ataraxionlogs | (no subject)

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

There is a brief pause as Wheatley fights off some residual dizziness, leaning heavily against the side of a tank, but after a moment or two he straightens and blinks the confusion away--or tries to. Things are still a bit fuzzy.

What he does recognize is that this is a voice he hasn't heard before. Someone already on board he hasn't met yet, or a new person entirely?

When Holmes asks for the time, he's inclined to believe the latter, and makes an attempt to bring up his displays before remembering that right, he is still human, and humans don't have internal clocks. Frustrating.

He takes a few stilted, awkward steps as if making sure his legs are functional. "Not a clue, mate. Don't think anyone actually knows. It's not like there are days on a spaceship."

Yep. Welcome to space.

Edited 2012-01-15 19:43 (UTC)

The world's still slanting at dangerous angles for Holmes. He hasn't dared to take a step, and he's still plastered to the grav bed for dear life, clearing his throat and furrowing his brows in Wheatley's direction thoughtfully as if, yes, he spends most of his days clinging to unfamiliar equipment and covered in a strange space goo whilst standing around naked.

That is, until he has to deal with the matter of the very sizable word 'spaceship'.

Because the strange room, granted. Naked people, yes. Unfamiliar liquid drenching his body, noted. Equipment he doesn't recognize nor can even begin to name, within eye sight. All of this is obvious and more, and yet when words like 'spaceship' are brought up with someone who doesn't even know that the goddamn Earth goes around the sun, well. Holmes opens and shuts his mouth. Whatever remains. No, what is he talking about? A boat amongst the stars? But it makes sense. But it's impossible. But it makes the most sense.

"Hm!" is all Holmes can say aloud for a moment, a distressed hum as he scrubs his fingers across an eyebrow, only really spreading fluid across his face, and it drips down awkwardly past his lashes. "Then this - " No, he can't bring up the spaceship yet. He can feel his eyes rolling. "You know this place. How long?"

He only makes it a few paces before another wave of dizziness hits him, forcing him over with his hands on his knees. "Um..."

When the nausea subsides, he turns the motion into an attempt to wring some of the goop out of his hair, the excess fluid splattering onto the floor. "A month? Possibly? I don't--It's hard to keep track."

But this is a new person (oh, god, this ship is spitting out more people), and Wheatley vaguely realizes he's not being terribly informative. "Sort of...woke up here, just like this. Can't really keep accurate time anymore, but I think it's been about that long."

He would look sympathetic, but it was looking pretty inevitable. Wheatley was just about as worse for wear here as Holmes was, and walking was never going to end well. He was just working on the eyes open thing now. "And there you have why I'm not charging full steam ahead. At least as of just yet. Slow and steady!"

And never letting go of this grav bed, it is his only friend.

It's hard to keep track. No time in space, or so says the man in front of him. It's not like Holmes can really judge him, not when he has trouble telling where June begins and anything else ends anymore. It was 1891 and that's all he has, but this doesn't look like Switzerland and it certainly doesn't look like 1891.

Luckily, Holmes doesn't expect too, too much of an answer from any of the people here, to be frank. It's unlikely that those in the same state of disarray and undress as him are going to have much more of an idea of what the situation entails than he does. Though it does seem that some have been here longer than others. Varying times, and this man has been here for a month. He wonders how much longer for various others.

"Do you make a habit of... being suspended in liquid, inside of a steel coffin? This is my first time. You'll forgive me, of course."

Offering Sherlock a somewhat incredulous look, he makes to wipe his hands off on something, but with no available clothing, the nearby wall would have to do. Eugh.

"Uh, no, I don't. Is that--is that common, or something? Among humans? Because I haven't heard of it. It's happened to me exactly twice. Once when I woke up here, and--and again, just now. So twice. I don't know if that constitutes a habit."

He sort of hopes not, because this is kind of gross.

"I'm not entirely sure what these tanks do, or why they think its necessary to drown us in liquid. Still a bit lost on that. But, um. There might be a number on you? Somewhere?" Having regained his balance, he thrusts forward his left forearm, showing off the three-letter six-digit combination tattooed there. "You've probably got some things in the locker that matches your number."

"Perhaps it is." At least not in his day and age, but then none of this equipment has a distinctly Victorian look about it, does it? The comment was made in jest, of course, but everything is different here. For all he knows, it could be a hobby of those within. "Not my habit. Though I've never inquired into the matter. Twice is the beginnings of one. You should keep sharp."

A tank. Like a specimen. Holmes straightens then, raising a hand to test the weight of the grav bed, and he sniffs at the liquid that's on his hand, taste tests it and flicks the rest to the floor in a rather unladylike fashion. "Perhaps to keep the body hydrated, though the technology well beyond my understanding." Which is annoying to admit, but as it remains. "You said you'd done so twice - have you any concept for how long either time?"

Oh, wait. Number? He checks his own left arm as well. Zero. Twenty-three. "Excellent. Somewhere else to start."

The thought of having to do the whole grav-couch thing on a regular basis is almost as nauseating as the grav-couch thing itself. He watches Sherlock give the fluid a taste-test and grimaces.

"Your guess is as good as mine." He knows he should be unsettled by the lack of knowledge regarding the passage of time, but after spending so long in a derelict, underground lab, the passage of time has escaped him for decades.

"Anyway, I--I'm sorry I can't tell you more. To be honest, there isn't a lot we really know. About all this."

Wheatley isn't a very useful source thus far. Holmes can't really hold the fact against him. The man is in the same exact position as he is, if perhaps having had a longer stay in the ship itself. Still, the arrivals themselves were bound to be largely the same, and thus it was unlikely he knew any information about what was immediately available.

Should he have any questions about the ship itself, there was where Wheatley would have his usefulness. But he doesn't yet. He's a little preoccupied with the whole kidnapped in space thing.

And nobody particularly knows, it seems. None of this is particularly promising at all. "Because nobody has been asking?" is all he offers in reply to Wheatley's statement then. "Or because nobody has been answering."