sixthiterationlogs | [EVENT] The Simulation Ends

In hindsight, he might have expected to wake up in the water again. The steady disappearances from the other side--not just Bodhi, but also the dog, also everyone who seemed to know him--had him in the same mind as before. Empty town, cold weather. He didn't need the powers that be to send him home--he was there, remembering it, to the point that he'd been looking over his shoulder and waiting for a blow.

Instead, he'd woken up in the water without a scratch.

At least this time he can move. Fully submerged with working limbs is better than half a foot of water with his body gone limp. It's the cold of a spring puddle kicked up by tires, not the deathly chill of water under ice, and you don't fear drowning as much as Jude does without learning to swim.

More stubbornness than sense. If a thirteen year old boy dares you to jump in a lake, and you're another thirteen year old boy, that's a life and death that trumps the literal.

Breaching the surface isn't the trouble; it's trying to haul himself over the edge. It's harder than it was last time; his clothes are still wet, still weighing him down, but it's something about the cold, something about his body. It goes right through him, even if it isn't the burning freeze of winter. There's no getting out of this gracefully, as he reflexively coughs any trace of water from his mouth. He wants to grit his teeth, see if the third time is the charm, but he knows now--he might lose the tether to his body at any moment. He might fall back in with no hope of pulling himself up, and that's more terrifying than the sudden shift into the water.

For all he knows, he was having an episode on the way here, and there's some perfectly reasonable explanation he's lost pieces of.

"Can I get a hand up," he asks the nearest person, already hoarse voice croaking in his throat.

Stella has had just enough time to change out of her wet scrubs and into the simple cotton trousers and button-down she'd got in her first gift box from the observers all those months ago; now is not the time for silk blouses and pencil skirts, even if it might make her feel more like herself. It's strange, that her house is dusty like no one's lived there in years — like it was when she first arrived in the village — but her clothes are all still there, no moths have got into the silk or wool, everything's as she left it.

She doesn't have the time to process any of that right now. Her hair is the real problem, longer than waist-length for a reason she can't yet parse, but she hasn't got the time to deal with that either; she's just put it back with an elastic and resolved to have someone cut it later so she doesn't feel like fucking Rapunzel.

What is for right now is making sure everyone's accounted for and anyone who's injured gets to see a doctor. Stella's been helping people out of the fountain who need it, off and on as she's not otherwise occupied, and she just happens to be standing there when Jude breaks the surface of the water. "Got you," she says, grabs his hand, then gets her arm round his shoulders for more leverage — he's taller than she is, like most people — only letting go when he's out of the fountain and on his feet.

She doesn't know him well. Stella makes it a point to know names and faces here, but there are a lot of people here with whom she's not done more than say hello in passing. But if she's not exactly kind, she can be polite — cordial, even. "All right?" she asks, glancing over him for visible injuries.

Aside from the strain, and whatever's making his arms feel full of sand at the moment, he can't lodge any specific complaints. Wet, cold: but his fingers successfully wiggle and his vision isn't tunneling. One more cough to clear his throat: "Thanks, I think I'm okay."

Stella's always had enough of a presence at important meetings that her name matches her face; he had at least one sketch from a dinner or breakfast, something of a comparison of the natural, light waves of her hair and the tighter, darker curves of Peggy's. He notices the damp, drawn back length of hers before he can push back his own and realize just how long it is. On the way back down, he touches his jaw, finding water caught in a rather sparse beard.

All right may need another assessment. "Before this, people were disappearing--are we all here? Did we all come out of that again?"

"That's what it looks like." A slight frown, as she looks around her. "I think we've still a few people missing, but as far as I've been able to tell, people have been appearing in the fountain in groups of three every few minutes."

People have been bringing towels from the inn; Stella looks about until she finds a dry one, hands it to him. "Everyone seems to be fine physically, aside from the hair—" this punctuated with a very slight rueful smile, "—and I don't think we're quite sure what these do yet, if anything aside from being fancy wristwatches." She raises her right arm a little to indicate what she's talking about. Stella is from the era of smartphones, but smartwatches are so new in her time she wouldn't know what to do with one.

If she sounds like she's trying to sort everything out aloud, she is. It's in Stella's nature to want to have all the facts on the table, so to speak. That there are alarmingly few of these facts is... not really anything new, to be honest. She's used to the observers keeping them in the dark.

He hadn't noticed the band at his wrist--the green band gives him a second look at his attire, and he vaguely remembers wearing black his first time out of the fountain. Doesn't seem of consequence; the band is nothing he's seen before, more like a futuristic toy watch than something he'd assign any use. It's an accomplishment to have any kind of portable phone, and that was more on campus than home.

"Why would they suddenly care if we can tell the time?"

The puzzle's never interested him so much as the concrete tasks and facts of the village, but the watch is concrete enough. And it keeps him talking, breathing, not panicking while he towels off his hair. Not asking other things, about specific people--he wants to trust everyone seems fine and leave it. "Is anything else changed?"

"I haven't the slightest idea." It's a bit of a bald admission for her, but really it ought to be no surprise she hasn't any more idea of what's going on than anyone else. Stella, for all her investigative skills, was just as thrown by her sudden... arrival? transition? to this place as the rest of them, and she hasn't had time to sit down and try to sort the details.

"It wouldn't surprise me if they were meant to be tracking devices of some sort," she hazards a guess. Not the most pleasant thought, but given who (or what) they're dealing with — well. She would not put it past the observers to find some additional means of tracking their every move.

"From the state of the buildings it seems as if no one's lived here in years," she says, "and—" A nod at the horizon, where there used to be a canyon wall blocking the way through. "The canyon's vanished."

Vanished, as if one can simply erase a wall of rock from existence as if it had never been. She hasn't got around to the whole simulation idea yet, but once she does, all of this nonsense might start to seem a little more clear.

Well, the lack of canyon answers his immediate question: why track what you've contained to a small enough area. In the kind of story where people wake up with mysterious tracking bracelets, they usually tracked more than location--but he still feels a little foolish, making that kind of suggestion.

"Maybe it does things like temperature and heart rate. That room--" he can't help but think of the fluorescent panel in the cave wall, coolers with red-black vials and initials. "It reminds me of the equipment there."

But that room had been in a cave, inside the vanished walls. There's no telling if they could find it now--if it even exists in this new, dust-covered village.

Emerging from the fountain once again was an inconvenience. Well, maybe inconvenience was too polite of a word to use, but Bela is focused on getting out of the wretched thing as quickly as possible, saving any questions for later. Once she reaches the surface, her hands reach out to grab at the edge and hold on tight to pull herself out - it doesn't look very graceful, but it gets the job done.

When she gets to her feet, Bela is a little unsteady and has to take a few minutes to collect herself, brushing her hair out of her eyes before wringing it out. That's when she notices the length of her hair. It falls past her waist.

Strange.

Bela looks around for signs of life, noticing Jude a couple of feet away. She approaches him with purpose, questions still racing in her mind.

"I've just come out of the fountain a second time. Was it the same for you?"

While he has no desire to linger at the fountain, especially after what happened at the river, there's enough of a crowd that he can chance it. And chance it he feels he must, until he knows how certain people have fared. Kylo is a familiar, if not especially endeared face; Samantha and Clary seem accounted for, and he thinks he saw Baze wandering out of the crowd.

No one seems hurt, and no one seems to be missing for so long that they've ceased waiting at the fountain for more arrivals, but part of him won't settle until he sees Bodhi with his own eyes.

For all her striding, it doesn't register immediately that Bela is speaking to him. He forgets, as often as he can, that day he stood at the front of the group and reported on the room he'd found with Margaery. He forgets digging himself and Credence out of a cave-in, and the merit of chopping wood, providing paper, scavenging supplies. Why would anyone want his opinion, in a group like this? But here she is.

Jude pushes his damp hair back again, unused to the length or weight. "Yeah, can't say I enjoyed it. Were you looking out for anyone?"

She just wants to talk to someone. Jude didn't look lost or confused so it was safe to assume that he could carry a normal conversation with her and hopefully answer Bela's questions. "A couple of people, yeah." She nods, glancing around for a moment. "Looks like most of them have already headed back to the village to dry off." Assuming that they all came out of the fountain like she and Jude both did.

"I'll seek them out later."

Gesturing to the device on her wrist, Bela speaks again. "I see you've got one of those things as well. Doesn't really fit in with the technology of this place, does it?" A rhetorical question, but one that she wants to voice out loud. To see what he thinks.

Jude is always, on some level, lost and confused. It makes it easier to keep trucking along if he just accepts that he's never going to really know what's going on. It makes it easier to take what he can and live with it: he's not in the water anymore, he's a safe distance from any open sources of it, and he didn't lose control of his limbs and drown.

That's a win for the day.

Attention redirected, he lifts his own hand, examining the watch. The water didn't seem to do any harm to it, but he wouldn't know it's function to say how well it worked. The band matched his scrubs, deep green in contrast with her red. "Doesn't even really fit what we had back home," he agrees, tapping the time and date. In an illuminating flash, with a short beep, the display changed, blinking between two options: signal and message.

Bringing it up closer to their faces, he glances at her. "Try yours?"

The matching band and scrubs has Bela wondering if the colours mean anything, or if they were just randomly assigned to each of them. Would the Observers really place that much thought into it? Perhaps.

"Alright." She lifts her arm up for him to see the watch, touching the screen with a finger and waits on it to do the same as his. A moment later, the thing flickers and comes to life, showing the options like Jude's.

Bela makes a thoughtful sound. "Looks like it works. Though I do wonder what exactly 'signal' means. Does it send one to somewhere? Message, I understand but-" she frowns, pausing. "- maybe I am thinking too much into it. I would like to hear what other people make of it."

That meant seeking out the rest of the village or whomever was left of the group.

"I mean," he starts, looking between their wrists. Only one way to find out, and he doesn't think it'll take another meeting. Jude taps the word signal on the screen, and Bela's watch changes again, a vibration even Jude can hear.

"That's my name," he says, reading it upside-down. Scrolling along the display, there are numbers, directions, measured in feet and inches. "Is that--"

He moves in to see better, and the number reduces. "I think it's how close you are to me." When he looks up, a few others are looking in their direction, up from their own devices. "I think it's telling everyone how close they are to me."

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theintercessor - 2018-04-26 22:57 (UTC) - Expand

Ren isn't the sort to normally give a helping hand to anyone but he's so stunned by his re-arrival and the lack of Rey that he numbly offers his hand to the man beside him, pulling him up with some ease. It's easier to keep his body in motion and to complete physical tasks than it is to deal with the psychological overload and that's where he is at the moment.

"We had already been in the village," he says, realizing there's a beard on his chin and his hair is past his collarbones now. He's never worn it this long and he's never worn facial hair. He'd never do this.

"Have we been in stasis? What's happening?"

Well, this is a turn-about, but not one Jude has any reason to complain about. There's an ease, an idleness to the movement speaking to Ren's strength, and for a moment he feels better about the situation: not alone, not in the water anymore, not standing next to anyone particularly helpless.

The question comes too soon--he's still spitting out traces of water, looking down at his dark green scrubs, darker for being soaked. Everything sticks uncomfortably to his skin, and the weather is cool enough to bite. "I don't know; I was going to the inn, people were disappearing." He doesn't remember anything past he doorway, certainly not anything like that fluorescent room, or time passing.

"That's as much as I could gather as well," Ren says. It's not his usual clipped, cold tones and he's just too stunned to do anything but move and speak numbly. It's kinder than usual, solely because his reactions are dulled and he hasn't been able to put on his mask, but for the time being it isn't relevant. What's relevant is figuring out where in the hell they are and what has happened.

"This is not something I've ever experienced before. Bacta baths get used if you're injured but they don't make you think you're somewhere else, you're just blank."

Bacta--he's heard that before, if not from Bodhi, then Baze. Water that heals seems a concept beyond his time and understanding, common to these people whose lives he's fallen into. It grounds him a little more, to see Ren trying to talk it out, slot it into that understanding of the world. Even as it reminds him that Bodhi was one of the people missing.

He must be here, with all the others. Tucking his arms up to his chest doesn't do much for the cold, but the reflex remains, and it keeps him from putting his fingers to Ren's arm in a placating gesture.

"You're alright, though? Nothing hurt?" He has to ask: "I don't think we think we're somewhere else. I think we just are."

"Not injured. Simply stunned." It's more information than he'd normally give but the stunned portion of his condition lends itself to that. Jude himself is a person that Ren doesn't mind so much, anyway, so admitting that he's stunned to Jude isn't really showing a weakness per se.

"We should probably go indoors to get out of the cold, though. Wherever this environment is, it's similar enough to where we've been that the temperature isn't any higher than it was before."

"It's all pretty similar," is Jude's estimation--it hadn't occurred to him to even think about the temperature here versus before. Cold is cold. The fountain is the fountain.

But when he looks around, he can feel that slight jar. The familiar made less, the sense of time passing. The uncertainty is in the snap of it, seeing the same park every day and suddenly--it's not entirely the same.

Jude peels up the sleeve of his scrubs, finding the outline of feathers still inked onto his arm. He doesn't know why he thought it wouldn't be there--hoped, honestly, that it wouldn't be. "My place should still be close by," he offers.

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immunetolight - 2018-04-29 18:29 (UTC) - Expand

It takes longer than it should to find Jude.

He's looking, but he keeps being distracted. By Baze, by the cold and wet, but mostly by the crushing sense of helplessness and futility he's been staring into since he managed not to drown a second time. Giving up and accepting his fate was the vice he lived most of his life with, and despite the improving practice since Galen, it's an easy habit to fall back into when everything he's tried has proven to be totally pointless.

Even seeing Jude doesn't light the fire under him it should. He can't possibly effect how safe anybody is, and everything is so brittle. All the thoughts that should be there flicker across his mind--get him warm, run to him, make sure he's alright, make sure he's real (fuck, what's to say he is). They just don't make his feet move any faster, and he's quiet when all he can say is, "Jude?"

If he knows any of these people, he knows Bodhi; knows the shape of his name in Bodhi's voice. Even that quiet, in a crowded space, Jude swivels to the sound on steadying, undsteadying feet. Still in clinging scrubs, still dripping from his hair, the eyes will still focus with that same overcast color.

"Bodhi," he answers the damp and better clothed spectre of the man he met when first he rolled out of the water. It smooths down the hair and beard, leaving familiar brows to their uncomfortable slant.

That might be the most familiar thing about them.

His gaze drops, finding the arm band, the fresh scrubs. The desire to close the space is strong enough that he steps back from it, just once, and turns his gaze out toward the buildings. He's starting to feel the cold, and with one reason for lingering resolved, there's still the other: "Are the buildings safe?"

For once he's glad of Jude's reluctance to be close in public. He doesn't trust himself in close proximity right now, not even with Jude. "I haven't looked around much." It's been hard to get himself moving in the face of this newest slap in the face. "Nothing looks bad." He speaks without confidence. It's probably fine. If conditions aren't livable then the game ends for whoever it is that's having fun playing. Safe assumption.

"Are you alright?" That, at least, he's able to care about. He's pretty sure of the answer, but alright can mean more than the obvious, and he knows Jude and sudden submersion don't mix.

In the moment, he's forgotten anything about the people around them, and remembers only that he shouldn't grab onto Bodhi--circumstances might be damned for one, but Bodhi's reactions remain eternal in his mind.

"I'm--" it isn't quite a teetering laugh, caught in his throat and ground out instead. What a question, with no immediate answer. He's wet, he's tired, he's as scruffy and long-haired as he's ever been. All in the span of moments. But he's not coughing up water and he's not alone--and as far as he can tell, he isn't imagining this.

"I've been worse," he decides. Bodhi's seen him at it. "Are there still--clothes to change into?"

Worse. Bodhi knows he has been, they've both been, this is just one more little irritation in the grand scheme of things. How is it materially different from electric lights suddenly turning up at the Inn? The one is as impossible as the other, and if he chose to interpret differently it's his problem, isn't it? It's stupid to be upset about it.

Knowing that never seems to fix it.

He swallows and tries not to think about it. "They, um, they didn't, didn't come in with us like they did l-last time. I think we'd... we'd have to go, go and look?" He holds out a hand in Jude's direction oh-so-belatedly, motivated by guilt more than anything else.

Jude wouldn't call it stupid, just--nothing he can do anything about, and nothing he has the energy to feel anything for. He's upright, he's breathing, Bodhi's accounted for. Find some dry clothes and the dog and his life is functionally what it was.

He'd never think Bodhi felt the same, or that he has to. He doesn't know what to do about that either.

When his hand swings to meet Bodhi's, he isn't thinking about who might be around. There are reunions and theories happening all around them, attention on so many other things--Jude's attention included. If panic crawls his skin after the fact, fingers laced with Bodhi's and realizing what he's done, well--he need only glance up to see that no one has noticed. Giving that hand a squeeze, he lets himself step the slightest bit closer, but not quite up in Bodhi's space.

"Let's check the house."

[EVENT] The Simulation Ends

Jude Sullivan | Group 13 | OTA

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a short while after Stella pulls him out

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