daan [pcs]

[cumulative]

daan the maan

Comments

[recession]

[ It's fine it would've done a weird panicked guy feedback loop.

Unfortunately he's become well-familiar with the sensation of being stared at lately, so he feels something is off. Glancing around a bit tensely until he sees Mathis. ]

...

Mathis, isn't it? If I remember right from the bulletin.

[cumulative]

Y-yes, that's me...

[he's so upfront about having read this stuff already, waow. mathis is still kind of staring.]

Um, and you were... Monsieur Daan?

[recession]

Yeah. That's right.

[ Well the bulletins are just kind of out there in front of everyone and god. ]

...May I help you?

[cumulative]

O-oh... I'm sorry if I was staring-! It's just...

[he fidgets with the fabric of his waistcoat.]

I've never... seen anyone your age before...

[recession]

[


Well, that definitely takes the cake for the weirdest thing he's been told yet, and he really thought he'd heard a lot of weird stuff. ]

. . .

How old do you think I am?

[ Let's establish that first? ]

[cumulative]

The paper said you were... twenty-eight... um, was that wrong-?

[earnest...

this is unfortunately very genuine]

[recession]

Oh, then... yes. I'm pretty sure that's right, more or less...

[ But that does just make it even more bizarre. ]

What do you mean by that? Did you grow up somewhere secluded?

[cumulative]

Y-yes... I've never seen anyone from outside my country.

[extremely secluded.]

So I've never known anyone who could... age past twenty-three.

[recession]

Ah.

Not much medicinal progress where you're from...?

[ Is this just a nation that hasn't seen the industrial age yet? Although 23 seems exceptionally low for anywhere. He can only assume it's some kind of disease happening here. ]

[cumulative]

No, we... we haven't found a way to cure the curse...

[daan is going to get jumpscared so hard by the state of this country probably.]

Only ways around it.

[recession]

Right.

Could you tell me more about that? I'm a little curious, and quite confused.

[ This island is so not okay. ]

[cumulative]

W-well, um... everyone in Arpéchéle dies to the curse by the time they turn twenty-three. A... a long time ago, someone from another country landed there with a few books from the outside world, and our scientists started using that knowledge to try to cure it, but they... weren't successful.

Then, another scientist who was born later continued their research on genetics, and managed to... find a way to create a backup of a person's genes and memory, and clone them after they died. B-but even a Reliver's body can't live past another twenty-three years, and... they'll always have the same body they did when they were backed up... so even if they can live for more than twenty-three years, they never age.

[after a second:]

I-it's supposed to be secret from everyone else, but nobody here seems to be from the same place we are, s-so I think... it's okay...

[how do you even keep a secret that is so intrinsically tied to the way everyone at home lives their life anyway come on]

[recession]

[ Tfw he had a long geography conversation with Lucas but he didn't actually say Arpéchéle out loud so he can't clock him from this name BUT he can actually figure out they're related from everything else he just said. Mostly the random foreigner.

Still, he assumed Lucas's place was more like... well, not so advanced as to talk about genetics, basically. ]

...

I'm sorry, what?

[ WHAT? GENETIC BODYSNATCHERS COUNTRY??? THAT IS INSANE! ]

[cumulative]

Um... I-I don't know which part I should try to clarify...?

[help him out here daan]

[recession]

[ He thought he'd already been through so much but this island sounds even more and he doesn't know how that's possible. ]

Erm... so you're from a remote nation that is cursed so that no man can live beyond twenty-three... and you create copies of yourself to achieve longevity until you can stop it?

How long has this been going on?

[cumulative]

It's been... some time now. I think the oldest Relivers must have lived for around... eighty years?

[something like that?]

Relivers can only ever look like the age they were when they were backed up, though, so... it's difficult to tell how long any given person has lived.

[recession]

And are you one?

[ Eighty isn't actually that long in the grand scheme of things, but that's also impressive they figured out a sort-of solution that fast if it was that recent. ]

[cumulative]

No. I've... never been backed up.

[recession]

So there is still some semblance of family dynamics, even in that state of things.

I'm sorry for all the questions. It sounds like your situation is pretty dire.

[cumulative]

Huh-? Family dynamics...? O-of course there are, Relivers aren't unable to have children... and people who don't become Relivers have families, too.

[it's just that, you know, if you don't get cloned you're probably going to die when your child is a toddler.]

Our situation would be much worse, if Monsieur Scien had never developed the technology for it.

[recession]

It just seems like the age for parenthood would be very young.

[ And yeah the fact that you'd probably die while your kid's still a child and that's something that makes him subtly sad. ]

Is "curse" just how you call it, or is it literal? It's not a biological cause?

[cumulative]

We... we don't know. They say Arpéchéle is... "a land loved by Death".

[but this is why they invented cloning before figuring this shit out, genuinely who fucking knows.]

[recession]

That's very ominous.

[ Yikes. ]

...

Do you know if it's tied to the land or the people?

[ Has anyone tried LEAVING. ]

[cumulative]

No one knows what happened to the Drifter... so I-I think it's possible the curse took him, too...? But maybe he just settled somewhere out of the public eye...

[he'd like to think that's the case, that someone with a naturally longer lifespan got to live it out.]

[recession]

...

I'm not the oldest here though, so there's also that.

[ Or is the existence of Ichiban just like, absolutely blowing up your mind right now? ]

Even with the wars, I'd still say the average lifespan expectancy is usually at least fifty.

[ Twenty-three is less than half that. BLEAK. ]