sixthiterationlogs | [OTA] Better Than The Lifestream

WHO: Reeve Tuesti
WHERE: South Village Fountain, Inn, Around Town
WHEN: 12/10 for Arrival and Inn, 12/11 - 12/13 for Around Town
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: None

Fountain Arrival - Can't Swim Well - OTA
They say that when one died they returned to the Lifestream. This was a story Reeve had even more reason to believe these days. That upon death one would float within the waters until their consciousness parted into it, melting like butter into water, flowing and mingling until it became new life. Reeve, himself, though he would like to be a cat if possible. Was it wrong to imagine that he could be a cat, Reeve thought as he felt himself weightless and rising in the water. Hope that as he scattered back into the Lifestream that he'd get to be a cat? Because he couldn't begin to imagine what else suddenly coming conscious in the water could be. Yes, it was colder than he'd imagined, and he felt like he was moving and heavy but... Well, none of Reeve's work or travel had any reason for him to be near water. He didn't swim because he was bad at it, he wasn't flying to Wutai until next week, and the last he remembered he was regarding the ruins of his Headquarters with some disappointment. So water didn't make any sense.
Which of course made this the perfect moment for the strain to really set in on his lungs, because whether his mind was willing to admit what was going on or not, Reeve's body at least handled being submerged in the right way. He was holding his breath and his lungs hurt and that more than anything got him kicking belatedly toward the surface as his eyes opened.

Too bad he was a terrible swimmer. The more he tried, the more it felt like he was just sinking back. Maybe he wasn't in the Lifestream yet, but as he flailed toward the surface with little real hope of making it on his own, it wasn't beyond reason to think he might be there soon anyway.

At The Inn - A Bit Like Home - OTA

It's beautiful, in its own way. In a way that some from Gaia might not appreciate. The structure is old fashioned by Midgar and even Edge's standards, but there was something about the exposed wood, the stone of the fireplace and the hearth, that made Reeve feel almost at home. Not in his suite at the WRO headquarters, or the apartment he had maintained for himself in Midgar, or even his mother's house in Sector Five. No, it was like his childhood, and even with all the strangeness of this place, Reeve felt oddly safe here. He could close his eyes and smell the rich stews his mother made when he was little and drew pictures of fairy cat kings and listened to his father tell the old tales about the spirits of the world and the will of the Lifestream. It was far simpler than the life he had afforded himself, but perhaps this inn made it more comfortable to be in this strange place.

"Now if only there was a hot cup of coffee," he mused as he stared into the fire he was sitting near. "Maybe a nice rasher with a side of beans and some stewed greens."

Or just company. That could work too.

Around Town - When All Else Fails: Plan - OTA

There was no point in letting himself stagnate. A bit of time spent in the Inn appreciating it for the shelter it provided and the warmth, and a lovely meal or two, had been more than enough. This, Reeve was given to understand, was the new way of things. Perhaps he had died in the final acts of Omega and Chaos, but he didn't think so. Perhaps he'd gone to Mideel and fallen into the Lifestream and come out somewhere completely different, though that seemed unlikely too. Or perhaps it was just another one of those strange things that seemed to scatter through life. Would lingering on the impossibility of it really serve any value end?

No. Never had and never would. So Reeve had pushed himself off of his rear and headed out into the village to walk the paths. He considered them as he went, carefully measuring each pace off in his mind, trying to create an image of the arrangement of the place. This many paces between the Inn and the fountain park. This far down the road to a house. A house of so many paces wide, calculated to actual scale in his head because really the math wasn't hard. At each house Reeve paused and allowed himself a bit of an arch of the front. Rude to truly traipse around his new neighbor's properties, but he wanted an idea of each house. And he marveled over how each had not only a distinctive look, but how well it all fit together.

"Interesting, an old fashioned style evocative of something along the lines of Kalm or Nibelheim, and yet with its own style. I wonder what sort of team they got in to build such structures. How did they transport in sufficient materials for construction, or was this all clear-cut for production?"

So many considerations, and he didn't know where to start!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Actually it's a bacterial infection," she corrected him brightly. "Sharp metals only increase your risk of injury, which allows the bacteria to enter your blood stream. It would be just as bad walking in dirt with scratches or cuts on your bare feet. And who knows if a vaccine from home would be effective against tetanus here. It could be a totally different organism."

"Consider me educated."

Truly so, because that was far more than Reeve had known about the illness. Other than that it was quite painful.

"By that logic who is to say that tetanus exists here? Not that I would seek to risk it."

"I am," was the prompt answer. "Because it's the basis of my argument." And that was really the only reason to think it at all.

"We don't really know much about this place at all. It could be anything, and anything could be here."

“Well provided there are not Nibel Dragons I should be happy,” Reeve smiles to himself. There is work to be done here, and being helpful suited him just fine.

"No dragons that I'm aware of. All sorts of other weird and dangerous critters, though."

“And no Hell houses. Those were a serious mistake from R&D,” Reeve groans. It was all rather a mess. Houses that could sprout arms and legs and shoot rockets were a bit much.

"Anything that could be called a Hell House should be cancelled immediately and burned." She doesn't need to know anything else about them. 'Hell House' is all bad.

“Yes, that is a very good argument,” Reeve agrees. “They fire rockets. It was tasteless but Scarlet was just that sort of person. In a way she made worse things, but nothing quiet so unnerving as that.”

The money could have been spent fixing issues in the slums.

"Houses that shoot-" She stopped short to put her head in one hand with a sigh.

"Whatever floats your boat, I guess."

"Oh, flying ships was more Highwind's idea," Reeve shrugged. Floating boats was not his cup of tea.

She blinked at him for a moment.

"Is that a joke, or do you just not have that figure of speech in your world?"

"A joke," Reeve shrugged. Clearly it had missed. "Derived from Cid's rants at people who called his airship a 'flying boat'."

It had been amusing to watch, time and time again. Especially when it came to construction plan updates.

She shrugged.

“Fair enough! He should’ve made the outside look different, like a zeppelin.” He couldn’t be talking about airplanes if people were calling them boats.

"It doesn't look like a ship," Reeve corrected. "If I had paper I would sketch it so you'd see that people were doing it to annoy him."

And given the energy with which he ranted, it was entertaining.

Steph snorted a laugh.

"Man, you've really got to work on your delivery. You're leaving out too much background."

"Well, where I'm from the background is intuited because, well, shared cultural references," Reeve smirked. His jokes worked at home. Most of the time.

"Here you've got none," she pointed out brightly. It was something she'd had to get used to as well.

"You have to assume everyone was raised by wolves, basically. Like, of course nobody knows what Twitter is, they don't have internet out in the woods."

“Ah,” Reeve cuts in. “Now you are assuming shared background. What is a ‘twitter’ other than the noise a bird makes?” Social media isn’t really a thing yet on Gaia. Yet.

"Exactly my point," she concluded unhelpfully. "No internet in the woods." Therefor it was safe to assume that people in general didn’t know about Twitter.

"Ah," Reeve said. Internet... That also didn't ring very true for him. At least... not outside of Midgar. Which meant he was now looking at her with deep intrigue.

"Where I was there was a city-wide Intranet. It enabled people to access shared server areas. Very hard to do without payment of serious sums to my company, and I will say that was not my idea. Is an Internet like that?"

Intranet. Huh.

"Eh, close enough. Only the network is global."

"A global network," Reeve said in awe. He had not even the slightest idea of how you would manage that. "The closest things we have is the PHS and cell networks. Satellite phones and the like."

Maybe, if he goes home, he should get his science teams on that. How do you make an Internet?

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure the solution is an absurd amount of satellites." Which has its downfalls, but she's not sure the space junk is actually doing any harm up there.

"I would like to hear more about this 'internet' thing. Would you be okay with that?"

Clearly the man was happy listen to her talk. What else were friends for? Other than, you know, saving you and picking their brains.

"Yeah, of course." Steph was happy enough to talk, at least about what things she understood. She didn't know everything about the internet, but she knew enough to go on about it and related subjects for quite some time.

[OTA] Better Than The Lifestream

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'An Internet' he says.

incredible

Re: incredible

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Might be a good close point.

Aye