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[WHY WOULD YOU SAY IT THAT WAY IN YOUR POST THEN, FORD.

OK. Bill also claimed to not be trying to escape, they were trying to get to the Authority, instead. This is a good thing, because Bill has killed so many planets he's developed ways he likes doing it, and he has to graduate, or he has to die, no third option.

These two aren't reliable regarding their own activities though. Trusting their word on this blindly would be like asking Hange if she were trying to overthrow the king, when she was trying to overthrow the king. "Oh, no, of course not! I'm not up to anything rebellious or seditious! I'm a loyal subject of his royal highness, protector of humanity!"

Still, she wants to hear Ford's accounting of it.]

What was?

For me, it was trying to reach the beings I believe are controlling the ship. For Bill, it was that and killing his creator.

[Hange reaches over and tops off her empty teacup while she thinks this over.]

And then what?

That would depend on how they were controlling us.

You see, I made several mistakes during the formulation of this plan. One of them was assuming that physical trauma was the only thing that needed to be prevented, and that everyone could control their imaginations. Another was not bringing my warden in on the plan from the beginning. But the most fundamental mistake I made, the one that doomed the operation from the beginning, was allowing Bill to convince me that his creator and the Authority were in the same world, exercising the same kind of control over us.

Bill isn't usually wrong. In my world, he was always right! He knew everything, saw everything, understood the principles that held the universe together. He didn't just know that mass has gravity, he knew why.

He'd met the guy who wrote him. And there were a lot of things about the Barge that his reasoning explained. So, I believed him.

But when all this succeeded, what came next? When I heard about this, I wondered if you didn't know how dangerous he is, or if you knew and didn't care. That doesn't seem to follow with how you're behaving here. Even so, how could you risk turning him loose on the universe?

Believe me, I'd considered that.

Here's the situation as I saw it.

I knew that getting to his creator, and to anyone else who tried to control him, was Bill's ultimate goal. He'd wait as long as it took to get into that universe, and he's very old, and very patient. As long as Bill didn't disappear from the ship, he could wait millennia, until all the inmates and wardens who remembered he was an evil mastermind were gone, and try again when the time was right.

And I believed he would get to that world, with or without my help. If he made it there, without anyone to stop him, it would be a massacre.

So, when I found the wormhole he'd been keeping in his cabin and he asked me to be his partner, I had to make a choice. If I reported him to the wardens and confiscated his materials and calculations, he'd only try again after I was gone. But if I escaped with him, either he would still be under the control of the Admiral, in which case the inmate power cap would still be in effect, or he would be outside of the Barge's influence, and free of the resurrection mechanic. I was reasonably sure I could get close enough, and I'd built a weapon that could do it months before. I could control him or kill him, and either way, he'd lose.

It was a stupid plan. I never succeed when I try to go it alone. I was risking a world on getting the chance to get a shot, and deep down I knew it. But I didn't see another way.

Until, of course, Bill told me the second half of his plan. A few weeks before the portal was ready, he explained to me that he needed me to cast a spell: one that would create a dome, hundreds of miles across, that would make anything that anyone imagined inside of it real.

Of course, I could imagine immediately the kind of chaos this could cause. I'd seen it already in my own world! People would be murdered by their own nightmares. I didn't want to do it.

But here I had a choice again. Go to the wardens, stop this plan, and wait for Bill to strike again, this time without being involved. Or, I could take the teeth out of the plan he had, get us both to the Authority's dimension, and free the Barge from their control without any bloodshed.

It meant I wasn't gambling on my own ability to kill Bill Cipher, something I'd been trying and failing to do for thirty years.

[No. Really. He gets how dumb that was.]

So, here's what I did. I agreed to cast the spell on two conditions: one, that Bill swore not to harm anyone, inside or outside the bubble, who wasn't his creator or the Authority, and two, that we modified the spell so that no one inside of it would experience physical harm.

[Ford's quiet a moment.]

It wasn't a perfect solution, but I did my best with what I had. I still believe, to this day, that if I had reported him, he would have made it to that world and thousands of people would be dead. I also still think the Authority has a lot of things to answer for, and one day, I'd like to meet them on their level and give them a piece of my mind.

[Is the flashback over yet? Shame you can't program the Enclosure so that your monologue is a voiceover.]

[God this is a lot of information and it all sounds like... such a mess.

Hange feels easier hearing it though. At least this man, who's made it to wardenhood now, wasn't Bill Cipher's qualmless ally. It all still sounds so, so precarious, but it's better than Ford wanting to help him, or simply not caring about the fates of the vulnerable mortals in whatever universe they'd pop out in.

Scouts like Hange are team players by training and necessity though. You couldn't have looped some discrete wardens in, Ford...?

What's done is done, anyway.]

At least you admit to the errors in judgment you made. [Hange sounds... calmed.] I can see the situation must have been complex. [Also the level of Bill-related anxiety indicated by the idea of Bill waiting the barge out, over the course of thousands of years... that's a Big Fear. Yikes.]

Who are the authority? I'm curious about them but hardly anyone seems to have been around here when this tub ran into them. I heard the Admiral made off with the boat...

[Bill told her this actually, and Hange has been wondering pretty much since they talked about it if he just wound her up and sent her off to info-gather. It seemed very plausible, and more plausible now; it's all made worse by the fact that Hange is genuinely very interested in the Authority and who they are and what they can do and what the whole thing implies about the actual superstructure of the universe that most people never get to see or poke at.]

[Right? Bill waiting for an entire generation to die off so that he can begin his plans again is terrifying, and something Bill has absolutely done before.]

I spoke with them, when we went to the Bargeyard. The Admiral had waited too long to bring the Barge in for maintenance, so they hauled us in for repairs. It was an interesting place, an intersection of people and places from all sorts of universes, and all around the docks, there were Barges of every kind.

We received a note inviting us to come to a place called the Officer's Lounge to discuss our experiences under the current Admiral. In exchange, the Authority said, they would answer one question -- anything we wanted to know.

They put on a real show getting us there. Enormous doors, cavernous hallways, creeping unstoppable sense of dread -- until finally I was alone inside a great big room, surrounded by distant, shadowy figures. I could feel that they were looking inside of my head, that anything I thought or felt, they would know.

So, I said my piece, I asked my question, and I was out. They didn't seem that impressive to me -- they were surprised by what I asked and had to confer among themselves, which means we're dealing with more than one -- but they did seem extraplanar. That place was their seat of power, somewhere they could do whatever they liked.

I don't know much else about them for sure. But I do know that when Bill spoke with them, they made a reference to a piece of Earth media. So, either they're fans of universes based on my planet, or they're from one.

[He'd thought it was the second, when he and Bill tunneled out of the ship. But now?]

I'm leaning toward the first one. Frankly, I think they're fans of us.

[This is a major paradigm-shattering idea right here.]

Fans of us - what does that mean?

[She doesn’t really... grasp it, not yet. But she understands that it’s important.]

I don't think the Barge is for us, Ms. Hange.

I think we're picked because someone, most likely the Authority, wants to see what each of us will do on a ship like this.

And I think that whoever it is is watching us.

[Hange rubs her forehead, pours more tea for herself.]

Do they make good on deals anyway? — And it’s just Hange, by the way. Sectioner, if you must use a title.

[Hange, got it.]

Oh, the deals are good -- if the Admiral was honest with you. He lets wardens sign on sometimes in exchange for things that were going to happen in the future anyway, without his interference. It's like a game show prize: he has to have something you want to get you to play.

I don’t think that’ll be the case for my deal.

[Hange stares at the waves.]

Whether we’re watched or not, I can’t pass this opportunity up.

I understand that.

It's a complicated situation. Some wardens really don't have another opportunity to make their deals happen. Others come from worlds so terrible that they can't go home without one. A few are here because they believe in helping the people on board, even though the Admiral's corrupt and incompetent. And, of course, there are the ones who are here because they think it's a good time.

[That last bit was said darkly, but Ford's tone is more level as he goes on.]

Idealists and vacationers aside, the Admiral finds people who desperately need something, something worth playing the game for. It's a neat system -- it means that anyone actually trying to change anything has to contend with every person on the Barge who needs it to stay the same.

Edited 2019-11-07 21:47 (UTC)

[She does need it to stay the same. She needs to get a deal. She needs it to work. Her people are at stake, as are the rest of the people in her world if launching the titan attack against them somehow works and the Eldians aren’t crushed by mismatched technological might.

Well, fuck. A lot of things were bad about being part of an upstart fringe group of dreamers, political radicals, would-be heroes, and idealists, but the sense of righteousness that came from being part of that group battling against a superior power sure was nice.]

What did you ask the Authority?

I asked them why the Admiral was called an admiral when he clearly only had one ship.

[Hange

looks at him.]

You what?

He's clearly a captain or a skipper, not an admiral!

[Okay.

Okay Hange has done enough silly, frivolous things in her life and pursued enough nonsense that she can’t judge him... no, she can. She’s judging Ford a little.]

And you could have asked them anything?

It's important to have accurate rank designations if you're going to model your fantastical afterlife fleet after the Earth naval system!!

He just did it for the hat!

... Hahaha! Hahahahaha!

[Ford is going to sit here fuming until she's done laughing, because he still hates this inaccuracy very much.]

Edited 2019-11-07 22:36 (UTC)

Hahaha...

[Okay, she trails off.]

It’s all made up anyhow.

Apparently so. When you're a group of insanely powerful extraplanar beings who can grant any wish you can imagine, I suppose you can call your officers whatever you want.

[if you want to be WRONG.]

[Doing it wrong is just inventing the new right way sometimes!]

Kick Betelgeuse out if he's too intolerable of a houseguest. He won't like it, but it's your quarters and you should feel comfortable and safe there and have privacy.

I think some of the people on this ship have done wrong by him, but he certainly does his part to instigate.

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