sixthiterationlogs | [EVENT] The Simulation Ends

[EVENT] The Simulation Ends

WHERE: 6I Fountain Park & Elsewhere
WHEN: April 1
OPEN TO: ALL - Mingle
WARNINGS: N/A

In the snug circle of an old park, a fountain sits burbling beneath a broad, midday sky.

Once-neat paving stones have buckled and cracked from the slow nudge of wayward roots. Benches stand covered in lichen and rust. Three paths push into the underbrush like the spokes on a wheel, the encroaching forest creating lush tunnels through the dark.

But the fountain stands singular and pristine, brightly splashing in open rebellion of the deep, muffled sounds of a place long ago gone to seed. A vibration hums through the ground, there and quickly gone, and the water in the fountain trembles, lapping against the high walls of its cool, pale reservoir.

Far, far away, in a place that isn't really there, people begin to blink out of existance.

It is the first of April.

It is precisely ten o'clock in the morning.

[Please see event details and guidelines here.]

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Nerys is so damn uncomfortable right now that she's barely able to process the fact that she looks right in its entirety, not to mention her weight, though the hair is starting to drive her nuts. She plods along the path with Kira, lost in her mind a little, until she realizes what he's said, and stops, frowning at him.

"This is real and that wasn't?" she asks, confused. "I'm not saying you're wrong, but how can you even tell? You think we were all being observed for what we would do on Earth or something?" This has all been so incredibly fucked up, the entire experience, that real and unreal is something that has a completely different meaning to her than it ever had in her previous life or lives.

"I don't know," he admits--none of them know. Everything they thought of as a demonstrable fact was challenged by the village itself, and everything they thought they'd learned as a demonstrable fact of the village is--starting from scratch, right now. Will the sun fail to set in the coming summer? Does the specimen room mean anything if it isn't here, maybe wasn't there either?

The return of Nerys' features has him pausing, giving her back his attention as they continue on to the house. He's grown something like used to the emptiness of each day, the lack of presence from everyone in the village--but even trying to sense her there, her mood, her immediate feelings. There's nothing. She's alien again, but he's still powerless.

"Mark used to talk about it," he says, pushing his hair back yet again as he finds and climbs the familiar steps. Brick house, just a he left it--but every window dark, curtains drawn. He has the absurd desire to knock before entering, but with an audience, he pushes forward. The door isn't locked, and no one tells them to get out as they cross the threshold. "How a lot of what happened in the canyon just couldn't, and it made more sense if it was just in our heads."

The dusty front room, silent and empty, has him paused in the doorway. "And, you know: this bullshit."

That's the thing, isn't it, considers Nerys--that none of them know, that every time they try to put together a working thesis, it fails on some major principle. Kind of like unified field theory, perhaps; maybe the truth is bigger than the mind of a linear sentient can comprehend, and therefore impossible to see.

Or maybe that's all bullshit.

She trots up behind Kira, eager to get out of the chill air. "Maybe. Though I've run into a number of things, back, you know, before. Things that I didn't think were possible, given scientific knowledge, but turned out to exist. So I was trying to keep an open mi--"

Her train of thought cuts off as she looks at the empty room, jaw dropping a little. "You...had more stuff than that, right?"

"I mean, I didn't have a lot of decorative items strewn over my front room," he assures her, holding off that worry until he's checked the kitchen and bedrooms. "But I did keep the place clean."

Thankfully, while Bodhi doesn't materialize from his upstairs room, signs of life do manifest. Feet skitter on tile as Aurora rounds a corner of the kitchen, bounding toward them with her eternal enthusiasm for company. Now divorced from her importance, and hardly the person she spends most of her time with anymore, Kira's surprised by how happy he is to see her. "Well, this is a good sign." Bending down, he lets her stand up with her paws on his stomach, nipping at his chin and licking his face.

"There should be a goat and a crow around here somewhere," he adds--somewhat hopeful for the latter. It's a wild enough thing that he wouldn't be surprised to lose it at some point. "Clothes first, though, let's check my room."

Nerys has reached down to trail her finger in some of the dust on a tabletop when she's slightly startled by the Earth dog. Admittedly, she doesn't betray the surprise vocally--she's too well-trained (some might say too traumatised) to startle aloud in most cases, and she's not 100% used to identifying the animal on sight. There weren't any on the station, at least that she was aware of, and that's the only place she's lived around this many humans before. The dog's friendly, though, so it's only a moment before her posture eases.

"At least not everything is gone," she agrees, looking at the streak of grey on her finger with faint distaste. It's thick and unpleasantly soft against her skin. "How long does it take this much dust to build up?"

It's mostly a rhetorical question, though now that she's out of the cold air, she's starting to think about just how long her hair is now.

Rhetorical and impossible for him to answer, besides. Dust is just dust, and there are enough plants and animals threaded through the area that a lack of human occupants doesn't strike him as necessary to create it. "It's just dust," he says, letting himself shrug free of the dog. Aurora drops, whines spectacularly, and turns hopeful eyes to Nerys.

"It's short enough that we aren't going to be trimming ivy off the walls, and everything looks sturdy enough. Nothing like it's been through earthquakes and hail storms."

Or the incident that destroyed the schoolhouse. He still isn't sure about that; his own notes hadn't been extensive, and that had almost backed him off of asking. The journal dodged around it, and if the old him hadn't wanted to put it into words--he probably doesn't want to know.

Shivering through a long exhale, he leaves damp footprints in the dusty floor as he wanders toward his room. "Watch out," he tells Nerys. "If the dog's here, there might be a crow in one of the rooms." Sure enough, his door opens to a flurry of black feathers, Hoshi launching himself the short distance he can glide from the bed frame to Kira's chest. "Sorry," he tells her, as he backs up into the frame and puts up both hands to catch the bird. "If you want to check the closet, you can pick from whatever's in there."

"Looks like months, but the weather's the same, though, which is kind of wei--" Nerys cuts herself off, shaking her head, and rolls her eyes at herself. Fuck it, this is all weird, what's the point in classifying every single instance of it? "Never mind."

Kira opens the bedroom door, and Nerys ducks as the bird dives at them--well, more at her friend, but she's just behind him and the crow ends up being in her line of sight. She doesn't shriek, though, again, just moves her head out of the way. "It's okay, at least they're here," she says, making her way towards the closet. It sounds like such a banal thing to say, but considering the amount of unsettling things at present, she can imagine that losing companion animals would be incredibly painful.

"Huh," she says, looking at the remaining pieces inside. It's slim pickings.

If slim pickings can mean the entirety of a thrift store sale bin, then Kira would agree--he doesn't love the choice being between jeans, jeans, and worn out scrubs. There are some cut-off shorts that have and will see better days come warmer weather, but for now he's just glad there's something to change into.

"Try the overalls," he offers, pointing to the denim hung over the simple bar. "They're kind of one-size-fits-all. Should be some thermal shirts too, if you want something warm."

There's one piece he's really looking for, though. One thing he doesn't want to ever lose. Three things, if you want to delve into the pockets--Ty's old parka shouldn't be in the closet, and he leaves Nerys to her selection as he heads for the bed. Instead of wadded up in the space next to the pillow, it's folded nicely, that same layer of dust over the olive green fabric. Kira puts a hand on it--still not sure how it fits in the narrative of this place, still not sure if it can really be the same coat, but not really caring at the end of the day. It's a piece of home, and when he lays it across the sheets and digs in the pockets, the polaroid of Chiyo and his cards are still there.

"I think everything made it," he says, quieter than before.

It's more that, while Kira isn't a large guy, he's still male-shaped, and most of the clothes seem to fit that mold. Fortunately, the overalls seem to have potential, now that he's pointed them out, and Nerys holds up a pair to her--though not too close, she doesn't want to get them damp--to check size. She follows it up with one of the flannel shirts hanging nearby, which looks like it'll cover her chest all right.

"That works. Thanks," she says, and she's distracted enough to not notice immediately that he's turned away, but looks over her shoulder a moment or two later. "You mean, all your stuff?" she asks. The scrubs have got her worried that most of her things will be gone. Admittedly, she hasn't ever had a box like some of the others, but she's accumulated plenty over the past couple of years.

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[EVENT] The Simulation Ends

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