sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #7

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TEST DRIVE MEME #7

1. before she hung up, she said she was a skeleton

[there is no note in your cabin. no forces stall your legs if you decide to walk anywhere but the atrium. in fact, for the first time in hundreds of years, newly arrived passengers on the Serena Eterna are waking up with absolutely no guidance. nothing but your fellow passengers in the halls - or maybe in your bed.

perhaps you end up in the atrium eventually anyway. it is where guest services is, and where Gal Friday… actually hasn’t been in a few days. until today. and she is visibly frazzled, her hair uncoiffed, her suit rumpled, something a bit like a bruise blossoming down from her hairline and over her smooth features. more papers than ever cover her desk, and when she turns to face you, her voice is as cheerful as ever, but audibly strained.]

Welcome aboard the Serene Eterna! [a pause] You know how to work a life vest, right? Everyone knows that! You don’t need me to teach you that!

[a light bulb burns out behind her head.]

… I’ll get right on that!

[freedom includes the freedom to not know what the fuck is happening. maybe you should reflect on that.]

2. grandma went and can't stop screaming

[it’s something about the lighting fixtures, this month. has the Bellona always had a massive chandelier? maybe. who knows. don’t ask questions. either way, in the stillness of the night, or day, or late afternoon, there is a noise like a cord being cut, and the chandelier plunges into the audience below.

it hits nothing, of course. no one is ever in the theater. and that, perhaps, is what the trouble is.

so, the chandelier starts to… travel, one could say. it starts to hang in various rooms: the dining halls, the bars, the clubs… sometimes, if you’re out on the pool deck and suddenly realized you’re under a shadow, you can glance up and see it suspended 20 feet above your head, securely fastened to nothing in particular and yet remaining perfectly in place.

until it isn’t. until it falls, crystal shattering on whatever surface it lands on: floor, table, person… and, wherever the chandelier goes, a lilting childish voice follows it, singing without any obvious source.]

Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies… ashes, ashes, we all…

3. jeff bezos murdered the infinite tommy bahama

[the lights of the Infinite Tommy Bahama go out three days into October.

barely an hour after its closure, the lights go on again, and a new banner is unfurled.

physically, it is the same store. you can even see the old signs hidden behind the new ones. however, long gone are the tropical prints and khaki dress shorts. now, one can purchase any number of officially licensed or legally distinct Halloween costumes, decorations, and various other haunted accoutrements, leading back as far as the eye can see, and then farther still. is that a Gal Friday mask? spooky! well, at least you’ll be good and ready for the Halloween party at the end of the month, which is absolutely just a normal party and in no way whatsoever anything even remotely resembling a trick. there are only treats at The Infinite Spirit Halloween!

note: bahamanuel is still here! somewhere! it kinda looks like dan bongino.]

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1
[He bobs back to consciousness in a place very different from where they left. The air is muted by the size of the space, whatever surface they are on is soft, more like a bed than a table. There are no other sounds in the room, meaning they must be alone. But he can't confirm it until he can see for himself.

A cascade of impossible things happen: A throat tightens, vocal folds vibrate, a jaw hinges open, and lips move, and the word "Arthur-" is spoken aloud.

He stops, and becomes aware of his own breathing, responding to the shock of hearing himself speak when he shouldn't.

"Arthur?" he repeats almost carefully, almost solely to test if those body parts move again.

The room is still for another moment, before John sits up. The movement is natural, occurring without thought, and he opens his eyes.

He's wearing the bloodied robes of the cultist they - he - ... Arthur was wearing on the table in the auditorium. A black under-robe, looser, coarser yellow robes over top, and...

His hands (his hands-) rise and meet the hard angle of the pallid mask.

The cabin is small, decorated strangely, but - he can hardly pay attention to it, and it feels redundant to catalogue it now that... That he hasn't heard any answer from Arthur.

He explores the room. He finds a mirror. He sees his face. The pallid mask.

His left hand rises, touches the jaw of it. He could unmask.

...

He exits the room into a small hallway. It appears to be that of a ship, one that is massive and decorated, an ocean liner, perhaps.

This is not the Dark World, nor is it the Dreamlands. The only evidence he has is how this world feels, and it does not feel like either of those. It doesn't quite feel like the one they - he just left, either. He will have to explore, and he will have to be careful.

The air breezes around the edges of his pallid mask as he moves through the halls, looking for some other sign of where he is, and what else may exist in this realm.]

2

[He's learned that while this world isn't free of danger, it's less obviously out to kill the denizens of it than the realms he's experienced.

Or so he thought.

He sees the chandelier floating in the middle of the promenade, seemingly unanchored. A strange sight, but harmlessly strange rather than the mind-facturing sort.

That lasts as long as it takes to move in the air, and reflexes he never had before command him to dive out of the way.]

JESUS CHRIST.

[He lands on the floor and curls his black-clad arms over the yellow hood of his robe, clear of the chandelier but not the wave of crystal fragments that shatter away from it. Jesus christ. He's going to be picking glass crumbs out of these robes for the rest of the day.]

3

[... He looks up at the banner, and then through the windows of the store to the unbelievably tacky contents within. He crosses his arms. He already has ill-fitting robes (not ill-fitting at all, actually) and a terrible (perfect) mask, he doesn't need more of either.]

Edited 2022-10-09 01:13 (UTC)

There's a faint rattle of two little wheels on the tiled floor. The two little wheels are attached to a long shuffleboard cane, and the cane is being held by a man who'll look strangely familiar, but for three important details:

1) he's wearing your dad's holiday clothes;
2) aside from bruises on his shins, he hasn't picked up any new injuries lately, and the old ones are scarred or gone;
3) he exists in the third person.

He's striding along, sure of the route, the cane mostly a formality in case somebody unexpectedly gets in his way. Someone has told Arthur about the Tommy Bahamas seasonal rebrand, and he's interested to check out the unbelievably tacky contents within.

He hears the sound of the wheels and the footsteps. Perhaps it is habit that keeps him from turning his head until the person is beside him.

Then he glances to the side and freezes, breath caught in his throat.

If the state of his body under the robes wasn't clue enough that he hadn't - that he hadn't finished what started in the auditorium, then the man beside him is proof of it. Living proof.

There is more that could be said, about the confirmation that they are truly separate entities now, that they are in the same place and - and the things that need to be said, talked about, after everything, after the auditorium, the table, the mirror.

He says nothing. He only watches Arthur, alive and well and - what the fuck is he wearing?!

John stares, watching Arthur walk towards the store guided by a stick and not a voice - another thing they have to discuss.

Instead, he follows after Arthur, silently, once again a passive observer.

Arthur is, of all things, humming to himself as he walks. It's a song John might recognise, that's been on the tip of Arthur's tongue for nearly a month now, and has finally come back to him.

He actually seems relaxed, at least by the standards of any situation they've been in together. Bizarrely, being on the Serena Eterna has in some ways been good for him: there are people here he likes and can trust, whole more-than-ones of them, and he hasn't died in over two weeks. He still looks gaunt, but it isn't for lack of food.

At the entrance to the Infinite Spirit Halloween, he pauses, listening.

"Where are you... no? All right, good."

There isn't a peep from Bahamanuel, not this close to the outskirts of its territory. So in he goes, and he starts messing with one of the endcaps, prodding and pulling at its contents.

"Hello... all right, what have you got for us...? Masks, by the feel of it?"

Rubber masks, some with hair, some with fabric hanging off them.

Arthur snorts. "Very seasonal." God, is this shit what the captain closed the restaurants to focus on?

Edited 2022-10-09 02:20 (UTC)

Arthur seems to wait for something...? But without any input from John at all, he decides it's safe enough to proceed.

John doubts that. Not solely because Arthur made that decision, but...

He still doesn't say anything, despite the pressure in his chest demanding to be turned into words describing what Arthur cannot see. But he just... Watches, once again, as Arthur navigates the world without him.

To his credit, he isn't stumbling and tripping as much as he had been the last time he rejected John's help. Of course, the environment is much more forgiving than the island, flat floor and only merchandise to examine.

He feels the flesh around his eyes pinch as Arthur feels the cheap, lifeless rubber masks. Please.

He considers describing what Arthur is looking at instead of simply introducing himself. There are things he needs to say... And questions he wants to ask. Answers for both of them.

He just... Lingers. Trying to figure out how to say what needs to be said.

Blissfully unaware of John's presence, Arthur puts a hand on the endcap and then pushes his cane out as far as it'll go in a couple of directions (it slides freely into open space), and then more carefully in a couple more (it taps against the bottoms of displays).

"Layout seems to be the same so far, thank god..."

So far. "Wonder if anyone's managed to map you yet," he says, thinking aloud, as he explores further into the store-- only to get jumpscared by a motion-sensitive spooky clown on display, because of course he does. It screeches and cackles as he walks past, and Arthur jumps out of his skin with a hissed "jesusfuckingchrist". For a moment he looks like a cat trying to decide if it should attack or flee.

Edited (hee hee hee) 2022-10-09 03:36 (UTC)

The mirror showed him many things. He saw, for a moment, eons of existence. Devices from times and places far, far removed from Arthur's own.

He's also started by the fucking clown.

A much louder "Jesus fucking christ!" overlaps Arthur's own as John nearly jumps out of his fucking mask.

Well that's even more startling!!!!

Arthur doesn't realise at first that he's hearing John's voice from somewhere in physical space behind him. He's a little too busy reacting to the fact that he's hearing John's voice at all.

"What? What? What the fuck? No, no, how could that-- that, that can't be--"

He starts moving away from that noisy fucking clown as if it's the one talking in John's voice -- which, for all he knows, it might be? The captain knows a lot and made everything and likes to fuck with people, so, not impossible? Arthur sounds surprised and alarmed, more than anything else, and not necessarily in that order.

Arthur, as always, flails first and thinks second, and in this way collides with John, who is still staring at the fucked up looking stupid clown automaton like it'll do more than laugh in a looping motion.

Arthur's body collides with his, a concept strange to think about so soon after their previous experiences together. Automatically his hands move to Arthur's upper arms to steady him, or just to keep him from fumbling into him more than he already has.

To head off even more panicking, he just says "Arthur, it's me."

But he pauses, knowing he needs to continue from there but not knowing how to start. Especially with that fucking clown still laughing in the background.

Edited 2022-10-09 04:00 (UTC)

So to recap: Arthur has been startled by an insane clown laughing noise, heard John's voice for the first time in nearly a month, and then bumped into and been grabbed by the someone with John's voice, a thing which makes no sense on its face.

This is nightmarish!

"What the fuck," he says again, pulling away sharply, holding his cane like a weapon. He barely misses backing straight into a shelf full of plastic animal skeletons. "No, you don't-- John doesn't have a body. How- how- how would you be standing there."

There. Acknowledgement. Even a bit of sense, because Arthur's right, John shouldn't have a body. Not one of his own.

What he feels, is... Annoyance. Anger. He sets his shoulders and tips his head.

"The same way I woke up on a fucking ocean liner." he says - and an equation computes, a blank space of assumption filled, a 'therefore' resolved: "The same way you woke up here without me in your head."

He knows this isn't Arthur's world either, so it stands to reason he appeared here the same way. How long must he have wandered blindly without his help.

Even without seeing, Arthur stares.

It's not impossible. It's not even implausible. The most unlikely part would be, out of all the billions of people in their universes, them both being picked at random -- and that's even assuming the captain picks at random. And after that? They're copies. Second printings. Some people not even quite the same as they were before. If the captain can make a ship and everything in it, then making John a body would be child's play.

Oddly enough, this doesn't make him feel better; it more sort of moves him emotionally sideways, into:

He's imagined what he'd do if John were here. Of course he has. How could he not? All the things he has to say to John, that have had nothing to do but circle and grow in his head for the last month. The talks he's had with Crichton; the drunken conversation about Parker.

He laughs. He can't help it. It's a stunned sort of sound. "Jesus. I didn't think I'd-- jesus christ. Well-- come here, let me get a, get a look at you."

The backs of Arthur's calves are touching the shelf behind him. He leans his cane against it, the better to hold up both hands and beckon with them as he steps forward again.

"You have a body!"

He feels giddy. He can hardly believe his luck, nor think past the next few seconds of his life. After that, whatever happens can happen; he just has one very important thing he needs to do.

John is tense, ready to - to argue more, to insist that he's here and real, to -

He's not sure. When he woke up, he thought... He thought the conversation about the auditorium, the mirror, that would be urgent. Then he moved his own mouth and heard his own voice in the air.

His shoulders ease back down, slowly, and he finds himself almost chuckling too, sort of, at how... unbelievable this all is. John has his own body, and Arthur has his. That crisis, that mystery, has apparently been solved by whatever put them both here.

He doesn't even correct Arthur on who's seeing whom. He just steps forward.

"Arthur, I..."

John Doe | Malevolent (Podcast)

3. yes......ha ha ha.......YES!

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