july 2019. welcome to the void.

[modblob]

Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: First Introductory Mingle
When: The Month of July 2019
Where: Around and outside the city.
Warnings: Please add any warnings in the subject lines.

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

a. bot party.

A few hours after the first arrivals, odd noises start to filter up from the pavilion and park at the base of the city. Limp whistles, the gunfire pop of small fireworks, and music from what sounds like a broken kazoo. It seems as though the still-functioning robots of Anchor are trying to welcome their new human overlords, based on programming that hasn't been exercised in... uh, shall we say "a while"?

Three of them have formed a tiny off-key band playing unfamiliar tunes from crackling speakers. One of the three punctuates the music at odd moments by smashing together a pair of cymbals that seem to have been constructed from a flattened pot and a trash can lid. Two others man the refreshments table. Some of the food looks downright inedible, but there are piles of wild berries from the upper floors. Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries. Apples and cherries. Fruits that shouldn't be in season together but somehow still are. There's a strange and vaguely triangular pastry that tastes like hot cinnamon candy. There are piles of vegetables, too, though the only preparation they've had is to be washed and dumped in baskets.

One of the chef bots has put some work in, though, and there are a couple of stews and soups available for the adventurous. All of them are made with the raw ingredients available to eat on the tables. One of them even has meat in it, though that's best consumed by people with very hardy stomachs.

At the end of the refreshment table is a cluster of fresh-pressed juices and unlabeled alcohol bottles, with uneven stacks of cups stationed around them. (Careful, some of the cups are cracked.) Even the good old bar bot is doing his part, pouring out glasses of orange juice and straight shots of tequila. A very generous compromise in place of his usual tequila sunrises. Right? Right.

The most conspicuous robot is the one setting off fireworks. It’s already blown off one six-fingered hand, but by god that hasn’t stopped it. With every small cluster of colorful explosives, the thing throws back its chunky head and gives a sound that can only be described as a metallic cackle.

Might want to watch that guy.

b. life signs in the wasteland.

In the wee hours of the morning after the robots' attempted welcome, the impacts against the dome overhead start. Meteorites, some of them as large as a person's head, bombard the shield and the area around for miles. The alarms that start throughout the colony are enough to wake anyone up, if the thunderous noise of the cosmic storm wasn't enough to do it.

And the alarms aren't for the meteorites. The red shift is rising up around the colony, that phenomenon that no one from the past had the foresight to give more than vague warnings about. New residents who have done some digging will know exactly what’s going on, but for those who’ve avoided even thinking about what’s happened to them, well. It could be a nasty surprise.

Anyone sensible would stay inside with all of that going on, but there's something else: life signs. The communication devices given to residents on arrival light up, indicating the presence of no less than five flecks of life out there in the wastes. Odds are good that at least a few of them are monsters from other worlds, or twisted radioactive creatures warped by the planet itself. But one of them is very human, and has been here for a very long time.

Should residents venture out to investigate these life signs, they’ll find the farthest one to be a man in protective gear, flickering like a badly received signal. As the red shift starts to fade, he solidifies, and as the shift finally dies away, he wrenches off his helmet with one hand and falls to his knees. He's as twisted as the creatures the planet has corrupted, one eye socket nothing but a depression sealed by flesh. His lips on that side curves sharply upward, barely hiding teeth too sharp and long for a human mouth. It's clear now while he pulled off his helmet with one hand--the other is a wreck, a blackened stony mass sealed to the cuff of his radiation suit.

He can hear you coming, if you're brave enough to approach. He can hear you coming, and will turn his one orange-irised eye to watch you until you speak.

c. hairy repairs.

Welcome to Anchor, where sometimes you're the only thing between you and the catastrophic failure of life support systems. After the red shift ends, the radioactivity warning alarms will at least fall silent. The cosmic storm has passed, and for a little while there's quiet under the dome.

But those exploring the upper reaches of the city might hear new alarms, much softer and less insistent than the radiation alarms. They're coming from one of the survey rooms near the garage and the exits to the surface. It might take a little doing to pull up the screens triggering the alarms, but you'll be glad you put in the work. It turns out, those meteorites damaged several of the exterior sensors and one of the major radiation and light transfer panels that help keep anchor supplied with energy--and help keep the shield dome in good working order.

While the damage is easy to see and isn't too hard to fix for those with some technical know-how, there are life signs moving slowly closer to the colony. It's quite possible to fix the damage and get back inside before those life signs arrive, but there's also the risk of being caught in the open and facing down some of the planet's native creatures.

In this case, they're large, furry millipede-like creatures no less than seven feet long. They're perfectly harmless, if you don't count the fact that they seem intent on trying to eat the protective gear and tools you've brought out onto the surface with you. It's not their fault that your arms are inside those delicious radiation suits.

d. shadows of the past.

A few days of genuine quiet follow the fixing of the exterior damage. Time to explore, to get lost, to drink more than your doctor might recommend at the colony's only serviceable bar. Enough time to feel the weight of Anchor's emptiness.

The next time you walk into the bar, there's a see-through stranger at the pool table, smiling warmly in welcome. "Want a game?"

Get too close, and he disappears. But he was there--he was clearly there. The cue he was holding clatters to the ground and rolls over to rest at your feet.

Down in the pavilion, there are children playing in the park. Throwing balls, playing tag, their laughs echoing somehow in the open air. Invisible parents call for them to be careful or slow down. Now and then one of them will vanish midstep, only to appear again back where they were ten minutes ago and start their run through the park all over again. They can see you. One or two might even invite you to join their games, taking your hand in their own, leading you toward their fellows. And when they do, you can hear their parents' voices exclaiming in shock. A rush of shadows scoop up these phantom children and whisk them away into some invisible world where you can't follow, only hear the children crying in fear.

All around the colony, shades appear and vanish, some solid enough to touch, some just barely visible. Some are inexplicably aggressive, attacking anyone who tries to talk to them or get too close. Just as many run screaming or sobbing at the sight of you.

But there are others, too, who seem to recognize you. One of these is a young woman holding a gun like she has no idea how to use it. When approached, she almost starts to cry. "Oh, thank god. We have to get the kids to quarantine. We have to get them into lockdown. Those bastards-- Those sons of bitches-- The kids should at least have a chance."

She starts to turn, and a laser blast rips through her, lancing across the wall right where a deep score mark still exists, not in the least ghostly or unreal. If you touch it now, it feels warm.

e. ping from the rubble.

As though the presence of past residents sets it off, a persistent signal begins to broadcast from the collapsed library. It turns out there's a section not buried quite as deeply as the rest. A row of broken terminals, ending with the one sending the signal. A warning signal about the structural integrity of the library complex and the need to back up crucial data. Too little, too late, but with time and patience some of the partial files on the terminal could be reconstructed....

For those less versed in computers, there's a mysterious door just past the terminals, partially blocked off by rubble. If that can be cleared, the door leads into a dusty room with more broken terminals, but beyond that, there's a small library of real hardcover and paperback books, with comfortable chairs (some of them needing TLC), low tables, and lights (currently broken). The books are in a variety of languages, both Earth-based and alien. A flickering "skylight" at the top of the room shows a blue sky flanked by swaying trees, or a thunderstorm, or other, stranger but still friendly skies. It blinks off, sometimes, but seems determined to keep playing its peaceful scenes for those below. With some cleaning up, this could be a good retreat from the sometimes oppressive emptiness of Anchor.

Navigation.

Comments

[treadswater]

Not the Games. Nothing like that. There are other things. White walls, white floors, flashing lights and fists in her hair as they hold her under water. Ask her questions.

No questions here. None. Just a voice, saying calm words.

She can hear him, a little. It's hard through the white static in her brain, choking her and clouding her and making her vision go hazy around the edges. She's stopped screaming but it's more a pause than a stop. A moment to draw breath (or try), to stare at the stranger with huge eyes.

"Where's, where's Finnick?"

That's clear: the rest of it isn't as her voice gets higher and faster with every syllable.

"Where's Finnick, he'd just gone to, to training and then, and then, we. Where's Finnick, where he is, where am I, you can't just take people I was, I was safe they said they said they said-!"

[killedwithlove]

Finnick.

Warmth and quiet, real in a world that isn't, makes it safer, makes it make sense, Finnick's like Rhys, but with different edges.

"I was taken as well. All of have been. It's some sort of-" he trails off. "Finnick's not here right now, but I don't know if he was or will be. Usually, in situations like this, I've found that the person you need will come. Some bonds are strong, pulling, plucking, pleasing pulses- magnets of emotions. Him to you, me to you, not the same, we're not the same, but whoever said before isn't here, isn't this place, we're all trapped on this world, if not this place."

[treadswater]

The man's voice is calm, earnest. Wanting to help. There are too many words for Annie to understand through the fog of her panic, but she can understand tone. And she can understand the important bit.

"He'll come?"

It's a tether, it's an anchor, it's something. She shouldn't want Finnick here, they are prisoners (aren't they?) but she does. He's safe. He knows how to talk to people, how to get information. He knows how to kill and how to actually kill instead of the knowledge all tangled up useless and she wants him here. They can do anything, together.

Except. Except she's not useless, she's not, she can try. She can breathe and she can try and she can think (or try to) and if she has to tuck herself into herself, press her hands to her temples, she will.

"I don't, I don't understand. What, um. What, what is. This."

[killedwithlove]

Finnick feels nice, like a safe corner with a soft, warm blanket. Cole knows lots of things, the world a constant barrage of information, but he can't make sense of it in a way that mortals understand.

He can kill, quick and clean and painless—look into my eyes—but he tries to ask first, tries not to be Mercy.

"The screen explains it all. I'll sit here with you and we can listen and I hope you understand, because I'm not sure I understand all the words, but I understand in different ways from people. And Finnick will come. Like calls to like, magnets, places like this amplify, attach, attract, want those bonds realised."

[treadswater]

To her credit, Annie tries. He's being nice, this man whose name begins with a harsh consonant. K, maybe. C. She doesn't know. Maybe it'll come to her later. She's tottering and wobbling on the edge of pulling herself together and collapsing, and it's more exhausting than just deciding. She's trying.

She's good at information, at reading people and their choices and what they put into videos and films. Better than Finnick. And it's important.

He might not turn up. She needs to know this.

It's too hard to watch and in the end, Annie just gives up. Listening is hard enough and not much is coming through. Anchor. No one can go home. There's a communication device and she can get up, she can walk over, she can pick one up, but looking at it is beyond her. It goes into a pocket. Then... Then.

She takes a breath. Another. And another.

"Where do I go?"

[killedwithlove]

Cole sits near her and doesn't try to touch, because sometimes being touched just reminds you that your body is still here and interacts even when you don't want it to. When it finishes and she selects her device, Cole rocks on his feet and points. "This way. They want to clean you? I don't understand, but they're very insistent you don't bring in contaminants from outside or from your world."

There are flickers of memories sometimes, of a new arrival and a sickness that no one was immune to, but he doesn't know if it was here, or a memory someone brought with them.

[treadswater]

Sometimes, Annie needs touch - needs someone else to touch her, to ground her. Other times, grounding is the last things she wants. So, later, when she's able to think back to what Cole did and said, she'll be grateful he didn't press in with a hug or reach out to her again, that he just let her be.

She's calming. She thinks, anyway. Calming down, a little. Or skimming over the surface of her panic, which works just as well.

(In actual fact, Annie's overestimating her state of mind. She's still scared and cloudy enough her logic-centres aren't entirely working. Still wobbling wobbling wobbling, with a scream just waiting for another chance to escape.)

"Clean?"

That makes no sense. She was brought here, they could have done it already (but no, no, she needs to be alert, she doesn't want to think about what could happen to her body with her aware of it) they, they, they whoever they are should already know.

"I could.... wash my hands, I guess?"

And her feet.

She'll be fine, taking off her shoes. That's. That'll be okay.

Still, it's a decidedly on edge as she walks into the next room.

[killedwithlove]

Cole can feel the fragility about her, in her, so much like the young mages awaiting their trial, so much like Cole, barely hanging together, terrified of the now and more terrified of other.

"They wanted me to take off everything and stand there and get washed and they washed all my clothing and my vest fell apart and got taken away but they let me keep my shoes."

His shoes are terrible. They are as much hole has thin, torn leather.