applesaucedream | Encampment Under the Sea [Open to All]

Encampment Under the Sea [Open to All]

photo encampmentunderthesea_zps98ceddce.jpg

Since the dreamers of Manhattan had such a lovely time at the last vaguely-nautical-themed party, the Rift has decided to step things up a notch. Tonight, the dreamers will find themselves in what appears to be a city very much like the one they inhabit in the waking world, full of towering skyscrapers, neon signs, and heavy traffic. But there is one rather crucial difference: this city is located deep underwater, and the aforementioned traffic is mostly whales and fish, with the occasional submersible thrown into the mix.

The walls and windows are heavily reinforced to withstand the pressure of the water outside, and the people who dwell in these buildings seem to be doing rather well for themselves, for the most part. Buildings are connected by enclosed walkways, so barring any horrible accidents, the dreamers should have no problem getting around without getting too wet.

Much like the city they inhabit in the waking world, some areas are more obviously affluent than others, and the dreamers are as likely to stumble upon an upscale club as an underwater pub. But while the chances of a full structural breakdown are slim, there are definitely some areas that are on the leaky side, and a general sense of claustrophobia pervades the city wherever you might find yourself.

Explore. Or, if you're feeling particularly ambitious, attempt to escape. Either way, take care - it's hard to say what might be lurking in the darkness just beyond the city lights.

[ooc: Y'all know the drill. All characters are welcome, whether they are in the game or not. Characters can remember or forget the events of the dreaming at the player's discretion. And the party never stops - backtag into infinity!]

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He pushes himself to his feet and, noticing the wordless hint a tad belatedly, quickly grasps Andrew's hand to assist him in doing the same.

"Who designed this place, anyway?" he muses aloud, very carefully not looking at the glass dome they're both in but focusing on the lamps and the floor and really everywhere else. "It feels, I dunno, temporally displaced, maybe. The layout and construction don't look modern at all but the engineering required to get this place underwater definitely is, I mean, it's like a, a metachronistic mess."

"Or someone was feeling terribly retro," points out Andrew. "Or we're not on Earth at all; you can never be sure how technology will progress in different cultures. Or regress, as the case may be here."

He toddles toward one of the lamps in question, though he quickly finds himself trekking up the inside of the sphere to reach it. "This definitely looks like a gas line," he muses, leaning on the glass wall of the sphere and looking up at the pipe feeding the lamp above him. "Not the best idea in the world, really."

All right, so Andrew's got a fair point there. Daniel's seen more than enough planets in various stages of pre-modern day Earth technological advancement. But the gas combined with the glass isn't just poor building design, it's really, really setting all of Daniel's nerves on edge.

"Maybe we, uh," he shuffles to the middle of the room, eying the lamps with serious trepidation, "shouldn't stick around. What if something...?" He gestures vaguely upward to indicate a failure in building stability, or the glass collapsing under the water pressure and drowning them both, or any of the innumerable bad things that could happen with this much glass in the room.

Andrew looks over his shoulder, finally seeming to take note of Daniel's discomfort. "Cracks?" he suggests mischievously. "Or explodes?"

That's not very kind, though, and he knows it. "Alright," he sighs, abandoning his exploration to join him back at the hatch. "With any luck we'll find something a bit less dead-endy up ahead."

Cracks, yes. Daniel would very much not like to deal with cracking or breaking glass or anything. He...would not like that. He does not like the glass. He stopped liking glass years ago. He doesn't trust it. It's flimsy, hardly a good foundation for an underwater structure.

He does not like the glass.

Andrew's arch verbalization of his fear does nothing to alleviate the jangling nerves. Tight-jawed, wordless, he scrambles back down the hatch as quickly as he can and offers a hand to Andrew to help him down.

Andrew is starting to catch on that Daniel does not like the glass, and from there it isn't a great leap to make the connection with his comments about dying several times over. He can empathize; he'd harbored a fear of heights for a while after that incident with the radio tower.

So he clambers back down the ladder, slower than Daniel and slower than he'd like, conscientiously closing the hatch behind them as if it will make any difference. Andrew accepts the hand down and gives it a little squeeze before letting go, though his cavalier attitude doesn't seem to change. "Well," he says, "That was a bust. At least we know a little more now than we did before."

"In that this place is apparently underwater and also not very well-maintained?" Daniel relaxes visibly, ridiculously, once they're both safely down. On some rational level he's aware of how pointless a relief that is; if the glass upstairs were to fail as he fears, one small hatch wouldn't do much in terms of protection. But the visible reminder is gone, at least, so Daniel will take it. "And also not great in terms of a floor plan. Who'd want to walk this far to get to an observation deck?" And in a thoroughly creepy, poorly lit tunnel, no less.

Still, that might be a sign they're getting closer to civilization. Or at least a more pleasant place than this.

"Keep going, do you think?"

"It could be a sign we're close to something bigger," Andrew points out with a nod. "Or it might be there's something worth seeing there that we didn't notice. Either way, I think I'd like to find somewhere a little bit drier; the last thing I need is a cold."

Not that colds work that way, but having wet feet is really starting to make him miserable. More miserable than a heavily pregnant man normally is, even.

"Right, that -" It's a little jarring for Daniel to keep reminding himself that Andrew is pregnant, and of course all the associated discomforts would just as easily apply. "Good point. Sorry."

Apologizing seems to be the thing to do, however Andrew chooses to interpret it, whether for dragging him out of the first dry area they've seen since they got here or for the sake of conversational social norms or for...whatever reason, really. Daniel slogs ahead doggedly in search for another passage or hatch.

It's not long before they find one. Just like before, a small ladder leads up to an innocuous little metal hatch angled upward. He pauses and rests a hand on the bottommost rung and considers the likelihood that this will just lead to another observation deck or whatever that place was supposed to be. Not much to be gained in wondering, he starts up the ladder hesitantly to start wrenching open the hatch, hoping there isn't a pressing mass of water on the other side.

Andrew watches the proceedings with a keen eye, though he's practically lounging against the wall as Daniel works at opening the hatch. He's looking for moisture where there shouldn't be any, listening for ominous creaking, that sort of thing. There's no sign from down here that there's water bearing down on the hatch, though, and anyway it opens upward and Daniel would have to do a pretty fantastic job of breaking it to get it open should there be water pressure working against him.

When Daniel does get it open, what comes flooding into the tunnel is not water, but light. Andrew breaks into a wide grin, though he can't see much beyond Daniel's silhouette. There's glass between them and the dark ocean outside again, but this time the lamps are already lit and they reveal an almost airy (and blissfully dry) walkway in much better condition than the tunnel in which they've been walking. It stretches off perpendicular to the passage below, terminating at a door to a building at each end not far away.

"Let there be light," grins Andrew, unaware that they've got the same problem as before, more or less.

"Indeed," says Daniel, with a faint smile reminiscent of a private joke. It disappears in the same moment it forms. He's not as excited about the promise of more glass, but hopefully the door will lead to a place less...structurally fragile.

He clambers up the ladder and has to blink rapidly for a moment so his eyes can adapt to the abrupt brightness, a startling contrast to the dimly lit tunnel below. Vision adjusted, he shoots a hasty scan of the walkway to assure himself of the relative safety of the area - with the exception of the glass there aren't any obvious dangers - and quickly stretches a hand down to help Andrew join him.

If it were just another observation bubble Andrew doubts that Daniel would have climbed up into it. He clambers up the ladder, accepting the hand up without hesitation, and stands blinking in the gaslight. "Now this is more like it," he says, turning in place (and nearly putting a foot down the open hatch). Picking a direction, he toddles toward a door. "Shall we see if this one goes somewhere better?"

"Please," he replies, one hand outstretched and hovering a good foot away from Andrew, whose seemingly tenuous balance has him more than a little worried. Onward he goes though, remarkably bouncy and agile despite all of it, and Daniel follows a cautious step behind.

The door, once they reach it, appears to be of the same caliber as the hatches they've encountered so far: metal and heavy and sealed, though this one seems considerably less caked with the rust of disuse. He shoots an inquisitive glance over his shoulder, back at the hatch from which they just entered, and wonders briefly if they've been wandering around in some sort of maintenance shaft. He returns his attention to the door with a shake of his head. It's not particularly important right now and the weight of all the water on the glass is starting to make him paranoid again.

Hoping the next room is someplace with considerably less glass built into its structure, Daniel throws his weight on the submarine-like wheel that appears to be the door's opening mechanism until it turns. The door clunks open with a faint mechanized hiss and swings out at them. Daniel hastily leaps back to avoid getting hit in its outward, swooshing arc.

An outward-opening door really ought to be cause for caution, though how they'll know whether there's water on the other side until it's too late Andrew does not know. Or he does, but by the time he gets his screwdriver out to initiate a scan Daniel's already got the wheel turning. It's a whoosh of pressurized air that greets them, though, not a wave of saltwater. Andrew is already standing further back, but the door knocks the screwdriver out of his hand and sends it clattering against the bottom of one of the big panes of glass that make up the tunnel walls.

"Oh, for--" he starts, before seeing what's on the other side of the door and stopping to gape.

"It's a shop," he says, staring in at all the shelves of tinned foods with charming, colorful labels. They're looking in from a side door, but it's clear enough it's a public entrance. "An underwater grocer, look at that!"

Daniel blinks rapidly a few times to take it in.

Well. Okay. So it is.

"I guess we kind of were close to civilization," he observes, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. Sure, after trekking for what felt like half a mile in a soaking wet sewer tunnel of some sort and getting waylaid by an apparently functionless observation sphere, they come up on a shop. Who designed this place? And why did glass have to be the material constant?

He notices the little object that the door's abrupt entrance had knocked from Andrew's hand and quickly stoops to retrieve the - penlight?

"Er," says Daniel, holding the...object tentatively between thumb and forefinger and offering it to Andrew, entirely unsure of what he should say about it.

"Ah," says Andrew, more to match Daniel's wordless vocalization than out of an attempt to clarify. He takes the screwdriver back and tucks it inside his jacket pocket before stepping through the door. He still hasn't quite worked out that this is a dream, hasn't quite cottoned on to the impossibility of being here. For now he's just wandering wherever the passages take him, and right now they've taken him to an adorable little ~~corner~~ tunnel offshoot shop.

"Look at these!" he exclaims, scooping a tin of beans off the nearest shelf, lured by the bright label. Then he frowns at it, turning it over in his hands. "Hang on, I remember these. Don't I? Yes. No. Different beans, never mind."

And with that they go right back on the shelf and Andrew's off to wander down the aisle in search of...something.

He hastens to follow Andrew, still at a loss as to what the pen-shaped object could have been or what Andrew could have hoped to accomplish by waving it at the door. The tin of beans serves as an adequate distraction - Daniel watches, perplexed, when Andrew finds them important and then not important and then returns them to the shelf in what feels like the span of a few seconds.

"Erm," says Daniel, speeding up to keep pace with the other man even as he meanders off, "what was that? The, uh - penlight...thing?"

"Beans," replies Andrew brightly, but that's not what Daniel means, as evidenced by the clarification a second later. He glances over his shoulder and gives a lopsided shrug as if to say whatever it is, it's much less interesting than the beans were. Or weren't. The beans did have a bit of a failure to launch. "Oh, that? Sonic screwdriver. Thought I'd have a bit of a scan, but opening the door worked, too. You found a shop!"

He's still on the lookout for the next interesting thing, which has got to be around here somewhere. It's an underwater shop, after all; what could be more appealing than that? For other people, of course. People like shops.

"Sonic - sonic screwdriver?" Sorry, what? Sonic technology might not be something Daniel has a great deal of experience in but screwdriver is certainly a new one. Though why a screwdriver would be conducive to a scan is somewhat beyond him. Then again, most technology is, by his own admission.

However interesting Andrew may find the shop, Daniel has quite enough questions just centering around his somewhat enigmatic, pregnant, sonic screwdriver-toting friend right here.

"So you - you just kind of - carry it around?" he asks, head cocking to one side quizzically. "For just - whatever? I mean, what is it?"

"It's a screwdriver," clarifies Andrew, stopping to grab a bag of crisps off the shelf this time. "It's sonic. Use the right frequencies in the right concentrations and you can do anything with sound. Well, almost anything. It doesn't do julienne fries or anything like that."

He examines the bag, then puts it back upside-down. "D'you know, I can't remember how I came to be in an underwater city. Can you?"

Sonic technology, integrated into everyday use. That's an incredible development. Daniel recalls Andrew's mention of his "people" - advanced enough to accomplish that? The air of nonchalance with which he discusses it would imply as much.

"Not particularly, no," he answers, drawing the words out warily. "I feel like - like I've been here before, though. Like maybe with someone else. Some - some other point in time?" Or several someone elses. Or - an intensely vivid memory of being caught underwater, pinned beneath something dragging and heavy, flickers in his head and he shudders. What does that even mean? Has he been here before? He feels like he'd remember - but then, Daniel's used to having thoughts and memories in his head that don't belong, or things he should be able to access but can't.

Maybe his joking suggestion of this being a dream really is a possibility.

If Daniel thinks a little screwdriver is impressive, someday Andrew will have to introduce Daniel to ~~his~~ the Doctor's sapient space-and-time ship. He strolls up to the checkout stand, which is suspiciously devoid of life, and after a glance around avails himself of the counter as a seat. It takes two tries, embarrassingly, but soon enough he's perched between the register and a rack of candy bars. Andrew sighs in relief at the weight being taken off his damp feet, then sniffs in a breath and gazes about the front of the shop.

"I don't think this is real," he decides. "Which makes it more than a little annoying that my feet hurt as much as they do. I always thought you weren't supposed to feel pain in dreams. Bit disappointing, too; I'd've liked this place to be real."

~~A sapient space-and-time ship would probably make Daniel cry out of delighted, overwhelmed nerdery.~~

"I think you're right about that," Daniel agrees with a thoughtful nod. He's too restless to sit still, pacing in unorganized configuration as he scans the apparently metaphysically constructed space. Would that explain why there aren't any other people around? Yet Daniel has distinct memories of meeting others. Diverting pathways? Multiple contemporaneous time-streams? If this is a dream it could be drawing from his head, which might explain the presence of all the glass; the dream may very well be constructing everything out of his subconscious terrors, addressing his phobic blindspots with an alacrity he wouldn't ordinarily possess in the waking world.

By now surreality has become something of an existential constant, what with Daniel's life too often landing somewhere between the schools of the implausible and the absurd. And what hasn't been done to him at this point?

He stops pacing and turns back to Andrew, meandering thought process having looped back around to its original point.

"You think since this is, apparently a dream," he waves upward to signify the entire space, the manifested shop and all its items and everything related, "we have some measure of control over it? Like, maybe you can affect whether or not your feet hurt? If, if you put enough thought to it?"

"...Oh." And now he feels like an idiot. He gives Daniel the most sheepish of smiles. "When you put it that way it seems a bit obvious, doesn't it?"

Andrew lifts his feet out in front of him and frowns at them, lower lip sticking out in brief concentration. "Stop that," he orders them. "Hang on, we're sharing this dream -- you stop believing that my feet hurt, will you? I think it will help, or at least it'll be an interesting mental exercise for you."

That Daniel might be leading up to something bigger than curing Andrew's foot pain goes unaddressed. They're in an adorable underwater shop, therefore his sore arches are the only real problem.

"Um, okay." Daniel's no stranger to pulling mental cartwheels and harnessing - how is it said? the full potential of his mind? something along those lines. The fact that it's all evidently taking place in a dream should make it easier, right?

This dream hasn't proved to be the most agreeable. Could that make any difference? If dreams could have mood settings Daniel would class this one as fickle, most assuredly. It gives them a friendly underwater shop but they have to slog through a long winding tunnel to get at it. They get a lovely view of the construct they've been dropped in but it specifically builds the observatory out of glass, probably with the full knowledge of how much Daniel hates it.

Daniel frowns sharply and concentrates on the release of pain, momentarily unsure if he should be focusing on Andrew's feet or his own and then projecting that sensation toward Andrew. Does it really matter? Andrew's feet can be the test run to see if mental power has any effect at all. Surely a year or two of practicing regular meditation should make him a little more proficient at this? Whatever...'this' is, really?

He employs the same sort of deep breathing he'd use to practice a Kelno'reem meditative state, patiently narrowing his focus down to Andrew's feet, ridiculous as it feels.

"Is it helping?" he asks, cracking one eye open to look at the other man dubiously.

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