lady_mab | Meliora - Extricate

Author: The Lady and the Ghost

My fellow citizens: We have made it to the end of this game. We have fought and we have won. The reward we were promised was truth, and I do not wish to withhold it from you much longer.

But first, I want to tell you a story.

It is the story of a small man who thought he had a big heart. He arrived in a city that was falling apart, and said that he could save it.

“How,” the people who ran the city asked. “Our water is contaminated, and people have been dying.”

“It’s worked once before,” he says. “We give them a game to distract them. And while we do, we slowly introduce a drug that can save them.”

They did as he said. And like he promised, it worked. While the game was carried out, the people who ran the city carefully monitored their people to ensure nothing bad happened.

And nothing did.

So the drug stayed, the people stayed, and the small man felt like a king. Those who ran this city did not like him pretending to be so high and mighty.

“I am the one who saved your people,” he said. “Don’t you think I know what is best?”

When they tried to fight him, he smiled and introduced another way to save the city he had come to love so much.

He introduced ALICE to this new golden kingdom of his, and the rest is history.

ALICE swept in when this city was in danger of falling by the wayside. They want us to believe that they are the heroes of this city, and in a way, perhaps they are. They introduced a drug that could keep the poison spreading through the earth at bay, but they made no effort to find a way to clean it up.

Instead, they spent all that time monitoring the people of Eminence, watching the way the chemicals played out in our everyday lives.

Our game was not the first that Patrick Mercer hosted. Ours will just be the first that the people remember.

You have fought, and you have won. We have seen the truth of this city, my fellow citizens. And we have seen the darkness of this utopia.

We have seen the lengths that small, petty people will go through to make themselves feel like a god. We have seen the careless abandon they have for life, the disregard they have to those in a true peril.

They want data. They want results. They want a drug they can take to the market, and we were nothing more than glorified mice.

“You will learn the truth,” he said. “You have the potential to become great persons.”

“You must work to prove to us that you deserve this more than someone else.”

What kind of promise is that? Freedom, but only if you beat someone else. Who is to decide who deserves it more than anyone else -- if you want it more, you must work harder?

And what about those whom we have lost? They worked too hard, they were noticed. And they were torn down. They wanted it too badly.

I am here to tell you that the golden rule of ALICE is over. The secrecy is over. Soon, you will be able to leave. Or you can stay, if that is your choice. But the important fact will remain thus: You will have a choice.

It will no longer be made for you because there are no trains that lead out of the city. It will not be made for you because ALICE decides that you should not remember what is so important outside of the city limits. No longer will you fear the darkness, or be told that there are monsters and bogeymen lurking in the shadows just outside of their golden light.

Fear is a powerful motivator.

There is no danger and there is no darkness more terrible than what is present in the minds of Patrick Mercer and his team. They have sent us on an aimless hunt, and we have figured out the one truth they did not want us to discover.

Thank you, for all of you have done. Thank you for your sacrifices. Thank you for your dedication. Thank you for holding out hope when we were given nothing more than a glimmer of evidence.

Having chosen to participate in Meliora has proven to ALICE, to Patrick Mercer, to everyone reading this blog, that you were worthy. Not only of the truth or a way out, but worthy of being able to make your own choices.

You made the right decision, whatever it was.

No matter what has happened over these past few months, never, ever, regret that.

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