[open] ☥ the world is just illusion trying to change you

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

Mulder was pretty certain that no matter how long he stayed here, there was going to be no getting acclimated to the fact that he was living out his wildest fantasies, even when those fantasies were sobered by the conditions that had led to his being on this ship in the first place.  If there was one thing that defined him, it was his will to believe in the impossible, and so he'd hardened his resolve already towards accepting that Scully, along with others from his world, were encased in one of those pods below.  Still alive.  Once he'd accepted that, it'd been easier to functionally react to his situation.  

And his first reaction had been to explore every inch of the ship open to him.  Of course, that ended up being more than he could have imagined.  The ship was huge and trying to wrap his head around the dimensions of the thing carrying them proved mind-boggling.  It hit him most fully when he made his way down to Level 4 to explore the rumored 'City', and found himself blinking up into the 'sun' set there in a sky that looked distinctly like the one back on Earth.  His jaw dropped for a moment, but he reasoned, it couldn't be real.  

And if the Daligig were able to manufacture technological illusions on that scale, he had no doubt that there were other things on this ship that weren't what they appeared to be.


[ooc;  So very open, for any kind of interaction.  Mulder can be wherever in the City you want, as he's exploring, so just specify in the subject line or tag, please!  Open to multiple threads, or even threads with multiple muses - jack away.  AIM > thegreatmuldini  if you want to chat about it.]

Comments

[facepunching.livejournal.com]

"Impressive, isn't it?" Soren asked, coming up behind Mulder. "A false sky, complete with sunlight. This city is apparently the size of a small island. Or so I've been told."

"You don't seem very put out for a man whose world has been destroyed."

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

Mulder was surprised by the familiarity of the voice. He hadn't really run back into any of the same people very much, considering how many were on board this thing.

"Let's just say we're in the middle of my life's work." He racked his brain for a name but came up empty. "I don't think we officially got introduced in the middle of exchanging life stories upon waking up naked from alien pods." Mulder thrust out a hand. "Fox Mulder."

[facepunching.livejournal.com]

Soren raised an eyebrow, but he'd finally figured out what people wanted when they kept shoving their hands at him. He returned the handshake.

"Soren. Pleased to meet you, Fox Mulder." He paused. "You say this is your life's work? Saving the world? I thought it was disseminating the truth."

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

Mulder dismissed the misinterpretation with a shake of the head, turning his attention towards a nearby building that even looked as alien as the walls on the main halls of the ship.

"Investigating life on other worlds. The idea of alien lifeforms, friendly or otherwise."

[facepunching.livejournal.com]

"Ah. Most of the crew members I've met so far haven't been too far removed from the species I'm familiar with. The dragons, for instance. And it's not as though I've never seen intelligent felines before. Do you come from a world of mostly beorc?"

[teethofneedles.livejournal.com]

"You look like you're settling in, newbie," Karis rasped. The City was pretty much her stomping grounds whenever she wasn't fiddling around on her new project. Better than looking at meat-walls all day, anyway.

"What do you think of our little cruise ship?"

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

"Well, first of all, I think you and I have vastly differing definitions of the word 'little'," he quipped, glancing over to see yet another familiar face. It was like a reunion tour from his first day or something.

[teethofneedles.livejournal.com]

"Could be bigger. But yeah, tend to agree. First ship I've ever seen with a whole damn city in it," Karis replied, waving a clawed hand at the cityscape. "And we've only explored a small part of this damn thing. Week or two ago, someone found a chamber fulla crazies underneath a part of this place."

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

"You've seen a lot of ships like this before then?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. But her second comment also caught his attention. "How long had they been down there?"

[for-magic.livejournal.com]

This visitor was neither stealthy nor familiar. The blue-marked dragon, observing an exploring figure below, landed lightly on the top of a nearby building to peer down.

"Are you looking for something in particular?"

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

Soren had dropped the word 'dragon' mid-conversation, but Mulder really hadn't allowed himself to process that until he found himself staring up at one that was perched on top of the nearest structure.

Talking to him.

It was impossible to keep the look of awe off his face, or the stupid smile.

"Not really," was all he could get out at first.

[for-magic.livejournal.com]

"Freshly released, I take it?" The dragon mantled his wings, then simply stepped off the edge of the building. Rather than falling, he descended gently down to the street level, landing lightly. Hey, it was easier than trying to hop.

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

Mulder really couldn't help the involuntary step backwards that he took. It would take a lot of balls to not be a little bit afraid of a giant dragon bearing down on you in the middle of some kind of alien city.

He had the stupid sort of optimism that would allow him those kind of cajones sometimes, but even his awe of the unknown quailed a bit next to those base fight or flight instincts.

And he sure as hell wasn't about to fight the thing.

"Good guess. Just last week."

[indeliblepast]

Sumeragi was finally starting to get the hang of this place - the layout was closer to a colony than a ship, though without the typical curved horizons the cylindrical shape of colonies came with. The City was also a little more hodgepodge than the carefully planned layouts of Krung Threp - she was still discovering little buildings and statues randomly tucked away.

Someone else seemed to be exploring, too - another newcomer, perhaps? She gave him a friendly wave. "Quite the place, isn't it?"

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

He met the wave with a sheepish smile, realizing how much like a gaping tourist he probably looked. But was anyone gonna blame him, considering where they were?

"You can say that again. Been here long?"

[indeliblepast]

"Not long," Sumeragi replied casually. "From the looks of it, the same goes for you." There was humor in her voice, but the slight smile said she meant no harm by it.

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

"Am I that obvious?" he countered, his embarrassed grin coming a bit more easily in response to her manner. "Could be worse. I mean, I don't have a camera strung around my neck, and I decided not to go with Bermuda shorts today."

He knew she probably wouldn't get the humor: not because of his monotone delivery, but because most people around here weren't from his world. But that wasn't going to stop him from making references to it. In fact, that might be one of the only ways Earth could live on.

[on_errantry]

Among the buildings from hundreds of cultures were at least a handful from Earth, including the impressive span of Grand Central Station. Its facade had finally been repaired from the damage of almost a year ago, and it looked like it had been lifted directly from the streets of Manhattan.

The small black cat that appeared with a sudden bang of displaced air looked up at the clock and marble carvings with a pleased expression. Of course, her immediate and loud appearance would be quite startling to someone not used to that kind of travel. She yawned, stretched, and shook herself - then spotted Mulder.

"Sorry if I startled you," she said belatedly. She was so used to short-jump transit that she barely noticed the noise.

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

Seeing a piece of home was something Mulder hadn't come to expect, and so it was with a child-like grin on his face that he made his way through the Station, remembering his few visits there, with vivid nostalgia. He closed his eyes and could hear the sounds of the crowd, whistles of the train, busy footsteps...

The sound of the cat's arrival drew him out of his reverie, and he was visibly rattled as his head yanked around to look for the source of the noise.

A talking cat was probably the last thing he'd expected.

He glanced around, as if to make sure that someone else hadn't been the source of the dialogue, because he really didn't need to make himself look like a total dumbass for addressing the cat, if there was some guy standing behind a pole.

Nothing, though, and his eyes drew back towards her.

"... Excuse me?"

[on_errantry]

Oh he did have to be a new one, didn't he? Rhiow never could tell who was coming through the Station anymore, now that there was an actual train running through it again. She liked that, though. It made the place feel more like home.

"Sorry," she repeated, "if I startled you. I know the short-jump is a little loud and it can make you jump if you're not used to it. Most of the people on the ship are used to me popping out of nowhere on occasion." She paused. "I'm Rhiow," she said, remembering her manners.

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

And a polite talking cat, at that. At least all the bizarre creatures he'd been meeting around the city seemed to have the best of manners.

"Mulder," he said, short and to the point. It got tiring, after all, telling people not to call him Fox. "Can I ask how you do that?" He made a little motion with his fingers expanding to represent her sudden popping in.

[cityship]

At one point during his exploration, he'd find himself at the entrance to a very unusual place. There was a gate there, and inside, there were upside-down stairs and doors and walkways, twisting and winding in all different directions, like something out of an MC Escher painting.

There was a clear path to follow, but whether or not it'd stay as direct, he'd only find out if he followed it.

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

And that was exactly the kind of lure into the unknown Mulder could never resist. He was intimately familiar with Escher's works, and so he couldn't help but delight in drawing the comparisons, as he followed the twists and turns, adapting his own sense of gravity and physics to allow the impossible to enter into the equation, as he followed the path, opening doors that should have led to the end of the road, and finding them inexplicably easy to follow.

[cityship]

There were times that he may have heard a rush of wind behind him, but he wouldn't see anything if he looked. In the end, after winding pathways and trails and doors and stairs, he would eventually find himself in a mostly-empty room with white walls. It was relatively large, but looked all the larger because of its emptiness.

The only furniture here was several lab tables and chairs, as well as a few computer consoles. On the tables was strange equipment that was almost too primitive for the nature of the ship, almost steampunk in nature. Tesla would've been proud. They were things to measure the unseen, to see things that weren't meant to be known.

Beyond that, there were only two other things, and they were in the center of the room. There was a black, burnt-out spot on the floor, like something huge and heavy had been there once and been moved away. Around the burnt spot were discarded paper talismans, and macabre carvings on the floor covered in dry splattered spots of brown that looked like dried blood.

There was a tangible sense of evil here, though now faded, as if there had been something awful in this place once. Though it was gone, it'd somehow fouled up where it once had been, left an indelible mark.

The carvings around the black spot wound their way across the floor to the other thing in the center of the room--an open sarcophagus of some kind. It was made of some unidentifiable metal and was about ten feet tall. It had a terrible face on the front of the door, which was hanging half open, that looked like someone's twisted imagining of a god or perhaps even an alien. The eyes were open holes, meant to allow whatever was inside to look out. Some of the sarcophagus was melted away and it looked no longer functional, but when it did function, it was clear from the tubes and devices on the inside that it was meant to act as life support to whatever was trapped within it.

This thing was meant to immobilize something, to hold it and keep it locked up for a very long time, trapped in metal, without the ability to move or even die.

And all the while, they could look out at the world outside their tomb and not be able to do a thing to interact with it.

[mulder-trustno1.livejournal.com]

There was a part of him that wanted to linger here for a long time, taking everything in, seeing if he could figure out what it was and what it did, but screwing around with scientific machinery wasn't really his element. He instead walked between them all slowly, before his gaze traveled to the scorch mark on the floor. He bent down, picking up one of the talismans and turning it over in his hand, before sniffing at one that was marked with those dry spots.

He was going to go with definitely blood.

He let the paper fall from his hand and rose to his feet again, his eyes tracing to the thing taking up the center of the room. He walked around it in a slow circle, the heavy strange and foreboding atmosphere of the room seeming to weigh down on him more heavily as he surveyed the horrific face carved on the door of it.

His insides seemed to turn to ice as he realized that whatever was put in here was either being punished or...

Restrained. Restrained but kept alive. Because it was the dangerous source of the aura that permeated this place?

Or was the aura from whatever had let it out, and the events that had occurred in the wake?

He glanced back down at the blood, trying to follow the spatters to see where they led, or seemed to originate from, and hoping to get a read on how much had been lost.