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

[fishermansweater]

Finnick's seen what hunger looks like. Hunger looks like taking whatever's on offer, no matter how bad or how suspect it might look. Hunger means scraping the worst bits off something and hoping that's enough to keep you going without making you sick. He's seen people die of starvation and of food poisoning. But he'd had the advantage of growing up in a food-producing district, which meant that even before he went to the Careers, he was still in little danger of actually starving. When money was short, he could always poach fish. And then there'd been the Careers and no danger of actually starving.

Little danger of that in the arena, either, when he could fish.

"Lot of it looks like it's been here as long as the abandoned buildings."

Some of the fruits look fresh, at least, and Finnick reaches across to snag a few berries, but he doesn't immediately eat them, instead studying them critically.

"Guess there's some blackberry bushes somewhere."

[deadlycurves]

"Yeah, sounds about right," he shrugs one shoulder. The fact of it is pretty inconsequential for the time being, because Diego refuses to put any of this in his mouth tonight. He knows he can't go too long without eating, but he can at least wait and see what happens to the idiots that do, first. He watches the other guy curiously as he studies the berries, one brow arched curiously at him. "Have you looked around the place much yet?" He definitely hasn't. Seen his brothers. Tried to calm down a woman mid-breakdown. But mostly... not much in the exploratory side of things yet.

[fishermansweater]

Poisoning is often a cause of death in the arena. There's usually someone who didn't pay attention at the edible plants station, and Finnick's well aware that with different luck, it could have been him. But he's confident in the berries, at least, and he's aware that food might not be on offer like this all that often.

He'll take some for later, but for now he's actually more interested in the stranger, though it's not apparent as he continues to eye the berries.

"I've been a few places. There's a lot to look at, I get the feeling most of the people here haven't been here long enough to do a really thorough exploration. It's a big place."

It's not as overwhelming as District Thirteen had been, but Finnick knows a lot of that could be down to himself, to the fact that Annie is here, just off to one side where he can see her, and the distinct lack of the military control that had run through everything in the underground district.

"You seen much?"

[deadlycurves]

He shakes his head at the flip of the question around on himself. "No, I was helping somebody earlier and then I made my way here." Helping someone is the most bland way to say he was trying to make sure a woman didn't have a complete mental breakdown in the middle of a hallway, but... whatever. It wasn't a lie, either. "Does seem like it's a lot bigger than I expected, at first, though." He really does want to get into exploring the place more. There's a lot more to see.

[fishermansweater]

"Hard to tell how big it is when we can't get everywhere."

But at least there's not the same level of control of access and movement that there was in District Thirteen, at least not as far as Finnick can tell. There doesn't seem to be anybody in this place who isn't like them, brought here very recently and without any satisfactory explanation. Everything that's running seems to be operated by the same machines that are hosting this gathering.

Finnick's first priority on arriving here had been finding Annie and helping her, getting through whatever they were required to do before they could get out of the confinement of the area where they'd first arrived.

After that, though... well, they both know the importance of understanding what you can about a strange and dangerous place.

"There's an area that seems pretty overgrown and wild, I wouldn't be surprised if there were wild berries there. Didn't get far enough in to know for sure."

It had been a big sort of area that would need a lot of exploring, so he'd noted the possibility of food supplies and moved on.

[deadlycurves]

"Yeah, but there's a lot we can access, still. And maybe we can figure out how to get to the more restricted places in time." Not that he particularly wanted to be here for any real amount of time, but... Well. The last place he was in made it pretty obvious that he had no choice in the matter. And there's a lot less here than in the last world, he's pretty sure he has no choice but to adapt here. He nods a bit at the observation of the other man. "Good to know, at least... We need to find some way to record what we find, probably." He may be thinking too far further down the road just yet, but it's easy to focus on planning.

[fishermansweater]

For all he's spent the past months living in District Thirteen, where everything is about the contribution to be made to the community or to the cause of the rebellion, Finnick still isn't expecting the other people who've been brought here to be thinking that way. He hadn't been; his priority has been protecting Annie and making sure the two of them have food and shelter.

Making sure they survive. That's what the arena's about, and Finnick's done it twice.

"Do you think people will cooperate to do that?"

It's asked out of curiosity, no judgment or assumption in his voice, but there is a little surprise. That sort of information's only shared with allies, in the arena.

In Thirteen, it would all be centralized and the information shared with whoever required it for their tasks, but there's none of the regimented structure of Thirteen here. Just a group of confused-seeming people.

[deadlycurves]

"No clue," he admits with a slight shrug. "But it's worth a shot. We're all stuck in the same hellhole, it would probably go better for everyone if we worked together." But Diego holds no illusions about the fact that people are more likely to look out for themselves than the betterment of a group, especially a group of absolute strangers. Still. There's something to be said about uniting in the face of a shared, awful situation, too. People can be surprising sometimes.