Entry tags:

[Locked & OTA] Splashdown

WHO: Liv Moore
WHERE: Fountain, Hot Spring
WHEN: May 28 & 29
OPEN TO: Ravi & Everybody
WARNINGS: Zombie talk in the first prompt, semi-nakedness in the second

6I Fountain - May 28, Evening

Locked to Ravi

You know what I'm not a fan of? Deja vu. In my line of work, or at least the very specific way I go about that line of work, I tend to get it a lot. That niggling feeling that I've been somewhere before, or seen something as someone else. It can be useful, sure — I'm not knocking the tool kit I've got to work with, here. But it can also be irritating. You feel off, like you're caught in a time loop, or in limbo. The worst is when you can't put your finger on why.

Today, though, I know exactly why. It's fortunately not everyday I relive drowning and then throwing up on myself.

It is also fortunately not everyday that experience involves me doing all of that in a fountain, with no memory of how I got there. I haven't had any brains in a few days... Did someone sneak me a piece of party animal without me knowing?

The scrubs I've got on are familiar at least, even if it's been awhile since I wore them for work. I've got somebody's backpack with a bunch of clothes inside, and a smart watch strapped to my left wrist, but nothing's ringing a bell. I heft off the bag, take a seat on the lip of the fountain and scroll through the screens on the watch, looking for clues. Maybe I can make a futuristic phone call on this thing.

There's a list of contacts, a few messages, and— Wait, what? Right there, bold as brass: Ravi Chakrabarti.

Furiously, I type out a message:

ravi what have you done and why was i in a fountain

It's only after I send it that I realize it says it's from Liv Moore. When did I buy a smart watch, and how many drugs was I on?

Hot Springs - May 29, Evening

OTA

I have no idea what I think about being here, and if I actually stop to think about that, I figure that's probably about as good a reaction as I can expect. So far, I haven't had any kind of discernible mental breakdown, although I did very emphatically give Ravi the third degree. Maybe being a zombie has fortified me against acts of supreme and all-encompassing weirdness. I mean, at least I'm myself, and not trying to get my Lara Croft on or sleep with everybody here. That's something.

What I am doing, though, is exploring. I've got no reason to doubt Ravi when he swears we're stuck here, even if I'm clearly not fully processing that I'm here at all. What am I going to do, sit around and hang with Ravi's rats? I've had more than enough of that for about three lifetimes, thanks.

I follow a path that leads out of town and end up at a spring. A hot one, to judge by the steam, with a little waterfall and a clear, rippling pool.

"Nice," I murmur, and after a quick glance around, pull off my shirt.

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If that's the case, this is the nicest maze I've ever seen, but okay. One thing at a time, here.

"I pretty regularly think you've gone insane, so that's nothing new," I say, and cross my arms over my chest, fingers pressing against goosebumps. "Before we get further into the insanity, could we maybe pause to find a towel?" I can just tell by the slightly-manic look in Ravi's eyes that if I don't bring this up now, I won't get a word in edgewise for awhile.

"That's very rich to accuse me of being the insane one," he retorts, wrinkling up his nose like he's about to get in a childlike 'am-not, are-too' argument with her about who's crazier, even if they probably both have a place on the spectrum when it comes to losing their minds given their current circumstances.

He opens his mouth to keep going, but then she asks for a towel and her arms are in a place he shouldn't be looking because a) she's extremely wet and b) Major.

"We can definitely do that," he agrees, turning so he can find the straightest by-line to the inn. "There's a communal meeting place, we'll go there," he says decisively. "Then I'll take you on a very strange MTV Cribs tour where I'm proud of basically nothing in my house."

"A communal meeting place," I echo, but leave it at that — I'm just really, really glad we veered immediately from Ravi looking at my nipples. Just thinking that sentence is a world of no.

"Wait a minute," I add, hustling as always to keep up with his long legs, "when did you get a house? Where the hell are we, Ravi?" I'm still cold and definitely still wanting that towel, but I'm starting to get the sinking feeling I should have led with a few more questions.

The road's dirt, which is weird, even for someplace in the boonies, and especially for a place with this many primo bungalows. "Are we upstate?"

He's glad that she notices it too. Everything here has a definite Seattle vibe, if you went into the woods and decided to find a time machine and hop back to the past, but it still looks like a place that they ought to be used to. "Well, I decided to save up a whole lot of money by rooming with another person back home and then the universe thrusted me into a fountain, all my savings didn't matter, and you can squat anywhere and call it yours."

He gives her a proud, beaming smile. "That's how you're looking at a homeowner," he boasts.

He's been avoiding her question about where they are, instead just walking to the inn, trying to keep a little ahead of her so that his face doesn't give him away. "I know this won't fit with your need to understand everything and change the world, but...I don't know? Where we are?" he offers, with a shrug. "I mean, you'd think it was Washington, but the technology can't be more advanced than a century ago."

At this point, I need to add a disclaimer: I guarantee you that no matter how many science fiction novels you've read or video games you've played or theoretical discussions about quantum physics you've had, being in this situation will screw with your head. It's like asking what's two plus two, and being told hula-hoop. You run up against this logic wall that you can't possibly scale because everybody else is in the same boat.

...Ignore the mixed metaphors and just trust me that it's no fun.

"Ravi, just— Stop." I do just that myself, halting in the middle of the road, hands on my hips. "Stop and try to make like... a tiny modicum of sense, okay? Are you saying you also were in that fountain? And if so, what party did we go to before that, and why don't I remember being invited?"

It's a bit hard once he's on a rolling slope of rambling, but Liv is fairly good about getting him to step back and readjust. He does stop, even if it takes him nearly stepping on his own foot to do it, because the last thing he needs is to overwhelm Liv.

Given that their daily lives back in Seattle were fairly insane, it's actually admirable that it's taken this long, even. "I was in the fountain, but not wet. When I got here, it was more 'Timmy down the well'," he says. "I learned that I really don't have any upper arm strength to speak of."

"No party," he says, more serious now. "One moment, we were back in our old lives, the next, we're here. We don't really understand that part, honestly, though I think there might be drugs at play or some other sort of experimentation to make us forget."

Okay, so that answers absolutely nothing, but the sinking feeling in my gut has become less 'Ravi is keeping something awful from me' to 'Ravi is keeping nothing from me,' which in this case is definitely worse.

"But... how?" I ask, the sinking feeling becoming more of a slowly tightening knot in the pit of my stomach. I can already guess that the answer is Ravi doesn't know. And if Ravi doesn't know, probably no one does.

"And why? Is this about the vaccine?"

He gives her a confused look, wondering what sort of vaccine they could be talking about. He doubts it's anything so mild as polio or Hep C, though both are equally important when it comes to protecting one from disease, but he really doesn't think Liv would spring such random things on him.

"What vaccine?" he asks, figuring that if he gets right to the point, at least he can find out why Liv is taking her turn trying to confuse him (turnabout is fair play, he knows, but this is a bit much considering things are already so wild).

"The how? I've got no idea. I mean, there's science here, but it's not like they're sharing their notes with me," he says, that damned specimen room still annoying him with its untouchable allure, so far out of reach, yet so close to look at.

"The polio vaccine," I reply with a low snort. "The zombie vaccine, obviously. What other vaccines do we ever talk about?" We deal with the dead (and undead), not the living. Preventative measures would be a little misplaced.

"Just... Hold on," I add, holding up a hand. "You know nothing, Jon Snow. I get it. Why are you so calm? And why are you acting like all of this is normal?"

It clicks then: There's been this niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach totally separate from the anxiety-driven knot there, but I couldn't put my finger on what was causing it until right now. From the moment Ravi opened his mouth, he'd been talking like all of this is old hat.

"How long have you been here?"

Nope, not working for him.

Ravi is still staring at Liv like she's just told him that instead of going by Olivia Moore, she now wants to adopt a stage persona, dye her hair black, and go by Mistress Livingstone. Of course it would be incredible if there were a zombie vaccine, but that's the sort of mad science that...

Well, that Ravi would absolutely love to be a part of and could probably accomplish given the right materials at hand. "Wait, are you telling me that I developed a zombie vaccine? Does the world know? Am I famous? Did you frame the letter that came with the Nobel prize?" It's easier to joke (only, he's not entirely joking) than to admit what comes next. "It would have to be you framing it, seeing as I've been here since Major got hauled off to jail for being the Chaos Kidnapper under our roof."

"What?" Remember what I said about this part screwing with you no matter what? Yeah, well, we're moving full-steam from casual weirdness into 'I would like to get off of this ride now before I hurl' territory.

"Ravi, you aren't making any sense. One, it's been a really long time since the whole Chaos Killer thing," I begin, emphatically ticking the items off on my fingers. "Two, you were there, with me and Major and Clive, the whole time since. I literally saw you like 20 minutes ago. Three, there was only one dose of the vaccine, and you took it— How are you not remembering this? Is there head trauma involved here?"

Ravi is giving her the same confused look he generally wears around Major when football is being described. Words are happening, but none of them make the sort of sense that Ravi can piece together. "I mean, you're being very hypocritical if we're having a sense-making competition, because I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I took a vaccine, an untested vaccine?" His eyes wide, he gives Liv a wary look, because while it's not impossible, he has a terrible idea about what might be happening. "How bad are things in the future?"

In the future, he says, like he's talking about the friggin weather. Is he high? I step up into Ravi's personal space, squinting as I look at his eyes. Pupillary response is normal, motor functions seem normal, no obvious signs of dizziness. He doesn't seem concussed, but I hold up three fingers anyway.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" I ask, peering. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Three fingers, the last thing I remember was having a very unmanly breakdown over the fact that Major was the Chaos Killer and was being hauled off to jail, and I promise you, I'm not crazy, Liv," he insists, as serious as he gets. There's no joking right now, because he feels like this is too serious to joke about.

"Please," he begs, giving her a desperate look. "You just came out of a fountain into a weird village from the past, please believe that I really don't know what you're talking about and tell me more about the vaccine, I need to know everything. How did I formulate it? What did I even use?"

"Like I would even know," I eject with a frown, my brow pinching. Most of the time I do a commendably solid job of rolling with it when Ravi gets like this, but in this particular moment, it's just a little too much.

"You took the vaccine, I scratched you, now you get your zombie period once a month," I add with an irritated flop of my hands. "Obviously it's a work in progress— Are you saying you've legitimately been in this place since Major got arrested?"

This is all too much for him to process and it leaves Ravi distinctly needing to sit down. Is he sitting down? Maybe he needs to lie down and put his legs up and breathe deeply. The vaccine is one thing, but being scratched and the vaccine not working completely is a terrifying other.

"Are you telling me that I'm a part-time zombie?" he asks, his voice a touch shrill with the disbelief and the anger that his future self didn't actually figure it out completely. "And yes! I have legitimately been here!" he insists. "I have a girlfriend, I have tiny lab rats, I have a pair of scrubs that look excellent on me."

And, at home, he apparently needs periodic brains in order to sate a monthly desire.

This is way too much. I'd like to say that the completely nonsensical information provided to me is just a dizzying, improbably swirl, but no. It's starting to slowly gel into a complete, if still improbable picture. A picture that belongs in one of those pulpy sci-fi magazines from the Sixties. And that is so much worse.

I really need to sit down.

"Is this the place for sitting down?" I ask, pointing at the building just ahead of us. "I'm going to sit down," I add, already brushing past Ravi.

He's getting the kind of headache that always comes when he's confronted with a problem that he can't solve. Of course, in this case, the problem he can't solve is one he apparently decided to just bypass at home and throw caution to the wind, so he's equally as displeased with his future self as he is with Liv for assuming he knows all this.

"I think I could use a good sit down, too," he says, and figures that any building is a good one. Once he's parked his arse down, he figures that he should say what he ought to have said first, before all the wild confusion started. "Have I told you that I'm really grateful to see you here? Because I am, selfishly. I've missed you."

It takes a little time before I reply, and I don't bother explaining to Ravi — He obviously gets where I'm coming from here. If I step back from myself and look at this like an episode of the Twilight Zone or Black Mirror or something, I can sort of see the thread, the story arc. And I can see that both of us are getting some seriously upsetting news today.

"I mean," I begin, and then scuff out a little laugh, "I saw you not that long ago, so if I said the same I would be a liar, but I'm glad you're here with me for whatever the hell this is."

"I should go vanish into the wilderness for years and see how much you miss me, then we could really test our friendship." He's talking because he has nothing else to do other than react, which is why he's going to keep going. Of course, he really is happy to have Liv with him, even if he's not feeling great.

"When I feel like I can be vertical again, I'll show you the hospital," he promises. "And you can tell me all about this incredible vaccine I invented."

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[Locked & OTA] Splashdown

6I Fountain - May 28, Evening

Hot Springs - May 29, Evening

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