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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
WHOOPS APPARENTLY SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE WATCHED THEIR STEP :D
It's too late, though. There's no cover at all in here, except for the man behind the desk.
His subtle, controlled expressions are well-known after so many weeks in close quarters, but this one hasn't been directed at Bel since their first few weeks on the Moira. So much for arriving in time. He'll remember their first meeting, as he did on the ship, but the rest.....
His first involuntary word, though, makes that the least of Bel's worries.
"No--" an earnest, open-handed gesture of denial; to make him think that -- Bel barely stops short of calling him by the abbreviated name, something else wildly out of place here. "Nothing like that. He's safe and well. I'll swear to it."
At least Bel fervently hopes so. It'd depend on when the Ingress has landed them, wouldn't it? ImpSec surely would have sent a report if they'd all been missed.
Or maybe it has; is that why Gregor's voice--
No. Bel draws a breath, mind racing to catch up with the necessary change in priorities. Gregor's question is double-edged, of course; no one should have been able to bypass his security. Would you believe, a wormhole? "I've just come from him. There's a situation, a peculiar one, but, I hope, not difficult to resolve."
The words are carefully chosen, but every one is true. Really, it's supposed to be easy.
All I have to do is get the Emperor of Barrayar to take my hand.
Easy, so goes the phrase on both planets, as falling off a cliff.
Re: WHOOPS APPARENTLY SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE WATCHED THEIR STEP :D
"I see," Gregor says after a moment, his voice edged with irony instead of panic now. "Not that it isn't a pleasure to see you again, Captain, but if indeed the Triumph has not spontaneously combusted and taken all the rest of the Dendarii top brass with it, would you please explain to me how you even knew to come to this office, in this city, on this planet in the first place?"
no subject
The irony is nearly restful in comparison. Gregor does irony so very well.
"With equal pleasure," Bel murmurs. And with a hint of rueful, reciprocatory irony, standing in, a little awkwardly, for the ceremonial forms of address they'd never needed to learn on the Moira. "--Sire.... I'm afraid this office was actually the easy part. I caught a special on the Hegen Hub Treaty, a few months after. There was a fuzzy vid clip -- I had to learn the rest after that, if only to keep from putting my foot in something."
Like this, for example. More important, though, and less forgiving, had been the need to steer others' feet away. Knowing what to steer them away from had been vital.
"The other part was a matter of adding two plus two, if the twos were dozens of ones cleverly hidden all over the Nexus." A glint of quiet personal pride at that, even if some of the clues had been more of right-place, right-time. "I was dead sure his secret was safe, so I held my peace until all this; that's why you wouldn't have been informed yet."
Except for the time when he'd been first to know.
The office is so... so calm. Beautifully appointed, absurdly opulent (to Bel's Betan eye) in its trove of well-used wooden furnishings. And empty, but for the two of them. Gregor himself can't have been reported missing on this Barrayar, or the room would be full of ImpSec. There's still time for that.... The picture it makes is strangely peaceful, the tall, quiet man sitting there day after day to manage the moving parts of his empire. On the Moira, Bel could have stepped up and taken his hand with hardly a second thought.
"It's been quite the unexpected field trip--" Again, no name to call him by. It's unexpectedly difficult, not to. "I should love to fill you in, but -- let me apologise first, if I've broken in on anything urgent."
Because Bel's come to take him away from it.
no subject
"I should have known you'd figure it out, honestly, even if it'll give Simon colonic spasms. I think it shaves a few weeks off his life every time another Dendarii finds out what's going on, but while our medical care is certainly not up to the standards you're used to, we're catching up. He'll be fine."
He tilts his head in slight invitation, not sitting again yet. "If you're waiting for me to have some free time, I'm afraid you'd be standing around outside that office until roughly a year and a half from now, but there's no crisis that can't wait an hour." Something like the shadow of a real smile curls his mouth.
"What can I do for you, Captain Thorne?"
no subject
The remark about Illyan is near word-for-word from their other first meeting. Given the contexts of both, Bel can sympathize acutely, though with a tickle of appreciation at the parallel.
"Unfortunately for Captain Illyan's cortisol level, the technology that brought me here may impact security. Moreover, it's not fully understood and we're not sure who else has it. It wasn't developed by anyone we know of." The wry smile ebbs, and Bel's head tilts thoughtfully. "Truly, though.... it's something you should see for yourself. Sir--" better than sire, if not quite Greg -- "if you had lost a memory of something that no one else would ever know to ask about, something that would make no difference here--" a gesture at the work-piled desk -- "and never come up again, would you want it back?"
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"Yes," he says simply, his lips pressing into a flat line. "What is this about, Captain Thorne? Please note that my patience for cryptic answers is thinning with stunning rapidity."
no subject
It's a unique challenge to condense the Moira into a brief report. The broken Ingress; the deep-space ship of unknown origin, peopled with abductees from across space, time, and the multiverse; the offer to send everyone home at the end of the line if they would work as crew -- the uniform Bel wears now, one of no known fleet -- to get the ship to its destination. The months that had passed, back there. Details ruthlessly excluded: death, love, disaster, the rapport they'd found, your hands around mine. Better to stay with dry facts and away from the tightness in their own chest.
Much better.
It almost slips through, a bare hint behind the eyes, as Bel describes the memory-loss reported by people sent back and later returned. But they're careful to differentiate the ship's Ingress from the one on Amissis-Re. For most of the trip, going home, even temporarily, hasn't been an option.
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He pauses for a long moment, appearing to carefully consider and reject several responses before air sighs almost inaudibly from his lungs and he meets Bel's eyes again, one eyebrow arching.
"Do you have any proof of this, Captain Thorne? Besides the unfamiliar uniform you're currently sporting, I mean. This is all a little..." He stops again, choosing his words delicately. "Difficult to swallow."
no subject
Sliding up one cuff, Bel displays the inert MID bracelet circling it, nothing at all like any wristcom Gregor might have owned here.
"A ship's intercom device, issued on arrival. You have one too."
It'll be dead as Bel's is, no transmission capabilities, but Gregor wouldn't have been able to remove it, even if the transport-disorientation had hidden it from his mind.
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"I see," he says, his voice paper-thin but carefully controlled. "And what do you suggest I should do about this, Captain Thorne?"
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But in the other one, Gregor would have called them Bel.
"Come back with me." Dry-mouthed -- they hadn't planned this far; the others had supposedly known what to say. "Remember it all for yourself. And then...."
They hadn't discussed that, up on the platform, and Bel doesn't think it likely. Someone needs him there, too. But in the end, the decision will be his. And it needs to be wholly his, no transport amnesia blocking his sight.
"...If you still need to do this, we'll help you find your way."
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"All right," he says simply, his chin lifting and the tension draining slowly out of his shoulders. "How do we get back?"