thespherelogs | Fourth Wall Month!

Entry tags:

Fourth Wall Month!

Who: Everyone and visiting Characters!
What: The Fourth Wall log!
When: The month of September!.
Where: All over.
Notes: If you have any questions about how this all works, please head over here to the Fourth Wall info post!.

Fourth Wall Log!

Company's coming!

So the Sphere is malfunctioning and there’s new arrivals here. In order to give them somewhere to sleep and rest, the Sphere has given them all temporary housing in dorm dome number two! That means sunken beds, three squares a day that are already prepared for you and clothing in the closets that just happen to be to your character’s taste. (And you know if they happen to die then you’ve got a nice space to Rez.) All and all it’s a nice little home base for people to have. There’s several common areas for mingling, and all though there aren’t individual rooms for the characters who are staying there, the domes also provide screens for privacy. Don’t worry, no one’s spying on you or something. Probably.

John (one of our resident NPCs here, who is a doctor and also a ghost but shush) knows the importance of family, and she knows how tough it can be when people arrive in a place they don’t know. The visitors haven’t really had the same experience as people brought in the traditional way, so John has stationed herself in the dorms with a sort of ipad thing, and she’s offering to take people’s information and to show them how things like the network work. She’s also there to hold hands and deal with any medical issues that these new arrivals may just happen to have. If people don’t want to talk to her, that’s totally fine! She won’t push. But she’ll also provide directions to places if people need them. Or at least point them in the general places that they need to go.

Speaking things out into the void.

This is a prompt for visiting characters to be able to put out a network post without actually joining the network community! Upon waking in The Sphere, each character (even temporary ones!) are fitted with a small golden circle behind their right ear. This is how they are connected to the network through a neural link. Touch and hold the button to create a broadcast of one of three types:

Audio. Your character thinks audible words onto the network.
Writing: Your character thinks text into the network.
Video. Your character projects a broadcast of a video of themselves onto the network.

Replies are determined by the player. The network needs to be accessed by choice, so character broadcasts are not automatically beamed directly into people’s heads. The Sphere isn’t that rude.

Private messages are allowed by pressing and holding and pressing and holding again as you picture the person in your mind. This can be an image or a name, err more on the side of things being more accessible than less.

God let people have their pumpkin spice lattes, Karen!

It’s September, and that means that fall has hit the Sphere hard. Well, as hard as any place can be without having actual seasons or sunlight. So, in the artificial sun of the Sphere, what there is instead of colder weather and leaves changing is a new festival. The festival, which if you ask someone who’s been there for a while is in celebration of the most fall thing in the entire world: pumpkin spice. That’s right, there’s an entire festival just centered around pumpkin spice flavored things! Of course, the people of the Sphere do try and make an effort to invoke the spirit of the season, with large garlands of fake brightly colored leaves lining the street. The scents of pumpkin spice fill the air and there are small fire pits near Adirondack chairs that are clustered together with all the things to make s’mores.

For those not pumpkin minded, there are also a fair amount of apples picked from the Sphere orchards, and a few small knives. Some older women promise that if people can peel the apples in a long spiral and throw them behind them, then the peel will form the initial of the person that the thrower is destined to marry. Of course there is also bobbing for apples and pumpkin carving.

In both the merchant dome and the agricultural dome there’s massive tables brimming with enough pumpkin foods to make Harry Potter jealous. There’s all sorts of pumpkin baked goods, pumpkin ravioli, roasted pumpkin and vegetables and there’s even roasted meats with pumpkin sauce! There's also drinks of both the alcoholic and non alcoholic sort: pumpkin beer, pumpkin spice wine, pumpkin spice vodka, apple spiced whiskey and so on! At each place is a coffee cart with a poor overworked barista who is doling out every sort of pumpkin coffee, hot chocolate and tea imaginable including yes pumpkin spice lattes.

We're waiting for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

There’s even a pumpkin carving contest in the agricultural dome! Pumpkins of different sizes ranging from small sugar ones to ones that could comfortably form a children’s fort are stacked around, and there are picnic tables set in newspaper and with things like knives and scoopers and nails and even drills for those people who want to remove the pumpkin guts or use them to do some carving. Everyone who participates receives a ribbon as well as a bag of toasted pumpkin seeds to take home.

They hope you really like pumpkin seeds. There’s a ton of them.

When the dark comes, people hunker down between the false stars above, with blankets all around them, the scent of pumpkin in the air. Flashlights and small lanterns are distributed by people, and when asked what’s going on, they’ll say that they’re waiting for The Great Pumpkin. Children whisper the name excitedly, and even some of the more inebriated adults do the same. Either way, at midnight the largest pumpkin rises above the crowd to gasps of shock and awe before it just magically changes into the types of candy and small toys that one would expect to come from an excellently stocked pinata.

The color of magical bounty.

In the rec dome, some magically gifted people have conjured up massive piles of dried leaves for people to frolic in. And when I say massive, I mean massive. It’s almost like an entire forest of leaves that’s thankfully free of all of the problems that come with jumping in leaves. With no animals in the Sphere, there’s not any of their presents hiding in the leaves and anything sharp hasn’t been created! Which means that it’s great for things like jumping in, burying things in and of course leaf fights.

If your character is missing nature, the area smells exactly how one would expect a late September walk in the woods to smell: it’s almost as if you’re there! The sunlight in the dome has also been altered a bit where the leaves are located, so it’s cooler, and a slight wind seems to be in the air, stirring the leaves every so often. It’s enough to encourage sweaters and scarves, that have been provided by people if they’d like them. The scarves and sweaters all seem to be of the handmade variety, and just the tiniest bit irregular, with one sleeve longer than the other, or the fringe on a scarf being slightly askew, that sort of thing. But they’re still lovely and soft and warm and smell of dryer sheets and leaves.

And we're flying, flying far beyond...

So the Sphere saw that everyone just loved the fireflies last month so this month it decided that what the city needs is to fly for real! So in the Rec dome, there’s a marked pad that people can step on that lets people fly around this particular dome for 30 minutes at a go using the same sort of controls that the communications behind your ear has! Press quickly once to go up and twice to go down. The clearance in the dome clocks in somewhere around 400 feet so there’s plenty of room for flying and even going up and touching the top of the dome and staring out into the abyss of water.

Be careful though because sometimes if you stare too long into the abyss, things just happen to stare back at you and then there are things in the deep water that you may not expect. Or that you might. Giant fish and squid may just find all this unusual activity quite interesting. But don’t worry the dome won’t crack. Guess what! You are now the fish in the aquarium for them! Or you know the bird flying past the cat in the window.

Wanna go to a real party? (CW: Mentions of drugs and alcohol.)

If people are looking for more illicit entertainment, and discreet inquiries are made, a passcode to the Black Market hidden behind some of the stalls is offered. The entrance is hidden enough that someone needs to be looking for it, and there is a rather large bouncer guarding the door and asking for the proper passcode. The passcode of the day happens to be I hate pumpkin.

Inside the black market is large, but much more dimly lit than the regular market dome. There are various pockets of people clustered under bright neon lights. The lights, someone confides to you, are code for what they’re offering. And nearly everything is on offer if a person has the ability to make a trade. Things from home, character skills and even favors tend to be the currency here, but watch out: the hawkers within are shrewd and sharp. If they make a deal with someone, it’s nearly always going to favor them. Eventually.

There’s also a large and loud party happening inside. Think of a rave with a large amount of people who happened to be a bit out of their minds. Drugs aren’t given freely here, they’re too valuable, but should someone want to figure out what they’re rolling on, eventually someone will ask or offer. The drug that they are currently using is called ‘self’ and it’s something that affects your character in an intensely personal way. For some, it’s an experience like your favorite cocktail mixed with vicodin, and for others it’s just like being drunk. For still more people, it’s like ecstasy without the side effects.

The drug has no physically addictive properties. It does however cause a hangover. The Sphere doesn't want to take all the fun out of imbibing too much.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Fuck.

[Bev just says the word softly but with great feeling, but she can't bring herself to ask the question. Not yet.]

...

I'm so sorry.

[Fuck, that somehow makes it even worse, doesn't it.]

Is it over now?

It will be.

[There's no other option.]

We're going to win. All of us.

How do you know?

Because there's no other option.

But we get out of Derry? And we go back?

[She does, Bev means.]

We do.

But there's so much more- we go to college, we fall in love, we get a tattoo, visit Europe, attempt an open-mic-night in college-- I know Derry is biggest thing right now. But there is so much more.

[Bev's voice just tightens in anger.]

It's not the biggest thing right now. Not for me. I haven't been in Derry in almost two years. I've been on alien planets, and I'm under the Marina Trench, and I knew Robin and am learning Ancient Sumerian and how to fight like a viking, ninja and I can shoot a gun and climb buildings and have a motorcycle and can steal stuff. I'm not going back.

[Wow. That was- well, there were a lot of weirder things to pick apart, so Beverly was just going to let it all hit. There wasn't time to worry about different planets and Robin. Right now- she knew herself.

So she takes a moment.] Okay. [She's not going to waste the time trying to convince herself that she was going to go back to Derry. She knew she would. They'd made a promise. 27 years was a long time.] I should be there, right now. [She inhales audibly, then exhales. She was here right now. There was nothing she could do about it, as much as she was desperate to.] I shouldn't have assumed.

[But! She didn't want to dwell. If anything, she wanted to buy her younger self a beer (which if it were any other teenager she'd never dare). So they didn't have to talk about the tough stuff. Probably better that they didn't.] Y'know, I always wanted a motorcycle.

[There is no small part of Bev that knows that she's going to end up back in Derry, because she made a promise, and because the Losers were going to need her to show up. But for right now, it's 26 years away. Twenty-seven if she goes back to where she was before. And she just nods a little, with a tiny smile.]

I know. And how to fight, I know how to do that too. Really fight not just jamming a fence into something's head.

Hey now, that fence really came in handy!

[She laughs, though the moment hadn't been funny. Looking back now, they could make jokes. It made things easier to accept- just look at Richie, for goodness sake. It made things less-scary.]

Good. [She says it firmly, wondering if she knew how to fight she would have been able to stand up to Tom.]

Look, this is weird- do you want to get a beer? Or I've got a pack of cigarettes with our name on it. I feel like it's the least I can do, showing up here like this.

It did come in handy. [And, Beverly expects, will probably come in handy again in this other Bev's time, especially if she doesn't remember how it was here and everything that she'd learned from everyone. But at least they'd be protected.

Bev swore that she'd never let anyone hit her again, but she'd definitely hit herself if she ever found out about Tom. She doesn't know how she could do that.]

I don't smoke anymore. Max, he's the head council guy, he runs the black market and he told anyone that if someone gave me a smoke then they wouldn't get smokes. So, I haven't had them for a while now. A beer would be okay though.

Good for you. It's terrible- I've never been able to quit. Not fully. [At first, she'd done it to rebel. Now it was an anxious tick. She wasn't a chimney, like so many others she'd known, but stress and emotions brought out her lighter fast as she could.]

I figure there's no harm. [They both knew how easy it had been to get beer as a kid in Derry.] Do you want to go to the festival, or is there another place you'd like to go?

The festival is fine. I can probably introduce you to some of the people who know us. Even if they don’t.

Perfect. I've had a few introduce themselves already- Tommy, Aaron, Eric.

Tommy is my best friend here. Him and Stan. Stan's here too, I don't know if you talked to him yet or not. Aaron and Eric kinda adopted me a little. They showed me how to shoot guns in case there's zombies and Eric's teaching me how to cook.

I did. I've already spoken with Stan, who warned me about you, [as all good parents had done in Derry. That Beverly Marsh....]

How different is a gun from a sling-shot? My-- my husband- he owns a gun, but I've never shot it. [She hated his gun.]

Good. I'm glad you've got that opportunity. I'm still awful at cooking, try as I might. Usually we do take-out.

[Beverly just laughs at Stan warning herself about her. Because it's totally such a Stan thing to do, honestly. He wouldn't be him if he didn't.

There's a curious expression at the mention of the husband, or at least at the hesitance of it.]

It's got a kickback, and it kills things better. I can show you if you want. We do it in the abandoned domes. When I was in Riverview I did take out all the time.

[Or ate candy and baked goods, they gave her an allowance and no adult supervision (other than Stan) for a long time. And she never went to school. She does here.]

That was the place Stan and me were before here.

He mentioned it. [She smiles. So this her is about fifteen now. Oh and she is every bit a fifteen-year-old. Honestly, she's probably getting into less trouble in these worlds than she was back at home.]

Sure- I think that'd be fun.

[She doesn't doubt that she'll be good at it, either. Just like she had been with the slingshot, with rocks.]

It's easier. Especially when you don't have time to cook. You can order just about anything now, too. I've had McDonalds delivered at 3 AM.

[Bev just laughs, because of course Stan would! How could he not really? But she does just stare for a moment, her eyes wide. McDonald's definitely isn't a thing that she's had in a really long time, and it was a rarity back when the two of them were kids, so the idea that someone delivers it is one that's just entirely foreign to Beverly.]

Really? Oh man. I want chicken nuggets delivered at three am.

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Fourth Wall Month!

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