[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019aaa43-443f-73a9-8b58-01c9b649cd96.webp[/img][/center][hr]Where is the soul located? The layman need not concern themselves with the nature of their very beings. The philosopher postulates and pontificates but can never reach an answer. Masters of the arcane know they exist, tied to life, more malleable then one might expect but also deeply resilient. Wade’s current stance on the matter was inconclusive, naturally, because at the moment he was only a severed finger sitting in a yellow mop bucket in a janitor’s closet in Silicon Valley. He rested in the bliss of nonexistence, as a finger cannot think without a brain to transmit its signals too. In some minutes it would be a hand possessing nearly an eighth of the bones in his body. Give it another few hours and most of the torso would be complete, propped out of the mop bucket like some Jack-in-the-Box fished from the garbage of a pet shop of horrors. But the time the work day was over, Wade would once again be granted the natural suffering of existence, head lolling as he tried to excise a fresh migraine without the substances he so heavily relied on, his body cleansed in its reconstruction (for all the good that did him). Once he was able to stretch his newfound legs, he left the closet cock first, echoes of merriment abound.
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Braced against the couch, Jack sat alone. He leaned against gravity, which was now slanted in the red tinted world he inhabited. He was currently studying the table while running his hand across his stubble, observing a speckling of various substances that should not be mixed, Jack’s concern more being with the fact that they remained on the relatively smooth surface without falling. He was waiting, waiting for it all to tumble down, as it was not prediction but inevitability. Hand reaching out for some of the pills and an opened pale ale, he made motions for his mouth, only to go stark still as a flayed stripper walked in, flesh scarred beyond human limits, entirely naked except for a tight pair of neon pink hot pants shining through his world of red, black, and white. Approaching, the gnawed human thumb grabbed Jack’s black MIT hoodie off of the empty chair, muttering,  [color=e04e4c]“I’m borrowing this, thank you very much.”[/color] Eyes moving with an odd typicality under the mask of a face glanced between Jack and his table, before a hand reached out to pull some of the pills out of his hand. [color=e04e4c]“I’ll take those. What are they?”[/color]

[color=bdaaac]“Downers. I’m about to fall off this couch and would rather not feel it.”[/color]

[color=e04e4c]“Awesome, cool, very specific.”[/color] Taking a seat, the pills were scattered to the floor behind him as he whipped up the bong and a lighter as though he’d been in this exact position a million times before, shaking his head before putting it back down. Flicking the lighter on and off, he asked, [color=e04e4c]“What’s your name, buddy?”[/color]

[color=bdaaac][i]Sure, I’ll humor this steward of my fresh hell.[/i][/color] [color=bdaaac]“My name’s Jack. Jack Hammer. My parents thought they were funny, and my life turned out to be one big cosmic punchline, so I guess they were right. I graduated at the top of my class in MIT, got with my friends and hopped into the generative AI model business. We got the grant and I was able to realize my concepts and create the first AI that has the potential to outsmart humans. After debating with my friends about the ramifications they sold it to outside parties under my nose. In the best case scenario, every job that can be replaced by AI will be, leaving the world in its largest Great Depression ever while those at the top continue to reap the benefits. In the worse case scenario, the AI uses all computer systems to proliferate and push humanity to a point where it either lives under its technomonarchy or abandon our entire tech infrastructure. Tonight’s the last night it’s ours, and tomorrow the contract goes into effect and we give my little STD out to the rest of the world, so we’re celebrating our emancipation from wage slavery. You know, I envisioned myself like an internet superhero. I used to track down pedophiles and animal abusers on the internet to report them to their local authorities, and then rat on the local authorities so the public would rightfully turn on those pig bastards when they were playing in the slop. I was so good at breaking into systems I called myself the Penetrator. My friends called me Weasel since I was playing both sides. At least, they did until they found out about my preferences for anal sex, then they accepted the name Penetrator. Of course those weaselly, talentless bitches are the ones who fucked me in the end.”[/color] The hallucinogenic specter’s brow shot up, and he scrambled about, looking for something. [color=bdaaac]“I’m currently debating whether or not I should just kill myself, or if I should live in the hell of my own making. What do you think, gross blood zombie from Mohg’s Palace in Elden Ring?”[/color]

Ass sticking out from under the table before he resurfaced with a pen in hand, the flesh colored avocado man said, [color=e04e4c]“I was following up until the Anal Ring stuff. I don’t watch superhero movies.”[/color] Pulling up a scrap of paper, he went to scrawling as he explained, [color=e04e4c]“I go back and forth on the death thing. The empty void I wake up from when my brain regenerates itself leaves me with an even deeper emptiness as I yearn to go back. Do you yearn? Nah, you’re just trying to run. See, the thing that scares me is that the comforting embrace of death is just an illusion, a deep sleep as my consciousness waits to wake up on this shitty rock of a world again. In my nightmares the real death is an eternity of pain and suffering that makes anything we can imagine here look like the tip of an earthworm’s dick.”[/color]

His still slanted world seemed to shift more as he felt sick to his stomach. [color=bdaaac]“Fuck.”[/color] His eyes ached with tears and he leaned over, slipping from the couch in his unequilibrium. The physical pain of the impact compounded his mental, and he trembled with sobs, each one wracking his torso with a pain of living. He became numb to the world around him, shy of a few comforting coos and the sound of crumpling paper as something was slipped into his pocket before the comfort of the void took him.