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Mm-hm.

[The reaction didn't surprise her. She knew the barge populace had seen worse. Still, it's best that people know and have the chance to make their own decisions. Being forthright is its own kind of power.]

No one has. It's still better that people know. I shared this so nothing would come as a surprise to people. [She spreads her hands, shrugs.] Since we're speaking, I wanted you to know also.

[No one can use secrets against you if you don't have any.]

You made the right call. There are floods here that broadcast selected memories from your past onto the network. That might not have gone over as well, if someone who'd gotten to know you wasn't expecting it. Public confessions, on the other hand, tend to get you support.

[It was a shrewd move, and Ford respects it.]

[Ironic amusement touches her face.]

Actually, memories were getting splashed around at the time. Text excerpts... drawn sequences... video...

[She was very lucky friendlies found the bad bits. It became clear then that Hange needed to beat the barge to the punch.]

Ah. I missed that one -- I was off the Barge at the time. I decided when I came back that I wouldn't look. No one in those memories agreed to let them be shared, so what right did I have to go through them?

All the excerpts seem to have disappeared now. It's a hell of a way to get to know people.

Personally, I've given up on having secrets. All the worst parts of my past have already been put on display, and I'm convinced that if I tried to keep anything under wraps that could cause me trouble, it would just come out at the most dramatic possible moment.

So, I just try not to give the floods the opportunity!

Controlling your release of information rather than letting it come out on its own is generally good policy... I sort of got the idea that all things would be shaken loose here eventually. [Not that she hasn't kept some things private. It's less that they're such awful secrets, and more that she's not ready to start talking them yet - Hange has years of processing she's put off for simple lack of time.]

It's still an improvement on home for me. If I can pull this off it stands to protect a lot of people.

If the Admiral had brought me on as a warden by telling me this place was the only way to stop Weirdmageddon, destroy Bill, and save my niece and nephew, I'd probably have the same priorities.

[He gets it, he's not gonna "ok warden" Hange over a world-saving deal.]

It might have made this place easier to stand, if I was doing it for them. But I'd still have seen myself as the hero of the story then, and I'd be much more insufferable than I am now.

[He offers a weak smile. Ha ha, he's still difficult to be around, and he knows it. But past Ford was worse. Past him is an asshole.]

To succeed as a warden here, you probably have to invest in them. You probably have to love them. It's a job that predicated on caring about them and, probably, on being kind to them.

What if it were a job that called on you to torture them? What if to save my people I had to hurt and mutilate the inmates here?

[That's one philosophy, and one he's heard from Jon as well. It's a nice one, but Ford's not sold on that being part of the design of the system. If it were, there'd be safeguards against things like that one warden he's heard about using fear gas on inmates for kicks. Ford's real glad he missed that guy.]

I was hurt and mutilated plenty already without that warden requirement. What are you asking me? If I'd have stayed on as a warden if the job description involved torture, even if I thought it would save my world?

Well, because some wardens did it, should we all indulge in it? I realize that might not be a job standard around here, but I want to be good at this and I want to do the job well and treat these people as well as I reasonably can.

[It's very important that she impress this mission in herself. Hange knows she can be shady. She has to commit to doing her best to be the best or else she might be... the worst.]

I wasn't asking that, but now that you put the question that way, sure, I am.

No, I really couldn't tell what you wanted to know. I'm not the best at reading subtle social nuances, a fact that has gotten me punched and shouted at on more than one occasion.

I'll be blunt then. [In general, she means. Hange stares at him with her single dark eye and then waves a hand, dismissing the debate.]

There's no point in arguing it, really. You're still here, which means that you have your reasons in spite of how much you might dislike it, right?

I'd appreciate that.

And, yes -- aside from feeling like I should do something to help out around here, I have a much more compelling reason to stay. I can't go home.

Why not?

Because time stops shortly after I died.

... Why... is that?

[Is he some kind of nutty time person?]

Because my world turned out to be a pocket dimension, of sorts. I met the man who created it when Bill and I tried to reach the Authority. It doesn't go on past that summer. There's...no more.

[Turns out, this just massively confuses her. The barge has thrown in some serious outside context problems so far.]

What...? How can that be true?

....do you come from a world with computer simulations?

[With a short chuckle,] Electricity isn't even commonly used yet, so...

.....ah, but you've used the Enclosure. That'll work.

Okay, so think of it like this. Think about what would happen if you made a person inside the Enclosure. You program in a history, knowledge, you build a world around them. You gave them a family. You tell their story. They feel like they'd lived out a whole lifetime, but really, it's only been as long as you've had the program running. What happens to them when you shut it off, and the program ends?

Of course, there's a record of the program inside the Enclosure's memory banks. Anyone who wants to can replay it, and it'll all go exactly the same as it did when the programmer designed it. But that's not the same as having a future, is it?

But you're here. How can you be like one of those people in here? [They are very real, unnervingly so, full of all the character, tics, courage, cowardice, charm, and personality she'd expect out of a real human.

A "real" human.]

You're... [A frustrated gesture with her hands.] ... here.

Bill and I did reach a higher dimension, Hange. Just...it was only higher compared to our dimension. Not the Barge.

[He reaches down and draws a square in the dirt.]

It's like if you, your world, and all the worlds the people here come from all have three dimensions. But Bill and I only had two. So, if I'm this square, you can see me, but I can't see you. And it's very easy --

[He scoops up a handful of dirt and rocks.]

-- to change things around me --

[He lets the dirt fall from his hand in a circle around the square. If it were a being that could move on its own power, it would be trapped.]

-- without me ever seeing why.

[He dusts off his hands.]

The Admiral has the capability to reach into the dimension Bill and I came from and bring people out of it. Take them into this one. Make them three-dimensional.

[Get it? Because he's a traditionally-animated cartoon?]

Edited 2019-12-04 03:22 (UTC)

[Silently wrestling it with an uncommonly long time (for her), Hange rubs her forehead and works to grasp the idea.]

Bill has alluded to this kind of thing before... keeping more of his body in a higher dimension, having eyes in a higher dimension...

[This is so frustrating!!! Her home could be so much further along, Hange could have a better platform to understand and explore this stuff, if scientific and technological process hadn't been repressed for literal decades. And here she is, racing to catch up to ideas that are kid stuff to some of the scientific-minded people here.]

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