outer_divide | [Video | Sunday

Um, okay, so I think I've been watching a little too much Twilight Zone lately...

[Dani's voice is slightly nervous, as is her little laugh at her own circumstances and attempts at assimilating her current situation into her own world view. And she knows she's more than just nervous because that's her father's voice in her mind, not hers. She's scared. Her eyes dart nervously about and she often looks away from the screen of her communicator.]

This isn't all just in my head, is it? This place? I mean because at least this all being some weird immersive hallucination would make some sort of sense.

[If she were locked away in Building 7, for instance, and everything that had come after her father met with her in holding was the product of her own guilty mind. Or she was still in that room in the warehouse and one of Stanton's special pets was weaving some elaborate simulation for her. That would make sense. But everything feels too real and this is a remarkably random scenario for either of those explanations.]

I just don't understand. I'm trying, but I don't know how I got here. I don't even know how I can be here. The last thing I remember...

Look, I'm not even sure what the last thing I remember is, okay? But I do know that I was in New York and then I was waking up on some kind of spaceship in my underwear.

[Another nervous laugh.]

Do I need to worry about being probed or something? [A small, frustrated sigh follows.]

Is there anyone out there even listening to me?

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It's a lot to take in, I know.

[And she doesn't want to freak her out anymore than she has to, so she carefully steers the conversation to her last question.]

Should you not feel fine?

No. I don't think I should.

It's the pod. It healed any injuries you had.

I had some pretty serious injuries...

Okay, fine, alien magic pod healed me. Why?

It sounds crazy, but the crew of this Ship were saving us. Apparently there's some sort of energy that creates these rifts in time and space and each of us fell through. The Ship could lock onto us and save us. We got put in the pods to heal us from that experience. But then the Ship crashed and people have been awakening at random. Beyond that, I don't know what the plan was for us.

[Dani is silent, staring down at the screen for a good few minutes as she tries to wrap her mind around what she's just been told.]

The ship crashed...and people have been waking up at random. So...it's been more than a day since the last thing I remember? I could have been in that pod for years, because I...fell through a crack in reality? And aliens saved me?

That's right, as far as I've heard. We all come from different times and places, though some have lucked out and have people we know from home here too.

Um... okay. Who's 'we'? I mean, I'm not asking for everybody's name but... you make it sound like a society.

Those of us who came out of the pods like you. We each had some sort of comm device in our footlocker with our personal effects, so we are a sort of community. Most of us live in Poseidon. It's the name of these two cities to the south of the Ship. The city you can see from outside the hatch door is the Old City. The Authorities there can help you get to Poseidon, and there's a place you can stay until you get on your feet.

[She knows how all this sounds. Like she'd better just settle in.]

There are some of us working on getting the Ship operational again. If you have any computer or engineering skills, you might want to look into that.

How many people are there? And I don't even have a G.E.D, so I think I'll pass on the tech stuff.

[So this was it. She's pretty sure there's a History Channel joke in here somewhere. What's there to be found, in that final strange land from which no man returns? Aliens. It's almost funny. At least she has a destination to head for now.]

What's this place I can stay? Thanks, for your help, by the way. I know I don't sound like it but I appreciate it.

About thirty or forty. It's hard to know sometimes who's from the Ship and who's a local unless you've seen them on this device. By the way, sensitive information is better left for in person. The Authorities can probably listen into these. They're not bad people-- [Not since the time line changed,] --but it's best to keep private things to meeting people in person.

The place in Poseidon is called the Flop. There're beds and simple food to get you started. But there are places to work too. Coffee shops, restaurants, courier services. I'm sure people will offer suggestions.

Okay. And who exactly are the Outer Authorities? Other than the people who can apparently help me get to the city.

So it's like a hostel?

They patrol this area because it borders the plague lands, which I don't know that much about, but you can guess from the name that it's bad.

Mm hmm, just like.

The plague lands? Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

[She won't even bother with telling her about the domes or how life used to be before the time line changed. "Plague lands" sounds bad enough.]

D'you have any other questions I can help answer?

[Video | Sunday - Week 44]

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