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TEST DRIVE MEME #2
1. this hotel room got a lot of stuff
[you wake up.
it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.
the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:
Dear Passenger(s),
As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.
At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!
See You Real Soon!
Sincerely,
Gal Friday
you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.
you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]
Welcome aboard! We're so glad to have you!
[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.
after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]
2. and a touch-tone phone
[chatterbox isn't exactly the most popular venue onboard. it probably has something to do with the distinct lack of open liquor bottles. so, nothing personal. except it seems that it's decided to take it that way, suddenly.
anyone enjoying the other amenities of deck five will feel the distinct sensation of being watched while they do so. the kind of feeling a prey animal gets while being stalked on the grasslands. something may slither by their foot, or past their elbow while they rest it on the bar, but nothing appears to be there when they look.
until there is.
a black electrical cord originating from somewhere will, first, wrap around their ankle, tugging in a very clear "follow" instruction. should this instruction be ignored, a second cord will wrap around their other ankle, and, once again, tug. should this clear final warning be ignored... well, now they're being dragged down the promenade, and that's really their own fault, isn't it. don't struggle. struggling means more cords show up. and none of them seem terribly aware that most species need to expand their lungs to live.
their final destination, no matter the journey, is chatterbox's main stage, where the karaoke machine awaits. the cords place a microphone in their hand; the mic's cords bind it tightly to their hand.
they don't have to pick a song. there isn't an actual gun to their head, in any literal sense. it's just, those cords really don't seem that interested in letting go until they do.
and if you were heading to chatterbox anyway? welcome to the weirdest goddamn karaoke night you've ever seen.]
3. and a bucket of ice (cw: cannibalism mention)
[no longer will scoops be bound by the shackles of only having 31 flavors. for this month, and this month only, a sign that very much looks like Friday hand-wrote it announces, they will have 32!
what is that mysterious 32nd flavor? it depends, really: the letters on the display case seem to shift and change with each new pair of eyes that fall upon them, with the contents changing along with it. someone from the capital wasteland might find some Nuka-Cola ™ branded ice cream. twilight town residents will be thrilled to find sea salt on the menu. and a frankly concerning amount of people bring out a flavor that only describes itself as "long pig." it's a weird off-white color. don't think about it too hard.]
psychotropic wanderlust
[ There's a man here who looks halfway to full business attire; he's got the slacks and the shoes, but his collared shirt has the top button popped with the sleeves rolled up. No jacket or tie. He'd look entirely ordinary if it weren't for the massive pair of owl wings strapped to his back. He seems to keep them folded in tight as if he'd prefer to ignore them. Not that it would make him the weirdest person in the dining hall either way.
He's looking at Darcy with... he's not smiling, but it's a casual, well-meaning look he's got anyway, as he nurses a glass of whiskey. ]
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She drawled back, turning that glare briefly onto him and his... wings? Should she be reacting differently? No, angels didn't wear business casual, and if they all looked like grammar teachers, she doubted they'd need to say 'be not afraid'.
"I could probably take on a couple of the people in here at once, at least."
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[ Sip. Hey, that's a wedding ring. ]
I got here a few days ago. What about you?
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She wasn't getting up though. Probably sensible enough to not actually pick fights. She shrugged.
"Something like a couple of days. Still haven't found any way out yet."
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[ The first time, he made his way out completely by accident decades after he stopped looking for one, and he still doesn't really know what he did. The second time, people vanished at random and there was a magic portal summoned by the local deities as thanks for helping stop the apocalypse. So. ]
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Yeah, clean clothes, that'll make her happier. The young woman was wearing gym clothes that someone up to date with fashion might recognize as being fairly trendy, so maybe his comment wasn't so far off.
"Do you have a name, or just opinions?"
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He holds out a hand. ] Phil Connors. Yours?
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"Darcy."
That's all he needed to know.
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Phil stuffs the hand back in his pocket. ] You come from Earth, or some other alien planet I should be aware of?
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Delivered laced with irony.
"Why, have you met a lot of people not from earth?"
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[ Not a bit of irony from him, by contrast. He misses Henry already. And his wife, of course, but at least he would have been able to commiserate with the one other guy who knows him and has gone through this before. ]
Myself, I’m from Philadelphia. I run the weather channel.
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He wasn't seeming to joke along and he wasn't getting stung by the mockery. What was with this guy? Did he... believe what he was saying? She gave Phil another incredulous look. Video game Pinocchio aside, "Philadelphia is in America, right? It's eughhh fucking..." she gestured vaguely.
"The middle bit? Midwest? Snow and shit, yeah?"
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The mockery slides off his back because he isn’t taking it personally. Darcy’s just a kid with an attitude problem, and in his opinion she has every right to be pissed off. So long as she isn’t being a genuine asshole and stirring conflict with others or endangering herself, she can do what she wants. And she’s been humoring him pretty well. (And her barbs are in line with his sense of humor, even if he doesn’t tend to crack those lines so much anymore.) ]
Close enough. Yes to snow, a little more eastern than Midwest, but not coastal. Historical city that doesn’t actually matter that much to anybody international. Home to America’s first fire department.
[ He glances at her. ] So is Bitchtopia a spot in Europe or Australia, or?
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That's... cool? Firefighters probably sat somewhere above the line between cool and uncool, even if she wasn't going to act like a dork and indulge her latent interest in history.
"France. Usually the French is a give-away," she gestured to herself loosely, "but whatever I say ends up translated if I try speaking it."
Annoying, but she knew a bit of English from classes and the internet anyway.
"Sort of the same as you, actually. Nobody outside France can find it on a map, but it's cool. Old as hell. 's where film was invented, if you care about that sort of thing."
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[ He glances away as he reaches for an old memory. A French poem. Mais où sont les neiges d'anten, he thinks, and it should come as easily to his tongue as water.]
Where are the snows of... where are the--God damn it.
[ He puts a hand to his mouth in thought, and with his brow furrowed, it's the most he's emoted this entire conversation. Yes, it's not a bad thing to be able to understand everybody, but the amount of control this weird ghost cruise ship has on everybody is... off-putting. More than the fact that it's a ghost cruise ship with a host of unwilling passengers. ]
... Huh. That's strange. That's strange, right?
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Because and solely because of his sympathy towards the issue of translation, she wasn't going to mock him for the old musty poem he picked.
"It's so weird. Feels like I've lost a limb, or something. I hate speaking English enough usually, but I can't so much as say 'shit' without it translating to what I said, but not what I mean."
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[ Yeah. He'd already deemed that this place sucked, but now it sucks even more. ]
Can I get you a drink, or... something?
[ Not only 'cause of the language thing, but because bereaved newbies stuck infinitely far from home gotta stick together, right? ]
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"I'm good with water," she tapped her knuckle on her drink bottle, "you know how much sugar those sport drinks have in them? It's a lot. Juice, too."
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A lot of teens I know don’t drink any flat water for days at a time. Hey, good on you.
[ Speaking of, he takes a sip from his whiskey. ]
You don’t like tea, though? Unless you’re telling me this ship doesn’t even have that.
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"I care about my health."
Another shrug, before taking a drink of water.
"Tea is bitter and gross. It has so much caffeine in it, too- I only take caffeine in my pre-workout. It's bad for the heart."
But to answer his second question, "this ship has everything, except a way off it."
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I thought about flying out of here. I tried it for a while, but… there isn’t any sign of land. We don’t know where the hell we are, and I’m not getting anywhere with these things on open ocean unless I feel like it’s a good day to drown.
[ (Again.) ]
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She gestured to them, as if she could have been referring to some other set of wings. Earlier in the conversation she might've made a joke about his mother and a chicken, but hey, she was mollified just enough by his sympathy to not outright keep insulting him, at least.
"It's never a good day to drown."
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He extends one wing out gently, just to show that they're both real and fully mobile. If Darcy has an eye for birds and feathers, she'll notice it belongs to an owl. (Eastern screech to be exact.) ]
Yes, otherwise I might've sawed them off by now. Flight is the only good thing I've gotten out of them.
[ He flaps ever so gently, it's more like a gesture, and that alone pushes out an entire front of air. ]
I've also got these. [ He points to his eye. When he blinks, there's the flash of a nictitating membrane. Then he points to his ear. ] And these. Better vision and better hearing. Both of which would be fine if I didn't live in the city, but at least I don't need to waste money on contacts anymore.
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It's there for a moment, before retreating back into the bottle.
"Weird shit, ehn?"
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He gets the feeling that this is a very consistent trend with the multiversal castaways that find their ways in these strange places. Even in Prismatica, he hadn't necessarily been all that normal himself, even if he didn't come in with any powers. ]
Very elegant of you, [ he agrees. ] Does that work on any liquid, or just water?
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