Wake up, Mr. Robot

"I know this is going to be a lot," Valli said carefully. "And I know you'll have a lot of questions. But please let me finish explaining the whole thing, because I put a lot of thought into how to explain this and thought this was the best way, and when I finish you can ask all you want and I'll happily answer, alright?"

He paused for a moment, and then simply dove in. There was no point in dragging it out any further.

"I wasn't originally from your world. I mean, Valgarður was, but you could easily think of him as my counterpart, as much as he was me. A few days back, I took his place for a while. Or... even that isn't quite right. We became the same person, and I experienced the things he experienced. I wandered the wastes and visited Haven. I went to your camp and begged you to spare the children. I talked about books with you. I rode with you to Haven to broker the peace treaty. I did all those things, but I did them as him. I remember it all, but it was him doing it. He is braver than I was, because bravery was needed in that world, but in the end, we were the same person."

It was not a very simple explanation, but he feared if he simplified it too much it would come off more as insulting then anything else.

"And then I woke up back here. And I could remember everything - it was as real to me as it was real to you - but at the same time, I..."

This was the hard part. He didn't want to say his world stopped existing. He didn't know that for sure. It had felt so real, and maybe he was just deluding himself for Gask's sake, but he wanted it to be real. He wanted it to keep existing.

"I didn't know what would happen. I didn't know what would happen to the Fire Eaters, or to you. Your world... it's difficult to explain. But you're a good man, Gask. You care about your people and you're a scholar. You did well in the wasteland but I wanted more for you. You deserved more. You deserved to be in a world where it would be appreciated, where you could read all the books you could possibly hope for. So when I had the chance I..."

Even with it all pre-planned, the wording was tricky. Had he stolen him from that world? Copied him?

"I gave you that chance. The brain is just electricity, and if you could and had enough time you could break someone's entire personality, all their memories and who they are down into information. Information so grand and vast that it you wrote a book of it it'd be as large as the earth. I took that for you--all that information--and I put you in a shell that woke up in my world."

Valli paused, and then decided he was giving himself too much credit.

"Well, not directly me. I had it happen but other people--skilled artisan and builders and everything--made it all work. Your body is not your old one, but it's still you, and your brain--everything you think and your memories and everything--that's still you too."

Which was about as well as he figured he could possibly explain it.

"That's... a big simplification of the situation but I tried to explain it as easily as possible."

That explained the what, but it still missed the most important part. It still missed why not my people. But god, that was so hard. That was so hard to explain. How could he even explain that? How could he say it without saying they weren't real but you were?

A part of him hoped Gask wouldn't ask, but the rest of him knew he would.

"It is a lot," Valli said, cringing. "It was a lot for me and it's been a lot for everyone." Everyone being the other people who had been stupid enough to participate in the simulation. Valli wasn't going to go protest in front of their office, but he would definitely be doing his best to dissuade his patients from participating in the future.

"Your world..."

It was all very confusing. How did he explain it? How did he put it into the right terms? He didn't want to lie, not to Gask.

"I don't know," he finally said, uncertain of himself. Had he gone there? Was it actually a world? Or was it all just a comforting lie he told himself to make it seem less awful? He hadn't stolen Gask away. The only question was if he'd taken a copy and left the old Gask behind, or if he'd rescued him from a world that was frozen in time. "I'm sorry, I really... I don't know that. Other worlds is not my area of expertise, and I know very little about the mechanics of... of everything that happened."

No, he wasn't there anymore. Valli had gone out of his way to assure that, an attempt to make things better. To make sure that Gask felt he was the real Gask, so that he didn't feel like a poor imitation or a copy. He hadn't expected this reaction, hadn't thought so much about how he would feel about leaving people behind. To Valli--and to Galactica Corp--they weren't real.

But to Gask they were.

He was not expecting a blow, or any violence, even though he should have been. He should have expected that a man raised in the wastelands where violence was a way of life would turn to it when presented with an impossible situation, and Valli went down like a rock.

Send him back.

He hadn't wanted this. He'd had plans and ideas and now it had all gone wrong in the most spectacular way he could have possibly imagined. Gask hated it, probably hated him. He had tried too hard to cling to the desperate, foolish idea that he could explain it all without saying the words they aren't real.

That was the crux of his logic, the important point that made it all make sense.

But it would mean telling Gask the truth that Valli had been so desperately trying to deny.

He didn't know if he was brave enough. Valgarður had been brave, having lived for years in the wastelands, dealing with cannibals and murderers, but Valli had experienced a normal life, unused to violence. Unused to this kind of anger directed at him.

"I can't," he finally said. "I can't send you back." He didn't know that, not for sure, and maybe he should have tried to drag it out, tried to check to see if he could.

But more then that, he wouldn't. There would be nothing. Even if they took Gask's data back, it would mean nothing. His world was over, the simulation complete. The data was no longer active, stored but not running. Maybe one day in teh future they would return to it, but more than likely they would simply wipe it and start afresh.

Valli felt sick, his jaw screaming in pain and tears in the corners of his eyes as he pushed himself into a sitting position on the floor.

People are less likely to hit you when you're on the floor, a part of his brain said. Because you aren't a threat.

Valli wasn't ever a threat, but he doubted that would matter.

"I..." It was hard. How was he going to tell him? How could he explain things so that he could understand without saying it?

He couldn't. It was the only way.

"I have tried to - to dance around the truth to spare your feelings and that was... that was stupid. I should have known it would come out, but I wanted to avoid it so that you could get used to things. But it was stupid."

So, so stupid.

It took Valli a bit to recover himself, even if the ache of his jaw continued. It was probably going to bruise a rather violent shade of purple, and for a moment he wondered if that meant he was going to have to cancel appointments.

It wouldn't look good to show up bruised. How long was it even going to last? His powers would interfere with it, but even still they wouldn't erase it.

"Gask," he called, pushing himself up as Gask stormed off into, of all places, Valli's bedroom. "Please wait."

He doubted he would wait, and it didn't really matter. There was only a closet that way, and no possible way out.

"I know you're -" Frightened? Yes, maybe, but better not to draw attention to that, "confused," Valli continued. "But please come and sit down and let me explain. I'll explain everything and then you can ask me whatever you want I'll answer, no matter what, alright?"

He shouldn't have dragged things out. He should have started with the awful truth and built upwards. He didn't go into the closet after him, lingering in the bedroom, ever so slightly wary of entering an enclosed space. He didn't want him to feel cramped or trapped.

Even though he was already trapped.

The bedroom was probably not the right place for it. It wouldn't make any difference to Gask, but to Valli the bedroom was a private, intimate setting, and would only serve to make him uncomfortable. Instead he opted to lead Gask back to the living room, gesturing to the couch to get him to sit.

"I should start this with an apology," Valli said, his voice strained. "I... I thought it would be better if I tried to soften the blow. To try and let you get used to things. It is a lot. A lot to... to accept, to come to terms with. That you're here. Your new body. Who I am. Everything. But... but I was doing a disservice to try and sneak around the truth."

Valli paused, a pained smile flitting across his face.

"Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both."

That was him, wasn't it? Because there was no way around it. There was no way to avoid talking about it, no way to dodge why am I here and they aren't? Why can't I go back? And the longer he dragged things out, the worse it would get. He might very well hate him already, but he would absolutely hate him if he found out later. He couldn't let him go into the world not knowing. What if he found someone who recognized him? What if they told him? What if someone said 'you were in the game too'?

He couldn't risk that. He couldn't let him go into the world not knowing.

Valli's hands balled into fists. Even resolved to tell him the truth, it wasn't so easy. Valgarður had been braver than him. He could have looked Gask in the eye and told him everything. Could have done it all without hurting him. But Valli was not quite there. He wasn't that brave, couldn't manage to do it the way he played it out in his head. Instead his eyes dropped, reaching his knees and rising no further.

He could be brave enough to tell him the truth, fearing the consequences, but he wasn't brave enough to look him in the eye.

"The world you're from isn't one we travel to through magic portals. It's... a simulation, and one we could join in on. One we could participate in to experience what it would be like to live in a world like that, to... broaden our viewpoints. To know what it was like."

It wasn't real.

"And maybe it's a world that exists out there that we were just peeking in on, but to us it wasn't like that."

Not real, his brain echoed, unspoken but still present.

"And you were from that. A principal character, the story about you and the people who participated. And the others... the others were not. We didn't see much of them. They were so important to you, but in terms of the simulation, they were... they were not as present. The simulation only had data for you, not the others."

He would hate him, he was sure. But he had told him, and maybe one day he wouldn't hate him because he'd at least managed that much.

Maybe.