#panchaea

go clik post n send me ur otps yall

@czigonas​

It took years after the incident, but he’s fine.

Years, but he was fine.

And then the Collapse hit.

He wakes up screaming, choking. The bedroom is dark and still but he knows, he knows, that outside the door people jitter and stumble along, mumbling, crying, nails that are cloudy with other people’s blood and wet bits of other people’s flesh dug into their forearms, arcing, aching. Sympathetic pressure tied with a darkened internal chant, thank god it wasn’t me, thank god it’s not me-

And the hell of guilt almost immediately after, thick and rough and turning him into something made of concrete, something petrified, something stone. You’re thankful!? For this?!

The hell of embracing the detachment. There’s work to do. He knows and he doesn’t know. None of it is real, of course, the bedroom is dark and still and the feeling that he can’t breathe is caused by phantom remembrances. He knows it. They aren’t real. But they’re real. And he wakes up screaming.

“JENSEN!” he shouts, half blind, hands reaching for empty air, knowing and not knowing and-

And Adam wakes up with a start, too. Waking followed by understanding, one thought jolting against the other at 3 in the morning.

He reaches out quickly, a sleepy dedicated alertness. Francis doesn’t seem to notice. Adam knows he does, though. This isn’t the first time this has happened.

Not even in the past few years.

He holds on to Francis carefully. If there’s one thing Adam’s come to appreciate about the way he’s been made more than anything else, it’s that while most people’s connection to the fine-tuned motions of their body wavers as the time keeps passing, his only seems to get stronger. It’s... It’s that Adam can hold Francis tight enough so he can feel anchored to someone (somewhen), but not tight enough that he feels trapped all over again. It’s that Adam can do all that and still run a thumb lightly over Francis’ shoulder. It’s that he can help make the shaking stop.

“It’s okay,” he says, calmly. “It’s okay, you’re here. I’m here.”

He holds Francis in the dark, I’m here, you’re here, everything’s okay, and he chooses not to know for how long. He keeps him there until he feels the other man relaxing in his arms, starting to fall back asleep, back to something that at least if not a good dream, isn’t a nightmare.

“I love you,” he says, quietly, knowing Francis won’t hear it.

Take A Read

From: James Mandibar To: Pieter Burke

Something you might find interesting came across my desk this morning- a report from one of the technicians working on Hydra's NIRVE extension. Apparently your men, or more specifically, the volunteers, have coined a new term to describe the post-release blackouts they are experiencing: "Mindcrash".

To quote Test Subject 2829:

"When you're plugged in, everything is cold. Your skin feels tight, your muscles are stiff, and your bones feel like glass. But you're not really aware of this, right--because the machine is telling you otherwise. It's telling you you're somewhere else, experiencing something else. But your body knows, it knows something isn't right, and it remembers. Like the real you is still awake, even though you're dreaming. When they turn it off and you start disconnecting, it's like the fake you and the real you crash together. One minute you're warm, alive, then all of a sudden it's like you fell through ice and you're dying. Sucks the air right out of you, like a bomb going off in your head. Your brain locks up, and boom! A flash. Then nothing, just the darkness. You know those blue screens of death on a computer? Yeah, it's like that. Except it's your mind that's crashing. Spooky shit, man. I ain't going back into that thing."

I think these "mind crashes" deserve some more looking into. If we can diminish the likelihood of them occuring, or eliminate the possibility altogether, it would go a long way towards retaining volunteers. As it stands, the cost of outfitting non-OCM candidates with Hydra tech in order to simply test the integration of NIRVE simulators with your SpecOps training regime is proving quite... prohibitive.

- J

From: Missing Link - Hacked Email

Hyron Drone being fitted with a control spine.

The Hyron Project is a series of quantum computers that are slaved to live human beings. Created by the Illuminati, Hyron is the most advanced computer system in the world. It is developed as an application of the Organic Computational Matrix Project, abbreviated as OCM. Consequently, "OCM" is often used as a synonym for the Hyron Project.

A single Hyron Project consists of a large central computer fused to multiple humans referred to as drones. These drones have been heavily modified to connect with the computer. The drones allow the supercomputer to think abstractly, store huge amounts of data, and be somewhat self-aware.

From: Deus Ex Wikia

Background

In 2007, DARPA became interested in pursuing research that would increase a soldier's situational awareness in the field. It took proposals from various private sector companies about how this could be achieved through an artificial cognitive science program. VersaLife put forward a suggestion which involved the direct interface of human brains and inorganic computer components. This proposal was deemed too extreme by DARPA and was thus rejected. Through VersaLife, the Illuminati decide to develop this project in secret. With it, they hope to create the most advanced supercomputer ever made. This would later be known as the Hyron Project. They also collaborate with Belltower Associates on the Hydra project which aims to achieve DARPA's original goal of increasing soldiers' situational awareness. Both of these pursuits rely on OCM technology.

Aside from Adam Jensen’s own prosthetic spine, the spines fitted into Hyron Drones are the only other time we see detailed spinal prostheses in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Aside from the interest in the Hyron Project itself, it’s lead me to wonder about spinal augmentations in the Deus Ex Universe. While the Drones’ spines depict a horrific reality, being jacked into a machine and experiencing horrors the human mind was never meant to experience, it leaves me to wonder what a technological marvel it must have been to be able to create prosthetic spines.

The Hyron Project gives us our first glimpses into the terrible AI of the original Deus Ex games as well, and I can’t help but speculate that perhaps theHyron is tied closer to Eliza than we realize, especially when one takes Eliza’s systems’ power into consideration... Is she more powerful, or less, than the Hyron? Were they attempting to make something more powerful than Eliza, or was Eliza the result of what was learned through the Hyron?

Or perhaps is there no tie at all?