Guide Orchid, whose current life is measured in hours, through a world that violently transformed the very day it came into awareness. Humanity will survive this, but not unchanged.
That sound is so annoying. Shrill, repetitive, completely out of sync with the red light that keeps flashing through your closed eyelids, making you wince and groan. What is that? You open your eyes and immediately regret it; pain makes your vision swim, aggravating the pain in your head and in your body. The room is dark and yet everything is entirely too bright - that sweeping red light, coming from somewhere up, refracts off of hundreds of tiny somethings right into your fuckin' eyes, and you close them again.
Deep breath.
That was a mistake too. You choke wetly, cough violently. Something is in your throat. Your eyes fly open as you roll wholly onto your stomach, and you cough again. It's still lodged in your throat. One more time; you hack out a spray of bright red blood, mixed with slivers that hit the floor and shatter, scattering into bright, sharp dust that sits light atop the small puddle of blood. That doesn't seem like it should be happening, right? You try to breathe, and end up spitting for awhile, until your throat will finally listen to you. Still, every little bit of air you take in hurts...
Let's take stock. That's what you're supposed to do in an emergency, right? It'd be easier to think if that damn sound and that damn light - alarm. That's an alarm. Oh. Oh shit, this really is an emergency, okay, take stock. The tile floor of the room you're in, you know that too, this is a restroom, you're on a roll. You're on the floor in a restroom, something is reflecting the lights of the alarm, and you're hurt. Things could be better. Where are you?
Wheeeere are you?
Okay, no answers yet. Let's try a self-check, a self-check will help. You're injured, obviously, that would be all the pain. Probably fell on the floor, hence the pain in your head and the warm trickle of what you're pretty sure is blood down the side of said head and onto your neck. But head wounds are always bleeders, even when they're minor, right? Yeah. Yes! You remember that. So. Maybe that can wait for a second.
You take stock of the rest of yourself and some things aren't there that you're pretty sure ought to be there. You're missing...
Pick 3
[ ] Your right eye
[ ] Your left arm
[ ] Your identity
[ ] Your privacy
[ ] Your voice
[ ] Your reflection
[ ] Your shadow
Welcome to the party. It's been a hot minute since I ran a quest, and this will be my first here on SV. We'll see how it goes. Some information to help y'all get on:
Timing: I have a relatively regular work schedule, but at the same time I've got the project planning skills of a rabid squirrel with a sugar high. My goal is to provide updates before and after work, but I'll be real y'all will just need to get used to an irregular update schedule until or unless I suddenly and without warning gain control of my life.
Voting: Majority rules. On most votes write-ins will be accepted; here in character de-creation, they will not be.
System: Pure narrative. Not really much to explain here, either I'm still good at this or I'm not.
Tallying: This is, again, my first time on SV. I do wanna learn how to use the auto-tally but while I figure that out and/or get advice votes may need to be counted by hand. My apologies.
You are missing your Identity, Reflection, and Shadow. All trace of who you were is erased, and who knows if it will ever return or if 'return' can even be called the right word.
You are now Zero Hours Old.
Okay. All of your bits seem to be here, which is probably good. You slowly stagger to your feet, gingerly using the sink to get up; you have to brush bits of broken glass from its rim before you can really get a grip, and standing gets you protests from your back and knees, who have been enjoying the hospitality of the cold tile floor. The bathroom mirror has seen better days; only the outer rim still clings to the frame, and the rest of it seems to be all over the bathroom. You try to check your face in what's left and get a whole lot of nothing. Maybe the room is too dark? Except the alarm sure is giving you enough light to see by...
That's fine. You look down at yourself to use your eyes. First problem: your clothes are ruined. Second problem: you still don't know where you are. There's a lanyard around your neck, with a nametag in the center of your chest, and splinters of glass that have peppered your breasts. That should probably hurt more, but you realize why it doesn't when you gingerly attempt to brush one away; you're wearing like three layers up top plus a bra? Okay. That's a lot of layers. And the nametag says -
Nothing. The picture is blank. The information is gone. Where a barcode logically belongs is just a faint outline where a barcode should have been printed and absolutely was not. The only useful bit of text says Threshold Innovations Ltd; it doesn't even say what kind of employee should be wearing the tag. Fuck.
But you know your name, right?
...Right?
RIGHT?
Your breathing is getting faster. Okay. Let's try something else. You're a....
No, job title isn't coming to you.
Gender? Okay. That should be easy. Your gender is -
Come on, you know this. Surely there's a hint somewhere here? You furiously brush glass from your top and your skirt and try to think about what evidence you have on hand for even this much self-identity and come up empty. FUCK! Okay. What in the movie amnesia is this? At least you're physically fine, just gotta brush this last bit of glass off your top. It's a bigger chunk, but it seems to be just as shallow as the others -
You can feel it, when you touch it. As if it's part of your flesh. It doesn't hurt; the wedge of glass should, by rights, probably be soaking your layers (why three and underwear? Who the fuck was running around in this body?) with blood, but even when you unwisely grip it by the flats of the wedge and try to pull the worst thing that happens is you manage to make your breast kinda lift in an uncomfortable way. It's not coming out. Okay. Keep that in mind. There's a chunk of glass in the right side of your chest and it's not coming out. Don't slam into any walls.
Deep breaths, Whoever You Are. We're getting out of here.
You check your shoes, heavy leather work boots that do not go with this stripe-y, skirt-y, thigh-high-leggings kinda outfit, and find the insides blessedly free of glass. The floor crunches as you stagger towards the bathroom door, and push it open into a locker room. One of the lockers is open and unlocked, just one of the maybe twelve in here, and you sit heavily on the bench near it.
Could that alarm shut the fuck up?
Not that you know or will ever know, but there's things missing from this locker. Still, something useful remains...
You find your bag. Then,pick 2 to KEEP. You will LOSE the rest.
[ ] Your gun
[ ] Your locket
[ ] Your phone (no signal in here, though)
[ ] Your knife
[ ] Your maps
[ ] Your subway pass
[ ] Your letter of acceptance to university
[ ] Your cigarettes and lighter
[ ] A lover's photograph
This locker is shockingly empty, though only the telltale whiff of tobacco tells you that anything of interest to you used to be in here other than what's currently inside of it. The scent is identifiable to your mind but not particularly special; however, your body immediately pangs, informing you of all the aches and pains you're currently experiencing, the amount of stress you're under, and how much a good smoke would really fix that. There's got to be cigarettes somewhere, right? Or chew? Or snuff? Or something?
The phone you scoop up is half-dead, and the charger is nowhere to be seen. It has no signal. Quickly opening up the text messages shows that the contacts list is empty, and attempting to open up some of the conversations gives you a stabbing migraine; just about anywhere you would see someone else say the name of the owner is a sharp-bright blank space that Cannot Be, and its absence pulls at your vision not unlike someone pulling your arm out of its socket. Ow. Interestingly, a few names the phone's owner tried to say also evidence this effect, though a few stand out; Karl, Nattie, Jessica, Mrs. Monroe, and Hoch all have extensive conversations, all shot through with that strange eye-pulling effect. Still, some things can be gleaned immediately - you used to talk with these people all the time, some more friendly than others. Jessica's gotta be real friendly based on the number of images that won't load which are immediately preceded with "PORN WARNING DO NOT OPEN AT WORK". Huh.
The fucking gun is a little confusing. It's a beast, a heavy five-shot revolver in a bottom barrel style. Not sure why you know what that means, but what it means is it shoots big, heavy bullets, two-handed kinda gun. It's loaded, and there are five more rounds in the bottom of the bag. Just as you're getting to ask yourself, who brings a gun to work, you look at the side of the barrel and see Property of Threshold Innovations Ltd. etched there.
That's.
Okay. You stash the gun in the shoulder bag along with the phone and set the bag on the bench you're sitting on. You don't really have time to re-dress right now, even if there was spare clothing you had easy access to, but there's a clean labcoat hanging on a rack and you swipe it immediately, throwing it on and buttoning it up to restore your mildly breached modesty. The breast pocket has a cupcake in a plastic bag, which you tear open and devour immediately before you can consciously choose not to; your body knows what it needs. You sling the bag over your shoulder and push your way out of the only other door in this room.
You're in some kind of corporate laboratory. Why do you know this? No, can't think about that now, your head already hurts. And also it still looks a bit wrong. Most labs should be tiled, clean, sterile, right? But this place has nice soft carpets that must be a bitch to keep clean, and which are soiled with blood and shards of glass. Banks of computer monitors hooked up to massive instruments of some kind ("Ontological wave detectors" your useless memory supplies) are in evidence, or they would be if every single screen hadn't exploded from the inside out. Seated at the chairs are some manner of odd glass sculpture; they're only intact from the waist down, with the torsos of the...human?...figures in, at best, chunks all over the floor. Some fragments are identifiable as sculpted clothing, others as limbs, bits of faces, and other such details.
One of the pairs of legs has elegantly-carved glass intestines, clearer than sweet water, protruding from it.
Slowly, you take the gun out of the bag, and you're just about to lay your finger on the trigger when a smooth, reassuring voice, odd - mechanical, that's it, this is a recording - comes out of the same speakers blaring the alarm:
T Minus Fifteen Minutes To Impact. All Personnel, Please Evacuate The Facility. T Minus Fifteen Minutes To Impact. All Personnel, Please Evacuate The Facility.
Impact? Don't you want shelter for impact? You look around quickly and spot windows or what used to be windows; they, too, have shattered outward, leaving the blinds in front of them whipping in the night wind. You run over to look outside and determine a few things immediately.
First, and most relevant: You are six stories up.
Second: there is a city in the distance, a sprawling metropolis huddled around a saltwater bay. If any of the buses were working it'd be a twenty-minute bus ride (why do you know that?) but, you see -
Third: The highway is choked with cars, none of which are moving. Many are on, and more than a few are on fire, but their asses are not moving, which, speaking of:
Fourth: A good chunk of the city is also on fire.
"Fuck my life," you whisper aloud. You turn and start looking for the stairs, moving as fast as you can with both hands on that big gun. You pass an elevator, and against all odds it seems to be powered and not on fire, but elevators are supposed to not be used in emergencies, right?
What do people in wheelchairs do, then?
Not the time. If the elevator is here, the stairs have to be close. And indeed, they are; around one more corner you see a heavy steel door with what used to be a thick safety glass window set high into it; the glass has shattered towards the stairwell, leaving behind nothing in the frame, but there's a sculpture here of a fleeing person in an expression of agony. They aren't wearing a labcoat; in fact they seem to not be in any kind of uniform, save for a lanyard a lot like yours which is not made of glass. You get closer and crouch to look at the lanyard; the tag on the end of it says Nicole Bartman, Custodial Staff.
You're hearing a voice from somewhere, panicked, desperate: I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die -
Confused, you peer into the stairwell, but the voice isn't coming from there. You try the door anyway and find that it's secured by an electronic lock; your absence of barcode on your lanyard gets you less than nowhere with it. You go towards the statue to take that lanyard, and the voice you're hearing shrieks in terror. You hesitate, trying to focus on its desperate sobbing, and...and...
Oh. Gods above. It's the statue.
Action (Pick 1)
[ ] Shoot the electronic lock
[ ] Take Nicole's keycard
[ ] Take the elevator
You've lost something, haven't you?
Pick 2 to LOSE; KEEP the rest
[ ] First aid training
[ ] Time at the gun range
[ ] Tinkering
[ ] A certain artistic bent
[ ] A talent for dream logic
You are unaware that you have lost anything, as of yet. The current situation has not called for making or fixing anything, or given much rise to an artistic urge. But you'll feel the lack later. Something is missing that ought to be there. Something has died inside you. A castle made of clouds, perhaps.
But you've kept some practical skills, and maybe a bit of an impractical one. If you can't get back what was lost...well, there's always prose.
"Shh, shh it's okay," you try to tell the statue. Your voice is sorta like the statue's? And sorta like the soothing voice of that 'impact' announcement, light and kinda higher-pitched sorta? Yours is a little rougher than the statue's, but then, you coughed a bunch of shit out of your aching throat a couple minutes ago, so. There's that?
Don't, please, don't don't -
"I need access to the stairwell, I'll be careful not to knock you over," you whisper, way quieter than the statue is being - Nicole, if that is its name, is practically shrieking when it isn't sobbing in abject terror. You go to lift the lanyard, and stop when its voice screams; you reflexively pull back, raising your hands to protect yourself from blows that aren't coming. That alarm is still sounding, and between that and the voice the pain behind your eyes is only getting worse. Stay calm.
Stay calm. It's important, in an emergency, to stay calm. You drag your hands down your face, take a deep breath that hurts your throat even more, and grasp the lanyard in both hands.
And then 'Nicole' says something.
You're not sure what, because the very first thing the statue says in its sentence hurts like nothing else has in your three minutes of life. The sound Cannot Be, it is a jagged, sharp null pointer in your perceptions that slashes right into your mind. You cry out and pull away, and the little clip on the back of the lanyard, a tiny metal frog clip, it just comes undone exactly as it's designed to. The statue's voice shrieks in agony; it vibrates, and then shatters into thousands upon thousands of glass chunks, some of which spray onto you. You stare in disbelief, vision swimming with pain, for almost a minute.
In the end, it's the warm, wet feeling of blood seeping out of the glass that brings you back to yourself. You brush it off your labcoat in a panic, but you're far too late; the white coat is soaked through in red, clinging to your partially-shredded clothes, and you can feel the sticky iron taint of human(?) blood on your skin. The screaming has stopped, forever. The voice is gone.
You have taken your first life. You have lost something you have no name for. You are four minutes old.
Deep breaths. You have to stay calm. It's important, in an emergency, to stay calm. You stagger back, slowly, until your ass touches the cold metal of the stairwell door. You jolt in pure terror before you realize what you're touching, and with fumbling hands you swipe the keycard that says Nicole Bartman in the electronic lock; it flashes from red to green, and the door audibly unlocks. You yank it open with indecent speed and rush inside, taking the stairs down as fast as you dare. Even over the alarm (that damn alarm, your head hurts so much...) your heavy boots clomp and stomp and clatter on steel steps that have not been designed for comfort. Your aching knees and back do not appreciate this course of action at all.
One flight down. Two flights down. Three flights down before you encounter an obstacle; some kind of glass construct or maybe a growth, almost crystalline, blocks the stairwell. The glass itself is clearer than sweet water, just like the statues, but it is absolutely coated in a thin sheen of red liquid and tattered flesh; even as you start to process, as your mind unwillingly tries to determine just how many people would be needed to produce all that...waste...a spike of glass shudders and grows another four inches towards the door back into the offices. You swipe 'Nicole's' keycard to open the way out and stumble through the door and into some kind of food court. There are a pair of voices; one is deeper, with a pleasant bass rumble, or at least it would be pleasant if it wasn't sobbing. It belongs to a burly statue seated at one of the tables near the shattered windows, with an intricate beard of curly hair that goes down to its chest and glasses that have little cat paws on the rims. Across the table from that statue is another; its voice is more like yours or Nicole's, and it is attempting to be comforting, to shush its compatriot.
You try to focus. That shushing is terrified. What is it scared of?
The answer click-clacks across the tile floor of this incongruously high-up cafeteria. You almost think it's a rat at first, but you're pretty sure rats aren't five feet high at the shoulder, don't have glass components in their flesh, and are supposed to have two or less eyes and not, as a random, nonspecific example, two or less eyes per square foot of visible fur. As the beast snuffles the ground, its whiskers chime beautifully with every downward motion, ringing out like pretty little bells whenever they touch the tile. Its face is already slick with blood.
You check your gun. Still loaded...but there could be more of these things, and the flight of stairs on the other side of the building is just across the room. Is this your problem?
As you LOSE, you can also gain. You've lost quite a lot already, and have up to two GIFTS available. When the option appears to gain a GIFT, you can cash it in and receive...something. Something useful to the situation at hand which will then stick around. It might not always be something that belongs here; perhaps you may even come to regret receiving it. But it will always be handy right now. These GIFTS are in addition to any potential advantages or backhanded powers you gain from your LOSSES such as, for instance, being able to sneak up on people who are looking at mirrors due to losing your reflection.
Action - Pick 1
[ ] Open fire; of course this is your problem, these people(?) are terrified!
[ ] Sneak past while the rat(?) feasts. You are not going to get a better chance, and that evacuation warning was very clear.
[ ] You've gained a GIFT, haven't you? (Cash in 1 GIFT)
You swallow past the dryness in your mouth and the scraping pain in your throat, and resolve to sneak past. You hold very still, and your patience is...
...Rewarded might be a strong word. Gleaming, reflective teeth gnaw into the glass arm of the bearded statue, and that deep bass voice cries out in agony. With every bite comes a tinkling crunch of something shattering and calving away, followed by the obscene chewing of the thing that is not enough like a rat. Blood flows freely from its mouth, and from the injured innocent you have willfully sacrificed to preserve your own life and your own ammunition. You can feel your gorge rising, and you close your eyes to focus on breathing through your nose. You can't afford to draw attention right now, and it's, it's already done. This person(?) won't be less dead if you act now. You already killed it.
You. Already killed it. Gods above...
The going is relatively slow, if you don't want these heavy boots to alert the rat. You shuffle and slide until you can get to some tray liners that have fallen all over the floor, which gets you a better turn of speed; with them under your feet, you no longer have to worry about accidentally creating a giant squeal with the soles of your boots. You reach the door to the other stairwell just as that soothing recording comes on over the speakers again:
T-Minus Ten Minutes To Impact. All Personnel, Please Evacuate The Facility. Repeat, T-Minus Ten Minutes To Impact. All Personnel, Please Evacuate The Facility.
Fuck. You swipe Nicole's keycard and slip into the stairwell; the heavy door closes behind you, and you breathe in a sigh of relief that is destined to be short-lived; the rat(?) hits the steel behind you at full force, and while the door holds - and the creature shrieks in pain as the glassy parts of its body crack and splinter - you're already taking the stairs down two at a time, shrieking in shock and feeling a strange, hot wetness on your cheeks.
Tears. Those are tears. You remember what tears are...
One flight. Two. This should be the first floor, but as you go to open the door on this landing you quickly realize that another of those odd, crystalline growths of glass is pushing its way into the steel, and the steel is slowly losing. The door above you is still shaking with impacts, so there's only really one choice.
Down one more flight, into the basement. Or possibly the ground floor? C'mon, you remember enough to realize there's gods you can pray to, surely you can remember an average building layout. Any time now. Any time. No? You can go fuck yourself? Fine.
It's dark down here, and while the light from the alarm is playing the shrill sound of it is blessedly gone. You swipe the keycard and slip inside, raising your gun immediately, but there doesn't seem to be anything moving. No screens down here, but no people either; instead there are variations on the same sort of model, displaying what you know to be the planet you're on (Domus), but after that you're drawing a lot of blanks about what exactly is being modeled in painstaking analogue detail. You approach slowly, curiosity giving you anything to think about but the three people(?) you condemned to die in terror and pain, and try for a closer look. It's not a weather model, and while you don't think you're an expert on air travel you're pretty sure these aren't flight paths either. For that matter, the other "large" object in the model very much isn't the moon...
A new voice comes on the speakers; it's low, husky, and in pain, and yet somehow soothing. Your body knows this voice, even if you don't. It feels...safe.
"Nicole?" the voice says, in confusion. "I'm reading your keycard moving through the facility - when you didn't evacuate with the first wave I...well, nevermind that. You need to leave soon, but since you're here still I need you in my office as soon as possible. Don't walk, run. Straight ahead from the stairwell, turn right on the opposite wall, it's the corner office. I know you usually clean the upper -" The voice devolves into wet, hacking coughs. "...Hurry, please. You should still have time to evacuate."
You look at all that distance across this floor, and then you look at a sign that points you towards the Parking Garage. Chances are the cars aren't working, based on the highway, but if it's vital that you evacuate you can always just sprint outside.
Pick 1 to LOSE
[ ] The certainty of safety
[ ] The chance at answers
You've been playing it safe, and all you've gotten is a new ache in your heart that has nothing to do with the glass over it. Maybe you can save this one. Maybe you can't. Maybe it has answers. Maybe it doesn't. But maybe, just maybe, who dares will win.
Run, don't walk, the comforting voice had said. So you run, sprinting hellbent to follow its directions. You almost slam into the opposite wall in your enthusiasm, but you manage to course-correct before that unhappy circumstance can come about. The corner office is easy to spot, and you're fully intending to just burst in, but the name on it is that sharp-bright absence that Cannot Be, and the pain that lances behind your eyes makes you stop and avert your gaze. You feel your gorge rise again, and you cough out a thin stream of saliva and blood that pools thickly into the carpet.
Breathing hard, you push the ajar door open and enter gun-first. There is another one of those models here, bigger, more intricate, with even more analogue devices that seem to be serving as controls. The figure standing at those controls is wearing a labcoat just as ruined as yours; it is, unmistakably, human, tall and rail-thin with stubble marking its gaunt face. Spines of glass, thinner than a promise, sharper than a lover's curse, jut out from its body, and from those wounds red, red blood soaks into its labcoat and drops thickly onto the device.
"Nicole," that pained voice says, without turning. "I could have sworn that -" The next word scrambles your mind, sends you staggering and reeling; you barely manage to hold yourself up against the wall, crying out in agony. The cupcake you ate earlier comes back up in messy chunks that leave you feeling hollow and awful, and the world swims and tilts. That voice is saying something, but you can't tell what, not when you feel like you're going to die...
Your senses swim back in, slowly. There's something running down your cheeks from your eyes, and when you wipe it away, there's blood on your hand.
"...You aren't Nicole," the person at the controls says softly. Soothingly. "Nor, I think, are you the other person who comes to mind. I wish I could be meeting you under better circumstances." It coughs, wetly, barely supporting itself against the device that it has, for the moment, paused working with. "Still, it won't do to be remiss. Welcome to your new home. It will..." The person smiles, or tries to. "It will be a bit of a fixer-upper."
You try to say 'what' and manage a wet croak. You cough to clear your throat, fail, and cough again; a mixture of fluids splatters into the room's carpet. "What's happening?" you whisper. "What's going on?"
"If this were one of my..." the person pauses. It seems to reconsider a word choice. "If this were a videogame such as I've been told of, this would be where I tell you there is no time to explain. And there isn't; however, for these purposes the gods have given us digital recording. Come here." It turns, hands gliding over the controls, looking for something, while you approach. The person finds whatever it's looking for and holds it up; your aching head takes a moment, and then resolves into information: this is a data splinter, or just a splinter, they replaced the thumb drive some, what, eight years back? Your phone can probably accept it. You take the tiny, pointed storage device between a clean thumb and forefinger, and shakily set your gun down so you can dig out the phone and work on slotting it in.
The person keeps talking: "You will need to evacuate soon or you will not survive long enough to be part of the first generation of novel alien life now native to Domus. Again, my apologies." It coughs again, and turns to the controls, continuing what it's doing. "My hope is that the refraction on Impact will revive the survivors in this building, but I can't bet on that...please listen closely. I'm having to rethink the advice I was planning on giving."
To Nicole. Who did not survive you.
"Hurry," you plead, as you finally manage to find the little plastic shield on the back of your phone. There's already a splinter in one of the slots, with PICS 4 JESSIE scrawled onto the side in tiny, neat, beautiful handwriting; the dots over the i's are little butterflies. You lay the bottom end of the new splinter in first, then gently press in the top until it clicks before sliding the shield shut. Phone back in the bag. Gun back in your hands.
The person spares you a look of...sorrow? Compassion? "Listen closely. Homo sapiens is finished as it was known. My species had a good run, but it will not survive the Impact unchanged. It is therefore vital to ensure the continuity of humanity, the preservation of our knowledge, culture, and morals. Don't -" it coughs again, and breathes hard, eyes fluttering. You step closer, trying to find a spot you can pat it on, help hold it up with, but those spines of glass...
It finds itself again. "Don't think I'm putting the weight of the world on your shoulders. There are already contingencies. Others will be attending to things, trying to help...Everlasting Lady, I did not come prepared to make first contact with novel alien life. I sincerely hope that one day in the far future you think back to this meeting and think me terribly incompetent."
You bite back cruel words to that effect. He does not seem competent right now. "Actionable plan please?" you plead in a hoarse whisper.
"Yes! Yes, of course - listen closely. Leave this office. The parking garage will be the closest exit. Flee as far and as fast as you can, at least to the yellow lines at the edge of the property, but don't stop running. You won't be able to escape Impact, but there's a distance at which you can ride the resulting refraction. It is vitally important that you concentrate on what it is you want or need most. Anything will do. Something you're curious about, art, carnal pleasure, a meal, it doesn't matter as long as you concentrate. If you survive, the splinter will have...context. Do you understand?"
You try to answer. Can't. Nod instead.
T-Minus Five Minutes To Impact. All Personnel, Please Evacuate The Facility. Repeat, T-Minus Five Minutes To Impact. All Personnel, Please Evacuate The Facility.
"I'm not going to make it," the person whispers. "Maybe I'll survive the refraction, but if I were you I'd stay away from this place for a good while. Go. Run."
You reach for it again, and with surprising strength it swats your hand away. "Go!" it repeats.
So you go.
You go through the basement (offices? Labs?). Your legs burn as you slide during the transition into the asphalt of the parking garage, which is slick in that way asphalt gets after rain, when the oils soaked into it rise to the surface. You sprint past cars where every bit of glass inside is shattered; you try not to look at bodies slumped over with mirror-shards in their throats and faces, try not to hear the voices of statues pleading not to die. You emerge into the night air, and with no other direction to run towards, you start sprinting for the burning city by the bay in the distance.
All around you, in the grasses that surround the road, are tall poles with speakers mounted on them. That voice that is sort of like yours, but not like the impaled person's, is still speaking, informing you that there is one minute to Impact. You cross the yellow "line" (the letters TIL spray-painted onto the grass, over and over again, forming a boundary) at T-Minus Twenty Seconds, with your lungs burning.
The mirror shard in your breast is getting warmer.
T-Minus Ten.
A dip in the grass; you go flying forward and into a roll you didn't know was trained until just now, springing back to your feet with only minor additional pain in your shoulders and back. Every breath saws at your throat.
T-Minus Nine.
You have to focus. What do you want? Answers? Your identity? Safety? Comfort? Some fucking nicotine?
T-Minus Eight.
The highway is making noise too. Voices from statues trapped in their cars. Fires licking away at metal. Here, and there, a car explodes in the distance, and you cut away from the highway to put some distance between you and any shrapnel.
T-Minus Six.
A thought occurs to you; you wrench your bag off your shoulder and bundle it to your chest so you can rip it open. The gun, you need to -
T-Minus Five.
- Unload the gun in case you come in hot and hit something, a misfire could kill you just as well as this Impact. You push the cylinder out and rattle that bitch around until the bullets fall out -
T-Minus Four.
- Good enough, you shut the bag tight, sling it back over your shoulder, keep running, keep running, don't stop -
T-Minus Three.
- Really wish you had more time to figure out what to focus on, no pressure, it's just your life. Is it even your life? Is this your body? Is 'you', you, or are you a blank template for someone else to fill back in? -
T-Minus Two.
"Everlasting Lady, I don't want to die," you sob, between heaving breaths.
T-Minus One.
On nameless instinct, you come down hard, and leap -
Impact.
The world before you splinters, comes up all in shards like a smashed mirror; the sound is almighty, beyond your ability to describe, there is a terrible feeling of rushing. Before your very eyes the city you're running towards falls away like glass from a frame, and behind it is another city, similar and yet so very different.
Refraction.
Losses
Your identity
Your reflection
Your shadow
Your innocence
Your locket
Your acceptance letter
Your subway pass
Your maps
Your cigarettes and lighter
A lover's photograph
Your knife
A certain artistic bent
Your talents at tinkering
Assets
Your good health (barely scratched the paint)
Your privacy
Your gun (property of Threshold Innovations, Ltd.)
10 .45 caliber bullets
Your phone (riddled with conversations you cannot fully read)
A data splinter from a mysterious person whose voice is not like yours
A keycard once belonging to Nicole Bartman.
First Aid training
A talent for dream logic
Time at the gun range
Access to Three Gifts.
Despite your own fears, you do manage to focus on things that might be important to you. But some are, obviously, less important. What kind of place do you want to go to?
Pick 4 to LOSE; GAIN the rest.
[ ] Access to immediate survival needs
[ ] Access to practical knowledge
[ ] Convenient access to your FUCKING nicotine
[ ] Someone who needs your skills
[ ] A friend
[ ] A defensible position
[ ] Someone to take charge
[ ] Access to ammunition
[ ] Access to medicine
End Prologue: Impact
You Are Eighteen Minutes Old
"So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go."
You're only eighteen minutes old. You've known nothing but stress, strife, and pain that entire time. The idea of a safe haven is so foreign to you that even trying to want it fails; you can't envision one. The first person(?) who relied on you died at your hands, and the next died of your neglect, hopefully never knowing that it was abandoned; you can't have that again, not so soon, not when your heart hurts this much.
As for the nicotine, that tobacco smell was nice, but you don't understand your need. You will, though. Soon enough, you will. There will be a butcher's bill to pay, should you choose to do battle with withdrawal symptoms and survival at the same time. Won't there?
The sensation you are experiencing is unpleasant but, praise be to Merciful Mara (why do you know god names?), not painful. Well, most of it isn't painful. The shard of glass in your breast is, in fact, extremely painful; it's burning your flesh, expanding outward and inward, and for a long moment you're certain that you're going to die. At the same time, you are swept up in...something. Your mind processes it like a current, or a geyser, or even a waterslide (why is that sensation identifiable?), but your body keeps trying to report that all of those things are completely wrong and what the fuck are you even on. The double-think strains your thought processes and makes your nose bleed; spherical drops of crimson are swept away into something that is not quite enough like a current, whisked away to who-knows-where, but wherever they go, it's not where you land.
It was night when the Impact hit. You go careening into an asphalt parking lot just after midday, who knows how long later, but it only felt like moments to you. You have to hit the ground running, stumbling, staggering, and -
- That's some kind of half-glass dog sprinting right at your face -
- You grab it on reflex, whirl with the momentum you're barely winning the fight against, and slam the creature directly into a parked truck's bumper. The glass parts of its body shatter instantly, followed by the wet crunch of bone and a spray of black blood. The force of the blow is enough to get you to stop moving, and you whirl around, looking for more creatures, more danger. You find none.
There is good news and bad news. The good news is, you're in the parking lot of a large building that proclaims itself to be Jillian's Farm & Fleet; the name tickles your memory, some kind of franchise hardware and animal supply store. There will be power tools, normal tools, seeds, soil, tractors, clothes, coats, more clothes, socks, more coats, even more coats, medicine, first aid kits, snacks, a limited supply of groceries, even more coats, hats, and maybe even guns inside. Getting even better, attached to the place to the west is a Dirty Dick's Crab Shack, and the neon light flickering in its destroyed window means the power is on, which means the seafood is still refrigerated, which means real food, maybe even running water. Potable water? Let's not get ahead of ourselves, but if there's water and power and stoves, you can make potable water. Can you get roof access? You could garden, with roof access and some books...
Then we hit the mixed news. This location, as you look around and walk a shaky patrol of the parking lot, seems relatively isolated. Some fucking super genius designed this place as almost a cul-de-sac in the midst of a snarl of freeways, which in turn are choked by cars ranging from "burnt-out husks" to "merely not currently moving". Getting here on foot might be half an hour of walking from the closest real part of the city, but that's all the defenses you have to speak of; the windows on all parts of this building are huge, on the ground level, and also only contain enough glass to be a hazard to someone's health. If you want to hold this place, there will be a butcher's bill to pay; you can't keep anyone or anything else out except through violence.
You weep openly when you finally step through the front doors; someone locked them on their way out, not that it matters at all since the sliding doors have no glass in them. You were anticipating months of staving off scurvy in a desperate attempt to get something decent to grow before the Everlasting Lady claimed you for her realm of dreams; instead, the first thing you see is that where the impulse buy section for garden seeds goes in the front is instead a small, strange garden. All that missing glass from the front windows? It's here, formed into planter boxes or crushed into a strange dust that seems to form soil. Plants of stem, leaf, and steel grow out of that odd earth, and they are already bearing fruit. On a nameless instinct, you pick one, something glimmering and half-translucent that isn't enough like a tomato, and you take a single bite, confident for reasons you could not describe at gunpoint. The flesh is soft and yielding, impossibly so, and its juices run down your chin as your body's ecstatic reaction informs you that you have, it seems, a garden. It's all you can do to force yourself not to eat until you become sick. You're not sure where your medical knowledge came from or why it survived...whatever happened, but it's pretty firm on that front. You don't even know how hurt you are -
- Oh. Right.
Gingerly you peel away the soaked and bloody lab coat, and then your soaked and bloody top, and then your soaked and bloody top, and then your soaked and bloody top, and then your soaked and bloody bra so that you can inspect where the shard of glass was. The news there is mixed too. There's. There's a window in your breast. That's the only way you can think of to describe it. On your right breast, just over your heart, there is a thick window made of glass, and when you touch it you can feel it, as if it were part of your flesh. The window provides a view to your heart, which is pounding away faster than it should be. Stress, right? Yeah. Stress.
Wait.
The heart is on your right side? That...
Nevermind. There's no time to get existential. You need to bathe, you need to dress, you need - you need a lot of things.
Fashion - Pick 3 for your usual fit
[ ] POCKETS POCKETS POCKETS
[ ] Form-concealing
[ ] Protective layers (as a note, it is currently spring, or at least it feels like spring)
[ ] Skirts! With pockets!
[ ] Hoodies! With one huge pocket!
[ ] A truly concerning number of trinkets and accessories that have all the flair and dignity of a freeway truck stop
Weapon - Pick 1 for your usual carry
[ ] Load up on the limited stock of .45 rounds that your revolver will take; the weapon is quite familiar to you.
[ ] There's a LOT more ammo for the bolt-actions here, even if learning to use one properly will make some noise.
[ ] There is also a lot of ammo for these FUCKING CROSSBOWS? HELLO? And you can practice with those much more quietly!
You lose most of the first day to treating your various wounds, figuring out doses on painkillers, and realizing that whatever cigarettes were in this building have been thoroughly turned to glass and shattered during the Impact. That turns out to be the last straw, and the sight of it makes you sob yourself to sleep. You wake up in the middle of the night, in no small part because the constant, irregular chatter of gunfire in the rest of the city has stopped for an unusual amount of time. You lay there, eyes open and staring, not moving, ears straining...and then it resumes. That's good. All is right with the world. There is nothing indicative of trauma in that mental sentence.
The next day begins the hunt for other supplies. You have access to a lot of books and magazines, or at least many copies of the same couple dozen books and magazines. Almanacs, gun magazines, hunting magazines, gardening books and magazines, plant identification, even some "prepper guides" which you have an instinctive revulsion for but might contain some useful advice. Scratch that, do contain some useful advice, they're the first thing you found here that lets you know how to make water fucking drinkable for sure. You find power cords and at least four generators, though there's no fuel for them on-site; thankfully the lights are still on, somehow. In a related story, the impulse buy section produces a charger for that phone, which lets you listen to the first of the messages left on that data spli -
- Someone's coming up the freeway.
You post up behind the hood of a truck in the parking lot and raise a pair of binoculars to your eyes. Thus far you have met one human and several statues shaped like a human, and been shorter than all of them. That track record is unbroken; this person, who is running as if for its life, is taller than most of the cars it's running past. Wait, no, not running, bouncing; its legs from the knee down have been replaced with some kind of prosthetic that was either glass to begin with or turned into glass, and it is proving surprisingly flexible and resilient. What those prosthetics are not proving, however, is to be faster than the pack of things that are not enough like dogs which are chasing it. Something in your chest wrenches, and you exhale, slowly. You were scared before. You were desperate before. You were actively bleeding, before. But now you've had one whole night's rest, you've stitched yourself up, you've studiously ignored the fact that you cast no shadow in defiance of all physical laws, you're ready. You can do this. You can help another person.
Name what you're willing to lose
[ ] Ammunition
[ ] Your good health
[ ] One Gift
As a reminder, the Gifts you receive will stay with you. They may, therefore, continue to prove useful.
Begin Part 1: Aftershocks
You are nineteen hours old
"Behind everything simple is a long tail of complicated."
Five dogs, five shots, right? Yeah. You're confident.
You're going to need to get closer to intercept. You dash from car to car, staying in cover, and draw your revolver from one of the big pockets on your heavy coat. You're not entirely certain why you'd also put on a beanie that has a built-in face mask (it tucks into the hat when not in use), but having your face covered is...comforting, somehow. Maybe there's a satisfaction in knowing that if you can't know what you look like, at least no one else can either, even if long strands of auburn hair have a tendency to fall out anyway.
You whistle sharply at this new person, and it responds instantly, bouncing clear over the hood of a burnt-out car and taking the road down towards you. You raise your revolver, steady yourself against the sedan you're behind, cock the hammer...
...Get out of the way, come on, come on...
Your rescue-to-be bounces towards your right, and you open fire immediately. The first of the glass not-dogs takes the round right through its open mouth and goes down without even a yelp; the glass parts of its body crack and splinter as it slides along the asphalt. Exhale. Second shot; you shatter the shoulder of a beast and leave it bleeding out when it slams into the concrete barrier.
Eyes open along the bodies of the beasts, dozens and dozens of them, and they turn as one towards you. They do not bark, or growl, or howl, or cry out; they hunt directly towards you in determined silence. Third shot, third dog, in a spray of black blood from the chest your bullet caves in like the fist of a god.
Then they're on you.
You open the sedan door in the face of the first one when it leaps; there's a crunch of glass-on-metal, followed by the more definitive crunch of you stomping on its neck. You have to duck to avoid the leap of the last beast, and it lands in the front seat of the sedan, claws scrabbling against cheap leather, body turning -
- Too close to line up a shot -
- Your rescue wrenches the other door open and yanks the beast's tail. It turns to snap at the human's hand, which the person draws back with a yelp, but that's all the time you need; you shoot it through the spine and leave it paralyzed and whimpering on the seat.
That's dead enough. You hasten away from the car, and this new person spares a confused glance at the dog before bouncing along to catch up.
Its voice is a little like yours, but it has a pleasant drawl, like it's not in a hurry to say anything in particular. "Mighty kind of you, stranger. They woulda had me."
"Mm," you manage, walking towards the store; your body is shaking, and as the adrenaline is draining out of you, you realize just how close you came to getting really, actually hurt.
"I'm Jill, uh, Jill Hatter, it's real nice to meet ya miss....ttteeeeerrrrr.....?"
Wait, wait, you know this one. You know this one! 'Miss' is for women, 'mister' is for men -
- No, FUCK -
"Are you hurt?" you ask, to cover your ass and not have that existential crisis right now. When Jill shakes its head, you breathe a sigh of relief. "You hungry?"
"Am I ever - hey, where are you going?"
"Food."
56 .45 rounds remain.
* * * *
You take the chance to observe Jill after getting it into Dirty Dick's, where the immediately perishable foods need using; this in turn means you've thrown together big-ass salads with no particular plan, just a lot of lettuce and vegetables and some grilled fish, though after the first flank of fish turns out a bit flavorless you compensate by salting the next one entirely too fucking much. When Jill squeezes lemon over her salad, you follow suit and find that it goes some distance to rescuing your bad decision. This person is tall, as you'd noticed, six feet or more if it's an inch, and because it's so tall it seems thinner than it actually is. Jill seems to have had a hard time of it; its clothing is in tatters, marked by burns and cuts, with splinters of glass still caught in the tangle of a plaid shirt. This one, like the Nicole statue or, you know, yourself, seems to possess breasts (any hint about what that means? No? You can still go fuck yourself? Okay) and that higher-pitched quality to its voice; it keeps unnaturally red hair in a loose ponytail.
It also eats like it's starving. How long has it been since impact?
"'s rude to stare," Jill says through a mouthful of food.
"Sorry," you mutter, without stopping. "I haven't met many people."
"I guess it's been hard going since...whatever happened," Jill concedes; it touches the back of your gloved hand and favors you with a smile, and you do your best to smile back. "You really saved my bacon back there. If there's anything I can do to repay you -"
"Tobacco?"
"Nah, never touched the stuff."
Of course it hasn't. You sigh, and look around, and...
"...Wouldn't mind someone around," you admit, quietly. A lot of practical reasons for that come to mind, but in the silence of your heart you know that it's because this person has a friendly voice, and it didn't die, and something in you that you didn't know was starving has had its first taste of what you need. "...I can't figure out roof access to start a garden."
It laughs, and that sound, it's the most beautiful thing you've ever heard. Jill's face scrunches up when it laughs, and its eyes close, and it's so vulnerable in that moment that you have to bite back hot and unexpected tears. It laughs, because it believes it's safe with you. "I'm sure we can arrange somethin'...?"
...
......
Flatly, Jill speaks up again: "Bitch you got a name or what?"
OH!
FUCK -
Pick 1
[ ] A name from a magazine
[ ] Nicole Bartman
[ ] Outis...uh...Outis Threshold
[ ] Come clean; you have no name
* * * *
The dying dog whines for hours, but luckily you and Jill have the perfect distraction to set up while you pointedly ignore it, even if Jill keeps shooting you odd looks every time it makes a particularly piteous sound. One of the homesteading magazines (Throwback Living: Your Guide To A Traditional Lifestyle) has a history piece on "Eternal Soup", a famine-survival tool and centerpiece of many hearths once upon a time. You get some soup going in a huge fucking pot, keep it at least on a constant low simmer, and frequently add more ingredients and/or water to replace what is taken; as long as it's watched, and kept going, it'll never go bad. Fuel for the fire will be a problem eventually, but Jill estimates you've got about three weeks of wood right now if you use it for nothing else, and that's three weeks of making this relatively okay but soon-to-be-freezerburnt fish fucking last. The first fire, which you try to place inside the store, activates the sprinkler system and the two of you have to scramble to turn it off. You put the second out back near the loading docks.
There's some limits this places on the two of you. If either of you wants to leave for any reason, the other must stay; additionally, you'll need to sleep in shifts, to make sure the fire doesn't go out or get too cold. It's during your first watch that you pop in an earbud, just one, and access the data splinter. For its safety, and for that matter yours, Jill and you have pitched a tent near the fire, and are technically sleeping outside.
That oddly comforting voice, which is not like yours, has a faint crackle and shake; your useless mind gets out of bed to inform you that this is a result of the recording technology.
"My name is [XXXX] - " His name makes you wince, and you bite your lip to stop yourself from hissing aloud, but something about the recording makes it less painful, less...violent. So you keep listening. "You may be familiar with my work on oneiromantic containment; that is, improving the safety devices used to contain loose consequences of particularly powerful dreams. My late [XXXX] always did say that good science is rigorous, but great science helps people. I suppose being remembered as a great scientist isn't so bad for an old sociopath. Heh. I really did show them, show them all, didn't I? Hell of an exit."
"If you are listening to these recordings, you are one of the survivors of, or new life formed by, the Impact and resulting refraction. These recordings are a bit...biographical, biased, inevitably, but they should provide context for the new Domus in which you now live. If you are a member of novel alien life now native to the world once solely of humanity's dominion...well, welcome home. I hope I live long enough to bring you a housewarming gift."
"Keen-eared listeners may realize that there are recordings missing that logically belong here. If you have these recordings, my odds of survival are pretty low. Forgive me in indulging, just this once, in...what does she say...my 'supervillain disease'. I decide how I will be remembered. I sincerely wish the same for you, when your time comes."
"Ontology is a difficult branch of physics. Everyone wants something out of you, and most of them want things that our young field is pretty certain do not exist. Measure the wavelength of evil...I'm not certain evil gives off a measurable energy, but feel free to dump grant money into my lab to get the exact same no answers as two generations of predecessors. I'm sure your funding will mystically prove that whatever group you're racist against is for-real evil this time and not instead result in a scandal that ruins your career when you're ousted as a fucking bigot. Morons."
"The biggest day-to-day obstacle is always whether or not to sound the alarm about something. Some oneirophysicists will ring the bell about any particularly strong collective dream, and I have a certain sympathy for that position; certainly seven times out of ten there's a temporary manifestation of something benevolent, maybe twice out of ten you get a malicious or harmful manifestation, but it's that one time out of ten that you missed an urban legend and some slasher manifests for months on end that gets you. Unfortunately governments don't like feeling like they wasted money in nine out of ten cases, and given the rather experimental nature of my research into measuring the broader dreamscape I've favored certainty over best practices. There are plenty of my peers willing to cry wolf, and without their diligent work I wouldn't be empowered to ignore the small fish. Unfortunately, it appears we're looking at the shadow of a big fish."
"Something is disturbing the dreamscape, something...massive is the wrong word. Any physical word is the wrong word, but I suppose I'm a physical person in a physical world. Something massive seems to be moving towards Domus along the oneiromantic axis. It's possible that this is merely a natural movement, a current or...geyser, of dreaming, but I need to be sure before I take drastic action."
"We're fucked, just not as hard or deep as I might have feared. If someone had discovered this oncoming phenomenon maybe a thousand years ago perhaps we could build on their work to deflect it or push Domus's dreamscape out of the way or, I don't know, some evil bastard probably would have built dream nukes to fling at it like a movie. None of that is in the cards. Imagine if you had invented the telescope and the first thing you saw was an asteroid headed directly towards you. That's my lab right now."
"The consequences will be catastrophic. Domus has always had a certain relationship to the ontology of the dreamscape, and certainly many kinds of life native to our world can invite that ontology in, or even practice oneiromancy...that will not be what happens here. Even the most catastrophic collective nightmare has nothing on the tide of alternate reality that is about to hit us. Forgive my physical metaphor, but we will need to build dykes, and there is not going to be time to do this right."
"I always considered myself a deontologist; it's astounding how reasonable utilitarianism seems in the face of this catastrophe. Raising funds quickly is proving difficult. A word to my cousin's sister-in-law acquired me a billionaire whose worthless mind was easily bent, but labor...I've had to go into debt to the mob. They've been shockingly reasonable. Micky the Grin even went so far as to say that if a disaster really does happen, I can consider my debt dissolved, which was very kind of him. I think my words about how his ancestors were the only ones mine could turn to when we moved to this country and had nothing struck a chord. The mob wasn't always...the mob, as it were.
Still. I can't go into debt with every mob on Domus and not everywhere that needs coverage even has a mob to go into debt to. Some small nations were willing to trade on my name and agree to build the devices; I wish my homeland showed me the same respect. A great many people are going to die, or be so fundamentally changed that despite a continuity of consciousness I can only call it death. We may even see permanent changes to the known laws of physics, or exceptions carved out into the same. It is not difficult to imagine, say, a portion of Salt Bay City becoming a flying island during this quote-unquote 'flood' of dreamscape, and then because everyone simply 'knows' that it floats, the collective unconscious keeps it aloft. That isn't even necessarily a bad outcome, but if those changes are more fragile than they might appear..."
"We were wrong. It's not a geyser. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck shit fuck shit FUCK SHIT -"
"We've built the wrong defenses. I can blame the imprecise nature of my instruments, the newness of my field, my subordinates. I will not. I have failed humanity, and all we can do now is try to fail it less. My field, and theologians, have always considered the dreamscape itself to be a separate dimension, ontologically contained but with a relationship to our own. I can conclusively say that we were all incorrect. It is not a dimension. It is a medium, like seawater, in which contained ontologies float. Whether we form like pearls or there's some manner of existential gravity is irrelevant. One of them is heading right for us."
"It's the damn mirrors. Chalk a win up for fantasy writers and poets; there is, in fact, a world on the other side of every reflection, although shortly there will not be. If I were a betting man rather than a scientist, I would say that this is some manner of...metaphysical satellite, whose orbit has been decaying for some time, but there simply is no time to prove that theory and no utility in trying. We have less than one month until Impact, and those 'dykes' we have been creating...they're going to make this worse. The soul of the world is about to get into a car accident, and I uninstalled the fucking seatbelt."
"Fuck...augh...this is not an ideal work enviornment at this time. The satellite...it's breaking up as it approaches us. Metaphysical gravity? A metaphysical atmosphere? I wish I had time...I wish I'd spent more time with my family...Everlasting Lady, we're gonna have such a long chat when you take me away."
"Impact is inevitable. I'm staying behind to recalibrate the dykes as best I can to make them useful in actually preserving lives. We have thirteen hours. Not...too bad...for an old sociopath, I wanna say. Not too bad..."
"We will survive this. Humanity. We...we will survive...just not...unchanged."
Pick 1
[ ] Share this information with Jill
[ ] Withhold this information
Last edited:
Aftershocks 3: A Name Is A Gift; Like All Gifts, You Hope It Is AppreciatedNew
Answering 'do you have a name' should not be this difficult when the answer is pretty obviously 'no', but you have enough social awareness rattling around in your ravaged(?) mind to understand that this is not going to sound like a sane and sensible state of affairs from the outside. It's not even a sane and sensible state of affairs from the inside. From your perspective you were born in a bathroom and neither of your parents bothered showing up to it. That's a crazy person kinda sentence.
"Lass?" Jill asks, very gently. That's concern on its face, right? You're doing something concerning. "Lass, you look like you saw a ghost. You don't need to tell me, it's okay -"
Something inside your head that was blocking your ability to talk comes free, and with it comes everything. Everything. You definitely said, "I don't have a name," near the beginning, but the rest of this conversation is a blur in your memory, a swim of tears and soft sobbing as you explain how you woke up, what happened, about Nicole Bartman and the things that aren't enough like rats and the absolute terror that grips you when you're trying to sleep, that this time there's going to be another Impact, and you won't be ready, and you'll just shatter like those statues, and you don't, you can't, you don't want to die, and you're sorry, you don't know why you're crying like this you're sorry, Jill's had a hard time too it's not fair -
A hug from behind stops your blubbering, and you sob with your chin on Jill's arms. Your next clear memory is working on the soup.
Somewhere in there, Jill tells you, "I'm gonna call you Orchid, for now. A hidden flower. At least until you decide on another name, okay?"
And you'd said back: "Orchid," before pulling your mask back down over your face, and tucking your auburn hair behind your ears in vain for the bajillionth time.
* * * *
The Present
Following that spirit of disclosure, so agonizing in the moment and yet so remarkably freeing after the fact, you give Jill access to the splinter when it's your turn to sleep in the tent. "The person speaking is going to say some proper names," you warn it in your raspy voice. "Please don't say those names to me."
Jill raises an eyebrow. "You mad at 'em or somethin'?"
"...Jill, when I said there are words that make me cry blood I was being literal."
"...Oh."
"Yeah."
Your last thought when you drift off to sleep is that you really need to ask Jill what the fuck its gender is at some point soon, when you're not still raw and fragile from...everything coming out. Your first though when you wake up and stagger out of the tent like a member of the living dead is: it's been crying. You try to offer Jill silent comfort the way it offered that to you, sitting near your new friend(?) and lightly touching the back of its hand. You feel like a fool. How is Jill so good at this? How are you so bad? Should you even be touching -
Jill's hand squeezes yours gently.
"We have some problems," Jill murmurs. "From the sound of Doc -" you shake your head violently, and Jill course-corrects mid-word, "- this person, whatever just happened...it's not a usual manifestation or collective nightmare. It's. Our world changed, forever."
"Ontology," you murmur. "The metaphysics of being, of what makes a thing that thing. It sounded like he was...describing all of our reality as one ontology, and then we got...hit by another one? Like two pieces of ice in a river smashing against each other..."
"Sounds like," Jill says with a soft sigh. "...These prosthetics are part of me now, you know. They used to be plastic and steel. Now they have sensation like...not the point, we have some problems. Food, for one."
"Roof garden."
"Orchid..." The name makes you blink in confusion for a second before you remember, oh right, that's me, and a little thrill goes through you. "Life isn't like a videogame. Food doesn't grow in three days. If we plant a garden here, we have to stay here, and if we have to stay here we need to lay in food, fuel for the fire, fuel for the generators, maybe find more ammo -"
"Tobacco," you add in a tiny voice.
"...Tobacco," Jill concedes, "and a lot of places are going to be picked clean very fast. And if they aren't...I'm almost more worried if they aren't, 'cause that'd haveta mean they're dangerous to loot. Maybe we should pack up what we can carry, and find a better place."
You frown. Chew it over. Jill tells you to take your time and that you should eat anyway, and soon enough you're getting some of the Eternal Soup and trying to understand your own feelings. This is the place the refraction brought you to. Surely it's special, right? It's not a bad place, especially with how aggravating it would be for anyone to march on the freeway in force...there's so much roof space, so many tools and materials and even some vehicles that aren't damaged in the form of the tractors. That glass garden with the edible fruits and vegetables is here.
You met your friend here.
Should you leave that behind? Maybe it'd be pragmatic...
...Maybe you can do both. The voice that is not like yours had talked about oneiromancy, the practice of manifesting dreams. The glass over your heart might not be burning any more, but it's still warm. Still ready for...something. And that word, 'refraction', has been on your mind. A bending of light, such that a thing appears to be other than where it is. A strange word to use for the restructuring of an entire reality, but what if what got refracted was the ontological laws of both worlds? What if they could be refracted again, on a smaller scale...
Lose 1
[ ] Blood, sweat, and tears
[ ] This new home you barely know, but already love
[ ] One Gift, in an effort to accelerate your garden
The Butcher's Bill 'ware spoilers, O ye archive reader or new participant; this will be updated as things go on.
Name: Currently, your name is Orchid; it was a gift from Jill Health: Okay; you lost a lot of blood growing a roof garden recently. Fashion: Form-concealing layers with more pockets than a god Weapons: Your weapon of choice is your .45 bottom-barrel revolver; you have
Intangible Assets
First Aid training; a doctor saves your life. You keep people comfortable while they die. Time at the gun range; you know gun safety, use, and maintenance. You are most comfortable with revolvers and pistols, though with time and ammo learning another firearm shouldn't be difficult. A talent for dream logic; there's something so strangely familiar about the alien world that has come, isn't there? Your privacy; your mind is your private sanctum Forklift certification; this body knows how to drive forklifts and other retail vehicles. And really likes it.
Tangible Assets
A Home; Currently a single building divided into two defunct businesses (Jillian's Farm & Fleet and Dirty Dick's Crab Shack), your home has space, tools, tractors in potentia, generators that might be encouraged to work, a deep and wide selection of clothing, snacks, some real food, supplies to garden, firewood for your Eternal Soup, medicine, and a roof that doesn't leak yet. A Glass Garden; these plants are not enough like the ones that you know. Their life is alien to this world, and they make Jill uncomfortable in an odd way. But they're edible and nutritious, and "safely" inside Jillian's Farm & Fleet. A keycard; Provides access to the labs at Threshold Innovations, Ltd. It's labeled Nicole Bartman, who died for you, mostly because you killed it. It was an accident. It. It was an accident... A phone; none of the Contacts exist any more (though you can still manually call the numbers, maybe), but it's charged, it has slots for 2 more data splinters at a time, and the screen is even intact. Haven't had time to see if it works yet. 2 data splinters; up to a terabyte of storage space each, small enough to slot into your phone. One is barely used at all, containing only recordings from the mysterious person whose comforting voice was not like yours. The other, uninvestigated, is labeled PICS 4 JESSIE; the dots over the 'i's are little butterflies.
Gifts
You have two potential Gifts
The Glass Thumb; you can cause a local refraction to encourage those odd glass-and-metal plants to grow, assuming you have seeds and soil. Getting them started is relatively painless; making them grow instantly, bear fruit more often, or otherwise be less like 'normal' plants and more like something out of a dream takes a toll on your body and mind.
Tangible Losses
Some possessions; you have no way to know these are missing, and might never find out, but there are things someone or something took which you, therefore, do not currently have. The only one you have any conscious relationship to is your missing cigarettes and lighter; even then, it's more that your body is craving something that the scent of tobacco reminds you of. Someone in Salt Bay City has cigarettes and they're going to share or someone's going to get hurt. Four bullets; expended to rescue your new friend(?), Jill Hatter.
Intangible Losses
Your identity; you can't remember any details about yourself, and a lot of the supplementary information is missing too. What gender are you? Fuck if you know, you're not even sure what gender anyone else is. Your original name, if there ever was one, is gone, and many other names are also gone. When exposed directly to evidence of your identity, or those other identities, you experience agonizing pain and possibly injury. Your reflection; you have no reflection, you cannot be recorded by cameras, telescopes and spyglasses and binoculars fail to see you entirely. Praise the gods that you're audible and/or visible to the naked eye or things would be really weird. Your shadow; the Reformed Temple of the Deep Dreamers teaches that the shadow is part of your soul. You really wish you would stop remembering that every time you look and see that you aren't casting one, no matter where the light is or how bright that light might be. Your innocence; people have died for you. You ought to know; you killed them. A certain artistic bent; you used to be better at this. You remember...not remember...you know you're supposed to be good at this. Why aren't you good at this any more? Why - Tinkering; the pointy end of the nail goes down, right?
