#ive finally taken a painkiller a couple minutes ago so hopefully.....

[autism-corner]

hi id like to sleep now <3

[loftyexecutor]

somnium vidisse se dicat in extremis orbis terrarum - 3

Chapter; 3 Rating; T+ WC; 1656 TWs; medical things, needles Pairing; AddElsAin [transform] AU; modern/dreamsharing scifi Summary; Being the best in the industry had its perks. Herrscher’s name was known far and wide, work offers coming in left and right, extort this, extort that. But that still didn’t stop his boyfriend from getting too tangled up in one of his dreams and switching places with the shade in his head. The shade that he had offered to extort ages ago. Fuck, this is a mess. Notes; heres the joke okay please laugh

illustrated by @declawedcat​♥

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Herrsch stood with his back to the group, scribbling onto the whiteboard that he'd pulled out. Because what good lab didn't have a whiteboard on hand? He’d felt bad about erasing Dox’s latest theory, but… well.

"Morphy, you will be our anchor in layer one," he said. She was the most experienced architect of them all, maybe save Sariel, but he needed Sariel inside the dream itself. "Do you have a stable dreamscape on hand?"

Morphy laughed, like twinkling bells, though her eyes were set and determined. "When do I not? I think you'll like it, I was in the middle of showing it off before I was so crudely taken away from my exposeé."

If he didn't know she was joking, Herrsch would have felt bad.

"Glad to hear it. You will keep Conwell as a failsafe, in case anyone needs to be booted." Hopefully they wouldn't. Hope was all he had. "Immo is already anchored in layer two. He… shouldn't be on layer three. We will recon, Laby, you will be the anchor in layer two if he's not there. Otherwise, you are anchoring layer three."

Laby kicked out with a leg, throwing her arms up into the air. Twilight barely held her stable. "Laby will tell Nisha, we will be the best anchor! Pinky promise!"

And because Herrsch wasn't an asshole, he held out his own pinky to twine with hers. The brilliant smile he got as a reward was almost enough to convince him everything was fine.

"Nova, me and you will act as the extractors. Queen and… Iblis and Anular will stabilize the dream if it starts falling apart. Sariel and Prime will be the inside architects. Make sure not to alter too much."

He got a couple nods back. He wasn't used to being the one in charge of large operations, that had usually been either Immo or Nova, back when they had all been part of the DDTP. It made him grateful that he knew these people, knew their ins and outs, what made them tick. Dreaming with more than four people made things imbalanced, so much more prone to going awry.

But they've worked together before.

"Centurion, Shakti, you're on outside duty. Do what you know best."

"You flatterer," Shakti laughed, and he didn't miss the pointed look Queen shot him, or the way Shakti reached over to wind an arm around her shoulders.

"Dox will be our layering overwatch. We can pull him out when Morphy establishes her anchor.” 

He turned to the whiteboard. Now, how the hell does he explain his mess of a timeline and arrows going anywhere in something of a comprehensible fashion?

"Laby was thinking." All eyes turned to the girl. She was lucky Twilight didn't seem to mind her kicking, because the way her legs swung was almost violent at this point. "Now that we are a team again, shouldn't we have a name? Like um… the Els search party!"

"Laby," Prime started softly, "we aren't… looking for El— Immo. We are just going to grab him."

"But Herrsch just said he didn't know if Els was on the second or third layer! That makes us a search party! And ‘Immo search party’ doesn’t roll off the tongue!"

"La—"

"That's fine," Herrsch said, shaking his head in the general direction of Prime. “Would you like to be called the Els search party, Laby?”

“Yes!”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The dream is crumbling,” Conwell pointed out, watching one of the floating cubes jerk in mid-air, stutter, and fall to the ground where it crumbled into sparkling dust.

Dox made a noncommittal noise, fingers gripping the edge of the cube he sat on, bobbing gently up and down. It still seemed solid enough. “I was never the best choice for an anchor. If it comes too close, I will have to boot us.”

“Would it not be easier to rewind the dream itself?”

“No, rewinding at this point would just speed up the process.”

Conwell hummed in acquiescence, turning back to his cube-watching. Maybe it would have been better to let Shakti hold him until they were ready. Her dream at least had people in them, constructs to populate it. Here, they only had the cubes, and each other. And Dox was about as good a conversation partner as one of the mute cubes, if he were honest, which he wasn’t, thank you very much.

Dox had spent much of his time in this place. If he were alone, the dream wouldn’t crumble, or at the very least, it would take much longer for it to start. Hopping from layer to layer of the same dream somehow made it more stable. Dox had a few hypotheses for why that was, but nothing concrete yet.

He looked down at his phone. Notifications littered the screen, constantly moving to and fro, still unreadable, but the time now read 91:67. Yes, it seemed the dream was truly collapsing in on itself, if even the analog clock turned into a digital and read something like that. 

The time was running out.

"Well, the grass isn't getting any greener," he mumbled, looking down at the decidedly blue grass. "Let me boot us ou—"

He didn't get the chance to finish his sentence. An earthquake shook the ground under them; his cube decided to give out and tumble to the ground, shattering under him and leaving Dox to sprawl on stone, because of course it would bleed through the grass right then. Of course.

At least he wouldn't carry any bruises out of the dream.

“It seems we are just in time.”

Dox looked up to see Herrsch standing in the middle of the endless field, offering a hand that he graciously took to pull himself up. “Everything set up?”

“Thankfully.” Herrsch hesitated for but a moment. “The whole of DDT team came together.”

Dox’s brows did an impressive dance as bewilderment, gratitude, enlightenment, annoyance and resignation flashed across his features. “Even her?”

“Yes. She will just be a backup architect, to keep Immo’s dream from, well…” Herrsch looked around at all the falling cubes, like oversized comets crashing to the ground.

Dox scoffed. “Point taken. I had just hoped not to work with Sariel again.”

Dox’s old crush on Sariel was no secret to anyone, and neither was the borderline-rude way she turned him down and the unspoken animosity between them. “It’s for Immo,” was all Herrsch could say, and it seemed to simultaneously placate and frustrate Dox further.

“I know, I know! Let’s get it over with.”

Herrsch didn’t expect the way Dox’s foot shot out to kick his ankle out, even though he should have. He didn’t have enough time to make a peep before he crashed to the ground and woke up.

Dox turned to Conwell, who was pointedly pretending not to look their way. Dox’s lips curled up.

“Time to go, old man. Want me to trip you, too?”

Conwell mirrored his smile, somber. “No, that won’t be necessary.”

Dox’s smile stayed as a cube changed its trajectory of fall and crashed so close behind Conwell it made his cloak billow. The shade jumped, turned his head halfway, and then he was gone.

Left alone in his dream, Dox spent a minute more watching as it repaired itself, cubes righting themselves, continuing their lazy way across the horizon, the grass that no longer had traces of stone underneath, the sky that twinkled with far-away lights, endless and bottomless around the wide grass pathway winding off into the distance.

Maybe he will add something to this dream, make the cubes more detailed, some gilded edges or something. Maybe a couple of buildings, so they would finally have something to explore instead of standing around, to show off to Immo when he’s back to being himself.

Maybe. When he was sure it wouldn’t collapse so easily.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dox awoke to a room full of people, hectically trying to move dream chairs into some sensible shape to fit into the lab, checking resources, hooking up extra equipment and… was Laby throwing paper balls at people?

Fuck, he missed these guys.

He opened his mouth to announce himself, but found his throat dry as a desert. He didn’t want to unhook himself from the ADSSU, no point since they’d be going back in in just a few moments, so he just knocked on the armrest with his free hand.

It grabbed Centurion’s attention, who grinned widely.

“Long time no see, Dox,” he greeted. His smile fell somewhat at Dox’s prolonged silence, but he understood once he nodded his head towards the movable trolley housing plethora of extra needles, IV tubes, painkillers, and, most importantly, bottled water on the bottom.

He handed Dox one of those, and Dox gratefully took it, gulping down no less than half of it in one go. “Fuck,” he croaked, “That’s a little better. Thanks, Centurion.”

“Anytime. Want us to lower your dosage?”

“No, I’ll get booted if my levels drop even a little. We’ll be going in soon anyways, right?”

“Yeah, as soon as everyone’s settled in. Glad I brought the extra chairs, haha. Morphy is already in, building up her dreamscape. You could probably join, since you’re doped up. Which, no judgement, but I have to point out— how the fuck are you still alive?”

Dox laughed, head thrown back. Which he instantly regretted, as it made another headache spike in his head. “I’m one tough motherfucker to kill,” he said, squeezing his eyes closed and feeling like the polar opposite of what he had just said. One of these days, a headache would do him in. His tombstone would read ‘Died due to a head cave-in. RIP’. What a way to go.

Centurion placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed for a second before upping the IV and plugging his cables into the mainframe of the ADSSU. “Keep it that way.”

[cosmosogler]

hnnnnnnnnnnnghhhhhhhhhhhh

i woke up on time but i didn’t want to do anything so i ended up getting out of the shower late. and then eating breakfast late. i was hungry, and i knew i had to teach for four hours straight, so i made four waffles instead of two. and a pbj, and the rest of my lunch, in the last 5 minutes before i left instead of like 15.

i biked to campus pretty fast... i got to class 1 minute before it started. i did my lecture and stuff and tried to be a lot more active with the matter model. 

they asked another question that stumped me and i’m embarrassed because my notes were wrong too and i had to correct them when i figured it out. i’m embarrassed because it’s a basic physics newton’s laws sort of thing.

i was hung up on why the force on the sensor and the frictional force are always equal even when the block the sensor is attached to is accelerating. i looked up the horse and cart problem and understood it way better... two hours after the students had asked and the new section had started.

it really rustles my jimmies that i can’t make the three sections of exactly equal quality. i feel like i let my students down when i can’t very well explain a concept to them specifically, but i can to the next group!!!

suzanne mentioned today that she has a lot of trouble with basic stuff too, along with jennica, just because we haven’t taken the classes in forever. i did apologize to the students while trying to answer the question- i said i’d been working with energy for so long that forces didn’t really mean anything any more. we don’t even work with any numbers in class basically.

i was so exhausted afterward but i only had a five minute lunch break to shove the entire pbj in my mouth before i had to head over for my psychiatry appointment. i let the doctor prompt me on which information she wanted, but i did have a list of things to talk about in my life in chronological order to keep me on topic. i think it was a productive meeting since i kept it kind of, more organized than if i was just rambling about my childhood for an hour and a half, you know? 

she raised her eyebrows a couple times... especially at the stuff leading up to and just after my heart surgery. i don’t know if i’m too focused on the negatives or what but i really just remember having a pretty bad time social life wise. 

i know one family did come to visit me in the hospital- actually it was a student i didn’t spend a lot of time with. joey. he and his family came to bring me a card and hang out in the common area for a few minutes to see how i was doing. i was hooked up to my iv and i think i had just gotten the drainage tube out so i was on some strong painkillers. mom must have been talking to them. i fell asleep in the wheelchair.

it was too much i guess. the painkillers on top of the effort of keeping up with a conversation while my insides were still putting themselves back in place after getting a garden hose yanked out of my entire chest cavity.

i guess some people care more than they let on. and some people care less. he didn’t really do much to help me out with the bullying that doubled down after i got back. i still reflexively punch people that try to tickle or touch my nerve-damaged side. maybe his parents were more worried than he was. i dunno. it was 15 years ago.

now that i think about it... what the doctor said i should have had, at the hospital and going back to school afterward... i’m really upset. at the time i’d blinked and smiled and said “none of that ever occurred to me.” 

but now i’m really sad. knowing what i didn’t have that should have been provided, i guess. i told her the hospital really was very busy, and that my parents were basically always around so they must have thought i was covered. and i had no idea the school was supposed to, i guess, assign some kind of buddy to make sure i could get around okay? 

i’ve already talked about the wheelchair. 

near the end she said “it sounds like no one’s really been there to support you.” i said “yes.” and showed her my teeth. it wasn’t really a smile. i think she could tell though. wasn’t foolin no one.

she made sure my meds were refilled for the next month. i talked about my grandparents too. on glenn’s side. how nice they were to me. i can’t say how they treated everyone, or even glenn and my uncle don, but the people who attended grandma pearl’s funeral had only the most glowing, actually kind of really sincerely fond memories.

uncle don seems to have had a complicated relationship with his parents. but he loved them enough to take care of them for a very long time after they got old. glenn didn’t. i don’t think i should ask what happened. i know parenting is hard and there’s probably not a perfect way to do it. but there’s... functional ways to do it. and i hope that they were functional parents.

anyway i caught the bus back to the physics building and had sooo much trouble sitting down to actually study. i didn’t want to open anything or even get out my notebook to try some practice problems. i sent danielle at the drc a semi-long email about my academic progress, since i had that midterm on tuesday, and some concerns about the upcoming friday test.

after that i strongarmed jennica into getting dinner with me. we went to subway. she didn’t actually want anything but i figured some exercise might help her settle down, and also it gave suzanne a small break. entropy can get contagious and jennica had been stopping her to look at this or that dress for several minutes. and i appreciated the company. going to subway alone when i’m so exhausted is super awkward. at least with jennica there if i couldn’t make a decision quickly enough i could smile apologetically at the lady behind the counter and say “sorry, i’m hella tired.” and jennica would laugh and the moment would continue.

it ended up not helping jennica that much but it did help me to get some food. 

i think this was after i realized mom never put the 900 dollars back into my bank account. i talked seriously with jennica and taylor about some bank options and how to switch my direct deposit and stuff. they said it’s super easy. i asked one of them to go with me on saturday to make sure i get a good deal. taylor said that wouldn’t be a risk but jennica told me a couple things to watch out for and i think she also agreed to go with me but i’m not 100% sure on that.

anyway, after i ate i was in a much better mood. not a good mood, but a less bad one. i did finally get out my notebook and start... actually taking notes on the textbook. i didn’t get very far at all- i was interrupted- but i felt like it was working for me a little bit. i was trying to take the equations, and finding the main ideas for how we interpret those equations, and then writing that down in my own words. it’s been four hours and i still remember the difference between poisson’s equation and laplace’s equation- even though laplace is just a special case of poisson. i think, if i can identify the most important ideas behind the main equations given in the text, i can write that down and that will help me remember what the hell green’s theorem is or whatever next time it comes up on a test.

i also tried something new after i was interrupted. suzanne had gone to talk about the class with one of the undergrads in the same section and he allowed me to sit in on the session while we worked through practice problems covered in class. 

suzanne made it so much easier though.

the new thing i tried is that i tried to basically repeat what suzanne was saying but in my own words. and i asked questions about what each variable *was*. and if i felt i didn’t understand it well enough i said it again a different way. 

i couldn’t tell if it was slowing her and john down or not. i tried to pull back on the goofs at least. i also talked to john a little bit just trying to identify what it is about the professor’s lectures that has me so lost. and i figured it out!

he takes these practice problems from the book but then generalizes them to include all cases. this turns his math into monstrous entire-blackboard-spanning messes of variables and summations. and he skips important logic steps so it looks even more like a wall of chalk.

suzanne walked us through the simplest cases and then explained how some parts could be expanded to account for harder scenarios. i found that SUPER helpful because it let me point out myself where something could be made more complicated. 

i have a lot of trouble with lectures, but conversations are so much easier. i don’t necessarily remember exact words or phrases but the idea sticks with me a little better. maybe it’s an active listening thing? or a participation thing. i had a good time in discussion-based classes back at villanova too.

i like john though. i hope he likes me enough to let me intrude on his tutoring time again. i felt bad that i was explaining really basic concepts- not to him, but to myself. but he seemed to react as if i was kind of, splainin at him about how image charges worked. 

really it was because i had to remind myself a couple times that they are not actual charges that appear in a grounded plane as a response to a real charge. they are a math thing we use because it’s convenient.

hopefully that helps tomorrow on the test! i think the discussions are starting to help a little more... now that i’m getting less anxious about not getting stuff right away. i mean taylor and jennica give me Looks, sometimes, when i ask for a definition i should probably know by now. i get turned around by the notation kind of easily though, especially when i’m trying to identify the point where i stopped understanding the question. but if Looks are the worst they can do, well, i’ve had worse happen. in this department! with the e&m professor. 

in the conservatory, with a knife.

dated jokes are the best.

anyway i think that is also going to be my good thing about myself for today because i am already running kind of late since mom called and wanted to chat for 10 minutes while i was trying to write. i got my test tomorrow. so i will try to rest now.