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

[substances]

It goes both ways, too. When his nose starts bleeding, she doesn't mention it, just huffs at him and brings him in the kitchen to get it sorted. Man, back home if he got a nosebleed all anyone ever did was ask him if he was on coke again. Which was stupid, because coke had never been a favourite of his anyway, just sort of an emergency fallback if it was all he could get his hands on.

He takes the towel she hands him and shoves it under his nose, tilting his head back and letting out a little sigh of relief quickly followed by a noise of disgust as the blood starts dripping into the back of his throat.

"Yeah, yeah yeah yeah, sure I will, but you better lie down. You look like shit."

He grins around the towel, eyes bright despite the fever and nosebleed, "Well. Like you feel like shit. Did I mention you're gorgeous yet?"

[redwinekindofgirl]

At this point, she trusts he's not going to fall back into those habits... at least not without telling her, first. She'd like to think that, to believe it, to have him know that she trusts him to come to her if he feels himself slipping... and to know she won't judge him for it.

Her eyebrows go up, and she can't help but grin back at him.

"I do feel like shit. Chest feels like there's a vice around it." Ugh. Ever since the cough started it's been getting worse. The inhaler Ben had helped her find had worked at first, but it's not doing anything for the tightness in her lungs now. It's an effort to make it look as if she's breathing normally, but each inhale holds a subtle wheeze if he listens carefully.

"But no, you didn't mention I'm gorgeous. Tell me more about that."

[substances]

Truth is, at this point he doesn't think he could go there without talking to Julie first. It's nice, to have someone think the best of him and realize that he's actually given her some reason too. It's not just misplaced trust, it's a real genuine thing and Klaus has had so few real genuine things in his life.

"Oh shit." he says, shaking his head, and he gestures toward her bedroom, "You better go lie down, the last thing we need is an asthma attack on top of this bullshit. Come on, move move move, you lie down and I'll uh. Do my best to not make it worse."

A laugh, but he's actually kind of serious, because now that she mentioned it, he can hear the wheezing, the way her breath seems to go through a choke hold somewhere in her chest. It's not healthy and the worry is a little more pressing than the joking. Or his own illness.

"Your puffer doing anything for that?"

[redwinekindofgirl]

"And get you bleeding on the bed?" she asks, then thinks about it, then shrugs. "Eh. Won't be the first time." Alright, then. She snags a loose handful of the front of his shirt and pulls him along after her.

"Been hearing that... voice telling us to go to quarantine. Fuck that. Fucking shitty robot chased me down two levels before I could shake it." And she hadn't shaken it easily. In fact the effort had been what brought on the wheezing in the first place, and she hasn't been able to get rid of it. Julie sits on the edge of the bed and shakes her head.

"Was working at first, but not anymore. It's kinda terrifying to not be able to breathe for hours." There's an attempt to be jovial, but it doesn't stick. "Fuck. Your nose okay?"

[substances]

At that, he snorts, which only succeeds in splattering a big glob of blood into the towel, and he mutters 'gross' just under his breath, before wiping at it with a disgusted face.

"Wow, my face is making all sorts of disgusting fluids right now, why would you...whooaaaah, oof."

He topples into the bed beside her and lies down on his back. The room seems to spin around him. He can feel how hot she is beside him, like a cute little furnace person. It's not cute or funny, but he laughs a little anyway...there's a slight chance he might be delirious, just a little.

"Yeah no, nope, uh-uh, no quarantine for me, thanks. I've been dodging them all day. Man, I wonder if we can find someone who's not sick to go down to the medbay and get like. One of those ones with the steroids. I had one when I got bronchitis a few years ago and whoof, it did the trick."

A pause, because it's super scary to hear she feels like she can't breathe. For hours.

"My nose is fine."

[redwinekindofgirl]

Julie feels cold and hot at the same time, but Klaus is a comfortable and warm presence beside her and she can't think of anyone else she'd rather have here right now. She rests her head against his shoulder, half closing her eyes, and as she concentrates on breathing (never more aware of the actual act of breathing as she is right now) she clears her throat and coughs now and then, trying to catch a deeper lungful of air.

"Good," she says eventually, and she gropes blindly to find a free hand of his to hold on to.

"You know, I'm really glad you're here." And she looks up to him, eyes slightly glassy with the feverishness of whatever fresh hell this virus is, and she manages to summon a smile. "I mean, seriously."

[substances]

Klaus has been like that all day. Sweating and shivering, feeling like he's baking alive, rolling around in a deep fryer, but also icy cold and shaking like a leaf. It's honestly bullshit, his stupid body can't make up its mind, and so he's decided to just ignore it. Honestly that always seems like the best policy lately, just ignore whatever stupid shit his body is getting up to and carry on carrying on. Helps with the drug cravings too.

Julie's wheezing is very very disturbing, though, and he frowns a bit, reaches over and rests his hand on her stomach, just below her ribcage, his expression twisted into one of worry, his eyes soft.

"Julie girl, I'm worried. I'm gonna call Ben and get him to go pick out a puffer for you, they gotta have something at the MedBay."

A pause, just for a moment, and then he tilts his head into the pillow beside her, just looking at her profile, "Julie. I love you."

[redwinekindofgirl]

It's... not the worst. It's that nerve-wracking, panic-inducing feeling of balancing on the edge of an asthma attack and she'd been all too worried about it at first, but when nothing seemed to help she'd just... accepted it as something she was going to have to deal with until it went away.

She's used to it. The scrawny kid who can't catch her breath. Just being calm and comfortable helps more than he might realise and she clasps her hand over his when he touches her stomach. A small cough rattles up when she tries to clear her throat again.

"Yeah, okay." Ben would do that. Probably be just as worried, because he was just like that, wasn't he? Anchor Dad. Julie smiles to herself at the thought, and Klaus' next words wash over her like something soft and warm.

So gentle, those words. Her heart stutters briefly against her ribs. She looks over to him, losing herself for a few seconds in those gorgeous eyes, and she brings up a hand to catch a dark curl between her fingers.

"I know, Klaus. I love you, too."

[substances]

Whether or not she's used to it...well, Klaus doesn't think he'll ever be used to it. He hates the sound of her gasping for breath, her chest wheezing, even the heat coming off her skin, it's really obviously way too much heat, it's obviously not healthy. The moment she says 'yeah, okay' he pulls out his device and types a text to Ben, one-handed, asking if he'll look for one of those puffers for him, explaining he'd do it but they'd quarantine him. A moment later, the answer comes, and he relaxes into the bed again.

"He'll do it. Man, Ben is such an awesome brother. Right? He's the best."

When Julie looks over at him like that, with her eyes so soft and bright and her skin so warm and her cheeks pink and her mouth pink and she touches his face and his hair and she's so damn gentle, he gets a little flush of emotion, both warm and guilty, all at once. Pushing up on one elbow, he looks down at her with a bit of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

"Seriously, though. Like, I don't know if I said it right before, it's just such a...big feeling, you know? Fills you all up and makes you feel light and airy and warm and...wow, you're really pretty. You know that?"

He's not at his most coherent and he has a hard time expressing these kinds of things when he's at his best, so...this is probably completely befuddling.

[redwinekindofgirl]

It normally doesn't last this long. A pull on an inhaler and it eases like a steel band coming off a barrel, but it just isn't doing the trick this time. She watches Klaus send Ben a message and hopes he can manage to get hold of something stronger than what she normally uses. He knows what's going on right now, she reasons, and he's smart. He'll think of something.

Julie smiles faintly up at Klaus and lets her hand drop out of his hair when he moves, resting it on her chest instead. She searches his face silently as he hovers over her, and that tiny stutter turns into a swooping drop of sudden realisation.

"Wait..."

It's different. At least, she thinks it's different because he's talked to her sweetly before but never quite like this. Her shoulder shift and she looks up at him quizzically, an uncertain smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"You mean it, don't you? Like, for real?"