ataraxionlogs | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(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

He's sorry, John, he can't help it. He's just having a lot of feelings as of right now, several that he doesn't want and can't define and having feelings is very awful, especially in the wake of near-death experiences. Or death experiences, depending on whose perspective you viewed this situation from. Also, Bobobbtopwitz Hamish Watson doesn't quite roll off the tongue for some reason.

With a cock of his own arm, he checks his numbers, snorting a bit amusedly despite himself. "In which case I suppose on zero occasions have I eaten twenty-three of them. Must be the true meaning of them." That new trend of fashioning sandwiches out of sausages and bread rolls. Not so bad. Though when he regards the number more seriously, there honestly isn't an immediate meaning that strikes him. He'll ruminate on it more deeply when he can think straighter.

"A locker designated to the amount of hot dogs that may or may not have been eaten. Then we'll search for things?"

"Sure!" He didn't mind searching for things. But he was still worried that eventually one of them would do a tumble to the floor, and that wouldn't have been really cool, or even ironically cool. Clearly that was the most important thing. So he casually reached out to casually steady him to casually walk onwards and it wasn't really as casual as any of that. In fact, he was walking a bit like a robot instead.

"So I guess you don't live here or anything... I don't know about you, but I really don't like having more questions than answers!" He seemed a little petulant, as if recalling several times in his life where he had more questions than answers. "And everybody just speaks in riddles..."

It's not entirely unwelcome. Though Holmes can only awkwardly regard the contact too, now that he's more fully aware of the fact that he's not nakedly clapping a young boy on the shoulder and creepily complimenting his name, hmm. They'll be a pair of robots, then, Holmes' own steps stiff and not very accommodating of anything.

If only -- well, anyone could see him now. Being chummy with a kid like this.

"It's no matter, not when so many here seem so very unfamiliar with each other. The air is one of confusion, and the answers that others do seem to have are none to the right questions." At least John and him have that in common. Holmes seems almost bitter about the face that nobody can answer any of the questions that he really wants to be answered. "It would appear as if none of them have much more of an idea than us chickens."

Wow. He didn't mean to be culturally insensitive, but this guy talked kinda weird! It was like he was from Ye Olde Times, like from... the Edwardian era or something like that! But that would be impolite to ask. He'd just have to be careful of Edwardian era sensitive topics, like, don't ask him for snuff boxes. That was a thing, wasn't it?

Also, he wasn't a chicken? But maybe that was another Edwardian thing. He had to be culturally sensitive.

"Yes," he said loudly, "There is nobody here but us fowl-feathered poultry." It didn't really make sense, but that would have to do.

"But maybe you have the right questions," he added. And he swiped his number to open his locker.

...Yes. Exactly. Though, maybe it was just John that was the one speaking strangely here. He didn't know! Besides, he was dodging a bullet with the snuff box issue. Holmes had an entire argument based around his left slipper and how much better a preservative it was for his tobacco.

Holmes' eyes sidle mildly to the side, looking at John out of the corner of them but not really attributing anything else to his forcible agreement. Odd little fellow, wasn't he? Unkempt hair, a mild overbite, and yet a certain degree of confidence. And entirely misleading, with the pallor of a typist and the thumb of a carpenter?

"It could be," he remarks in turn, not terribly narcissistic but certainly assured. "People rarely do." Says the man who's screwing up his face and following a teenager's lead for how to open his locker. He gives a surprised laugh when it does open, impressed. "Astounding. Of course, the alternative would suggest that there are merely people in charge of this all who simply don't want people to know said answers."

"I think it's a conspiracy. But I think," and here, his voice does falter for a moment, with his face screwed up in slight confusion, "sometimes adults purposely try to talk in riddles, because they think it's for your sake, or maybe it's just how the game works. But I think it really sucks, because you don't know until it's too late." He lingered gingerly by his locker for another moment, with the wallet of someone who was already gone in his hands. He held it for another moment, and then slipped it into his pocket.

"What do you have?" He grew distracted easily, or perhaps forcibly, and tried to peer into the other man's locker. "Do you have cool things, like Cosby memorabilia? Bill Cosby, I mean." Though by the way he looked at him, it was very obvious that he thought there was only one Cosby that need be mentioned.

His smile is something grim as John speaks, Holmes' face a dry agreement with what he's saying, probably, or maybe he's just addressing the small folded cloth on the top shelf of the locker - his tobacco, amongst... other poisons. He pockets it in a ratty, grey number of a robe inside, and it's only when John's voice peters off that he realizes the boy has something in his hands and he seems to be giving it some deep thought.

A wallet. Something simple to someone else, but Holmes doesn't see a young man's wallet, something bright and colorful like John's expressions; he sees the wallet of someone else. An older male individual, likely related - could be an uncle, a grandfather, but a father is most likely, or at least a figure as such. Not stolen, he doesn't seem the type, so sentiment, but what sort of sentiment? His father leaving, abandoning him, isn't likely to drum up that sort of nostalgia and so, conclusion: His father was dead.

Holmes doesn't say a word, eyes sketching over the wallet one last time before he starts to blow a few tobacco flakes from his pipe. "It really is merely a game. How I wish to tell you it was something more complicated than that. One makes more sense of adults when they're younger, and as their true methods unfold, the more shadowy they become."

Wow, he does not know what a Bill Cosby is at all, but he's sure he's an upstanding sort of man who wears some fantastic knitwear. His paraphernalia well out of the way and his robe safely tucked over his arm, he swings it wide to show his jumpsuit, a small gold-plated steampunk sort of apparatus, and a dusky violin sitting at the bottom, complete with bow. "The dregs of another life, I fear. Nothing so interesting as your William might be."

Edited 2012-01-16 11:05 (UTC)

Unobservant to the observations, John scampers acrobatically to hunch over the DUSKY VIOLIN for a moment. He hovers over it, his own reflection flickering over the lacquer, but he keeps his fingers pinched to his sides. He only really played the piano, specializing in haunting refrains! His friend and possible marriage partner Rose was the one who really played the violin. In the few seconds that he watched his own mirrored shadow pass along the strings, he thought about her with some sadness, because she was not here.

But it didn't take long for him to begin to poke at the GOLD-PLATED STEAMPUNK APPARATUS, since he knew Rose wouldn't get angry at him for touching that.

"Aren't you an adult?" he asked, tinkering around with the apparatus with curiosity. "If you're an adult, then you should know." He never really thought about himself as an adult. He thought he might be a little stuffy, but never anything further than that. However, he did finally turn towards Sherlock Holmes again with the weird gold thing in his hand.

His companion really was an adult. He hadn't really thought about it, but he didn't particularly linger on any subject too deeply. It did seem strange, though, to see an adult after so long a time with only his friends and aliens under six. At that realization, he hesitated a bit in his knowledge on how to treat him, as a proper adult who knew all the right questions. An Edwardian era man with a violin and strange things in his locker. An adult. But John just really wanted to know what the gold shiny thing happened to be.

Holmes, on the other hand, is fully allowed to touch said violin, at least on most occasions, the majority of which not taking place at three o'clock in the morning. As John moves onto better prospects, Holmes takes the violin from the locker around him, watching the child's own observations as he begins to pluck at the strings with a look of concern on his face. No, it's not his violin specifically - the one from back home, this is the fill-in violin, a paltry one at best - but oh, how much he treasures the familiarity at the moment.

His eyes sketch over said gold-plated apparatus with a bit of a frown. His fingers strum at a few notes. It's almost something vaguely resembling Vivaldi.

"I should most certainly know, shouldn't I?" In an adult's body, and an inherently observant one at that. Every twitch of a lie, every scuffed shoe, every removed engagement band, all these details in direct opposition to what people may so adamantly claim to be the truth. The world should be getting sharper with his observations, and it certainly does, but there are days. He's not really sure what these days are. "Perhaps I'm merely a child at heart. Stuck between both worlds."

He tucks the violin under his arm and props the pipe experimentally into his mouth, even empty. Everything in working order. "What do you think it is?" The thing in John's hands, he probably means.

"It's probably a bomb." He twisted it back and forth in his hands, and squinted at it with one eye. Squinting with one eye did not, in fact, make anything clearer; he just saw it in movies and thought it looked really cool to do. But all squinting did for him was shift his glasses lower on his face.

"Someone is probably out for you. Really out for you. Like spies. Or a criminal. A super criminal. Or maybe you're the super big criminal, and this is actually a switch so you can blow up all the worlds, but you should know better because Agent John Egbert is here and clear to stop you and your vile schemes. Or maybe it's like one of those things that makes big things tiny, and like there's a bunch of cool guns in here and they all shoot and stuff. Maybe you even have Nick Cage in there, except you can't stop him for nuttin'. Or maybe this is really something you got from aliens, and if you say a super duper secret word, it'll open up and give you a lot of candy but not Fruit Roll-Ups, because Betty Crocker is a witch. But the secret word is so secret, that nobody even knows it! If you say it, everybody's eyes will bleed and then some super secret agents will come swooping out from the ceiling and they'll have to fight us all except I have to get home to my daughter so we'll have to take over a plane and land in Las Vegas. Or maybe this sucks up ghosts. Maybe this is the ghost! Maybe you're the ghost, and this thing keeps you alive."

He held up the item higher and squinted at it again. Then he lowered it back into his arms, almost cradling it.

"Don't worry, Nick Cage," he whispered, "I'll get you out of there."

It- He- Hmm. At least he had creativity on his side.

Holmes could have stopped him at any point in time to correct him, or to perhaps ask a question or two (like what, exactly, differentiated a rolled fruit from a regular fruit, though the cultist Crocker seemed to have something vaguely to do with it, according to the boy), but, well, this was fun. Half of these things were nonsensical observations and theories that Holmes didn't recognize, but John just kept right on trucking. Determined little fellow, wasn't he?

At the end of it all, Holmes puffs uselessly on his pipe, transferring it from one side of his mouth to the other and then into his hand, the one with his violin. "Good, John. Very good. Close, even." His free hand reaches out to gingerly begin to pluck the apparatus from John's arms - carefully, breathing evenly, as though it IS an explosive and it requires the utmost of care, before he puts the end of the bomb in his mouth oh god what is happening

and oh, it appears you can breathe out of it. A small oxygen supply.

He did not say anything at first. He stared, with a serious drawn face.

"You could have died today," he said, with complete seriousness, as if he had not realized they had just erupted from weird blue liquid pads in a mass kidnapping action and Sherlock Holmes already knew the identity of the device. But he was somber, and serious.

"I wouldn't have died, but you could have died. I hope we live everyday to the fullest and be careful. Except not so full that your stomach really hurts and you can't eat anymore turkey." But with the serious time over, he was already scampering and standing on his tip-toes to try and take a better look at the apparatus, seemingly uncaring about his own stupid statements about life and death and life again.

"Wow, what is it? You have to tell me. We have gone through too much together that you have to tell me now, since it is a code." There was no code. There was no obligation. But John stared with all the intensity of all the buddy cop show obligations there were in the world.

Holmes can't help it. There's a small quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth about this. The boy has quite the imagination. "You're absolutely right." He says so with mock horror, and a shudder. "Why, there isn't even anyone to carry on the Holmes name in my place." Mycroft didn't count. He meant someone credible. Though, really, in all honesty, the name was thoroughly doomed. "My apologies, of course," he submits, waving the big ol' faker bomb in his hand. "An explosion within this proximity of you would have certainly caused you serious injury, and my intention was naturally not to either endanger nor upset. Perhaps the explosives should be left to our expert, in future."

Okay, he was delving far too much into the sarcasm territory for talking to a teenage boy. He was going to answer his question now.

He demonstrates again, taking in the mouthpiece again, and drawing in a breath. "A personal oxygen supply!" he crows, though the look on his face is vaguely wan. "Absolutely mine and not at all apprehended from another individual." He holds it out for John again, in case he wants to confirm that claim and, you know, put his mouth slobber where Holmes' mouth slobber has been. "Perhaps of less use here."

"That's not as cool. But that's pretty cool. And I'm glad Nick Cage is not in there." He did hold it into his hands, and seemed tempted to use it. The seemed melted flawlessly into did, as he tried to use it without touching it as much as possible. He breathed sharply through his nose and he didn't grasp the entire contraption altogether, but he beamed because it seemed like a cool thing to him.

"I don't think I really need this, either." He meant for his windy thing powers, but he didn't give it back, either. It was just fun to play around with something for a while. But he really kinda hoped that Sherlock Holmes would come with a box set of awesome DVDs. He'd take what he could.

"Do you have any other cool stuff? Or kinda cool stuff."

"I, um. Yes." Seriously, what. "Whoever Mr. Cage is, he's hopefully residing somewhere much safer and-" Holmes shifts as John takes the oxygen supply, eyes narrowing. "-larger."

When Holmes played games as a boy, even imaginary ones, he hardly dreamed about such physical impossibilities. Only sailing. And a small boy named Leonard who read all of the books that the other children didn't and agreed with all of Holmes' opinions. But not men stuck inside breathing apparatuses.

"One never knows when they're going to need a supplementary supply," he says passively, because the device has been useful for him in the recent past, impossibly useful. But he'd also had other intentions for it in his near future. Those plans had been sidetracked. "Though I'm afraid I've just the basics. The robe, the violin, the... heinous one piece number they seem to think I'll be wearing as part of a new wardrobe." He pops the pipe back in his mouth and shrugs a shoulder.

Mostly because he doesn't think John means the recreational substances rolled up in his pocket at current time and nor is he intending to let him in on that secret.

"I'm my own supplementary supply, I guess. So if you ever need another one..." John thought about explaining it for a moment, but it was really complicated and it wasn't really that interesting. (Despite the fact that the entire explanation that he really would have thought about giving was just "it's a windy thing," as if that explained everything and anything.)

But he does catch, for another moment, on the pipe, and he looks down at the violin to his own faded reflection. Then up again, with more determination, though less certainty.

"Can I try that?" He pointed to the pipe, though not directly at it. He gestured towards it, with eyes shifting away from the violin to the area above his head.

"Just really quickly," he adds, as a promise. Because things did go very quickly, and sometimes, too quickly.

"I." Holmes pauses a moment. "Thank you. Though, with all hope, I won't need to utilize that," he finally confides within John, windy things being well outside his grasp of knowledge. He is definitely assuming that John's 'supplementary supply' is... his lungs.

But it's the gesture that's more readily interesting, and for a split second, Holmes misses it - the violin, the robe, no, he saw it. The pipe. It was what he shifted last, and thus John's concentration would have been on it - though his concentration wasn't on it, not for the time being. In fact, it was everywhere but, and Holmes plucks the pipe from his mouth for a moment. It's not the gesture of a small boy who merely wants to pick up smoking for the first time, but- what?

After a moment's debate and hesitation, it's the second prompt that has him affirming - 'really quickly' - and Holmes finally holds it out, just slightly, with a mildly jerky movement of his arm. "It's empty, you know, no- Ah." And he fiddles with what he can, which is his facial features - his nose wiggles, his eyebrows furrow even as his mouth curls into a small smile. "No tobacco."

"It's okay." He takes the pipe, which feels warmer in his hands than he thought it would. He regards the pipe curiously, and scrunches his nose. The pipe was perfectly fine, but felt a little strange and wrong. Like a square trying to fit into a peg hole, except that peg hole was life, and the square was a pipe, and the pipe wasn't just a pipe, but it was more or less just a pipe. He felt weird; weirder than when he tumbled out of the tube headfirst, weirder than being in a spaceship, weirder than just seeing that he only had Casey and a hammer in his wallet. It was like he ate a thousand tacos, and they had all been filled with beans.

He holds the pipe with both hands, and then quickly drops his left when he thought he looked like he had never handled a pipe before. Straightening up importantly, he put the pipe into his mouth, and thought about three things. First, there really wasn't any tobacco in there, and it was a little disappointing because it would have been a totally authentic experience. Second, it was cold and hard and not really that fun. The third wasn't something to be put into words.

"Do I look older with this?" He grinned sloppily, one hand still holding the pipe in a distinguished manner. He probably looked super cool, and not like a little kid trying to fill up the absence in his life at all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only