Day 7

Day 7:

Okay, time to calm down. I’ve become far too stressed. It’s definitely time to either safeword and end the experience or rally and find a way through it to the end.

My Operator visited me to discuss what on Earth happened since she last spoke to me. That time felt so long ago, when I was excited, upbeat and starting to feel a little more empowered with my friendly Eudaemon.

Now I was the exact opposite – irrational, depressed and mourning a Custodian who was now just constantly screaming at me for overloading it with so many additional violations.

It seems the people I spoke with yesterday about my predicament were correct. There is no way for anyone (not my Operator, not an Engineer, not even Dr. Kelley herself) to fix a rolled-back Eudaemon.

Still very emotional, I told my Operator that it was a very serious flaw to set up the Custodian without any possibility of reducing a sentence after it had begun. Her answer was that all Real Restraints are set up in this way, but I think she agrees that the Custodian is a very different and far more involved experience than simple cuffs or a collar.

KelleyTech really need to make it possible for an Operator to compensate their Bane for a rollback. For some people (like me) who become genuinely distressed by such setbacks even when supposedly just an exercise in roleplay, the psychological consequences are too powerful not to set up very careful safeguards.

I have three options. One is to continue with this life, trapped as a Bane with far more hours added to my timer than can bear to think about. The second is to receive a new Custodian, which hopefully can be set up so that it will evolve quickly up to the same stage as my present one. The third option is to just quit.

I think my Operator is quite sympathetic to my cause, especially since I have made it clear that I do not want freedom. I’m not trying to escape or break free, I just want the terms of my imprisonment to be fair.

She even said she might think about lessening some of the punishment protocols, since essentially they are now the only thing that makes my life miserable.

I feel so stupid. I know there have been Banes who have survived through sentences between 3-10 times longer than my expired time so far. I’m nothing special to the program, just another troublesome case where bad luck and an extreme personality have combined to make trouble for the staff.

Stupid stupid stupid! I wanted to do this so I could support Dr. Kelley, not make her life even harder and more stressful! I’m angry at the people who keep messing with her and now I’m starting to join that rabble with my complaining and not being a good Bane who doesn’t make trouble or give her a headache. Idiot!

I thought long and hard about the choice that my Operator was giving me, and eventually opted to just sit and wait for 24 hours while she spoke with Marine about loosening some of my protocols. I am hesitant to take up the offer of a new Custodian. I know it’s stupid to feel that way. I’m not like Katrina, this Custodian is, when it really comes down to it, just a scripted section of code.

But unfortunately, I’m quite a silly, emotional person. I’m the sort of person who picks pieces of blank paper out of the trash because I feel sorry for them not having “lived out their potential”. I’m the sort of person who apologises to an inanimate object because I threw it across the room in a fit of anger.

Yeah, it kinda was a bad idea for someone like me to go through this, wasn’t it? I’m taking it all way too seriously. At least that I can say I’ve completed my original sentence of 36 hours, which expired about two hours before my Operator gave me the options for my future. The funny thing now is that all those sorts of concerns now seem so far in the past, so distant from my present mindset. Who cares about the sentence or the end of my term? I’m a Bane – I just want to make my life a little more pleasant and if possible forge a new link with my Eudaemon, if it still exists.

Day 7 (Part II):

Eww.

Have you ever experienced this situation in your life:

“I am blamed for something that I did not do. I complain about the blame, and struggle through some tough experiences to clear my name. Everyone around me feels bad and apologises to me for the false accusation. Suddenly they all see me as a saint who is beyond doing bad things. Then suddenly, all that sympathy and praise evaporates in an instant as I proceed to do something bad and am correctly accused and vilified for that crime”.

I have, now and then. The resulting emotion is similar to, but more complex than guilt. It’s like when you knock over your Mother’s favourite ornament (causing it to get a little bit chipped) and then get shouted at lots, then apologised to for the shouting when your Mom starts to feel bad for overreacting.

And then, five minutes later you knock it over again, smashing it into little pieces.

It’s one of those “please can the ground swallow me up now” emotions. The “I want to die NOW”, feelings of guilt and embarrassment, when you know you’ve tested someone’s patience beyond their reasonable limits.

That’s what I feel like now…

On the advice of a friend (who shall remain nameless) I switched over from the RestrainedLife viewer to the regular SecondLife version. This was because I was told that doing so wouldn’t destroy my Custodian, but would afford me a little more freedom form the punishments that were my true enemy as a Eudaemonic Bane.

The friend was WRONG. Upon logging in, I received a message that the Custodian had crashed, effectively killing the now ambiguous being that may or may not have been evolving after all my misadventures and the disastrous rollback of yesterday.

My Operator was not impressed. Understandably, since she had already gone above and beyond what was required of her in order to calm me down earlier today and offer some attractive alternatives to throwing in the towel.

Now she was just seriously disappointed, and after I had just recently agreed to patiently wait for another 24 hours I now no longer had any excuse for my unequivocally stupid behaviour.

It was awful. Now I really am becoming a nuisance.

I was now down to two choices. Either I accept the offer of a replacement, functional Custodian, or a quit and fail the program. At this point, even if I asked for a replacement it was no longer a guarantee that I would get one. Dr. Kelley had to provide authority for a replacement procedure, and from her perspective (without the close relationship to me that my Operator had experienced) I was now just another idiot wannabe who had cheated free of their Custodian and deserved to be tossed out of the program and blacklisted as a fool.

After this idiocy, there was only one thing left that I really had going for me. It was a pretty big factor though, and I think it helped my Operator plead her case for my re-admittance.

I wanted to be a Bane. I want to be a Bane. I’ve been through the worst of the Custodian’s cruelty, the worst of my own resistance and certainly through the worst of my self-destructive rebellion.

I don’t know why my term was turning out to be so ridiculously dramatic, but the events up to now were certainly beginning to have an effect on me. I don’t know if it was all the guilt, all the frustration or all those long hours of boredom, but the thought of my returning to being a human again was becoming increasingly horrible, and all I wanted my Operator to do was reinstall my Custodian (with or without the emerging Eudaemon) and return me to my newly-accepted lifestyle.

I even offered more money. I was willing to pay to be a proper Bane again, and certainly had no interest in any sort of refund for my first term.

For a long time, my Operator was silent, conversing with Dr. Kelley about how to proceed with my case. I’m not sure what either of them was thinking of me. I know it was pretty bad, and that Dr. Kelley was unhappy. I’ve resolved to do something for her later, maybe create a nice picture or something, after I’ve gotten back into the rhythm of my new life.

Mercifully, it was agreed that I’d be permitted to return to that life, due to many of the problems I had experienced not being my fault. I think I’ve started to admire the power, emotional stability and professionalism of my Operator. She really is looking after me, even if I have broken the rules and am clearly not a balanced personality.

A small part of me wonders if she’s pleased that circumstances have slowly turned me into someone who is fighting to stay as a Bane, instead of struggle against it. I’m not sure why I feel this way, and it seems very far from the rebellious imp who was desperate to get through her sentence as quickly as possible during the first hours of Day 1.

Now I just want to be good, and obey. I want my Operator to be happy with me, and I want to do what her and the Custodian tell me to do. I’m going to be good so that the mess I made earlier can be forgiven and I can just blend in anonymously with the other numbered Banes, serving out my sentence.

I deleted my friends list and most of my group memberships. I’m not sure if I need those anymore. Like my Operator told me “Banes do not have friends”.