applesaucedream | Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

Current Music: Evening July 27th/Morning July 28th

Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

The woods are dark and deep, but not particularly lovely. If anything, they feel dangerous, as if something terrible might come lurching out from behind any given tree and tear into the nearest warm body. What that terrible thing might be is anyone's guess. A cat with hands? Slenderman? Stegosaurus? Actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf? All of the above in a horrible mob? It's anyone's guess. But every dreamer will be absolutely convinced that there is something unspeakable out there, and that it's after them.

The dreamers have two things on their side. The first is that there is actually nothing dangerous lurking in these woods (with the possible exception of other dreamers). The pervasive terror the dreamers are feeling is just that: a rift-given feeling, nothing more and nothing less. That snapping twig or rustle in the undergrowth is almost certainly just a squirrel or something else equally harmless.

The second is that no dreamer is alone. They all will be reunited with - or introduced to - their dæmons, a source of comfort in this dark, intimidating wilderness. However frightened the dreamers might be, at least they have someone with them who definitely doesn't want them dead.

[OOC: as ever, any and all are welcome! You don't have to be in the game to join the fun. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. And the party only stops when you want it to; feel free to backtag forever.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Daniel jumps at the sound of someone calling out but Aliyah immediately assures him that it's a human scent. Also something of the lower primate variety, but it's less specific. The owner of the voice gradually comes into view - a young man with a species on monkey on his shoulder, both of which seem...oddly enthusiastic?

He jumps again when the primate yells his name and Daniel frantically tries to remember if there was any point in his life in which he divulged his name and life story to a monkey, which he's almost certain he hasn't.

"Uh," he says carefully, staring at the man and his communicative monkey in complete and utter confusion as they draw closer. "Hi?"

As they get closer and Topher can hear his voice, oh this is very exciting, his grin grows very wide and excited.

"Hi!" he answers, just a little bit high-pitched, and clears his throat, reaching out his hand eagerly towards Daniel. (And haha! No sweaty palms in the dreamscape!) "Topher Brink. Very excited to meet you. That's Phonea, she's a night monkey."

Meanwhile Phonea bounces of his shoulder and onto the ground to say hello to the very large kitty. Normally not something she would do, except this kitty is basically Daniel Jackson, so there's very little threat there.

"Uh." He takes the hand but doesn't quite have the processing power to remember to shake it, still trying to sort out how this guy could know his name. "Daniel Jackson. But, um, I guess you knew that? How do you know that?"

This raises a lot of questions. A lot of questions, first and foremost being - how does this person know him? Is this a Rift thing? It could very possibly be a Rift thing. Aliyah sniffs at the indicated night monkey curiously but her scent explains nothing about how either man or monkey could know Daniel's name, just casually on the fly like this.

That's okay, Topher is excited enough to shake their hands enough for both of them.

"Uuhhhh," Topher answers, not having thought this far ahead. It's not that often he gets to meet people who are fictional in his own universe. But it's always exciting. "I'm.. a friend of yours from an alternate universe."

"You can't tell him that, you moron!" Phonea exclaims, looking up at Topher.

"Well, it's sort of true?" Topher answers, annoyed.

"It's sort of delusional."

"No, it's not -- Well, okay," Topher turns back to Daniel again, gesturing vaguely for a second. "I'm a fan of yours. Still from an alternate universe, though." He then gives a pointed look seeking approval from Phonea, who shrugs and nods.

He transfers his stare between monkey and man periodically, entirely unsure who he should be looking at to supply the explanation. Said explanation, when it comes, is...oh god, no.

"You're not one of those Wormhole X-treme people, are you?" Daniel asks sharply. Figures that show had to exist in multiple versions of the same universe. "Cause they kept promising me they'd killed Dr. Levant for the last time but then they kept bringing him back -"

"Alternate universe, though?" Aliyah asks, unable to restrain her minor spike of anxiety.

Topher grins brightly at the reference. "No, I'm not. We don't have that show in my universe. But-- sort of, I mean..." He trails off, gestures a little in place of words, and then exhales noisily, planting his hands on his hips, unsure what to say.

"I think you'd better tell him, yanno, the whole thing..." Phonea answers, climbing back up onto his shoulder, making his clothes a little disheveled and crooked.

"Right," Topher says nods. "Sorry, let me just..." He gestures a bit to the side of him and creates a lamppost (making the area suddenly quite a bit less creepy) and a bench, which he sits down on. Completely forgetting, of course, that Daniel might not even be aware that they're in a dream.

Reality warping is not something Daniel anticipated happening with this guy anytime soon, and he takes a step back and squints at him oddly, like he's expecting him to sprout wings at any moment. Which he is, actually. The only creatures he's seen capable of this are angels. And the Devil, who he supposes also counts as an angel. Sort of. Physiologically, anyway, if that's a thing with them, which he has no idea if it is but it seems a safe enough bet to assume so.

"איך עשית את זה?" he asks edgily. He doesn't sense any weird auras but if this guy is something angelic or equally powerful, there's a possibility he'll understand anyway.

Topher is just about to launch into a lengthy explanation when... "The whatnow?" he asks blankly, staring up at Daniel.

Had he been more prepared for that, he possibly could've fished out the intention behind the words, much like he can sense some of Daniel's emotions bleeding into the dreamscape. Right now all he senses is trepidation and confusion, which.. is not actually different from what he's been feeling all along.

Okay, so probably not an angel or, well, the Devil. Daniel relaxes minimally, but the casual alteration of reality still unnerves him. This guy is still probably two or three sigmas away from the mean, whoever he is, even if he looks physically human. And physical indication is hardly anything to go by.

"Sorry," Daniel mutters, now flicking his eyes over the lamppost and bench with a blend of curiosity and apprehension. "I had to check, I promise you. How did you -?" He waves inquisitively at the quite solid-looking manifestations. Aliyah's mindstate is the same darkened swirl of unease that his is, but their shared insistent curiosity is, as always, a much more influential force of nature.

"OH!" Topher and Phonea exclaim in unison. Phonea leaves the explanation to Topher though, choosing to climb that lamp post. She likes being high up, where you've got a good overview of things. So does Topher, really, but it's not currently possible for him.

"This is a dream. It's.. bendy," he answers. "Wait ok, let me just. Are you in Manhattan? I mean. Normally, not currently," he asks, because he feels like he needs to establish this first of all. If he's not, he can just write himself off as a figment or something, he supposes, without having to go into the whole.. TV show business.

"Um. Yes? Currently, yes. I landed there about two weeks ago."

A dream. Ah, all right then, that...explains some of it. At least the spatial shifting, anyhow. As soon as Topher says it the reality (or lack thereof, if one is going for scientific accuracy) of the situation becomes all the more obvious, and he nods to himself. And reminds himself to start getting better at distinguishing when something is a dream and when it isn't.

Aliyah hums in bass agreement. Her presence should have been the first indication this world is a metaphysical construct, but her presence had felt so natural Daniel had simply accepted it without question.

Edited 2014-11-02 18:43 (UTC)

Oh, he is pretty new, that explains why Topher hasn't bumped into him yet. And he must've avoided getting picked up by either of the factions - Topher usually keeps an eye on what they're up to - which is very good.

"Right. Well. You already know about there being multiple universes. So you've got two theories. One is that there's a finite number of universes, which makes it seem pretty unlikely that I should know who you are, except for how sometimes, with Rifts and all that especially, sometimes the reality of other universes bleeds into close ones and presents itself as fiction," he explains, gesturing enthusiastically to support is explanation.

"The other is that there's an infinite amount of universes, which means that somewhere, there must be a universe where your life, exactly as you've lived it, is part of a TV show, with an actor who looks exactly like you, ummmm Michael Shanks, I think? And.. It.."

"What he's trying to tell you," chimes Phonea in from above. "Is that he's watched your life as fiction since he was fourteen."

"I -"

That. That. That is not the explanation he expected. That is the furthest thing from an explanation he would have expected, any explanation.

"Wait, so you're, what you're saying is that in, in some universe, some universe where you grew up, there's a, a, a, a universe where my life is, is - is fiction?"

Daniel's voice is pitching dangerously high in a weird amalgamation of pained incredulity and distress. He'd call it absurd, except the worst part is that according to the hypothesis of infinite universes it actually isn't even all that theoretically absurd.

Topher nods and materialises himself a juicebox. "Stargate. I mean, well done though, SG-1 ran for ten seasons, had two spin-offs and there were three movies. Stargate Universe was still running when I came here. Never had a chance to properly watch that one though. Too busy with work. Apparently you were in it though," he rambles on.

He pauses for a second, sipping the juice and narrowing his eyes a little at Daniel. "I liked you better with the longer hair," he comments. It is not entirely impossible that Daniel's earlier hairstyle influenced Topher's own.

Oh god. Daniel's going to have to class this one under nightmare, most definitely. He buries his face in his hands for a minute. He needs to, to. Process this. Right. Give him a minute.

Then a horrible thought occurs to him.

"Wait, so -" He turns to face Topher again, still aghast. "Ten seasons? But that's - that's ten years. And I've only been with the USAF for eight."

The idea that this could be a method of predicting Daniel's future is ridiculous but in a...vaguely, metatextually terrifying way, because there's evidently a universe where an innumerable number of civilians have apparent access to very classified information and a grasp of his very private life, right down to his hair length, it's a deconstruction of his own reality and it's - it's -

"This is a dream," he reminds himself, now grinding both palms into his temples. "It's not - this isn't real."

Except it is, technically, assuming Topher isn't a construct of his subconscious, manifested for the sole purpose of picking apart his life and reconfiguring it into fictional imaging for its own nefarious purposes. But he can't imagine what any of those would be.

"...Show length doesn't necessarily mean the same amount of time passed for you," Topher points out. Even though he... realises this might mean he knows certain things about Daniel's future. He's just going to... veer right away from that thought and not dig into when Daniel is from and what's happened so far. Daniel is probably better off not knowing. Curiosity killed the cat, and all that. ~~Even if satisfaction brought it back.~~

He's like to offer some form of comfort, but Topher is terrible at actually being reassuring. He usually just messes it up.

"Coffee?" he offers, holding out a mug that wasn't there before to Daniel. He just went for something he remembers Daniel drinking a lot. Not sure if it's all that appropriate.

"God, yes." Questions of his (very much non-fictional, thank you) life are swarming his subconscious and making internal navigation extremely difficult. Coffee, at least, appears to be a multiversal conversational light fixture that he can cling to and anchor himself on until all...this becomes slightly more manageable.

He only just recently met the Devil and then the archangel Gabriel. Daniel silently demands the Rift, the universe, and everything if there are anymore surprises it would like to dispense upon him. Just once, he'd like to be prepared for things like this.

He accepts the coffee, dream-manifestation it may be, and drinks. It's black, pure and simple, nothing else, and that's exactly what he needs right now. The caffeine patches his frayed nerves enough to remind him of the primary question at hand.

"So I'm...really, honestly a, a fictional character? In your universe?"

"Yeah. Sorry," Topher answers. He knows there must be universes where his life is some kind of fiction, surely. But that doesn't mean he'd like to meet anyone familiar with that fiction. Who could read his life quite literally as an open book. The idea of privacy becomes a bit moot.

"I mean it's like.. PG-13 at most, though," he says. No, that's the rating system for movies, isn't it? Oh well, close enough. "It's not, uhh. Too invasive or detailed or anything. It's mainly mission-focused."

Okay, so Topher might have a BIT more information about Daniel's private life than Daniel would probably like, but. Can try to reassure him a little bit, pretend it's not as bad. "Also, I mean, you're awesome in it. You were my favourite. ...Maybe tied with Carter," he adds with a grin.

Daniel's absurdly curious for a moment over which missions would be deemed interesting enough to be fictionalized and broadcast for audiences on a national scale. Perhaps international. Topher did say ten seasons and two spin-offs.

Daniel can't believe he's actually thinking about this.

The mention of Sam warrants a small pang. God, but he misses her, he misses all of them. He misses the rapidfire execution of the polysyllabic words she'd have to explain what the Rift was and how it worked and how they could use it to get home, and he misses her singularly genuine enthusiasm over his explanations for this or that obscure alien culture, and he misses the insomniac camaraderie of late nights with shared coffee mugs and stacks of paperwork and indefinable alien tech to solve the latest world-shattering conundrum in time.

"I'm, uh, glad I made a good impression?" he ventures weakly, once again finding himself more than a little overwhelmed. And...okay, he'll admit it, mildly choked up. He really misses them, all of them, more acutely than ever.

Topher takes a little while to figure out why Daniel gets suddenly gets sad. If it weren't for the fact the telepathic nature of the dreaming and his affinity with it gives him about 250% more empathy and social intelligence, he probably wouldn't have realised what the issue was at all, just that Daniel suddenly seemed bummed out.

"Sorry," he answers quietly. "I'm not good with the whole... newbie sensitivity thing. Which is kind of funny, cause I actually used to greet newbies pretty often." Not that he was good at it. It was a proximity thing, not an... aptitude skill thing. At least he was good at explaining the science, or at least what they understood of the science.

And he's almost been here a year now, and a lot has happened in that time, he's even had to completely change allegiances. He didn't even arrive in New York, he'd fallen through into San Francisco and then been relocated. If almost feels strange to think back to what it was like at first, to dragged from home, or at the closest thing you could call home, and his own team. Still. Daniel is probably more used to that experience than Topher's ever been. Topher is purely an intellectual explorer.

"No, it's, um, it's fine." It isn't really, but Daniel's not about to blame Topher for that. "It's just, uh, not everyday that you meet someone who tells you your whole life is fiction."

It's fairly unsettling to hear it. And also makes Daniel wonder, briefly, ridiculously, if that would actually be a good way to go about making the Stargate Program go public.

"What about you?" he asks, a superbly clumsy alteration of subject. "I take it you're not, um, fictional where you come from?"

"Nooo," Topher answers, drawing the word out. "But I might be, in some other universe." In fact it's probably not even unlikely. It's just unlikely he'll meet someone familiar with it.

"Anyway, your life isn't fiction. It's no less real," he continues, because he'd rather talk about the theory of all this than his own private life, though he'll probably get to it eventually. "I mean, you've still lived it. It's not like anyone's implanted the memories of it into you without it ever happening. And hey, even if someone had, that would still make it real to you, which is what matters." He's getting a little off-topic, and accidentally straying dangerously close to old territory, things he definitely doesn't want to talk about or reveal he has first-hand experience with.

"Point is, either your life bled into fiction in my world, or they merely developed identically independently. Not the other way around. My world's fiction did not determine your life. So you've still got your free will and all that good stuff," Topher answers, gesturing casually. "And uh, to actually answer your question, my world was pretty much like yours, minus Stargate." He shrugs. "No aliens or fake gods or time travel. Just on TV."

"Simpler world," Daniel replies, one side of his mouth quirking into faint smile. It quickly fades. "Or I guess not, I guess, well I guess that's completely relative. It's not like Earth is any less, less complicated. It just happens to seem less when you have several galaxies' worth of additional reference points but of course when you consider the more localized context Earth is more a microcosm encapsulating the broader, more interstellar conflict."

He has to stop to take a breath and it occurs to him that Topher in all probability doesn't care much about that. It certainly holds more appeal to him as a topic as opposed to, say, discussing the rather disturbing idea of free will versus fate in universes where one's existence is defined solely by their reflected character in fiction. Daniel's just not sure if he's ready to address that, particularly in relation to himself.

Edited 2014-11-04 20:27 (UTC)

Topher gives Daniel a skeptical quirked eyebrow at Daniel claiming Topher's is a simpler world. Topher knows exactly what's different between his own world and this one. And, of course, that even just the existence of the technology at Rossum has a 97% chance of causing the end of the world, and that he may well helped speed it along. The thing that actually lets him sleep at night is knowing that even though they may not have guaranteed the destruction of the tech, they've surely done a good job in delaying it, and undoing much of Topher's damage. And there are still plenty people back in his home universe making the effort to continue doing so. They're probably doing fine without him. Topher was always much at making the tech than destroying it.

It's probably a good thing he doesn't actually have time to ponder all this more than a few seconds, because he can't help but feel a little childish glee at Daniel rambling. And interesting stuff, too! See, this is why Topher was excited to meet him. Well, partly.

"Well, exactly!" he answers enthusiastically. "And that works on every level, too. You can find that same kind of microcosm if you limit it to just one country, one city, one family, one person, as long as you look close enough! The same kind of conflicts, motivations, self-preservation and self-advancement, it's important whether you're a tiny organism or a vast intergalactic empire. Like growth patterns; electrical firing between brain cells, growth of social networks, expansions of galaxies, they look similar even though they're on massively different scales. It's all complicated."

"And it's all interlocking, it's all, all interconnected, it's the butterfly-hurricane theory which one would think doesn't actually have scientific basis but it does, that's the brilliant thing, it's that it does." There it is, the familiar rush of language and hand-waving and the associated joy with being able to describe it, make it verbal, vocal, communicative. "Nature and it's, it's equilibrium being that it needs to enact conflict right down the cellular level, constant growth and change and code alterations and adaptations to those external changes, it's the building blocks, it's, it's how there are so many deviations of the same universe, it's how there is no central, prime universe, just derivations and copies upon copies upon copies of mirrors and parallels and layered existences. And it's because of the constant shifts in reality, it's because Newton's First Law, it's because stillness is not, not in nature's foundation."

Topher's excitement, his equal-or-greater magnitude of energy for this conversation, is exactly the kind of intellectual energy Daniel has missed so desperately since falling through the Rift. There's something vaguely Sam-like about him - no, not exactly, more accurately it's a McKay-esque vibe, the full awareness of his own depth of intelligence and a complete, utter willingness to prove it. He presents it much better, however, distinctly unMcKay-esque in the ease with which he can slip in and out of polysyllabic jargon with someone else, anticipate them keeping up, and leapfrog off their last points accordingly.

Despite the strangeness of it all, Daniel can't help but grin a little, perplexed but delighted to come against a similar-caliber mind.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

I mean should I warn for canon-puncture?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject