WonderlandifulCat

actually wrong in this

one, but may I add

"Oh I don't normally use AI, I just wanted it to plan my trip"

You lived on this planet for decades, you know what you like, there are hundreds of websites where you can type into any search engine " things to do in [area]" and have at least a hundred different options.

"Oh I only use it so I can figure out what to make during the week with what I have"

The most popular website as you type in "recipes" into google have sections where you click dinner- quick and easy and those usually rely on staples + 1 or 2 items. I found 30 recipes on chicken alone.

"I had a writing idea, so I typed a few sentences into Chat GPT and I was able to write 20 pages with it."

One is Colt and Ryland's older brother, Court. He's one scary motherfucker that used to beat up the twin's bullies all trough middle school and highschool. He has black belts in numerous martial arts, can lift his own body weight and has a murder glance that could make grass wither and die. He says that he's in the military but they all suspect he's a CIA agent or something.

The other is that third year history major that lives two doors away from Ryland and Simon. Ava Stratt is 5 feet and 8 inches of pure titanium and meannes, and they all pray that she passes her finals because if she doesn't, there is a concrete possibility that she will recalibrate her goal to world domination. They all know she would succeed.

This two would either love eachother and form the strongest alliance in human history, or hate one another to the point of starting a rivalry that would reduce the whole world to a pile of rubble and ashes.

The x-ray camera is a pinhole. The proximity sensor is a pinhole. The porthole, literally a small circle that you can look through to see the outside world, is a pinhole. They are limited little windows into the world outside the sub and using what information they give us we are left to make sense of what exists more broadly.

The speaker is a pinhole. It is a pinhole into the SM14, to the docking ship, to Ava and her crew; it is a pinhole for Ava and the crew into what's happening the SM13 as well. Simon is their pinhole into the blood ocean. When Simon and Ava exchange names, when they talk; is that also not a pinhole into each other's internal lives, into their humanity? Did Ava assume she knew Simon in his entirety based on her pinhole into his life from the COI report? Just a pinhole, and she made sense of him using it, saw it as all he was and ever could be. Like with every other convict she made them what she saw rather than what they were, their ignorant god, until Simon's name and pain--a pinhole, through the speaker, through their words--forced her to contend with how what she believed was not what was and, despite her efforts, not what is.

The computer is a pinhole into a limited amount of knowledge. The previous occupant from Eden leaving behind a message, merely a glimpse into who he was, a bit of audio and some words for us to infer all he was, and we are left to wonder. Just the same as the fate of the SM8 and the two people on it.

The limited POV of Simon is our pinhole. Our only glimpses of the world outside the sub is his perspective and memories. A pinhole, just glimpses, and Simon's own life his own pinhole into the universe, these flashbacks our pinhole into his pinhole, into how Simon experiences the world. Pinhole-ception. Similarly, the pinholes of the sub are not just through Simon's POV. We see through them even when he doesn't. We see the photos he doesn't, we see behind him as blood drips and the sub transforms, the camera lingers on things of importance even when Simon's gaze does not. Still, our perspective is warped by his, both in what Simon and others offer us (Simon's memories, his words, his actions) and Simon's own degrading mental state that leaves us unable to tell what is real or just him. Like Simon, we are left to make sense out of uncertainty, out of a limited perspective.

And Simon is aware of this in a way even more than others. It fuels his hope, this awareness, as much as it does his fear, caused by his desperation and the fact that the edges of his knowledge cuts into him in a way it doesn't others, so immediate in how he is actively deprived it by others makes him even more cognizant of it. Simon asks what is more likely, that every planet and star disappeared or a few stations and spaceships. Just because they perceive an absence, does that truly mean it is gone?

He questions if the distant stars he sees are truly ghostlight. He can see them after all. His perception makes them real, in a way, and like everyone else he uses this to make sense of the universe. But more than that, if our awareness of them relies on light, and its absence--they truly cannot tell if more distant stars have disappeared until their light stops reaching them, and until then their absence is simply assumed because stars nearer to them had stopped shining. And did they truly die, or can they simply not see them for another reason? Him, Eden, the COI; their perspective of the universe is through a billion pinholes made of distance and time and light.

Eden and the COI look through the same pinhole and come to drastically different conclusions about what they see, what Is, and what will Be.

The black box, floating in the ocean of blood, is a pinhole too just waiting for someone to look through it as well. A limited perspective of what happened, different to ours and Simon's. It has the SM8 black box data. It will lack what was purely Simon's perspective or the vital minutes after it was removed from the sub. We have no idea what it recorded of the SM13 either but it will not have what we saw, at the very least it won't have visual recordings. Will there be recordings of Simon's one-sided conversation with the fish-monster? What conclusions will be drawn from his mutterings? What technical information on the state of the sub has the black box recorded that may been clarifying for us and Simon that we will never know?

(Is the knowledge in the black box the doom of humanity? We do not know, our perception is limited. But that gives us the freedom to hope as well as dread)

It thinks, therefore we are? The light illuminates yet blinds--to see something is to define it, to solidify it, to make it reality and therefore limited rather than the infinite possibility of the unknown. But to think is to have perspective, to have perspective outside of what sees you. The fact Simon knows what the god does not; therefore what he knows exists outside of its perception. So is the ignorant god the cause of the Quiet Rapture? Or is the ignorant god humanity, the ocean, us, making sense of a universe suddenly devoid of stars and planets through our limited perception? Is the blood ocean the remains of humanity? Or is that just us, making sense using what little we see of a larger universe?

If the Light is a pinhole bleeding light from somewhere else, and we look through it, what do we see? What looked through to see us?

A film is a pinhole being cleverly used to tell a story. Like an ignorant god we look through it and extrapolate worlds and people, like I'm doing now, but outside it is not the empty space and the Quiet Rapture and an ocean of blood. It's a cast and crew and a set meant to trick us (for a time) into thinking what we see is real to the point we think what we see through the pinhole can be used to infer an expansive world outside of it. But we are not an ignorant god (in this, at least), we are an aware one, indulging in the craft of a pinhole pointed at puppets, its edges easily seen beyond but when peered through cleverly obscures the stage.

Why? I know this is the question you want to ask. You are not allowed to ask it. I’m not sure why it’s frowned upon but you can’t.

You should name it after me. Not funny. No one laughs. A selfish statement that takes the attention off the pregnant party and shifts it to you. This joke is a flop, save it for the next pet they get.

and grace who is so alien, but reflects eridian mannerisms that they've never considered strange before but coming from a creature so soft and strange, it just doesn't feel right. grace who stomps his foot twice when he asks a question, and it rings out flat and dull instead of the strong, sharp sound of an eridian hand on the ground. grace whose voice is so alien, so one-note, so full of articulations that are sharp and round and everywhere in between, but who echoes the melodies of eridian poetry and music, sometimes on accident but sometimes perfectly in time with what rocky translates him as saying, and later, perfectly in time with his keyboard.