30 KiB
[RT][FF][WIP] r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (Chapter 15)
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Author: u/TK17Studios Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning*
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URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11090259/17/r-Animorphs-The-Reckoning
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Score: 32
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Created: 2016-03-16T08:33:51
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+10] (10 hours later)
I love Marco; he and Jake are, to me, the two best thinkers in the entire group, with Cassie on the way, but lacking the detachment both seem to show at their best. Creating and extinguishing cloned consciousnesses of yourself, essentially doubling your brain power, a multiplication that will only get greater as your perspective shifts and the clone's doesn't, allowing both of you to look from different angles... brutally efficient.
u/TK17Studios [+6] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a minute later)
Also available at: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5627803/chapters/12963046
My Patreon, for those interested: https://www.patreon.com/Sabien
(proceeds going toward the development of a rationality/worldsaving bootcamp for middle and high schoolers, based off the curriculum I wrote and taught for sixth graders and the material I picked up from CFAR/LW/HPMOR/EA/Thinking Fast & Slow)
u/CouteauBleu [+6] We are the Empire. (2 hours later)
Well, that went south faster than a left 4 dead game with my little brother.
Also, hurray for AOO.
u/XerxesPraelor [+6] (20 hours later)
This continues to be the best fic on this sub.
u/Kylinger [+2] (a day later)
Definitely. I loved Animorphs as a kid, and despite how much smarter he's made all the main cast he's still captured their personalities so well.
u/TK17Studios [+1] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
<3
u/Cifems [+5] (a day later)
Haha, all right then. I decided to just lurk after reading it but your pleas and my nostalgic love for the series has pushed me into commenting.
The multiple back-and-forth people-acquiring has me a little lost. Right now I'm handling it the way I do for stories with time-travelling or other complex scenarios - where I'm aware that the author has put a lot more thought into it than I have/am willing to. I'm glossing over the details and focusing more on how the narrative uses it.
Is there much to be gained in discussing plans with a not-very-different past self, when all the objections and points that the 'copy' can raise, you can+probably already have thought of? It doesn't seem worth it, especially with the cost of psychological trauma from watching yourself beg for life.
Which brings up another point: the existential crisis of morph death is slightly unrelatable to me. It's a little better here then last chapter with Jake, when my view is "No harm no foul, Jake Prime isn't coming back, so agonizing over being a copy isn't the best course of action especially with an alien war to win." With Marco 2, I sort of get it, but the scene where he dies... maybe wasn't visceral enough? I'm still relating more to Macro Prime's mindset, where obviously knew this would happen, and it didn't seem to impact him that greatly if he's planning to do it again.
And if I understand your morphing rules correctly, if you get trapped as a nothlit of a morph-capable person, you can still morph? Which is what fakeJake is? Then can't Marco just become a nothlit of himself instead of murdering his copy? Then he'd have two brains in one head all the time, and subsequent self-morphs will result in a doubling of minds each time.
...As I typed that, I realized that the prime brain dies in Z-space somewhere... lol, congratulations, you've made me stop being lazy while reading and actually think through the rules. Oh, I guess this is your mechanic instead of miracle demorph-healing... where you have to commit suicide each time and let an older copy take over... Now that's dark... and I feel dumb, that's what you meant by version control. Huh, I should have realized this with the Jake chapter. Maybe I was too busy thinking "hey, this is different from canon!" to realize the implications of what happened with Jake.
Haha, I guess you can take my rambling as feedback if you want, I had to type out half a dozen paragraphs and organize my thoughts because it wasn't clear to me at first. Might be a failing of my own, and not of the story, to be fair, but I'll leave that up to you to decide.
I just went back to reread and that whole portion gave me problems.
"Six days" - From the point Marco 2 was copied? "One for the memory..." - What memory? "three of us, where right now there were only two" - Why a new copy tomorrow? Is the plan to do it every five days? "My idea. Me—the Marco in between." - Wha...? Who? In between what? Aren't there only two of you?
I know you want concrete suggestions, but never having written anything myself, I don't have anything that I feel would be constructive. I think my complaints so far sound like I'm saying "Just spell everything out for me-!"... but no, that would be really crude.
u/TK17Studios [+4] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
Thank you very much for taking the time to write out your thoughts. Super appreciated!
What I imagined Marco figuring re: past selves was something like "Okay, I've been looking at this plan from the inside for the last few days, and talking myself into thinking it's good and glossing over the flaws. What I'd really like is to share it with somebody who's got a healthy dose of skepticism and an outside perspective, but Jake's been talking it through WITH me and I don't trust Erek or Ax and I don't respect Cassie or Rachel or Garrett as rational thinkers. Hmmm. Man. You know who I do trust? Myself. Like, if I wasn't already primed/anchored on the plan as it currently exists ..."
I think Marco's view on "murdering" his past self was basically "this sucks, and it is a price I'm willing to pay; I'm willing to wake up as the copy, and die, but this first time took me sort of by surprise, and I'm not going to flinch away from the horror of it or gloss over it; I'm going to stay with him/me through the whole thing, and listen to the fear, and take the abuse, because if I'm willing to murder myself then I should at least admit that's what I'm doing and ACTUALLY HANDLE it, rather than plugging my ears and going 'lalalalalala'."
... yeah, you lose morphing power when you go nothlit (you also lose earplugs; Jake no longer has them, and is as vulnerable as Garrett). They used the blue box to give Jake2 his morphing power back (and he immediately used it to reacquire himself, which was a subtle detail from the previous chapter—when Garrett was going to go Yeerk and infest Jake2, Jake2 was actually in his new morph armor (as evidenced by his use of private thought speak in human form), just in case Garrett turned out to be untrustworthy or something else went disastrously wrong).
Marco thought up the numbers scheme (because he's read Ender's Game, of course) to differentiate self-morphs. Then he counted doubles up to the first one he couldn't just immediately figure in his head, and memorized it. Then he spent a day thinking about that answer, so that the number would get encoded into long term memory/become a part of the physical structure of his brain. Then he had Rachel acquire him and morph him, and he acquired himself back, storing the copy. The plan is for him to memorize a new power of two every week, and reacquire himself every week. I haven't yet decided whether he's bugging everyone else to do this, too, or is quietly doing it on his own, with Rachel's uncritical unthinking help. Basically, he doesn't want amnesia lasting more than a week, if he has to do what Jake did and refresh his body.
"The Marco in between" was in reference to the fact that there were, at that point, two copies (his original morph armor, and his new, "now I know what's going on" updated saved version). Once Marco Prime does another save-game, there'll be three.
Thanks again for your thoughts. I'm extremely grateful.
u/DCarrier [+4] (14 hours later)
What was the thing about not having the cube? I don't remember them losing it. Did I miss a chapter?
We're on Chapter 17: Chapter 15. I like how fanfiction.net insists on doing its own numbering.
u/TexasJefferson [+4] (16 hours later)
I don't recall them losing access so my best guess is that it's with Tobias. But then taking your super-weapon to the military is an obviously bad idea for first contact, so I'm not sure what he's doing with it (unless he's recruiting himself instead of finding adult authorities to trust).
u/CouteauBleu [+2] We are the Empire. (a day later)
Maybe it's a bad idea, but it's not an obvious one, because I don't see why he shouldn't do it.
u/TexasJefferson [+5] (a day later)
They don't really know to what extent the rest of the Earth is infested. We know that this is the spear head of the invasion, and they have some evidence for that, but no where near enough to be confident that wherever Tobias heads will be safe.
Tobias also runs some risk of being captured by not-military-infesting Yeerks. There needs to be a very solid reason to massively increase the impact of that risk by putting the device in danger as well.
The (both typically overcautious and reasonably sane sides of the) military reaction will view the Animorphs & friends as a large, if a little less pressing, threat. Perfect imitation, just like the Yeerks, is a huge security hole in all current military and political systems. Giving the military the device and sufficient knowledge immediately completely undercuts the Animorphs ability to keep themselves relevant long enough to prove their worth and amenability to cooperation.
Handing over the device means handing over the primary means to effectively combat the Yeerks. The semi-reasonable teenagers are completely out of their depths, sure, but trusting the massive bureaucracy with an unexpected threat that must be handled quickly and correctly doesn't sound like a clear path to victory either. Best to keep the cards that would enable you to still have a chance close to your vest.
If the military controls the device they won't, after the implications hit, just be using it in the fight against the Yeerks.
For this to go well, Tobias should emulate Elfangor. Presenting himself as a stranded alien general with only a handful of surviving guerrillas willing to help puts the Animorphs and the war in a much better position than the truth.
u/TK17Studios [+2] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
u/TK17Studios [+5] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
In Which The Author, Desperate For Detailed Feedback, Resorts To Shameful Begging.
u/callmebrotherg [+6] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 days later)
o.0
I don't know why, but this kicked off a train of thought in which I decided that Esplin knows that he's a fictional character, and his great plan is to simply keep scheming and spinning plots so that everyone demands that you keep writing and never allow the story to end, so that his universe never dies.
u/TK17Studios [+1] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (2 days later)
Deadpool 9466.
u/CouteauBleu [+2] We are the Empire. (23 days later)
By the way, this is 20 days late, but I'm pretty sure you're still having the feedback problem, so here goes my stab at it.
Have you tried going, I don't know, wilder? I get the feeling that what you write is sort of what I expect, not in terms of making predictions, but in a way that makes your writing feel like the opposite of dissonance. I'm not sure what I'm getting at, but I suspect I'm just saying your minimum quality is too high for me to be able to point out any flaws. I'm not sure if anyone else agrees at all with this, but if so, it means criticisms from readers might not be accessible to you. Pointing out how to be less awful is easy, pointing out how to be more awesome is not.
So maybe you should try to experiment more? Try to write in styles or with characters you're not comfortable with, and see what sticks. Or don't. I have honestly no idea what I'm saying.
u/TK17Studios [+1] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (23 days later)
Next chapter is a bit of a departure from usual, so I will be taking your advice. <3
u/4t0m [+3] Chaos Legion (50 minutes later)
‹Garrett here. Ax is ready at the second break zone, Rachel's good to drop the tree if she has to but she says no one's coming. Over›
A period is missing after the "Over".
u/TK17Studios [+1] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
Thanks for the help. Over
=)
u/CouteauBleu [+3] We are the Empire. (a day later)
Feedback so far:
I know that visceral self-preservation isn't something you can control, but I still feel Marco is a bit, um, too fatalistic about the whole 'being a copy' thing. I'd expect him to think of counter-arguments to his own complaints, like how being reset is basically equivalent to taking a drug that gives you two-hours-long amnesia.
Also, self-morphing! Version control! Asymmetric self-mind-reading! Forcibly extracting secrets from traumatized andalites who have no idea what's going on! \o/
"Cassie's sitting this one out"... Ouch. Ouch.
Wikipedia saves the world! Again! Remember to donate money to Wikipedia, people.
What did Marco morph? It has feathers and scales? Did they mix DNAs to make it?
The yeerks are recruiting PMCs now? Makes sense, they're almost as mobile and much less supervised than national militaries. Crap, they're going fast.
Wait, so Chapman stays a principal, but Tidwell becomes a mercenary? Huh. Also, eeeeee, Illim and Tidwell! I think V3 namedropped Aftran as some sort of password, too. Not sure what it means for the future, but I do hope we're going to see pacifist yeerks.
Psychological torture! Dramatic five seconds countdowns! Man, this really is Animorph. Also, Jake's offer to Illim is the same Elfangor does to Loren's yeerk in Andalites Chronicles. Well, except for the part where Elfangor lies and kills the yeerk anyway, because it's that sort of kid book.
I kind want to know what Illim said to Tidwell to persuade him to let him go. Is there as chance we'll get alternate yeerk/host POVs in the future? Also, what happened to the yeerk that was previously in the cylinder? Did they squash him? Did they have a spare, empty cylinder?
It looks like Jake's default position is now standing around like an officer with his hands behind his back. I wonder what that looks like.
"Its name is Illim" Yeah, but what was the name of the yeerk you took out of the cylinder to fit Illim inside? Anyway, good to know you guys still have a conscience. Not sure it'll do you any good if you're still planning to blow their pool up.
Jake screwed up again. I like that it's because of a stupid reason "I didn't know what to do with him and I was pressed for time" instead of something overly dramatic like "I knew deep inside myself that it was wrong but I was overwhelmed by the dark side". As long he doesn't make an habit of it.
And now the Animorphs are actually called Animorphs. And Marco comes up with the name in basically the same awkward forced way he did in canon. Yaaaay!
u/TK17Studios [+3] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
Thank you super much for the feedback.
I think that future Marco morphs will be much more mentally prepared/resigned/fatalistic about it, given that they'll have the memory of this first time and know that a) Marco Prime isn't screwing around and b) Marco Prime isn't taking it lightly, either.
Marco was morphed into spoiler
Re: getting various minor canon characters in, I don't actually have a mechanism that explains why Tidwell isn't one of the teachers for the school except that then he wouldn't have been a part of the convoy, and I figured either way there was a valid reader complaint ("This character is basically Tidwell; why'd you create an OC?" vs. "Why'd you change Tidwell's backstory when you could've just created an OC?"), so I just went with the option I liked better.
I think it's getting more and more likely that we'll see other Yeerk/host POVs than just Esplin. My thoughts on what happened to the other Yeerk is that Jake murdered it JUST NOW (just before going to the shack) so that they could have an empty stasis cylinder. The previous Yeerk had already been acquired and "didn't work," and they had no particular reason to keep it around.
Re: conscience, yeah. I imagined a scenario where Jake promised to return Illim to the pool, and then ... well ...
Thanks again for your thoughts. Very very much appreciated.
u/KnickersInAKnit [+3] (a day later)
All right. Questions time! Don't necessarily have to be answered, but perhaps could provide interesting plot points in the future. Your call, TK17!
Marco is making a backup copy every week or so. Does each backup copy overwrite the previous one?
How many backup copies could Marco feasibly create? Is there a limit?
How does Marco differentiate between backups when he morphs them? Would/could there ever be a plot point where Marco or someone else morphs the wrong/way-too-early backup, creating a similar situation to Jake2?
Would/could there be a plot point where Marco morphs successively older backups (chronologically younger versions of himself) in order to bounce an idea off each one to observe the shift in perspective/morals over time?
With Marco about to do some serious abuse on poor Elfangor's brain, how much will he actually recall from the experience? Andalites are capable of much more advanced thinking than humans, so once Marco demorphs, will he be able to remember the specific thought processes or just the results of whatever problem he gets the Andalite superbrain to solve?
I bloody love the YPM. We're about to see Illim (YESSSSSS), what about Aftran?
In canon and in other fanfics, the idea of morphing Yeerk, while taboo, is necessary for the Animorphs to empathize with why the Yeerks do what they do. Do you plan on making it impossible to morph Yeerk, or will they have to find a clever workaround?
u/TK17Studios [+4] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
- Does each backup overwrite the previous?
- How many copies?
- How does he differentiate?
- Marco cross-checking with various copies?
- How much Andalite thinking can Marco preserve?
Thank you for the comment! Feedback is my Favorite Thing.
u/MagicWeasel [+2] Cheela Astronaut (4 months later)
Was reading through old threads and just had a thought after reading this comment - you say that Marco considered using scars instead of powers of two to mark his 'versions'. Was something like small tattoos considered? (i'm talking like tiny dots - I'd assume they'd heal pretty quickly). Heck, does morphing keep tattoos?
u/TK17Studios [+2] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (4 months later)
Tattoos will stay on your original body, but won't be carried through the acquiring process (if you acquire someone with tattoos, when you morph them there won't be a tattoo).
u/MagicWeasel [+1] Cheela Astronaut (4 months later)
That's got some interesting applications for impersonation! I wonder if the yeerks/animorphs might get tattoos to guarantee the identity of their unmorphed selves?
u/chaosmosis [+2] and with strange aeons, even death may die (a day later)
The vignette style makes more sense and is improved by the fact that their minds are constantly being lost and overwritten, I think. The reader gets to share the confusion of the mental constructs.
u/LieGroupE8 [+2] ** (a day later)
Animorphs was a staple of my childhood. This is a touch of nostalgia. I am in love with this fanfic - never stop writing it. (This is a short and uninformative review, I know, but maybe I'll get around to writing longer feedback for a future chapter).
Question: does the yeerk-killing tech that Elfangor gave the animorphs work while you're in morph, and does Jake still have it? (And is it triggered voluntarily?) I've been thinking about this and can't quite settle on an answer. My guess is that since it "blends sufficiently well with the body's hardware to be preserved during the morphing process" (as Elfangor said), then it gets brought into stasis with your original body, so it doesn't automatically work in morph - unless you acquire yourself from someone else, in which case you would presumably acquire the device (again, "sufficiently blended") and be able to morph it. If that's the case, then Jake still has the device implanted in himself, even when he morphs into himself - but they were going to put Garrett into his head as a yeerk, which would kill Garrett unless the device was either voluntary or not present at all - but there is no reason for it be voluntary, since the yeerk could stop it if it got control in time .... And this is where I get stuck in my reasoning.
u/TK17Studios [+3] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
Thanks for the comment! No worries re: short.
The Yeerk-killing tech is automatic, and only in their original bodies; I've been thinking it gets excluded during the acquiring process (though now I'm second-guessing myself). Jake doesn't have it anymore, under that reasoning.
u/LieGroupE8 [+3] ** (a day later)
That makes the most sense, I think. Though my reasoning was that if the artificially placed Yeerk neurons get acquired, the Yeerk-killing tech ought to as well. But I suppose it's entirely plausible that those things are different enough that one gets carried over and the other doesn't.
u/TK17Studios [+1] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (2 days later)
Yeah. In particular, the earplugs are almost certainly not Seerow tech, and Seerow tech is special/unique.
Something tells me they're not giving him lab access these days, and that some other, less mad-geniusy Andalite came up with the earplugs, based on more conventional technology.
u/KnickersInAKnit [+2] (2 days later)
On this line of thinking, what happens in your universe with these following situations:
Someone without earplugs is infested while in human/HB/Andalite morph and then is forced to demorph? Does the Yeerk reattach to the new brain while the morph occurs around it? Or, do the artificial Yeerk neurons prevent/interfere with control of a morph? That's some pretty amazing immunity if so.
Someone with earplugs is infested while in human/HB/Andalite morph and then is forced to demorph? Does this kill the Yeerk, or are the earplugs successfully bypassed?
On the question of whether earplugs are retained by morphing - if they were, shouldn't they interfere with the artificial neurons needed to control the morph? Would it have been possible to revive Jake2 then by re-inserting earplugs instead of burning off the tissue?
I've specified human/HB/Andalite morph here as those are the species we've seen infested so far.
u/TK17Studios [+1] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (2 days later)
In both of the cases above, the earplugs are irrelevant (because they're off in Z-space with the rest of the original body). If for some reason a Yeerk infested a morph and then forced that morph to demorph, it would be signing its own death warrant as it got disintegrated.
As far as them being used to revive Jake2—maybe? I've been thinking of them as more of a simple gateway that notices stuff passing through it and then zaps that stuff, but I did have Ax jerry-rig one of the earplugs to burn Yeerks out of that random family...
u/KnickersInAKnit [+2] (2 days later)
My curiosity in the case of a morpher-without-earplugs was how a Yeerk experiences/controls the demorphing process in the situation where a morph is infested instead of the original body.
That would be a really fucked up way to deal with morphs. Insert earplugs and break the z-space connection.
Perhaps that would work well with V3's clone bodies?
u/TK17Studios [+3] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (2 days later)
It seems to me that the Yeerk is literally incapable of having any influence over the demorphing process, in this case. The morphing tech is tied to and controlled by the original body (and the emulator tech running that body's algorithm, while it's in stasis). That's how come Esplin/V3 can control Alloran's morphing and demorphing—he's fused with the true body, and therefore can manipulate the tech present in the brain and get himself emulated, etc.
If a Yeerk infests a morph, though, it's insulated from the control layer—it just can't access the part of the morphing tech that decides when to demorph, because that's out in Z-space and beyond their touch. Indeed, while I haven't thought this through all the way, it's possible that a Yeerk inside a morph can't even access the morpher's memories and personality, but instead can only touch the animal underneath and the "blank Yeerk" conduit. They're much more cut off than they would be otherwise, and entirely at the whim of the morpher. The only exception I can think of is that the Yeerk might be able to cause the body so much physical pain or emotional turmoil that it could blackmail the morpher, or prevent them from mustering sufficient focus, i.e. "I can torture you enough in the 45ish seconds before I really start to die/disappear that I can prevent you from disappearing me in the first place."
u/KnickersInAKnit [+2] (2 days later)
That's fantastic. I'm now wondering if you plan on using that as a defense against long-term infestation for the Animorphs who lack earplugs. Also, had Garrett been successful, I suppose he would have run into that issue with Jake2!
u/TheLeo3314 [+2] (2 days later)
So I am only up to chapter 11 at the moment, and I am really enjoying it so far, but something came up while I was reading.
What is Jake's brain doing when Marco is morphed into Jake. Not Jake's actual brain but the body that Marco is inhabiting, what is that brain doing? You mention that the animal brains have some instinctual effect on the "mind" of someone who is morphed into the animal, but does a human brain, with all it's neural connections, have some of that persons consciousness floating around?
Does that make morphing into another human any different from Yeerk takeover? I mean it's a copy of the human, and not the original--but it's still real, and probably terrifying, for the copy.
Just a random thought I had, and if you address this in future chapters, or if I straight up missed it earlier then let me know.
u/TK17Studios [+2] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (2 days later)
You'll see more about this in future chapters. +1 for thinking it through (took the Animorphs longer than it took you).
u/TheLeo3314 [+2] (3 days later)
Yeah the last line of chapter 11 (or 10 I guess because of the interlude) kind of answered my question haha.
Anyway, I'm excited to see where you take this story.