We're Not In Kansas Anymore...

[meat_mooks]

They might have been trying to get to the City, or another level, or anywhere else in the explored parts of Stacy. But when some crewmembers stepped into the transport tubes, they were going to find that where they ended up was not where they were trying to go.

The first sign that something was wrong was the strange electric jolt they get just after stepping into the tubes. The second sign was the unusually long time it took for them to get to their destination. And the third and final sign was the fact that when they arrived, it was in a place they would have never seen before.

To all appearances, it looked like a smaller replica of the crew quarters. If they ventured out a little further, they would find smaller versions of the mess hall, sleeping halls, and bathrooms as well. But there was one important difference.

They were completely and utterly empty.

And with any attempt to go back into the transport tubes failing, they appeared to be stuck here. What were they going to do?

[ooc: ICly this post happens over the course of a day, so not everyone arrives at the same time. If you tag into the post later, you can just assume that your character arrived later in the day. Also, your characters will not find that their omnicomms and communication rings don't work!

If you have a question about anything, you can ask on this ooc post.

Oh, and for this post threadjacking is welcome :P]

Comments

[first_of_steel]

"Just a minute."

People back home were all used to speaking to, and through, power helmets. People here, not so much. Roger figured that for the moment, they were safe enough for him to pop the catches holding his helmet's seals shut and take the thing off.

"Okay, that's better," he said as he stashed the helmet under his arm. "Yeah. We're on a ship that I've been told is about the size of a moon. Can't verify that myself, but it's sure as hell bigger than any vehicle I've ever heard of."

[lillylivered]

"So this is a spaceship." Mark said dryly. That would at least explain the weird armor suit thing. "And I have been what? Kidnapped by aliens?"

Now he was wondering if Randall had slipped some drugs into his orange juice at dinner.

[first_of_steel]

"All of us have," Roger said. "I'm told there's some kind of a universe-spanning war going on, and somehow we've all been grabbed for it. Don't know how true that necessarily is, but I'm playing along until I find out otherwise."

[lillylivered]

"Universe spanning war." Mark repeated.

If Mark hadn't moved to Manhattan and adjusted to the exceedingly abnormal world he had lived in, his reaction might have been "well, my girlfriend is a succubus, my roommate is a zombie, and my coworker is a wizard. Aliens shouldn't be a surprise." However, Mark was quite used to those things and didn't consider them too strange. And so he felt that the likelihood that all of this was a bizarre dream, hallucination, or other manipulation, was far higher than the possibility that this was true.

"You know, I don't actually believe a word of that but I'm just going to go with it."

[first_of_steel]

"Fair enough," said Roger. "Next thing you probably ought to know is, you're going to meet a lot of people who don't seem to match up with what you expect the world to be like. Whatever you expect the world to be like."

If nothing else, the talking rainbow pegasus pony would probably do it.

[lillylivered]

Yeah, the talking unicorn just might do it.

"Thanks for the warning but as far as I'm concerned my roommate drugged me and I am hallucinating everything. So, I think I'm good."

In time he would have to eat those words, but not just yet.

"Since you're lost with me, do you mind if I tag along for a while?" It was nice to have company even in hallucinations. Unless said company was trying to rip you apart. He really hoped that wasn't going to happen.

[first_of_steel]

"If you've got that kind of roommate, I feel bad for you, son," said Roger. "You might as well come along in the meantime. I don't know where I'm going, but if there's anything hiding here, you'll have more of a chance that way. Ever handled a laser pistol?"

You know. Just in case.

[lillylivered]

Mark was about to protest that Randall wasn't all that bad when you got to know him but then Roger asked him about laser pistols.

"Not a laser pistol but I have held a gun- and missed horribly when firing." Which was for the best at the time. "You don't- think we'll have to use them, do you?" He swallowed nervously.

[first_of_steel]

"Don't know. I'd rather be prepared than caught off my guard," Roger said. "I was going to offer the loan of a sidearm if need be, but I'm thinking that might be more of a hazard to us than to anything we might run across. No offense."

[lillylivered]

"No, no. None taken." While Mark was pretty sure this was all a hallucination he would rather not risk shooting himself in the foot, or worse, if it turned out this was real. "I'll just uh, follow your lead."

And run screaming if they did run into danger.

[first_of_steel]

"Not a problem." Roger glanced up and down the hallway, just in case, but there hadn't been any further sound. "Where'd you come from originally, if you don't mind my asking?"

[lillylivered]

"I'm from Manhattan. I work in the Department of Integration as a social worker." True, Roger hadn't asked what he did but what was the harm in sharing? He was probably going to ask anyway. "What about you?"

[first_of_steel]

"Manhattan-" It took Roger a moment to remember. "Ah, right. That's either New York or Kansas, and you sure as hell don't sound like a Kansas boy. I'm from... used to be southern California. It's just wasteland now. Been in the service since high school."

One way or another.

[lillylivered]

Mark had to wonder where Roger was from that he had to remember where Manhattan was. He should have been wondering when.

"A wasteland? I didn't think medical marijuana laws were that much of a problem."

[first_of_steel]

Roger made a snorting noise that was probably originally a badly-suppressed laugh. "I can't remember the last time reefer was on anybody's mind," he says. "If the plant still exists somewhere it's probably mutated beyond all recognition. It was the year 2097 the last time I looked at a calendar, and it was twenty years after a world-wide nuclear war. That's why SoCal's a wasteland now."

[lillylivered]

"Oh, er. So you're a time traveler?" This was turning into an oddly complex hallucination.

[first_of_steel]

"Only in the same direction and same speed as everybody else," said Roger. "One second per second, into the future. I'm here because I got kidnapped by aliens, same as you. They just kidnapped us from different worlds, that's all."

He'd spent long enough reading old-school, poorly-explained pulp science fiction novels as a young man to accept certain explanations without poking them too closely. Then again, considering some of the things he'd seen in his own world and daily life, Burroughs or Verne could've very easily been at the helm of his world and it would've been hard to notice.

[lillylivered]

"So I'm on a spaceship, kidnapped by aliens, and they took people from different times and worlds." That sounds like a Fallout 3 expansion.

"Right. Why did they do this? Are they watching how we react to strange circumstances?"

[first_of_steel]

"You really didn't pay attention when your pod popped, did you," said Roger. "Long story short, there's a lot more aliens out there than just the ones who built this ship. One race of 'em destroys whole universes. Whatever world you came from, it's gone now, thanks to the Ohm. This ship was supposedly built to gather up people and resources to fight back against them. I'm told a victory over the Ohm will allow for restoration of our universes so we can all go home. I can't say I have proof of that, but I'm buying the explanation for now until I find evidence to the contrary." He glanced at Mark a moment. "Not really sure why it picks up ordinary civilians for a war, to tell you the truth."

[lillylivered]

"Hey, all I heard was this woman talking in my head telling me to go see the others. And I was- kind of- distracted by being naked and covered in goo. And thank you so much for your confidence in my abilities."

He paused, thinking over what he was just told. If he didn't have much of a reaction it was because he was still convinced this wasn't real.

"Ohhh wait, I see. You must be a part of my subconscious telling me that I have some deep seated insecurity about my ability to defend myself."
He rubbed his chin. "This is all starting to make sense now."

[first_of_steel]

"Friend, you're a social worker. No offense, but I was United States Army for the better part of seventeen years and then leader of a survivor community of soldiers and military scientists for the past twenty. It's been a long damn time since I've run into anybody who couldn't hold their own in a fight. We'll have to get you trained up something serious when we get back to the main ship."

[lillylivered]

"Right, right. Of course." he had better make the most of this hallucination. Clearly he had to do whatever this man said if he wanted to work out his underlying neuroses.

Although he hoped it didn't involve doing anything for Satan's army again.

"Say the word, o teacher." And he was not being sarcastic.

[first_of_steel]

"First things first," Roger said, unaware of Mark's thought process, "we need to find other people. Or somewhere reasonably safe where we can base our operation and send anybody we find. I've seen replicas of the crew quarters so far, so there's probably another version of the mess hall somewhere. We're going to look for that and verify that it's safe and unoccupied, then set up camp there before anybody goes looking for anybody else."

[lillylivered]

"If you say, sir." Mark said. "Do you want me to scout the area?" That was just about the only military sounding line he knew.

[first_of_steel]

"Do that. But don't get so far ahead that I can't hear you call out if something goes wrong," Roger said. "I'll be listening for you, whichever way you go."

That probably didn't help the impression of being an educational hallucination any.