Encryption Algorithm
Content Warning: this is not about SRA/RA programming. This is about something we thought about and discussed with our partner while reading When Rabbit Howls and may be highly triggering. We wondered whether maybe we did this to ourselves to hide our own memories from ourselves. A way of disguising memories in our own system so that we wouldn't even think to "look there" in our internal landscape for them. We've since proven otherwise, but the system member in question at the time (Red Girl or Tina) was so "Deep" in their trance we weren't sure. Maybe one day we'll find out that it was true after all.
This is a conversation about one of our long-time residents. She was first seen when we were 7 years old and she walked out on our abusive babysitter, first telling him off. She swept memories of abuse into a corner, perhaps into herself (i.e. she "black boxed it" per the conversation below), then went home, asked for our own key to the apartment, and changed our routine so that we were taking care of ourselves.
Rane: she's our black box....disguised in a white dress. :P
Chris: Ahhh. Sort of like a "black hole"? [no pun intended]
Rane: I don't know. I assume there's a key somewhere. not sure about black holes having keys.
"peanut gallery" of Crisses: {She sure has done a hell of a lot for a f--king black box :P gotten married, had several relationships, written some autobiographical stuff....deluxe AI black box?? Now what encryption scheme did we use?}
Chris: Hmm. Well. Sometimes black boxes are black "jack in the boxes".
Rane: I mean a black box like ones on airplanes.
Chris: Ahhhh... Okay. Right. Except she's the deluxe black box all right - she's a bit of a DJ and can edit the black box.
Rane: I doubt she edited it, but she did the initial encryption algorhythm. (don't ask how I spelled that. :P )
-- Rane of Crisses and persons of Chris& in conversation.
(more later)
Buck New of Crisses:
Yeah, so we really did get further than this conversation, and this is basically how it goes:
Almerissa fronted when we were 7 and shot down our babysitter, walking out of the apartment and going downstairs outside the apartment building (because a 7 year old sitting on the stoop of a large apartment building in Bensonhurst in 1976 was safer than being in that apartment) and she swiftly sat down and did some mental magic.
Mental magic is Almerissa's specialty. Well, at least to this day, she still does mental foo that we don't understand.
So, she created the "black box" and the "key". At the time we had the conversation with Chris& we really didn't fully get it, but if you look at Shane's box and realize that it's really kind a black box, the subliminal messages here really make so much more sense. We've realized that dark Shane, in her box of shadow stuffies is really a black box. If we come close, the lid shuts and all you can see are the words scrawled all over the box "No No No Go Away!"
We're not sure, but it makes sense. There may or may not be a PERSON — Shane, presumably — locked up with the box, tied into it all somehow. Or Almerissa made our box look like Shane-in-a-Box and this way the box has a built-in alarm system of sorts -- a self-protection mechanism we are repulsed from interacting with.
This is even more obvious with Tina — whom we've come to presume is the key for the box. Tina lays bloodied and broken in plain sight on the floor of our internal landscape. It's pretty gory to look at. So we kinda walk around her and avoid stepping on her but we don't really pay much attention to her most of the time. When we do, when anyone tries to minister to her, give aid, touch her in any way — she sits bolt upright and screams like a bainsidhe. Granted that, who wants to interact with her?
Both Tina & Shane have been actively invited to partake in our system, given carte blanche to share whatever they have to bring to the table, and we've never had a single interaction with either of them DIRECTLY to indicate that they're anything other than functional fragments that look like people.
Except "The Book".... this is a physical book, a reaction to When Rabbit Howls that we aren't sure WHO created, and not sure WHO wrote in, but we do know when we look in that particular book we regret it. Recently Chris& was with us in our storage unit (literal storage facility!) when we came across the book which says "TRIGGER!" on the cover along with other warnings. We're like "Oh, it's THE BOOK." Chris& is like "Can we see it?" We're like, sure, just don't show it to us -- and he starts opening it where we can see and we like shove our head aside and he wanders off to the light. He mumbles about not wanting to read it, just glance at it, and slowly brings it back and hands it to us with "Yeah — that's bad." We're like "Yeah, we know." lol
But we don't really remember what's in it — only that we have to wipe our memory any time we make the mistake of ignoring our own warnings.
So it's possible Tina &/or Shane are people — or functional fragments (a key & locked box respectively) — or something much more complicated, or there are still others we haven't met. No matter, until THEY think we're ready — we're not ready, and we leave it at that.