TEST DRIVE MEME #10

[sailmods]

a. that's where we both belong

[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! I'm so happy you could join us!

[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.]

b. and there's plenty of that down by the sea

[it’s strange to think about, isn’t it? how all those new passengers, the ones grumbling or shouting their way through the forced muster drill, have absolutely no idea what happened just last month. no idea about the labyrinth. no concept of why anyone around them would be a bit more hesitant around shadows.

they’ll learn.

sometimes a shadow is darker than it’s supposed to be. very rarely does anything come of that; just a vague sense that someone is watching you, and little more. sometimes, though, the shadows move. sometimes they grab at your ankles as you walk. sometimes they give you a shove as you go down the stairs. sometimes they pull your hair, or pinch your arm.

sometimes you feel something sharp cut into your lower leg.

that’s not a shadow, though. that’s a fiddler crab. you see the crab, sometimes. the cut isn’t from its claws, which don’t look very intimating; it’s not a very large crab. the cut is from the large kitchen knife crudely taped onto its back. it’s probably fine. it's not chasing you. there isn't evil in its heart. probably.]

c. think I'll go back to the Keys

[one day, in the atrium, two pedestals suddenly appear. on each is a large button: one green, and one blue. pressing the blue button gives you a little treat, popping out of thin air next to you. pressing the green button sends a small electric shock through your body. weird, but, hey, pretty avoidable, right?

except, it seems to be spreading. to every other button on board.

in the elevator. on the soda machine. the arcade. your phone. the bell on Friday’s desk.]

Comments

[crushed_pearls]

"No??" Erin takes a deep breath, steepling her fingers in front of her face. Fever. Fever lass. Are you okay? You doing okay? Do you have a permanent spine injury? "Okay. Um. Alright. If that's how hard you like it definitely talk to Siffleur but mother fuck, wow."

[abhorrently]

"It's not a burden, if you want to share. I'm hardly going anywhere in a hurry."

The smile she gives is meant to be encouraging, open. She'll listen, for as long as he likes.

[abhorrently]

"It wasn't for my sake! It was for this other guy, and there was this ritual, and I was trying to blend in at the time, and it's all awkward to explain unless you were there or you have a good knowledge of this particular goddess."

Ugh, this just sounds worse the more she talks about it.

"Anyway, I don't think it counts if it was only for someone else."

[businessorlibation]

As she starts to reach the extent of the Gargle-Blaster's cruelty, he begins building a second drink for her, something just slightly less toxic (thought it three ounces of liquor and neon green to boot).

"Sir Mimley Bastrop--solid six feet tall, dark skin, pencil mustache. He'll work to present himself as a fop, but he's not nearly as useless as he'll pretend. He's both a skilled fencer and talented with fisticuffs. His maid, Ducky, is a woman who's a shorter than me, with heavy-lidded eyes and a lovely beak of a nose. She listens more than she speaks, but when she does speak, it's worth listening. Razor-sharp wit, excellent strategist. And then there's Madame Theresa Ferrier. Dark, dark skin, bald as an egg, tall enough to reach the top shelf here without a stool. She walks with a cane, though. Hard lugging a body that large around at her age. She's a detective by trade."

[crushed_pearls]

"Listen, I'm not here to judge, I'm here to say that if getting erotically maimed does it for you, Siffleur is the guy to talk to." That cat had better be grateful. "But as to the smiting the wicked part, maybe wait. Or at least ask them if they wanna get smote. Things are...different, here."

[abhorrently]

"It's not like I'd know the wicked just by looking at them, anyway."

But all jests aside, she does calm, looking at Erin. There's a doorway behind what she just said, and Fever's willing to listen.

[abhorrently]

It hurts her head in a comforting way, like being cheerfully buzzed around a fire and listening to stories, with the bite of the liquor strong on her tongue and in her throat. She listens, and notes the names down, how he speaks of them. He cares about them, enough to hold them in his mind's eye as if they were right there, even under these conditions.

"You miss them greatly, don't you."

As if anyone wouldn't.

"They sound like quite the group to have around."

Arrival [Promenade]

[astrogator]

Ari Tayrey doesn't usually bother with the new arrivals these days. She used to, back when she thought there was a war for minds and hearts and she wanted to offer them an alternative to the Binder of Hopelessness. Now, she's past trying to convince people, or even really caring whether they agree with her. The division, as she has identified it, is between people who are doing something to try to get them out of this endless nightmare, even if she dislikes their tactics or ideological standpoint, and people who aren't. Who are content to stay in this prison. All the rest is ultimately irrelevant. Tayrey? She spends practically every spare waking moment working on a way home.

Including right now. The young spacer lieutenant is walking through the promenade, a familiar sight to most in her well-kept blue and silver uniform. She's holding up a little roll of thin plastic, partially unrolled in the middle so that it almost resembles a scroll, and staring at it intently. So intently that she very nearly plows straight into an unfamiliar blonde woman who is staring at the statue.

Tayrey stops short, catching herself just before the collision. 'Oh! I'm sorry.'

[businessorlibation]

"They were. They are. From what we've been told, there's still a version of us, back in our worlds, with the ones we care about. It's...reassuring, knowing that they're not missing me."

He's not sure if this is new data for her, but he did wait for her to be properly pickled before laying it on her.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's voice and face soft, gentle and tinged with both wonder and pain. "I'm gonna tell you something, and ask you to try and envision that it applies to everyone here. Everyone who ever hurt you is far away. As long as you're here, you'll never go hungry, or poor, or cold. You'll never be homeless, you won't be press-ganged into someone's army or government. Every. Single. Bad circumstance of the world you come from is gone."

"...What might that realization do to someone who turned to evil to make it all stop?"

[abhorrently]

"...Fuck. There's two of me now?"

At least she's half drunk for this. It keeps the pure sting of it out of her for the moment.

"Fuck. I'll have to go kill my double. Or she'll kill me."

[businessorlibation]

"She can't get here because you're here; you won't be able to get to her to kill her. She's not currently your problem. You are, and you're here."

Is that a useful explanation at all?

[abhorrently]

There's a long silence there as she mulls it over. Wonders what the words might sound like in the ears of those she knows, those running from what would chain them and those who are striving towards something better occurring in the world. For a second, there's a bright and shining hope, a wish to gather all of them near, to say there's something to this. It doesn't solve their problems, but it offers them respite. Even if one day they have to return, take on those burdens - there's a rest, as deep and easy as the midnight sky. Even the parasites can't reach them. They won't lose themselves.

They won't lose themselves.

It is fog curling at her ankles, soaked in red, it is damp and sticky shadows painted in more blood, it is the choked back desire to rip off the head of the faceless woman, to give her a face with a dagger and see if she can scream without a mouth. It is rot set into the membrane of her skull, dripping through her veins like any drug. Kill your way out. Slaughter them until they release you, or you seize the key from their corpse's grasp. Snap their bones under your heel as you walk over the bodies. Build a portal from their nerves and sinew, and go back, because you are not done. You have already lost yourself. But to reclaim-

The thoughts are shoved away as one might heave off an enemy attack, to dissolve into their mist and shadows, to leave her be. On the outside, she's merely pulled back, looking somewhat sorrowful, but she forces herself to take a breath, to smile a little.

"Absent of any reason to be evil, why would you keep going? It wouldn't make sense."

[abhorrently]

"But when I get to her, or she gets to me, then we duel to the death, right? There can only be one of us. Two is too much trouble."

You know, when she gets unstuck. At some point. The cocktail isn't done, so another sip can't make her thought process worse. It's already a mess in there already.

[abhorrently]

The statue is unfamiliar in any light, and she's summed it up in her head as disgustingly tacky, wondering who on earth would create such a thing. Why gold? Stone would be more tasteful, especially indoors, and the man's expression makes her want to gag. But someone is coming, her reflexes know, and Fever turns her way right before the young woman speaks.

"Nothing to apologize over. Are you alright?"

The newcomer has her hand up to prevent Ari from walking straight into her, but drops it when she realizes she has her attention. Whatever that odd scroll is, it's engrossing her enough that she's forgotten where she is, or something. Good books do that, but then, she usually just stops and reads where she is, standing.

One blue and silver, one red and black. A study in contrasts. It'll come to her mind later.

[businessorlibation]

"You're not going to get to one another--for one thing, she doesn't know you exist here. For another--no one's been able to get home. If you think you're going to make quick work of the problem, you're insulting the skills and abilities of everyone on the ship."

[abhorrently]

That statement is making its way through the parts of her brain that retain coherence but are luxuriating in a bath of strong as hell spirits. Okay. She frowns, but it's more the sad look of someone who just got told they have to eat at home instead of dining out, so she'll get over it.

"But...I can help, right? Now that I'm here? So the ones that need to go back can go and the people with a better life can stay?"

[businessorlibation]

"Right now, your job is to get settled in, make friends, figure out who you can work with. I've been her for a year and a half, you know? It's not going to be a quick thing, solving the whole thing."

He hates this part of The Talk.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's ears droop; the taste of pain in the air, knotted and whispered. She knows that feeling, even if not its cause. Someone hurt this woman very badly, and Erin's heart wrings in her chest.

"...Yeah. And then it's just...learning how to be a person among people again. We fuck it up, give in to old bad habits, but...well, one of the other neat prizes of being here is that opportunity. The chance to shuck the old life like a husk, and see what we might make of ourselves in its absence."

[abhorrently]

She's not going to argue with him, her expression says, she just wants to look mournful for a bit and take the last drink of the cocktail, knowing she'll wholeheartedly feel it in the morning and that it will be the sort of suffering that she can only call her own fault. None of that is bad, at all, but still, she feels like she's being halted from what she needs to do. From everything that demands her time and attention. It's rather the opposite of helping one settle.

"That's where the whole time separation comes in, doesn't it."

[teethoftherisk]

"It's fifty-fifty these days. Used to go months in one body, then the other. Now I change daily, depending on what's easiest for where I'm going." Especially now that it doesn't refresh itself on the daily. He keeps pushing the wall, pausing to give her time to finish tossing out the rest of the clothes and rack before he pushes the wall into place. "I'm almost always a cougar in here, then about half and half out there. Eating's easier with thumbs, since the buffets got lots of spoons and ladles."

[abhorrently]

For some, that might be possible. When you know what you're shedding so that your own flesh doesn't rend in the bargain. But when you don't? The scraps and husks have to stay, for the time being. Whatever they cover, Fever isn't sure she is ready to see. Not yet. It's too much, too soon, and it makes her head ache. Unconsciously, she moves a little more back towards a table, to discreetly steady herself with it.

"It sounds wonderful, for those that need it. I can see very well why you'd choose to stay."

But thankfully, mentioning the cult means that it's likely any hesitation reads as focusing on saving the land she lives in, and not for where it hooks deeper into her heart with cat claws and tugs. Breathe. Just breathe.

[lightconductor]

He opens his mouth, ready with a slightly dry response, but he pauses, stunned at the scent. He hasn't smelled it for some time, but it's one of those things that never leaves him: pungent, slightly sweet, a smell of medicine and illness, a smell that lingers in dens of iniquity or the more clinical morphine.

It's a smell of his own illness, and that of others.

Watson steps a little closer. "We have no river here," he points out.

[businessorlibation]

"Only partly. But a little, yes. The thing of it is, when you're brought here, the version of you that arrives here is pulled from a singular moment in time, and time happens with you there, but that version is here now. Moving along a different timeline. Like...a thread, there's a knot, and now you're on a different branch."

He shakes his head. "I'm explaining poorly."

[treasonlikebeauty]

"Regrettably, I have not had that experience."

He certainly doesn't remember that being on the menu at Quark's. Also. Ghosts. Hm. He doesn't much like the sound of that. Garak gives a little bit of a sigh. "What sort of ghosts are you talking about?"