T O P S E C R E T || S P E C I A L H A N D L I N G

CLASSIFIED

Date: 3/18/2015
Subject: Twin Conscience

Every year the number of twin births increases. Since the year 2000, the amount of live twin births has increased at a steady rate, thanks to more innovative medical practices, as well as healthier practices on the part of the expectant mother. In 2009, it was documented that twin births had risen from 18 to 33 twin births per 1000 live births.

Twins are considered a miracle of life; two infants born from the same gestation. People often express a desire to have twins, enthralled with the tight, sometimes seemingly supernatural bond the siblings seem to share. 

(If one were to browse online, one would find a cornucopia of forums dedicated to the disgruntled spouses of twins, who often feel that their significant other holds far more affection for their twin than their spouse.)

As has been discussed copiously among the medical community, carrying to full term and giving birth to twins is not without its own unique risks. Vanishing twins, conjoined twins, and late term miscarriages are just some of the few problems that may arise during the gestation period of a twin birth.

Perhaps one of the worse of the afflictions to befall twins are "parasitic twins," an occurrence in the womb in which one twin fuses, but is not fully absorbed, into the other. This defunct twin may come to depend either partially, or solely, on its functioning twin for all biological support, becoming in effect a parasite to its sibling. These parasitic twins can become a dangerous burden to their surviving sibling, often times siphoning off important nutrients that the host body needs to survive. It is, truly, one of the very worse afflictions to befall a surviving twin.

Recently, however, we've uncovered something that may take "parasitic twin" to a whole other level. 

In the past ten years we've been following the cases of seven children, all of whom were late miscarriage twin births. That is to say, their twin, as a fetus, died within the womb, but was too late in development to be reabsorbed back into the mother.

These seven surviving children have all displayed unique, if not, somewhat disturbing mental traits in childhood, some of which included the apparent propensity to carry on fully developed conversations with an extremely well developed imaginary friend. All seven of the children were noted to insist, in childhood, that this imaginary friend was real as opposed to created. 

Stranger, perhaps, were the seemingly psychic attributes that each child possessed (and wielded to their benefit). All were noted to have apparently "psychically" lifted an object at least once in some point of their life. Particularly violent psychic occurrences were often accompanied by fits of anger or rage. More genial occurrences, such as helping a parent reach a pot or pan in a particularly high cupboard, were also noted to occur when the child was feeling neutral or pleasant.

Of course, no parent(s) can go without recognizing the problem in these situations. Every single child we are dealing with has been, at one point, subject to extensive medical examination directly before being reported to the government, at which point, we (the government run lab) took over the care and overseeing of the development of these children.

With the present technology we have, we don't have the capabilities to further delve into the brains of these children and discover what it is that is giving them these extraordinary abilities. 

It seems, however, that being the surviving twin of a failed twin birth plays a role. Joke theories originally proposed by a few of our doctors suggested that the twins harbored two consciences, that of their own, and that of their deceased sibling, essentially serving as the body for two people.      

Now, what started out as a joke, seems more than ever real. We can't prove it yet, but its not just a coincidence that these children are all surviving twins. Nor is it a coincidence that every single one of them has a well developed imaginary friend, equipped with its own personality and preferences, and very much individual from its creator, or as we've taken to calling them, host. 

We've tried to theorize realistically. One suggestion is that the brain cells of the children fused, creating a hybrid brain with more than average functionality. However, not all of our patients express a particularly outstanding I.Q. (all of them, however, are NOT dim-witted; they're intelligent enough and rather crafty). Furthermore, each twin was documented being born alongside a failed, but well-developed, fetus, with no suggestions of brain cell degeneration on the part of the failed twin. 

Uniquely, we've observed arguments breaking out between the host and what we've taken to calling the "parasitic conscience". The parasitic conscience, while seemingly incapable of taking full control of the host's body, is able to fight with the host over certain conditions and situations, causing what the host reports as a considerable amount of pain to both host and parasite. During these arguments, many of our hosts were observed experiencing massive headaches, nosebleeds, and blurred vision, as well as a decrease in the stability of their motor functions. 

The biggest mystery that remains is: what is the "parasitic conscience"?

With a lack of helpful technology, all that's left to do is watch, observe, and experiment..

• The RP begins in the year 2015.

• In this RP, we the RP'ers will be playing the surviving twins and the conscience of the failed twin's soul. The idea is a kind of supernatural one, dealing with ghosts and spirits. Basically, the surviving twins are the hosts of not only their own soul, but the souls of their failed twin siblings as well. The reason for this will be made clearer as the RP progresses, but for now our main focus is to deal with our characters coming to term with the fact that their imaginary friend is not just an imaginary friend. The RP will follow a plot, but will include sandbox elements, allowing players to diverge and create sub plots of their on (any huge ideas should be cleared with me first). It will be heavy in matters of belief, religion, and spirituality. For example, hence your character finds out he has another soul in his body, what is his reaction? Does he gloat about how he always knew God and religion were real? Does he stoutly refuse to believe it, and attempt to come up with another theory? Or does he just not care? You do not have to be religious to play in this RP; rather, the RP is more of how the characters will relate to the souls and the like once they discover that they do in fact have another soul in them. Belief will effect a lot in this RP; if your character is the believing type, they'll have an easier time adjusting to the soul in their body, and probably get along better with it. If not, problems may arise that might interfere with the character's daily life, as well as any missions the characters may embark on.

• The government, when given the opportunity, will use these kids to their advantage, meaning they'll set them out to run missions for the government. It very well may mean our characters will be traveling to different places, perhaps, even completely different countries all together.

• This RP should span the lives of the characters in years. That being said, I have "arcs" and "episodes" planned for the characters, so our characters don't get lost in an everlasting day. An arc will be a year in the life of a characters, whilst an episode will be a day. I hope you can infer from this that not every day of the year will be covered. Will employ the use of time skips and the like. HOWEVER, I will be including what will be titled "Sandbox episodes" every now and then, to allow the characters to live a human life to some extent, and go exploring and like.

• The arc title will be accompanied by its ultimate goal, while episodes will accompanied by summaries to help steer our characters in the right direction. As I said earlier, players will be allowed to initiate sub-plots, and if ANYONE has ANY major plot ideas they would like to see involved in the rp, by all means, approach me. We have 365 days in a year; each day won't have it's own episode. That means they'll be A LOT of days open for anyone who decides they would like to a include a plot idea of their own!

• This RP is going to start as a Pre-Apocalypse RP, and may eventually move into a Post-Apocalypse RP.

• It should be noted that the characters we play DO NOT know what the thing within their mind is; indeed they are not even aware that it is a separate soul within them. Their failed twin's soul, who has been with them from even before birth, is none the wiser. (For now.) Some of the host twins don't even know that they had a failed twin. All that our characters do know is that there has always been someone else there, present but intangible, and powerful enough to move and attack things without a body. Our characters also possess the ability to see spirits.

• Our characters should be between the ages of ten and eighteen. This isn't a very romance focused rp, and while romance is not banned, it shouldn't be the primary goal of the RP. Rather, we should think more along the lines of Life of Pi, and explore beliefs alongside a wide variety of emotions. It will also be an adventure RP of sorts.

• The RP will begin as our characters are being shipped from various facilities around the U.S. to a middle of nowhere lab in Georgia. Thus far, our characters are unaware that there are others out there like them. This will be the first time they meet.

• The failed parasitic twin's soul grows in power with age. Incapable of separation in infancy, now in adolescence the soul is able to reach out a limited amount of space from the hosts body, ranging anywhere from ten to fifty feet, depending both on the concentration and cooperation of the host and its twin's soul.

• A soul twin is practically immobile when the host falls asleep. This is the only way that the host is able to exert any "control" over the soul. However, it is possible for the soul twin to argue with the host twin, therefor postponing sleep. When a host twin is awake, a soul twin can effectively shut down; that is, they can withdrawn to deep within the host twin, to the point where it is like they do not exist.

• The level of companionship between the host and the soul twin also dictates the clearness of communication between the two. A host who has a very strong and trusting relationship with their soul twin will be able to communicate very clearly with their soul twin, even hearing spoken words from the soul twin within their head.

• In the case of identical twins the voice may sound almost the exact same as their own and may sometimes make it difficult for the identical twin to differentiate his or her thoughts from that of their soul twin. (Identical twins have very few genetic differences, making it plausible to say their voices would sound exactly or close to the same. Keep in mind their are VERY few occurrences of male-female identical twins without abnormalities. Remember it is the same zygote splitting into two. A female gendered zygote should be incapable of splitting in two and forming a male and female zygote. For the purpose of their rp, I will NOT be allowing male-female identical twins.) With identical twins, the host twin tends to be more like-minded with their soul twin. As a result, they often approach issues from a singular angle, rushing headfirst into problems when they believe they've found the solution without really reviewing an alternative option. The pros, however, arise from the fact that identical twins cooperate better (though not necessarily like each other better) with their soul twin and often work together flawlessly, stopping very rarely to argue. It has been noted that, because of their great cooperation, even on bad days, identical twin's soul twin will tend to have a further reach than fraternal twin's souls, usually being able to extend out of the host twin's body a full ten feet more than the souls of the fraternal twins.

• In the case of fraternal twins, there is greater genetic diversity between the two, making it plausible to say that the soul twin's voice will sound more different than the host's voice, especially if they are male-female fraternal twins. The differences that exist will make it harder for the soul twin to trick the host twin. The fraternal twins tend to argue more than the identical twins; however, they also tend to have more varied opinions and approach topics from different angles, often discussing and dissecting problems together and bringing different views to the table.

• What happens when the host and its twin's soul don't get along? Minor arguments can lead to the host zoning out, and sometimes have accidental verbal outbursts. However, major internal arguments, especially ones in which the host vies for dominance over the soul, can lead to the host experiencing a slew of unpleasant symptoms, including nausea and vomiting, massively painful headaches, blurry vision, slurred speech, reduced motor functions, and thick, runny, nosebleeds. Reportedly, during these major arguments, the host has said that the soul also expresses feeling pain somehow.

• While it is possible for the soul twin to influence host twin, it is impossible for it to control the actions of the host twin. Contrarily, if the host twin exerts enough energy into the effort, it is possible for them to, not control, but subdue the twin soul. However this effort may lead to host twin experiencing the same ailments as listed above.

• Significant levels of the voltage are the only known shields against the twin's soul. For one reason or another, they have great amounts of trouble passing high voltage barriers (600 volts and above). It can seriously hurt the soul twin to pass through a high voltage area, and by extension, affect the host twin, causing the host twin to experience symptoms similar to those found when the host twin and the soul twin have major fights; that is, nosebleeds, headaches, blurry vision, etc.

• This should be obvious, but as an advanced RP, I would hope everyone writes with detail. Since you will be playing a bodily independent character alongside the soul of his or her's failed twin sibling, there should be as much internal thought process as there is external action. That being said, I don't want writers to give themselves headaches over writing out a post. I'm not asking you to write ten pages worth of paragraph (unless you really want to...which I strong advise against.) Just to write interesting and detailed posts. And if ever you come to a block, feel free to approach me or say so in the OC.
• In terms of writing style, feel free to use what makes you feel most comfortable. I myself will be using first person past tense for the host twin, and third person past tense for the soul twin.
• Vulgar language is allowed, but keep it to a reasonable amount.
• No sexual stuff please.

Oh, and I put this in a separate post to avoid confusion, can the host 'see' the twin, as if they are right there with them? Can they feel their 'touch?' Or is all communication restricted to thought? Or again, does it depend on the strength of the bond between the twins?

Hmm, okay. I think that clears it up. Would it be alright to say that my character has a mental image of what his twin looks like? So while he can't 'see' his twin, he pictures him as looking a certain way? This would be no more 'real' than a mental image of a situation while you read.

As well, during intense experiences such as arguments or 'fights' between the two, would it be possible for the host twin to 'see' a glimpse of their twin in a human form? It could remain ambiguous whether or not this is a hallucination of a mind under extreme stress or an image imposed by the twin, if that makes any sense.

@Obscene Symphony
The one problem is that the CS seems to insinuate the character knows the other soul is his twin, which I said none of the characters knew, though I'm not sure if I'm reading your CS wrong.

@McHaggis
Just saw your char. I shall get to reading the CS straight away!

It should be noted that the characters we play DO NOT know what the thing within their mind is; indeed they are not even aware that it is a separate soul within them. Their failed twin's soul, who has been with them from even before birth, is none the wiser. (For now.) Some of the host twins don't even know that they had a failed twin. All that our characters do know is that there has always been someone else there, present but intangible, and powerful enough to move and attack things without a body. Our characters also possess the ability to see spirits.

<Snipped quote>

The thing is, they just don't know what the thing is. They know there's a voice in there, and that its something beyond normal, something that can see and think and somehow move things on its own. They just don't know the "what" factor. What is this other sentient thing? Remember, many of them will have grown up with this thing in their head, probably thinking its perfectly normal. They don't start out having a name for it...its just another thing there in their head; a weird extension of themselves. A good deal of them, when they found out it wasn't normal, probably believed they were crazy, or that they'd got some type of mental disease or syndrome. Many of them would probably think of it as a second conscious, now, at the stage of life that they're at.

So I mean, they are very well aware of the "other person", just not what the other person is.