twenty-eighth jump;

[ataraxites]

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: It could just be the standard sensation of air on wet skin, but if you bother to check, you might notice the steam rising from your body, barely there and gone within a minute. By the time you get to the showers, it will be clear that it's not just taking you time to adjust. The room is cold — colder than usual, but no worse than the last jump. While it's nothing dangerous, it's certainly motivation to hurry through the usual routine and get dressed quickly.



It's getting closer.




YOUR EYES ARE OPEN.

KEEP LOOKING.

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

[unforgives]

Yeah, that's right— [emily smiles trying to be reassuring even if her following words don't give too much of an explanation]

It was like that for me when I arrived too. Unfortunately how we arrived here isn't something that those of us brought here know of.

[ensouls]

Is there anything we do know? If not how we were brought here, then by who? Or why?

[ wanda is trying not to become too distressed, but this body reacts to stress differently from melanie's, and already she's beginning to "freak out", as melanie would have put it. she's not even meant to be alive, and now she's been kidnapped onto some strange ship with no friends or explanation as to how she's here. in melanie's body this information would have just focused her, motivated her to move and investigate, but in pet's body the fear feels overwhelming. ]

[unforgives]

[emily shakes her her at that] We only have theories to go on and most people typically assume the ship itself is sentient and it was what brought us here.

I'm sorry— I know my lack of answers isn't exactly helpful but we're all in the same situation here, trying to figure this all out. [she quickly adds that on mostly from noticing that the younger girl looks a bit worried, not that she could exactly blame her for that]

[ensouls]

The ship is sentient? That's... I've never even heard of that, I didn't even know that was possible...

[ wanda tries to remember as much as she can about being a spider -- their brains could work so much better and faster than human brains could, and even when she had been a spider she hadn't know that sentient machines were a possibility. they could come up with most of the rest of this ship, but a sentient machine? in thousands of years, that had never been done. ]

No, that's alright, I understand that you're doing your best. It's a lot to take in, that's all.

[ she summons up a smile, but wanda is no better at nonverbal lies than she is with verbal ones, and it's obviously forced. her hands have begun to shake a little, and she clasps them tightly together. ]

What happens next, what do we do now?

[unforgives]

I didn't either but that's what most people seem to think it is, anyway.

[she nods at first] I can understand that, it just takes some getting used to as well.

As for where we go next— well there are showers just nearby to get cleaned up and you'll want to find your locker too. It corresponds with the tattoo on your arm— but inside that you might find some of your belonging.

[ensouls]

[ wanda nods along, but at the mention of the tattoo on her arm her eyes brighten. she looks at it in confusion and, if she's honest, annoyance. ]

So this is a tattoo? I was tattooed without even being asked for permission? That's very rude.

[unforgives]

Yeah, definitely rude— [she frowns for a moment, not looking pleased by that fact either] we all get a something similar when arriving though since it acts as a key to our lockers and our rooms here.

[ensouls]

A tattoo... Acts as a key? I've never heard of that before. [ wanda pokes at her tattoo, but it seems fairly normal. just like any other tattoo -- at least, she would imagine so, souls don't usually have any interest in tattoos. she's seen some whose hosts had tattoos, but not many. and she can't imagine a soul wanting a tattoo that their host didn't already come with. ] How can a tattoo be a key? It's just ink inside of scar tissue, isn't it?

[unforgives]

It's supposed to be but from the explanation I've heard, the ink of it is made up for nanites which have a type of technology that make it work like that. Kind of like a barcode? It reads the number and it confirms access if that makes sense.