sixthiterationlogs | mingle post

mingle post | open

WHO: Jess Brightwell and everyone!
WHERE: The inn.
WHEN: Sept. 28th to Oct. 11th.
OPEN TO: Everyone who lives at or would visit the inn during the non-stop rain. If you don't feel like making a log for the inn but want a place to tag around, this is the mingle post for you!
WARNINGS: Will update if necessary.
STATUS: Open. Mingle away, comrades.

There's nothing quite like the sky opening up and releasing a torrential downpour to bring people together. With water coming down in buckets and the streets turning into waterways, it would be wise to seek shelter until this lets up...

If it ever lets up.

For those needing a place to warm up, the inn has a roaring fire and hot tea waiting. Pass the time watching the rain at the window, or telling stories around the main room's fireplace, or enjoying friendly company in the pub. You're even welcome to stay the night in one of the inn's spare rooms, just don't mind the leaks. It's an old building. Luckily there are plenty of buckets to go around.

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Riza enjoyed the warmth of the tea for a moment. She knew that their actions back in Manhattan had probably not been the best, but justice and revenge had certainly blurred. It was probably for that reason that the CIA's CFP-TCI had intervened.

"After taking back the ships, we were able to bring in outside help that had been trying to reach us for some time. They were part of some organization from the same world as Tagruato Corporation, the CIA I believe. They were a special branch sent to take Tagruato and his subordinates into custody and have them put on trial in their original dimension." She had come to terms with that decision, but she certainly remembers the uproar that had caused among the others. She didn't like it any more than anyone else had, but they hadn't exactly had any way to argue. After all, the CIA had also gained control of their way home so it was accept that decision or be stuck in a hell hole.

"But, yes, after all that we were able to be sent back home using the technology that had brought us there in the first place. The CIA's lead representative requested that once we returned home that we remain silent on the matter of inter-dimensional travel. We were given CIA Level 4 clearance and were told that the CIA would be responsible for any future use of the technology involving inter-dimensional travel." She rolled her eyes at that last part, obviously either something had gone wrong there or this was a completely different group that had the same sort of ability or technology to intervene in the lives of others. At least by focusing on this part she didn't have to worry about the painful goodbye that had followed. Riza's hand went to her chest, the empty spot where Harry's pendant had been until recently.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She didn't need to think about all of that right now. She continued, "It was like I'd never left. I kept silent about my experience, I didn't think the Colonel or any of the others would have believed me anyway." Her eyes hardened, thinking about how she was once again in a situation that was all too familiar. "Obviously that deal is off the table now. If I'm going to be dragged into a similar situation then I'm going to share what information I do have with the people involved." And she was going to have some very strong words for Captain Warren of the United States CIA if she ever found out that this was a result of a second experiment involving a DRT or something similar.

CIA? Unsurprisingly, the name of the organization failed to ring any bells for Jess. It was a moot point when stacked up against the rest of what Riza had to say, anyway.

"We have Heaven and Hell, the usual suspects, but anything to do with other dimensions isn't even a whisper of theory back home. Anyone interested would be laughed out of academia for sure." If not labelled a heretic and quietly dragged from their house in the dead of night. He doubts the Library would treat the subject favorably. The threat this technology posed was dire--not just to the Library itself, but to anyone, anywhere.

Weren't they proof enough of that? Quietly dragged from their homes just the same, some of them more than once?

Jess said nothing when Riza seemed to get caught up in her memories and took a moment to gather herself. He knew the toll of having to bite your tongue and look the other direction when injustices were being committed, and that was under normal circumstances, with none of this magical alternate dimension angle; it was a miracle anyone who'd gone through this kind of trial once was still sane, quite frankly. Jess had wondered more than once if he hadn't finally just cracked and this was all in his head, a by-product of psychosis.

"I'm getting that I might be in the minority, though. Here's what I still don't get--the others here who say they were snatched say it was to other places, and for other reasons, than what you went through. Is this the same technology at work in each case?"

"As far as I know my experience was a unique one," she admitted. She'd mostly spoken to Jo, but she knew there were a few others here who had experienced being taken to other worlds and met people who could claim to be from places unlike their own. "I've tried to keep that in mind, after all there are some differences here that come to mind when comparing our current predicament with the last one I was in." The most obvious being the lack of monsters -- giant or otherwise -- being a common threat. There was also the setting to consider. They had electricity, water, and other amenities in that version of Manhattan they'd been trapped in. True, there was plenty of destruction, almost as bad as a war torn country, but it was still a city. Hell, there had even been technology and a network to communicate through.

"I don't know if we can answer that question until we figure out how the fountain works to bring us here for starters. As far as I know, the others who have experienced this might not have had the luxury of being returned home before coming here. They went straight from one place to another...at least as far as I understand it."

"I mean, what are the chances this technology's been developed multiple times in multiple places independently of each other, and it just so happens to end up used in multiple cases of experimentation? It seems too much to be coincidence."

Little does Jess know, his words have a river of irony running deep and wide through them. He's always been clever. He's always seen moves ahead of the competition. He likes to think he knows how the world works, that secrets so grand and so large can't stay hidden from billions of people for long.

But they can and they have, and he doesn't know as much as he thinks he does.

His gaze eventually drifts down and lands on the cup still cradled between his hands like he's almost forgotten it was there. He sips from it slowly, though if asked he wouldn't be able to say what it tastes like. Riza had given him a lot to think about, but the tea is too valuable to let go to waste and she'd done him a kindness by sharing it in the first place.

Riza shook her head, "I'm not sure I have a good answer for that. I suppose it's possible that others could have developed the technology independently and then also decided to use it for different purposes." It didn't seem THAT impossible, but at the same time that seemed like a very rare thing to have occur once in someone's lifetime, let alone twice or in some cases multiple times.

"Until we find more answers here though. I'm not sure we'll be able to get much further with theories," she admits. And information was the one thing they always seemed to be short on. She takes a sip from her own mug -- it's colder now than she would have liked but it was better than nothing and certainly a welcomed treat.

Jess didn't have a good explanation for it, either, so they were about even on that score. Bringing his cup to his lips, he pensively toed a floor plank with the edge of his boot. He couldn't expect anyone to hand him the answers he was really after--how could he, if he wasn't capable of digging them up for himself? This was his area; if he couldn't put these pieces together, he wasn't half as good as he thought he was.

But thinking through the possible motivations for imprisoning them and the scenarios that could've landed them in this backwater nightmare just seemed to tighten the Gordian knot tying together the mystery. Aggravating as it was, she was right--they needed more pieces, more information.

"You saw the tech that took you home? How it worked? That's a leg up on most people I've spoken to."

"Maybe. But I don't understand entirely how it works. I would certainly recognize it if I saw it again though," Riza replies. She doesn't want anyone to think it means she knows how to get them out of here. The science behind it, for one, was well beyond her. Not to mention they'd been introduced to it at a time when exhaustion and tension was high or coming down from the high of the adrenaline of combat and fighting the clock for being ill. Plus, well, emotions had been high for other reasons. Not to mention it had actually been awhile since that incident. She'd faced other trauma since then.

"I'm really not sure how much of a leg up it is, really."

No, escape is still a few too many moves ahead. Jess recognizes they still have a ways to go before they can allow themselves to worry about that. Before anything, they have to be able to get out of this canyon before they start worrying about buying a ticket off an entire planet, if that's what's happening here.

"It could come in handy. I'm still not sure what I'm looking for when I go out to scout. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Or ten thousand jumbled pieces belonging to ten different puzzles that they were simultaneously trying to solve.

"Anyway, if this were about spreading an infection I expect we'd have noticed more signs by now. It seems we're in for a different kind of human experimentation."

She nodded, because what he was saying made sense. Maybe she didn't know how the device worked, but she would recognize it if she saw it and that would be a whole slew of puzzle pieces falling into place with that revelation alone.

"Let's hope not. So far we haven't had the luck of anyone with magical healing abilities here and that was a major factor in making it through that one -- of course maybe whoever is behind this learned from that particular draw back." The people running the project hadn't exactly planned to bring in a handful of healers that could fight the virus' effects with magic or whatever. Still, they'd had them and eventually those people had been targeted in order to try to get the project to move along.

Something in Riza's choice of words had Jess smiling in an amused and slightly self-deprecating manner. "Speak for yourself. Magic possibly being real is one of those things that takes a few seconds to sink in every time I wake up in the morning."

Only instead of this village being reality, it felt like the dream. An impossible bit of subconscious fantasy that bent the laws of nature in ways they weren't meant to be bent.

Maybe one day Jess would feel on even footing again.

"But I see your point--having the power to heal a cut with the snap of your fingers would make life infinitely easier," he went on, taking another sip of his tea. "They did get one thing right: the tea is strong."

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mingle post | open

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weeps, ignore all my random tense changes

i am guilty of that sometimes |D

let us sail our failboats into the sunset together

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gdit i can't believe i did it again, my failboat is the actual Titanic