Entry #91

[postictal]

[In the latest dramatic reveal, it seems that Claudia has been hard at work unearthing a great deal of dirty laundry as it suits her. In the process, on November 23rd she manages to draw out an encrypted broadcast - only it's encrypted no longer.]

[And what's more, it's no longer anonymous. The broadcast bursts across the screen with an eerie screech of static and rapidly flashing images. There's even a voice speaking in the background - a voice that some might find familiar.]

YOU TOOK IT
I SAW

BURNING

[An image flares in a brief sputter of black and scarlet, and is gone again.]

/////////////////////////
////bird flying south////
///////do you know///////
///////what you did///////
/////////////////////////

----checkmate----

[And now, the name of the user who released the video in the first place is painfully apparent. For some, this won't be much of a shock. For others, on the other hand...]

[Did Tim Wright ever strike you as someone who favored cryptography?]

Comments

[burntvideocassette]

[There's a short silence, as Jay processes what Tim just said.]

You think whoever decoded it put two and two together?

[It could be a coincidence, and Jay's not sure what the simplest explanation is, but if there's anything the codes and scrawled messages back home taught him, it's that Occam's Razor doesn't always get you the right answer.]

And...do you think there's a connection? I mean, with your Mirror and the key...you...used here?

[postictal]

[You.]

[It's not him. It's not really him. He bites back the fierce protest that wells in the back of his throat, stomachs it with a grimace, stares at the key Jay worked out, pointlessly, instead.]

I have no idea. The last thing we need is the pair of them working together.

[burntvideocassette]

[Jay huffs out a small, annoyed breath.] Yeah, that'd be...bad.

[He lays his head in his hands, thinking.]

Still, doesn't make sense. Unless your Mirror somehow got a hold of the network...or, or you blacked out and somehow recovered within a couple minutes, there's no...reason why somebody'd bring this post back. And, I mean, they had to've been doing this on purpose, or else they wouldn't've decoded the whole thing.

[postictal]

Yeah, I might...be able to get back to you on that.

[He's eyeing up the response queued from an unfamiliar username. Could be wishful thinking. It's either answers or someone here to inquire after his well-being. Or, alternatively, someone here to call bullshit on how fucked up this all looks. Either way.]

[burntvideocassette]

[There's a shuffling of papers on the other end as Jay sits up straighter.]

What, did you find something?

[Wait, "get back to you." That means he has to get off. Jay thinks. Maybe. Probably?]

[He stays on the line, just in case.]

private text

[postictal]

[He switches over to text, now communicating with Jay and Claudia simultaneously.]

some hacker dug it up
thought it had something to do with wonderland

private text

[burntvideocassette]

[And with a click, it switches over to text. He did have to get off.]

[He's still messaging, though, and he's actually got answers.]

you mean this was an accident?
god
how do you even
how do you solve a keyword cipher by accident
i guess there's probably some program that can brute-force it but

[Jay doesn't know what to say, beyond incoherent annoyed noises. 'what a letdown,' crosses his mind, but even he knows that one won't land well. And it's not really a letdown, even if it feels like one. Boring should be a good thing.]

yeah i can sorta see how somebody might confuse the two
if they hadn't seen the cryptic bullshit we had to deal with back home

private text

[postictal]

i guess that's why
if anyone ran into me

i'm pretty sure i was at the checkerboard hills
this lines up with that night

["Checkmate," right?]

[So apparently the masked freak version of him knows what chess is. Great.]

[burntvideocassette]

[Checkmate.]

wait
you also said your mirror wrote the key on the checkerboard hills right before this
well the key plus a couple duplicate letters

is there something

[He's not sure how to put this.]

is there something significant about the checkerboard hills

[postictal]

i have no idea
it's not like i had a lot of time to think about it
kind of busy with the bleeding and all

[How's he supposed to cross-reference that with what happened months ago? It's not like his memory's that great.]

look i'm not concerned about what this meant
i'm worried about what this means if it happens again

[And someone draws the correlation between this video and the sort that his masked counterpart is so fond of posting.]

[burntvideocassette]

[Jay wants to put the pieces together. He wants to line everything up so it makes sense, so it makes more sense than the scraps he had back home.]

[But he also sees there's a more pressing threat here.]

i'd offer to be around next time something happens to your meds but that went super well last time
to be honest i don't think i'd be able to stop you from doing anything

i'm assuming the other you has access to everything you do, so password protecting the account won't work

we could try locking you up or something but that's kinda weird

look whatever happens we have to make sure the other you isn't collaborating with your mirror

[postictal]

not sure how to manage that
i don't know if the other me just remembered what he wrote there or what
i don't know if they've been working together
i don't know if my mirror has another him

i don't KNOW

[This part sure is familiar, huh? Scrabbling, straining to piece together fragments of a puzzle scattered farther apart than anything?]

[burntvideocassette]

[It's almost a relief, the familiarity. The frustration. The tiny scraps of information that don't quite line up. He knows this.]

alright let's just lay out what we do know

what we know:

today:
- some hacker (name?) says they decoded and reposted this by accident
- people who have seen the decoded video: me, you, sans, some account i don't recognize (the hacker?)
- video is still up so i'm assuming we can't take it down

six months ago:
- your mirror wrote "he is a liar" (i think) on the checkerboard hills
- your mirror stole your meds
- you blacked out, and the other you took over
- other you used "heisalr" as the keyword for the cipher
- other you wrote the following using this cipher as part of a video posted on the network: "bird flying south/do you know/what you did" and "checkmate"
---- potential reference to the checkerboard hills
---- potential reference to my absence
- nobody six months ago decoded the message
- other you went to the checkerboard hills
- other you got injured

what we don't know:
- whether or not your mirror and other you worked together surrounding the original post
- whether or not the repeated use of "he is a liar" and the checkerboard hills is just a coincidence
- whether or not your mirror has an other him
- whether or not reposting this message was really an accident
- what any of this means really

[He put that last one up as a joke, but he chooses to leave it in. Maybe Tim'll get a laugh out of it.]

[Telling jokes to a guy with anhedonia. Great work.]

[postictal]

[There's a long period of silence, and Tim doesn't know what to say to that exactly. He blinks dumbly at the list of points, gaze blurring over, until he can focus on all of it anew and...breathe a little. The tension in his chest eases slightly, very slightly.]

[He breathes out.]

that was
really helpful actually

thanks


it could've been coincidence right
everyone was kind of using that by the end

[burntvideocassette]

[Tim said the list was helpful. Tim thanked him.]

[They always helped him, when he was compiling evidence, but he wasn't sure if they did anything for anyone else.]

[He'll have to remember this.]

no problem

and yeah
if the mirrors have all our memories
and if other you has seen the graffiti in the hospital and the stuff on totheark's channel
(which it sounds like maybe he has)
they could have both gotten it from there
doesn't explain the checkerboard hills connection though
unless that's a coincidence too
not too many places you can go in wonderland
still might be worth checking out

[postictal]

or it knew that anyone who met my mirror would wanna know what he was doing there
or my mirror inspired it or something
god I don’t know

what do you think would be there after all this time

[burntvideocassette]

[Tim calls "other Tim" an "it". Jay files that away.]

i mean probably nothing
but maybe the two of them wanted to get people there for a reason
maybe they left something there like the guy in the hoodie did that one time
and totheark as a whole did another time

what i'm saying is if there's something there
i would not be surprised if it's more tapes

(i'm kidding)
(mostly)

[postictal]

it was just one that time
the one with alex and me in the hospital
with him in the chair

[He still has it. He really shouldn't, but he does.]

[burntvideocassette]

[There's a lot he could say about that video. Seeing Tim become that...other one was rough. Seeing Alex bound and bruised with a gun to his head was also rough.]

[What did the hooded guy want? He seemed to want to stop Alex, but he never got past threats. He'd capture him, and then...]

[Well, couldn't really help that.]

[Jay doesn't want to talk about that if he can help it, though. Instead, he writes:]

if there's seriously been a tape out there for six months it's probably gonna be rough getting it to play again
worse than the one at the hospital

then again we got some of those burnt tapes working and they'd been out there for
what
seven years?

[postictal]

i have it

[He, uh, didn't mention this bit, did he?]

my mirror took it
i guess that's why the other me went to all this trouble
mocking me maybe

anyway he gave it to george
she gave it back without watching it

[That kinda changes your opinions on...people.]

[burntvideocassette]

you have “it”?
wait
are you talking about one of the tapes from home
i thought you said you got rid of all of them

[He can put together why the Mirror would give it to George. She’s a reporter; might be even better at getting the information out there than Jay himself is.]

and i’d ask how you know for sure she didn’t watch it
but i guess she’s got that whole “truth or die” thing

[postictal]

an event brought one through
max had to watch it all the way
so im pretty sure she’s fucked

im pretty sure george doesn’t even have a camera that can work that kind of tape

[burntvideocassette]

[Wait. What?]

you’re saying max KNOWS?
i just talked to her and she made like she had no idea

what was on that tape?

[postictal]

she was friends with Alex
stands to reason she’d remember a thing or two

i don’t think she knows much
just giving you what i remember

[Fuck. Now he’s gotta keep Jay from sniffing this out and making life insufferably difficult for her. He said he’d try, right?]

[burntvideocassette]

["Just giving you what I remember." It's something, and it might be more than he would've told Jay otherwise, even if it's less than he actually knows.]

even if she doesn't know much
has she seen
you know

[He'll have to rewatch the footage from the day he talked to Max. He might even go over that now. Benefits of text.]