TEST DRIVE MEME #2

[sailmods]

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.]

Comments

[touchofcashmere]

"Well that's a bit bleak, isn't it?" As much as he is surprised that someone so otherwise scruffy looking can quote the bard in a single breath, he's not altogether fond of that particular passage talking about abandoned wives and widows and suchlike.

"As far as hallucinations go, if indeed it is, it's not the worst one I've had. But I doubt it is as I have a much better imagination. This ship, well! It's very interesting but it lacks a certain..." He revolves his wrist. "Je ne sais quoi. That means 'an indescribable attractive quality' in French."

[more_magic]

"It's not a perfect reference," he allows. He's about to say more, but the man apparently abhors a conversational vacuum of any duration, given how rapidly he fills the space with his own theorizing, and aggrandizement, and a frankly pointed explanation of a well-known idiom.

Darlington's not exactly used to being underestimated. If anything, he's used to something close to its opposite, problematic as it may be. Merely being an Arlington opened certain doors, the name carrying weight even if he didn't have the funds to go with it, even if all it had really become at the end was a fading legacy and the crumbling shell of a hillside estate. Other situations called for only the key of skin the right color or a well-placed word, and once he had the backing and blessing of Lethe, yet more locks came undone to reveal answers he'd sought all his life and possibilities he hadn't known. He can allow that he's moved easily through the world, and he likes to think he's not abused that any more than necessary.

Still, when he's slowly and patiently walked through je ne sais quoi, a small and petty part of Darlington wants to reply in Mandarin, or Dutch, or the scraped-together dregs of his still-passable Portuguese. "Oui, je sais," he says instead, more dryly than might be warranted. "Et le navire est peut-être simple, mais il a définitivement ses mystères." Point made, he continues in English. "Dare I ask what sort of vessel you might have envisioned?"

[touchofcashmere]

"Ah, mea cupla." He was learning all about deceiving appearances.

"And I don't know. Something that looked more finished. Masts. Sails. Some sort of steering mechanism. It looks very-- well I don't really know-- bleak? Perhaps? Lacking charm. Lacking adventure. You don't say adventure with a ship like this. At least not very easily. I suppose you might find a mystery but maybe the biggest mystery is how it's supposed to go anywhere at all."

[more_magic]

They'd gotten off on the wrong foot, but that changes, or begins to, with the man's answer. It's hardly a surprise given that he looks like a fugitive from a Molière play, but as he starts to talk of masts and rigging, adventure and charm, Darlington hears a kind of echo of his own romantic sensibilities shot through every word. Black Elm was no ship, but its crumbling towers and overgrown gardens had held mystery and adventure enough for him all his life, despite his parents' neglect and his grandfather's sternness.

It had been his world, even if his love for it had proven too little to hold him back from the abyss in that corner of Rosenfeld. The thought jars against all the rest, and he tries to put it aside.

"Bleak, I can agree with," he says, and this time his smile has warmth in it even if it's a little slow in coming. "It's too sterile for the kind of adventure you might think of when you consider sailing the open seas." He's about to make a reference to Stevenson, to Defoe, but stops himself, a different and odder question coming to mind instead. "When you ask how a thing like this goes anywhere...forgive me, but what year was it, wherever you were last?"

It's an insane question, one Darlington never would have asked, too strange even compared to all the strangeness he'd been shown as part of Lethe. He doesn't try to call it back.

[touchofcashmere]

It's not so insane. Days can be hard to keep track of on the open sea, even when one has a calendar. The rhythm of life is different. There is no time to sow and time to reap, or even invitations to parties that loathed attending with hard dates inked on them in gold. There were no deadlines or expectations. Just you and the open sea and a hearty crew and a good book.

"When last I looked it was the year of our lord seventeen hundred and seventeen. The year of the cock according to the Chinese. The fire cock no less, which seems a bit dangerous if you ask me but they've been around for a while so I'm sure they know what they're on about." He smiles.

"When's the last date you remember? Did you get a bit of the sun touch?"

[more_magic]

The joke is vulgar, but better crafted than any of the interminable attempts at wit he'd overheard at Wolf's Head back in the fall, as they'd waited for Shane Mackay to come out of his rooster form. It gets a laugh, short but sincere, out of Darlington. "I know some people back home who'd likely be able to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the iconography of the Chinese zodiac," he admits, though it might be giving Manuscript a shade too much credit. "But your assessment is a good one."

The year the man thinks it is startles Darlington only briefly. what else would he have expected, given his outfit and his intimations of the golden age of sail? Still, the question he gets in return has him pausing a moment, as much to figure out how to answer as to fight back the sudden, sick knot in his chest as he recalls the last of his memories before finding himself on the ship. "December tenth," he says. "The year, though, was slightly over three hundred years from any date you might recognize."

[touchofcashmere]

He didn't think he made a joke, but he laughs along just in case he missed something.

"Oh< I wouldn't know about that. My appetite for knowledge is quite vast and the Chinese are a rather interesting people. They figured out silk, you know, from worms of all things. Quite ingenious!"

He is also startled by the date-- A great deal more than the young man, but not as much as he could be. This certainly looks like he's stepped into another world or a far more advanced one.

"My God. I feel like someone just stepped over my grave." He shivers. Then it occurs to him that if this lad is from the future... well... "I don't suppose you've heard of the Gentleman Pirate, have you? Scourge of the seas? Most infamous pirate of his time?"

[more_magic]

"Silk, and gunpowder, and far much else besides," Darlington agrees, caught up at last in the ever-changing flow of their conversation. It seems the only way to manage it--and, despite their rocky start, it's become more than slightly entertaining. Like talking to a Grey, finally, without the attendant risk he'd always been warned about.

It all skids a little to a halt when the man asks a variation on the question Darlington should have anticipated was coming. He has the decency to look apologetic, even as he weighs the risk and benefit of the truth--of giving him knowledge of the future that might well affect the choices he makes when (or if) he returns to what's now his present. "I can't say I have, I'm sorry," he says, and genuinely sounds it. "New Haven has its history of piracy, but it's far less robust than elsewhere." It was a town always on the brink of things, and never quite as illustrious as it hoped to be. "Am I right in assuming the Gentleman Pirate is you, though?"

[touchofcashmere]

"Oh yes. Gunpowder. Good for cannons and fireworks." His enthusiasm fades a bit though. He doesn't know where New Haven is exactly, but he knows it shouldn't matter really. He tries to tell himself that three hundred years is long enough to forget anyone... But then again, some names are burned indelibly into history.

It's also a bit embarrassing being so transparent.

"Guilty as charged." He tries to laugh it off. "But you can call me Stede..."

[more_magic]

"Stede," he repeats, committing the name to memory. He does, genuinely, wish it sounded familiar. Maybe there is something about him in the historical record Darlington just never had cause to notice, but whatever it is, it's a mystery to them both. "I'm Darlington. No gentleman pirate, obviously, just a college student."

It's not entirely true, but he's had too much practice in discretion to bring up Lethe and the other societies without due cause.

[touchofcashmere]

"Oh a student. Tough days being a student. I was one for a while but I never quite took to it. And then afterwards-- back to the grind." He sighs. "Glad I took to piracy really. Always hiring you know for bright young things."

But it could be he enjoyed it too. Who knew?

"Darlington. Nice to meet you Darlington. Any plans while onboard?"

[more_magic]

"Tough, but rewarding," he says, because for Darlington, that was half the point: the moment when all those hours of effort unlocked something new, a connection made that hadn't been there before. He's been seeking it for so long, in so many ways, the thought of stopping entirely is unfathomable. There was always more to know. "Still, it's not for everyone. Much like piracy, I'd imagine."

Stede asks about his plans, and while it's not unexpected, it's still a question he has to think about for longer than he ought to. "Aside from figure out how I got here in the first place, or how to get back?" he says. "Find out why, I guess. How I got from a basement in New Haven to a ship somewhere...God only knows where. There has to be an answer."