What's Stopping Us From Breathing Easy [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Dreamers of Manhattan, you've lucked out. Rather than finding yourselves in some kind of dystopian nightmare, you'll end up in a series of formal gardens on a lovely day, the air filled with birdsong and a cloud-scattered sky arching overhead. Some of the gardens look a bit wilder than others, in an artful sort of way, but it's clear that all of the gardens are well kept and frequently tended. Aside from each other, dreamers aren't likely to run into any creature larger than a rabbit. True, there are no actual exits - every doorway or arbor leads to another garden - but that's hardly a problem. It's beautiful, it's safe... what could go wrong?

Well, that depends on the dreamer's honesty. No uncomfortable truths will drop unbidden from anyone's mouths like last time, but the dreamers will find that any time they attempt to lie or prevaricate, they'll be beset by a sneezing fit. A tiny lie by omission might only prompt that uncomfortable feeling of an impending sneeze; a larger, more significant (or more stubborn) fib will lead to a sneeze attack so crippling that the dreamer might just need to sit down for a minute.

You could try to pass it off as allergies, if you could get the words out without making everything worse. But while telling the truth is not compulsory, lying is punishable - and pretty well obscured - by sneezes.

[OOC: Usual dream party rules apply. All are welcome to participate regardless of whether they've been apped in the game or not. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion.]

Comments

[singthesong]

"Right!" The Balladeer snaps his fingers, pointing at the nearest bush. "Right! Flowers! These are roses - I don't really know what kind, but they're pretty, aren't they?"

He takes a step towards them, reaching out to touch Wheatley's elbow as he moves away. Hopefully he won't just go toppling over again - he's still close enough that he should be able to grab him if he does. "Hey, you're getting the balancing thing pretty good. Want to try walking?"

[grabme]

"Flowers, yes!" Yes, he's sure that one was in the mainframe database! It's all coming back to him now! Or, well, it's coming back in fragments and scraps and pieces but good enough, right? Absolutely, right.

"Am I?" he says, genuinely alarmed. He looks down and grins, wide and slightly manic. "I am! Look at that! Not dead, all standing upright and - and - "

He seems to deflate somewhat.

"Well, tell you what," he says delicately, now wobbling uncertainly, "er, I'm actually feeling rather, erm, rather tired, you know. So why don't you just - go on ahead and I'll just, ah, wait here in case the, um, the, the flowers, you know...decide to, uh, to come over here."

[singthesong]

He knows flowers don't move, right? He probably knows.

"Sure, sure!" The Balladeer takes a few careful steps backwards, assuring himself that Wheatley won't fall, then turns and walks over to the rosebush. "You're going to want to work on that eventually though. It's pretty important." Where is he, back in Manhattan? Maybe someone should go check in on that...

Careful of the thorns, he pulls off a rose and brings it back, offering it up for Wheatley's inspection. "See? Nice, right? You can take it if you want, but watch the thorns."

[grabme]

"'Course," he says, with a dismissive pfffft for good measure. Clearly he's working on it, isn't he? Clearly he knows that walking's just going to come to him eventually, why, he's probably a bloody natural and right now it's just that standing still is so much more appealing, but he can get on with it and start walking proper whenever he likes! He just doesn't feel like it now, is all. Perfectly valid reason. Absolutely.

He perks up considerably when the Balladeer brings the thing back, tilting his head this way and that as if to observe the rose from every angle without moving his feet from where they're planted firmly on the ground.

"Watch the what?" he says absently, reaching out. "Watch the - aaah! Ouch!"

He drops the traitorous object, hand swiping through the air in utter agony as he struggles not to lose his balance.

"Ouch! Ahh! Dastardly little - argh, ow!" Wheatley glares at it. "What sort of manners are that, I ask you? Disgraceful. Terrible."

[singthesong]

"...the thorns."

It's a bit late for warning now. The Balladeer reaches out, offering help if needed. Wheatley looks like he could fling himself right over any second. "Are you bleeding? Let me see it." He's going to panic if it is bleeding, isn't he? Best to take that bull by the horns.

It feels a little strange, being the one who's competent and accustomed to things. Normally he gets thrown by aspects of living within time like a normal human being. But it's hardly a bad thing! He's glad he could help someone out. Wheatley's certainly in a much worse position than he ever was. Hopefully he'll at least manage to keep himself fed and clothed.

[grabme]

"Bleeding?" For a moment he looks positively appalled before it occurs to him that right, human now, and humans are just full of those pesky fluids that go leaking out every which way, and he peers anxiously at the pads of his fingers, wiggling them experimentally.

A round, crimson drop swells on the tip of his thumb.

"Nnnn," says Wheatley, shaking his hand and sending droplets of the stuff scattering. "How do you handle it being like this all the time? Inconvenient is what it is! You're all so flimsy. One little puncture and you can all just go dribbling out. What sort of system is that, I ask you?"

[singthesong]

The Balladeer shrugs. He can't deny that.

"You're more durable than you think you are," he replies mildly. "That's not so bad, just put some pressure on it. That's always a good thing to do. If it were bigger, you'd want to wash it off and bandage it - don't forget the washing." He will never, ever forget what nineteenth-century medicine was like. Cleanliness is so important when it comes to sticking your fingers in wounds. "Don't worry about it now, though. It's only a dream."

[grabme]

"Right," he says, nodding firmly as if he understands any of it - this wounds and dreams business is just awfully, terribly new, and he thinks he's been adapting quite nicely, but there's just so much information coming streaming for him at once and he doesn't even have the luxury of organized files in his programming anymore. How do humans keep everything straight in their organic little heads?

"Hurts, though." He gives his fingers a final shake and then, without any idea of what he should be doing next but knowing with utter certainty that he's not overly eager to keep looking at it, shoves his hand into his pants pocket. There. That's pressure of a sort, isn't it? Problem solved!

"So you've got flowers but they can hurt you," he clarifies, now surveying the be-thorned roses with more suspicion than awe. "Doesn't seem like such a fair exchange. What's the point of living up on the surface if everything's trying to bloody kill you all the time?"

[singthesong]

"Not everything's trying to kill you." The Balladeer dismisses the idea with an easy smile. He can see where it might seem like that. What daily dangers does a robot face? "You won't die from a little prick like that anyway. Here, try this."

Bending, he picks one of the nearby lilies instead and offers that out. Prrrrobably should've led with that, to be honest. "They don't ALL have thorns. You honestly just have to deal with it. There's always some kind of risk, but you can't just sit at home forever." New York's easily overwhelming, but even it isn't all that dangerous if you know what you're doing.

[grabme]

Well that is a relief. He'd been worried, privately, just a smidge, not that anyone'd ever get him to admit it. Not even the suspicious itch in his nose.

He eyes the flower skeptically before extending the tip of one finger to nudge at the soft-petaled thing as if expecting it to spontaneously combust. One can never know these things. He had no idea flowers apparently came equipped with defense mechanisms. He wasn't aware the things had feelings!

Oh. Oh, no. He's not thinking about that. That's a bit too much like Her, now, isn't it?

Bit too much.

Far too much.

Having deemed the flower safe, he accepts the proffered object and holds it delicately between the pinched thumbs and forefingers of both hands, entirely uncertain over what to do with it. Looks nice, doesn't it, but does it have a function other than being a possible finger-hazard?

"No," he says. "No, right, being a go-getter, then, that's what you're saying. All for that. Practically been my motto, really, for the better part of ummm, ummmm. Lots of years? Really big number. It surpassed all my preprogrammed limits, and I've got whole thingies of data crammed up in here!" He knocks one hand against the side of his head lightly in a gesture that just seems appropriate for the conversation and flinches. "Ow."

[singthesong]

"That's right!" He grins, relinquishing the flower. "I'm not gonna lie - being a human can be tough sometimes. But that's no reason to just lie down and give up." Or, you know. Haul off and start shooting people. "You'll do fine."

The Balladeer doesn't know enough about computers to decide just how large a number you'd need to outpace whatever mechanisms Wheatley used to have in his head. He'd have to be really advanced though, right? "So you were in some kind of bunker keeping track of experiments that whole time? That sounds pretty dull."

It'd be easy enough to just figure all this out for himself, get it laid out in an easy-to-follow manner, but who does that? He'd much rather go through these occasionally confusing conversational loops.

[grabme]

Wheatley huffs out a long-suffering sigh. Finally someone who understands. Someone sympathetic to the whole miserable experience! Not someone who'll lock down and say nothing, either because he can't or because he's just not polite enough to, not someone who's just raring to go blabbering on about space all day and night, not someone who'll look down his proverbial nose and say You pathetic. Little. Moron.

"It was," he says earnestly. Now here's someone who's reasonable enough to be patient and listen for once. "Drove me absolutely bonkers. Ridiculous, really, leaving one little core in charge of thousands of test subjects while the whole bloody world's falling apart outside! And did anyone pop back in to give me an instruction manual, or even a fair bit of advice or encouragement? Oh noooo, not once did I get a, 'oh, good job there Wheatley,' or 'we just don't appreciate you enough for all you've done, Wheatley,' or 'thanks for maintaining the whole facility while we were away, dunno what we've done without you, Wheatley'! Never. Not once. Heathens, I tell you."

[singthesong]

The Balladeer listens patiently. He is not unfamiliar with listening to people's entitled rants about how the world should have appreciated them more.

That's probably not a fair comparison. It sounds like Wheatley's situation was, at least, genuinely unpleasant. Nothing quite like no one wanting to read his book, or Jodie Foster ignoring his letters. Getting upset over being left alone in a bunker for however long is perfectly reasonable!

"What was going on outside?" he asks instead. "Maybe something happened to them?

[grabme]

"You know, they never even told me." He runs his fingers up and down the stem of the flower in an inadvertent anxious tic, worrying it. "Not once. Something about the...fall of civilization or, or society coming to terms with its imminent doom but nothing terribly specific. Just plain bloody inconsiderate, that. Nothing I needed to know at the time, I'm sure."

He scoffs in a manner that could certainly be construed as a pout, which he'd never have willingly engaged in if he'd known the definition of such subtle facial nuances at the time.

[singthesong]

"Riiiight." That's such a pout! "Maybe they just didn't come back because they all died. Could you see outside at all?"

It would've been better if they'd told him that nuclear winter was coming, or whatever happened, but the Balladeer can understand how maybe that wasn't the first thing on their minds. Whoever "they" even were. "You're probably lucky to have gotten through that."

[grabme]

"Not really," he says, almost wistfully, then fearfully because, yes, he remembers, he did get to see outside, quite a vast ways outside from the most spectacular aerial view anyone possibly ask for - from space. He sneezes.

"I - yes, all right, maybe a bit towards the end there I got a nice view of the outside but it was vague and they were vague and it was all very - I didn't want to be there at the time, really."

He pulls his arms around himself in a tight hug, hunching his shoulders in an attempt to shrink himself down with a body height that simply doesn't allow any such thing. He'd wanted out, hadn't he, and he'd gotten it, hadn't he. He'd gotten out. He'd been launched out through a portal and sent careening through space - only it hadn't been how he'd wanted out, not at all, and if only he could have apologized to her, told her how utterly and miserably sorry he was maybe, maybe they'd've both gotten out and gotten clean away from Her and could be having a grand old laugh about the whole bloody thing.

"Suppose this is better," says Wheatley faintly, looking down at the flower clasped tight between his hands. "Better than being out there, properly."

[singthesong]

You don't have to be a genius at reading people to get the picture here.

The shrinking's not making Wheatley any less of a beanpole, but it's effective in that the Balladeer gets the message. Outside is a sore subject. Ordinarily he prods at those, and it'd be a lie to say he isn't a little tempted. What did happen? But not now.

Instead he shrugs airily, pretending not to notice the depths of misery Wheatley just suddenly sank into. "True. It's better than where I came from too. Once you get used to it, you'll have fun." It seems like something he can promise. That's how it worked out for him. Manhattan is a utopia compared to back there, even with the Rift and ROMAC and all of it.

[grabme]

"Fffffun," he says, stretching the word out experimentally like it's a concept foreign to him. It is, in a manner of speaking. Fun. Fun. Shooting up through those tubes riding the way to Her chamber had been fun - at least up until the point the slope changed and he came bouncing back down again. He can't imagine fun being a thing that one has all the time.

"Right," says Wheatley sheepishly, scratching the back of his head with one hand. "All part of a proper adjustment routine, is it? Can't be that difficult, can it. Adjusting's my middle name. Ol' Wheatley the Adjuster, they called me - " He sneezes, and hastily amends, "or, well, they didn't, actually, but they would have if they'd known, I'm sure - " And he sneezes again.