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

[not_the_last]

She takes a breath.

"He is, we have been told, responsible for our captivity here and for the conditions under which we live. Including periodic events, set pieces, ranging from perfectly pleasant to actively torturous. We have further been told that he is in some way using our emotional energy, particularly suffering, for the power he needs to maintain this setting."

A brief pause. "There are those who oppose the Captain completely, and those who wish to work with him and hope to change his behavior toward us. With significant variations in both cases, but I believe that is the primary point of contention."

[guildmastermind]

"I see. Where do you stand, Miss de Rolo, if you don't mind me asking?" He doesn't know her proper title yet, but he's being proper and formal enough to use her surname instead of her given one.

[not_the_last]

"Among the opposition," she says, a little cool, a little stiff. "It's no secret."

[guildmastermind]

"You sound like that's a position you've had to defend." Look, calling her defensive might be rude, but that feels like a fair observation. She's stiff, but standing her ground. Alright, he can work with this.

[not_the_last]

She breathes out. "Yes, I'm afraid so. Somewhat recently. I apologize; you've said nothing to merit that tone of response from me."

[guildmastermind]

"I've also not really done anything to earn your trust, yet. I'm not judging you, I'm just trying to get a handle of the situation I'm in." He holds up his hands, palms out, sheepishly.

[not_the_last]

"I appreciate your understanding," she says, with a small smile and nod. "Perhaps I should ask -- what have you already heard, regarding the general situation? Factions aside?"

[guildmastermind]

"Erin and Skulduggery worked me through some of the nature of this reality already. Erin, in particular, talked me through a lot of the practical knowledge I needed." Which means he's starting off with some of the more interesting potential skews to his perspective. "She told me I ought to bounce thoughts off Peter Smith and Lieutenant Tayrey at some point. But also that the Captain is bound by the rules he sets, and that our emotions are a form of power in use by him to maintain the ship."

[not_the_last]

She nods. "Erin is fairly reliable when it comes to practical aspects of things, yes. Skulduggery ... is keenly intelligent, but I find he has a tendency to take leaps of intuition and consider them natural, obvious conclusions." A faintly wry look. "He's often right, which doesn't help matters ... Yes, those are definitely good people to speak to for a variety of perspectives. And yes, as far as we've been able to ascertain, the Captain does seem to be bound by the rules of any scenario he creates. On one occasion, it appeared that he set up a game for the express purpose of making himself do something that he was otherwise unable to bring himself to do."

[guildmastermind]

Her description of Skulduggery gets a bit of a nod. "Skulduggery seems...not like he's playing defense, the way you are, but like he doesn't assume that anyone he meets is going to be a potential ally or even a player in the same game. He's almost astringent on the first meeting, to see how put-off someone is by it, and flippant about the circumstances around him. He seems like someone who's lost good faith in the average person. As for the Captain and rules..."

There's a pause. Shiroe pushes his glasses up his nose, and there's just a way they catch the light and gleam that makes him look shrewd and malevolent for a moment before it passes and he continues speaking.

"Knowing that something is bound by rules is useful, especially if you can discern what their rules are. When the natural laws of a reality are created instead of actually natural, that means they can be manipulated and exploited. It's a matter of learning the systems involved."

[not_the_last]

That simple gesture -- pushing his spectacles upward on his nose, the lenses briefly gleaming opaque -- catches on her heart and tugs.

"Yes," she says, "exactly. Though it's certainly possible to manipulate natural laws as well, but an artificial system may be simpler."

[guildmastermind]

“Nature has exceptions for every rule. Plants take in light and water to live, except those that are parasites or that catch insects to eat. Birds fly, except those that are flightless. An artificial system, especially run by someone who can’t break their own rules once set, doesn’t have edge cases.”

He smiles like a video game player being offered a new challenge. “I’ll need to figure out if my Overskill still functions, at some point.”

[not_the_last]

"Overskill?" She finds herself leaning forward a little, resting both arms against the edge of the table. Wanting to hear more.

(It would be so easy to feel bitter about his eagerness to face a set of challenges that has ground so many of them down to exhaustion. She doesn't want to.)

[guildmastermind]

"I am a scribe, which is a useful skill in its own right. But I also have the ability to write contracts that bind their parties magically, becoming law unto themselves."

He stops there, to see her reaction to that concept by itself.

[not_the_last]

She nods, slowly. "I've encountered the idea before. Though never as something a human could do. It's mostly the province of fiends, in my world."

But it doesn't sound judgmental, and her eyes flick up to his as though to suggest that if Shiroe is actually a fiend, this would be an excellent time to tell her so.

[guildmastermind]

"I'm not a fiend, but I'm also technically not just human. I'm what's called a half-Alv in the place I come from. The Alvs were a race of very advanced magical beings who fought a war against elves, dwarves and humans hundreds of years ago. They no longer exist, but there are those who seem human who carry their magical talents, like me."

Yes, there are a lot of implications below the surface there, but he doesn't have time to get into all of that.

(Especially since half-Alv is his character race, and he grew up human a reality over from all of that.)

"However, the magic of contracts is, as far as I can tell, a talent unique to me within that world. An evolution of the scribe's art that goes beyond binding legally into binding magically."

[not_the_last]

Cassandra hears a blurred version of half-elf at first, but then he mentions elves and she's lost again. Alv, not a varying pronunciation but a different sort of being altogether, it seems.

"A talent unique to you? That's ... surprising." She says the word as though it means something more like impressive.

[guildmastermind]

“There is a longer story attached to it, but it’s not exactly a first meeting in a public dining hall with a stranger who is…nobility?…sort of story. I almost thought military based on physical bearing, and clearly you’re a responsible steward of your people. But I think I recognize the sort of manners on display here. The level of diplomacy.”

He’s seen them in the Cowen family and other nobility of the People of the Land. While he’s not insulted, he wants to lay some cards down on the table here. And see some of hers.

[not_the_last]

She regards him for a moment, and nods. (Not quite hiding the fact that she's pleased he guessed.)

"Nobility, yes. My family has been the ruling lords and ladies of Whitestone for centuries. I don't insist on being called Lady here, though."

[guildmastermind]

"I imagine some here would chafe if you did, seeing it as you placing yourself above them. Though I'd guess there may also be internal reasons for not insisting, given your separation from your family's domain."

It's good strategy--or rather, it would be poor strategy to be a twat about it.

"But would you prefer it, if people who at least pretend to have manners used your title? I'm fine either way."

[not_the_last]

She can't help but smile. "I'm fine either way as well. Lady is more formal; I would prefer that over Miss, if you're asking. But I have no objection to Cassandra by itself."

A beat. "And while we're on the subject, what would you prefer to be called? Formally or otherwise?"

[guildmastermind]

"Shiroe's fine, functionally. I have titles, but they're not meaningful here. But, ah, I'm a founding member of the Round Table Conference of Akiba and the guildmaster of Log Horizon, if having that information enriches you in any way."

He's interested in seeing what questions she asks, if any. Or if she just files it away--that's data, too.

[not_the_last]

She smiles. "Having information is always a benefit. I would be quite interested to hear more about those."

Her phrasing is careful, giving room for him to elaborate now or put it off for another time.

[guildmastermind]

He's liked talking to her this long, but this is when he decides that even if they end up on opposite sides of the politics, she's always going to be one of his favorite people to dance talk about matters with. The delicacy on display is a quality of merit, in his books, and he agrees with the idea that 'having information is always a benefit'.

Is this what having a crush feels like?

"The Round Table Conference is a representative body for the group of adventurers from Earth who became trapped in the world of Theldesia and who settled in the city of Akiba. We're trying to work with the people of the land, to make sure we're able to survive without disrupting the society the landers have more than is necessary. Log Horizon, my guild, is made up of such adventurers, primarily. Both experienced ones and those who are younger and in need of experience and training."

[not_the_last]

Her eyebrows rise, as she listens.

"Adventurers from Earth?" is what she finally says. "That's fascinating. Everything I've heard of Earth suggests that it doesn't offer much opportunity for that way of life."