TT: Ok. TT: I will disregard your anomalous observation for now and continue conversing as if it never happened. GT: Right. Good plan. GT: Um. GT: Anyhoo thats a heck of a tragic and thrilling tale dirk. GT: I am still totally cockeyed and catawampus about it all i dont even know what to think. TT: But you believe me, right? GT: Oh yeah every word of it! TT: Wow. GT: Why shouldnt i? You are my friend and i trust you. TT: I still just think it's impressive, is all. Even after all this time. You are pretty much a one of a kind dude. GT: Heh not really i just like believing stuff and believing in people. GT: Wait what do you mean? TT: About what? GT: When you said after all this time? GT: You just told me now! TT: Yes. GT: Hang on. GT: Blarg! The deja vuey shit is happening again!!! GT: Okay i am SURE weve had this conversation before so many things are familiar. GT: I remember you saying the one of a kind dude thing and i remember saying the word catawampus and... GT: All of it! GT: Whats going on? TT: Took you long enough to figure it out. TT: Pages really are a slow burning class. Damn. GT: Figure what out! TT: You're asleep. GT: Oh. GT: Thats right. I fell off the platform thing and i guess i got knocked out? TT: Yep. GT: So im dreaming. TT: Kinda. TT: It's a dream bubble. GT: Whats that? TT: A place in the infinite abyss where sleeping people can share dreams with each other while revisiting memories. TT: Also where they can meet dead people. GT: So we are sharing a dream together? GT: And youre currently asleep too? Uh. Currently in the future? TT: No. TT: Even if I was, I wouldn't visit a dream bubble. That only happens when your dream self is dead, like yours is. TT: Mine is not. GT: Hm. I guess i understand? GT: So whats the deal then? Wait. GT: You said this is where they meet dead people too... GT: Shit! Dirk are you dead? Are you a ghost!? TT: No, dude. Chill. I'm fine. GT: Then what the fuck is going on! Who am i talking to? TT: Well, who are the people you talk to when you have a regular dream? GT: What? Uh... TT: Like just a boring normal dream, and there's a person you're talking to. Who is that? GT: I dont know? TT: It's nobody. Just a projection of your own mind. TT: Dream bubbles don't always need to be shared by dreamers or dead people. You can go to sleep and wake up in one alone, reliving an old memory. TT: Kind of like a normal dream. Until you remember it's just a memory, which is where we are now. GT: Okay. GT: So. GT: I am having like a lucid dreamy thing in a magic bubble and you are just like a figment of my imagination? TT: Yes, basically. GT: So im talking to myself! Thats kind of stupid! TT: Well, yeah. But not quite. TT: You could view me as a projection of the real Dirk within your mind, as expressed through all of your thought patterns about him. TT: So I'm kind of a splinter of his corporeal self who happens to live in your awareness. TT: I'm a startlingly close approximation to the real thing, for all intents and purposes. GT: Just how startlingly close are we talking? TT: I'm not going to give you a bogus percentage like the glasses cause that's not my shtick. TT: But pretty damn close. GT: Okay thats fair. GT: But. GT: Man. GT: There is something that feels kind of weird about this. You being in my head... its a little messed up! TT: What's messed up about it? TT: You were the one who put me here, with your intimate understanding of all his mannerisms and predilections. TT: And a splintered existence is pretty much how he rolls. TT: This is how shit is bro. GT: Ok im sorry for saying its messed up but... GT: Its still a bit frustrating! Ive been trying to talk to you all day. GT: But all i get is your pesky responder bedeviling me at every turn and your friggin robot punching me across the ocean and then throwing a weird tantrum and ripping his nuclear heart out in front of me. GT: And if that werent enough i tumbled off the doohickey and knocked myself out and now im strolling down memory lane with your fake brain ghost! GT: Its like you are surrounding me from all sides with imitations of yourself but never the REAL YOU!!! GT: Cheese and fucking crackers when do i just get to talk to the actual dirk? TT: Jake, what do you even know about someone's actual self? TT: What makes it actual? What is "actuality?" GT: What a horseshitty question! GT: I dont know anything about actuality i guess but i know some philosobabble horseshit when i dadblasted hear it. TT: I'm just saying, this isn't really your field of expertise. TT: Dirk is the heart guy. He's the one walking the path of self, even when he doesn't know it. Like right now. GT: But what does that mean? GT: And how can you really be made of only my thoughts when i dont even know what youre talking about sometimes? GT: Or when i didnt know some of the things youre telling me? Like about being in a dream bubble? GT: How can i tell myself about that stuff through brain ghost dirk! TT: Who says you don't know those things on some level? GT: I dont think i do! GT: I have no business knowing those things. TT: Pages have a lot of untapped potential. TT: That's practically all there is to the class, actually. TT: But when they eventually find it, look out. TT: And the ones who deal in hope? Shit, man. TT: I'm scared of you already, and I'm not even real.