(july intro log) WELCOME TO THE CONTAINMENT ZONE! (for real this time.)

[vestigemods]

JULY INTRO LOG

► PROMPT 1 ► WAKING UP

Whenever you're from or wherever you were, you awaken now with the mildest of headaches in-... oh, this is new. For some people, you wake in a cabin - in a bed, on the floor, amidst boxes in the basement - and for others, you wake up somewhere else entirely. Off in the woods. Between aisles in a run-down gas station. Lying on a branch ten feet up a local tree. Perhaps even on a leaky boat out on the middle of a lake. It's mid-morning, and across the nine square miles of containment zone, a little under two-dozen people are waking up just as you are. I'm sure you'll run into some of them soon enough.

This might be your first time waking up where you don't expect to be. If it is, consider yourself lucky to have missed what came before. For those have been through a Loop or three (or five or twelve), you'll find that waking this time feels different. It's as though you've woken from a dream - and that's what those memories feel like, trapped in the semi-tangible realm between dream and reality, though if pressed you can probably discern that they were undeniably real. (Or perhaps you can't - or perhaps some of the memories are missing altogether. This is hardly a precise science.)

Somewhere in your vicinity (in your hand, in your pocket, on your chest) is a smartphone, if you're able to recognize it as such. The models tend to vary, but they all share the capacity to connect to what seems to be an overarching network, able to connect to others with similar devices via text, voice calls, or even video messages.

But the phone is likely the least of your concerns, at least for now. More pressing is where exactly it is that you've awoken and whether or not you've woken up alone.

PROMPT 2 ► THE CABINS + LAKE

As many as a dozen cabins sit in the general vicinity of the lake, some along the shore and some a bit farther back in the woods. Perhaps you awoke in one, or perhaps you're stumbling into one after dragging yourself out of the lake or through a couple of miles of woods. Either way, you're in perhaps the best place you might have ended up. The cabin's amenities are sketchy but functional, and the kitchen is stocked with food...

And let's not forget about the pamphlets.

On at least a couple of nearby tables or countertops sit a handful of them, fanned for display. They're vividly colored, depicting what you might recognize as the landscape outside, and the title reads: THE CONTAINMENT ZONE AND YOU! Within these pamphlets, a conversationally cavalier voice explains a bit about the Containment Zone, which (as it turns out) you're stuck in right at this very moment.


"THE CONTAINMENT ZONE AND YOU", summarized


• Where am I?
  Earth. Well - an Earth. Definitely not your Earth. if that creates more questions than it answers, glance to your left and right and ask any follow-up questions to whomsoever seems least confused.


• Why am I here?
  To feed the elder gods with your death and/or suffering in order to prevent any more of an apocalypse than we already had.


• Can I leave?
  Voluntarily? No. Involuntarily? Probably not.


• What do you mean, 'death'??
  Oh, calm down. You'll come back.


• I have very important shit to be doing/people to be saving/weed to be smoking back home!
  Lucky for you: If you go back, we'll put you back right where and when you left off. You won't miss a thing.


• Isn't that how you break time!? I'm pretty sure that's how you break time.
  Only if you remember this place and/or what you've learned here when you get back. Which you won't.


• Supplies?
  Cabins and gas station.


• Cabins?
  Yours. Pick one.


• Lake?
  Safe. (For now.)


• Moon?
  Haunted.


• Who even are you?
  Call us the Technicians. Individual identities don't matter. We may give you sweets and toys but we're not your friends.


• Do you at least negotiate?
  We'll consider it. Depends on what you're asking for. And, of course, on what you have to offer.


• Wait! I'm (insert emotions) and have more questions!
  How unfortunate. Expect your next pamphlet in 4-6 weeks.




Well, that certainly is... something. Lots to discuss, lots to consider. If you're the get-right-to-business sort, that could easily occupy you for a good long while.

Alternatively: It's a hot day, and you've just ever-so-conveniently learned that the lake is 'safe (for now)'. Why not go for a dip to clear your head? The water is actually impressively clear, offering visual reassurance of the lack of abject horrors lurking below.

Those who do swim find that the lake is, as promised, mostly innocuous. 'Mostly' being the key phrase, as anyone who swims out close to the center will find it getting more and more difficult to stay on the surface. As if you're getting heavier and heavier, or your limbs are getting weaker and weaker. It isn't enough to drown you (probably), but you certainly might find yourself considering how peaceful it might be if you let yourself sink.

These thoughts are simple enough to push away in much the same way you might push through the heaviness of your limbs. One could consider it more a warning than anything: Even that which is 'safe' should be treated with proper caution. (Quick and senseless deaths are junk food to the elder gods - tasty but unsatisfying.)

PROMPT 3 ► THE GAS STATION

At the south end of the containment zone sits an old gas station, run-down and overgrown at first sight. It sits alongside a cracked asphalt road, one which (as you might discover) bisects the containment zone from the east wall to the west without a single other building in sight.

You may have woken up here, or perhaps you found it at the pamphlet's behest. Either way, it's a discovery that you'll thank yourself for many a time as throughout the next few months here, for reasons that become apparent the moment you step inside.

In sharp contrast with the outside, the inside of the gas station looks... well, like a functional gas station should. Floors and surfaces seem recently-wiped, shelves seem stocked and organized... It's enough that if you're familiar with gas stations as a concept, you might find yourself reflexively glancing around for an attendant.

But no attendant seems to be present. Just shelves and shelves of goods - perishables and nonperishables, first aid supplies and whatever else one might expect to find at such an out-of-the-way pit stop, all ready for the taking. You might even find an extra surprise. Oh, and let's not forget a nice array of THE CONTAINMENT ZONE AND YOU! pamphlets on the check-out counter, in case you missed them back at the cabins.

Maybe you encounter someone here - are they friend, or foe? Maybe they're as lost and confused as you are. Maybe they're reaching for that last fucking can of Spaghetti-Os and you're serious about your fucking Spaghetti-Os. At least one person is definitely waking up in a gas station fridge... Maybe you're lucky(?) individual who spots them and has to decide whether or not you've discovered a corpse where the soda should be. The world (or, at least, the gas station) is your oyster.

PROMPT 4 ► THE WOODS + BARRIER

The vast majority of the containment zone is covered in evergreen forest, populated with wildlife that look and act disarmingly normal. It may, in fact, be a nice quiet place to stroll in order to clear your head. While large swathes of the woods are moderately dense, there are a number of paths to make your way along should you choose to. Birds sing overhead, deer occasionally bound across the path ahead... If you didn't know any better, you might be able to forget that this isn't a normal stretch of woods somewhere not far from home.

But nothing in the containment zone is truly harmless. The blackberry bushes that line many a cabin (you remember, the ones that make your mouth and tongue go numb?) are out in force in the woods, and out here they're even more of an infernal menace: While the cabin variety only cause havoc when ingested, so much as a scratch from the woods variety's thorns will induce a tingling numb in the affected area that lasts for the better part of an hour.

And let's not forget the lovely field of "wildflowers" that definitely aren't not infested with poison ivy. It's a shame, really. The flowers themselves are quite pretty, an array of pastel blues and pinks and oranges. It's almost like a painting, if touching that painting happened to make you itch, burn, and blister for one-to-two weeks.

But why are we talking about flowers? What you're truly interested in is the containment zone barrier, aren't you? That's fine, you're bound to encounter it out there somewhere. It's invisible until you touch it, at which point a honeycomb pattern ripples out from the point of contact. As a general rule, the barrier gives back what it gets: Place your palm on it and you'll receive a faint uncomfortable buzz. Run headlong into it, and it will ricochet you multiple yards back into the woods.

The barrier stretches all the way around the containment zone without a single break or point of yielding. No further buildings can be seen beyond the barrier, nor any real sign of civilization at all save for the gas station's road stretching past the barriers and out of sight. The only thing of passable interest is the somewhat concerning tree sitting at the far end of the field across the street from saud gas station, at least two-hundred yards past the barrier. At this distance, it's a bit tricky to make out what flocks in the tree's branches. Those have to be birds... right?

► MOD NOTES ►

• This log takes place from July 4th onward, arguably through whenever the event goes up - though you're welcome to toss up your own logs in the meantime. I'm gonna troubleshoot the HTML to leave a space for IC dates, but I didn't want to waste any more time on that right now.
  
• Vestige is now open for business! You're welcome to post logs + network posts of your own, post memes on vestigechat, whatever you want.
  
• This log is functionally intended to be a tour of the containment zone for new characters and players, with dashes of mild horror or discomfort along the way. Don't worry: The actual horror is rolling in later this month. (I'm tagging this under 'event' anyway, just to keep track of it.)
  
• You can literally have your character wake up wherever you want within the containment zone, even if I didn't list it. Go nuts.
  
• It's worth noting: None of the cabins are recognizable as the precise one from the TDM loop, nor is the forest fog still present. The forest is recognizably the same flora/fauna, but that's about it.
  
• You're welcome to include a network post with your top-level (or to put it up on vestigenet as per usual) - but don't forget to consult the NETWORK: USERNAMES ARE FUCKY drop-down of July's Infopost before you do!
  
• Direct any and all questions at Trace on plurk/discord or (for slightly slower answers) this top-level.
  
• My deepest most heartfelt apologies for the lateness, I failed to factor in my own godforsaken attention span.
  

Comments

[hedoniste]

( that seems fine, she decides. fair, even, since she just marched into probably his house and announced she's going to turn it into a breathing hazard. she says, )

Okay,

( as if this is some benevolence, nevertheless, slinging her backpack down one arm to rifle through it as she turns on leather-sandaled heel to go back out onto the small porch. it's a remarkably well-stocked pack; if only more of it contents might be as useful as the cigarettes, which are produced in short order (hand-rolled, from a case) alongside a lighter that matches it.

she is not a total animal, so she lights one for him first, offering it back from where she has sat like holding court on (probably) his front steps.

the second one she holds between her teeth while dispassionately holding the corner of her pamphlet into the flame. )

[inventoried]

[ Luke accepts the cigarette with a muttered thanks, his voice sandpapery and quiet, and finds a corner for himself. Putting distance between them but not exactly retreating, because being alone in this moment sounds potentially more crazy making than he wants to fuck with.

He smokes and watches her light up the pamphlet, the flame turning into a longer ribbon of fire. He says, dry as the building she is lighting fires within the vicinity of; ] Smokey's gonna kick your ass.

[ That flicker of humour warms his voice a moment, stamped out in the next moment. ]

[hedoniste]

( when the flame licks close to her fingertips, she shakes it out what's left of the paper, wrinkling her nose— )

Oh, here it's encouraged.

( the details don't linger; dreamlike and unsettlingly real at the same time. still, she remembers watching a cabin that she can't find now burn, over and over and over again,

she will have to see all of them, she thinks, to be sure. she doesn't think she can sleep anywhere until she's sure. if it is still here, she's of the mind to burn it the fuck down again on principle, but she can sit here for a little while first. )

Did you wake up in there? Or somewhere else.

[inventoried]

Here. In the.

[ A tip of his head indicates the second storey up, finishing his sentence for him.

He isn't covered in dust (anymore), unlike every surface inside, so it's unlikely that she's meeting him mere moments after waking up, with enough time to clean up some and attempt some form of exploration within and without. But if he's looking at her like she is the first person he's met since arriving, then that would be because she is.

In all his wildest imaginings of what kind of fucked up shit is currently in store for him, random strangers had not factored in. ]

Do you know what this is?

[hedoniste]

Kind of.

( it isn't a confident answer, but— )

I woke up here. And then woke up here, and woke up, and woke up, and woke up—it kept looping, yes, there was this one cabin and it was the same every time no matter what had happened to it. In it. Whatever. It feels weird to remember.

( not so much in a delicate sort of feelings way, from her tone, but in a more literally disorienting sense. a dream or not a dream, a dream that she remembers too well and lingers too strongly. that accounts for too much. )

My brother was there but he wasn't my brother, ( breathing out a wreath of smoke. ) Whatever it is, it's fucked up.

[inventoried]

[ Luke listens, expression intent and cigarette smoldering between his fingers. Someone unaccustomed to weird shit may be concerned, frightened, but more likely might struggle to connect to what the woman is saying. They might hear it without hearing it.

But he does, it seems, some familiar snag catching in her words. He swallows down the taste of his cigarette and drops his eye line to the porch floor. ]

So it's like a dream?

[ He hovers the cigarette close to his mouth, hesitates, adds, ] All this.

[hedoniste]

It didn't feel like a dream.

( when it was happening. and neither does this—

but the answer still doesn't quite seem like a no, either, her brow furrowed and her eyes on the blur that smoke makes in front of her. maybe it's a dream? something that's real and not real and a problem, anyway. that they won't remember if they leave, if they leave.

it is still better than what she was waking up from, except the snagged complication that is her brother (or not her brother), which has a lot to do with the muted nature of her present reaction to their predicament. the thing about surviving is that it gets to be a habit. )

If this were my dream, you would be better dressed.

( that is both very rude and apparently intended as friendliness. )

[inventoried]

[ Hurtful, says Luke's brow wrinkle. Not really, adds what could almost pass as a smile, subtle enough to read as shy. The next line manages to come out smooth, unstammered; ]

If this were my dream, I'd probably know your name.

[ What are dreams but nightmare tours of people you love getting hurt and hurting you? He has never met a real live French lady. That he remembers.

He offers; ]

Luke.

[hedoniste]

( the end of the world had introduced gwen to a whole new world of people who didn't already know who she was, but somehow in all the assorted lessons of the apocalypse, that one didn't really take and there is an air about the way she laughs, rueful,

like she probably wouldn't have introduced herself without being prompted. maybe someone should see how long that can go, like for science. it's probably a while. )

Gwenaëlle, ( she returns, apparently really getting into it by offering him the hand not currently holding a fire hazard to shake. ) Gwen.

( gwen being generally easier for english speakers, on the whole, and the nickname of hers least likely to prompt someone to inquire whether or not she is in fact a poodle. (gigi is a perfectly good thing to call a person, actually.) )

The gas station has more cigarettes, Luke, ( she pronounces it more like luc, and the difference is minimal but distinct, ) if you didn't think to pack any for your foray into bad dreams in the woods. Maybe you'll know the brands also, I don't know, I didn't, I'll just be sad when I have to resort to them.

( she taps ash out onto the steps, and curls her toes in her sandals. )

Derry was shit anyway. Have you been to Maine? It's shit.

[inventoried]

[ Okay, sure, says the jumpstart twitch semi-shrug that precedes Luke tipping forward enough to reach a long arm across the way and shake her hand, nodding to her, cigarette clamped into the corner of his mouth. There is dirt under his nails but that's about all his hands have to say about him as a person.

When he takes the cigarette out of his mouth (glancing at it like the hand-rolled twist of paper and embers might inform him of its brand and origins), he holds it between pinched fingers. 'The gas station has more cigarettes' is knowledge he files away for later, somewhere between 'no one stays dead here' and 'moon? haunted'. The idea of staying long enough to explore that fact feels unlikely. ]

Maine's okay, [ he says, still talking angled-down. ] Every state's got a shit town.

[ He clears his throat, habitual. ]

I'm, uh. I'm holding out for a better explanation than bad dreams. Or the bullshit in the pamphlet.

[hedoniste]

( everyone in derry was dead.

almost everyone. it feels like a weird, unreal thing to have to say to someone else—impossible as it was happening around her, even moreso to recount, apart from that experience. so she doesn't, but pulls her knees up toward herself a bit, leaning onto them and tilting her head sideways to watch him, thoughtful. )

What, you don't think the moon is haunted?

( gwen doesn't think the moon is haunted. )

[inventoried]

I mean.

[ Luke taps away some ash. ]

I haven't been up there, so.

[ Jokes land better when you don't mumble them, but still, a sense of humour persists. Being a Crain means inheriting more than just crazy. ]

What did you mean about your brother?

[hedoniste]

( the huff of breath released into her knees could have been a laugh, almost. it's a shame gwen is not nearly internet enough for a buzzfeed unsolved: on the moon joke of some description, because it'd be great, but she is familiar with no forms of shane madej. in any font.

instead, much less amusingly, )

I have a twin. He's— ( the gesturing isn't helpful, at this point, ) like you, tall, American. I went to the states to find him. ( maine was not exclusively shit, there was also eliot. ) The first time I woke up in the cabin, he was outside.

( her fingertips tap restlessly against her knee. )

It was him. Exactly him. The same face, the same voice. Eliot. But different. Like—

( he did fucking magic )

The scars were different.

( —protests the psychic. )

And he didn't know me.

[inventoried]

[ Whatever ease had managed to eke its way into Luke's system, either by way of nicotine uncurling in his lungs or amiable enough chatter with familiar undercurrents of nihilism, that all crystallises. His chest feels immediately tight and he steers a look away.

Is grief just like this? Like a whole separate animal part of you, violent and clawing against the walls of your ribcage. He counts, internally, one, two, three-- ]

Sorry, [ a little late, four, five, six, and he breathes in a sharper draw of smoke, gusts it out. His apology is intended as in 'to hear that', but also a little like he is conscience of the fact he's reacting to some other damn thing and it's embarrassing, and also like he says that word a lot.

Seven. ]

He still here?

[hedoniste]

( the one-shouldered shrug is even more lopsided for being delivered with her leaning over her own knees— )

I woke up by myself.

( it's not a no, and not a yes, either; she hasn't found him, but she only saw him once in all that looping, just the first time. maybe he wasn't real—what's she supposed to do with that? she went halfway around the world into the middle of an apocalypse to find him, and did, and now she's in that movie final girl and he...isn't? maybe?

she feels too worn out to feel a way about it, but she knows better about stillness and icebergs.

and icebergs. he looks like one; she wonders which part of what she said struck, lodged. )

[inventoried]

[ It's probably a lot of bullshit for a normal person to process, and by all accounts, there's a lot normal about Luke. Well, maybe not normal. Ordinary, certainly. Expected. Even so, there was something porous about the minds of both himself and his sister when they were little, and a lot of good that did them in the long run.

All the same, he absorbs inexplicable words around a brother who is not, who has different scars, and doesn't remember who she is, but still counts. ]

I keep expecting people I know to walk out of the woods. When I heard you come in.

[ The sentence dies there, the rest unspoken, but probably understandable enough. He is looking at the woods too, as if imagining it. ]

Better for them if they don't, right.

[hedoniste]

Maybe,

( in the kind of tone that means no, but is generously allowing that it might be true for the people he knows. it is not, she is sure, true for the people she knows.

knew. most of them,

people she knew.

it's hard to think about her father, or marc, or—anyone. they'd lost contact even before she'd managed to get on the last flight to the end of the world; what are their odds? what does that look like. what does—

bushes rustle, as if in answer to both of their thoughts, but it's not a person who emerges. the dog is enormous, intimidatingly large in a way that's only slightly undermined by the fact he's also carrying the end of his leash in his mouth, and gwen is awkwardly halfway between standing up and not doing that because that's crazy, actually, when he trots far enough up the porch steps (they creak, audibly) to dump it at her feet.

her favourite swear-word sounds a lot like his name; when she utters it, blankly startled, putin thumps his big tail on the step below, and swivels his cinderblock head to examine luke. )

[inventoried]

[ The look that Luke steers towards the sound of rustling is all low-grade fear, understated, stiff up his curved spine and still in his hands. It does not immediately abate when the cause of the noise is a massive dog, not right away, but by the time the dog has made it up the stairs and dropped the drool-spattered end of the leash down on the wooden deck--

Luke looks to Gwen when she says a word, and then the tail thumping. ]

Seriously?

[ He looks down at the dog, and then after some hesitating between impulse and caution, stubs the cigarette out on the porch railing, and stiffly descends into a squat. His hands go out, then, for the dog to investigate, with some tension bound up like he's ready for this encounter to go bad.

Still, Luke says; ] Hey, boy. [ Probably. Who would name a girl dog Putin. ]

[hedoniste]

( putin sniffs, interested, at luke's hand; he looks to gwen, and when she fails to object, pushes his head underneath that hand, then his entire body into the space between luke squatting and gwen sitting. hey guys what's up on this porch.

she sinks her fingers into his fur, bemused. )

I thought he was maybe dead, ( is—a thing to say about a surprise dog.

that she is very pleased to see. )

Uh, he's Putin Onaritz. Putinka. He's a guard dog.

( he rolls onto his side. you seem chill, luke. this porch is great. )

[inventoried]

[ Little by little, Luke relaxes. He's met enough dogs to identify their innate good natures, even when they snap and snarl, normally because bad things happened to them at some point. It's just he'd rather not be on the receiving end of said snapping and snarling.

But this one has a cold wet nose that nudges up under his hand, and coarse fur, and a wagging tail. So he gets slow skritches, and Luke huffs out a barely-there laugh at the name. ]

Yeah he is.

[ Today, Luke met a cool dog. Also a nice French lady. ]

What do you mean, maybe?

[hedoniste]

( luke needs to raise his standards for nice french ladies, but— )

I left him in Vienne when I went to the states, with my father. ( at the time, it hadn't seemed like a very big deal, aside from what an enormously big deal traveling internationally to locate the other half of her bad remake of the parent trap inherently was. it had not seemed like the last time she'd see either of them, until suddenly it probably was. ) And then the everything happened, and I wasn't going to see them again either way.

( she scratches under his chin. )

People got sick, and then everyone got sick and you couldn't get any news from any place, and then I was stranded in fucking Derry.

( if she hadn't already met an eliot-who-wasn't, she'd probably be a little bewildered as to how anyone had missed the apocalypse, but somehow it seems like the least of it. )

[inventoried]

[ The end of the world or something that sounds like it is approaching it is a big sized implication to interpret and account for, but Luke's silence doesn't resonate as skeptical necessarily. He's looking at her a little different, and that's all.

And his hands smell powerfully of dog, now, resting back a little on his haunches and giving Putin a break from pats. ]

Maybe he'll be in Vienne when you get back.

[ And for the record-- ]

It's not like that, where I'm from.

[hedoniste]

No,

( with a tilt of her head, )

you didn't seem like it was.

( which is easier to address than i don't think i'm ever going back to vienne, which is true but sounds excruciatingly dramatic even in her own head. (so she'll probably say it to eliot at some point, anyway.) bereft of pets (he's fine), putin lays his heavy head on gwen's thigh, and he feels real and he's here and that's already better than derry.

sure, in many respects this is a terrible situation. and worse, probably, for someone whose daily life wasn't—that.

but. )

I wasn't sick, ( she adds, in case any element of his new look might be an attempt to ascertain if typhoid marie has just shown up on his doorstep. ) I get migraines, but I always got migraines.

[inventoried]

[ The shift in Luke's expression is subtle but legible; that he hadn't really thought of that, the notion that maybe he should have, the acknowledgment that she's not dangerous to be around. ]

I was--

[ This time, he doesn't sound so much like he's giving up on the concept of speaking so much as truly uncertain how to proceed. Not because of Gwen, really, so much as everything is a muddled blur, half-remembered, impossible.

He keeps it simple. ]

I was ill. Like I was, um. I was dying, so. Anyway. Then I wake up here and I feel fine. Like nothing happened.

[ He drops his hand back down on Putin Onaritz's flank, which is where his attention is turned. ]

I kind of thought I didn't make it, you know, when I woke up here.

[ Crazy, right, says his tone of voice that isn't completely convinced he was wrong. ]

[hedoniste]

( crazy, right.

except, you know,

gwen looks thoughtful, wrapping her hand around her knees and thinking about the statistical likelihood of putin and emery's respective survival and what derry was like and what people were like and what people had been like before the world started ending around them. it isn't remarkable in the same way that she feels fine—she had done, before, except the headache she'd given herself talking soldiers into bellhops.

but how safe was vienne? and how many things could have killed her in derry. and now they're here, and he was dying but he's fine.

she taps ash away from the dog.

probably rude to ask someone she's just met what he reckons he might have done to deserve this kind of afterlife, even if she's got several guesses already for herself. )

Purgatory, mm?