Lyra messages Faerzen about universal abortion

snuffshotMartyr [SM] began pestering visceralVanguard [VV]
SM: S'when's your party s'posed to be again?
VV: Ah, hello, Lyra!
VV: That is quite the question, isn't it?
VV: I am afraid that my answer to that question is going to have to be "I do not know for certain."
VV: Currently this game has me wrapped up in the middle of something I cannot easily leave, but then again that is not anything particularly new for SABATH.
VV: As soon as I am able to return to my house and start setting things up we should be good to go.
VV: I will reach out to everyone who expressed interest in attending to see if they are available soon.
VV: Last I heard several people were in the middle of activities that could not be immediately departed from, but that may have changed.
VV: I will get back to you shortly on the specifics of that matter.
VV: In other news, how are you doing as of late?
VV: I can only presume your response to that question involves something related to death and/or hallucinations and/or monsters. :/
SM: Close
SM: Dreams, but I suppose hallucinations is close enough
SM: You're from the future. Do people know how comas work yet?
VV: Comas? I am sure medical professionals in my day did, yes.
VV: As for me personally, my knowledge is somewhat limited. The underlying phenomena behind comatose behavior, as well as the most effective methods of treatment, can vary quite significantly depending on the case.
VV: Why do you ask? Is someone in a coma and in need of treatment?
SM: Look it up on your future internet, download the webpage, and send it to me
SM: Same thing with trebuchets and manga
SM: Oh, and if you have time, abortion
VV: What do you need those things for? It isn't like much changed on those since your time.
VV: Japan has, and always will be (until it somehow got annihilated by meteors simultaneously at multiple points in history), Japan, and Medieval siege weaponry has not changed either.
VV: Do you not have access to some sort of internet encyclopedia?
VV: I cannot provide you with much information in the way of abortion as it essentially hasn't existed in society for some time.
VV: I can obtain some information on comas, but you still have not particularly said why you need it. Are you and Alex okay?
SM: Hasn't existed. That's good to know
SM: Just send me the documents. I'll figure it out myself
VV: Is there a reason you won't tell me what's wrong?
VV: I am currently downloading materials to send you.
SM: Nothing's wrong
SM: It's hard to explain
VV: Well I daresay I have time to listen while this downloads so fire away!
SM: I've got a plan
SM: You sure you wanna hear more?
VV: Of course you have a plan. :)
VV: Is there a reason I would or should wish otherwise?
SM: Y'ain't exactly fond of my plans
VV: Simply because I did not quite agree with some of your past plans does not mean I am going to be opposed to all of your ideas ever.
VV: We are working together on a team, and as such I want to be supportive when I can.
VV: What is your idea?
SM: If and/or when you disagree, am I gonna be on my own for those documents?
VV: Probably not? If you say something I disagree with, I am not going to throw a tantrum and leave.
VV: If whatever your idea is even warrants you asking that question in advance then I am not certain I can answer that question in advance.
VV: I am certainly not planning on withholding information from you if that is what you mean.
SM: I'm gonna kill the universe.
VV: .....okay? I am not sure I understand your idea any more than before you said anything.
VV: How the fuck can you even kill a universe?
VV: What universe would you kill? Why?
SM: The next one.
SM: This whole game is for the sake of reproducing the world, right? Making a new universe for reality to continue in
SM: Wanna find out what happens when the kid dies?
VV: Why would you want to kill it?
VV: It we get through all of this shit enough to make another world, then why would you want to just destroy it?
VV: Why go through all the trouble of trying to beat the game in the first place?
SM: EXACTLY!
SM: Why are we doing this? Some malevolent entity that OBVIOUSLY has no regard for our health, happiness, or sanity asked us to? Made us?
SM: What's in it for us after this nightmare? The right to finally die?
VV: The right to finally live in the world we created.
VV: To have a life, to create a new world worth living in, and to move on from all of this.
VV: Creating and shaping a new world is beautiful in a way, is it not?
VV: Why would you destroy what seems to be the primary endgame reward of this whole ordeal?
SM: Come on Faerzen
SM: You're not stupid
SM: Don't tell me you really think Sabath is gonna give us anything worth having
VV: It isn't that I expect it to give us something worth having, it is that I do not understand why you are set on destroying it before you even know.
SM: I'm curious
SM: I wanna see how I fail
SM: I wanna see what takes priority - me failing the game, or me failing to quit
VV: What if somehow the end result is something desirable, and then you destroy it? What then?
VV: I can absolutely understand the curiosity about the inner workings of the game, but destroying the one good thing that we get out of this after it is all over seems quite counterproductive to me.
SM: There's nothing desirable about this game
SM: We don't get the reward
SM: Come on, Faerzen. It isn't for us
SM: We're just the poor wretches that ended up babysitting
SM: We'll die like everybody else did
VV: Are you confident enough in that fact to throw away any chance we could possibly have at an alternative?
VV: You may not care about depriving yourself of that, but by doing this you are also taking away that possibility for every single other person on this team, regardless of whether or not they agree with you.
VV: Especially with repercussions this large, simply deciding this for everyone because you are curious which aspect of this game is more screwed up hardly seems fair or respectful.
SM: Says the person with the death mask
VV: I chose to take this mask based on my own personal judgement but also after consulting quite a few other stakeholders in the event.
VV: Nick supported my decision, Alex supported by decision, both Reggie and Regent agreed my decision was the best decision that could have been made at the time.
VV: I did not choose what I did because I wanted to control what was going on and take responsibility for events. I did what I did because I felt I had to and because nearly everyone else agreed with me.
VV: I think you will be hard-pressed to find anyone else in this session in favor of you effectively aborting our only chance of anything good coming out of this.
VV: Guaranteeing the rest of our lives to be alone in oblivion against everyone's wishes is different than taking a risk with precautions that might put the others in this session at risk.
SM: "Might"
SM: Y'still don't get it
SM: There isn't a might, Faerzen
SM: You've signed their death warrant
SM: 'Scuse me for tryna find some good out of it
VV: Yet again you are assuming that the only the worst outcome is possible so you might as well personally doom the entire session.
VV: How can you be so certain that you are convinced going to such lengths to destroy the session is a wise decision?
SM: Listen to me, Faerzen.
SM: S'not "might as well"
SM: Same thing as always. I'm tryna win. All you're tryna do is keep from losing
SM: There's a difference
VV: How is what you proposed at all trying to win?
VV: You just said that you intend to destroy the world which we may end up making should we win.
VV: How is saying that you plan to destroy all evidence and reward of victory contingent upon victory "trying to win"?
SM: How is hoping the world lets us survive anything but trying not to lose?
VV: What?
VV: Hoping that the world lets us survive is our only chance at winning so striving to make that happen is trying to win!
VV: You make it sound as though I am hiding in a hole in the ground just keeping my fingers crossed that everything will be okay.
VV: That is blatantly false. Just because you have lost all hope that anything good can come up from this game does not mean you can use that as a justification to doom everyone.
VV: You have still failed to answer my question as to how your idea is "trying to win" at all. It still seems to me as though this guaranteeing self-defeat but under the guise of blaming the game.
VV: How is killing the world we may create in any way at all helpful to anyone other than it satisfies your curiosity about what will happen?
SM: Come on, Faerzen
SM: You're smart
SM: You tell me.
SM: In what situation is infanticide useful?
VV: If you are really trying to tell me that you think that all of the people in the entirety of time and space in the new world that we are creating are going to be better off dead than a small number of them having to deal with the next generation of SABATH, then I am going to have to vehemently disagree with you.
SM: Talked to Tarane, I see
SM: Now answer the question
SM: Just try to *think*
VV: No, I have not talked with Tarane about this.
VV: I am simply citing one commonly-used excuse for abortions, back when it was prevalent.
VV: The only motivations for the archaic process I can remember off of the top of my head were fear for the mother's health, constant reminders of a negative experience such as rape, and the thought that due to the conditions in which the baby would have to live (ie poverty or disease) it would be better off dead.
VV: I fail to see how any of those are applicable here. Please, Lyra, enlighten me.
SM: Seriously?
VV: Do you think I am joking?
VV: Of course I am being serious, Lyra.
SM: I'm starting to understand your reasoning for what happened at the trial now
VV: And that would be....?
SM: I get that I have to be a sociopath, but just
SM: *Come on!*
SM: You wanna be the one to dump another batch of kids into this pit? You wanna be the God that forsakes them?
VV: This is what I just said and you brushed it off.
VV: Using your logic, you could justify that a mother having children at all should never happen since that child will almost certainly have to go through experiencing the death of their parents and loved ones.
VV: Yes, if we create a new world this cycle of universal death and rebirth will continue and another batch of people will need to go through what we are right now.
VV: However, I would not argue that is sufficient justification to kill all life in that universe before they even get a chance to live their lives.
VV: Yes, I have experienced pain because of SABATH, but I would much rather have this than have never existed at all. Even including this past week in SABATH, my life as a whole as by far been a net positive in happiness and enjoyment.
VV: The short-lived pain and harm that we would put a comparatively small number of people through is not justification enough for saying it is better off that the entire set of living beings in the universe ought to not have existed in the first place.
VV: Before it died, Earth was a beautiful place for a long time, and I just because I know that an artistic creation will end in fire does not mean it is not still worthwhile to construct in the first place.
SM: I'm not killing anything.
SM: I'm not a murderer, Faerzen.
SM: It's nice that in utopian future Norway nobody has to deal with stuff like this
SM: But try and look at it from somebody else's perspective
SM: Just once.
VV: What are you getting at, Lyra?
VV: Are you trying say that the pain we all have felt here is sufficient to outweigh the entirety of good in the whole history of Earth such that it would have been better off that the world had not existed in the first place?
VV: If that is not what you are saying, then I find it hard to extend that same logic to the world we may or may not create.
SM: Not everybody lives in a utopia.
SM: Even in your timeline, life isn't necessarily good.
SM: Byron's father. Alex's family. Skeleton wars, megacorporations.
SM: War. Famine. Hate.
SM: There've been two world wars in my history. How many more in the hundred years since?
SM: And you think the fact that you've had a good week makes up for that?
VV: No, I don't.
VV: I am not arguing that this week is good, that the pain we've experienced is insignificant, or that problems in the world do not exist.
VV: You are arguing that the sum of the totality of all of humanity's experience is negative, and I am disagreeing.
VV: Lyra, my father DIED in the aftermath of the e-wars. While I wholeheartedly agree that I have a lot to be thankful about compared to others, I am not someone with a pampered life who presumes everyone must feel the same as he does.
VV: Through genetic engineering, we had essentially solved the problem of world hunger. The Pan-African Conglomeration was a formidable player in the world economic stage. Lack of access to medical care and disease treatment was incredibly rare, worldwide. Yes there was war, yes families were ripped apart--including my own--yes megacorporation competition caused strife, but on the whole, people across the world just live their lives.
VV: I believe that, even in my era, if you asked the entirely of the human population whether or not they would prefer to continue leading their lives as is or to never have existed, a majority of people would not have seen their lives as so bad as to chose that first option. Yes the years of war and pain are terrible, but I disagree that those times outweigh all of the rest of the good in the world, and that just because of that the entire universe should not have existed.
VV: The way I see it, all our lives are a mixture of good and bad things. In no way do the good things necessarily soften the bad things, but just as equally the bad things do not necessarily spoil the good and make them unimportant.
SM: Selection bias
VV: I do not want to jump to conclusions about your perspectives on life, but I would make the exact argument about your case as well.
VV: If you believe not everyone in the world is as optimistic about the experiences of humanity as I am, I would argue not everyone is as pessimistic as you are.
VV: Happiness is inherently an unmeasurable quantity, particularly when it pertains to a world that is long gone, so there is little that can be done to prove anything regarding the totality of happiness.
VV: In this case I suppose we must respectfully agree to disagree.
SM: S'pose so
SM: But like you said
SM: Doesn't have to be unanimous.
VV: Hardly anything in life ever is unanimous.
snuffshotMartyr [SM] ceased pestering visceralVanguard [VV]