redshiftlogs | november 2019. welcome to the void.

november 2019. welcome to the void.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.]

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.]

[She doesn't reply to his assurance that he's coming. When he opens the door he'll be greeted by one worried cat and one worried part-cat, who linger around his legs while he goes to the bathroom.]

I'm fine. I think.

[Says the girl slowly dripping blood from her nose. It's harder to admit she needs some help when he's standing right there.]

I sneezed, and now it won't stop.

[His own glow-cat is sitting on top of the fridge and screaming helpfully WHY IS MOMMY LEAKING RAAAAAAOOOWWWWW. Ooooh cats.

Peter stops panicking on the inside quite so much when she says she'd just sneezed, but that's still an alarming amount of blood.]

Okay, um. Try pinching your nose, I'm gonna take you to the medbay. How- how long ago did this start?

[He's going to just grab a roll of toilet paper and uhhh kind of awkwardly start trying to clean her up a little?? Goddd he isn't sure what to do.]

[Cats are the most helpful creatures, truly.

And Poison, who has never bled this much at once from her nose in her life, is managing to not show quite how much she's panicking because one of them needs to be able to keep calm.]

Oh... about twenty minutes.

[She's sure that twenty minutes is far too long to be continually bleeding from your nose.]

I'm starting to feel light-headed.

[He refrains form saying something like THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE BLEEDING OUT OH MY GOD]

Okay. Okay, I'm gonna pick you up, and I'm gonna take you to the medbay, okay?

[He gives her a second to prepare for said up picking, super careful not to jar her around too much when he lifts her into his arms.] Make sure you pinch your nose off, that should help stop the bleeding.

My legs aren't broken, Peter. [She points out, but she's already very aware that lifting her up is going to be the equivalent of picking up a feather for him and she - for once - just does as she's told.

Maybe it's something to do with the way the room is spinning, but she doesn't have it in her to be contrary just now.]

Oh, I hope I don't die. [Poison mutters dizzily, pinching her nose.] ... It's always so inconvenient...

[he knows she's died before but goddamn that doesn't make hearing her say things like this any easier.] You're not gonna die, okay? It's just a nose bleed, we can stop it and-- and you're gonna be fine. You're gonna be okay, babe.

[He takes her out of the room, heading towards the medbay. He decides to take the stairs like a normal goddamn human being since doing his usual jumping from level to level and web swinging probably wouldn't be great for her right now.]

[Pinching her nose isn't quite enough, especially when she starts to lose the feeling in the tips of her fingers, and by the time they make it close to the med bay there are more than a few drops of blood down the front of her sweater.

She leans her head against his shoulder, musing distantly on how long it's been since she actually did die. Surviving a robot invasion only to be killed by a nosebleed. Kind of funny.]

Is it far? [Poison asks, though the words seem to blur together.] I don't... feel very good.

[Peter holds her close, pressing what he hopes is a reassuring kiss to the top of her head.]

It's not far. It's not far, we're almost there. [Once he's done navigating the stairs he breaks into a deadass sprint the rest of the way to the medbay, practically kicking the door in once he gets there. He quickly finds her a bed, setting her upright on it before making his way to a nearby computer console so he can maybe look up what the FUCK he should be doing about this.]

Okay... [She mutters quietly, and her head lolls in towards her chest when he breaks into a run.

It's only by sheer force of will that she keeps herself sitting up when he puts her down, though it doesn't last long. The side of her head hits the thin pillow before she's even aware of falling.

However, still conscious, she manages a faintly surprised-sounding 'oh'.]

[oooOOOOH GOD okay, Peter's figured out how to deal with this. Probably. She's flopped over onto the bed, so he doesn't panic too much and takes a second to focuses on gathering the supplies he's going to need. Once he has everything, he rushes over to her, laying the stuff he's gathered out on the bed.]

Oh my God, okay, uh, I'm gonna be sticking things up your nose and it's gonna be weird and it's probably gonna hurt and I'm sorry. [While he's doing his terrified little ramble he repositions Poison a bit and grabs a clean cloth to clean her up. He does the best he can with that, and then starts grabbing tools to very gently take a look up her nose. Mostly in an effort to keep himself calm, he starts talking himself through the steps that he'd read up on, spraying a local anesthetic into her nose and hoping it's really fast acting because UHHHH she's still bleeding so there's not exactly a lot of time to let it numb her up.]

Okay, okay. I'm gonna have to hold your head real still, I'm so sorry if I'm too rough, I just-- I cant have you moving around right now. [And grip her head he does, gently but firmly, while he suuuper carefully uses the equipment he'd grabbed to cauterize the tiny nose wound. Mannn he isn't even sure if she's awake right now but he is apologizing so much.]

[She very much wants to tell him not to bother with any of this, because she's going to be fine and it's not as if she's never had a nosebleed before... but she's never had a nosebleed last for this long before, and she's beginning to think that the light-headedness isn't entirely to do with the blood she's lost.

Vaguely aware of being held still, she's very much awake while he tries to help her. It does occur to her to, perhaps, point out that she doesn't think he's qualified to have that thing in his hand let alone to use it.

Not given much of an option, however.

The first thing she does, once he lets go, is sneeze. She goes very still in the aftermath, but doesn't start bleeding again.]

Ugh... [Her brow furrows.] My nose feels funny.

[Peter isn't qualified to do any of the shit that he does around here, to be fair. He just kinda jumps in and does shit, especially when it comes down to either doing something useful or straight up panicking.

He freezes on the spot when she sneezes, just staring, waiting to see if she was going to start bleeding again. When she doesn't, he finally relaxes, moving all the equipment off her bed and taking a seat next to her.]

Yeah, uh, I put something up there to numb it. It might feel weird for a few hours. Looks like the bleeding's stopped, though...

[He reaches up to gently tilt her head back, just staring up her nose, don't mind him.]

[She rubs her nose delicately with the back of her hand and tries to blink the spots away from her eyes. It doesn't work, and she presses her hands to her face instead.]

I don't like this. [Poison mutters. Almost everything that happens to her in these places, one way or another, comes back to something that happened in the Box and she finds herself internally cringing away from yet another set of memories that she thought she'd buried.]

What if it starts getting worse.

[With the immediate crisis over, Peter's starting to come down from the adrenaline rush. Now he's less in a 'trying not to panic' mode and more in a 'keep it together don't you dare cry on this POOR SICK GIRL' mode, which he can't decide if that's an improvement or not but he'll take it.]

This sounds like the same crud that I had. Y'know, when I spent that week alternating between sleeping and whining. You'll get better, we just gotta stay on top of it.

[Godddd he hopes he's right about that.

He shifts on the bed, moving to where he can wrap his arms around her. It's not too tight, but it's secure, like he's trying to reassure both of them that everything is going to be okay.]

I remember.

[The sleeping had actually been the worst part of it, because at least when he was awake and complaining she could work out if he was getting any worse. It occurs to her that she doesn't want him to get sick again by being close to her like this... but also that she's never going to be able to persuade him to just leave her here.

So, she shifts up against his side and stops trying to keep her eyes open.]

I haven't been ill since... hmn. Since the Box. ... A lot of people died.

Sorry about that, by the way.

[He's the biggest baby when he's sick. Really, Poison is being such a trooper right now, what a badass. It's just too bad she's saying stuff like that right now, because Peter is absolutely terrified of that exact thing happening.]

The Box didn't have medical facilities like this, though. Right? We'll figure out a way to beat this.

[God he hopes he's not totally full of shit right now.]

Mm... no. They had a morgue, and we had some doctors, but no good equipment.

[She hadn't quite understood the severity of it when she'd arrived, given that she came from somewhere where the idea of 'medical equipment' would be entirely foreign (did they even have those words? She can barely remember anymore).

Even in the more densely populated places, like Shieldtown and beyond, medicine was still something that could just as quickly kill someone as cure them.]

But it didn't matter to them if we died. That was what they wanted. I haven't worked out what Anchor wants yet.

[He reaches up to absently stroke her hair, holding her close, hoping he's at least being somewhat comforting.]

Neither have I. There's just so much weird stuff that happens, it's hard to piece together what everything means.

What if it doesn't mean anything.

[But it has to mean something, because for all she's been through there was always a reason behind it even if she hated the reason she was given. For the the Box, it was the end of the world. For Hadriel, the survival of a species no matter the cost.

Poison shifts, looking up at Peter tiredly for a moment before she presses her forehead into his shoulder.]

What do you think we're here for?

It's possible that we weren't specifically brought here for a reason, and if that's the case, I plan on making my own.

[He continues playing with her hair, but now he's staring off at some random point in the room like he's distracted. He might be a little bit, he's putting his thoughts in order.]

Personally, I wanna find out what happened to everyone that used to be here. I wanna find a way to prevent it from happening again, to us or whoever might come after us.

[She nods slightly. A reasonable goal. One she wants to follow him on, if she's being honest (and not moping).]

... Do you remember that creature we saw outside, when we were fixing something on the roof? Did we ever see more of those..?

[If Peter's being honest, he's half doing all of it to keep from moping himself. Distractions from dealing with personal issues for the win!]

Those were the... what were they, big worm things? Bugs? I haven't seen any more, but then I haven't really gone outside much since then.

Mm, those.

[She could fall asleep like this. Her head hurts, but not too badly as long as she doesn't move too much.]

I just wonder why we haven't seen any more of them... even on the video feeds.

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