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CHARACTERS: EVERYONE
LOCATION: MED BAY
WARNINGS: ... Partial nudity? It should be pretty tame, but let me know if I need to add anything.
SUMMARY: Side-effects of a jump may include disorientation and temporary memory loss. Fortunately, there are a handful of others who have been through this before.
NOTES: Yes, it's a rehashing of the game premise. Don't worry, you can personalize your own (re-)introduction!

You wake up, alone in the dark.

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.

Don't worry, 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. They will help you through your disorientation, even though they might suffer from it too.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I think I missed." Or did he? It was really hard to tell, because everything was so shiny, and maybe that was his memory loss? Maybe he'd really been a rocket scientist and he lost all those memories. That was a shame, but fortunately, not his problem for now.

"Is this the right time for you? Have you lived here all your life?"

"There is no right time for me. But no, I haven't." The boy appeared to be faring better than he'd initially thought. Level-headed. Asking questions, and not terribly stupid ones either. "Woke up just like you did, not too long ago. This is my second time."

Second time? Maybe that was his fifth time? Or seventh? Or- okay, being a forgetful smart person was taking a lot of work, so he'd just go ahead and pretend he was a fully-remembered normal person. Until he actually remembered he was secretly a mad scientist genius prodigy thing. Yeah, he had all the makings for genius inside him.

"That really sucks." He didn't really feel like flipping over, but he patted his hand comfortingly. "Hopefully you won't have to do this a third time."

"Well -- not just like you did." The Doctor lowered himself all the way down to the floor, lying on his front to look the boy in the face. "For instance, I didn't spend altogether this long on the floor. Are you feeling alright?"

"I think I'm fine, but it's hard to tell! But it's just fun to look at the world upside down, until the blood rushes to your head and stuff." The blood was rushing to his head and stuff, admittedly a few comments back, but he did eventually flip over and sit up.

"It looked better upside down," he said thoughtfully.

The Doctor rose with him, coming to stand by the end of it, leaning against the empty tube next to him.

"Most things do," he reassured, giving another pat on the shoulder. "But what should I call you, if not Jodie? Apart from making conversation easier, it's always a good sign if a person knows their own name. In my experience."

"I'm John," he said, "and if you told me your name, I forgot it." It sounded like him. He thought he had a good grasp on who this John Egbert person was, but he was getting all these Twilight Zone sensations. Maybe he really was in Contact, except this was the part where Jodie Foster met the aliens, and he wouldn't remember anything and just drop back with only static as evidence.

"Didn't, so no worries about your short-term memory. I'm the Doctor." He gave a little wave. "Not the ship's Doctor. Lord, I'm going to be explaining that a lot, aren't I..."

"Yeah, that'd really suck..." Some people had strange names, like if some poor unfortunate soul out there had been named Zoosmell Pooplord. That would have been certainly unfortunate.

"But I guess if anyone got hurt, we'd need to find someone who knows about band-aids." There could be some serious injuries, like falling out of a tubething on your face!

"Oh, there's plenty of them. You don't need one, do you?" He leaned down, trying to get another good look at John's face.

"I hope not. But if I get one, I hope it's a really cool one, and not with harlequins!" Other than being a little smudged and bruised, John seemed to be okay. Not that he would know, since he was frantically patting his face in case he had a gaping wound. Without any blood on his hands, though, he was fairly content. On the other hand, at his own mention of harlequins, he seemed a little emotionally shocked.

"I guess we should do things now," he said thoughtfully, still staring down at his hands in case he dropped blood everywhere. "Do they have places we can go, or is it just a lot of tubeythings?"

The Doctor claps his hands. "Plenty more than tubey things! Check out your arm. There's a number there. Nanotech tattoo. Does a whole lot of nifty things, but most importantly right now that's your locker assignment. If you can walk, we can go and find it."

He held out his own arm, showing off the 001 » 018 there, to prove he had one as well.

In a monkey say monkey do sort of way, John instinctively puts out his own arm to check. The 002 » 001 (his Ghostbusters telephone number) looked up at him with all its nanotech nanology, and John thought it was telling him something. The number had a lot of significance to him.

"I think it's trying to tell me I'm 21," he said somberly. But since that did not seem very plausible, he started to wander towards the lockers instead. Util a thought hit him, anyway.

"Does this also make food for you?" Nanotech nanology sure had improved since he was last awake and/or alive!

"Got microwaves for that." The Doctor paused at his own locker, and opened it with a scan of his tattoo. Inside: his clothes, his psychic paper, his sonic screwdriver. Just like last time. Along with one of those jumpsuits, which he did not toss over his shoulder this time, but merely left inside.

"See? Scan the tattoo, it opens your locker. Works the same way with the doors on the ship. Well, most of them."

"Wow. This is a really serious power." And John was going to use it to open and close the doors all the time. Waste of electricity? Pshaw, they should have thought of that before they gave nanonology to thirteen-year-old boys. He wandered to scan his own locker, which had the jumpsuit he put on, and a single wallet.

He opened the wallet slightly to peek inside, and then sighed with relief.

"Hi, Casey," he told the wallet, and then slipped the wallet into his suit. "You have weird stuff! But those seem really handy."

"Handy and cool," the Doctor amended, bobbling his bow tie. "Not everybody gets their original clothes. I got lucky."

Even he had to admit that was very cool! Though he suspected, by the way the man said cool, that it wasn't very cool at all. But it was still cool to get the original clothes back.

"But why do you have a screwdriver?" That seemed very curious. Then again, maybe this man was Mario. He shouldn't be mean to Mario.

"Why d'you have a wallet?" He tosses the sonic end-over-end and catches it again before pocketing it. "Because it's useful."

"I... guess? Are you a plumber?" It would be unfortunate to be a child named Doctor who grew up to be a plumber, or a child named Plumber to grow up and become a doctor.

He shook his head 'no.' "Told you, I'm the Doctor. Try to keep up." He tossed the comment off before continuing: "By the way, there's a comm device that would've been left in your locker. Connect you to the rest of the ship, everybody on it."

"But you're the Doctor, not the ship's doc..." No, too easily distracted by the shiny things, he was turning around the comm device in his hands excitedly. It was so shiny.

"Can I try to contact you here?" Too late, he was already trying to ping the Doctor, even if they were standing not even a feet away.

Why yes, John. Yes you could. The Doctor's device went off; he picked it up on an audio channel and spoke into it.

"John, come in Johnny-boy. Can you read me?"

"Loud and clear. Whiskey tango foxtrot." He did giggle a bit to the side, but resumed his very serious face.

"Doctor, Doctor, we have a situation over here. What's your twenty?"

"Standing three feet away from you." He pointed at John, extending his arm all the way out. It didn't quite reach to the boy. "Got you in my sights. Can be there in a flash."

"10-4, Med Bay." John took the comm away from his mouth for a second to mouth, that's your code name. He then resumed to busy himself over the comm like a squirrel over a newfound nut.

"Be on standby. Remember, we are on a super duper galuper secret mission. Enemies can attack at any moment! And they'll probably be samurai, ninjas, and helicopters."