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

[moonstruck]

[Well this just gets better and better.]

You almost make this-- ship sound sentient?

[dino_zarf]

Most any spaceship's got some sort of personality, but this one goes well beyond. And then there's the text that seems to pop up of its own accord. Not generally saying pleasant things.

[moonstruck]

And this "text" belongs to the ship? Or someone else?

[dino_zarf]

[Wash rubs his temples. That's... another one of those questions]

Hard to be rightly sure. Some sort of ship's computer's our best guess right now. Not like anything I've ever seen before though.

[moonstruck]

[Yuri is undoubtedly full of these questions.]

Then... you mean an AI of sorts. I take it, just by looking around, that sort of technology is not terribly far-fetched here.

[dino_zarf]

Might be. Way beyond anything I've ever seen if that's the case. Then again, so it just about everything on board. LIke the jump drive.

[moonstruck]

Jump drive?

[A pause.]

Forgive me if I'm asking far too many questions for your liking. I imagine you might hear them often.

[dino_zarf]

It's fine. My wife's always saying I could talk a person's ear off, especially about spaceships.

[Though really, when it came to spaceships he had nothing on Kaylee]

Everyone has to learn this stuff eventually.