sixthiterationlogs | [closed] homeward bound

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[closed] homeward bound

WHERE: Treetop Village remains, Southwest of 6I
WHEN: May 10 and onward
OPEN TO: Mark Watney
WARNINGS: N/A

Kira wakes up in increments, a funk clinging worse than a hangover as he decides whether or not to open his eyes. He has aches his shit mattress doesn't usually beat so badly into his body, and it's cold. Mornings have been rough, the sun warming up the village closer to noon. Strange dreams, thankfully devoid of badgers. He's withdrawn lately, acclimating to the retun of his powers--well, power, singular. Some days he's laid in bed, waiting for the right sense of timing. Now is when to roll out of bed. Now is the moment to go out. A sense of beats to hit in the day, but no major disasters.

Just the funk. The sense of something on the horizon, some kind of separation, and nothing they can do about it. Back pain isn't a disaster, but he wishes it got specific enough to warn him about sleeping on his side.

Or waking up in a strange room.

Kira rolls over, in his old scrubs and Ty's parka, slapping an arm down over the side of the bed.

No table. No glasses, no dog. The birds chirping are up close and, when he cracks his eyes open, looking down at him from a branch crossing through the roof. Startled upright, he finds the break, but it's--not a break at all. The window to his left simply allows for the branch to continue though. Coughing, he realizes his movements have lifted a cloud of dust from the decrepit bedding, and when he rolls out of the bed, his sock covered feet skid and catch on worn boards. The bed itself is hanging off a frame, a wide hammock woven over posts and slipped from one.

As he looks around, it's obvious the furnished room isn't one of the houses back home. This isn't a morning of waking up in a stranger's bed, a little too much to drink or smoke the night before. He's alone, no footprints in the dust but his own. Some of the furniture looks similar enough to have been dragged out of the village, but the rest is hand-made, vines and branches woven together into baskets, roofing, even sections of floor.

His next step breaks the morning quiet with a crack, and he surges forward as his foot drops through a worn out board. Grabbing at the window, he catches on the sill, an arm flung out into the cool air. He caughs and catches his breath, dragging himself flush with the wall and waiting for the burn of pain along his calf to run warm with blood or fade into simple scratches. He's too busy staring out at the trees, unfamiliar structures built into branches and walkways strung between.

"Alright," he murmurs, sucking in a breath. "Yeah, this might as well be happening." The pain along his leg starts to lessen, and he tests his weight on it as he leans further out of the window, widening the scope of he doesn't fucking know what.

Keep calm, figure it out. He's smarter than this.

No, not this early he isn't. "HELLO," he calls out into the birdsong and breeze. "IS ANYONE OUT THERE?"

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The crack of movement is alarming enough that the voice which follows is a definite relief, even though I can hear the annoyance already threaded through the words. I actually laugh a little, recognizing both the voice and the tone of irritation — If I'm going to discover myself in a decrepit village of tree houses, it's somehow fitting that I find myself here with Kira.

"Where are you?" I call back, one hand bracing myself against thick, looping vines as I step carefully across rotting planks and slippery limbs.

The only thing worse than being alone, in a strange place, with no shoes, would be waking up in a strange place with no shoes and someone annoying. Kira's relief is twofold when Mark's voice echoes back through the canopy. If he has to trudge through the wilderness with anyone, at least it's--the guy he's already done that with.

"Like I fucking know," he yells, punctuated with a short bark of laughter. Things are looking up, and so is he: the voice didn't come from the ground, so he's not going to subject himself to the stress of looking at it anymore.

"I woke up in a treehouse; what about you?"

Following the voice isn't too difficult, although seeing as how I'm hoping to stay in one piece, it's slow going. "Just stay there," I yell, because that just seems safest when considering the state of the place we've landed. No need for both of us to be in danger.

"The good news is we're not wet," I add, feeling like I should probably knock on wood — I can't see the sky through the canopy, and for all I know I'm about to be proven wrong.

"The salient question, of course, is if we're in the same place we were before — Not specifically, but generally." In here, there's no way to get a read on the broader landscape. "Is there a village to get back to or should we start building a nest?"

"I knew I should have saved all that hair," he calls, just to keep Mark aware of his location. Moving gingerly, more for the perceived fragility of the floor than his injury, Kira pulls himself to perch on the windowsill, an arm looped to anchor over the intruding branch.

The question itself isn't one he can answer, but until they meet up and find a way down, throwing ideas at it can lead Mark over. Now that he's half out the window and paying attention, Kira can see how the walkways pass below, and he might lower himself down when it's proven safe to walk across.

There has to be a ladder, a set of stairs--even some stupid pulley system just to move resources up and down. Impressive as it is for this to be up here, if it is the same general place, he can't imagine no one going to ground again. Even with the spray of plants growing over inside the treehouse--lichens on the branches, a plot of dirt in the hollow of the trunk.

"This didn't happen before," he points out. "Even coming through the fountain wasn't like this, but I guess we wouldn't know the difference. It could just be a new simulation." Mark's voice was close enough that he's stopped shouting his answers, and when he sees him round a corner, holding onto aged rails and hanging branches, he lifts his free hand for one sharp chop of a wave.

"At this point, your guess is as good as mine," I say, finally making the last few steps over to the walkway that runs beside the building Kira's waiting in. My steps are tentative over the old boards, and I keep a firm hold on a solid loop of vine just in case.

"This is crazy," I say, taking in a sweeping look at the entire village of buildings and walkways perched in the trees. "Relatively speaking," I add with a soft chuff of laughter and a cant of my head Kira's way. "The materials are rotting away, but the methods they were put together were made to last. People lived here, probably a long time, but it's been dozens if not hundreds of years." And what happened to those people we'll probably never find out, if precedent is anything to go by.

"We've got to get out of here, though. See if we can find anything that looks familiar."

"Unless it was all put here for them," he points out; Mark was one of the first through the fountain, and he hadn't any hand in building the bungalows. "A treehouse city makes as much sense as anything else." More, perhaps, when there are badgers with super-strength and deadly fungi to worry about.

Mark appears unhurt and in possession of a pair of shoes, at least. "The poles seem stronger than the planks," he adds, some of the floors and walkways lashed together like floating rafts. Something to keep in mind if they run into a water hazard worth the work of separating and carrying a section.

"How far out from the village have you been,?" Without roaming very far on his own, he's not sure what should look familiar, even as he gives Mark some of the lead before lowering himself slowly onto the walkway.

"Where are your shoes?" I ask, glancing down to Kira's feet. As if he had any say in how he popped over here. "We should see if anybody left some in one of these buildings you can use, you can't go on a hike like that." And if we can't find any, we'll just have to improvise.

"Well, I was in that group that went to find the lichen," I answer. "So pretty far. The whole way we never saw anything like this, though."

And it's only now, thinking about that journey, that I remember the wrist devices. "Jesus, I'm an idiot," I say, lifting my arm in demonstration. "We were able to send messages the whole time we were out before. If we're able to send some now, that'll be one big question answered."

"I didn't realize I should be sleeping in them," he answers, venting irritation away from Mark in a sideways glance--not the man's fault, but no need to remind him. The house he crawled out of had a few belongings on the floor, but going back to check the furniture risks falling through more of the old wood.

They'll figure something out, but he's going to hike however he has to: he's not ready to be the Tarzan to Mark's Jane.

Glancing back, he sees a light blinking on Mark's watch, and finds the same when he looks at his own. "I think someone's already trying to reach us," he says, looping an arm to hold onto the rail as he swipes the screen open to reply.

"Good," I say, letting out a sigh of relief. I don't know the range on these devices, but if we're getting messages, we're in it, and it's a fair guess that means not in an alternate dimension or on some other planet.

I quickly flip through the screens on my watch, squint a moment at the message, and then close back out again. "I'm going to let you reply to that. I'm gonna check this building out over here, see if I can find something for your feet."

The deterioration of the village around us is pretty advanced, but with no supplies and not knowing how far out we are, the risk of Kira cutting open a bare foot is more than I'm comfortable with. A few days with even a small wound like that and no real care, it could become a full-blown infection by the time we got home, and unless the Simulation Gods wanted to drop us some antibiotics, we'd be fully screwed.

"If all else fails," I call back, coughing against dust as I rummage through the dust-coated furnishings that haven't fallen through the considerable hole in the floor of the hut, "we can always go full Gilligan's Island and strap some coconut shells to your feet."

"Oh," he calls back, hoping his tone can be forgiven by A) Mark knowing him, and B) his fucking situation. "Are you finding a lot of coconuts in this decidedly non tropical forest?"

Rather than diligently follow along, once his animals and their existence on this mortal plane are settled with that weedy little teenager, Kira continues around the structure, looking for a way down. In his entirely secondhand understanding of treehouses, it's either going to be something attached to a trunk, or a horrifying pulley system that will send them straight to their deaths.

Or it's the walkway itself, sloping suddenly downward at the back of the hut. A new level seems to curve around the tree, leading out above the open branches. Not fun to explore, but worth trying. "Find me a volleyball," he adds, giving Mark an idea of his movements. "I'll name it after you when you fall through the floor."

I pause, rolling my eyes as I attempt to wipe the dust from my nose and succeed in just adding more on. "I would point out that it was a joke, and thank you for being fucking pedantic, but coconuts in a deciduous forest would be one of the least weird things about this place," I call back.

And lo, I've found some shoes. They are barely hanging on and were definitely not crafted with fashion in mind to begin with, but it's better than nothing.

"I found you some ugly footwear," I yell, and gently extract myself from the plume of decay so I can make my way back. "They might fall apart."

"Good," he calls, less for the fact of shoes and more to set himself up to also yell, "just like the tenuous grip on my sanity."

So often challenged, but somehow held together, in Mark's presence. Science is bullshit and god is dead, but at least he has moldy shoes for when he maybe gets back to the ground. "I think some of this is shitty on purpose," he says, stopping where the walkway meets, rounds, and carries away from the trunk. Mark and his shoes are slightly above him now, and he waits for the man to pick his way into view.

One hand clinging to the rail, the other points to the way forward: the walkway suspended between one tree and the next, another hut lower o the trunk than this. "I wonder what there might be to deal with, that they made for such a long way down."

"Where in the hell did you— Ah." Apparently I needed to have reiterated my directive for Kira to not move, because he's dead-set on stepping on a splinter or nail or some sort of native plant that does terrible things to him.

"Unfortunately," I begin again, and start down one of the pathways, only to realize it's taking me in the wrong direction. "We probably won't know why treehouses were in vogue around here until we get to the forest floor." I pause a moment, evaluating the various crumbling paths, and then begin again down the correct one. "If we're lucky, it could be something as benign as seasonal flooding."

And if we're not, here's hoping it's something we're fast enough to get away from.

"Here," I say when I finally reach Kira, holding out the shoes. "Put those on your feet. This planet doesn't have tetanus shots."

"Thank you, parental figure that I did not ask for." Not a denial of Mark's point; Kira pulls only a partial face for the smell before putting his socked feet inside. A little roomy, but that will be better than tight once they reach the forest floor.

Which--is not going to be so easy as gingerly walking on rope bridges until they slope down to the dirt.

"Flooding might be part of it," he says, the lower vantage of tying a shoe letting him notice what's around the bend of the next tree. "Look." Keeping his eyes on it as he stands, he points to where the makeshift bridge is down to bare ropes, the strongest scraps still clinging to the frame. Having directed Mark's attention, he shifts his hand, now pointing to the alternative. "That pulley has at least held up the boat for all these years."

Which doesn't make him any more excited to consider it as a way down, but the boat hanging from the next house in their path looks to be in better shape than the walkway beyond it.

"Does it really count as parenting when I'm mostly trying to spare Helen from having to amputate your foot?" I ask, and step gingerly past Kira, surveying the state of the pathways. None of them look particularly sturdy, but I don't trust that pulley system, either.

"It's not flooded now, at least," I say, and cast a glance toward the canopy again. "It might not be a bad idea to find a way to cut ourselves some of those longer vines down. They'll be more sturdy than any rope we find, and I really don't trust this place to drop me three stories."

"How else am I going to permanently drop five pounds," Kira grouses, lifting each foot in turn to make sure the shoes stay on. To take the possibility seriously puts him in the uncomfortable position of trying to avoid injury and death, and he while they made them learn how to avoid drowning in high school, they skipped getting oneself down from dramatic heights, with whatever is on hand.

If he tries to take it seriously, he won't trust vines or rope to get him out of here, and they need to keep moving.

"Stop making me readjust which of us is Tarzan in this scenario," is his extremely helpful reply. "Which, for the record, you're starting as Jane." If he thinks about the rickety walkways like the groaning, shrieking fire escapes gone slick with snow, he only has to be as terrified as he was back then. "Let's check this next house for something to cut with, but we might at least get to the next level on something attached to the tree."

To the Jane comment, I can only arch an eyebrow; I think we both know who's better-equipped for a survivalist situation, swinging from vines or not.

"I just want something we can tie to a sturdy branch, just in case the floor gives way," I say as we pick our way into the next building down, no less dusty than the first. It's filled with pollen, and I take a sharp look around to be certain there aren't any puffballs in residence before I let either of us inside.

"You have to wonder about the point of this exercise," I say as I open the lid on a moldy wooden box, the hinges squealing and popping with rust. A bird in a nearby tree answers with a shrill squawk. "Or maybe there's not a point, maybe we're just being screwed with."

Over time, the things done to us all, the tasks set before us, have stopped feeling arbitrary, particularly since we all came out of the fountain the second time. But anything's possible.

It might make more sense, understanding that Kira's only point of reference for Tarzan is the over-hyped animated film; he is, at the very least, calling Mark the smart one.

What he himself brings to this situation, he has no idea. Maybe it's more a test for Mark than himself, and he should stop being such an acerbic burden. Maybe he should also stick his arms out and do the chicken dance in a decrepit old tree house; neither is likely.

After breaking through one floor, he moves gingerly around the space--sticking close to walls, areas with furniture that hasn't pushed through on its own weight. "You know, I thought they were using us to get an idea of the place, until they told us where and what to find." And picked the teams, and teleported them out of the village. "Now I lean toward screwed-with."

At another twist of the trunk, similar to the house he woke up in, he runs his hands over an overgrown bed of plants. Gardens in the sky: what were they avoiding, or was it just convenience? His hand runs into something solid, and he wraps fingers around it--pulling a trowel out from the dirt, its rusted edge all the sharper for being eaten away. "This should work," he says, holding it up to one side.

From the hole that it's left, he wraps his other hand around a leafy stalk and uproots the plant from the loosened soil. Some kind of near-white, starchy vegetable. "We've seen these around haven't we?"

I glance up, dusting my hands off, and nod. "They're pretty common, which is good. They'll definitely help with bulking up the stores for winter. They taste a lot like a regular potato, but the consistency is more like a yam." Not that Kira really wants to know that much detail, I realize, and motion to some vines looping low through the tattered roof above us.

"Let's get some of those and get moving. I really don't want to spend the night up here worrying that something could fall on top of me or from beneath me at any moment."

Kira slow blinks his agreement: he did not need the complete run-down at the moment, but whatever makes Mark feel better. Yanking out a few more plants from the disturbed soil, he fills the parka's pockets.

"Pull as much of it in as you can, then." He nods at the end hanging closest to Mark, and hauls himself up into the garden to reach the branching sections of the trunk. At some point, this place was strong enough to hold people. At some point, the setup was nice enough to let them drag dirt up here, raise and lower boats. It's impressive, and old--and there's no sign of anyone left to say it did them any good at all.

Careful of his over-sized shoes, he goes with both hands and feet up the bent section of the trunk, getting as close to where the vine breaks through the roof; once Mark's got it pulled taut, he breaks more of the rust off the trowel, getting it cut down. "Definitely sturdier than rope," he comments, all the more careful backing down.

The vine won't be quite as versatile as a piece of new rope would be — We'll have to watch how we secure it — but it's strong, and taking it in hand, I feel confident it can easily hold our weight.

"Okay," I say, and nod for Kira to follow me back out onto the platform outside. "Now we find the way that looks easiest to get down, a sturdy limb to attach this to, and we should be good to go."

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[closed] homeward bound

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