sixthiterationlogs | Is this all as strange as it is seeming? Was I dead or was I only dreaming? [OPEN]

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Is this all as strange as it is seeming? Was I dead or was I only dreaming? [OPEN]

WHO: Samantha Moon
WHERE: Around town
WHEN: Post-quake
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Some shell-shock. And because it's Sam, a lot of swearing.

As hard as Sam tried, she couldn't stop thinking about the night of the Rain of Fire. Compared to what had happened to her and the life she knew that night, an earthquake should have seemed like small potatoes. She lived in stupid California, for fuck's sake. This shouldn't have been enough to scratch up memories of the Rain, like a scab being ripped off her elbow. But introspection had never been Sam's greatest talent. So she understood herself less than complex physics or genetic sequencing or the right way to make fun of people who actually liked Walter Keane portraits. And when the memories flooded her brain, she was helpless to stop them, much less understand.

Sam was fast. She’d been fast even before she died. High school track team. Only for a hot minute, it seemed, but it had stuck with her. And it served her well, now, as she raced through the jumbled and ripped up streets of Los Angeles, jumping over steaming craters in the concrete, dodging around debris that was so twisted and mangled that she couldn’t even begin to guess what any of it had originally been. Was that bent metal rod a piece of the international space station? A support beam from a skyscraper? A fender? No way to know, no time to care.

She raced along Vine, her wig tilted to a terrible angle, her clothing ripped and torn. Her shadow stretched out in front of her, illuminated by fires from every direction. No matter which way she turned, she couldn’t erase the image of Sterling Engelhart being sucked down into the earth. “He had a piece of me with him,” Elizabeth kept moaning to Aubrey, before she succumbed to torpor and the hunters opened fire. If Sam believed in miracles, she’d call it one that no one had been shot. She’d separated from Grace and Avery at the Ordo library, then immediately turned tail and started back for home, despite their protestations that she should stay with them.

Even in this state of emergency, Sam was still afraid to reveal her secrets to them. Karen had well-ingrained the notion that no Kindred could really be trusted. The streets were full of the dead, dying, and bewildered. Most of the people that she passed seemed to come to life only when a large chunk of building fell from above. And then there was screaming and running and still more dying, as if they were reliving the first volley of space junk and satellites all over again.

“Joanna!” she heard someone screaming. “Joanna! Where are you?”

Sam did the math in her head. Based on her rough estimates, Los Angeles had probably lost well over one-third of its population tonight. And it was still too soon to make a final call. The looting hadn’t begun yet. And the panic. That too would inevitably raise the death count. And as for the rest of the world? Who knew?

Sam walked to a pile of rubble, leaning over to move a piece. She didn't hear anyone or anything underneath. With a scowl, she kicked it. What had it even been? A shed? A supply store? A fucking outhouse? There was another way this was different from the Rain. The landscape was still alien, whether it was pristine or wrecked. She was an outsider, a foreigner without any landmark to navigate by.

Her walkie crackled from her belt. “Mother to Sleepwalker.” Avery’s voice. He sounded formal. It was the same voice he used when he was in Court. “This is Mother to Sleepwalker. Come in Sleepwalker.”

She yanked it free, bringing it to her mouth. “This is Sleepwalker.” Her voice didn’t tremble too much. That would probably come later.

Avery’s tone softened. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to force herself to believe it.

“I wish you’d stayed.”

“I have to go.”

“Will you at least tell me where you are?”

And there was yet another way this was all different from the Rain. There wasn't anyone around here like Avery, anyone to worry about her whereabouts or even care if she was alive or dead. For all she knew, she was dead and now a fucking ghost, haunting this clown rodeo. Angrily, she pressed the heel of her palm against the side of her head. She wanted to force the memories out. And maybe hide her face a little, as her expression crumpled.

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Jude doesn't know his maternal grandmother--as far as he can tell, she lived and died in some kind of commune that rivaled the Amish for segregation from normal civilization. His father's parents were dead before he was born, but there were plenty of ladies in Hollow Creek who echoed the sentiment. Have another sandwich, more brisket, more pie.

He misses all three, now that he's here.

"Well, take better care of yourself or I'm putting it on yours." He's found at least one grave in his wandering: nothing traditional with a headstone, but a pile of rocks growing moss and grass under a tall pine, a star carved into the roots around it. Credence probably knows who it is, he's obsessed with the subject.

Making his way into the kitchen, he points at the spread on the table, not quite picked clean. "There are more plants and vegetables next to the old school," he adds, "you can pick things up when you walk by it. Paper and blankets are here, upstairs."

The inappropriately-timed humor earned Jude another smile. "Nah," she said, walking over to the food. It was as about as appetizing as an enema. "My tombstone is gonna say 'Here lies the blue bitch. She lived. She did some stuff. She died.'" She lived again. She survived the apocalypse. And she was the first line of defense against the Predators.

'Galatea of the Ordo Dracul.' That's how she actually wanted to be remembered. And hey, she'd been yoinked from the world before the final battle. That would probably be her only footnote in the annals of history.

Well, as both a Galatea and a deserter.

She picked up a stubby, gray carrot, eyeing it suspiciously. At least, she thought it was a carrot. "Can I ask you something?"

"People's grandmothers dye their hair blue, so maybe it's all the same thing." For a moment, it was almost a back and forth, almost like turning back time to before he started losing it, and stopped leaving the dorm for anything short of basic survival or expulsion worthy class-skipping. He doesn't know why the kids along the hall had adopted him into their group, but they had been like this more or less constantly.

It had been exhausting, but it wasn't terrible to be reminded.

"Sure," he says with a shrug, making his own orbit of the table, picking up leftovers to examine and eat as he went.

She set down the carrot and picked up what was either a cucumber, or a shriveled, green penis. She couldn't be entirely sure. "Why do you give two shits about whether I eat or not?"

It wasn't a snap or a bark or any of her other typical ways of asking. More, she was genuinely curious, genuinely unsure. He hadn't exactly shown any signs of even liking her, much less tolerating her, the first time they met. And Sam knew herself to know that she wasn't exactly endearing.

Hell, she'd just called herself the blue bitch because it was true. She was a total bitch.

So, really, Jude didn't make a lot of sense. And like any good scientist, Sam needed to know why.

His first week, he probably wouldn't have given a shit. He had his own problems to deal with, and people who can't take care of themselves are liabilities in a place like this. She shouldn't need babysitting--or worse, even a baby knows to cry until someone feeds it.

But he'd been no-one's problem before. Losing time, falling over like someone cut the strings holding him up, locking himself in the dorm. The cave-in had been similar enough: only Credence would have even known he'd been in there, and only because he had some kind of attachment to following him around. If some girl with blue hair could wander around starving, no one paying it any mind, what kind of place was this?

"Like I said," he answers with a shrug, "this place is what you make of it. I like it better when it's a place people give two shits."

Sam put down the cucumber-penis, watching Jude for just a moment. She tended to avoid eye contact, just because of its connotations in Kindred society. But it wasn't like either of them were at risk of brainwashing the other. And, anyway, it brought about a certain type of intimacy that Sam couldn't really express in any other way.

Snark she could do.

Sincerity was harder.

She ducked her head. Once. And said, "Thanks."

And then decided not to make a deal out of it.

Watching her pick at the table, he shrugs: praise and thanks are hard things to shoulder, so he usually just doesn't. Jude believes in paths of least resistance, and he's found that the best one is to sit like a stone and hardly move on the path at all.

A rock on a sheet of ice: every time Hell freezes over, he moves.

"What do you like to eat," he asks, seeing little progress in the leftovers. "I'll see what I can do to reproduce it."

What she really wanted, more than anything in the world, was her mother's matzo ball soup. Or a beer. Or both, even. She'd be delighted with both of them. Unfortunately, neither seemed likely, somehow.

She nearly laughed thinking about such a request.

Instead, she made a dismissive gesture. "Anything that's recognizable is fine. Just some bread with a topping would be awesome."

"There's no yeast," he says, slipping back to the pantry to find the strange, crumbling bread put out each day. "But it's not bad, really, and there's jam and eggs."

Probably going to be less of both if too many people divert to fixing buildings, but the bread's enough if they keep bringing in some meat each day. On his way back out, his arm cradles a helping of bread, a jar of dark preserver, and two of the eggs from the basket. He rations himself a little more sparingly, but she looks like she has some catching up to do. "All that stuff in there's just there, you can come take from it any time."

"Yeah, but I'm a biologist, not a chemist." Which was to say, she couldn't cook worth a damn.

Still, she smiled and did her part, fetching the frying pan, just the way she used to do back home when her mother would make her eggs in the middle of a late-night study cram, before her high school finals.

Sam was excellent at fetching pots and pans.

"So what's your world like?" she asked. "I mean, you're handling your here-ness with amazing chill." Which meant it had to be pretty weird. Like hers.

"Normal," he answers, managing to make it sound like a question as he drops his items on he counter and goes back to find butter for the pan. He'd seen a man cooking with oil earlier in the week, but he thinks it's one of those box items--guy had taken it with him when he left. "I was home in the mountains, it was 2001, the sun went the right way and nobody talked too much about space exploring or smoke monsters."

Everyone's home is their idea of normal, but there's nothing on his side to make sense of this place. Nothing but the problems in his own head, and he doesn't think he could make up all these people. "I just don't see a point in getting worked up. It's like a test when you don't know the answer: I just skip it. I just make some food, walk through some trees, and I don't think about the shit I can't change."

"No such thing as 'normal,'" Sam replied, fetching two plates, since she figured they could eat together. Like people. Or something. "Normal's just a baseline before you realize how fucked up life is."

At least, that's what she'd decided for herself.

Normal was just a pretty fancy that people invented for themselves, about the things they couldn't have, for one reason or another.

"But 2001? Guess that makes me from your future. 2014. We don't have flying cars."

"That's the kind of thing I don't think about," Jude points out, though there's no ire in hearing it, and his shrug isn't quite a dismissal. He's here, he's cooking eggs. She's from the future, but she speaks English and needs to eat and--he doesn't have to let it mean much. Everyone here is human, at least.

Stories about Credence notwithstanding, but he doesn't think about those either.

"I guess I should be asking you about lottery numbers." It's what Charlie would do, he thinks, presented with a place like this. He'd settle in, and he'd joke, and they'd never talk about it. But at least they'd be together, and frying up eggs isn't so different from mixing up Hamburger Helper for two every night.

"I wouldn't be much help to you," Sam replied. The Halpers might not have prepared Sam for the world she was going to inherit, but they'd certainly been loaded. And she was more than a little grateful about receiving the best education money could buy. No complaints there.

And just like in their home, she set a little table now.

"I can tell you that the Space Wars prequels suck, the Cubs still haven't won the World Series, and we finally got a Black president."

At least, they'd had a president until the Rain. Sam wasn't entirely sure what was happening in DC--or the rest of the world--now.

"So, Hell froze over and the Cubs still lost," is all he can think to say to that. Butter sizzles in the pan, and he cracks the eggs into it, breaking the yolk with a spatula and folding it into itself. There's only one kind of eggs he knows how to make, eventually turning to her table settings and dividing up portions of scrambled, and some of the odd, hard bread he's softened up in the buttery pan.

"Grab some fruit," he suggests, the bowls of scavenged and harvested berries near to empty in the middle of the leftovers, but not looking any worse for the wear. Carrying the pan back to the sink, he starts cleaning before he bothers to sit and eat, trying to have some better habits in the communal space than he had at home or the dorms. "I guess it's just good to know it's still there," he adds, struggling to imagine himself over a decade older, giving up the same way he gives up on puzzling out the point of this place.

She started to fetch the berries when Jude made the comment. It's still there. But was it? Was it? She didn't really know.

The thought formed a hard lump in her throat.

The fucking world was in shambles. She had no way to know if anything had survived--and in what state--on the other side of the country. It was probably a reasonable assumption, though, that the Cubs would probably never win.

She shook her head and grabbed the berries, trying to shake off the thought. "Well, we may not be from the same world. I kinda hope not. Mine is pretty fucked up."

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Is this all as strange as it is seeming? Was I dead or was I only dreaming? [OPEN]

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