[MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

[markwatney]

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: Town Hall & Inn
WHEN: 6 September 2018, Evening
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Warn on your threads, please. PTSD is probably a given.
NOTES: Support group mingle! If your character needs some support after the latest meta plot or just generally, send them on over to Town Hall. Also, feel free to do top levels having to do with signing up for a tube monitoring shift. Please let me know if you want a Mark thread, I have notifs off for the post.

---

So, I have been down to what we all seem to be collectively calling the Bunker. It is... something, to say the least.

For some people it feels like hope and for others despair, and I can honestly see both sides of it. Some people need to feel like they have some control, even if it's illusory — Having a puzzle to possibly solve makes them feel less adrift. For others, it's too much reality, or the perception of, anyway. I can't say I'm personally convinced by any of it.

See, I've been here since the start of whatever this is, with a group that's almost entirely gone now. It's been five months since we were birthed into this expanded world, and I don't know if it's any more real than the last. That isn't me putting on a tin foil hat, that's just respecting the environment. Mars was the same way: You do what you need to do to eke out a life, to survive or even thrive, but it's dangerous to think you have any real control. Everything can go to shit in the blink of eye, and then you're tumbling around in an airlock while your entire food supply is turned to dust.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people should stop hoping to get home, stop trying to figure it all out. I'm just saying we might all be a little easier mentally if we could express how scary it is to know, deep down, that the rug can be pulled out from under us at any moment... And then to accept that feeling that way is okay.

With that in mind, after a little meditating during my daily work in the fields, I put up two notices on the blackboard in the South Village inn:

Volunteers to monitor the bunker tubes for new arrivals, please sign up for a shift on the paper on the bar.

That's one thing we can do, at least. Just the illusion of control, but still important to some people, and definitely helpful for anybody new.

Below that:

Support Group Tonight
Town Hall - 7:00 PM
Everyone Welcome

I don't know how many people will actually show — We've got a surprisingly stubborn, resilient group, in my experience. But even if it helps just one person, it's worth doing.

Comments

Liv Moore | OTA

[living_proof]

To be honest, I am not a support group type of person.

...says, probably, everyone who needs a support group most. But I digress.

For a long time, my personal baggage has not been the sort that exactly comes with a group of people sitting around sharing their feelings. You learn to deal as best you can, and I've been lucky. Really lucky. I've had a great group of friends to help me along, even if some of them came with some hiccups at the start.

But even I, Olivia 'Take it on the Chin like a Trooper' Moore, can acknowledge that it's been a hell of a week and a half. It's easy for me to say I'm here in a supportive capacity, for the people I know who are having trouble getting past all of it, but the truth is that I came really close to losing it on the beach that day. I said some things that were... true but potentially dubious.

And I'm really kind of pissed off that Simon and Garfunkel is ruined for me forever.

So I slide onto one of the benches a few minutes before seven and try to play it cool, not make it obvious that I'm looking around to see who else turns up.

[underpinnings]

Owen's life has had more years of getting there when you get there than military school, and knowing the time doesn't make him much better at it. Somewhat temperamental and, it would seem, experimental animals don't give a shit where you might need to be.

'Box of experimental puppies' is not the thing to suggest, four days out. When he makes it in, a few people are already talking, and he takes the circle of the room to hear a round of statements, apologies, and answers by the time he slips over the back of the bench next to Liv.

In the claustrophobic press of the bunker, in the time crunch of crisis and immediate recovery, he'd let the words fall aside. They don't always feel necessary--he doesn't much like any kind of thanks himself--but sitting where they are, trying to hold things together in more ways than the physical, he cants his head her way to speak without interrupting.

"Forgot to tell you good job, the other day. Not everybody's that quick to pull together."

[living_proof]

"Oh." I huff out a laugh, shaking my head as Owen slips down beside me. "I didn't anticipate the bitchy entourage, but I guess there's comfort in knowing that they show up when I ask for help." Or even when I don't, apparently.

"This whole thing is just—" I pull in a breath and sigh it out. "You think it's wrong to want to kind of ignore it? Because I have to say, despite my participating in Sharing Time here, that's the way my personal coping mechanisms are leaning."

[underpinnings]

"We've got winter coming and a steadily increasing group of people and livestock." One of whom is eating them out of pumpkin patch and pasture, but milk is better protein than gourds--and so is roast groffle, if it comes to it. "We could really use a large group of people willing to ignore it."

Or able to get past it, with a few meetings to say what they need to say.

"I'm partial to the method where you put one foot in front of the other, punctuated by screaming." Delivered as factually as their oncoming harvest, its truth treads an intersection of proximity to his house and timing. "I don't even want to buy into the idea. We've got some people with rough backgrounds here--what do they do, grow us in tubes and redo the damage?"

[living_proof]

One foot in front of the other punctuated by screaming is definitely a familiar refrain, and my mouth curves into a softly sympathetic smile before faltering and dropping again with Owen's next remark. I flick a look over to Bucky where he's talking to someone else across the room.

"Body dysmorphia," I quietly reply, and slide my gaze back to the general vicinity of my lap, rubbing a hand across my forehead with a sigh. "That's why they do it. There's only so much the human psyche can take at once."

This hadn't even occurred to me until I'd said it, but it makes perfect sense. Why I'm still a zombie, though, I really couldn't say. Maybe the people in charge just like that spicy sauce.

[underpinnings]

Owen follows the look at a slower draw, and he can certainly see her point. He thinks he'd get over it, for the full use of his hand back, but if these people wanted to play the cards close to the vest, it would have been a very immediate hand to play.

And for a whole arm, well. He doesn't envy Barnes now, and he wouldn't start.

"The houses," he adds, gaze evening across the room. Its style, materials, furniture. "The tech we've been living with. Familiar enough for people used to more, basic enough for others to learn. How do you build a baseline for that--"

With a lifted chin, he indicates the Parker kid, and Lyanna hovering.

[living_proof]

"Most of the people here are from some version of Earth," I point out. "Or think they are. I'm not really ready to get into the deeply existential stuff, as we've discussed." If I was never back in Seattle, if my family and Peyton and Clive don't exist beyond someone's ability to grow them in a jar, I don't know about it.

"But yeah, it makes sense to pull from the industrial revolution, old and new overlapping. And you're always going to get outliers — The medieval people or the sci-fi people. But it seems like the bulk of us actually adjust pretty quickly, under the circumstances. I'm thinking this probably isn't our Overlords' first rodeo."

[underpinnings]

"When I--arrived--everyone was coming out of the fountain in groups. Some of the animals too." He'd heard of something like it once before, on a much smaller scale. Wondered what would be worse: the chaos of that day, or crawling out of the fountain alone, to an empty village.

"I didn't remember anything but where I'd been, but people talked about a canyon. Seem to think we're somewhere a little more real than before--for all we know, they had a series of virtual rodeos before this one." The world he's seen does and doesn't suggest it, signs of people left to rot among wildlife that doesn't seem to know them as threats. It's a lot to believe every group they've encountered were friendly enough to sow those seeds, for this group to reap in the now.

"Been long enough since the last group, far as I can tell, for nature to kind of take over."

[living_proof]

"The simulation, right." As I say this, I realize how screwed up it is that I am saying it that way, like we're talking about the weather or the latest episode of the Bachelor. Belatedly, I pull a sour face at my casual tone, and also that the Bachelor even crossed my mind.

Ew, and again.

"I guess I just wonder why. Again, freaky existential stuff aside. What's the point of any of it? If the people before were in the Matrix, why take them out of it?"

[underpinnings]

That attitude might be the why of it: they figured it out, they got complacent. Owen doesn't pretend to know the motives, shoulders lifting, ear tilted toward the one. "Honestly, I try not to think about a them when I can help it."

Some whys just don't matter, and he keeps too busy to chase them. "You got the whys that help you adapt, and the whys that freeze people up. Why'd the Wendigo come down from the mountain--you can use that, be prepared next time the weather's that bad and the earth starts shaking. Why's the Wendigo exist, why are we here, why the parties--

"Good on the people who keep track of it all, in case it's useful later. But until it is, I try to just let it go."

[living_proof]

"Yeah, I honestly do better with things that are more concrete, things I can get my head around and pick apart or put together — It's easy to wonder about the whys, but just surviving here is enough to focus on most of the time."

I'd started this conversation saying I wanted to avoid all that existential jive, but I guess I'm an example of how easy it is to fall into that philosophical trap if you're not careful. Maybe I'm willfully naive, but I did a psych rotation, I have a good enough idea of how the average human being makes it through the day. It isn't pondering the answer to life, the universe and everything, I can tell you that. Plus—

"We're making connections, here, too. Friends. Some of us have partners. Kate and the cat guy are married; they never would have met otherwise. I'm not trying to polish a turd, here, but I've got a life. It's not the best all the time. It could be a lot easier, but... If you told me I could go home right now, I really don't know if I would. So there's that."