november 2019. welcome to the void.

[modblob]

Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: Fifth Introductory Mingle
When: The Month of November 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. outbreak.

There's a plague in the city.

What was an annoyance before, a bug that seemed to be passing, has erupted into a full-scale biomedical hazard. Onset is slow. It’s a near mystery who is infected and who isn't, who is immune and who isn't. Doors lock themselves seemingly at random to prevent people passing through. Is that person with you one of the sick? How do you know? Would they tell you if they were?

The city will do its best to isolate the ill, once again locking them out of communal areas and trying to force them down toward the MedBay for quarantine. All bots will be temporarily shifted to plague protocols, rounding up and caring for the ill as best they can. (Lucky you, you get your cough syrup with a mixer courtesy of the barbot.) But they might not always get things right, and what healthy person wants to be locked away in a ward full of the violently ill? How do the bots even know which is which?

The ill will slowly find themselves dizzy, lightheaded, with chills and fever. They may cough hard enough to spit blood from irritated throats, or sneeze so long and hard they give themselves bloody noses. The symptoms can vary wildly depending on body chemistry, species, and dozens of other factors, making it difficult to pin down a specific set that indicates a person is infected. All bodily fluids are dangerously infectious. Maybe you want to keep your distance from your friends if you start to feel the onset, to keep them safe. But you also want to keep your freedom, not get trapped in a room full of people who seem to be dying. And anyone who was exposed to the first outbreak will find themselves either completely immune to this new one through early exposure...or far more susceptible, their immune systems doing almost nothing to protect them, with extreme symptom sets that hit them much harder than the average infected.

And through all of this, that voice that cheerfully chirped out helpful hints during the item exchange, that giggled and sang songs in the crashed spaceship in the wasteland can be heard again - but this time it's different. This time, there's very little cheer left, and though the commentary is still sing-song, it's much harsher, more monotone and without much energy. 'Go on, hurry up to the MedBay. No breaking quarantine!' it says, or to those moving through the city with friends, 'You must not like those people much, are you sure you want to get them sick?' In the depths of the worst of it, in the third week of the month, people may start hearing more of those 'helpful' suggestions - 'Maybe it would be better if we just left them out in the wastelands, you know? For the greater good and all...'

Mod Note: An NPC post will be going up next weekend on redshiftrp to supplement this prompt. Keep an eye out!

b. gone to shit.

With 90% of the city's bots repurposed to serve the ill (the matchmaking bot being the notable exception), things are starting to go downhill fast elsewhere. Didn’t realize how much work the bots were actually doing? You can't avoid knowing now.

Restaurants, slowly coming back online after the increased activity in the agricultural areas, are promptly shut down again with things starting to go bad in the fridges. The VR rooms have no attendants to help with glitches. The maintenance bots are prowling the halls looking for ill people to assist to the MedBay. The spa bots are all down in the lower levels helping keep people comfortable while they convalesce, leaving the spas to run themselves. Sometimes to overflowing. It's definitely going to be an adventure discovering what else the bots were doing to keep things running smoothly.

There's no bots manning the bar (make your own drinks while you can), but this also means there are no bots cleaning up the messes people leave behind in the bar either. The detritus of people living their lives starts to pile up - which means if you don’t want garbage filling up the most used common rooms, you're going to have to apply some good old elbow grease. Exactly what you wanted to do while everyone is violently ill, right?

c. dance of the moonlight jellies.

In spite of everything going on elsewhere in the colony, something magical is happening in the lakes and ponds of the park. Maybe your healthy or recovering character stumbles across it on their own. Maybe they see the glow from a higher levels and are drawn down to it. Maybe a persistent and super helpful voice, the same voice from the item exchange, the same voice that suggested throwing the sick out into the wasteland, suggests that you should go down and look at what's happening there.

However you ended up in the park, the place is filled with a silvery glow that emanates from the ponds, rivers, and lake. Fish have come up from the bottom, from where they were buried under the sand. They look almost like East Asian dragons, for those familiar with Earth. They're long, muscular, with two sets of fins trailing in the water like legs. Their heads are delicate, beautiful things that trail whiskers in the water along beside them.

And they're dancing.

In loops and whirls, over and under each other, diving deep and then rising up again to create patterns of light and shadow. Anyone who watches for more than a minute can start to feel relief moving through them, calm, the sense that things will be okay. Watching the dance is almost like meditation. Probably, for some, a much-needed break.

Navigation.

Comments

QUESTIONS

[modblob]

Any questions for the mods can be posted here!

sorry this is heckin' late but

[superposition]

Is there any way to override the robots' quarantine protocols? I don't think Qubit would want to take all of them off quarantine duty necessarily, but he'd at the very least want to get the maintenance bots back on maintenance to whatever degree he can.

For the sake of Fun, though, I'm thinking maybe it's not as simple as rolling out a software patch - maybe he has to physically chase down the bots he needs and plug something in manually, in between putting out maintenance fires?

Peter Parker | OTA

[itsnotaonesie]

It's all just gone to Hell lads I don't even know

[Peter, lucky him, has already been sick once, and after a nice little heart to heart with Qubit has been taking at least somewhat better care of himself. Thanks to that, and his body's general superpoweriness (that's a word), he feels fucking great. At least in a not-catching-the-space-plague sort of way. Unfortunately, there are other people who do have the goddamn space plague, and now all the robots are abandoning their posts to go help them. Which is great, certainly, but goddamn now everything's going on at once and Peter's mostly scrambling to keep up with all of the neglected maintenance. 'Hey Peter you shouldn't over work yourself it's not good for you' 'okay but I'm going to try to do the work of the entire robot maintenance team.' So that's happening.

When he's not doing that he can be found trying to help out in the medbay, popping into R&D to grab supplies, or checking in on like everybody because he is very worried, you guys. He can either pop up knocking on someone's door, or they can shoot him a reply to this handy little text that he hastily slaps up on the network:]

Hey guys, it's Peter. Just kind of a heads up that I'm okay, and if anyone needs literally anything at all, let me know.

Wildcard

[If you have literally anything at all 3 2 1 LET'S JAM]

[writtendestiny]

I need help.

[sleepyhollowed]

[Kieran already caught the space plague so he's not about to catch it again, thankfully.]

[That being said, he's still in the medbay because he literally can't go back to the barn without possibly dying. It's safer for him to spend time in here where it's relatively safe and making one wrong step won't land him two stories down or on an especially dangerous piece of equipment. Peter will probably find Kieran hanging out in a bed with a blindfold over his eyes, super bored with nothing to do.]

[kaballin]

What the fuck is wrong with the bar-bot Peter.

What did you do to it and why isn't it there?

[braidmage]

[ Reynir has also been doing his best to help in this not-ideal situation. While Peter looks after the neglected maintenance, he's really taken up the slack on as much of the neglected cleaning as possible. He might not know a lot about medicine or about technology but it turns out that dishes are a multiverse constant, and Reynir is pretty damn good at doing the dishes.

He's doing rounds of the different levels, collecting trash to be disposed of, when he sees Peter in R&D, collecting equipment, all of which looks super important. He's never spoken to Peter, but the boy has been everywhere these past few days, trying to keep everything afloat.

The real trick to handling a crisis like this isn't just hard work: it's smart multitasking. Reynir has other tasks, apart from just emptying the garbage. So, he knocks on the doorframe as he comes in: ]

Hello. Two questions! When was the last time you had something to eat and do you have a wastebin for me to empty?

[ In the backpack on his back are emergency supplies, including a few tupperware meals that Onni had made and given to Reynir to hand out to anyone he ran into who might be locked out of the kitchens or not feeding themselves properly for any other reasons. ]

text, @a.h.

[hersay]

[ okay, here's something coming down the line that isn't some kind of ambient sociopathic voice suggesting we leave people to die ]

I need information, for one.

Do you know what's happening? Do you know anything about this disease?

@kyouken

[justbeingknife]

Is this normal

[ hi peter ]

a montage begins [MEGA backdated ofc]

[superposition]

[ This text comes at an inconvenient time! You're not busy or anything, are you? ]

Need you on level 8 section B. Trying to get this bot back on maintenance duty but it won't hold still.

klaus hargreeves 👻 ota 👻 cw: blood

[substances]

👻 outbreak

Klaus Hargreeves feels like shit.

Of course, that's not exactly something new, now, is it? He has, in fact, spent about 75% of his life feeling like shit, so he's mostly used to it by now. Sure, maybe he's coughing up blood on occasion, his face feels like it's burning off, and he's pretty sure that at least a third of the things he's seeing out of the corners of his eyes aren't actually real for once, but it's all fine, right? Totally fine. Gravy.

Blithely, he continues on about his daily business, though he's wearing a pair of sweat pants he normally wouldn't be caught dead in public wearing and a sweater he's pretty sure he stole off Diego before he left that's way too long in the sleeves, but he's at least mobile. Stumbling and dizzy and light-headed, but what else is new?

Sure, sure, he can totally make it up to the Agriculture area to check up on his little pot plants and maybe steal some fruit off the farm there. Sure. Right.

Except that halfway there, he feels a crazy little headrush that's less than pleasant, and what seems like the next moment, he's waking up in a pathetic little pile on the concrete, groaning, with his nose and mouth all bloody. Great.

"Just great..." he mumbles, tries to push himself up again, and can't manage the coordination, "Super. Okay. Help, someone? Heeelllp..."

👻 dance of the moonlight jellies

So, this is nice.

Much nicer than being holed up in his room. Much nicer than accidentally falling asleep in the stairwell. Much nicer than being fucking starving because he got locked out of the kitchen for the third attempt in a row. This is a much, much better place to lie down and rest.

Right in the grass beside the lake in the park, lying on his back and staring up at the dome trying to make out stars. Klaus has slept in his fair share of parks, but this one is totally the best. Most parks don't have weird glowy dragon fish that just totally make the ambience. He's not even looking at them anymore, just basking in the glow and how nice and cool the grass is under him.

Thank god for the glow though, or else it would be almost impossible to spot him lying there and ask him what the hell he's doing. Or maybe he's just in a prime location to get stepped on.

👻 comfort (closed to julie)

There's a certain point at which even Klaus starts to feel like he needs to lie down and really rest in an actual bed, and maybe have someone around to whine to about how awful he feels. Maybe someone who'd be so kind as to push his hair back off his forehead and worry about him.

Lately, that means only one person.

So Klaus drags his sorry carcass down the hallway of the dorms and leans heavily against the wall beside Julie's door, knocks against it lightly.

"Juuuulie, baby are you in there?"

i'm heeeeeere

[redwinekindofgirl]

Julie's been quiet, the past couple of days. Most messages have been responded to by text, and she hasn't been showing up in the agricultural areas as often as she usually would. There's a good reason for that, and a reason she's been trying to keep to herself.

Even knowing that there are probably enough medical supplies for everyone, growing up in a time where everything was hard to find it's almost like an instinct to keep her own illness to herself, to make sure that people who need it more get the right treatment.

And she's been hoping there wouldn't be a knock on the door. She's been hoping even more that it wouldn't be that person, because... damn it, she can't ignore him or tell him to go away.

When she finally opens the door, it's all too obvious that she isn't well. She's pale, with dark shadows around her eyes and a faint sheen across her forehead. She grips the door frame and manages a smile, though it's very faint.

"Uh, yeah. I'm here. Mostly."

outbreak!

[hersay]

[ it all happens so fast -- allison is walking down from the agricultural area as klaus is walking up, and to be honest, allison doesn't even recognize him from far away. at the top of the stairs, all allison can see is a dude in clothes too plain to belong to klaus. and then the man sways, and trips, and allison rushes down to make sure she's all right when she realizes --

shit. that's klaus. and that's a whole lotta blood.

allison tears off some cloth from the bottom of her shirt, and when she reaches klaus, wastes no time in applying it to his nose, gently, to at least stop the bleeding. and that's when she notices that he's burning up.

it's not a good time to reach for her phone to text, but allison gives klaus a look that plainly reads what the are you doing here and buried under that, concern. ]

moonlight jellies.

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben, being Ben, shows up with a blanket.

Well, two blankets and a pillow, actually. His arms are stuffed with them as he approaches, making his way by that shimmering, glowing light coming from the water where those strange jellyfish (if that's what they are) are dancing. He had spotted Klaus a few minutes ago, laying there on the grass. But instead of bothering him to come inside, or worrying about him making himself even sicker, Ben felt... strangely peaceful and okay with the situation. So he had left silently, without even saying hello, gotten blankets, and come back.

He settles himself next to Klaus just as silently. It is Klaus, after all. He knows Ben and his presence so well by now that he doesn't have to say a thing. Ben sets one of the blankets down beside Klaus, for him to use if he'd like, and spreads the other one out on the grass, laying down and settling his head on the pillow - but with enough room for Klaus to share it if he'd like.

When he does speak, finally, he skips all the questions about why Klaus is here and any of that, and merely asks: ]

Is it just me or do they look a little like dragons?

onni hotakainen ❄ ota

[scowlish]

❄ Caretaker

It seems that the illness has only gotten worse. Thankfully, it shares almost no symptoms with the Rash, and he and Reynir have already gotten safely through the first wave of it.

Still, that doesn't stop it from being alarming.

Having grown up in the world he has, anything resembling a disease requiring a quarantine is a great cause for concern. Onni had taken to wearing his breath mask when things started getting bad at first, but after having been sneezed on violently by someone while he wasn't wearing it early on and discovering not a single symptom after a couple of days, he's come to realize he's likely immune to this one. It seems a little like a cruel twist of irony, if he's going to be honest. Then again, there's no evidence that this one doesn't kill just as effectively as the Rash - the symptoms are bad enough, with infected people coughing up blood and experiencing fevers and hallucinations.

Still, once he realizes he's immune to it, he can't justify not making the effort to help those who aren't. So he can be found around the city helping out with maintenance that the robots aren't doing while they try to take care of the sick. He repairs whatever damage he can, he sweeps and cleans common areas, he helps Cho with the cooking and dishes in the kitchen. More importantly, he takes containers of warm stew out of the kitchen and looks for sick people, knocks on the doors in the living quarters and drops off food for those who can't access the kitchen. Is willing to help transport people who have fallen or who can't make it to their rooms.

Onni isn't a particularly nurturing person by his nature, but he has helped to raise two children and has dealt with his fair share of colds and illnesses. He's soothed people through fevers and made sure they were fed and slept, and he knows that there are sure to be some people here who haven't yet made connections with people that are deep enough to merit special attention. He might not be nurturing or particularly altruistic, but he most certainly has grown up in a society where community is important and illness is to be feared and treated as quickly and carefully as possible, and it's a mentality he's continuing on with in this place.

❄ Wildcard / Plot With Me

[Feel free to have your character set up somewhere being sick or needing help with maintenance or whatever else, and I'll have Onni approach. He's immune, willing to help, and can be quite caring if needed. If you want to plot something in advance, hit me up on Discord, plurk, or PM.]

[braidmage]

[ Reynir has been pitching in, too, taking the other cleaning tasks that slip between the cracks - the ones people forget about or that nobody in their right mind volunteers for. But Reynir honestly doesn't mind a bit of bathroom-scrubbing or garbage collection or taking rotted food from those abandoned restaurants and tossing it into the compost pile he's started in the Agricultural area.

He has been working alongside Onni, too - the two of them spending hours a day together, with Onni mostly silent and Reynir chattering away or even humming. He's told Onni at least one story about every person from the village where he grew up, and who knows how many amusing sheep stories, and he shows no sign of letting up. But his energy and good cheer aren't wasted; they make the work seem to go faster, the day more full of laughter (even if it's grudging) and smiles than it might be otherwise.

After a long day of it, he knocks to the door of Onni's room and, when he opens it, hoists the basket he has braced against his hip: ]

Calling all laundry.

[livingdeadgirl]

The space flu hit Ami hard and fast this time around, digging its claws into her sinuses and refusing to leave. She got to leave the Medbay and return to her room not because she was getting better, but because she wasn't getting worse. Since then, her condition's been fluctuating day to day. Her sinuses are all backed up, and the endless fits of sneezing or coughing don't even provide much relief - it'll be a whole lot of nothing, and then a huge glob of blood from the last nosebleed, followed immediately by another nosebleed. Some days she's too dizzy to get out of bed, and some days she just doesn't want to, because she is freezing and burning and will never, ever leave her comfy blanket nest.

But help has come from a somewhat unexpected source. Ami doesn't know Onni that well; he's nice and all, but she hardly ever sees him anywhere. But here he's been, dutifully stopping by her room every so often to feed her and check on her and deliver her medicine. Part of her wonders why, but... he's probably doing that for a lot of people, she figures. That's just what you do when illness strikes a small community.

When Onni knocks on her door this time, she's most of the way asleep, but not quite. "C'mon in," she wheezes, and then the wheezing turns into a miserable, unproductive cough. Ow ow ow.

He'll find her curled up in bed as usual, eyes squeezed shut, covering her mouth with one hand while she waits for the coughing to subside.

allison hargreeves // ota

[hersay]

outbreak.
[ allison hasn’t been in anchor long, but she has been here long enough to get acquainted with a few things. in particular, ben has shown her the medbay, and while the robotic nurses can be unnerving at times, they’ve got what allison needs to soothe her injury. so this morning, she’s taken it upon herself to return to the medbay and get that relief.

relief isn’t what she finds, however.

the medbay looks nothing like she last saw it. there are people in here this time — and they don’t look good. people are coughing, hacking, doubled over, pale, shaking. it’s horrifying, and as the doors close, allison instinctively backs away. she wants to help, and in an ideal situation she would, but she also knows that if she wants her throat to heal, (much less stay alive, it seems) she cannot catch this illness.

so when she turns to open the door and it just won’t budge, fear sets in. allison isn’t sick. she’s not. they’ve made a mistake. she pounds on the door. somebody, anybody — let her out. ]

moonlight.
[ realistically, allison can’t shut herself in a dormitory forever. so at night, she takes her chances with the plague and the robots and this uncontrollable city and ventures outside, quietly, under cover of darkness.

tonight, she spots something new. even from a distance, allison can see that the park is glowing. cautiously, she ventures in to investigate.

you can find allison sitting cross-legged by the side of the river, raptly watching the moonlight jellies, occasionally tracing the path in the air with her finger. it’s the first real beauty she’s experienced in some time. ]

wildcard.
(ooc: gimme what you got!)

moonlight

[redwinekindofgirl]

[Julie isn't feeling great, but god knows she can't keep herself cooped up 24/7 either. The glow coming from the water draws her in and she sits down heavily next to the river, pushing her head into her hands for a moment.]

Mrgh-- [She mutters, closing her eyes to ease the throbbing between her temples.

She's ill... probably, but everything she's currently feeling could also be caused by a lack of sleep and she's not feeling so rough yet that she wants to try and find out which it is. Rough enough, though, to not notice she has company for far too long, and she almost jumps out of her skin when she sees the woman sitting not too far away.]

Oh ffh--holy shit. How long have you been there?

outbreak

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben likes keeping tabs on where his siblings are. It's an old habit after all those years of seeing Klaus spiraling, always managing to find some new low even after Ben thought he had finally hit rock bottom. Besides, the Anchor has been a little less safe recently, at least, in his opinion. Allison is new to this place and still getting her bearings.

So when she leaves for the medbay that morning and isn't back for an hour, at first Ben dismisses it as him worrying too much. Maybe she decided to go exploring or is off making new friends. Another hour, and he's less inclined to doubt his own reaction. A third hour, and he finally gives up trying to pretend he's not this person.

Over the devices they all received upon arrival he sends a quick text: ]

Hey - everything okay? I thought you were coming straight back.

lalli hotakainen | ota + closed

[lallipop]

[ 01 | outbreak | ota ]

[It doesn't actually occur to him that he could get sick. Onni and Reynir did and he didn't, so his immunity must have extended to other things as well. It only makes sense. He doesn't think much of it that he wakes up one day feeling a little dizzier than normal, that his skin is more sensitive than usual, that he keeps coughing. He hasn't been properly sick since he was a child and he's forgotten what it's like.

So he doesn't understand why doors suddenly start locking after he walks through them, or what it could mean--he can be found standing perplexed at several doorways, trying to get them to open. The spa bots, too, keep trying to herd him into the medbay, and he seems to have some difficulty fending them off. Help a twig in distress?

Or maybe you're in the vicinity when he straight up keels over while in the kitchen, or the VR room, or really anywhere. It hits fast, and he definitely has a fever.]

[ 02 | closed to onni + reynir ]

[He's definitely sick, and it sucks.

This may be the sickest he's ever been in his life. Rather than submit to quarantine, which certainly would have been the smart decision, he decides to be self-indulgent and slink back to the apartment he shares with Onni and Reynir instead. It's not actually the rash, so it's not as important, right? Just a flu or something. And he does not feel like being around of strange loud people in a bright white environment when he feels this shitty.

He doesn't bother checking to see who is home, he just grabs the nearest blanket he can find and curls up in the nearest bed, regardless of whose it is. For once the space underneath sounds more uncomfortable than anything, so he just bundles himself in a bunch of sheets and tries to sleep, hoping it will cure his pounding headache.]

[ 03 | closed to cole ]

[It had made sense at the time, at least. Lalli can tell that he's very, very sick, and honestly at this point he's delirious more often than he's lucid. But he remembers waking up and seeing Onni's stressed, worn face and feeling horribly guilty, knowing he's the one who's putting this pressure on him.

He doesn't remember a lot, really--only feeling like he doesn't want to be Onni's obligation, doesn't want to be a burden to him, and the next thing he's aware of he's in the middle of a corridor, huddled on the ground, the metal wall blissfully cold against his fever-hot cheek.

This is fine. It's... comfortable. He can stay here, and Onni doesn't have to worry about him, and everything works out.]

[ 04 | wildcard ]

[Plot with me via PM or the game discord!]

c.

[killedwithlove]

Cole appears moments later, feet silent and moving over to Onni. He crouches down and feels his brow, not to check his temperature, but to check what he's feeling, how sick he is, if it's safe to leave him here or if he needs somewhere else.

He doesn't like what he can feel. "It's okay, Onni's not here, but he's going to worry about you going missing as well. I'll let him know you're safe, but you can't stay here. This is a corridor. It's for walking through, not sleeping in."

Julie Grigio | OTA

[redwinekindofgirl]

outbreak

[It was annoying before, when she had an itch in the back of her throat and had to wait for someone else to come along so she could actually get through the door of the agriculture area. Now, the way the entire place keeps trying to herd her towards the med bay is becoming more like an entirely aggravating inconvenience that she's finding harder and harder to ignore.

And if that wasn't enough, the voice that comes along with it is enough to make her want to rip every speaker off the wall every time she hears it. 'No breaking quarantine!', it chirps out, and she can be heard talking back to it more than once.]

Oh, shut the fuck up. [She says while she's passing the currently non-functional VR rooms. Julie coughs roughly against the back of her hand and misses the few spots of blood that the action produces.]

Like hell I'm letting some sociopathic robot tell me where I gotta be right now. You can fuck right off.

dance of the moonlight jellies

[The light is almost like a heat-haze while she watches it.

Julie hadn't been following the suggestion of that irritating voice that's been feeding into the speakers for the past few days - it's perfectly natural to want to investigate the source of any weird glowing where there wasn't any glowing before. It's pretty, and she lies on her stomach in the grass with the occasional cough breaking the silence around her, watching the creatures moving in the water.

It's peaceful, she thinks, and she places her hand in the water and keeps it very still. After a few minutes the dragon-like fish begin to come closer, and she even manages to touch a few.]

Cool...

wildcard

[Hit me with anything!]

Poison | OTA

[writtendestiny]

gone to shit

[90% of the bots in the city may be occupied with trying to take care of the people who have already become sick, but that doesn't mean they can let the entire place go down the trash chute.]

We can't possibly be making all of this mess ourselves. [She says out loud as she pokes her head into the spa and finds the entranceway half a foot deep in water producing large, golden bubbles. A tinny voice comes out of a speaker above the door, saying something about quarantine, but she ignores it.

Over a few days, she does her best to try and keep things relatively tidy in the areas that see more use, still convinced that there's no chance the handful of them are possibly causing the level of detritus that's being found everywhere.

The sooner it's over, the better. Good thing she isn't feeling unwell.]

medibay

[After some increasingly violent sneezes caused a 30-minute nosebleed that had Peter rushing her into the MediBay, Poison finds that the damn place won't let her out once the bleeding has stopped. It's just as well that she doesn't really have much in her to fight it.

Once she has some drugs in her system to combat what's happening to her, she'll probably appreciate some visitors...]

wildcard

gone to shit

[justbeingknife]

I guess those bots were holdin' it back.

[ The spa water was soaking into the legs of Majima's suit slacks, but he didn't seem to mind all that much as he walked in. ]

There's gotta be a burst pipe or somethin'. How are ya at dealin' with plumbing issues?

Ami Aihara (Aradia Megido) | ota

[livingdeadgirl]

[ Prose or brackets welcome! ]

> Time to get sicknasty.

Ami got off easy during the first round of space flu. This time around, she's not so lucky. Though a lot of people are gradually feeling iffy, Ami's one of the earlier patients to fall unambiguously ill. What really sells it is the one morning at breakfast when, mid-conversation, she starts sneezing and just cannot stop. Well, this is a problem.

She ends up allowing the robots to escort her to the Medbay, where she continues to get sicker and sicker for a few days, until she finally sort of stabilizes. That is, she stops getting worse. She's still very, very sick.

But the Medbay doesn't have infinite space, and the more people the robots herd inside, the more crowded and chaotic it gets. Some people are getting quarantined even though they're not sick - they're bound to get sick now, though, she supposes...

> Go into solitary.

By the second week or so, the Medbay's no longer a good place to convalesce. So, through some shenanigans or other, Ami manages to transfer herself (or be transferred) back to her own room.

It's better, but it's still boring and lonely, and she still feels like crap. She's likely to spend the remainder of her illness more or less confined to this room, occupying her time with reading, or playing games on her phone, or texting her friends, or (mostly) sleeping. If anybody's well enough to visit or check in on her, she'll be happy for the company.

But fair warning: as of 11/14, she'll look a little different. Her lips are now naturally black, the sclera of her eyes are bright yellow, and her blood (when it happens to escape her body, which sadly is pretty common right now) is much deeper red than human blood ought to be.

But Spider-Man's helped her deep-clean the crazy scribbles off her walls by this point, so at least the room looks normal again. That's something!

> Pester your chums. (text; @aa)

[ At various points during the month, Ami will be reaching out to her friends individually to check on them (and chat because she's sick and bored), but she also tosses a quick open thing onto the network late one night: ]

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[ ......... yeah, that's it. ]

[text; un: bearly.bewitched]

[birdical]

What is wrong, Ami? How may I help you?

[It's late at night, but hey, Elleru does not turn down a text featuring what she assumes is an expression of discontent.]

Qubit | Irredeemable

[superposition]

[ Prose or brackets welcome! ]

01 | catch ( NothingFuckingWorksException fml ) { }

[ At first, Qubit's main concern is the robots going AWOL (again) and trying to cram everyone into the Medbay. The outbreak was like a month ago, they're a bit slow on the draw, aren't they? But once it's clear there is another epidemic going around, that immediately jumps to Priority One.

As a precautionary measure, he creates some filtration masks early in the month, handing them out to anybody who wants one. But he quickly realizes that's not going to make much difference. It's the same pathogen as before, mutations aside, so everyone in Anchor's already been exposed - at this point it's just a matter of whose immune systems will be able to fight it off.

His own succeeds, though, and it's a lucky thing, too, since apparently it's going to fall to him and Peter to keep the station running for a while. He's going to be spending most of the month running from crisis to crisis (often literally - this would be a lot easier if his stupid teleportals worked here), or coordinating with the handful of others who aren't deathly ill, or chasing down maintenance robots in an attempt to override their quarantine protocols. This station is way too big for two people to maintain on their own, superpowers or no.

So yeah, feel free to run into him literally anywhere, and please excuse how frazzled and irritable he'll be for the entire month. All this running around doesn't leave him a lot of downtime for, say... decent meals, or sleep. (Real talk, if we ever run out of coffee, Anchor is doomed.) ]

02 | for User u in Anchor { phlebotomize( u ); } // network; @Qubit

[ There's also the issue of the illness itself. Now, full disclosure: biology is not Qubit's specialty. He is not a epidemiologist, or a pathologist, or even a doctor. But somebody's got to find a cure for this thing, right?

Not that he's planning to do it all himself, obviously - there's no way he'd have enough time to do an in-depth study of the space plague on top of all the other bullshit on his plate right now. But whoever does get tapped for this, they're going to need samples and data... ]

Qubit here. Keeping this quick: I need a few volunteers to provide blood samples for testing purposes. These will need to come from both sick and healthy individuals, please. Contact me if you're interested. Thanks in advance.

[ Qubit you could at least explain why- oh, something's on fire? Okay. ]

03 | user.find( quiet );

[ The little silver dragons are nice, though.

One evening, when the creatures' nightly display has drawn a handful of onlookers, Qubit will be found among them. It's a rare moment - the fact that he's here at all means there's nothing else demanding his immediate attention, for probably the first time in weeks. He had time to go make himself a hot sandwich, and when nothing exploded in that interval, he figured he might as well go and eat it somewhere nice.

There's one spot from which a thick congregation of dancing fish can be seen not far from the shore, and that's where Qubit decides to sit, even though there's already someone there. ]

Mind if I join you?

number one!

[hersay]

[ since allison's disastrous near-quarantine in the medbay, she's been deeply, deeply concerned that she's going to get the illness. when mom and pogo were treating her wounds, they said that there was a chance that allison would be able to speak again, but that it was too early to know for sure. allison is holding on desperately to that chance, and she knows that contracting the illness is going to blow it.

so when allison notices a man with a box of what looks like gas masks at dinner, allison practically power-walks over, reaches into the box, and takes one, gratefully. she gives the stranger a little smile and wave before putting it on. ]