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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2018 17:28:08 GMT
He had been living on the street for all his life. No, no, not true, think of the truth, Galileo. A lie can run around the world before the truth has got it's boots on, but the truth will set you free. None of this was real, a lie made to change the story, to change the beat. The beat goes on and on and you can't stop it but you could change the way it was played, make it twisted and distorted and wrong. The world was wrong.
It wasn't as though he had intended to be mad. No, he was just looking out for something to do, be a normal kid. Well, a normal kid who had to deal with the fact that their family was more than just broken, it was a smoking hole in the ground. Not that they were his family, not really. This was all a ... smokescreens. Lies that begat more lies that begat more lies and they all swirled around in his head as though they couldn't stop. He didn't want to know this, but the dreams wouldn't let him forget who he was, what he was supposed to do.
Seek out the place of Living Rock...
Did that place even exist here? Galileo didn't even know. He just knew that he was son of a gun and Edgar Allen Po... NO! He was Galileo Figaro. He picked the name, from a dream. He had dreams, so many beautiful, crazy, maddening dreams and he knew the truth. No one else did. He did. All these words rushing at his head and it ached.
"I don't know what it is, but it just won't quit." But he did know what it was. Of course he did. Killer Queen wanted him to forget but he couldn't. He could remember. He ran from his 'home', ran from his 'school'. He tried to get people to remember, reaching out to anyone who passed him on the streets. He was just the mad kid, to be pitied. To be helped. Not to be listened to.
"I'm just another case of arrested development, just another wasted youth," Galileo muttered to himself, walking along the street, hands deep in his pockets. "But it seems to me that to the contrary of all the crap they put on the page..." He glanced around, looking at the people around him, the lies they were contented to life. Finally he eyes landed on the building for the headquarters of GlobalVision. "A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age."
He had to find the others. There had to be someone else who remembered.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2018 18:33:47 GMT
"You should be arrested," Paris muttered as she walked past Gordon. What a total and utter weirdo. Paris remembered Gordon from school; he was a couple of years older, but as the most popular girl there, she made sure she knew the ins and outs of everybody. And Gordon, with his scruffy clothes and that smell - EW! Paris remembered herself and her pack taunting Gordon in school, holding their noses and spreading rumours about him living in a trash can - jokes! - Gordon was a hard one to forget.
"Do you talk to yourself because you're so boring no one else will listen? Or are you just that much of an idiot?" Paris asked nastily.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2018 19:19:08 GMT
"Like the pigs know what to do with a lad insane," Galileo said in an automatic response to Paris' words. He hadn't even thought on it, it just came out. He blinked, a movement that seemed to take over his whole body, turning to look at whoever it was that had spoken to him. He blinked again, leaning forward to look at Paris' with a sense of wondering just who she was. He leaned back, shaking his head.
"I t-talk because I have t-to," he said. "Life is a lemon and I want my ... No!" He clutched at his forehead, forcing the words back, just for a moment. Not here, not now. He needed to think clearly, needed to get the word out. Get the truth out.
"I'm not the one walking around blind." He said, glaring at Paris. "None of t-this is real, can't you see?" It was pleading. He needed someone to see it.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2018 19:38:44 GMT
"O-o-oh. I-i-is that s-s-s-so?" Paris exaggerated Gordon's stutter, a wide, thin grin on her face. But humour didn't reach her eyes.
She laughed at him, and shook her head. "You're such a loser. Like any of this junk will buy you pity. Here -" She reached into her bag and took out a coin. She threw it at Gordon'd feet. "Buy yourself some deodorant, Gross Gordon. Or a toothbrush. When was the last time you even brushed your teeth? You're stinking up the neighbourhood."
She shook her head again. Really, people should erect statue of her somewhere. She was so good at thinking of the general public and their needs. She was such a martyr to public services it was untrue.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2018 19:53:37 GMT
He glanced down at the coin that she had thrown. He knew he wasn't all that great, when it came to public appearance. There was only so much that could be achieved in public bathrooms, after all. Still, there was a sting of humiliation at her dismissal, her cruelty. He could hear it in his mind, someone else mocking the stutter, but they had never meant it so... coldly. A flash of purple hair and a smile that drove him wild in his mind's eye...
"Like you'd even understand," he shook his head, pushing hair back out of his eyes and turning to look at the GlobalVision building once more. "We're all just pawns in her game." He didn't move his gaze from the building, hands clenching into fists as he continued to look. "Until she's done with us all, and then your castle will fall."
He turned to look at her again, head tilting just slightly. "Count your friends, on your hand. They're not your friends. Everybody left. What a surprise, you're living a lie."
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2018 22:06:34 GMT
Paris's attention went to GlobalVision as well, but her reaction was different to Gordon's. "What the hell are you on about, Gross Gordon? GlobalVision is like, the most sick thing out there. You're just jealous you can't afford to even sniff the company." Just think, someone who didn't like GlobalVision? Well, that was about right, wasn't it. Poor povo had probably never even seen any of it.
But Gordon's comment caught her off guard. "What do you mean, my castle will fall?" She snapped haughtily. But it wasn't pride that made Paris' words sound so standoffish. It was another emotion, an emotion Paris fought with most days. Fear was something she never let people see, never let people know about. She knew her dad wasn't straight. She knew that the family's fortune had been built on lies and embezzlement. And she knew that GlobalVision could bring it down, and her, therefore, along with it all. But how could Gordon know any of that?
"You're an idiot," Paris' voice, a quaver higher than usual, wobbled ever so slightly. "You don't know what you're talking about. I have tons of friends. Tons! Way more than you, Gross Gordon. Look -" Paris snapped out her cell and quickly pulled up her Facespace page. "Three thousand, nine hundred and forty two. And that's just Facespace. You should see my Fotonow followers."
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2018 22:37:03 GMT
It just so happened that - at this time - Will had been taking a walk through the street, on a lunch break from working at the coffee shop, and noticed something that seemed uncomfortable - that poor looking guy he often passed but had never had talked too, and some bitchy looking popular schoolgirl. Almost uncomfortably, he attempted to woroch them and see if everything was okay and maybe offer some help to the man, but as soon as he got a few feet away, he felt his insides shudder and nerves kick in. Was he going to be seen as some creep for blurting in on them? As he got closer though, he couldn’t help but hear parts of the conversation, and found himself even more scared - terrified - of what was being said.
“Uh- um- excuse me, sir- sorry to interrupt and all- but what do you mean by- by pawns in her game? Are you- is this about- sorry, some guy warned me the other day about this woman I met- that’s all,”
He felt- looked- seemed embarrassed as he spoke, with his cheeks burning a flame hot red. With dark framed glasses, an oversized shirt and some blue, skinny looking jeans, it didn’t help that he looked like a hipster, and he messed his hair up into a brown tuft of confusion with a hand as he held it up to his head, visibly nervous after speaking to the pair of them - well, mostly the boy.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2018 1:30:07 GMT
He heard loud talking from two stories below, on the street.
He really wished he’d closed his window. He heard two voices going back and forth, one insistent and pleading, and another berating and shrill. In an undershirt and a pair of jeans, he leaned out of his window, trying to conceive of what these kids were yelling about. The girl seemed to be patronizing the guy, who looked like he’d seen better times to say the least. He narrowed his eye at this. High school girls were just as vicious as he remembered. The boy seemed to be distracted, ranting to himself more than to the girl sassing him. He could only hear snippets from his window as he leaned farther out into the clear sky, light hair catching in the sun.
Something something, "isn’t real", something about being "gross", something…
Tunny gripped the window a little tighter, feeling his breath hitch in his throat.
He saw the dark haired boy point to where the GlobalVision building was, a mile away or so, and say, “once she’s done with us…” something, something. The nervous, ominous tone in the boy’s voice was impossible to ignore.
Tunny’s head was reeling. The only person he knew from GlobalVision was Kassandra Queenie, and the way she’d treated him the other day…
No, no. He was getting ahead of himself, his more practical side was insisting. There are other people who work for that company.
Not that he’d heard of anyone else working there. Besides that witch.
His gut feeling won out over his brain’s logical resistance as Tunny sighed at the thought of his own decision and disappeared from the window, quickly pushing his arms through a green flannel shirt as he hurried downstairs. Even if this kid seemed a little insane, at least someone seemed to share his lonely opinion.
Tunny wasn't the only one, his heart forced the hopeful thought into his head. Maybe this kid....saw things... too.
Tunny didn’t even see Will as he attempted to calmly walk out of his building.
“What the hell are you kids screaming about? Either explain, or shut up,” Tunny stated sternly, almost like a father scolding his children. He tried to come off as uninterested, but he just as easily could’ve come off the opposite of how he wanted. That tended to happen often.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2018 12:51:21 GMT
Galileo couldn't help that laugh that came as Paris insisted on proving her friends by showing her FaceSpace account. He wasn't entirely sure why - he knew that everyone had a FaceSpace account, even he had one though it had long been abandoned. Just something about her insistence on these people being her friends... It made him laugh. He shook his head at her, and his tone was soft when he spoke again.
"Looking for some real friends? Gotta get out of this town."
There was a start from him as the other approached him. He blinked, staring at the face with the glasses. He, this person, he wanted to know what he knew about Queenie? About the Killer Queen. Galileo was thrown. No one wanted to listen to him, the Killer Queen had fixed it so that all people saw when they looked at him was the mad boy who had ran away from home. (He was never going back, he could still feel the hand around his throat, tightening it's grip... No, he was never going back.)
And then another appeared, demanding explanations. These two people, they both wanted answers. All he could do was pointed at the GlobalVision building, "She made this world. We just live in it."
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2018 18:04:13 GMT
"What?" Paris dropped her phone back into her pocket, as her face twisted into a snarl. "Did you just tell me to get out of the the town? Freak!" She lunged at Gordon then, going to hit him as hard as she could. If that failed, a good kick where it would hurt was coming next.
"You freak. Are you seriously telling me to leave? Like you're the mayor of this town? You dirty scumbag. You don't even have a home. Do you even know who I am?" She went for another kick, before rounding on the man stammering questions at Gordon.
"Did you hear what he said to me? He's mad - he's a freak. He's..." A heavy flush rose in her cheeks as she breathed deep. "You can't seriously be listening to him? He's mad! He's a total loser!"
It worried her though. Why did Gordon not care about her Facespace friends? Why did he act like it didn't matter. She was popular. Everyone loved Paris, right? That was why she had hit out. Nobody could question her popularity. She couldn't be seen to let anyone question her crown.
At Tunny's interruption, Paris sighed. Why were there so many interfering idiots around? "Oh, f - off!" She muttered. "He's an idiot."
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2018 18:29:36 GMT
"Leave him- leave him alone. If- if he really is an idiot- then- then what's the point of you beating him up?"
Will was shaking as he stood up to her, with no hint of aggression in his voice. He was a negotiator, a peacemaker, someone who broke up fights rather than took part in them or encouraged them. Only, this version of himself was too weak to really interfere.
Maybe it was the fact he was trying to break up a fight, but all of a sudden, he felt his life flash across his eyes, the sudden vision of having to pull an unfamiliar guy- about his own age, he guessed- away from someone his face couldn't have seen in some fight. It was quick and confusing, but given what the poor looking guy on the floor was saying, after a few seconds of fear, he glanced at Galileo, and sighed, quite scared.
"And besides, he might be right,"
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2018 23:52:15 GMT
Tunny quickly assessed his situation. This chick was clearly very aggressive—by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs she’d started hitting the boy and telling Tunny to fuck off, which he brushed off easily, sending her a speedy exasperated glare. That was pretty much this town in a nutshell in his mind. The boy seemed to be somewhere else, barely paying attention to the girl smacking him. Will was attempting to break it up, but not touching either of the kids, probably not wanting to get to...into it, Tunny supposed.
Tunny made the rash decision to try and take control of the situation, wanting the escalation to end so he could get answers. Kids don’t just rant on street corners for the fun of it.
“You—” Tunny narrowed his eyes a bit and pointed to the whiny girl. “Are on the ‘shut up’ end of the spectrum.” He now pointed to the boy, softening his expression a bit. “And you’re on the ‘explain’ end. Who’s ‘she’? I—what do you mean ‘made this world’? That’s...I…” Tunny trailed off, trying to get a hold of all the thoughts smacking into each other in his brain. He took a breath and started again.
“Okay, kid. You’re saying a woman from GlobalVision—who I can safely assume is Queenie, you mean—has created Rideau Falls? But she’s just a person. Sure, she’s a shady one, and a mean one, but...I’ve been here my whole life. Is there something that makes you think this isn’t...real?”
Saying that out loud made the words’ weight actually sink in. He’d only come down because he’d thought the boy was talking about Queenie, which he was, but not like this. Not like questioning the reality of the world. Where would someone get such crazy ideas like this? Stuff like that only happened in movies, or…
Or in dreams.
His head flashed back to the raging images of gunfire and ruined third world cities his brain thought up every night, the sounds of yelling men and grenades, the prick of a needle in his arm that wasn’t there, the girl in the purple dress...
Before Tunny could stop himself, he rubbed the tattooed star on his neck then blurted out, “do you see things, or something?”
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2018 13:28:15 GMT
It was automatic for Galileo to raise his arms, and protect his head from Paris' hits. It was something he'd been doing all his life, after all. Both of them. Though this is the first time it had been because he had laughed at someone's FaceSpace page, even the Clones from the Zone had simply snorted a dismissal at him because he was the weirdo who didn't 'get' what it was to be popular. If this was popularity, he thought, this desperate need to be been to be important by others, well, you could keep it.
"I wasn't... I was just..." He couldn't get the words out to explain to Paris that he wasn't telling her to get out of town, it's just a phrase he found in his head. Even to him it sounded crazy, and he lived with that reality.
What he wasn't used to was someone coming to stop the attack. He stared at the one with glasses in a mix of surprise and confusion, head still ducked under an arm as if he was waiting for his attacker to just... change their mind. It had happened before. He opened his mouth, closing it again as he blinked. What did you say when someone stopped the person hitting you?
"T-thank you," he managed, the words seeming odd on his tongue. Galileo couldn't ever remember this happening before, and he peered at the one with g with a curiosity. Who was this person? He shook his head, turning as the other one - he wasn't sure of his name - spoke directly to him, asking him questions. Oh. Well, those he could answer. A sneer fixed itself on his face.
"Queenie didn't like not winning," was the explanation he offered, glancing once again at GlobalVision with a bitterness on his face. "She had to fix it so she was in charge again. Businesswoman of the year and dynamite with a lazer beam. Guaranteed to blow your mind." A hand went to the back of his neck, feeling the scar tissue there. "She'll hunt me down again."
"Do you see things, or something?"
Galileo turned fully, looking directly at the one who asked him that. "I have these dreams. I hear things. Screeches and sounds and noises and words. Beautiful weird words. And I see... I see the truth." He looked around, at all three, pleading with them to listen to him, to understand what it was he was saying.
"We're caught in the rat race."
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2018 19:54:18 GMT
"You're all mad!" Paris looked from one man to the next. Why on earth were those two tolerating the weirdo's rants? "Can't you hear that he's a raving lunatic? He's a mad man. He needs hospitalising or something."
She turned on Tunney then though. "Who do you even think you are, telling me to shut up? It's a free country, isn't it? And this loser is stinking up the street. It's called a public service. He needs deodorant. Can't you smell him?"
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2018 20:14:07 GMT
2If he needs deodorant, I'll but him some, you need to treat this poor guy with some respect and kindness," Will practically snapped, getting a good look at the girl. He wasn't sure where the sudden bite in his tone and confidence had come from, but he'd decided to trust the poor looking man and to help him if he could. Of course, he still wasn't aggressive, but there was some sort of- attitude about him he didn't know existed. "And yeah, it's a free fuckin' country, but there's a difference between using your voice to criticize others and hurt them,"
He sighed in frustration and looked back at the kid on the floor and knelt down next to him with a warm, kind smile, though it didn't feel out of place even given what he'd just said. Every word directed at the girl had been from a place of passion, not aggression, and it showed. "I don't think you're mad- I mean, I don't know the truth, and I'm not blindly agreeing, but I guess it makes sense. Nothing's ever felt vivid round here,"
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