update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/qoheleth/RJ/004-b.html

@@ -24,29 +24,30 @@
 <p>Ey bounded back up the steps two at a time to the tech booth and set about waking the theater up. Caitlin was already delved in, so it would already be shaking its sleepy head. Ey just had to help it wake up the rest of the way.</p>
 <p>RJ exchanged cheery greetings with the lights understudy as ey shrugged out of eir jacket, draping it over the back of the chair. Ey slipped eir hands carefully out of eir gloves. Contacts gleamed from eir digits, freshly polished and clean.</p>
 <p>Ey settled into eir chair and delved in to greet the theater. It purred in recognition, brushed up against em, stretched and unlimbered. Thoughts of Cicero and Debarre, of Sasha and the lost left back with eir body, with eir hands resting lightly on the contacts in the cradles, forehead against the headrest.</p>
-<p>The first half of rehearsal went by without much trouble. Johansson had apparently highlighted a few areas of concern, so they began with those. From there, the cast has followed his lead, adjusting as needed per their dear leader's suggestions. RJ and Caitlin kept a script running so that they could keep up with the director and stage manager.</p>
+<p>The first half of rehearsal went by without trouble. Johansson had apparently highlighted a few areas of concern, so they began with those. From there, the cast has followed his lead, adjusting as needed per their dear leader's suggestions. RJ and Caitlin kept a script running so that they could keep up with the director and stage manager.</p>
 <p>When the clock hit eight thirty, Johansson called for a break and informed everyone that they would be running through top to bottom after. Last chance for a full run-through.</p>
 <p>RJ gave the purring theater some reassuring warmth and backed out of the connection, reveling in the snap of eir fingers pulling away from that light magnetic grasp of the cradles. Ey wiped eir hands dry and flexed fingers to keep limber.</p>
 <p>Ey spent the break walking around the theater and stage in one big, looping arc, simply listening. Hearing from the theater's perspective so often, it was easy to get wrapped in the omniscience of it all. Good, too, to hear the way that the ambient sound moved through the room, reflected off of walls and ceiling, died among the baffles. It would all be different with people in the seats, to be sure, but the acoustics of the space were beautiful on their own.</p>
 <p>Johansson whistled piercingly. Back to work, back to the stage. Back to the booth and back to the contented and satiny-soft embrace of the theater for RJ.</p>
 <p>It was around the end of the first act that RJ started having problems.</p>
 <p>When one was delved in, one could always focus hard enough to feel the way their head felt against the headrest, or sense the way that their hands rested within the cradles of the grips. Trickier, sure, when one was as immersive as eir tech required. Bodies weren't a thing in that liminal space. Ey was as much the room as the room was itself. No forehead, no hands. No headrest or grips</p>
-<p>By the time ey had brought house sound down in time for the curtain, RJ could feel a numbness creeping. A stealing of sensation. A non-feeling flowing slowly over emself from the base of eir neck outwards, stretching out along eir scalp, down eir arms, not-tickling along eir ribs.</p>
+<p>By the time ey had brought house sound down in time for the curtain, RJ could feel a numbness creeping. A stealing of sensation. A non-feeling flowing slowly over emself from the base of eir neck outwards, stretching out along eir scalp, down eir arms, the non-sensation not-tickling along eir ribs.</p>
 <p>Ey had been willing, desperately, to chalk it up to nerves or exhaustion. It had been such a long week.</p>
 <p>Thoughts of Cicero, doubtless cradled in some hospital creche: strictly disallowed but nonetheless teasing around the edges of consciousness.</p>
-<p>Tired, yes. Exhausted. Yawns.</p>
+<p><em>Tired, yes. Exhausted. Yawns.</em></p>
 <p>By the time ey couldn't feel the plastic of the headrest or the cradles beneath eir hands, no matter the desperation, ey began to panic.</p>
-<p>Panic, yes. Just anxiety. Nerves.</p>
+<p><em>Panic, yes. Just anxiety. Nerves.</em></p>
 <p>All the same, it was final dress. Ey would be able to head home and catch up on sleep. Drink some tea. Hot chocolate. Pet the cat. Whatever ey needed.</p>
-<p>Need, yes. Baser than want. Imperatives.</p>
+<p><em>Need, yes. Baser than want. Imperatives.</em></p>
 <p>By the second curtain, something was desperately wrong.</p>
 <p>Ey hadn't missed any cues yet, but ey couldn't seem to figure out how to work eir 'voice'. That thing that wasn't talking. That subvocalization used to communicate with Caitlin Sarai Johansson anyone. The immersion-mouth to chat to talk to radio for help a non-entity non-thing non-here, gone, leaving em feeling exponentially more cut off from the rest of the theater as time went on.</p>
 <p>Numb, yes. Yet strangely embodied. Strangely tangible. Strangely localized. Oh god oh god please help please help. The play. Ey had work. Ey had the theater. Ey had the room and the lines and time and space to manage. Ey had a home and the Crown and a cat and Sasha and Debarre.</p>
-<p>Had, yes.</p>
+<p><em>Had, yes.</em></p>
 <p>It was the muzzle that was the kicker. The muzzle and the tail, which ey felt --- any feeling a beacon in the storm of numbness which had long since enveloped em entire --- with a piercing intensity. Felt, bordering on and then diving straight into pain.</p>
 <p><em>Pull back,</em> ey begged. Every bit of training begged. Every nerve begged, screamed. <em>A bug, a glitch, an error. Pull back oh god please pull back.</em></p>
 <p>Ey lifted eir hands --- paws? --- in a coarse, jerking motion which, along with the act of pulling eir head back from the contacts, led to em toppling over. There was no chair to catch em.</p>
 <p>And that was when ey missed eir cue.</p>
+<hr />
 <p>The curtain went down, the lights dimmed, and then, ringing clear, a thin giggle filled the auditorium. The lead laughing at a misstep. A quiet joke to share at the pub later. No harm. Sound was off, right? Curtains would eat the unamplified laugh.</p>
 <p>"RJ," Sarai whispered into the silence of the theater's sim. "Stay on cue, bud."</p>
 <p>No answer, no apology, no acknowledgment that a note had been made. No signal.</p>
@@ -55,10 +56,11 @@
 <p>"Something's wrong, boss, lemme back out and check up on RJ."</p>
 <p>"Hold places," Johansson said aloud to the theater. The open channels from the actors' mics carried a few quiet whispers in response. "Hold on, quiet please."</p>
 <p>Moving with a quickness which belied his bulk, Johansson jogged up to the tech booth and slipped in as quickly as possible to keep sound from leaking out. Sarai was trying to rouse RJ.</p>
-<p>Like a projector bulb's heat burning through celluloid film, the third curtain had signified a drastic change. Slow enough to be observed, faster than ey could hope to avoid. The few tenuous touches on reality that held RJ into eir seat in the tech booth scorched and peeled away, acrid smoke stinging eir eyes. And the pain spiked.</p>
+<hr />
+<p>Like a projector bulb's heat burning through celluloid film, the third curtain had signified a drastic change. Slow enough to be observed, faster than ey could hope to avoid. The few tenuous touches on reality that held RJ into eir seat in the tech booth scorched and peeled away, acrid smoke stinging eir eyes. And the numbness spiked.</p>
 <p>RJ lay on a tile floor. Dirty. Yellow. Brown specks, dark enough to be black.</p>
 <p>The tiles were completely regular, one foot on a side, obviously made of some synthetic material. Harder than linoleum, softer than stone. They were glued to a concrete foundation. No wasting time with grout, each tile butted up against the others to form a grid of thin, black lines showing where the dirt of hundreds of feet had been ground into the remaining seams. Thousands. Millions.</p>
-<p>Ey couldn't move yet, but ey could see that the world was bounded. There was a thin plastic strip of molding around the edge of a wall. Above that, regular rectangles of blue. A wall.</p>
+<p>Ey couldn't move, not yet, but ey could see that the world was bounded. There was a thin plastic strip of molding around the edge of a wall. Above that, regular rectangles of blue. A wall.</p>
 <p>"Something's not right, boss. He's totally unresponsive on the line."</p>
 <p>"Pull him, pull him! Hit the panic!"</p>
 <p>Caitlin, who had backed out moments before, and Sarai both leaped to RJ's sides and pulled eir hands up from the cradles, rocking em back from the headrest to lean against the back of the chair. All according to training.</p>
@@ -77,7 +79,7 @@
 <p>"The hell?"</p>
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-                <p>Page generated on 2020-04-24</p>
+                <p>Page generated on 2020-05-05</p>
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