THE BOX OFFICE

[tellthestory]

This is where you can meet privately with the Balladeer! The Balladeer is almost always around during the day; just knock.

(Secretly, the door's usually not locked if he's inside. But you wouldn't want to be rude, would you?)

Comments are screened for privacy!

Comments

[inforapenny]

I don't know, I think his collar sticks up because it's chemically 95% salt at this point. Maybe he's just 95% salt.

[He puts his empty mug down on the desk carefully.]

...I-I, um. I wanna say, thanks for... talking to me. I guess I just, uh, just needed to talk to someone who knew...

[He doesn't seem in a big hurry to leave, though, he just wanted to say it in case the Balladeer decides to kick him out.]

...It'd be a long shot for me to ask if you knew anything about how our memories got removed, right?

[tellthestory]

It's no problem. I like talking to people, and I think it's...good to have someone to talk to about everything. Even if you...weren't the one who told me in the first place.

[lol, artificially induced confidences]

I wouldn't be able to tell you if I knew. But I actually don't. [The Balladeer frowns. His cider's gone too, but he's still holding the mug; he doesn't seem like he's in a hurry to get Billy out either.] I'd bet it's more along the lines of magic than science. It's a good plot device, you know? New stuff happening every week.

[inforapenny]

...I-if you didn't already know, I don't think I would've come in here.

[Secret identities and all that.]

...I don't believe in magic. All magic is is science that's more advanced than the beholder. A cell phone would be magic to a caveman. Or, uh, probably also to a pirate.

...Where did my phone go?

[tellthestory]

That's fair, I don't know anything about science. I just haven't seen any...science-looking things around. [.....] But hey, if they're using some detail of the Garfield assassination, I'll be on top of that.

[lol his specialties are u s e l e s s]

I don't know. The booth?

[inforapenny]

Oh. Heh, for a second I forgot that Garfield was a president, and I thought you were talking about the cat.

[He looks awkward at that.]

I haven't, um. Visited the booth, yet.

[tellthestory]

Well, it's not like he was in office for long. Got shot after six months. [.....] I always thought he seemed like a nice man.

Oh. Yeah, some people's stuff is in there. But they're just going to give you whatever they feel like, so there's a more-than-even chance it'll be junk.

[inforapenny]

I bet a lot of presidents were nice enough, some of them have that kind of big friendly grandpa aesthetic to them. The older ones, anyway.

That's weird. Another plot device thing? Like, uh.... What's the one with the gun on the mantle? Only I guess it's like, um, the...random crap that comes out of the booth in Act 1 has to be relevant by Act 3...

[tellthestory]

I only know a whole lot about the ones with major assassination attempts, to be honest. Didn't get a lot of exposure otherwise.

[He listens to that attempt at explanation with his head tilted slightly for a second, then brightens.] Oh, Chekov's gun! Yeah, that's...huh. Yeah. I guess the razor did come out of there.

[god damn it

at least gabe's trap was made entirely out of costume and prop stuff]

[inforapenny]

Yeah, I only kinda know the ones from my lifetime. Carter and, uh, Reagan, and...them.

[Anyway!

That response is very interesting, and Billy considers it for a moment, before something that the Balladeer said earlier comes back to him.]

Can I, uh. Can I ask you...something else?

[tellthestory]

Heh, yeah, Reagan. Hinckley's such a creep.

[He said to the other guy he knows who stalks women, um]

Sure.

[inforapenny]

[The difference is that Billy knows that Penny won't be happy if he kills Hammer, he just has a contingency plan.

Also he doesn't remember that yet um.]

...Why do you want to help the Showrunners, if you don't agree with what- with what they're making us do?

[tellthestory]

I...

[That doesn't seem to have been what he was expecting; he opens his mouth as if to speak, then closes it, and then eventually goes on in a lower tone of voice, leaning forward in his chair.]

I didn't think it was going to be like this.

[inforapenny]

[Billy glances around the room to see if they're being monitored, and then scooches forward and lowers his voice, too.]

What did you think it was going to be?

[He sounds curious, not judgmental, an ironic echo of earlier: What difference do they want to make?]>/small>

[tellthestory]

[There's no visible cameras in here, but the Balladeer still seems to feel a need to act as if they could be overheard.]

More like the last one, I guess? I didn't have any basis for comparison. They said that...since it wasn't about history anymore, I'd have a chance to talk to all of you before anything even happened. So maybe I could change how it went.

[inforapenny]

[Yeah he'll act as well.]

Did they tell you that you could maybe change it? Or did you decide to try on your own?

[tellthestory]

They said I might be able to. It was some kind of new experimental thing - they thought I'd have fun if things went well, and if they didn't, I know how to handle myself with murderers.

...they made it sound like they thought I had a good chance.

[inforapenny]

...Have you thought about making your own chance? You don't have to let this be the status quo.

[Because the status is not quo.]

[tellthestory]

How do you mean?

[don't start that shit with him he knows where that rhetoric leads]

[inforapenny]

They're... They're trying harder to break us than you thought they would, right? So we need to stand together, more than they expect us to.

[tellthestory]

...well, sure, that's sort of what I've been trying to tell you all.

[It hasn't been working out]

[inforapenny]

But there's only so much we can do by ourselves. You're- you're part of their experiment too.

[tellthestory]

Wh -

[He hesitates, glancing down as he knits his fingers together.] No, I mean...they didn't mean it like that.

[inforapenny]

Twenty people brought together from all different backgrounds, with the hypothesis that isolation and stimulus will make them commit murder. The motives and the promise of freedom are all the independent variables, because they're the factors that the Showrunners control, with who kills for which motive being the dependent variable, because it is dependent on the independent variable.

But then... They have one person who's dealt with murderers and with a comparable format before. They could have just told you when you were recruited to do the same thing you did last time, to not interfere or try to help us. But they told you that you could help. And in so doing, they made you an independent variable, too.

Their hypothesis is that even with exposure to hope, any person can fall into despair with the right stimulus. What they're not counting on... is losing control of an independent variable.

[It's science, Jim!]

[tellthestory]

[The science talk gets him to look up at Billy again, at least. His brow furrows at all the Science, but he's following along.]

I don't...know what I'm supposed to do. I didn't have choices before, things just went the way they went.

[inforapenny]

...I don't know, either.

[He doesn't say what he suspects: that the Balladeer is supposed to try and try and try to save them until he falls into despair like the rest.]

I don't know what all you can do that we can't, or what, if anything, you can't do that we can.

[It's a quiet admission, compared to the hushed passion he had when he was talking about the science behind this social experiment.]

But... This isn't about history, anymore. I-I mean, most of us aren't even from the same time, let alone world. Balladeer, this doesn't have to be just our story anymore. You can be more than just a narrator.