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

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.

[itsnotaonesie]

[Peter has literally never dropped work so fast in his life as he's dropping it right now mmmbuddy]

Sure, where are you right now? Are you at home?

[He's typing all calm but he's panicking SO HARD god she probably just needs something off a high shelf Peter wtf]

[writtendestiny]

Yes.

[Currently in the bathroom, leaning over the sink, with blood dripping down towards the drain. Typing is difficult when you can't quite manage to put your phone in front of your face without getting blood on it, or your forearms.]

[itsnotaonesie]

I'm on my way.

[It takes him less than ten minutes to get from wherever he was crawling around to the room, and he pretty much has to stop himself from kicking the front door in. Door kicking is not necessary.]

Poison! I'm back, where'd--

[Oh, she's just in the bathroom. Oooh she's just in the bathroom bleeding all over the goddamn place. The color is pretty much drained form his face by the time he reaches her, gripping her shoulder gently and trying to see if maybe she'd hurt herself? Fallen face first into something? Jesus shit man.]

[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.]

[itsnotaonesie]

[Oh good, the less space plague going around, the better.

Peter keeps himself so goddamn busy all the time that it's been a while since he's checked in on Kieran at all, or much of anyone really. He'll feel like a shitty friend for that later, right now he was a little more concerned about Why Kieran's all up in here with his fucking eyeballs bandaged. He finishes with whatever he'd been doing and makes his way over to Cowbuddy's bedside.]

Kieran? Hey man, something happen to you?

[sleepyhollowed]

[...That's one hell of a loaded question, Peter, buddy.]

[Kieran isn't sure how to answer that. Partly because 'I had my eyes gouged out and then someone tried to heal them but messed up halfway through' is tough to say, but also because that's not even the most fucked-up thing that happened during that whole ordeal.]

[Instinctively, Kieran turns his head to face wherever the sound of Peter's voice is coming from.]

I-I, uh...

[He clears his throat.]

...it's a long story. Sh-Short version is, uh, I'm blind now! That's--That's somethin', I guess!

[itsnotaonesie]

[Well it's a good thing Kieran can't see Peter right now because he just looks absolutely devastated. Also very confused, because goddamn. He places a hand gently on Kieran's shoulder.]

What the Hell!? What do you mean you're-- Oh my God, were you attacked?

[He doesn't hope that's the case, but if this is another complication from the space plague that would be super bad.]

[kaballin]

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

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

[itsnotaonesie]

did you miss that we're kind of in the middle of a giant medical crisis right now??? just wondering

[kaballin]

Middle of a what now?

The fuck does that have to do with the bar?

[itsnotaonesie]

MEDICAL

CRISIS

KABAL

HOW HAVE YOU NOT NOTICED
PEOPLE ARE SICK
LIKE CRAZY SICK
HALF THE GODDAMN STATION IS ON LOCKDOWN

[he takes a moment to stop caps locking at Kabal and juuuust chill the fuck out.]

a lot of the robots have left their posts to take people to the medbay, the bar bot must have too.

[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. ]

[itsnotaonesie]

[Peter looks up from whatever it is that he's fiddling with. He doesn't know who this dude is, but he's definitely seen him around. Dude's got some nuts hair, it's kind of hard to miss.]

O-oh, uh... [He does an awkward little spin in place, looking for his trash can,] Y-yeah, uh, trash is here, it's pretty full. Um, I...

[he pauses and crosses his arms, looking up at the ceiling for a moment while he tries to remember just when exactly he'd eaten last. That is a very good question, my dude.]

Dinner. Um, not last night. The night before. That... probably explains why I've had a headache all day, huh.

[braidmage]

[ The fact that this guy needs to think for that long - not just that he's gone a long time without food but that he's totally lost track of it - tells Reynir everything he needs to know. He smiles, unslinging his backpack and undoing the fastening at the top, rooting through it to find the tuppers of food. With a hint of dry sarcasm he answers: ]

I imagine it's a contributing factor.

[ He sets a glass container with a lid, full of something that looks like a very hearty stew, down onto the desk. A moment later, a metal spoon follows. Then, a hunk of bread wrapped in a cloth napkin. Then a plastic bottle of water - if circumstances were different Reynir might share from his own flask, but with illness going around? No way is he taking that risk. ]

I don't suppose you've gotten any sleep between now and then, either?

[ That's not something Reynir can shove into his bag, but he thinks it is a shrewd guess nonetheless. Leaving his bag on the ground, he goes to the trash and says: ]

I'll be back in a moment.

[ Then he picks up the trash and carries it out to deposit in the big, wheeled bin he's been dragging around. The robots must have more efficient ways, but this works for him. He can take it to the agricultural section later, sort out what can be used for fertilizer, what reused, and what should be burned.

He returns and, impulsively, just plonks himself down on the floor, resting his back against the wall and hauling his bag the last foot over towards him, reaching in and pulling out some bread for himself. ]

I could use a break, too.

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?

text; @Spides

[itsnotaonesie]

I don't know a lot about the disease itself other than some of the symptoms. I don't have any medical training, I'm sorry.

As for the station, it seems like some sort of quarantine protocol has been initiated. Most of the robots have abandoned their posts and seem to be hell bent on escorting people to the medbay.

[hersay]

Quarantine mode sounds right. They won't let anyone out of the medbay, either.

[ speaking from experience. ]

You've never gotten the disease, have you?

[ after being mistakenly locked in the medbay, allison is trying to gauge whether or not she'll get sick too. ]

@kyouken

[justbeingknife]

Is this normal

[ hi peter ]

@Spides

[itsnotaonesie]

No, this isn't normal
like people were getting sick about a month ago but I thought everyone as starting to get better
aaand now it seems like it's just getting worse?
The lock down thing is new

[justbeingknife]

Great.

Without those robots around, things're falling apart even faster.

[ He had a half-ruined suit that said as much. But it made sense, right? Big station, lots of maintenance. Not enough people to do it. ]

But you're fine so far?

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.

OFC

[itsnotaonesie]

[uuUUUGH QUBIT can't it wait a minute???

Is what Peter wants to say, because he is busy, but he's also a people pleaser and a good good helper boy, so instead he says:]

Sure, be there in five minutes.

[And sure enough, Peter arrives about five minutes later, lookin for you Qubit.]

[superposition]

[ Qubit's also keeping an eye out for Peter, and waves him down when he spots him. He's almost in Section C by now, on the trail of a maintenance bot emitting a flashing yellow light from its head, like all its fellows that have gone into quarantine mode. Although the quarantine-related dialogue it spouts every few seconds is also a pretty good indicator of that. ]

Peter, over here!