Disclaimer: Descendants does not belong to me.
Simulation Paused
Jane blinked as everyone in her line of sight froze. She blinked again and the partners in her current conversation were gone - the people who had been standing behind them were gone, the furniture and decorations for the coronation were gone, even the sunlight that had been visible through the windows was gone. It was all replaced with dim lighting, dreary concrete walls, and the series of wires surrounding her where she was sitting in her chair.
Ben was still with her (the only part of it all to remain). He was sitting in a chair of his own looking smaller and far less regal in the khakis and polo shirt that they were required to wear when they were on duty. The fact that Ben (real Ben she reminded herself) had not yet hit the growth spurt that his avatar had probably had a lot to do with why it felt as if she had watched him shrink in on himself.
She blinked again and did her best to straighten out her thoughts. It was hard to make the mental adjustment from fourteen and angst ridden and being chided for her poor life choices to eleven and startled and concerned at where the powers that be had chosen to end things.
Mal had still been talking. Why had they stopped in the middle of a conversation?
It was never possible to completely lose oneself in the midst of a simulation when there was a voice that would unexpectedly start up in your head requiring you to follow its directions to add another layer to the hoops that they were determined to make the others pull themselves through - giving them yet another test.
"Turn on her," the voice had demanded, and she had mock whispered half scolding half hateful words that had been intended to burn.
"Give her an out and see if she still tells the truth," the voice had ordered Ben, and he had spun an explanation for the Love Spell on the spot in that carriage.
Coming out of the simulation included a rush of information from anyone that had been pulled out at the same time (a quirk of the programming they insisted - she knew it was an added layer of confusion to muddle them during the inevitable questioning that followed).
She pulled herself together as quickly as she could, but the voice from the speaker in the corner was not inclined to offer her sufficient time.
"We believe we have seen enough," it declared as if that would be an end to the matter (as if their handler had not been dealing with her and Ben for long enough to know that neither one of them let things like that go without offering up a counter argument).
"You interrupted her defense of me," Jane tried for an even tone even as her thoughts whirled around and clicked into place in the back of her mind. Her name really was Jane. She was only eleven years old. She most definitely did not live in a fairy tale universe.
"Are you attempting to count her interference in someone else receiving the consequences of their choices as a positive point in her favor?"
"You do not consider her words as accepting responsibility for her own actions?" Ben countered from off to her side. Ben always did so well in matching the even tone of the others. Jane admired that as much as she found it frustrating. He always told her that she would learn - that he was two years older and had been dealing with them for much longer. She appreciated his attempts at comfort in the aftermath of the times that she had allowed them to know that they had gotten to her, but she wasn't sure that she wanted to become good at the politics of this place.
She wasn't good at people - a fact that kept creeping up in the background of all of the sims (she suspects that they add instructions to the programing to that purpose to help keep her off balance). Ben being pushed to be responsible for too many things too early keeps creeping up in his. They can't seem to escape from themselves even when they slip out of the confines of their reality.
"Are you going to waste the council's time attempting to argue that the participants did not fail?" The voice nearly sneers at the two of them. Jane latches on to the hope that that brings. They only bring out the sneering when they expect the two of them to have extra reasons to be stubborn.
Jane's inclination to let out a squawk of protest is (fortunately) overridden by Ben's measured "How so?"
"They chose to fight Maleficent." Jane mimics Ben's tone as best she can manage.
"One grand gesture does not override a virtual lifetime of poor choices - stealing, revenge, cheating, breaking and entering, drugging others - must I really continue?"
"You've kept them trapped in a mock fairy tale world and controlled their education for their entire remembered lives," Jane protested as calmly as she could. "You expected them to turn on a lifetime of what you have programmed into them in an instant?"
"The opposite nurture spectrum failed as well," the voice commented as if it was an adequate dismissal of Jane's point. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that their handler was not the final word on any of this. This was just an attempt at getting her and Ben to give up before the results made it to anyone that could actually make a difference.
"I would think you would be pleased by Audrey and Chad both - what with their ability to parrot lines they've been taught without question and all," she threw back.
"Janie," Ben whispered in warning from her side. He was correct. This was not the time. She didn't have Ben's patience (or tolerance for being baited). "Gifted" children were offered apprenticeships that required them to leave their families early on (and declining was an affair that was fraught with difficulties). It was an unspoken understanding in their world that the more resistant to the Societal Betterment platform a person's family was, the younger their children were inducted into a program.
Jane's family was open about their questioning of the ethics of the situation; she had been made her "offer" to join the computer programming corps of the Generational Control Division at the age of eight.
Ben's family had fought the adoption of the laws that decreed children of criminals an undesirable risk to society that must be rounded up and placed under government control from the first floating of the possibility. Ben had been pulled into the Understanding and Preventing Criminology Division when he was four.
As much as she fought against all of the eugenicists' premises on principle, there must have been something that kept Ben from falling for everything they had been filling his head with for nearly as long as he was capable of remembering. She knew what had kept her from losing her sense of right and wrong in the face of the chronic bombardment of propaganda to which she was subjected - it had been Ben.
Her best friend was a rock of conviction, and his master's thesis (because what lives did they have but work and further schooling) was designed to shine enough light on the situation to bring people back around to caring about what was happening just out of their sight.
She should be grateful, he reminded her, that they even had this chance. The vocal subsection of the Eugenics Coalition that had called for execution of all of the "tainted" bloodlines could have carried more weight. The children of the roundup were still alive (and Ben liked to say things about while there was breath there was hope). They were sedated and hooked into a mainframe and living out their existence in an extended research project of a simulation, but they were alive. They were, perhaps, permanently mentally scarred from a program that rushed them through a lifetime of choices before resetting and taking their memories of the previous simulation when it went before resetting their mental ages and starting all over again.
It was cruel. It was unethical. It was wrong.
Ben was going to make it end. She was going to do whatever it took to help him. They just needed to gather enough data to prove that they were all capable of choosing to be more than the geneticists projected for them.
"May we finish out the day now?" Ben requested. There was no point in arguing with their handler. They would save their words for a time when they mattered.
"That serves no further purpose."
"Maybe they've earned a celebration," Ben countered.
"They won't recall it after the reset."
"Then what does it matter?"
The abrupt disappearance of the dreary concrete was her only warning that she was being pulled back in to the sim. They had fast forwarded them to the party (she wondered how the others' brains compensated for the time leap). She was seated on a bench apart from the festivities. That was fine. This wasn't about her. This was about them (and whatever she and Ben could give them until they managed to get them all released).
Being approached and pulled into the dancing was not something that she had expected, but the kind eyes of the boy that spun her around only helped cement her commitment. He deserved better. They all deserved better. She knew he wouldn't hear her over the music (and he wouldn't remember that he had ever met her in a few hours when the reset kicked in), but she said it anyway. "I'll get you out of here, Carlos." She promised him. "Even if it takes me the rest of my life, I'll get you out of here."