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[hacker]

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[scission]

Roughly two years, now. Several months before the truce celebrations. I worked in the farms for about a year before I returned to the ZDG.

[hacker]

How's a farmer get into defense?

[scission]

How does a werewolf get into farming? We were all presented with being unplugged as opportunity for a new life.

[hacker]

This text represents the sheepdog joke I am choosing not to make.

[scission]

I truly appreciate your restraint.

[hacker]

You're welcome.
Ok but be honest was it like a full moon thing and how much hair are we talking.

[scission]

Yes and no, and not much. It's a little more complicated than the myths. Perhaps I'll show you sometime.

[hacker]

Yeah last I checked that required going back in and uh
no thanks.

[scission]

The training simulations are quite safe.

[hacker]

From agents maybe.

[scission]

And all other threats. No one can die in the sims, agents or otherwise.

[hacker]

There's more to danger than death.

[scission]

[There's a pause as he stops, steps back enough to pick up on the signs here.]

I deal with rehabilitation and training of new unplugs. I've no interest in pushing you into something you're inclined against, but if you tell me what it is you're afraid of, I could perhaps be of some help.

[hacker]

Not every superpower is body hair and full moons.
I leveled part of San Juan. People died. Maybe to everyone here they were just naked babies in pods but to me they were people.

[scission]

I very much doubt that everyone here will consider them just naked babies in pods. Nor are you the only one with deaths on your conscience, superpower related or not.

[hacker]

Wow.
"Other people have feelings too."
All that professional training for rehab and helping people adjust and that's what you've got. I feel much better thanks.

[scission]

Well, I am rather limited by the medium. And a lack of involvement in your extraction.

Why did you take the red pill?

[hacker]

I found what I spent my whole life looking for, and I didn't like what I found. Hoping that there was some possibility that none of it was real was
A relief.

[scission]

And has it remained a relief? Being unplugged?

[hacker]

In some ways.
Not in others.

[scission]

A sentiment I think we all share.

[hacker]

Not everyone's dad dragged them down into an alien city to give them earthquake powers.

[scission]

Do you think I'm trying to belittle your pain, Skye?

[hacker]

No. I just think you don't understand it.

[scission]

I understand betrayal. I understand helplessness. I understand remembering all the lives you destroyed, and knowing that the potential for that destruction still remains inside you.

Your pain is your own, and if you need to be alone with it to heal then that is what you need. But you aren't as alone as you feel.