seventeenth jump;

[mathematically]

CHARACTERS: any and all
LOCATION: Gravity Couches and beyond
WARNINGS: maybe some swearing, or even some violence, and more than likely some implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Another month, another jump, another round of new faces.
NOTES: Keeping up with the tradition and copy pasted like always from the last one 



You wake up in darkness.

There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're deposited on the floor of a stark, sterile medical bay.

You are not alone.
There are others who have come before you, others who are awakening beside you. Some may be familiar to you, perhaps even friends. Others have much less amiable plans. Some are merely alien and inexplicable, but there are always those who might mean you harm.

After you catch your breath and your vision returns, you notice a number on the inside of your forearm. Maybe it's a familiar number. Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just a number. But the number—completely unique to you—is a tattoo, and it does not come off.

If you enter the room adjacent to the medbay, you will find a small locker with your number on it, surrounded by rows upon rows of identical lockers. Inside, you will find a few of your personal items, a communications device, and a ship's uniform in your exact size. The comms device is fully powered and connects directly to the ship's network; it's your only means of communication beyond physical conversation. Upon turning the device on, a neutral, automated voice will say, "Please take the blue lift to the passenger quarters." Any other attempts at communicating with the rest of the network are met only with static.

This is your welcome party.

Comments

[onsilksheets]

Fourteen months if we're being precise.

[Not something that she was entirely pleased with despite finding happiness with someone. A person that could disappear at any given moment and there would be nothing that Bela could do except hope that they came back. Knowing that your death was imminent back home also dampened a girl's spirits so there was a lot on her mind.]

I could impart some information about it, yes. You probably won't like it though but no sense in keeping you in the dark, is there?

[linguistician]

I like precise.

[It gives her a lot more to work with, for one thing, whether or not she actually appreciates knowing it] Is that normal for people here? Or is fourteen months the longest anyone has been here?

[She's not going to agree, really, because it would be pointless. She doesn't like being displaced at all, and any of the answers for being so? Probably aren't going to sit well with her. But not having them isn't an option]

It would save me the trouble of having to look for it on my own, if you wouldn't mind?

[onsilksheets]

There are a few people who arrived in the first wave, about two months before me. I was in the third and I think it corresponds to the number inscribed on your arm.

[To demonstrate, Bela rolls up her sleeve and shows her: the numbers read 003 179.]

Less waste of your time too. [From what Bela had noted so far, the other woman was efficient and polite. Perhaps it was part of her job ( whatever that may be) back home and she was the kind of person who liked getting as much information as possible. She couldn't blame her as Bela was the same.]

I don't know the exact amount of passengers on board but there's quite a number and they're from different universes, even time periods. Some aren't even human. The only remaining original crew on board is the Captain and his chief engineer but they haven't made an appearance for quite some time. There's passenger rooms, kitchens, recreational facilities, holo rooms, oxygen gardens which provide the air we breathe and so on. On the negative side of tjings, we've had space illness, missing passengers, nightmare fog and monsters known as manticores.

[A pause to let her process that.]

[linguistician]

No one knows for sure?

[But it's probably a fair guess, especially when Uhura doesn't really believe in coincidences. But verification- It's always better. She only does a quick glance at the other woman's arm, and then looks away. Whatever purpose the numbers serve, Uhura doesn't like them.

That may be (is) an understatement.

She's letting that sink in, and trying- She's trying to figure out which point to pick apart first, the captain and the engineer are important- The fact that they're missing, hiding? Is too. The rooms aren't anything special. Most of them are standard for a starship, the rest sound like they're luxury rooms- useless and ones she doesn't think she'll make much use out of, but it's can't hurt to know they're around.

She settles on the last grouping]

Can you elaborate on what you mean by space illness, or nightmare fog? [Manticores- If they're anything like the mythical creature within texts, she's got a pretty good idea how that goes]

[onsilksheets]

There's probably a list of them somewhere. You'd need to ask one of the other passengers.

[She's wracking her brain, trying to remember who had a list of the relevant information but nothing is coming to mind. Probably a mixture of post-jump effects and the fact that Bela doesn't always pay attention to the network. When it came to people making announcements, she mainly stuck to those made by people she was friends with.

The space illness was something that Bela didn't really want to go into too much detail about because it was an unpleasant experience and not a thing she wished to go through again.]

Quite a number of passengers got sick from the stasis fluid we're encased in the pods, myself included. The symptoms were mild at first but then their skin started turning blue, they were in agonising pain and bleeding from just about everywhere. They would have died if a cure wasn't found.

As for the nightmare fog? It made you see things that weren't really there. Horrible things. I won't go into it.

[linguistician]

I will, thank you.

[She feels a little bad for asking, hadn't quite connected that the woman was personally affected by them. It- Didn't make the explanation any more necessary, might she might have asked for a name to take the questions to, or enabled a little more tact]

That's fine, I wouldn't ask you to. I've...Got a pretty good idea of what I'm dealing with now. [Hallucinogens, tech malfunctions or tampering, and strange creatures. Absolutely nothing she wants to be dealing with, and things that make her very glad her phaser came with her. Or probably more accurately, was given to her]

I'm Uhura. [It's an invitation to move way from the harder topics, if she wants to]

[onsilksheets]

My name is Bela.

[An invitation that Bela would happily accept and run with if it meant that she didn't have to talk about the topic they were just discussing.]

A pleasure to meet you, even under the circumstances.

[They wouldn't have met in the first place, if they hadn't been brought to the ship. Now they didn't have a choice in determining when they left and that was something that annoyed the majority of the passengers. Bela's viewpoint had changed when she learned that she was destined to die back home, no matter she did to prevent it. At least here-even in the midst of all the danger-she had a chance at living.]

[linguistician]

You too. I wish they were better.

[She seemed nice enough, and even if Uhura was frustrated by the lack of conclusiveness to some of them questions she had, she wasn't ungrateful for the fact that the woman had answered them at all. Hadn't utterly left her to spend a lot of time looking on her own.

At least with these, she had some place to start. And she was here, in one relative piece, it could- It could all be a lot worse]

[onsilksheets]

[Bela's niceness only stretched so far so it was highly unlikely that she was going to help her anymore. She operated on a favour for a favour and maybe she'd call on one later if this woman proved useful. Still, Bela could be pleasant; she did have manners after all.]

Is this your first time on a spaceship?

[A method of gaining more information about her without being too intrusive or personal with her questions. ]

[linguistician]

No. I'm assigned to one.

[One she found to be superior, and not just because it was the flagship, not just because she was meant to be there and had earned it. There's something about this atmosphere, how imposing the whole thing feels- That she doesn't like]

I'm going to guess though, that this was yours? [She's not an officer, it's apparent in her entire demeanour, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. There were starships purely for travel between the colonies, whether to visit family or to establish one]

[onsilksheets]

Which puts you at a slight advantage.

[She may not know the systems yet or any of the passengers but at least she was used to traveling and working in space; Bela didn't, much to her chagrin. But she had survived this long so that account for something in her eyes.]

You're correct. I'm a twenty first century girl and space travel has only advanced so far; it hasn't been an easy adjustment.