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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~~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.

Andrew lowers his feet as he relaxes himself, mentally poking and prodding at the dreamscape. In a way it seems like it would be easier to change the room around them than to change his own perception of his body parts, but he can hardly feel any of it in his head the way he knows a true telepath would. He opens an eye to watch Daniel when he gets bored of meditation (so very soon indeed), and grins at the sight of someone who was at one point practically a deity concentrating on making Andrew's feet feel better through the power of thought.

He's grinning shamelessly when Daniel cracks an eye open in return. "No, but you should see -- hang on." He halts in the lead-up to some jibe or another about Daniel taking him seriously, then wiggles his toes thoughtfully. "It did!" he crows, back to full volume at the drop of a hat as he hops off the counter and bounces on the balls of his now un-sore feet.

"Wait, really?" Though Daniel can quite easily interpret Andrew's rather animated bouncing as a 'yes' in its own right. He can't help but grin in response, baffled and pleased in equal measure at the unanticipated success of, of - whatever it is he just did.

"Well that - that. Okay. We can change things if we focus, I guess? Um, good to know." Honestly, he has no idea why that would work, but hey - he'll take it. "Think maybe it's easier if it's ourselves or, or do you think we can affect the environment too?"

That might be trickier. So far the 'underwater' theme has been fairly static, though it's entirely possible the dream's pulling from their subconscious to manifest all the structures. Daniel certainly doesn't recognize much about the specifics.

"Well, if we want to cure the shop's foot pain I'd say we've just shown we're up to the task," replies Andrew flippantly. "What did you have in mind for an experiment? Keep in mind we are underwater, even if we're under imaginary water."

Not that he probably needs to remind Daniel. It might even be cruel to remind Daniel.

"I - no, yeah, I think I got that, thanks," Daniel replies lightly, throat a little tight as he glances upward, scanning the surroundings. "The underwater thing. Kinda, kind of a bit difficult to forget, that."

Most definitely.

"What about something small?" he suggests finally. "Like, say...changing whatever might be on the shelves?"

"I could go for some kimchi right now," muses Andrew. "And a chocolate bar. Alright, let's do...the beans. The beans can go away, I think, no one wants any beans. Unless you do?"

Andrew, it's a dream. Most people don't even want to eat in dreams.

"That -" He blinks a few times, rethinks whatever it was he was about to say, and abandons it mid-sentence. "Okay. Sure. Beans it is. Er - lack of beans. Is what we're aiming for. I guess."

As long as Daniel doesn't pay attention to the absurdity of what he's doing, he can narrow his focus at, well, at the beans. He quickly realizes this is going to be a more problematic endeavor. He doesn't know whether to broaden his focus or narrow it and he has no end goal in mind. Should he try to change the contents of the tins or should he shoot for altering the entire object structure? Would it be more effort to completely eliminate them? And oh my god why is he trying to apply logic to this. It's a dream and therefore the logic should be pliable, shouldn't it?

Or the logic is just completely nonsensical, which is what Daniel concludes after his first attempt to alter the environment results in twice as many tins of beans than what they started with.

"I think I overdid it," he observes lightly. "Well, more like - inverted it."

The beans were a disappointment, is the thing. If they didn't want to be banished they should have turned out to be more relevant to Andrew's interests. As it is they're just beans, and apart from when he finds himself craving beans on toast (i.e. not right now) they are therefor of the lowest order of interest. Of somewhat greater interest is the question of whether Daniel is the one affecting the dream around them. Andrew doesn't lend his mental powers to the cause at all this time, choosing instead to lounge against the counter and watch as Daniel looks awfully confused for someone exercising his telepathic abilities. And lo, there were more beans.

"...I thought you were going to turn them into kimchi," he comments, picking up one of the tins. "Is this the first time you've done this sort of thing?"

"Is this my first time participating in an apparent group dream event?" Daniel asks skeptically, raising one eyebrow. "Ye - no, actually."

He deflates a little at that, looking confused, but quickly regains his momentum. The possible group simulations he's experienced were years ago, and also very different in conception. "I haven't done this sort of thing recently. And I've never tried to actively manipulate a dream environment even if this one seems more - er, not receptive per sé. Responsive, maybe, though not necessarily in the way we'd like."

Capricious dreams that choose to fill themselves up with endless tins of beans and big underwater glass structures are really not something Daniel anticipated being a problem of his, see.

"Really? I meant lucid dreaming, but if you've had your subconscious telepathically linked to a collective during REM before now I'm all ears," comments Andrew. "Is there anything you haven't done? Because we've already covered space exploration and voluntary reincarnation; at this rate you're going to turn out to've traveled in time and given birth to twins."

It's not so often he finds he has so many experiences in common with a human, after all. At least, not a human he himself didn't take to see the stars, etcetera.

"I...well." Daniel rubs at his nose, sounding almost apologetic. "It's...kinda what happens when you spend eight years of your life going through stable wormholes every week. Can't say I've done, um, twins. Or, or pregnancy." He's going to guess Andrew's current predicament is more along those lines. "Though uh, apparently the time travel - well, those're. Uh. Kind of. Long stories. And you know, I still don't understand those mission reports."

The fact that there's no real way to confirm them does not help.

Alright, he was grabbing for the two things he was decently sure Daniel hasn't done. One out of two isn't bad? His laughter comes out of him as a short, high bark and he leans forward to clap Daniel on the shoulder.

"I like you," he says decisively. "We're going to have to meet when we're awake. Where are you when you're awake? I've got a flat. Well, we've got a flat. You said your last name was Jackson?"

The abruptness with how this man operates is vaguely alarming but his announcement still prompts a bemused half-grin.

"Jackson, yeah. Daniel. I'm in the, uh, the rebel apartments? Staying in a friend's old place until I can get my footing." Andrew's struck Daniel as genuinely well-meaning, if a little on the excitable side, and he needs to start getting to know people in the area anyway. "Er, you say 'we'?"

He assumes Andrew means his partner, but making those sorts of intuitive leaps might not be fully reasonable in a place where Godzillas and Devils are commonplace.

"Oh good, I thought you might be with ROMAC -- not that they aren't lovely people, I'm sure, but a little looming government agency goes a long way. It's me and my partner, James, out in Chelsea. I'm fairly certain this," he gestures at his belly, "is his fault somehow, but we haven't quite worked out the how just yet."

To say the least.

"Yeah," he replies, stretching the word to four or five additional (and highly suspicious) syllables. "No, I'm trying to avoid political affiliations right now. At least until I can work out exactly what kind of morality each of them operate under, though currently it's looking along the lines of 'not a whole lot'." Having worked in a looming government agency (well, Air Force, but it certainly felt close enough at times) and seen firsthand the kind of decisions they make regularly, Daniel isn't overly eager to involve himself in that political structure again. Even he, ethical absolutist as he is, could only do so much to lighten the moral gray of many of those decisions.

Daniel nods politely in response to the pregnancy conundrum, though in all honesty he's still not sure how to address that. He's saved from having to think of an answer when a peculiar tugging drags at the edge of his consciousness.

"Oh," he says unhappily, shoving his dream hands into his dream pockets. "I think I'm waking up. Er, I'm pretty sure that's what's happening, but really I'd have no way of knowing if -"

The next minute, he's back in Lucy's apartment, awake and gasping and horrified.

"Oh, don't--" protests Andrew, sure Daniel ought to be able to choose whether or not he wants to wake up. That assumption is quickly proven wrong, but at least he finally gets to see what it looks like when one dreamer wakes up and another doesn't.

"Well, that's just wizard," he says to the empty shop and the stacks of tinned beans.

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Encampment Under the Sea [Open to All]

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