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

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben gives a small blink, but doesn't otherwise show how surprised he is by the answer. He thought she was younger. She looks younger, to his eyes, but then again, he doesn't know the first thing about teens and guessing ages. Hell, his brother looks thirteen and is in his 50s. Shit happens. The fact that she is less sure of her own age seems to indicate shit's happened for her, too.

Then he sits up, thinking about it, and says, with an air of only just realizing: ]

I'm not really sure how old this body is either.

[ He doesn't look the way he did when he died at sixteen. But this body, presumably, didn't exist until he arrived here. Is he a few days old? Thirty years old? Sixteen years old? What counts, consciousness or embodiment, and which times count and which don't? It's all some pretty deep existential shit. ]

How come you don't know?

[ It's possible the question is invasive, but then, he's just laid out the fact that he's also not sure, so hopefully she'll see it's coming from a place of relating, and not weird curiosity for curiosity's sake. ]

[writtendestiny]

[Poison is small and slight, but she has seen far, far more than anyone of her age should have ever seen. There's something here that makes her wonder if Ben is the same.

The question is taken in and mulled over, and she doesn't answer right away. She wonders how much she really ought to say, but quickly realises that none of it is actually a secret. There's no-one that she's hiding anything for, except herself.]

I've been away from home for years. The places I've been in, they didn't let you age. I gained two years, in the first place, but I didn't live it. [She frowns, then looks his way.]

I was first taken when I was sixteen, and I've experienced almost four years since then... but I haven't aged all of that time. That's why I don't know.

[benhargreeves]

[ It doesn't surprise Ben to hear Poison's been in other worlds before this one - in the brief time he's been here, that has seemed to be the norm for most people. At least, it was true for Klaus and Diego, and the others he's spoken to. What does surprise him is that those worlds didn't line up precisely, in terms of time. ]

Did no one in that place age, or was it just you?

[ Either seem to be possible; just about anything does these days. Ben wonders if he and his brothers will age, here. If they had aged at the last places they were taken to. And, as always, his mind loops back to how, and who is responsible, and whether there is anything they can do to take control back of their lives.

But those are big questions, to tackle another day. Right now the decision facing him is a fairly simple one. Honesty, or silence. After a short interval, he decides on the former. ]

I- died when I was sixteen. I hung around as a ghost for about fourteen years after that, and when I showed up here I was alive and looked like this, so... so am I almost thirty or am I sixteen or am I three days old?

[ His mouth curls into a little smile at that last part - clearly a joke. Still, he does genuinely wonder what some kind of medical test of his blood or DNA or whatever would show, about the age of this body. Not enough that he'd actually let anybody run that kind of test, but still. ]

Was the other place you were in anything like this?

[writtendestiny]

I don't think anyone did, in either place. [It's hard to tell, when you're already at an age when your growth has more or less reached its peak. Poison had certainly done no more growing in Hadriel, and no one had really talked about it.

Poison's expression flickers when he talks about dying, and she studies his face as if trying to work out whether or not he's lying. Silly thing to lie about, if he is, so she decides quickly on 'not'.]

The first place wasn't like this at all. People died all the time. They wanted us to die. Hadriel was... better, but still dangerous. I don't know what to expect here, yet. [She purses her lips a moment.]

... It looks like we're the first, doesn't it.

[benhargreeves]

[ He catches the look after he says he died, but then, he doesn't expect any different. It's not something you hear people saying all that often. He wouldn't blame her for just deciding he was crazy. But she doesn't question him, or walk away, so that's a good sign.

As she continues to speak, Ben silently amends his understanding of the situation - so she had been to two other places before this one. The first, the one she doesn't name, sounds pretty damn bad. Ben has, for the first time, a feeling of profound gratefulness that he didn't end up somewhere worse. And the second place... ]

Oh, you were at Hadriel? My brother was there for a while.

[ Ben makes a mental note to ask Klaus later if he had met a girl named Poison. He thinks that with a name like that, Klaus would probably remember. ]

He hasn't really wanted to talk about it much, but he showed up pretty injured. We had to go straight to the medbay.

[ Which is really just an oblique way for him to mention that there is a medbay, just in case Poison is injured, but the sort of person who would conceal it to a stranger, in a strange place. Weaknesses and injuries could be exploited, if people want to hurt you. Maybe someone had taught her to be paranoid, the way that Reginald had taught all of them. ]

I don't think we are the first. I think we're... round two. Or three or four or eighty-four. Someone planted those trees, and I doubt it was these incompetent robots. And there are traces. Bullet holes. Stuff that got left behind.

[writtendestiny]

[Poison never did meet Klaus. Perhaps, in time, she would have, but his entry to Hadriel had come at a busy time and Poison herself has always been quite a quiet, private individual. She nods, though, in some understanding when he speaks of his brother's injuries. Very few had come through the fight against the Null without at least a few scrapes.

She'd been lucky to be a non-combatant.]

The first for a while. [She corrects her phrasing nonchalantly. The marks of war haven't passed her by, but the place is falling apart, overgrown, and from the sounds of all things has had no one to properly tend to it for a while.]

I thought I might take a look at one of the robots. I might be able to do something.

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben nods, conceding that she has a point. Something has changed to bring a new wave of people here after what must have been years of emptiness, based on the state of things. So what had changed? Or perhaps the question is, who had changed something... ]

Do what?

[ The prospect of action, of doing something rather than reacting to everything, is an attractive one to Ben. Still, he isn't sure what help those strange, rudimentary robots will be. He has... more than a little experience with robots after all. An entirely different sort, true, but he doubts their programming will allow them to divulge anything that is supposed to be a secret.

Still he's not going to make any judgments until she explains what she's got in mind. ]

[writtendestiny]

I don't know. Something. [She frowns. The robots are rudimentary, that's true, but they're also broken.]

They work, but I think they can do more than they're doing now.

[The bar robot, for example. She finds it hard to believe that the only thing it was ever made to produce was variants of tequila and tequila-based cocktails.]

Maybe their programming degraded. Or parts. Maybe they can be better. They could help us.

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben considers a few moments, weighing the possible negative effects of tampering against the potential gain of getting the robots restored to something a little closer to complete function. It didn't take an expert to tell that they're not doing so great. Maybe it's the only merciful thing. Maybe it's long overdue. ]

You might be right. So much in this place is neglected. Their insides are probably full of dust.

[ Huge problems could come from such tiny environmental factors. Maybe with a thorough cleaning and a good charge, they would be different. Be people. ]

I think it's worth a try. Just... maybe not when there are so many of them around? Might freak them out to see you open up one of their comrades.

[writtendestiny]

[She snorts softly.]

Yeah, I wasn't planning on doing it where the others could see.

[Working with the Cybertronians gave her a bit of sensitivity in that regard. She suspects that however long they've been here, they don't have any ability to look after themselves or each other. It's... almost sad.]

I have a friend who can probably help me. I bet he'd only need to be asked once.

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben smiles when she says she had already thought about that; there is something enjoyable about talking to someone with so much confidence in herself, and who clearly thinks ahead in a similar way to Ben. Maybe... talking to people isn't such a bad thing after all. ]

Well, you should let me know how that goes.

[ He is genuinely curious. The more he knows about this place, the better he can plan to keep himself and his brothers safe. And besides... there is something interesting, about the mystery of this place. ]

My username is 'lazarus', on the uh- [ Takes him a moment to remember the word for it. ] -network. And if there's any help I can give, just give me a call.