redshiftlogs | july 2019. welcome to the void.

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july 2019. welcome to the void.

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.

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Even in his stunned stupor, Diego can't help marveling at the way she makes talking to people to get information out of them like an art. It's beautiful, in its own way, how confident she is, how assertive without being overbearing. The kind of balance that makes people want to talk to her.

But what really manages to kick his brain back into drive is the second Patch darts off, following the apparition wherever she'll lead. Part of him wants to leave her to it, not interrupt for worry that if he does, Maeve might disappear or stop helping her piece it together. The rest of him just runs and calls her name. "Patch, wait!"

She hears her name, she turns, and the look on her face is one of utter devastation. "Diego?" She can't handle this. Not now. Except she doesn't really have a choice, does she? In this, she is out of her depth. Completely.

You know, maybe, for once, just try things my way.

Her one compromise in a career of playing by the rules, and the end of her story. It's easier to avoid thinking about it without the walking reminder right in front of her. Not that it's his fault. Her life, her choice, and the consequences are hers alone to carry.

There's also Maeve. A ghost at best, some sort of mass hallucination at worst, but Patch gave her word. "I--" She looks to where the woman is still running ahead of her, and Patch speeds up again. "I promised I wouldn't leave her." She wants to turn back, wants to talk to him, but she can't. It doesn't matter if Maeve is real or not. She gave her word. So she keeps running, part of her hoping Diego won't follow her, part of her praying that he will.

He's a little taken aback by that, but at the same time, it isn't really a surprise at all. It's just so her and he can't really even be mad about it. So, instead of wasting the energy for that, he just follows her and the specter and hopes that she gets whatever information it is she's going for and can stop being distracted by the mission of it in a few minutes.

He doesn't even really know what he'll say, when they get that minute of time. There are a thousand things he wants to say, should have said, never got the chance to say because there was always going to be more time, but... But he isn't even sure he's ready for any of those conversations. He just hopes he can say something when the time comes.

Patch has no idea where they're going. She doesn't know this place well enough yet, and for all she knows, the layout might have completely changed after this woman's time. Depends on who won the battle, and she's got absolutely no insight into the history of this strange new place.

"Get down," Maeve hisses at them, ducking behind a piece of debris that doesn't actually exist for Patch and Diego in their time. Patch is also pretty sure that the heavy gunfire being laid down right now can't interact with them. It all exists for the soldier, though, and so Patch intends to take it seriously, for her sake. She automatically begins to crouch. Her arm snaps out, blocking Diego's path, a universal gesture of protection, of get behind me, completely and totally reflexive.

Diego follows the pair of them through the unfamiliar area. He has to get a better handle on this place, and makes a mental note to do a more proper go of it later. They need maps, that would be a good project to pitch to the masses, right?

He isn't unused to situations like this, those reactions are borne deeper than thought or breath and when Maeve makes the command to get down and Patch is crouching, he instantly follows suit. Maybe some other time, he would be annoyed with her 'behind me' gesture, but right now, he's just trying to wrap his head around her being here. Being alive. He'd follow her off a fucking cliff just to prove that fact to himself at this point.

Maeve doesn't respond to her offer to go on ahead, or to draw fire, not that she's sure she could. She's still solid enough, though, and so Patch doesn't push the issue.

No convenient distraction, and Diego right there. She turns her face toward his, biting her lip for a moment, unsure of what to say. It's not a feeling she loves, being unsure."What are you doing here?" As though he can answer that mystery any better than the rest of them, as though he'll have some insight that she doesn't.

There are other questions she wants to ask, more important ones. She wants to know what he knows, if he saw her, or just stole her autopsy report after the fact. She holds no illusion that Diego just let it be. She could ask him whether he already knows, but the look in his eyes has already answered that question for her, and she's not sure she'd be able to handle hearing him say so out loud.

"The same thing you are," the quip back is easy-as-breathing, like nothing ever changed and he never had a complete fucking breakdown over her dead body in that shitty ass motel room. Life as usual, everything is fine. He doesn't know what else to say, and he hopes to a God he doesn't even believe in that she doesn't try to have a conversation. Not here, not now, like this.

The same thing as her. That stings. It fucking wounds, and it probably shows on her face. She knows why she's here. More or less. She knows how she ended up here, at least, what event immediately preceded her journey. "You died?" Her voice is small, her posture deflates. She's not prepared for this.

Maeve gets up and keeps running, talking to someone who isn't there the way she was talking to Patch. She runs through a doorway that's sealed up tight, closed and dented, with its control panel ripped out of the wall. No following the ghosts through there. Not that Patch even notices.

For a moment, he isn't sure why she has that look on her face, but he regrets opening his mouth as soon as it spills across her features. Whatever he did to make it happen, he wishes he could take back. But as soon as she asks that question, it clicks together and that realization is painted so clearly on his own face. "Oh... N-no, I didn't die, I--" He, what? He definitely didn't die, but the explanation was still insane and long and-- "It's complicated." That sure was a hell of an avoidant answer.

God, what a fucking mess they are. "Isn't it always, with us?" It's a weak attempt at a joke, but it falls flat. It falls so, so very flat. Getting him to open up has always been like pulling teeth. Took her years, the first time, and he still didn't every really truly share what was going on in his mind. Not all of it. Not with her, maybe not with anyone. Why would things be different now, just because she's dead? Why would life get any easier after it ends?

Fuck this. No. She's not going to wallow. That is weak and stupid and pointless, and she is none of those things. She's in the middle of something here. This is when she actually looks around for Maeve again, only to find her gone. Now that there's no ghost to humour, she forgets about hiding behind debris that doesn't exist, about taking the fighting that can't touch her seriously. She stands back up, looking around. "Shit." She's gone, and Patch has no idea where she went. So much for that.

She sighs, holsters her weapon. "It's all right, Diego. You don't have to tell me." She wanders over to a low planter wall and sits down, looking at the fading chaos around her, suddenly far less interested by it.

The joke is hollow and he can't help but notice that. He wonders, briefly, if that's how she feels, beyond the confusion and the uncertainty he's pretty sure has to come as a package deal for waking up from dead. Though, if he's honest with himself about it, he's not convinced she's stopped long enough to let herself feel anything like that at all yet. He knows better than anybody, it's easier to keep things at bay if you don't let the waterfall start in the first place-- but once it starts, it gets pretty impossible to do much else than let it happen.

"It's... not a brushoff, I'm serious." he gets to his feet and debates if he should follow her or not. But. Well. He's followed her this far, so what's another handful of steps by now, right? "So much... God, so much happened after y-" There's that look on his face again, he can't say it. Hasn't, in his two months and change away from that awful week following his father's funeral.

He shakes his head and tries to figure out the best words to explain it. Except there aren't any that are good enough, so he decides to just barrel into it instead. "And- and I ended up in a different world? Universe? I don't know, it's confusing and I've already lived it, but I was there for almost two months before I showed up here, and..."

He crouches in front of her, watching her carefully. "this place? It isn't some kind of...afterlife. You... you're... but I'm not, I didn't." As much as that didn't make sense, when he considers it all. Even more so when he tries to put things like fairness into it-- how unfair it is that she died and he never did, in all the years he's been doing idiotic, impulsive things around wildly dangerous people.

"I died," she says, slowly and deliberately, holding his gaze. "I died, and you didn't. It's all right. You can say it. I can hear it." She certainly can't change it. Maybe he doesn't want to hear it, either, but... well, two months is a long time to be in denial. It won't do him any favours in the long run. There's a way home from this place, if the welcome video is to be believed. Diego can go back. She can't. Dead is dead.

Just because this isn't the afterlife, if it's really some sort of second chance for her, she's still dead at home. She's dead, and nothing is going to change that. "Did you... get my message?"

"No..." He shakes his head. "I- I can't. I haven't. Maybe you can hear it, but I can't say it." Which sounds completely stupid. Of course he could make the words and force them out of his mouth, but... he doesn't want to. As much as he can't at all live in anything close to denial, because he saw it, saw her dead on that motel room floor, he hasn't admitted it out loud. The closest he came was mentioning honoring a memory.

He nods at her question. "Yeah..." Too late. Everything about that night happened too late. Too fast. Too... everything. There's a long, drawn moment of silence before he finally just admits, "I- I can't have this conversation right now, Patch, I... it's... I know I shouldn't do this- I shouldn't make your..." He hesitates, and his mouth moves wordlessly for a second. "death... about me and I'm really not trying to, but I can't. Not yet."

He's already getting to his feet, though he isn't sure where he plans on going. Leaving her seems cruel, staying seems impossible after saying... all of that. Two other words burn a hole into the end of his tongue, but he can't quite push them past his lips-- 'I'm sorry'.

All right. Not a full conversation, then, just one more question. "Did you come?" She's about to continue, to clarify that she's asking him if he followed up on her message, if he saw her there. She doesn't have to, though. It's written all over his face. He's horrible at hiding what he's thinking, or maybe she's just gotten really good at reading it, over the years. Damn near a decade. It's a long time to know someone, even for her.

He answered the call. He saw what happened. Makes more sense that he can't talk about it, then. It's so different, when the victim is someone you know, when you see it with your own eyes. "I'm sorry. I never meant to do that to you." Life really does have a way of going entirely off the rails. It's strange to find a little bit of comfort in the fact that it took her so long to do something so fundamentally stupid. Thirty years is not a bad run.

She stuffs her hands into the pockets of her jacket, to keep herself from flicking her fingernails. She doesn't need Diego to have any sort of visual confirmation that she feels restless. Instead, she just runs her thumb back and forth over the fur of the rabbit's foot in her pocket. It's just as comforting. "Are you going to be all right?"

Diego absolutely could not hide that answer even if he wanted to. The mask didn't crack, it shattered to pieces the second that question was out of her mouth. The only answer, besides that suddenly broken look on his face, that he gives is a slight nod. He found her. He dreams about it sometimes, it's not great. He's not convinced he'll ever be 'over' it, even with her being here... that in itself is just as much of a risk as it is a reward. He knows how worlds like this work from his short-lived experience in the last one. Sometimes people just disappear, without a word or a warning. Gone like they never existed in the first place. He isn't prepared for that possibility at all, even while knowing it hangs in the balance every second of every day, at the whims of whatever or whoever dragged them to this place.

"Don't." His voice has the slightest waver in it with that one word. "Don't do that. You didn't ask for it." Their line of work, weird ends of the spectrum they may have lived on for the most part, they both know the hardest part is on the shoulders and in the hands of the people left behind. Most people don't get to get them back. Suddenly, he's not sure how right he was to be so envious of Klaus for keeping the ones he lost.

"I'll be fine, Dora- fuck, don't--" He shakes his head and waves one hand at her. "don't comfort me, you're the one that--" His hand drops and his chin tucks toward his chest. Nope. Can't do it. He said the word once, now, in the last two months and he is not going to do it again. "Are you gonna be okay? Have you met anybody else yet?" He needs her to have someone, anyone else that she can lean on, too, because he isn't sure he can do or be what she needs right now, no matter how much he wants to. He can at least be that honest with himself and where he's at with standing here face-to-face with her. But he can't let her just deal with all of this alone, either.

She doesn't even call him on the name. She will, later. There's no one here to call her Dora, no one here to know that version of her. She's going to miss that. Maybe it's a comfort for him, too. "I can't just stop caring about you, Diego." Which is at least something that doesn't deal directly with her death, he doesn't have to think about that specifically. "I met an Abercrombie model and a total asshole. How about you? Met anyone interesting?"

Above her head, there's the boom of a phantom explosion, and she looks up, hands coming out of her pockets and reaching for her gun automatically, but relaxing once she realizes there is nothing that can harm them. The chain of the rabbit's foot is wrapped around the middle finger of her left hand, and when she relaxes, a little flick of her wrist tucks the foot in against her palm. After a moment, her thumb returns to rubbing back and forth against the soft fur.

"I know that." he says, voice quiet and not quite looking at her. He doesn't miss how easily she breezes over his flip-back of her own question at her, but he decides not to press it. The lack of answer is an answer all on its own. He rolls one shoulder in a vague shrug, "Few people... not anyone that particularly sticks out yet." Although there was a guy that might fit the vague Abercrombie model description she gave, so he has to wonder if it's the same one. Doesn't seem important enough to bother with asking, just now, though.

His attention jerks immediately upwards, one hand reflexively reaching for one of the many knives he carries on his person at all time. When he looks back at her again, he sees the trinket he'd bought her years ago and one corner of his mouth lifts slightly. "I was always surprised you kept that thing, after we split."

She can be stubbourn, too. Few people see it the way Diego has had occasion to. Few people drive her as crazy. If he’s not answering, though, she can play that game of chicken with him.

The rabbit’s foot, however, that seems like something she owes him. He’s seen it before, but never commented on it, and maybe there’s a reason for it now. “Are you really? Come on. You know me. It’s a nice memory, I want to keep it. My little concession to ridiculous superstition.” Meant to bring her luck, keep her safe. Well, it had a good long run. She opens up her hand, lets it dangle there, spins it around a few times. The fact that she has to flip him off to do this also seems a little fitting.

He smiles a little more as she lifts it up to show it off a little more properly for a moment. 'Was I a good memory?' Five words echo inside his head over and over, but he never actually asks it, bites his tongue to stop himself. He reaches up to catch the foot between his fingers, stopping it from spinning, studying it for a moment. "Didn't really hold up its end of the bargain, did it?"

He lets go of the talisman and watches it fall away and swing a little on her finger. "Maybe its luck resets here, huh?" He smiles a little, but it's got no heart in it. This has all hit so many things he hasn't looked at, at all yet, and he's running out of steam to deal with it.

"It did a pretty great job for years." In the end, no, not so much. Not that she'd ever really expected it to. The idea that a little dried out animal foot could be any sort of protection, it had never been something she could actually believe. It had been Diego, the way he threw away the comment as he'd tossed it to her, even though his eyes were far more serious, were scanning her face nervously to see what she'd make of it. It had been real to him, and so she'd cared.

She watches it swing along her finger, and then once again flicks her wrist and turns her hand so it's caught cradled in her palm, so she can close her fist around it. "Maybe it brought me here. Maybe my luck is that... I'm not finished." He's hurting. Still. Written in every line of him and she can't fix it and she can't even be surprised that it's happening. Diego and feelings. It only ever ends one way, doesn't it? So, she does what she's always done - she gives him an out, because she cares. "You were headed somewhere, before you saw me. If you've got something to check on, don't let me keep you."

"Yeah, I guess so." He admits with a slight nod. He knew she never bought into it, she just humored him, really. But... it was kind of nice to know that, despite that, and despite the way things ended for them, she never could bring herself to get rid of it. Some superstitious little trinket he'd grabbed randomly one day meant too much for her to throw away, no matter how much she didn't believe in it.

"Yeah...maybe." he isn't much of one for platitudes, but... this might be one of the only things that he could hold onto for now. He recognizes that handed out escape route for what it is, and he's so grateful for it. For the respect she has for him still to even offer it, when she really shouldn't have to do anything for him right now. It should be the other way around, he knows that, but he can't help being the way he is, either. At least she understands. She always has. "Yeah... um-- but...I'll see you around, yeah?"

"Yeah. I'll be here." Hopefully. Hearing that traveling between strange worlds is a thing, and that you don't need to be dead to do it, that is going to take a little while to properly sink in. Diego won't be around when it really hits her. That's probably for the best.

Definitely for the best.

Patch gets slowly to her feet, and tucks the little totem back into her pocket. "I feel like I should go try to find another Maeve. Quarantine sounds important." It might never work, but it's something to do, it's a distraction that's incredibly welcome, even if it's not necessarily useful. Then, because it doesn't seem like he's going to be able to actually move, she gives him another out. "Try not to get into trouble, huh?" A little quirk of just one side of her mouth, an affectionate punch on his upper arm as she walks past him, and then she's gone. He can take all the time he needs to pull himself together and move on with his day. She'll give him the privacy for that. She doesn't look back, not once.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

july 2019. welcome to the void.

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