darkinferno | [ic inbox]

were you holding your phone when that picture was taken?

.............no

[...]

so you probably aren't as right as you hoped

There's something that I remembered.

And I really have to hope that something like it hasn't happened yet.

It was a way that other people could see what you were seeing, through machines.

how'd it work?

Interceptors. They were a type of micro-machine. Think like nanomachine, but it's on a different size scale.

Somebody was injecting people with them, and they could remotely get all of their visual data, everything they saw, just remotely sent back to them.

Other-Togusa was looking into a situation and the Intereptors were important to it.

and you think somehow these interceptors ended up inside you?

["But Retrospec can't do something like that, can they?" he wants to ask, but he already knows the answer. It's evident in the color of his hair, the color of his eyes--his fear, that terror that someday soon he's going to wake up and feel a presence stirring deep inside his heart.

Of course Retrospec could do something like that, if they really wanted to.]

how do you find out for sure? do they show up on any sort of scan or blood work?

[It takes Togusa a little bit of thinking, and the image comes to him, looking at pictures, closely analyzing them, and then a vision of himself in the mirror. The realization of what was wrong with all of the photos that he had been looking at.]

[Damn.]

He figured it out, by getting some leaked data. Pictures, but with someone looking at the picture-taker, and it was obvious. They'd been taken without a camera, just pulled straight from somebody's vision.

Damn it all, you know why this feels familiar? I tried that same trick with the Retrospec pictures, the ones where people had been grabbing photos of us from behind? I was looking for reflections.

i'm guessing you didn't find any in the retrospec pictures

so what does this mean, do you have them in you? i don't think i can zoom in on that picture you sent me enough to see if there's a reflection or not

[This isn't an invasion of privacy in the slightest]

Firstly, no. Secondly, I dont want to know what you're zooming in on for a picture of Mariko.

[This isn't a deflection in the slightest.]

who said i was zooming in on anything? come on togusa i'm not that kind of guy

you're avoiding the question

[Yeah, good luck with that. You're talking to the guy that deflects things all the time; like he wouldn't notice!]

I'm avoiding the question because I don't know the answer.

There's another possibility, a memory that I got from the other Togusa. He had a way of connecting to the people he worked with, talking with them. Something like the telepathy I had last month. But it was through a machine.

a machine that basically gave you telepathy? how would that even work?

The best I can remember. Through more of those micro-machines, but intentional ones. A way for people to connect to the net, remotely. It could also connect people to people. And it was like the telepathy, talking over a long distance, whether they were right there or not.

[Dante's frowning on his end. Honestly, it's something he finds tough to really comprehend, because...]

so you had a smart phone implanted in your head?

You have the most impressive way of cutting through subtlety, there, Dante.

It probably had more functions. But, fine, sure, whatever, the other Togusa had a smart phone in his head.

am i wrong?

you said it was a way for people to connect to the internet remotely that connected you to other people too that could reach over a long distance

the only difference is talking with your mouth and talking with your mind

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Not incorrect, but I think you're missing some of the implications here.

What if this keeps happening? What if it turns out other-Togusa isn't entirely human?

yeah, sorry

that's just a pretty big bomb to drop, you know

[Give him a moment to take this in again, this time with all of the potential hazards of such a thing.]

if the other togusa wasn't entirely human, you're suggesting he was part machine

i'd ask if you thought that meant retrospec could hack you considering the picture you sent me but let's face it, in the end it doesn't matter anyways

they can already make people forget things or remember things whenever they want, they're already messing with our heads as it is

what changes?

How do you hack a person?

For fuck's sake, don't ask that question on the network or Yoon-sung's gonna try it.

But in all honesty. What could they really do to me? It's just a connection, right? You could try to piggyback off me to whatever I have access to.

what do you mean, piggyback off you?

think about everything we've seen so far. what do you have access to that they don't?

[The failing of text: Dante isn't sure whether Togusa's being sarcastic here or not.]

It's really just another connection to the net. So, sure it could be hacked like any other connection but there's no data on my end for Retrospec to try to access, right? You can see what I'm seeing; Retrospec can already do that.

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