have gotten a chance to contact him before that. If you have, I'd appreciate if you could tell me about your conversations with him.

You don't have to tell me what the conversation was about, I understand a lot of them were confidential. [That word, he hates it. Lois might see it as a sign that she's pulling the right strings but Clark only sees it as a wall he cannot punch or fly over.]

It's really him I'm interested on. If you noticed anything weird in how he behaved, perhaps, or if he was acting completely normal.

[He pauses for a second. And then:]

I'd also be interested in talking with people who've been able to take a look at the Porter, or been in contact with it. I understand it's a privilege to be allowed near it?

Thank you.

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[ He feels bad, anyway. Probably because he's kind of... a disaster. ]

We were the chess pieces, yeah. It was never specific who she was playing against -- or if it was anyone -- for all we knew, she was playing it against herself for the fun of it.

I don't know if she ever planned on telling us, but there was... she sent us places too. Sometimes, it's like she had a goal in mind, and other times it was just that she wanted to see how we'd mess things up.

[Wait hold on what]

When you say she sent you to places do you meant she sent you to other cities? Like the porters?

No. [ That one 'no' is a lot more...emphatic than one would suspect. It's the kind of word that says, very clearly: "I've seen some shit." ]

Alternate universes. Of the City. Heropa was just the last place we were sent to.

[SOMEONE COULD HAVE MENTIONED THAT.]

How often did she do something like that? And you implied sometimes she actually wanted to get something out of it, what was it? Information?

I think it was... every few months? Only near the end, when Vulcanus was... they were there, whenever we showed up. Anyway, she was trying to stop them. She sent us once to a world where everything was water, and once to a place where...

Well, if you think this is bad, you have no idea. Imports were...property in that place.2

Pleasant trips all around, it seems. And it hasn't happened since we got here, has it? At least I haven't heard anyone mention anything like that before, and I think people would remember to warn about something like that.

Did she give you missions or things to do in these trips?

Not since showing up here, no. I think that's a sign that there's something wrong, or different. Then again, she only started doing that in the last year, before we came here. There was a purpose to it.

[ There was a pause. ] She didn't give us...missions exactly. It was clear we had to do something, though. Sometimes it was easier to figure out rather than others. The last one, where we were property... we had to find her sister.

Her sister. That's a common theme as well, I wonder if we'll be seeing sings of them any time soon.

Did you find her?

Shit, I hope we don't. If we see Clotho, then that means that Atropos is far behind and...

[ Not thinking about that. She had, after all, destroyed the world. ] Everyone said they found Clotho, yeah. Eventually they got home. I had been... someone killed me, so I found myself home early.

Could you tell me about that? About Clotho and Atropos. I know the latter appeared as the City got destroyed... at least that's what I was told.

But I'd like to know your version of what happened.

Of when the world ended? Shit.

[ There's a pause, before there's something that sounds like what an ice cream headache would sound like, and then the line's encrypted. It's not that he doesn't trust other people, but... Mitch doesn't like revealing weakness.

But he can trust superman, right? ]

You ever watch a city that you love fall apart around you? It's... it's not pretty. It started with the sun, it went red. [ A pause. ] After that, things cascaded bit by bit. The City started to collapse around us, or really, collapse up around us. Starting with the highest skyscrapers, and then bit by bit, everything started to melt up. I didn't think -- well, I didn't think we were going to make it, honestly.

City Hall, most people went to the sewers, but City Hall was built over subway stations, so we went straight down. We tried to keep people calm, and evacuate where we could, but it wasn't...

It wasn't going to be enough. Not up against that.

And then Atropos came. Have people told you a lot about her?

[Clark swallows.

It's one thing to be told their city was destroyed, to be told they had to be relocated into another world. It's another thing altogether to finally get to know the horror behind it and he tries, he tries his damnest best but his mind can't help but draw certain parallels. 'Not really', he wants to answer. 'But my parents watched the world they loved fall apart around them. Almost entire species did'.]

I can't imagine what something like that must have been like. I'd say I'm sorry but I know that wouldn't solve a thing, so I'll say I'm sorry for making you recall it. You can stop whenever you want.

But no, they haven't. It's not a pleasant thing to talk about after all.

[ Joke's on you, Clark. He already knows. :') ]

It's... alright. It wasn't easy, but... you know, we can't just ignore the ugly realities. My job focuses a lot on that, more often than not. I've gotten used to doing that kind of thing when needed. How else can we prevent it in the future?

[ And really, when every sleeping moment is met with worse, this is nothing. There's a pause. ]

Anyway, after some time, Atropos came. She...swallowed -- I think -- the world. Took it into her, and we were in her... a part of her. It wasn't normal there. You could breathe, but it was obviously still a vacuum. It wasn't normal, and one step could find you flying, and then you could be falling in the next. Lachesis eventually called to us. Atropos saved her too, so I guess sisterly love still applies.

Anyway, once we found her, she... took us away? To here? It was never very clear exactly what happened.

[One day he'll realize that and then he'll feel free to share.

What Mitch's sharing is somehow even worse than what he'd been envisioned. At least if there's war or destruction of some kind you can lash out as you watch the world crumble. But how are you supposed to cope inside nothingness? Inside a void?]

And I'm guessing Atropos hasn't made an appearance since. Which is for the better, of course. But in all of this I find it curious that no one spends much time talking about Clotho. Was she not there?

[ He will literally have an anneurism of joy. ]

Clotho...didn't really seem to be there. From what we could tell, she was the weakest of all of them. If I remember right, I think...she was constructed. She wasn't capable of doing much.

She was... constructed? [The wording makes him frown a bit in confusion.]

Do you mean that she was made? Fabricated?

Yeah. As far as we could tell.

That doesn't mean that she couldn't... find sentience, I suppose.

No, of course not. I've seen enough AIs in my life to know how that works. But it does make me wonder about who made her, and why.

And I'm also wondering if her sisters were also 'made' in some way or another.

We don't know, but it's possible. At least for Lachesis. Atropos...

I don't think so with Atropos. She wasn't so much made as she...came into being around us, you know?

Yes, it did sound like that...

[But there's something off in this whole thing. Clark doesn't to spend too much time making wild guesses about things that he cannot prove, he'd rather focus on something with solid proofs he can investigate. But there's a certain appeal to the story of the sisters and he wants to know where it leads, and what their role is in Lachesis's so called chess games.]

I'm just checking every possible explanation here so feel free to laugh, but could Atropos and the void have been some sort of hallucination?

Good question, but I'm sure. Hallucinations... aren't real. In the end, the injuries and the anxiety, unless they're self-inflicted, are going to fade. There were no signs of self-harm, and I'd have to write off the last 4 years of my life if I'm going off of the idea that it's a hallucination. The City wasn't one, and this isn't, and what happened in-between...

It's just as likely as simply waking up here. Although it's a bit far-fetched, I've stopped writing everything off just because it's impossible.

No, you're definitely right. I was just wondering if it wasn't some kind of trick Lachesis had done to keep you guys playing. It does sound like she's not above doing anything to get us to do what she wants, from what you've told me.

It's hard to make sense out of this whole situation, it's like nothing she does has any real purpose. Or at least not one we can see.

I'd be able to tell. [ Plainly. Clearly. ]

And honestly? I don't think she has one that we can really figure out. She might just be doing it for fun, or she might just be fucking with our heads while manipulating us in a certain direction. I wish I could say which one it was.

Sometimes the easiest way to find out is to let them lead us and see where we end up going. But I'd feel more comfortable with that if we at least knew it'd cause us no harm. She doesn't seem to be violent in nature or anything like that though.

If she's as powerful as everyone makes her to be she could pretty much do anything she wanted to us, and so far we're living pretty comfortably.

She was remarkably hands off, actually.

I think that she still had some limits, most likely. Probably why she didn't do anything like that to us.

Either that, or she didn't care enough.

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Voice; I'm so sorry I'm probably making you have to check super old posts sob

haha it's all good! I remember most of this stuff offhand | encrypted

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