Season 2 / Sylas Grey - "To Love And To Cherish" [The Second Trial Projection]

Sylas Grey

You hold the phone’s camera over the white square. Another flash of light, and another scene appears. A tropical resort’s blinked into existence, and that now endless path leads up [right to the gates]. More laughter. Two stacks of luggage by the path. A man’s sigh -

“Hey, Damo?”
“Yeah! What’s up, buddy? Excited for, uh, the big day?”
“Totally. You’re still good to pick Alannah up and drive her to the chapel, right…?”
“…Yeah, man. Legit. And you’re saving that Best Man position for me?”
“Of course! You’re the one who introduced us, aye?”
“Heh. Yeah. Sure was.”

…But nobody’s here.

Emily Lewenhock

“Are these supposed to be the spots he’s blocked out in his mind, or…” Maybe just aesthetic, who knows.

Follow that path!

Sylas Grey

Emily Lewenhock

The third verse is the same as the first. And the second, but that doesn’t rhyme nearly as well.

This cartoonish resort isn’t a literal cartoon, but it’s clearly filtered through the eyes of someone who’s only seen this in TV shows or staged Instagram shots. The layout doesn’t actually make sense. There are an absurd amount of tiki torches, totem poles, pools, sea shells, leis, surfboards, actual sea turtles, actual sea turtles on surfboards in the pools wearing leis… You get the idea. It’s dumb. But the one thing that doesn’t seem goofy and tropey is the trail of rose petals that leads out to the [terrace dining area.]

Emily Lewenhock

Can she pet a turtle. This is an important step in murder investigation.

Sylas Grey

Emily Lewenhock

She sure can. The turtle nods at her and goes “Cowabunga, dude!” in the same voice as the turtles from Finding Nemo.

Shiori Yoshida

Woah.. turtle.. anyways. Shiori (unlike her admin) is not all that charmed by the talking turtle, instead continuing forward to the terrace dining area now that the path has a specific destination.

Sylas Grey

Shiori Yoshida

The trail of petals winds down a wooden walkway lined with torches. They pulse rhythmically; three flare-ups of fire, pause. Six flare-ups of fire, pause. Three flare-ups of fire, pause. Six flare-ups of fire, pause. But once you stop looking at them and get to the terrace… What do you know? Most of this is empty, replaced by a white square. You know what to do, don’t you?

Andrew Edgeworth

Andrew follows the ladies, a little spooked by the sudden talking turtle. However, his attention is swiftly grabbed by the next white square - partially just to get away from the turtle. Click!

Sylas Grey

Andrew Edgeworth

Your vision goes white. Now there’s furniture, now there’s music, now there’s movement- even if it only lasts for five or so seconds. A looping clip, a quick reel. Two [chess pieces] sit at one of the tables, fresh food and drink placed in front of them. Camera lights flash. Steam wafts off their meal. Romantic music is… present, for all five seconds of the loop. It’s not a pleasant sensory experience.

Emily Lewenhock

Emily blinks before giving the turtle a shaka and backing away.

Oh great, fire in action. Stay where you are, please.

And an off-putting romantic dinner. Been there, done that.

How are those chess pieces doing? Maybe they won’t notice her swiping a bite if the food looks relatively fur-free. Maybe. It’s probably not real enough, but never say never.

Sylas Grey

Emily Lewenhock

The rightmost chess piece is a queen, and presumably the same one you can see on the phone’s background. The leftmost one, however… is a horse? No, that’s a knight. Well, the knight is a horse. You get the idea. It’s made of smooth steel, however, and seems quite out of place. Words start up again. This time, it’s multiple people, all straining over each other to talk-

“Hey- sorry, can you hold these flowers, uh, I think Alannah just posted on Instagram-?”

“My phone just went off too! Do you think she ran out of cell phone credits, or-”

“Those aren’t a thing any more! Wait, where the hell is she? Is that Damo?”
“We’re tired of hiding our love…”

“Shut up, don’t read that OUT LOUD- Hey, Sylas- Sylas, I’m so fuckin’ sorry-”
“We’re escaping to Bali to start our new lives. Sorry if you’re upset or offended, but true love is true love…”
“I told you not to READ IT-”
“Oh my God. Ohhh my God,”

…But she’s not here.

…You blink again and find yourself back at the resort. It’s empty now. [The phone buzzes.]

Andrew Edgeworth

Y I K E S.

Andrew doesn’t exactly have a love life of his own to judge from, so this gets a sympathetic wince from him. However, the whole experience definitely feels more confusing than the first go-around; why did ‘Damo’ only appear now?

His thoughts are interrupted by the buzzing of the phone. That’s two projections now where his clothes changed and a buzzing phone was featured…he looks down at the screen.

Sylas Grey

Andrew Edgeworth

It’s an Instagram notification. You open it.

Now there’s exactly one post that this app will let you see. It’s a photo of a beautiful (if somewhat plastic) woman in a wedding dress with her arm slung over the shoulders of a guy who, while average in looks, clearly has a hell of a lot of money to blow if the Rolex on his wrist and tacky brand-name suit are anything to go by. The blurb reads:

“We’re tired of hiding our love. We’re escaping to Bali to start our new lives. Sorry if you’re upset or offended, but true love is true love, and we can’t apologize for that. Looking forward to-”

…That’s all you can read before the screen breaks. As in, it physically shatters in your hand.

You hear a bell ringing. Three times. Six times. Three times. Six times.

And then it all goes black, and the projection ends.

MILGRAM

Everything around you shutters into darkness. A breath, a blink, and then you’re once again standing in the relatively empty courtroom. Any injuries or other strangeness incurred during the projection has vanished in like fashion. It’s all finished, it seems, though the wardens still have to release the prisoner from the pathetic remaining restraints on the chair themselves.

As you’re all shooed away, down the long hallway and back to the core of the prison and your daily life there, all that’s left is for you to ponder what on earth all of that meant.

Emily Lewenhock

As Emily finds herself semi-restrained once again, she doesn’t make much effort to fight off the wardens or offer Sylas anything more than whatever extent of wave she can easily manage right now. This projection wasn’t entirely clearer than the last one she saw, but it was sure less wildly disorientating to leave.

She did at least get the impression Sylas had a solid motive to murder a guy after all, but, well. Everyone on earth probably had enough motive to murder somebody. Didn’t mean they did it. But…

Well. Not like they’d been connecting on some deep level anyway. No reason to treat anybody any different.

Just maybe don’t show him his Insta.

« Previous Page