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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Well, that answered his question, albeit in a roundabout sort of way. Though to be fair, it's not like he phrased the original query all that well himself.

"So you're saying that, uh, we're both experiencing the same dream. In real time. Together."

The place just gets better and better.

He lets out a long, noisy whoosh of breath.

"Okay, well seeing as we're both here - wherever 'here' is, though I can't, can't really say..."

He lapses off, now surveying the walls with renewed interest. It's still dark and gloomy and wet but at least he's not alone. Though the present company is...strange, he can't say it's unwelcome.

"Us and --ooh, probably a couple dozen others, unless this place came out of your head," confirms Andrew. He looks around as well, lifting one foot with distaste and letting it drip. "It's not very good, is it? Better than prom, but still not very good. We had one where we were all monsters; that was much better."

"I don't recognize it," Daniel replies, still studying the walls. What material even is that? "But then, there are quite a few things in my head that I can't consciously...remember..." He drifts off, finally recognize what Andrew just said. His head snaps around to stare at him.

"Um, uh. Monsters?"

"Not really monsters," admits Andrew. "Alright, monsters, but only physically. Half-animal things, mostly, though I heard someone was a nymph -- I was a man-horse-fish."

Icthyocentaur, actually, but even if he knows the word Andrew doesn't deign to use it.

Daniel stares at Andrew for a long, long minute, mouth slightly agape.

And decides that he can worry about this some other time.

"What do you say we get outta here?" he asks, abrupt and a little too quickly because he has no idea how to respond to any of this. The place is creepy and dark and far-reaching and discussions of monsters are reminding him that they might not be the only things down here.

They'll be fiiiine. They may be an archaeologist and a pregnant stick figure, but surely they can handle whatever this dream throws at them.

"Dry socks," he muses. "Yeah, come on. Nothing back the way I came for a long way, how about back your way?"

"I don't know," Daniel admits, looking back over his shoulder. "I haven't been here long enough to check. Not that we have much choice. I mean, it's that or stay here and, well."

He doesn't complete the sentence. This place has him well and thoroughly spooked and he wants out of it as soon as possible. But Andrew's likely figured that out by now.

Endless, dark, ominous corridors? It's like being back home, none of this staying home and away from danger nonsense. "Back your way it is!" he decides cheerfully, waddling off through the dripping tunnel in a decisive manner. "Where are you from, Daniel? Or tell me how it's different from this New York, that might be more helpful."

Daniel hastens to follow, more than a little bemused by Andrew's evident lack of caution. It's refreshing, at least.

"Er, well." He hesitates; this could get complicated. "I hadn't actually been to my universe's New York since I was a kid. Back home I was, uh, an explorer. I'm an archaeologist."

That's probably the most normal, succinct way he can put it. He's not sure how much he should be elaborating on the specifics of what his job actually entailed. Then again, he's talking to Peter Vincent's apparent doppelganger who also happens to be pregnant so perhaps weirdness is just a given all around.

"Oh, were you?" Andrew seems to find this amusing for some reason he's not sharing. He grins at Daniel as he privately thinks how little the man probably understands about the ancient civilization(s) to which he's devoted his life. "I've always been a bit of an explorer myself. James and I -- that's my, ah...partner, James, you should meet him -- got snatched off our spaceship when we were visiting Hedenex."

He might be trying to surprise and confuse Daniel by this point.

"Spaceship -" Daniel's head snaps back to Andrew, torn between alarm and, bizarrely, delight. "You mean you've, you've explored and been to uh, well, space, the universe? I mean other, other planets and, uh, whatnot. 'Cause that was - well, that is to say, when I said explorer, I did mean in a more, um, galactic sense."

He's babbling, he knows it, but this is the first person he's met who might actually have an interest equal to his in the whole "exploring the universe" thing. And that's just exciting.

"Hedenex, is that a, uh, a planet?" He's never heard the name before, even if he's mentally plumbing the depths of every obscure planet name he can think of. And that is - there simply isn't any other word for it - neat.

"Did you!" Alright, that's much more interesting than being an archaeologist on limited old Earth, though really, he is aware there's plenty to explore even on that one planet. Of course, Daniel could just be latching on to whatever Andrew says for the attention it gets him, but if he went around assuming things like that about everyone Andrew would never make friends with interesting people. He nods. "It's one on a string of jump nodes that start about three months out from Earth. Friendly place, or at least seemed like it, I didn't get to see much of it. Why, where were you when you got grabbed?"

Edited 2014-10-16 18:32 (UTC)

"I was on, um, P5X-909, it, uh." Right, that's not exactly useful. Daniel hastens to explain:

"We used a, uh, a binary naming system based on planet coordinates." At least that's what Daniel thinks it was. Someone explained it to him once but they used a lot of numbers and large words and he has trouble following the former. "Not very interesting, I know, I kept asking them to change it but until we find inhabitants we don't have any way of telling the actual name so we, um. Yeah, P5X-909."

Daniel doesn't know the specifics of how far it was from Earth or very many specifics of the planet at all since the Rift pulled him off it rather quickly, other than the area they arrived at had been deserted and apparently very geologically active if the periodic earthquakes were anything to go by.

"Um," he says again, placeholding while he tries to work out a reference point. "Still in the Milky Way galaxy? Part of it kind of...desert-like?"

"Coordinates based on what system?" asks Andrew, amused. The name means absolutely nothing to him; while he could likely work out its location if he knew what they were using for units of measurement and a central reference point he wouldn't be able to do it in his head anymore and it seems somewhat irrelevant anyhow. "Any natives? Hang on, no, you said it'd have a name if you'd met the natives."

"Not on that planet, no," he answers, now shutting his eyes in an effort to remember the specifics of the SGC binary system. Nope, got nothing. "We didn't have access to ships until more recently so we use a, a gate system. Stable wormholes."

Daniel's not sure how much of this information he should be sharing, but with the apparent lack of an SGC and no obvious external threat of alien invasion in this universe, it's very plausible that stargates simply don't exist here. He's not sure he likes the thought.

Then he asks, abruptly curious, "Why? What, uh, how did you travel?"

"By ship," says Andrew faintly, gazing at his newfound best science buddy. "You don't have access to ships, but you have access to a system of stable wormholes? Who is this 'we,' anyway? Are you human? When are you from? Where are you from?"

"Human? Yes, uh. Mostly. Er. Long story. Why, aren't you?" All of it is a long story. And seeing as this is technically no different from a first contact situation, Daniel can share a fair amount without breaching security that probably doesn't even exist here. "I'm from Earth, or a version of Earth anyway. I was, uh, it was 2005 when I left."

And here's where things get complicated. Daniel doesn't know how deep he can get into technical details, but here goes.

"We found the first gate in 1928 but it was some time before we could get it to work. Um, it was a, a stargate, an alien device left on Earth probably, um, thousands of years or, or - a really long time ago. The gate can form an artificial wormhole between another active gate when you enter the right address and we, um, my government, use it to travel to other worlds." Or used. Maybe past tense applies here. There's no way for Daniel to know.

"Really?" Plenty of 'alien' races have used Earth as a base or an outpost over the millennia, but this is the first Andrew's heard of any of them giving it an address on a wormhole network. Had there been such a system in the last universe where he and James had lived, it would have saved them a good three months of traveling. "Top secret, I suppose?" he asks, though it can't be all that top secret if Daniel's spilling the beans to him like this. "Because let me tell you, I could've used something like that back home. And no, I'm not human. Not entirely. But how mostly human are you?"

"Top secret to Earth citizens maybe, but other planets?" He shrugs, because it's an honest assessment. "Well, not so much." He's just extending that logic to other universes is all. Not such a huge leap.

The not entirely comment about Andrew's exterior human physiology earns him a second look, but not a wholly surprised one. Daniel got over the "aliens that shockingly resemble humans" thing years ago. It's his last question that prompts a much longer pause.

"Well," he says finally, drawing out the word. He doesn't particularly know how to address what he is now, not in the least because he doesn't fully understand it himself. It's one thing to give a truncated history on alien technology and quite another to turn this conversation to a more personal direction. "Mostly human as in my physiology is more or less human. But there are um, remnants. Of, of certain past experiences."

Oh, how does one put this delicately? Can one put it delicately?

Andrew tuts and shakes his head in amusement at the idea of telling people on other planets all about things they won't even tell their own fellow humans back home. It's a very human approach to take, but knowing the cultural context doesn't make it any less silly to him.

"Exchanges with other species?" prompts Andrew, accepting Daniel's answer but probing for a little more detail. The same description could nearly apply to him, after all, but he doesn't think Daniel's about to tell him he's a long lost meta-crisis cousin.

"Uh, kind of?" Yes, Daniel's aware that his voice has just jumped an octave. He drops his head to stare at his waterlogged feet. It's not particularly an easy thing to discuss "I died a few times and came back different. Not hugely different, just, uh, with some knowledge and senses of things I might not have otherwise."

And that would be the highly abridged version. But as friendly as Andrew's been, Daniel's not sure he wants to be one hundred percent forthright with this. Sharing it with too many people would be tantamount to waltzing into Manhattan with "HARBORER OF SECRETS OF THE ASCENDED" emblazoned on his forehead in neon letters, and that would likely cause more trouble than good.

"You died?" Now it's Andrew's turn to go squeaky. "Wait, wait, hold on -- was this before or after you stopped being entirely human? Because believe it or not, resurrection's not typical, present company excluded."

Sorry, Daniel, you brought it up. Andrew is never not going to be curious and nosy about it now.

Present company excluded?

Okay, so that's one thing Daniel never thought he'd have in common with anyone.

"Well the first few times nothing changed much, really," he stammers, entirely taken aback. "Other than the fact that I, uh, tended to do it a lot. Really a lot. It was only when, um, I was dying and I, I learned, er, I was taught how to Ascend. To, um. Another plane."

So much for not being forthright. But the mention of present company having some experience with death and then undeath has greatly reduced Daniel's already underused ability to think things through.

"What." Alright, so not regeneration, not eternal life through cloning. not even resuscitation, but ascension. "I've heard of people ascending, but not -- not humans. No offense. But you're -- we're -- you're not supposed to have the psychic capacity for it!"

No, that wasn't incredibly rude or anything, obviously. He's just being ~~brutally~~ honest, that's all.

"Well, I had some help," he admits, wincing a little. "Uh. Both times. Some of the Others - well, one Other, she helped me, uh...'open my mind'." No, really, that's how she put it. Several times, and usually with the help of obscure metaphors.

It's honestly a little surprising (no more so than anything else, Daniel supposes) that Andrew seems to know about it. He wasn't sure if the concept even existed in this universe.

"How do you know about Ascension?" he asks curiously, head to one side.

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