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I wonder what Rebecca meant when she mentioned those organized survivor groups. The way she sold the idea to me, it's like they’ve been preparing for an outbreak of freaks for ages. I mean, imagine: order in society breaks down. If there’s no order, how is a bunch of people going to get together in an orderly fashion to do…anything? Could they even order each other around without any order in the City?

Jokes aside, there has to be more to this story. How did they come together? Why are there so many groups? How many are in each group? I could even play a conspiratorial angle, like how could a bunch of groups get together so easily during a crisis? Where does Rebecca fit in all of this, then?

Are these groups…cults? Would that make Rebecca, like a recruiter, trying to put me in a pyramid scheme? It’s not like anyone else cared about me. Wait, record scratch. On the other hand, Nick’s group had a malicious goal and assigned me to do work that clearly could lead to a pyramid scheme. Phoebe’s group was organic but certainly not virtuous. Ironically, Rebecca, by process of elimination, appears the most trustworthy right now.

I’m pulling at straws. For every ulterior motive I could think of in my head, I just didn’t see any of that in her. It was like she wanted to be amused by any willing audience, while she made up half of her own entertainment anyway. I felt like I was a conduit for her to express herself, and although I might have shared some characteristics or personality traits she had, she brought out aspects of myself that were simply a reflection of her. Unlike Nick, though, those aspects weren’t self-destructive and actually helped me be more attentive and interactive during that engagement, in my opinion.

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Only going by first impressions, I feel like she doesn’t have so much of a dominating presence, aside from being the most vibrant person I have met so far, as she’s been so much more present in our interactions. Whether she realizes it or not, she put emotional guardrails during our time together. She didn’t put topical guardrails on, nor did she command a certain level of attention- towards or away from her. In short, I felt like she curtailed liquifying melancholy, disallowing me to slip away into a mental retreat. My thoughts were open, and every second we sat together, more thoughts became open.

I can’t entirely be sure if she’s just…vitamins: the person. I’m unsure if she’s boosting my ability to maintain the full extent of who I am or if she’s imprinting something very similar but not entirely resonate with me. It’s possible she could be like an organism who uses mimicry to have an advantage over another, such as capturing prey easier. Where we’re not the same creature, but she has the instincts to be so similar to me that I could be fooled.

In a similar vein but with a different conclusion, possibly she’s like a solar eclipse. In theory, what I am not, she is. What constraints I gravitate towards, she repels herself from. What motivations I am disconnected from, she’s entirely tapped into. And so forth. And all in such a precise way that it would mirror who I am. Where, many of those in the groups I was in before had some overlap and some contrast, making a cacophony in my mind trying to disentangle what I am and what I am not. She could be like my mirrored image, and thus, I don’t need to guard my senses from her.

I felt like the more I was near her, the more I could verbally run at her at full speed. Any reservations I had dissolved, any hooks or barriers lost their ability to ensnare me, and all inhibitions that kept the integrity of my body and mind together began to melt away. It was as if my internals were mere minutes away from turning into my externals.

Wait- that was her, wasn’t it?