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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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The Doctor took a second examining the readings he'd got off the wallet. Okay. Deadlocked doors, little blue men, ponies turned into humans, but this was the strangest thing he'd encountered aboard the Tranquility. He paused and stared at the sonic for a moment, then snapped it shut, ready to resume the conversation.

"Noted." He reached out a finger and tapped John on the chest. "Where you from, by the way?" He had been assuming Earth, but after John had produced that hammer...

He opened his mouth to say Earth, but then a great idea occurred to him. It was so great that he could barely even handle it. They didn't call him the master PRANKSTER for nothing! Also, he did not call himself the master PRANKSTER for nothing.

"I come from the planet Farts, and I am new to your type of civilization. I think Earth is a great place, and I have watched your movies about Nick Cage. I think he is a wonderful guy. You should be proud of his accomplishments, because he is better than pyramids and everything." He did, however, hide his mouth behind his hand to giggle.

Planet Farts... riiiiiight. Okay, he'd bite. But he'd do it with the very obvious look of someone who didn't believe a word he was saying.

"Technologically advanced, Farts?" he asked. "Big on science?"

"I am so big on science. I am all sciencey up in here! If you have seen Ghostbusters, then I am like that. Except I'm really an Ectobiologist?" There was something quizzical about his last sentence that seemed removed from his other jokes, like he was being curiously serious. But that didn't last very long.

"Greetings, human. Or as they say on my planet, pfft pfffft pffffftttt."

"Pfffftttt. D'you want to know how I knew to ask? Because -- well, because you must be receiving an awful lot of Earth broadcasts on Farts to be talking about Nick Cage and Jodie Foster and Betty Crocker, but also because you have got --" He pronounced almost every syllable as if it were its own word: "A di-men-sion-al-ly trans-cen-den-tal wallet."

"Which, seriously, actually seriously, how does a human wind up with one of those? Not exactly standard issue, in my experience."

"It's kinda standard issue..." He let the act slide for a moment and shrugged. "It stores Captchalogue Cards? It's just a Sylladex. It's a pretty good one, though."

But back to really important matters, as he cleared his throat and assumed the face that he thought the aliens would have on when they encountered Jodie Foster.

"Your world is just not ready for us yet," he said with solemnity.

It was starting to get to him. Not in the sense that he was angry, but curiosity and mild bewilderment were taking over. The Doctor rather liked being a little bewildered. Made things interesting.

"Listen. I'm an actual not-from-Earth alien, and my people invented that technology. Weren't too keen on sharing, either. Not that I agreed with a lot of their policies. But still. You - really know a whole lot of people who have something like that?"

"You can come from the planet Poopnuts, then." John played along with this strange fellow, because he enjoyed games like that. Also, because Poopnuts was a funny word.

"Yeah, Dave and Jade and Rose all have it. And this..." He touched the wallet, and hesitated. But then he smiled again, brightly and cheerfully. "What's your Fetch Modus? I used to have this super crappy one. It shot things EVERYWHERE."

Fetch Modus... that, at least, he could interpret.

"Mostly I just grab whatever I intend to." He opened his jacket to show the inside pocket, which unfortunately ever since he'd been pulled onto the Tranquility had only housed his sonic screwdriver. "I'd demonstrate if I had anything more than the sonic in here at the moment. Not so impressive, reaching into a pocket and taking out the one and only thing that's there."

"As long as it doesn't come shooting out and you grab the right thing, I think it's okay. But it's not fun if it's not stupidly complicated and makes you really frustrated." As long as it didn't come shooting out and destroy your walls, he meant, or your bathtub. But the bathtub part was implicit.

"I do know some actual aliens, except they're kinda weird. I'm not sure if they have this too, but I think it's really handy." He peered into the wallet again to wave at Casey, his salamander daughter.

The Doctor didn't mind that John didn't believe him. People rarely did. He put an arm around the boy's shoulders, leading him toward the lifts.

"What sort of actual aliens?"

"Trolls? You know, they're the ones who say they're our gods and stuff, except only one of them kinda said that. A few of them are my friends!" John was used to people leading him places, so he had no second thoughts about following and even outpacing himself towards the lifts.

"Oh, trolls." Well, wasn't that a coincidence. The Doctor waved a hand above his own head. "Grey skin? Horns? We've got a couple of them on board already."

"Oh, really? That's super great. I think!" John tried to think up ways it could be not great. But there was nothing not great about this entire experience, because now he would finally get to meet the trolls face-to-face for potentially the first time! It would be cool. It would be mad cool.

"Is Karkat here? Or Vriska?"

"Some guy called Eridan. Fancies w's and the color purple." The Doctor hadn't been about to mention names at first; he figured it would be a bit like asking somebody from Canada if they knew a Bob Smith. But since John had asked...

"Oh. Well, maybe Vriska's here, too." He didn't appear to really care about the actual answer.

"So where does this go?" He was now motioning towards the lifts again.

"Blue lift to the passenger quarters. You can find your room based on your number. Handy little thing, like I said." He pushed the button on John's behalf.

"Wow, I get my own room?" That was fairly impressive for a mass kidnapping! Kinda. Maybe? The last time, he got a planet, except it wasn't really his. This time the room would be his. On loan. Good enough.

"But I didn't bring any of my movie posters with me..."

"Oh, we're bound to stop at another outpost eventually. You can get yourself all sorts of spacey-wacey decorations. Meanwhile, check out the media library. I hear they've got a great film collection." He glanced back toward the crowd.

"I ought to stay down here for a while. Get some more people acclimated. Whole lot of Jodie Fosters today."

"I hope they have a lot of Matthew McConaughey..." John was already going starry-eyed at thinking about watching a bunch of cool (read: shitty) films in SPACE. But he did turn and wave to him, quickly, before he left.

"See you later, Doctor! You know my true name if you want to find me and stuff. Keep up the good work, Palmer Joss!" And then he was up, up, and away, or perhaps sideways, or perhaps back, because directions are hard.

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