thebastion | Day 204 :: any format [OPEN]

Entry tags:

Day 204 :: any format [OPEN]

Who: Rob and anyone
Open: Open
When: Day 204
Where: The entrance to the Bastion, then everywhere
What: The latest survivor has just arrived and doesn't realize that his world is gone yet.
Format: Any, will match
Warnings: I don't think so?

This had certainly been an unexpected event. One moment Rob had been walking to the game shop to hang out and the next he was lying on the sidewalk, part of the street and the small park he was passing the only recognizable landmarks. It was like someone had picked up a section of the world and deposited it here. Or dropped it; things were looking kind of broken. He had an initial moment of panic and confusion at the sudden change in his situation, but that quickly gave way to calm, and then to a bit of excitement at the prospect of an actual adventure in some fantasy world, since that was obviously what this was. With no people, monsters, or animals in sight, the buildings he could see in the distance were as good a destination as any, so he set off walking towards them.

A few hours later he walked into the Bastion, a bit sweaty from the heat since his backpack was too full to fit his coat in, but otherwise in a good mood, twirling the shard he'd found between his fingers. The new arrival was around 5'9" and broad-shouldered, with long brown hair, a reddish-brown goatee, and his ears and septum pierced, the septum with a fairly thick circular barbell. He wore a shin-length black canvas coat with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, baggy black BDU pants tucked into red high-top skateboard shoes, and a black T-shirt with a red symbol on it, the front of it tucked up behind a matching belt buckle. For someone who'd just had their world destroyed, he looked to be in a pretty good mood. Maybe he didn't know yet?

A while later he could be found wandering around the Bastion, looking everywhere that didn't look like a private space and awkwardly pausing when he saw people, unsure how to strike up conversations with them. It wasn't like he could just walk up to them and press X to have them infodump, but these were people he was going to be around a lot and he knew it would be a good idea to get to know them all. How did video game protagonists do this?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"You guess right. I advised everyone that it was going to be safer if they stayed indoors and didn't move around too much." Colin says, approaching from off to the side. "Takane, who is this lonely stranger?"

Colin smiles behind his environmental suit's helmet. Yep, you're getting another weird one, Rob.

"Hello there, looks like you made it to our little enclave in one piece," he says. "I'm the aforementioned 'Colin.'"

So far, in whatever timeline these threads occur in, the Meta still has Colin beat in the "weird" department. The environmental suit deepened Rob's confusion about the tech level of this place though. His eyes flicked over Colin but his head remained immobile.

"So long as you look where you're going it isn't too bad," he replied. "I'm Rob."

Colin didn't give a last name so Rob didn't either. He also didn't offer to shake hands, but that's because he forgot to, not because Colin didn't offer.

Takane scowled again, crossing her arms over her chest and looking to Colin with an unamused stare. She should've known he wasn't too far away.

She hadn't exactly given her name to the stranger as well, but Colin had said her name. Good enough. Totally.

Colin seemed to have a handle on things. She didn't need to talk anymore, did she? Maybe? Maybe not? She was just gonna keep herself quiet and talk if she needed to.

"Nice to meet you, Rob. Welcome to Bastion," Colin says in greeting.

He gives Takane a grin then, and he shakes his head. "You're displeased to see me?" he asks her teasingly, before turning his attention back to Rob.

"As Takane told you, we've got a cure for what's afflicted us," he says. "If you get the a headache and start feeling cold, get to the hospital, and we'll fix you right up."

He points off in the distance to the large medical facility, not too easy to miss.

Rob looked where Colin was pointing and nodded, his septum piercing bouncing with the movement.

"I'll keep that in mind."

It was probably good that Colin had given symptoms; having a stranger simply ordering him to take some drug wouldn't have gone over well.

"You a doctor, then?"

"Not really," Takane answered for him. In her experience with him, Colin was a great many things. A proper doctor, though? Nah. That was Yukio.

And it was still weird to her that even Yukio was, because he was younger than her.

Other than that, she still remained largely to the side of the conversation.

"Interphasic Drive Engineer, actually," Colin says, smiling and shaking his head. "Sadly, I'm one of the few people with medical training of any sort here. And that's mostly first aid training more than anything else. Still, we march into battle with the army we've got, and with a plague, it was me and Yukio, or prayer."

He sizes up Rob curiously then, and he gives Takane a glance. "I'm guessing he just arrived?" he asks, before looking back to Rob. "You just came in the from the Skyway? Or did you arrive some time while we were stuck in the hospital?"

Rob made a mental note to ask about interphasic drive engineering at some point; it sounded interesting, but his priority now needed to be on information that was more directly relevant to the situation he was in.

"'Skyway'? Sounds like a good name for that. Kinda cool place. Hm. Is 'Bastion' the name of this world or just this settlement?"

Relevancy was in the eye of the beholder.

Takane only shrugged in response to Colin's question.

"Beats me. He was here when I was taking a walk. I'd assume he's brand new, though. He really doesn't know much about this place."

Nevermind that Takane doesn't know much about the place herself. Only what she's been told. Kinda.

"I told him that his world blew up."

You're welcome, man. Now you don't have to do it yourself.

"Thank you, Takane," Colin says, smiling at her. "That saves me a little bit of trouble."

To say nothing of the fact that it saves him the trouble of trying to do feels. Why are feels so hard?

"Anyway, I don't believe I've actually asked the name of this world. Not that it really matters, since it too was blown up," Colin says. "We're living on chunks of land of a whole bunch of different worlds, but the majority of it seems to be centered on the origination of the incident that took place. Typical region of least resistance, rather common with this sort of reaction."

Rob paused a moment to try and work through what was said, pulling his hands out of his pockets, shifting his stance slightly, and crossing his arms over his chest.

"So you're telling me that an event in this universe - which is, by definition, a closed and self-contained system that neither influences nor is influenced by any other universe (with the possible exception of black holes or spawning other universes through quantum mechanics) - caused the destruction of not only this universe but also multiple other universes. But, in the face of the immense power required to destroy a universe, breach the barriers between universes, and destroy multiple other universes, pieces of matter, including fragile living creatures such as people, somehow managed to not only survive, but cross over into this universe."

An eyebrow is raised.

"That seems rather unlikely. It'd be more reasonable to assume that whatever the event was that destroyed this world, it somehow reached out and transported chunks of other planets in the same universe here. Rather than other worlds being destroyed, it's more likely that there are a bunch of craters and missing persons reports back home."

"The odds of survival of anything in that space are in the billions, if not even more remote than that," Colin replies, looking utterly amused. "But it sounds to me as though you're operating under a scientific mind that operates on a three dimensional view of the universe."

He shakes his head then, and he sighs. "But no, the destruction is significant. It SHOULDN'T be significant, not from what I've seen so far, but there was a catalyst of some sort that I wasn't able to determine, and likely never will, given how poorly documented the Mancers had the reaction, and the fact that it was sabotaged on top of that," he continues. "When time gets fractured, there are natural points of attraction for sentients to be drawn to. Again, a point of least resistance. Most commonly, those spots are the origination site of the causal incident. These sorts of incidents are not unheard of where I'm from, though one of this magnitude is disturbing. Especially since it still seems to be growing."

"I'd like to believe that the Calamity had the sort of effect that you're thinking of, but it's unlikely. The amount of energy necessary to break a dimensional barrier is significant. To crack a planet, as this one has been broken? Even more significant. To do both is difficult for me to calculate without a supercomputer at my disposal, and to calculate the amount of devastation that we've seen so far is the kind of equation that stumps both mathematicians and temporal physicists for centuries," he continues to explain. "Make no mistake, the universes haven't been destroyed, but planets have been."

"Four-dimensional, including time, but from what you say it sounds like the theory about ten dimensions is true after all. But anyways."

He put a fist to his chin in thought, casting his gaze downward.

"Assuming planets were in fact completely destroyed - which unless someone's witnessed that happening seems like an overly-large assumption to make - why just planets? Shouldn't there be sections of stellar atmospheres showing up here too, if the effect is random and/or attracted to concentrations of matter?"

He remembered something that Colin had said earlier and looked up.

"What's so special about people that they get drawn to the source of the problem? That seems more like a plot contrivance for a science fiction story that something you'd expect to see in reality."

"Sentience and or consciousness, really," Colin says. "Believe it or not, it does have something to do with it. Not everything, mind you. There's a reason you can find the remnants of several worlds out there. But the ability to perceive the passing of time does have an effect on time itself. As for why there's no star stuff here, there probably IS... but gases dissipate, heat has a lot of room to disperse, and there is a lot of empty space out there that's a lot more likely to be pulled in than star stuff."

He smirks faintly. "Not that I'm complaining, it's a damned sight better on the scale of coping mechanisms than most people here, but do you really want to spend your first day debating exactly why it is you're alive and not an ash statue?" Colin asks.

"Huh. So observation affects time as well as quantum effects. Interesting. But you're right, this is a conversation for another time. I should be asking about what you guys do for food, clothing, and shelter around here, but... 'ash statue'?"

"It's a little more complex than that, but I'm not a temporal scientist. Dad wanted me to stay the hell away from it, as a matter of fact," Colin says, giving a lopsided grin for just a moment. "But... yeah. As for the ash statues, well... You'll see them sooner or later. Everyone has. If you're lucky, you won't find one of anyone you know."

He grows somber then, and he looks down and shakes his head. "They're the corpses of people who DIDN'T survive the calamity," he explains. "I've already confirmed they're the real deal. My crew, all of them were statues except one corpse that had been stuck inside a shuttle that had been fried shut."

For the first time in the conversation, Rob looked somewhat distressed by what he was hearing. Something about the idea of the dead as statues instead of merely corpses struck a nerve for reasons he didn't immediately understand and he felt a sudden, urgent need to change the topic.

"Well, uh," he shifted uncomfortably, "like I was saying, um, how does getting food, clothing, and, uh, shelter work around here? You guys have trouble with supplies a lot or're you, uh, usually okay?"

Oh yes. Once he accepts that this has really happened, this is going to hit Rob like a ton of munitions falling off a hoverlift... Colin's mood brightens somewhat as they change topics.

"We're hanging on for now," Colin explains, gesturing in the direction of the monument. "About a third of the Bastion's population makes daily supply runs to the outlying areas around here. The monument can create a great deal of what we need, if we bring it shards. They're small batteries, basically, and the monument..."

He looks puzzled for just a moment, searching for words to explain it. It's a good, LONG moment, if Rob cares to interject.

Rob spoke up once the moment of silence had lasted for a while.

"'Shards'?" he asked, pulling one out of his pocket along with a dark green hair elastic, which he took with his other hand and returned to his pocket. "Is this one?"

"That's right," Colin says, nodding. "The monument takes them, and spits out whatever you can imagine. Seriously, ask around about the donut trees. I don't even know."

The look of exasperation on his face is unmistakeable.

"But anyway, it's some sort of matter-energy conversion system that I've never seen before," he says. "It can create living beings, animals, food, BUILDINGS, DONUT TREES. It's pretty amazing, and if it weren't so vital to our survival right now, I'd strip it down and try to figure out how it works."

Rob mouthed "donut trees?" with a mix of confusion, terror, and fascination on his face before he processed what else Colin was saying. Because what he had just heard wiped every other thought from his mind.

"Wait, you're saying that this thing can create life!? How!? What limits are there? Does it create biological robots or do the creatures actually have souls? Doesn't that mean you could potentially create sentient beings with this? Clone people!? This is..."

His words trailed off, but he continued to gesture for a bit and his mouth continued to open and close. A few unintelligible sounds came out, but he'd forgotten how to communicate the thoughts that were still running through his head.

"Living, breathing, bleeding, thinking creatures, yes," Colin says. "If you saw the mammoth herd out on the Skyway? The monument created it. The same with the little dragons you'll occasionally see."

He gives a grin then, and he shakes his head. "The big dragon, on the other hand, is Paarthurnax. The monument didn't create him, he's another survivor. And he's probably the most well-adjusted person here. Good to talk to, if you need a sympathetic ear," he adds, in diversion from his prior topic.

He finds his way back to the matter at hand with sudden seriousness. "I don't know if it can clone people, and I'm not inclined to try it personally," he explains. "It's possible, I'm sure, but clones have a very rough time of things. Artificially created people are often stigmatized due to being created at someone's whim. Not saying anyone here would do that, but just the same, I'd rather not even try to find out."

Rob said nothing to any of that, instead bowing his head and running his hand over his face as he raised it, ending with a goatee stroke. His hand then returned to pinch the bridge of his nose for a moment. When he finally finished though, there were obviously gears starting to turn in his head.

"That all's something I can look into later. Doubt this thing will do much with one shard anyways," he snorted softly, then turned serious. "But you said the monument's vital to this place's survival. What's it giving you that you can't get any other way, and what's your plan if it stops working?"

"It takes about a week's worth of gathering to buy a small house," Colin confirms. "More for special amenities and the like. But all things considered, that's not too bad."

He smirks as he watches the gears turn in Rob's head. "Simply, it provides hope," Colin says. "Without the monument, I'm guessing that half the people here would have given up months ago. As for me... well, I don't like to put my life in the hands of one device. I'm working to build facilities and equipment that meet my standards. The monument is handy, though. It's shaved years off of my timetable already."

A person with a tendency to indulge in fantasy has been given the opportunity to make those fantasies real. The existence of donut trees has simply expanded his concept of what's possible. Colin may have additional headaches in his future.

"That's good. If something's this critical it's a good idea to have a backup plan.

"But until I can gather more shards, is there some place I can stay? And some place I can get a few things to tide me over? With how hot it is here right now I can pretty much guarantee that no one'll wanna be around me after I've been working if I can't change clothes. Especially if I'm wearing long pants like this."

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Takane skipped with permission.

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