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far from nowhere
"the trees rustle in the evening when we stand uneasy before our own thoughts."
With the events of Del Pascia behind the Moira, things are only now beginning to settle—and not very well. Through the combined efforts of some of the crew, D-E-L and her permanent residents were incinerated into the dust of space. While it’s not the most peaceful end, it is one, and not many are going to be thinking back on how nice Del Pascia’s facilities were for quite some time. Repairing what they could of the ship’s interior and putting as much distance between the Moira and the prison as possible, those aboard are informed by Navigation that they are approaching another planet. This means, of course, the potential for better supplies, as some things are beginning to dwindle, and the Captains elect to dock so long as the crew follows protocol. WELCOME TO AMISSIS-RE
Amissis-Re is an unregistered planet with no documented histories or signs of life. The Moira’s Navigation crew have scanned the planet for any usable resources and have discovered a faint signal emitting from beneath the surface of Amissi-Re. Using the transporters and any other crafts located in the Cargo Bay, the crew are able to travel to the source of the signal. Upon arriving in its exact location, they’ll find a small series of lakes that lead to a tower-like structure that appears to be in use. Crew must cross a poorly assembled bridge system that sways and dips when weight is applied to it in order to gain access to the entrance. Once there, a woman comes out to greet them and explains, excitedly, that she is so very happy that they have come to Amissis-Re.
Everyone can go home.
Their host insists that she has done the impossible and has somewhat fixed the Ingress that’s been built on Amissis-Re a long time ago, and what’s more, she can send crew home for short bursts of time. Upon following this woman inside, crew will find that the planet is not, in fact, barren at all. Diving deep into the underbelly of Amissis-Re, it’s like an eternal factory of machines, and while vast, for whatever reason, it also seems incredibly welcoming...
☄ LEAP OF FAITH ( 05.01 and on ) The barren planet of Amissis-Re is devoid of vegetation and organic life except for a lone woman, and the planet itself is an intricate honeycomb of machines that go for miles below the surface. Yet, that seems insignificant and unimportant in comparison to the news that the crew has just received. After Thán has looked at the Ingress, he tells the crew that he cannot say for certain that it is properly functioning, but Emiri native, Ben Link, will volunteer to test it out.
An elevator takes crew down to a glass platform that overlooks an inverted Ingress portal. In order to return home, the Moirans will have to take a leap of faith and jump in. Ben, in order to show his commitment to the crew and willingness to help get them home, takes that jump with Captain Thán seconds behind him. Jumping feels like dropping through wind; lights swirl, it’s warm, and a soft buzzing encompasses you as you fall. You don’t feel the landing. One moment you’re falling, and the next, you’re in a new world.
A few hours pass before a similar elevator rises from below and to the left of the Ingress, stopping beside the platform. Ben and Thán step out unharmed.
It works, and everyone can temporarily go home. Will you jump? ☄ COMBINE THE EXTREMES ( 05.01 and on ) The woman that greeted the crew and led them to the platform will allow anyone that wants to go home the opportunity to go. There’s only one catch: it’s not permanent. She’s worked for years to fix the Ingress so that she can return to her own home but hasn’t been able to make the trip an everlasting one. Everyone always comes back. Always. They go for a few hours, at first, but that amount of time increases with each visit.
The one guideline, she says, is that you can’t go alone. Each trip requires a partner, or it becomes too much for the mind to bear. These rules are simple: the world takes shape depending on who jumps first, but if crew go hand-in-hand and leap at the same time, the worlds combine. This new world will be populated with people that existed in both and may appear to be a jarring combination of both worlds. It may seem unusual, but if the woman is asked, she’ll explain that the combined world does exist as there are more universes than can be imagined. The Ingress tries to take the person to their own home, their original home, but when jumping together, it finds the closest possible match and deposits them there instead.
From that point on, you can travel the world together or split up, but remember, this world is a living, functioning world. It doesn’t matter if it’s the home of one crew member or a combination. You meet other people. You can get hurt. You influence and are influenced by others.
Be cautious, and enjoy your visit “home”. ☄ LINGER ON ( 05.05 and on ) The more times the Amissis-Re Ingress is visited, the more it seems that your trips last longer and the experience becomes even more vivid. More real and harder to distinguish from the current reality that you know. It’s difficult to explain why, but you get the feeling that maybe if you went without the aid of the host, that perhaps you’d be able to stay. Forever. It takes some subterfuge, but in time, you see your chance: she’s nowhere in sight, and you take it.
The world you are in now is completely your own, whether another crew member accompanied you or not. The people you know are there, everything around you is exactly as you remember. A few hours pass, and you don’t feel that familiar tug, that invisible hook at the base of your spine that signals that your visit is over. Even more time goes by, and you’re still in that world, your home. When the first day has passed, you begin to question if you’ll ever go back, or if life on the Moira was all a dream. The person with you won’t be able to convince you otherwise, and they’ll start to feel less real, a stranger that you used to know.
There’s only one way to go back to the Moira. Someone from the other side has to come in and retrieve you both. Once in, contact with a third will jump-start a link through the Ingress, and it will pull all crew back to the platform.
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thisavrou_log2016-05-01 09:04 pm
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Yeah, that was all it took. If words were a sword, he cut right to the heart of the matter. These people, Deacon had known them. Worked alongside them. Some part of his mission had died here. Maybe a part of him with it.
Miller got the idea. Got it quick.
"Alright. Lets get out of here." He turned and put his fake hand on Deacon's shoulder, letting it rest there for that additional touch of support as they were leaving.
"Who was your Cipher?"
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"The Institute. Our OpSec was total crap back then. The Institute Coursers--they're the Institute's dedicated hunters and killers. When an escaped synth needs retrieving or an enemy needs eliminating, the Institute sends Coursers--anyway, they tracked a synth we were helping to one of our safe houses. Too many people knew too many secrets and someone at the safe house squealed. And just like that the Institute knew everything, all our safe houses, location of HQ, our operating procedures and pass codes, everything. They kicked down doors and came in shooting...."
That was it. That was all he could say before his voice started to crack. It was twenty years ago, but the feeling that he was living on undeserved borrowed time never went away. And it was twenty years ago at the Museum but it was also the Hall fourteen years ago, the Farm six years ago, Bolthole four years ago, the Switchboard just a few months ago. They'd gotten better at having escape routes, the casualties were never again as high as they were at the Museum, but every time the Institute found them a few more people he knew died and somehow he never did.
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He genuinely was. In truth, Deacon's ideals were better than his own. His goals. Miller, he only scraped at the surface of idealism. Of greater ideals. And so recently he'd found himself consumed by hate, he'd given up on his resistance to Cipher altogether.
Deacon had managed to hold onto what he had.
"Doesn't matter how paranoid you are, how overprotective. They find you. They use you. It's how it goes. There's no safety, it's just an illusion. I get it. Knowing that... Knowing that is the worst thing anyone can ever discover." And he was very sorry Deacon had.
"But you still have it, right? The Railroad..."
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Deacon moves to the door and taps on the terminal keyboard beside it to open the lock. He hopes he'll be able to breath easier once he's out of this building.
"What we're doing, it matters to the synths we save, but it's really just drops in an ocean-sized problem. Some day we're going to have to take the fight to the Institute if we want to really make a difference. I don't know how we're going to manage that, since they have an impenetrable hidden base, an army of synths, and super advanced tech, but it's good to have a goal."
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Of course, Miller's situation was infinitely more complicated. Big Boss had been discarding his men. Deacon willingly changed his appearance, whereas Venom Snake had not (though Miller didn't know about Deacon's habits yet). There were as many lies here. And Big Boss's ideals were no longer ones that Miller could support, either. And Cipher's intentions were much more obscure than those of the Institute.
But still. The point stood. And it made Miller more steadfast in his new position.
"Maybe if you're lucky, you'll get back to this sooner than later."
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A lot to make up for, and he felt like he was slacking while he was enjoying the relative safety of the ship.
"Not that I'm not basically expendable, but every little bit helps, you know?"
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He said it with absolute confidence, and just a touch of anger. He knew, now, that Rinzler was trapped in a situation he couldn't have gotten out of and because of it the crew would never feel safe with him. He didn't know what to do with that.
"You're definitely not expendable. Loyalty like yours? I would have loved to have something like that around."
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And by style, he meant his constant lying and face changing.
"The first time I met Rinzler, he took me by surprise and I can be just a little bit jumpy sometimes and he ended up with my rifle pointed in his face. And he didn't attack me then. He was calm. So I know he's not, like, totally out of control like Peter says. Killing J was a fucking tragedy, but I understand it. When you're fighting for your life and instincts take over, sometimes mistakes happen. But the first person he killed, his roommate, that really bothers me, because I can't figure out a reason for it."
The door's lock clicked open and Deacon hurriedly opened it, eager to escape.
"I honestly don't know what to think. Sometimes he reminds me of the synths who did that--" He jerked his thumb back towards the museum collections room and dusty skeletons within. "--and...I don't know. But I do know that reprogramming him is total shit."
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"No. Rinzler is more controlled than he's given credit for. What they did, though. They just convinced him he's not allowed to have a will of his own. That it's all he is.
"Being a human... a user, I don't think I could convince him otherwise. But I can see why you were afraid." Especially having seen the carnage. He considered the gun he just took again. Maybe he could have it fixed up when he got back, give it to Deacon. Miller probably was more sentimental than he was, but it would be a nice gesture he reckoned.
"Rinzler reminds me of the things that took my arm, my leg. That bitch on motherbase, infected with a disease, sent to kill us. Decided not to for whatever reason." Possessed with the shameful desire to hop on the Boss's dick, as many people were unfortunately afflicted with. "But one of the first things he did was express curiosity. Didn't threaten me. He just wanted to know about things."
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The doorway led to a short hall which in turn opened up into the museum lobby. Deacon was silent for a while, until he could be sure that there were no threats here. Empty buildings like this were ripe for super mutant or raider infestations. But the museum was silent. Large double doors opened up on a decayed cityscape, rubble on the streets, windows shattered, buildings falling in on themselves. Home sweet home.
"You know Rinzler better than I do, so maybe I can ask you something. I know that Rinzler is sentient, that he has free will, but sometimes I kinda get the feeling that he doesn't want free will, you know? Or maybe he wants it but is afraid to express it. Or...I don't know. I've only talked to him twice and the guy doesn't exactly open up easily."
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"I think he wants his free will, even if he doesn't know what he wants out of it."
Simple as that. He'd been so upset in that vent. But Miller couldn't blame him.
"No, he doesn't. You have to push. I don't think it's his fault, though. You can see it, in the little tilts of his mask, his posture, the way he directs himself. He wants to. But that's been taken away from him. His words." It was funny, to think when he'd seen Quiet, everything about her actions and posture, her wordlessness, had put him off. The conundrum was evident on his face, even then. What was it about Rinzler that compelled him the opposite direction. He had to think it was that curiosity. His will to learn.
Quiet had even attacked people for insulting her. So he couldn't even say that-
It was only then, in that moment, that he considered asking Rinzler if Peter had insulted him. During the first attack. He knew Peter had been calling him a rabid dog, but what else could he have done to coerce it.
But then... then his eyes were filled with devastation. Not unlike the old warzones he'd visited. Familiar, yes. Unwanted, that also.
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He picked his way over the rubble down the museum steps, across a street, towards a small plaza of dead grass. A toppled bronze statue of a Native American man on a horse lay in the dirt, half-buried by time. The shattered city that used to be Boston was familiar to him, all he'd known before he came to Moira. It barely registered to him as broken unless he stopped and thought about it. It just was.
"The first time I met Rinzler I asked him why he didn't speak. 'No permissions' he said. Well, wrote. You know what I mean. His old master must have been a hell of a control freak."
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"We were close enough to Boston to drive there when I was in college. I remember the first time I saw this place. Here I was in a big city and I didn't stand out. I just looked American.
"At the time... I was so pleased with that."
He leaned away from the horse. "Not much safe water, huh? Don't know many tricks for getting radiation out. Just chemicals."
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Deacon took a few steps north, then waited to make sure Miller was with him.
"Sometimes you can find old bottles of purified water. And settlements usually get some kind of purification system going for them, but when you're travelling, sometimes you've just gotta take what you can get, even if it means drinking out of an irradiated toilet and shooting up some RadAway later."
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Miller had learned so much about nuclear nightmare scenarios. Never thought he'd be walking through one.
Time to get a little more of that knowledge firsthand.
"Well, I can confirm it was a lot better off than this."
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"But, yeah, population growth or the lack thereof is a problem. You don't really see many big families around; people's fertile years are often cut short by radiation exposure or, well, dying."
Deacon doubted that he'd be capable of having children anymore, even if he were in a position to try. He made jokes about that sometimes, too, because bullshit humor was totally the best way of coping with loss.
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"I was lucky. They sent me off base for it. But anyone infected or suspected of it, anyone in quarantine... They had to lose their chances to make families.
"Maybe you're right. Maybe there's a lot of the same. But there are families here sometimes, right? Ones that pull through despite everything?"
He had to hope. He walked closer to one of the cars, ran a fake hand over the rusted exterior, taking in the grungy texture.
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He squinted at the sun from behind his shades, gauging the time. Mid-morning, he thought.
"The human race is pretty damn resilient. By the way, watch out for the cars. They're fine now, but if we get in a firefight don't try to use them for cover. They kind of...explode."
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"I've been to a lot of places where kids don't have that. Even in the 'Old World'. One's torn up by war. Where that's all the children know."
And he hated it, that much was evidenced by the vitriol he carried on his voice. But he was glad somewhere in this world, kids had a chance at peace.
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He knew mostly of America before the War, and half of that was propaganda. The idea that before the War, although America had schools and refrigerators and TVs and cars and kids who didn't live their lives being afraid of getting shot in the street or stepping on a mine, but there were other places that didn't have all that, was unsettling. Disappointing. And, on a smaller scale, a bit familiar.
"But, yeah, Diamond City's pretty nice, probably the nicest place to live in the Commonwealth and definitely the safest. It's a shame it's run by a racist asshole who has a really clear idea on who's good enough to live there and who isn't."
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They broke everything.
"Let me guess, no ghouls or synths?" At least that sounded like the trend so far.
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Not that there was a shopping network anymore, or even working televisions, but Deacon loved his Old World references. And he was even with someone who wouldn't give him blank stares at them.
"But there used to be ghoul families living in Diamond City before McDonough was elected mayor. He showed them all the door and then booted them in the backside through it. I'd say he ruined Diamond City, but he didn't elect himself single-handed. He ran on an anti-ghoul campaign and the good citizens just loved it. The city ruined itself."
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"So... they can have families too? Or are they people left over from the war. Seems sort of sad, if they just come from us..."
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Which in his mind, ghouls were now just an extreme case of.
"Think we'll see any? Ones that aren't dangerous that is."
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