A Day Late and a Dollar Short

[applesaucemod]

As far as dreams go, this seems surprisingly...normal. True, the dreamers of Manhattan and beyond will find themselves stranded in the middle of the ocean on a fairly deserted rocky island, but it's nothing so unusual as the labyrinth from last time, and no one appears to have become an animal or reverted to an insane past (or future) version of themself. Besides, well, rocks and grass, there's nothing here but an abandoned lighthouse, the doors and windows broken, and the spare furniture worn by the weather. You can go up the spiral staircase to look at the view, but there's nothing to see but the endless ocean. One might almost think tonight was a night for simple socializing via the telepathic current.

As if anything to do with the rift is ever that simple, you silly bumpkin. How quickly each person realizes what is unusual about tonight's dream will depend in large part on their personality. Some might go the entire night without noticing (except from the distress of others, naturally), but some will find out the instant they open their mouths to converse with another dreamer. You see, each and every dreamer will be completely unable to tell a lie for as long as the dream lasts. The truth might be evaded by omission, but any attempt to say that which is untrue will result in the corresponding truth emerging instead.

Good thing it's just a dream and everyone's going to forget in the morning, right? Right??


[Mod note: As usual, players can choose to have their characters remember or forget anything that happens in the Dreaming. As per usual party rules, both members and non-members are welcome to play any character in this post, regardless of whether that character is currently in the game. Unlike usual, tonight's theme is not optional; all characters will be subject to the enforced truth-telling. Have fun!]

Comments

[bluesuit_hoofy]

See, he's had practice at this. Of course, it could have turned out things were different here, but it seemed a fairly safe bet that the spell psychic field would have the same limitations as the trueberries.

"Oh, that wasn't the accident," he replies breezily. "No, that Dalek definitely shot him on purpose. No -- and it gets more complicated. There's a lot of energy associated with regeneration, as I'm sure you can imagine -- sort of a hodgepodge of energy forms, let's just call it regenerative energy, very useful stuff -- very volatile stuff. So, ah." And here's the part where he has to explain the hand, and that's really sort of embarrassing. "Well. Right after -- almost right after the last regeneration, he'd sort of gone and got his hand cut off." Swashbuckling and so forth, you know how it is. "Clumsy swordfighting, and you've probably got no idea where I'm coming from with this."

Handy sighs. "Not what I meant to say. But this hand was in a jar under the console of his ship -- don't ask how it got there, really, just don't."

[semioticallyspeaking]

Sort of gone and got his hand cut off. It's the most casual attitude towards dismemberment Cosima's ever heard, and both her eyebrows are up now. It's definitely true that she has little idea of clumsy swordfighting and losing hands, but she's drawing connections anyway, mind flitting from possibility to possibility as he speaks.

She huffs a wry little laugh through her nose at the embarrassment in his tone about the hand in a jar, and shakes her head a little. 'Wow, and I thought my life was complicated. Ok, so, lemme get this straight; this Doctor gets shot, which triggers the regenerative process, but-- the hand introduces an extra variable? Or--'

She can't really imagine how a severed hand in a jar would interact with an internal biological process in such a way as to produce a clone, even if the process is one which releases a lot of energy. Unless, and she exclaims softly to herself, 'Or, oh, oh, if the hand came into contact with the Doctor, then would all that volatile energy kickstart cellular regeneration in the hand as well? That, I mean, that's crazy, but, well, this whole thing kinda is already.'

[bluesuit_hoofy]

Handy hasn't even thought to clarify that the Doctor grew the hand back. It doesn't occur to him that Cosima might assume he went about for an entire regeneration sans right hand; he was within the window of opportunity, so of course he grew a new one.

His eyes light up and he gives an undignified little prance at her deduction. "You're close!" he exclaims, delighted. "Really, that's very close -- it's along those lines. See, he aborted the process -- you can't see it now, but we'd got a good face and really good hair this last time round. Handy biological receptacle right there under the console, perfect match on the cellular level and everything, so he just...funneled the energy off. Normally stopping a regeneration will just kill you for good, but time it perfectly and bleed the energy away before the process can go beyond initial repairs to damaged cells, and you can heal without changing. The hand was only supposed to store the energy, let it leak out and dissipate on its own. But, well."

But, well, that was the painful part of the story, because it involved him only coming into existence because Donna had unwittingly put herself in harm's way. Maybe he didn't need to share that part, though. It ought to be enough that it had been an accident; Cosima had heard at least part of the mechanics behind the event. "Here I am," he finished lamely.