forty-second 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: There's a strange sense of contentment that greets you as you wake from the jump. Deep and certain, it doesn't warm you or cloak the unpleasantness of the stasis fluid on your skin and the disorientation spinning in your head. It feels disconcertingly distant, instead, a sense as though an answer has been decided on - and that you won't much like to experience it coming to fruition...

New arrivals will find messages spraypainted across their lockers telling them not to follow their tattoo numbers, and instead to find a room on Floors 001-010.


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ＹＯＵ͘ ̨ＷＡＫＥ̢ ̧ＵＰ ́ＩＮ ＤＡ̛ＲＫＮ̢Ｅ̕ＳＳ̶

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.

ＹＯ́Ｕ̴ ̧Ａ̨ＲＥ ＮＯＴ҉ ̷ＡＬＯ̨ＮＥ҉

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.

ＴＨ̀ＩＳ͜ ̶Ｉ͠Ｓ͡ ͘Ｙ̵Ｏ͝ＵＲ ̕Ｗ͝Ｅ̛Ｌ̨Ｃ͡Ｏ͝Ｍ͏Ｅ Ｐ̛ＡＲ̴ＴＹ͜

Comments

[lafautedevoltaire]

He's Death. Just... not for here. Some people call him Bill.

[No he does not know why]

[muscovy]

The world that I came from has a big black dog that was Death. It adopted John. I'm not sure how, though. I think he had to die for it.

[Very factual, this is a perfectly normal conversation, after all.]

[lafautedevoltaire]

I guess you'd have to, for that, right?

[It makes sense to him]

He has a wife whose Death too. She makes good cookies.

[muscovy]

And you at them?

[Eating cookies that were made by a Death sounds pretty dangerous. ...JOhn still worked around after being adopted too. He's studying the other boy a bit more closely now.]

[lafautedevoltaire]

Of course. They don't actually kill people.

[muscovy]

How do you know?

And just because they don't mean to kill people doesn't mean that what they eat will be good for people who live.

[He doesn't know England's or Finland's cooking yet, but those would be points in question.]

[lafautedevoltaire]

She uses food she finds here.

Besides, I've kept right on growing after eating them.

[muscovy]

Do you think their food makes one grow?

[He'd be tempted to try it if it makes him bigger and stronger.]

[lafautedevoltaire]

Hard to be sure. I'd never had as much to eat in my entire life as I can have here.

[It's amazing and part of the reason he's one of the rare people who prefers the creepy murder ship]

[muscovy]

Then it isn't that the food is special but that you're eating like you're rich.

[That really sounds intriguing. Sure, he hasn't known starvation since he came to the Drabwurld - first Maglor kept him well-fed (and that was a new and very nice feeling, to be able to trust that someone else would make sure of and succeed in him having enough to eat) and then he could always go to the castle or find the restaurant owner at the Station who had taken a liking to him and would give him a meal for running small errands (so after Maglor left, he had to worry about food but there were still options with doable consequences if he should run out of means to feed himself properly). So hearing from the other boy that he can get a lot of food here...]

Who distributes the food?

[lafautedevoltaire]

The Support department moves food from the gardens to the kitchens. But only on the first ten decks. THe rest just has things in cans.

[He shrugs]

And even that's better than what I had in Paris.

[muscovy]

What do they take for it? [He still has some trading material on himself - knitwork, herbs, a few copper coins - and food for a few days, but if it isn't free the price will determine how quickly he will need to find a way to earn or otherwise make money or whatever is traded here.]

[lafautedevoltaire]

Nothing. It all grows on board. Most people try to find something they can help with, to keep the ship running. I work down in the shuttlebay so we'll be able to leave in a hurry if we have to.

[It's important work. Every department is.]

1/2

[muscovy]

[That sounds really nice. He's pretty sure that there is a catch, there always is outside of feasts (and even there there is usually some kind of catch). But unlimited food for free still sounds nice, and if it's even good...]

2/2

[muscovy]

Why would we have to leave in a hurry?

[That's a prospect that he likes a lot less. Because it implies a lot of unpredictable (or predictable) danger.]

Re: 2/2

[lafautedevoltaire]

It can be dangerous here. It's... getting more dangerous, I think. The monsters might not just go away next time.

[muscovy]

And there aren't enough people here to kill all the monsters?

[lafautedevoltaire]

Pardi, the ship is massive. It seemed there was no end to them until they retreated.

[muscovy]

[Nodnod]

And you cannot use fire to burn down those parts because it is a ship.

[It's really troublesome.]

Do they let children work, too?

[lafautedevoltaire]

Exactly.

[Ships were a new experience for him, but he'd learned quickly. You had to do that on the streets, after all.]

Most of the departments let us work. I help with repairs in the shuttle bay. M'sieur Wash says I can start learning to fly them soon, even.

[muscovy]

[He's never been on a ship bigger than those that Sweden used to carry across his lands, but he knows enough about them to well, know certain things anyway. And he understands fires and towns falling to the flames, so...]

What do the other departments do?

[lafautedevoltaire]

Agriculture grows all the food down in the gardens, Engineering keeps the whole ship running, Security protects us on board, Gunnery uses the ship's weapons, COmmunications runs all the computers, Medical takes care of everyone, Xenogen looks at plants and animals, Physical Science looks after any other science people want to investigate and Support helps out with a bit of everything.

[Urchins are well knowns sources of exposition.]

[muscovy]

Do the healers use magic?

[He could join that one, he has learned quite a lot about healing over the last year, but... well, he's not a healer in the magical sense, or at least nowhere near what others can do. But if they can use someone who knows about bandaging and herbs and such...]

[lafautedevoltaire]

Some of them do, but some are doctors. Some even know how to use all the marvelous machines.

[That's more impressive to him than magic, some days. The things they have on this ship.]

[muscovy]

[Nodnod.]

My lord father and I liked to watch the things in the Tee-Vee.

[There were many other machines at the Station, but the Tee-vee really was the most curious of them to him, even though it wasn't all that different from the lockets.]