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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.

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There's a hunch to Capa's shoulders, something like a wince that expresses itself not on his face but in his whole posture as he realizes that yes that probably wasn't the greatest way to go about greeting somebody who's just made her way through a dimensional time-space anomaly. The look that he gives her as she comes up beside is apologetic as a result, his shoulders given most of their usual slump though there's something a little stiffer that usual (the result of the warp sickness, a tightness in all of his tendons and joints). With a hand he rubs at the back of his neck. There's some residual gunk there from the gravity beds so the skin there is tacky; he stops to wipe his hand on the leg of his Icarus crew uniform.

"Sorry. Just—" He gestures at the lockers around them, in the vague direction of the Medbay. "—if the last twenty minutes are any indication of the overall influx we're looking at, the projections are off. Way off, and I—" Capa shakes his head. Catches himself and starts over again, exhaling audibly as a surge of nausea twists his insides then releases them again. "Yeah. Somewhere quieter'd be great."

Edited 2012-01-16 00:50 (UTC)

She nods simply enough, taking him by the arm gently and leading him out of the medical bay. The last thing they both need is for someone to come along and eavesdrop on them. She gives him another look. "I'm teasing you." That's it. Look natural. As natural as one could be under these circumstances. With one last look into the throng of people waking up - and making sure she spots Chase - she heads out with him.

Re-l walks with him down the hall, making sure no one's following just yet. She finally looks up at him. "You're upset." Understatement. "What's this about projections?"

Re-l leads and Capa follows along and it's moments like these were it's most obvious that Capa — despite knowing what it is that he needs to do, despite his vast wealth of knowledge and experience with unpredictable circumstances — is ultimately a beta at the end of the day, not an alpha. He knows what he's good at and what he's not and while he's more than capable of seeing the big picture and assessing it, that's not necessarily his strong point or what he enjoys having to do. And so when Re-l steers him along he's more than happy to go, though he does give her hand on his arm a small glance as if to verify that it's there in the first place.

Once alone he gives her a frank look and what he says next isn't judgmental or defensive, it's just Capa doing what he knows best: reiterating fact, being precise, being as literal as literal can be.

"I'm mentally disoriented and physically compromised by the warp sickness, Re-l, not upset," he tells her. And as far as he can tell, he's not upset. Concerned, yes, but anyone with sense would be. But being upset wouldn't be helpful; if anything it'd be counterproductive, which was one thing Capa was loathe to be. Still, he concedes: "I am concerned. We expected more people as a result of the jump, but if the numbers begin to trend, there may be a case of escalation here, and what we want is — at worst — a plateau."

"Are you." It's not a question. In fact, it's a hell of a lot more like she's skeptical of his statement, though she doesn't say this outright. Instead, she just keeps walking with him. Eventually, she realizes she still has a hand on his arm and she frowns at herself. Hesitantly, she lets go and lets him walk on his own.

"And we'll run out of room. We won't be able to keep track of everyone." Shit. That's going to be a problem. They barely made it to Tansei station with the food that was on board and if Ward and Resnik weren't going to let them go out again...

She scowls. "We're missing people, too. People who were here the first time we jumped, when you and I arrived." That bothers her a great deal.

Capa shakes his head, but not in total disagreement. There are points in Re-l's line of thinking that he follows and agrees with, others he doesn't. In true Capa style, he delineates them one by one, making sure that they stay on the exact same page for the duration. Re-l wasn't a technical person and Capa had no desire nor expectation for her to be, but that meant that clarity of understanding was his responsibility in these exchanges, which meant being as precise as possible without falling down into incomprehensible patterns of technobabble.

"No, the carrying capacity of the Tranquility easily reaches into hundres of thousands, if my estimations are correct. This is a colonization ship, which means it has to carry the population of an entire city without so much as batting an eyelash. Which it can do, though resources are a concern. Without Corazon—" That gets Capa to frown, the name still somewhat bitter in his mouth. "—without a proper staff to mind the oxygen garden, there's no way to ensure that oxygen yield will be nearly as high as it has to be. As for food and rations, I don't know exactly what the Tranquility has as far as collateral is concerned. So keeping the kitchens flush as the numbers rise, well—" Capa shrugs. And that's not the end of it.

"And then there's trying to keep track of everyone. Making sure that the general populace is both trained for space protocols as well as willing to work with the crew rather than against it." A pause and then the frown on Capa's face deepens, almost looks like a proper frown for once, even though the expression still remains smaller than most people's. His voice drops down to a whisper; he's thinking about the door, about the message they'd found.

"And if there's someone else on the ship. A third party that hasn't been accounted for—" Capa isn't sure exactly where to go with that sentence. None of the options that follow are particularly good, so he keeps it open ended to see where Re-l's train of thought brings it first.

Edited 2012-01-16 03:56 (UTC)

She stops for a moment, staring at him. "Hundreds of-- But..." It doesn't seem even as big as Romdeau was, and that only held tens of thousands. She pinches the bridge of her nose for a moment. Hundreds of thousands. There's definitely no way they can keep track of everyone like that. Any way they have now is too inefficient, too sloppy.

But what he says next is even more alarming. Without oxygen, without any sort of way to keep the garden running, they could all be in a hell of a lot trouble. Goddammit. Where are the Proxies when you need them? Lurkers of their own domes, killers, saviors and gods... They could use one right about now. But that simply draws her mind back to the door, to the message.

It's not the first time she's seen cryptic and startling messages written somewhere for only a select few to find. This mystery is just as bad as her last and she worries how far the scales will tip this time...and if she really wants to pursue this truth.

She folds her arms across her chest and presses her thumb to her lips in thought. She says nothing for a long moment. "A third party that may or may not have been the cause for us even being here in the first place." The thought hasn't escaped her. "I don't like it. There's too many unknowns. Too many questions, not enough answers...and not enough places to find those answers without jeopardizing too many people." One wrong move on the crew's part and they could end up like the last set: gone.

Capa listens, of course, and listens intently even though his expression fails to register the true depth of his concentration beyond the suggestion of a crease at the middle of his brow. He nods, looping his arms loosely with one another as he nods — once, twice, at various intervals to let Re-l know that he's listening and that he agrees or at least acknowledges the foundation of this theory or that. She was right, there were too many unknowns and Capa has more than learned his lesson when it comes to making decisions when so many of the cards remain pocketed or blind. Granted, there were times when a decision had to be made in either case, but semantics or no, it wasn't a decision, it was a guess and if Capa hated one thing, it was guessing.

"There is an alternative theory," he eventually says. "One that seems to split the difference between the other two." Rubbing his arm absently, Capa glances around to ensure that yes they truly are alone before continuing. "It's possible that the third party is the ship. That's something has happened within its systems and now it's trying to fix itself. Not unlike the way the body self-regulates its own chemistry—" A pause and Capa himself tries to wrap his head around the theory. "—if the ship is in any way sentient. It may be deliberately trying to repopulate itself, given whatever happened before we got here."

Edited 2012-01-17 19:26 (UTC)

...That is not what she wanted to hear. She stops walking altogether, staring at the corridor in front of them. For all of the technology Romdeau had, for all of its great achievements, the only thing close to being sentient and mechanical was the WombSys. She imagines those clockwork android wombs as the ship and she immediately feels sick. She closes her eyes and swallows in an attempt to keep her head on straight. It's just a theory and nothing else right now. That's all. Even if there's an overwhelming group of evidence to suggest it's true.

"But why would it keep trying to repopulate? It doesn't make sense. Why would it dump out an entire crew of capable people and then turn around and bring so many back?" And if it was sentient, why couldn't it keep supplying them with adequate food on its own?

Unless those stasis pods and the fluid is supposed to be food. Ugh.

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