caughtinanetwork | It Could Be Worse

I've been laying low since I arrived here, watching you people on the network, learning what I could about this place. I've watched the bubble go crazy with a body swapping curse, watched friends, acquaintances, lovers, enemies find each other after being torn to this new reality. I've watched ad-hoc cross-dimensional families discuss their plans for the evening. I've watched trolls hate flirting, magicians planning, and self described geniuses trapped in some sort of Moriarty and Holmes like mental cat and mouse. Mostly I've watched people go about their lives, their relationships, their hobbies. Very few of you seem to be at all concerned with what this place is, or how it works. So many of you are focused on the here and now. I've learned what I can from passive observation, I think. I have decided it's time to start writing again. It's time for me to do my job and get out there, back on the streets.

My name is Spider Jerusalem, and I am a journalist. I write articles for a living. I write about the things that make us, society as a whole, great. I write about the things that make us pathetic and disgusting and worthless.

I write about The Truth.

One month ago, I was born again.

Not in a religious sense, fuck no. I landed in a strange world, wet, cold and naked. Nothing from the place I came from mattered beyond how it shaped me to enter this one.

The mammals out there in the audience know what I'm talking about.

So here I am, taken from my home in The City, and dropped here in the land where nothing matters. None of the rather serious shit I was dealing with back home has any affect here. None of the banal bullshit going on here will ever have an effect when I go home.

A brand new life.

And what a new life this is! Every need provided for! No hunger, no homelessness, and with a touch of the coral, no disease. We are told that we are effectively immortal here, that we will be brought back less than a week after our death! Is this not liberating? With all worldly needs taken care of, with even death a fear of the past, who can deny the fact that we are free to spend out lives in pursuit of whatever art or entertainment we could want? What an astounding new freedom to live a life solely dedicated to what you want to do without need to work mindlessly to afford menial, petty, mortal things.

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." Sure. This seems like freedom, like paradise. Quite the gilded cage we're in.

Just what will happen if any of you produce offspring in this world-disconnected? What happens to a pregnant woman who gets sent back home on the capricious whim of some scientist, or the coral, or whatever fucking forces are out there controlling all of this?

Threaded | Flat

We aren't staying here for free. Far from it - we're experimental subjects and batteries for the coral.

Everything's reset when you're brought back to your world from Vatheon and you don't remember your time spent here.

I can only assume that if, for example, I aged and was about to have a child...when I'm brought back to my world all of that time and change will be lost. Similarly, the children that already exist would become wards, waiting for their parents to come back, only to find that the coral brought them back as children too if that time comes.

It's a disgusting thought.

Hey, I like that quote. It's a good one.

And it's accurate here, but it's hardly a gilded cage. We KNOW we're here to be sold.

-Well, Sir Spider Jerusalem, in exchange for this new life, we're part of an experiment; as well as giving energy for the Coral to provide the barrier around the city. As for your pregnant woman scenario, I'm told all time is lost from here, so the woman would likely be the age of when she'd left her world, as well as not having her child any longer.-

YOU WATCHED SOME OF US HATEFLIRTING?
WHO?
AS FOR THE REST
1) I HAVE NO CLUE ABOUT THE MECHANICS OF HUMAN PREGNANCY, AND EVEN THE ADULT TROLLS HERE ARE INCAPABLE OF REPRODUCTION WITHOUT A MOTHER GRUB, SO THIS POSSIBILITY IS OUTSIDE THE REALM OF FUCKS FOR ME TO GIVE.
2) FOR A "GILDED CAGE", AND DON'T GET ME WRONG BECAUSE I KNOW IT IS ONE, IT'S STILL BETTER THAN WHAT SOME OF US WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE.
SOME WOULD ONLY HAVE DEATH BACK IN THEIR WORLDS.
AND WHEN WE'RE STUCK HERE FOR MONTHS OR YEARS AT A TIME
I'VE BEEN HERE LIKE AN EARTH YEAR AND A HALF, ALMOST
SETTLING IN AND FORMING A LIFE IS BASICALLY WHAT WE HAVE TO DO.
TRUST ME, I KNOW THERE ARE CHANCES TO FIND SHIT OUT ABOUT THIS PLACE
BUT THE LOCALS ARE TIGHT-LIPPED AS FUCK, THE PEOPLE IN THE KNOW ARE SECRETIVE BASTARDS WHO ONLY HAND OUT THE OCCASIONAL CRUMB OF INFO, AND THE SCIENTISTS ARE AS EVER A COLLECTION OF SHAMELESS COWARDS HIDING OUT WHEREVER THE HELL THEY ARE WHILE THEY RUN THEIR SO-CALLED "EXPERIMENTS".

Text

[text]

Text;

{Text}

[TEXT] so long as you don't mind a late tag, now that I've got my app out of the way