spherememing | 001. Test Drive Meme.

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001. Test Drive Meme.

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Welcome, welcome, welcome.

The Council is well aware of how hard it is to get used to that whole ~~kidnapping~~ being brought to a new place you don’t understand is, and because of that, each month they host an open welcome party for all residents both old and new. The party and its theme and location vary by month, and November’s theme is funnily enough Thanksgiving. The location is in the market dome, and all of the stalls have been closed in favor of long, large and communal tables for sitting around and eating and talking. The Market dome is large, roughly three city blocks would fit comfortably inside of it. The stalls themselves are lined with bright lights, giving the activity within more of a carnival atmosphere than that of a normal shopping experience. Around you, the air hums almost, teaming with life and vibrancy among all sides. The way that the tables are seated encourages some intimacy despite the space, offering a large family sort of feeling versus something like a restaurant.

The people there are happy to see new people, that much is evident. People who one doesn’t know are greeted with smiles for the large part, and questions are eagerly answered, even if there is a slight ‘no one really knows’ vagueness to them. For the most part, of course. No city is ever a Utopia, and there are those who give newly arrived people flat looks, and answer questions with short and curt monotoned responses.

There are conversations happening at some parts of the table that aren’t meant for you to hear; they’re just whispered snippets of something about ‘Cruz doesn’t know what she wants.’ Or ‘Tearing is keeping it all under wraps of course, because that’s what she does.’ More common are grumbled complaints about ‘that bastard Tinder won’t stop just because…’ When they notice someone listening, they definitely glare at the listener. But whatever else, and however many secrets they may be keeping from the newcomers, the people complaining seem honest about it.

There’s a huge food table on one side that’s completely loaded with everything one could want. Turkey, and all of the fixings, including vegetarian and vegan options for those who would require them. (Though, someone leans over to mention, “the meat’s not really an animal anyway.”) The food is definitely sort of a potluck, given the variety of types of food in various sorts of serving dishes and states of presentation. Some of the foods include some weird stuff that looks terrible but is delicious. Probably. There are foods thee colors the likes of which only would be found on Earth if someone added an insane amount of food color to them.

Do try the grey stuff though. It’s delicious, ask the dishes. The blue milk? Less so.

However, food isn’t the only thing at the meeting. On the opposite side from the food, there are smaller tables set up with people sitting behind them. In front of the tables are homemade brightly colored signs that advertise things like jobs and clubs. The people and interests here in The Sphere are hugely varied and people are just so earnest to tell newcomers about them. They’re earnest to the point where they may just actually reach out and grab a person in order to force them to stop and to listen to whatever spiel they happen to be working on. Booths that are in attendance for jobs include: Agriculture: “help grow the food that feeds us all! Farming is life!”, The library: “No skill needed! We’ll teach you what you need to know!” The school system: “Teachers wanted! Education is the right of everyone!” Maintenance: “Help keep the domes clean!” As well as various restaurant booths looking for help for both servers and chefs.

For the hobbies involved they are even more varied. Book club: “we live in a multiverse, let’s read the books from it! With wine!” Garden club: “we want to grow stuff on our terms!” Sprinkled among are various skill learning clubs, among them: woodworking club, smithing, robotics, technology, first aid. It seems that despite the fact that no one is required to work in the City, people are still offering skills as needed.

As the night progresses, music starts, and there’s dancing and more adult fare. Liquor is broken out, of various sources from various worlds, including some that offer the Sphere’s own label on them. If discrete enough inquiries are made, a passcode to the Black Market hidden behind some of the stalls is offered. The entrance is hidden enough that someone needs to be looking for it, and there is a rather large bouncer guarding the door and asking for the proper passcode. The passcode of the day happens to be turnips.

Inside the black market is large, but much more dimly lit than the regular market dome that the welcome party was held inside of. There are various pockets of people clustered under bright neon lights. The lights, someone confides to you, are code for what they’re offering. And nearly everything is on offer if a person has the ability to make a trade. Things from home, character skills and even favors tend to be the currency here, but watch out: the hawkers within are shrewd and sharp. If they make a deal with someone, it’s nearly always going to favor them. Eventually.

There’s also a large and loud party happening inside. Think of a rave with a large amount of people who happened to be a bit out of their minds. Drugs aren’t given freely here, they’re too valuable, but should someone want to figure out what they’re rolling on, eventually someone will ask or offer. The drug that they are currently using is called ‘self’ and it’s something that affects your character in an intensely personal way. For some, it’s an experience like your favorite cocktail mixed with a vicodin, and for others it’s just like being drunk. For still more people, it’s like ecstasy without the side effects.

The drug has no physically addicting properties.

Welcome to my nightmare.
For anyone within the architecture dome, the library dome, the sunlight rec dome and any personal dome that people chose, around midnight people will have a curiously tired sensation. They just need to rest their eyes for a moment, or some may fall asleep for longer. No matter the length of time that the character is out, the nightmare infects them, and when they wake they will be filled with a curious but urgent sensation.

They have lost something. The loss can be a physical object, an emotion, a memory, a person or perhaps a sense of self. If the lost person is currently present in the game, they will be unable to be seen by the character who is experiencing the waking nightmare. Urgency will grip the character, because the longer the sensation goes on for, the worse it becomes. Characters can search and scrounge for their loss everywhere, but until the nightmare is over, they will not find whatever it is. Even if it is themselves. Instead, they may be frantic, angry, or just play old scared to death. They need to find this at whatever cost. Where they may find it is something that their own brains will settle on, but of course until the nightmare is over, they will not be able to.

The nightmare ends with either the character falling into a normal, restful sleep naturally or through some other means (someone might mention the infirmary has sedation medication just for the is purpose, or that there’s always a brick) or when they are woken with the intervention of someone else. The intervention of someone else is entirely up to you, and can come from a player character or a NPC, depending on how the player is feeling with the thread. By intervention we mean someone who is able to talk the person out of the nightmare, or to slap or shake them out, or to use some sort of trick that shows them that they are indeed inside of a nightmare. The knowledge that someone is affected by a nightmare must come from an external source, and should come from a character that your character would trust. After all, would you believe someone who told you that you were in a nightmare if you didn’t know that? That said, the best way to deal with waking someone is to remove them from the affected domes. Too bad you don’t know which domes are affected.

Harvest time

The Council hopes that you enjoyed the party the other night, because now it’s time to put out the call for volunteers to come in and help with replenishing the city’s stores from the fields and orchards in the agricultural domes. Your friend neighborhood councillor in charge, Annie Cruz has sent out a message that volunteers who come in to help out will be given payment in the form of lunch and beer and wine.

The jobs involved are varied, and involve harvesting crops such as corn, picking apples or grapes and handing out water or the boxed lunches provided. People will be assigned an area and given a bucket or basket in order to put the fruits of their labor inside of. Either way, there’s a festive atmosphere, and most people who have been there longer than your character seem to be old hat at this.

There’s even a large tub of grapes for people to smash with their feet (“but for fuck’s sake make sure they’re clean first!”). If asked about it, someone will explain that the city makes its own wine and brews its own beer every season! A good chunk of the things picked, you are told slyly, will probably end up drunk rather than eaten, “once the off the top happens.” If asked to explain it, a character will just touch their nose slyly and not say any more. It’s also explained that the grapes crushed with people’s feet don’t actually end up in the general bottles of wine: they’re not savages here!

So, jump in and help with something, or sit down and have lunch and just get to know the people around you with a glass of wine or beer. You’re all here for the foreseeable future, might as well!

Network!

In the Sphere, the network is neural, and accessed via touching the glowing golden circle behind your character’s ear. They can identify themselves with a screen name if you so desire, but messages should be one of three ways or a combination of them. 1. Audio. Your character thinks audible words onto the network. 2. Writing: Your character thinks text into the network. 3. Video. Your character projects a broadcast of a video of themselves onto the network. Replies are determined by the player.

The network needs to be accessed by choice, so character broadcasts are not automatically beamed directly into people’s heads. The Sphere isn’t that rude.

Private messages are allowed by pressing and holding and pressing and holding again as you picture the person in your mind. This can be an image or a name, err more on the side of things being more accessible than less.

Wildcard!
This can be meeting a possible roommate or dorm mate (if one is choosing to go that route), the use of a communal kitchen, waking up and dealing with the things that you were just told about the City, yelling at the sphere, or anything else that your little heart desires. Go nuts.

OOC note: if you feel that something requires an NPC interaction, please go to here and reply with a link and a brief summary of why you need it and the mod will try and be accomodating.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

a. FESTIVITIES

How do you find a safe vantage point to hide in a dome? Laura sticks to hiding under tables instead. While she prefers the higher ground-- people rarely remember to look up-- she'll take what she can get. Darting from table to table, she's pretty quick and nimble; you may see her, but she'll be gone in an instant.

Then again, her stealth isn't that good. Eventually, a child's grubby hand reaches up from underneath the table to blindly grab at whatever food is laid out on it, sometimes several times. She eats whatever she finds, but it's... messy.

b. DREAMS

Laura finds a safe place to sleep in a hallway, far from the sounds of others. She crawls atop some stacked boxes, safely out of view, and dozes curled up like a dog, smeared with grit and food.

Bad dreams aren't new, but this sort is...

She needs to it. The... thing that will kill the bad man, the worst man, the one who wears her father's face and isn't. She knows she has to. Nothing else makes sense.

"¿Dónde está?" She crawls down from her boxes, and claws come out of one of her fists. She begins to hack at one of the boxes angrily. Her yelling is high pitched, echoing. "¿Quien tomó?"

c. HARVEST

Laura fails completely to pick food, and instead sits and eats it until someone guides her toward a more productive task. Which is good, because she has a lot of aggression to take out on these grapes.

She missed the part about washing her feet first, though. Nope, she's still a little grubby and a lot grape-y, jumping up and down with wild abandon and something even approaching glee. If you stop to stare, she'll stare back, the happiness disappearing from her expression before she whirls around, her back to you, to keep on stomping. Ooh, cold shoulder from an eleven-year-old. How you gonna take that?

d. NETWORK
UN: garras

esto no canada. este es un lugar estupido

la comida sabe mal

e. WILDCARD

[go for it, man. im down for whatever. feel free to pm / hmu @ wehwalt if youre feeling it.]

Edited 2018-12-02 04:17 (UTC)

Logan's given the jobs and clubs little more than a glance, instead heading straight for the food. Looks like they didn't realize it ain't October anymore--this spread's the best Thanksgiving meal he's ever seen, considering he usually spends the holiday in dive bars.

So he loads up a plate of everything he recognizes (and a couple of things he doesn't) and takes a seat. He leans hard on one arm, unconsciously guarding his food like a stray dog as he eats. All of it's good, even the damn grey stuff, just about makes up for the fact that he was kidnapped out of his own camper for this little under-the-sea adventure. The one thing that mars it is the hand that reaches up from beneath the table and smacks itself right into his mashed potatoes.

He grabs for the wrist attached to it, firm but not bruising, and gives a little tug. Come up from under there, whoever you are. "The hell are you doing?"

The hand yanks back with a level of strength that shouldn't, frankly, be possible for someone Laura's size. She immediately emerges, popping her small, angry face out from under the table, eyes livid.

And then she sees his face. The face of a dead man. The familiar scent overwhelms her senses, and while something is off, not quite right, she's too caught up in the moment to question it. She just buried him.

She slackens in his grip. "Lo siento."

"Huh?" Logan recognizes just enough Spanish to know which language he's currently failing to understand. Beyond that, what she's saying might mean anything. What the rest of her is saying--her stance, her scent, the sound of the words if not the meaning of them--is a little less complicated. She wasn't expecting somebody to actually catch her, and the look of him's making her think twice about protesting.

(Something about her smells familiar, and he can't figure out why. It's a mystery he doesn't bother solving for now.)

He didn't think there'd be kids here. With a huff, he tries to soften the edges in his voice and mostly ends up sounding tired. "If you want food, get your own, kid. There's plenty up there."

She's stopped struggling entirely, her wrist caught in his. It's almost like holding hands. She looks over her shoulder, at the people wandering around, getting food so casually. Eyes wide with fear, she turns back to look Logan over.

"There are people watching."

"They're hungry, not watching." At least she's speaking English now--he can actually respond to that. Letting go of her hand, he reaches for a napkin to hand to her. She's still got potato clinging to her fingers. "No one's gonna care if you grab a plate."

She takes the napkin and shoves it in her pocket like it was a gift. "People see. They remember." She looks around slowly, not quite nervous, just... observing. Scanning the scene. Making sure they're not being observed. Checking the vantage points, making sure she's safe. Carefully, tentatively, she reaches for him, a hand settling lightly on his knee. "Are you... okay?"

"Kind of paranoid, kid." Who cares what the rest of the room sees him do? If they come looking for a fight, they'll get one. And if anyone's planning on ganging up on a grade-school kid, Logan doubts he'll be the only one calling foul on that.

His gaze falls on the tablecloth when he feels a hand on his knee, frowning like that'll make his sight go through to where the kid's steadying herself against him. And then his eyes are on those sunken brown ones staring at him. He doesn't have much experience with kids, but this one seems off. "I'm short some potatoes. Here, wipe your hand off."

Where'd the first napkin go? Hell if he knows. He gives her another one, putting it directly into the hand that needs cleaning.

She wipes off her hand dolefully, before tossing it on the ground. Then she leans closer, sniffing the air. "You are not sick," she says, quietly and barely believing it. "I can't smell it."

She wants to be happy about this, but Logan's moods are impossible to predict, and he seems strange. Stranger than she remembers him. More like the man in the books she read as a child, and yet, also less. It's upsetting and confusing and she holds the information inside herself, waiting so she can react later, when it's safer.

Of course he's not sick--when's he ever been sick? Tired, cold, (briefly) injured, but he's never so much as had the sniffles. And the way she's talking...something about it doesn't sit right. She's looking at him like she figured he'd be something else, someone else.

He gives another sniff, no subtlety at all. Still familiar. Still a complete unknown. "Who are you?"

He doesn't remember? She remembers the time when Angel died in issue #524 and came back with no memories. Maybe it's like that.

She could say her name, but it would have no meaning to him, if that's the case. Names aren't what connect them, anyway. It's more than that.

She raises a fist, and shifts her body so it's hidden between her shoulders and the table. You'd have to be standing right next to them to see the claws begin to slowly extend from her knuckles. She watches his face the entire time, searching.

"Laura," she says.

Logan stares at her hands, feeling the ache in his own knuckles as her claws break the skin. It's an action as familiar as breathing, made bizarre by the fact that it's happening on somebody else.

"Put those away." Jesus Christ, kid, you want people to lose their minds? Turning away from the other diners isn't going to be enough to keep people from noticing a ten-year-old with knives coming out of her hand. His voice is rough again, urgent. "Who are you?"

A name isn't an explanation. Not for those.

She does as she's told for once, because she understands the logic of it. At the very least, she knows she's taking a risk. But she had to show him.

"Laura," she says again, a tad impatient. "No other names." She was never given any. She isn't even supposed to have this one. But she refuses to go by X-23.

laura | x-men | ota | hover spanish for translations.

a.

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dreams

d. un: madrid

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too lazy for hover, have italics for Spanish

sounds good!

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