RECOLLE IC CONTACT.

[daemonized]

ARDYN IZUNIA

Ardyn Izunia. Professor of law. Lord of law. Liege of law. The one grading your papers. Leave a message.

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( old contact post here )

Comments

9/26 mail call (now that I'm not wibbling at you two adorables)

[standalonehuman]

[Togusa hopes that Ardyn appreciates this stuff still. But he gets a rather large envelope from Togusa this time.

Inside, first, is a summary of research by Dr. James Halliday. Apparently he was a memory researcher who theorized about increasing human recall by deep-brain stimulation of the entorhinal cortex (underlined, with a sticky note attached that comments that it contains the hippocampus and other memory-related structures).

Behind that is a copy of a head MRI, the multi-colored brain pictures might mean nothing to Ardyn, which is why there is another note commenting 'normal function of hippocampus, nothing odd.'

Behind that is a copy of a head CT, a few pictures of the brain in varying shades of grey, or in this case, a lot more white than is generally expected, like there's an extra lining in all the major pathways of the brain.

"Extra solid matter within the channels of the brain, if we didn't know what we were looking for, you'd think this was the brain of somebody with advanced dementia."]

[daemonized]

[Ardyn ends up looking at all of this more than once, devoting what he can to memory -- even if some of the medical jargon initially escapes him. He thinks, briefly, that Grell or Lucian would be more suited to look over this than him, but nonetheless he's curious. At least there were helpful sticky notes to be had.

Later, he sends a text.]

The CT scan. Yours?

[standalonehuman]

Mine. So there you go, I have tiny computers in my head, how are you?

[daemonized]

Me? Living a life without tiny computers in my head.

This information settling any better for you now? Still no adverse side-effects?

[standalonehuman]

I'm. I'm ready to believe this is true.

Not even because of the scans, because of something else, something Koutarou saw. I'm still going to rail against letting us just turn into these other people Retrospec is showing us.

But I think they're real.

[daemonized]

And what was it that changed your mind? Something which has been no easy feat thus far.

[standalonehuman]

A feeling, not a fact, or anything rational.

But Koutarou remembered he was married. A whole life with this woman he loved, and lost, he out-lived her, stayed by her side while she slipped away. And just all the grief hit him at once, he can remember the love he had for her.

That life belongs to someone. I can't just look Koutarou in the eye and tell him she never lived.

[daemonized]

Then you understand now when I said that it was the emotions that made it real. A feeling, something immeasurable, that ironically lent credibility to all of these memories.

I'm sorry to hear about Koutarou, though. [And he means that.]

[standalonehuman]

Yeah. It's all something I hadn't even considered the possibility of. So focused on the kids, keep getting memories of fighting and monsters and impossible fantastical things.

Something as simple as a woman he loved is what gets to Koutarou. He'd been drawing her without realizing quite who she was, but it came through. You could see the love he had for her in just the strokes of a brush or a pen.

But she's not here. So he's lost her all over again.

[daemonized]

The feeling of grief, experienced a second time from a life past. Once again unfair that anyone should have to feel it again.

Will he be all right?

[standalonehuman]

Koutarou is another man who has shown far more resilience than I would have ever hoped for him to need. I had the support of my parents coming here; he got disowned by his father for daring to leave Japan. I haven't seen him like this since that time.

Koutarou will be all right, I wish he didn't have to be just 'all right.'