[i'll use you as focal point so i don’t lose sight of what i want]

[majorlyugh]

WHO: Major Lilywhite
WHERE: Around both villages
WHEN: Nov 1 - 4, Stage I; Nov 5 - 6, Stage II; Nov 7 - 9, Stage III
OPEN TO: OTA!
WARNINGS: Will update as needed.

---

i. i have a bad feeling about this

The beginning is mostly mild, with Major forgetting the names of a few folks around the village. In each of the conversations, he chalks it up to having a rough night's sleep (mostly true), the general exhaustion of life in the village, or just having "one of those days." The only person whose name he didn't forget was Ravi's, though he doesn't connect it to the fact that he'd known him before his arrival in the fountain.

If someone he knows in the village were to run into him while he's at this stage, he will do his best to hide the fact that he has absolutely no idea what that person's name is. He'll try to carry on and having conversations as normal, but the other person might suspect that something's up. He'll laugh it off, apologize, make some joke about it - but there'll be a slight glint of worry in his eyes that he is forgetting something so basic and simple.

ii. there is always something worse

Things don't seem to get much better as time wears on. If anything, Major's forgetting more and more. Now, instead of forgetting names only, he seems to be forgetting people entirely, greeting people he's spoken to or has developed relationships with as though he's never seen them before. He can be found wandering the village a lot, eyes saucer-wide and full of curiosity, as though he's seeing the place for the first time. He might also be overheard complaining about the lack of electricity, the lack of video games, and the lack of modern technology - and he might be asking why all of those things are abhorrently absent, as though he's realizing it for the first time.

Conversations with Major at this stage will be on the frustrating side, fleeting. He'll forget things that were just spoken about a few minutes earlier. He might ask the other person what their name is again, how he got here, where Seattle is, where any of his missing friends are. He only vaguely recognizes Ravi, and he might insist that the real Ravi is still somewhere back in Seattle. The one in the village is just an imposter.

iii. only catastrophe is clearly visible

By the end, Major seems to have reverted back to his college football days. Somehow, the strange location and setting don't seem to bother him as much as one would expect, but he can be seen in any open field, utilizing whatever he can find as a makeshift football, running drills for hours on-end. He has no memory of the village, of his more recent days prior to the village in the city of Seattle, Ravi, the whole zombie outbreak, being the Chaos Killer, nothing.

He talks a lot about his parents' divorce, how his mom had come out as a lesbian and found a girlfriend, how he'd chosen his dad's side because he didn't know what else to do. He talks about a new girl he's been dating, a woman named Olivia Moore, who goes to UW with him. He talks about being nervous about meeting her friends for the first time, especially a woman named Peyton, whom Liv has known since high school. He talks about being a starting Safety on the UW football team. He talks about grappling with what to do with his life, his thoughts of pursuing social work, and everything else that a college co-ed might grapple with half-way through school.

Comments

ii. there is always something worse

[chosenbytheocean]

It was during one of his wide-eyed wanderings that Moana had stumbled across Major. She was wearing her island dress with a pair of thick boots and a cloak that she'd been gifted her first day in the village. It looked a little odd but it was more comfortable than wearing the clothes she had arrived in. Moana didn't like cotton.

She was carrying a collection of dried milkweed reeds that she had collected early that morning. They were tied together with rope and slung across her back.

Moana knew Major, not by name but she had seen him around the village a few times. He was friends with Ravi, who Moana counted as friend even though she rarely saw him. It was a little surprising to see Major wandering around looking as lost as he currently did and the oddity was enough to make her pause. "Um..." Her voice broke the silence in an awkward timber.

"Are you okay?"

[majorlyugh]

The girl's voice cuts through the haze of the fog Major's currently wandering around in, as aimless as a bat with one wing. He spends an excruciatingly long time staring at her, squinting, trying to make sense of who she is, why she talks like she knows him, why she's .. dressed like that, and if her being her might provide some sort of clue as to where he is.

"Yeah, I'm --" But Major cuts himself off, deciding not to pursue that. He isn't really sure if he's okay. He doesn't even know what "being okay" would mean at this point. He glances at the ground, at the reeds on her back, at her outfit, at their surroundings. "Do you -- do you know where we are? Where am I?" he asks, turning back to her.

[chosenbytheocean]

"You don't remember?" Moana wanted to approach the subject cautiously but she didn't know how else to phrase it. She might not have spoken to him before now but she knew that he wasn't new to the village. "You're Ravi's friend right? You two live together over there." She pointed off in the general direction of his home. Moana had never been there but she paid attention and noticed that both Major and Ravi would come and go from that house.

It felt like a safe assumption to assume he lived there.

She didn't give him time to answer her questions and set to explain, since he'd most likely ask again if she didn't reply back. "This is a village with no name. Everyone arrives through the fountain but we don't know why we're here." Moana shifted her weight nervously between the pads of her feet. Her fingers curled into a loose fist that bumped gently against her thigh.

[majorlyugh]

".. No. The last thing I remember is being in my bed, in my house, in Seattle," Major says as though he's pulling threads out from a tangled ball, slowly and one-by-one. His eyes glitter with the mention of Ravi, though, and he looks to her excitedly. "Yes! Ravi! We live together in that house. He's my room mate. He's my best friend."

He glances in the direction of her extended finger, but when he turns back to her, his brows are furrowed.

"No, we don't. We live together in a house in Seattle." He gestures to the village around him with his hands. "This isn't Seattle. This is .. I don't know where this is." His concerned and disturbed expression only gets worse the more she talks. ".. What .. do you mean? We're .. I'm not in Seattle?"

[chosenbytheocean]

Moana had no idea what to do in this situation.

"Did you forget?" She asked, the tension and worry in her voice now audible.

This wasn't Seattle. Moana tried to bring up the little map that she had in her head but Seattle wasn't on it. Was that near Chicago? She'd ask later. Right now she needed to focus on Major and his apparent amnesia. "Ravi is here." She continued, hoping that it might somehow help him if they keep talking about it. "You've seen him haven't you? You guys still live together."

She didn't know if this would work or not.

[majorlyugh]

"Did I forget what?" Major asks, growing more suspicious by the second. There's this weird itch at the forefront of his mind, an itch that confirms that yes, he did forget, but what he forgot is still unknown to him. It's like leaving the house with the feeling that you've forgotten something, only to realize hours later what it was - if anything at all. Except Major feels like that with everything, not just something simple like a set of keys.

"We do? .. Ravi's here?" A pause before he snaps and points at her, like he's remembered something. "Oh, you mean Impostor Ravi. He's a fake. He's totally like an evil clone or something. The real Ravi is back home. In Seattle." Another pause as he blinks, tilting his head slightly. "How do I get back to Seattle?"

[chosenbytheocean]

"You can't."

Moana was very worried now. "This is a different realm from our homes. No one knows how to get back." She shifted her weight between her feet while thumping her fist gently against the side of her thigh. "I don't think that Ravi is fake." He's been here longer than Major though Moana wasn't sure if that would convince Major.

"Why do you think he's fake?"

iii. only catastrophe is clearly visible

[scepterschild]

At first it was small things. Wanda forgot names and faces of those she met in the village. Something would remind her again but each day was harder. Her memories had become unclear and it took a specific question or comment to pluck a memory into focus. Seeing Major playing football did just that. She remembered their conversation and while she didn't remember everything else she knew that they had had a conversation about football.

Wanda walked up to Major with her arms crossed over her chest. It looked as if he was using one of the snuggies as a football, having gathered the material into the sleeve of the snuggie and then twisting the ends. It worked and Wanda's interest was peeked.

"Want someone to play with?" They wouldn't be able to have a real match but Wanda wanted a distraction and this felt like a safe one.

[majorlyugh]

Major falls in and out of lucidity, sometimes stopping in the middle of his one-man hail marys to remember that this isn't UW, other times being completely unaware and blissfully so that he seems to have an entire field to himself to practice. His brain compensates for his confusion by telling him that he's found a secret little space in some park in Seattle somewhere, and he should be damn pleased that he's got it all to himself for now. No kids, no kids-with-parents, no runners, no nothing. Just him, his makeshift football, and a big ol' open space.

The woman approaches just when he's in between running drills, and he considers her with one hand at his waist, the other wiping at the sweat on his forehead. His breathing is still a tad labored, though not overly so.

"You play?" he asks, quirking a brow. "Not that women can't play football, I mean. I just .. haven't ever had one offer to play it with me before."

[scepterschild]

Wanda pulled an elastic band from her pocket and tied back her long chestnut brown hair into a tight pony tail. "I don't but I could use the distraction." She knew the rules of American football but she's never played a one-on-one match. This will be a learning experience and one that Wanda was looking forward too.

Memories continued to slip and reform in her head. She knew this man. Major was his name and for now she wanted to focus on him and nothing else. She didn't want to forget again. They had talked about football. She had promised never to become a 49ers fan. These thoughts circled, like they were a song that had gotten stuck in her head. He had a puppy named Minor. He had arrived . . . The thought slipped away from Wanda and she tried again. He's friends with Ravi. Who was Ravi? It didn't matter. Major made her laugh. He was friendly and a zombie.

"I'll put up a challenge." She flashed him a grin. "I'm tougher than I look."

[majorlyugh]

"Do you need me to go over the rules? Go over how the game works? Or do you wanna just jump, head-first, with no worries or thoughts about your physical safety?" Major says, half-joking but also half-concerned. There's some vague spark at the back of his head, like a tiny, whispering voice that's trying to tell him something, but no matter how hard he tries to listen, he can't hear what it's saying. But he knows it has something to do with this woman. Like maybe he's seen her before somewhere?

"I don't doubt it. You look like you could probably karate chop me to the throat if you had to." He tosses the "football" around in his hands, squinting in concentration. "Hang on, have we met? Are you in Dr. Grossman's Sociology class? The one with the kid who's always snoring at the front of the room?"

[scepterschild]

"I know the rules but I've never played one-on-one before." Her statement was left open, giving him the option to explain if he wanted too while not directly asking a question. She was content to jump in and figure it out as she went but there might be things she didn't know. The problem with the things that she didn't know was that she didn't know them enough to ask about them.

Her expression fell at his question. "No." She never went to college. There was a war and fighting; that's all she knew. Wanda felt her memories slip away before she was able to refocus on Major. Football, he liked football. She repeated those words to herself like they were a mantra.

"But I know you." She confirmed with a bit of an awkward grimace. "Sorry. I'm having trouble remembering."

[majorlyugh]

"Well, one-on-one is different than playing in a game, you know? It's mostly just .. hang onto the ball, try not to drop it, and try to score a touchdown by getting into the end zone," Major explains, pointing to a little segregated area that he separated using some twigs. "Not a great set up, I'll admit. The twigs go all over the place and whatever, but it's the best I can do on such short notice. I was hoping to find some like .. little cones? The little orange ones that you use for drills and stuff? But I can't find any for the life of me, so I figured twigs were next best," he shrugs.

He loosely spins the football in the air from hand to hand as he looks at her. He studies her face, like there might be clues as to why he vaguely recognizes her. He comes up empty, though.

"Crap, you do? Cause I .. can't place you. Like, I feel like I know you? Your face looks familiar, but I have no idea where I've seen you unless it was around campus or at that house party last weekend? If that's the case, I'm sorry for anything I might've said or done. I'm kinda an idiot when I'm drunk."

ii

[zomboligist]

Back home, this had always been his worry.

The cure he had developed worked when it came to curing someone of their zombie affliction, but it was only temporary. The true cure worked, but stripped a person of their memories, as he'd seen with Blaine. He'd always known that Major taking the cure would have a similar effect and had been preparing himself for it but seeing it actually happen has been a heart-wrenching, awful thing, and Ravi isn't sure that he's going to be strong enough to see the last glimmer of recognition leave his eyes.

As it stands, there's still something there, and Ravi is tentatively trying to figure out what can help. "Hey," he greets Major as he stands in the doorway, having just brought Minor in from his walk. He lets the dog loose of the strange rope-leash he'd made, siccing him on Major. "I dread the answer, but, how are you feeling?"

[majorlyugh]

Major's entire face lights up at the sight of the puppy, as though he's never seen him before. It stirs up some kind of memory, one that's buried under a lot of dust and the water in the fountain, of a dog that looked like this. But he can't quite recall it, and he can't quite remember anything about it - other than the fact that he's pretty sure there had been one.

"Hey! A puppy!" he shouts, kneeling quickly to allow the puppy to attack him with licks and whines and excited jumps. "God, this little guy's cute." After he's had a few seconds to pet the furball, he looks up at Ravi with a significantly less excited look.

"Impostor Ravi," he murmurs before looking down at the puppy again. "Doing fine, I guess. Why wouldn't I be doing fine? Oooh, do you think we can grab a cup of coffee at that shop I like that's around the corner?"

[zomboligist]

"You do know the Imposter Ravi comments are hurtful, right?" he deadpans, mainly because he's not even ranking as an evil clone, just someone who's not quite real. Still, he'd rather not have to go through this exercise at all, if he's honest. The grief of Major's lack of memory hits him in his chest, making him feel physically sick.

Every time details come up that don't make sense, he feels the instant pinprick of guilt and worry, things he's been anticipating for so long, but now that they're happening, he's not sure how to bear it. "There's no coffee shops here, remember?" It's a gentle, prodding question, because no, he's not sure that Major does remember anything.

[majorlyugh]

"I'm sure they are, to an impostor," Major says with a pointed look towards his supposed friend. It feels so much like that Futurama episode, with Bender and Flexo, and how the only thing discerning the two (aside from their behavior) was the little magnetic goatee on Flexo's chin. He wonders if this Impostor Ravi's beard is magnetic, and if it'd pull off if Major tried to tug on it.

"What? Of course there are! It's right around the block, man." Major makes a bit of a face, like it's ridiculous for Ravi to even suggest that his favorite coffees shop has somehow vanished into thin air. He glances down at Minor for a second, who's a bit more demanding on his attention, before looking up at Ravi again. "What, are you trying to get out of doing some cardio for the day? That's a pretty Authentic Ravi thing to do."

[zomboligist]

Ravi rolls his eyes pointedly, making a very big deal about how annoyed he is by all of this. "What would even be the point of having an impostor version of me?" is what he wants to know, because honestly, that's the part that doesn't make any sense to him and if Major would think about it for at least a few minutes, he'd get that.

"Okay, fine," he says, with a nod. "If you promise to stay in my sights and not do some weird touchback running spree, we'll go outside to the corner and I can show you that there's no coffee shop." He gives him a 'deal?' look, hoping that'll work.

[majorlyugh]

"I dunno. What's the point of anything? What's the point of the sky being blue?" Major asks, as though the question makes any kind of sense. It doesn't. "But I figure they've put an Impostor Ravi here to .. get my guard down. Make me trust you and trust in whatever you say is going on. Then you'll .. I dunno, take me to some weird dungeon, tie me up, do weird experiments on me. Go all Silence of the Lambs on me, cut my skull open, and feed me my own brains. Who knows!" Major throws his hands up to either side of him in exasperation.

He really doesn't know. He doesn't even really remember what they've been talking about, though he's trying his hardest to feign otherwise.

"Fine. Fine." Right. The coffee shop. Major sort of remembers talking about it. But only sort of.

iii

[enterprisingheart]

For all that Picard has begun to, if not quite expect the unexpected out the village, than at least not be too entirely surprised when it crops up, he can't at all say that he'd expected to see someone simply running around with a ball. Not that he's about to judge what anyone should choose to do, of course, and given that he hasn't ever really spoken to Major he can't say whether or not this is something that he's simply chosen to do.

Nor, for that matter, does he recognize either the ball or the drills themselves. But he figures that hardly a reason to not at least strike up a conversation, especially when they've never actually met before. And he can't deny being at least a little curious about the drills themselves.

"That's certainly one way to keep warm."

[majorlyugh]

"Yeah! Gets the heart pumping, the blood flowing! Besides, I gotta make sure I get these drills down so I don't get benched next game," Major replies as he slows down to a trot, a walk, then a halt. He looks over at the man, a stranger, really, but that's to be surprised given that he thinks he's in a park in the middle of Seattle. He's not really used to strangers coming up and approaching him given that it's generally kind of weird to do so by most accounts, but the guy seems friendly enough.

There's something strangely familiar about him, like maybe he's seen him before somewhere, but Major can't seem to place it, no matter how hard he tries. It feels like a weird tingling at the back of his mind.

"You wanna join in?" he asks, tossing the ball from hand to hand with a curious expression. The guy's not old, but he's definitely older than Major by at least a decade. Still, Major's not going to deny someone the joys of playing football - or running drills, at least - if he wants to!

[enterprisingheart]

Given that as far as he's aware there aren't any regular games of anything, Major's comment comes as something of a surprise to Picard. He's not entirely unaware of the fact that the Observers are prone to doing any of a number of strange and bizarre things to the people who happen to live in the village, but so far none of it has seemed to affect people's memories. Or at least, not directly. There'd been the plague, yes, but the delusions that had come of that had been very clearly been a result of the fever, something that certainly doesn't seem to be the case here.

On the other hand, while he doesn't know the first thing about football, he can't deny that it does look like decent exercise.

"I'm not sure I'd be familiar with the drills in question. Sports were never quite my style."

Not that he isn't willing to learn, either. But that will depend on Major being willing to teach someone in the first place.

[majorlyugh]

"Yeah, you seem more like the brainiac type. Like the guy who wins like, ten games in a row on Jeopardy or something. Like that guy .. what was his name? The one who'd won a million dollars? Ken something?" Major snaps a few times as he attempts to locate this very obscure, random memory from the darkest recesses of his mind. It .. doesn't go so well, unsurprisingly. When he realizes he can't quite recall the guy's full name, he shrugs and then blinks at the man, having now forgotten their conversation entirely.

The man's looking at him a bit expectantly, like they'd just been in the middle of coming to an agreement, but for the life of him, Major can't remember what it is.

"What, um," he begins, feeling very much like the Dumb Jock and feeling pretty badly about it, "What we were just talking about again?"

[enterprisingheart]

Major isn't wrong in the least to assume that Picard is the brainy type. He's certainly not incapable of holding his own when it comes to the more physical aspects of his career, true. But it's certainly not his primary interest. Unfortunately, however, he doesn't really have any idea of what Jeopardy is, much less the familiarity with it that would be required to recognize the person Major is trying to remember the name. In fact, he's just about to say as much when Major shrugs and blinks... and apparently loses track of the conversation they'd just been having.

Still, he recovers well enough, and apart from a brief pause there's nothing to mark his surprise.

"Nothing terribly important," he answers instead, with a gentle - and hopefully comforting - smile.

[majorlyugh]

"Oh, whew, okay," Major says, exhaling the relief that washes over his features. He suspects the man might just be placating him to some extent, but honestly, he'd rather that than someone who hurls insults or gets testy over the fact that Major .. can't seem to remember much these days. Except that he's in Seattle, he's got a makeshift football in his hand, and he was running drills.

Right! The drills!

He snaps again, this time ending it with a point in Picard's direction.

"Were we talking about football?"