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

[besixdouze]

It's an odd sort of laugh to hear, but not a bad one. Not at all. Voyager beams back up at her, and readily takes her offered hand to return the handshake.

(His own hand is small but warm, very warm, just shy of too hot. While hers, meanwhile, is quite cool...oh...is that some webbing, between her fingers? Huh.)

"Okay! It's good, that you know someone. I look forward to finding out. Grace is a nice name...mine is Voyager. But, I guess I'm pretty golden too...hehe..."

Others have given him nicknames in the past, after all, and this one is quite nice. He doesnt mind it!

Otherwise...well. In the end he hasn't learned much here, really, where the strange parallel aura with Euclides might be concerned...but that's alright. Grace doesn't seem to know much about that either way, and even if he wanted to press more, Voyager's now quite distracted by other matters.

"Did you only get your bubble voice really recently? You're doing pretty good with it so far. Talking can be tricky, whether it's bubbles or not! It took me awhile, to get the hang of words at first."

[moonlesstides]

Grace nods, and lets her hand drop back to the children's books. ~I have never been able to speak, but when I came here...that changed. I know the power of words, and longed for them, and now it is mine. When I master reading I will be truly mighty at last.~

The thought brings a satisfied look to her face; not a smile, but something more along the lines of a predator that has finally cornered its meal.

~You remind me of someone I know. Have you seen a young boy whose head is a sack full of mice? He can usually be found with an axe unless he's gotten into the flare guns again.~

[besixdouze]

As a person that's never yet experienced the conventional terror of being in the sightlines of any sort of predator, Grace's satisfied look as she muses upon the power of the written word triggers no sense of alarm whatsoever on Voyager's part. Rather, she simply seems quite pleased at the idea of such things, and he's hardly about to begrudge her that. A basic ability to read might have set in fairly naturally for Voyager himself, but he does know it's a sort of thing that doesn't come half so easily to others without practice.

"I hope you can master it really quickly! You'll be able to read all kinds of stories then...there's lots, of really wonderful ones, out there in the world. You could get 'mightier' with every one, definitely!"

Because that's probably what she means, right? Well, perhaps in at least one sense, or so he's assuming. This new topic, though...the description is brief, but already quite enough to plant the mental image firmly upon Voyager's thoughts, and his eyes widen at the idea of it.

"Wow, a sack full of mice? No, I haven't seen somebody like that...I'm pretty sure I'd remember all the mice, in the sack. Is he one of your friends?" --Hm! If his head is the sack... "Ooh, do you think he might have a bubble voice now too?"

[moonlesstides]

~A friend...no, I don't think so, but I do think fondly of him. Little Robbie was quite young, even younger than you I suspect - ten years old if I remember the gossip. He was very energetic and enthusiastic, if prone to...touching things that were not his.~

Grace is only not having war flashbacks to Robbie getting into the stockpile of flare guns due to experiencing that event by locking herself in her room.

Grace fucking hates flare guns.

~I have not had many friends, little golden thing. Perhaps I can be yours?~

[besixdouze]

Hmm, not a friend, but still someone regarded well. There's probably other words for that, then. ("Associate"? "Co-worker", maybe? He thinks he's heard Erice use terms like that in the past...)

Either way. An energetic and enthusiastic boy, with a sack of mice for a head, who touches lots of things. Ah, Voyager does that a lot too, though maybe with a bit less fixation upon flare guns...it'd be nice to find such a kindred spirit here.

"I'll keep an eye out for him! Robbie sounds like he would stand out, so, I'll let you know right away when I see him."

The resolution is already accompanied with a smile, but he perks up further at Grace's offer. Honestly, she didn't even need to ask...but since she does--!

"Oh! Yes, you can be my friend. And I can be your friend too! I wouldn't mind that...not at all..." A warmly decisive nod--so it's settled! Here, a new thought occurs to him. "Huh...yeah, and since we're friends now. I can show you something! If you'd like to hear it?"

[moonlesstides]

Grace nods several times with enthusiasm. What is it? What is it? Don't leave her in suspense Voyager!

[besixdouze]

His own smile widens at the clear enthusiasm.

"Okay! I haven't done this very often...but, your bubble voice reminded me about it. I can send something a bit like that too! Listen..."

A moment's slight concentration passes across his features, as Voyager focuses on a point just over one of Grace's shoulders, and reaches...for the recording. A certain part.

They don't emerge quite like bubbles to Grace's own mind. Rather, as if playing at her ears and yet not, there's a very soft crackle of some sort of static feedback...and then voices. Dozens and dozens of voices, of all manner of human demographics (and not one of them Voyager's own), welling up over each other in a gentle overlaying murmur of sound. The overall tone seems to range between neutral and pleasant. The translator of the ship also doesn't seem to touch any of the words at all--dozens and dozens of myriad tongues for the dozens and dozens of people speaking--though if Grace hails from any iteration of the planet Earth, she might still recognize one or two of the languages.

The words are friendly greetings, of all kinds. Though even magically beamed as the voices might be, the recorded quality is clear, because the fidelity is still somehow poor and somewhat fuzzy...

[moonlesstides]

Grace only knows English, but the Manor had people of many nations, and she recognizes some of the words of greeting from them. She listens in awed rapture, and when the voices fade her face breaks out into the brightest smile. ~Oh it's marvelous! But - I must know, to whom is the message intended? It's as if all the world has sent it...~

[besixdouze]

As the overlaid recording of the greetings draws to an end, Voyager's concentration returns to the present conversation at hand. He beams back at her bright smile, heartened by the positive reaction.

"Yeah, it really is marvelous, huh? They wanted to collect as many samples of the world's words as they could! Fifty-five human languages, ancient and modern...these were made to greet interstellar civilizations!"

It's a brief bit of a shift, here, as Voyager touches upon this topic now. The way the slow and careful cadence of his own words now quickens, focuses, takes on more of a clarity and surprising eloquence.

"I'm on a voyage through the stars. I'm the first, so I'll be the guide. And when they sent me out, they gave me the messages to carry, in case I'm intercepted someday." He places a hand on his chest, fingertips over the star-crested logo on his tunic there, and he puffs up a bit with a clear sort of pride. "There's these greetings, and music, and pictures of the world! --Well, like this, I don't know how to send the pictures yet. But, out there, we hope it can tell somebody some things about Earth...wouldn't that be really wonderful?"

[moonlesstides]

Grace has very little idea what 'interstellar' means but she's better at context than she gives herself credit for; there is a short moment of the (metaphorical) math equations floating before her face before she pieces it together and beams an unpracticed smile. ~You mean to say - aliens, little one? How splendid!~

Local Lovecraftian horror & victim has not pieced together that she's supposed to be the aliens.

aaand wrap!

[besixdouze]

Oh, if only Grace had asked, Voyager would have been more than happy to explain what 'interstellar' means! In almost excruciating detail, even! As a person who might not be very good at explaining pretty much anything else, but does know a great deal about space...

But, well, that can be a topic for another time. Just the same way that Grace's dubiously alien status might surface another time too. For now, though, she's simply a watery bubble-voiced lady with an aura very vaguely like Euclides'...and now they're friends, as agreed! Voyager's quite content enough to know her simply by this sort of identity; it's hardly a bad one in the least, after all.

"Ehehe...yeah, aliens! Since I'm the messenger, I think it's a bit more polite, to not call them that. But that's definitely what we call them on Earth, isn't it? I'm going to try my best to make a good first impression, when I meet them."

Which may very well be sooner than he expects, on this ship!