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[the_archivist]

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Jonathan Sims/The Archivist ⬤ The Magnus Archives
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moonblessing ⬤ Cordis

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[professorfreischutz]

Hm? No need for thanks. It's mutually beneficial!

[ He settles in now that Jon's accepted his hand. ]

Don't be so sure I wouldn't disabuse them of theirs first.

[the_archivist]

Yes but it is... Awkward having to rely on physical contact from other people.

[It's something he'd rather avoid, and he feels uncomfortable at other people having to offer it.]

It's fine. I'm used to it. I know what I am.

[professorfreischutz]

Awkward, especially when most are hoping for more from it?

[ Just a guess, but he shrugs regardless. ]

Regardless, I'm very curious about your stories!

[the_archivist]

Yes. Precisely.

[The vast majority of people here are quite willing to be more physically affectionate than he is comfortable with, even before actual intercourse gets involved. But what's new there?]

Of course. I'm good for horror stories at least.

[professorfreischutz]

Horror stories have always held a certain charm.

[ Especially because they're not always happy endings. ]

Would this particular tale be one of those?

[the_archivist]

Yes. I don't really know any other types of stories.

Not from work anyway.

[professorfreischutz]

That suits me just fine. No benevolent sort of supernatural creatures to come in contact with where you're from?

[the_archivist]

No. Nothing like that. They're all quite hostile to humanity.

[Well, view them as a food source. Jon is probably the most benevolent supernatural creature around, and that's only for now.]

[professorfreischutz]

And yet you don't know of magecraft? What is it your people do to fend these horrors off?

[the_archivist]

There isn't anything like magecraft. No magic spells, no powers of light and love and hope.

[professorfreischutz]

[ Sounds like his kinda place... ]

Then please tell me one of your stories. I'd like to know how your people deal with it.

[the_archivist]

I mean, we do a little research into it, try to figure out what we can. Usually the trail is long dead, long with whoever gave the statement.

But... right, Sergey Ushanka. Digital guru diagnosed with an incurable degenerative brain disease. Supposedly tried to upload his mind to the computer. Depending on which version of the story you got, maybe he wrote the code in his own blood, or he cut his skull open and smashed his head into the motherboard. He was supposedly found surrounded by floppy discs, or CDs or hard drives in later versions of the story.

That's not the point. It's an urban legend, supposedly.

The women who gave this statement, she was a hacker. She downloaded- do you know what a chatbot is? I didn't.

[professorfreischutz]

I don't, but I believe I can surmise it from the name. An algorithm meant to simulate an online chat experience?

[the_archivist]

Yes, that's exactly it!

She there had been chatbots based on the urban legend for years. She downloaded one and opened it. Normal chat window. She typed in 'hi' and got a few responses. Mostly symbols that didn't make sense, but the letters... twitched in a way that shouldn't really be possible. There were some bits of English test. "HELPHELPHELP" and "It peels my mind like knives".

The fan on her laptop was working overtime, and she tried to restart her computer. But it wouldn't switch off. And after a few moments, a video came on. A grainy image of a pain-filled man in his 30s appeared. The camera was pointed up at him as he wept in front of his computer. He reached down and pulled one of the keys off his keyboard and placed it into his mouth, then started to chew, the hard plastic splitting his lips.

She shut the laptop, and went to sleep, but partway through the night the TV switched on showing the same video with sound.

She pulled out the cables to the TV but the video kept playing. For the next couple of days, any screen she looked at for more than a second would start to play the video.

It only stopped when she'd watched all seventeen hours. At the end, Ushanka smiled, lay down and said, "The maze is sharp on my mind. The angles cut me when I try to think." The back of his head was missing.

And after that, the file stopped working.

[professorfreischutz]

[ That isn't the story he had been expecting, but he's engrossed nonetheless. ]

Seventeen hours of a man losing his mind while consuming his computer, who was then shown to be impossibly still functioning at the end of it. No way to verify the curse after the fact. And this woman was otherwise unharmed in the end?

[the_archivist]

Yes. Physiclaly unharmed. But scared, obviously. Traumatised.

[And he sees her when he dreams, her nightmare where she puts the keyboard to her lips and bites down and chews while the blood flows from her lips.]

[professorfreischutz]

Yes, I would imagine so. I don't suppose it was ever discovered what happened to Sergey specifically?

[ Not that he thinks Jon would know, but better to ask than not. ]

[the_archivist]

No idea. There's a good chance he was never real in the first place. Just an urban legend.

[professorfreischutz]

Yet that poor woman definitely saw something. How fascinating!

[ That's definitely his takeaway here. ]

Are all of your stories unexplainable like this?

[the_archivist]

[They're all perfectly explainable. He knows that now. The influence of malevolent entities on the world.]

Yes. I mean, you might come up with some explanation for some of them. God knows I did when I took the job.

[professorfreischutz]

And now... you know better? Or you've simply stopped trying?

[the_archivist]

I- I know better. I always did. I was just afraid.

[professorfreischutz]

[ He looks interested, head tilted and attentive. ]

I can see why. It must be strange to come here and see the supernatural being used for good rather than ill.

[the_archivist]

It's definitely strange. I'm still not sure I trust it.

[professorfreischutz]

[ He looks at their clasped hands, a smirk on his lips, and nods. ]

Yes. Magic is not something I'm fond of, but it is part of my life regardless. Now that I'm something of magic, I don't really get to be picky. You may have to take a similar approach sooner or later.