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

She immediately likes this fellow -- he's calm, collected and quite polite.

And respectful. That's a nice change, especially when one considered Roxanne's past dealings with the opposite gender.

"Yes, you've hit it right on the nose. I feel like I'm in some sort of strange made for TV movie you'd only see on the sci-fi network." She takes his arm, glad for the stability.

"You're not far off," he chuckled lightly. "The disorientation might take a day or two to wear off completely. There may be things you can't remember right now, but try not to worry about them. I had gaps in my memory the first time, but they came back in full." He mentions it because in retrospect, he would have liked it if someone would have been able to tell him the same, that first go-round. There had been moments when he'd come close to panicking, before he'd realized he was slowly regaining what he'd lost.

"Really. Zombies aren't going to start appearing, are they?" She smiles, trying to appear lighthearted but deep down, she wonders if something like that really could happen. It's not as if she hasn't seen some strange things in her lifetime.

"No wonder everything feels a bit fuzzy and out of whack." She presses her free palm to her temple. "I was beginning to wonder about that."

She pauses, though -- curious about that statement he had just made.

"...What do you mean, the first time? Does this happen often?"

Ianto's smile falters. He realizes Roxanne is joking about the zombies, but if Ianto has learned anything over the years working for Torchwood, it's that all the horrors people laugh at are more likely than you think.

"I can't say how often this happens, but I first woke up here a month ago. We had to get back into the gravity couches for a jump. And I've yet to see any zombies, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're out of the woods as far as things that want to kill us." He thinks of the Cyberman on board and suppresses a shudder. "I don't mean to scare you by saying so, but this is a big ship, and space has its fair share of undesirables. It's always best to be cautious."

...Yes -- shes joking, but when that smile of his falters and he starts spouting things about ships and zombies and undesirable things she wonders if maybe she is legitimately losing her mind.

"Wait a second -- ship? We're on a ship? A space ship? Are you being serious right now?"

Ianto gave Roxanne a startled look that quickly became sheepish. "Right, you haven't been given this talk yet. Sorry. I'm usually not this tactless." Damn grav couches. He took a breath, scrambling in his fuzzy head for a good place to start.

"Bear with me, here. You're on a ship. An actual, honest to god space ship, yes. A good number of the people here are human beings, but not all. We're not necessarily from the same planet or even the same time. Some of us are only a few years apart, but others might be centuries or even millennia from the past or future." He pauses to give her time to digest that information and ask questions.

"It's alright. I think, given the circumstances we're in, you're allowed some leeway." She smiles, but it's tight around the corners of her mouth -- Roxanne is more than a little agitated at what has happened to her, but she's quite relieved that she had found someone who not only knows what's going on, but is also quite the gentleman. That helped.

"A space ship." She echoes this quietly, brow furrowing. Why not, right?

"So let me start at the beginning and then I'll work my way to the rest of what you said -- how did we get here, exactly?"

"I'm not entirely clear on the subject, myself. This is a colony ship, but I don't know what happened to the colonists. We've ended up here with a skeleton crew who periodically send the ship through jumps in space-time. From what I understand, the process creates a wormhole around the ship, and somehow it's been drawing people from different places and times into the anomaly and we end up here. The obvious thing to do would be to stop jumping, but then we'd be stuck. The captain is trying to get us to a jump point called Ataraxia where we can all be sent home."

Ianto tries not to think too much about being sent home. He knows what awaits him there.

"Different places and times. So, you and I could be from two completely separate...instances?" Interesting thought -- a little mind boggling, but incredibly fascinating.

And alarming.

"It's more likely than not. What year is it, for you?" Ianto keeps a close eye on Roxanne's reactions. Some of this is still a bit overwhelming to him, and he catches rogue aliens for a living in a top secret organization based out of a tourist attraction. It wouldn't do for Roxanne to panic, but there's no easy way to break this kind of news.

"Mmm. It's 2010." Hell, she thinks. There's still just the slightest bit of disorientation and Roxanne isn't sure she's not just hallucinating this as a result of...something. Lack of sleep, possibly. She does tend to overwork herself on occasion.

"But I'm familiar with aliens. Does that count in the 'space capades' index?"