thespherelogs | Fourth Wall Month!

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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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Pepper was told she needed a vacation more than once in her life. She'd never listened then, and she suspected no one eve meant a kidnapping to some underwater fishbowl in what was presumably the Mariana Trench (Some Mariana Trench, somewhere, in some world). It wasn't as if she weren't worried about it all either, occasional worried glances toward the dome walls would more than say she was incredibly aware of the precarious situation everyone was dealing with.

She found the seasonal offerings to be a comfort. It's what it would have been like at home (or would have been), so she happily accepted a pumpkin spice and a piece of apple pie and set about finding a quiet spot to think about her situation and eat the pie. After a few moments, she noticed Tony sitting in a quiet spot and scribbling in his notebook. She made her way over to quietly look over what he was writing.

She couldn't tell what it was, but she knew it was something new and interesting.

"Another suit?" She raised an eyebrow as she took a sip of her drink, still looking over the notebook.

Tony's head snapped up and he quickly closed the notebook and standing up. He was quietly overjoyed to see his wife, but he was well aware this might not be his Pepper. At least not yet. "Just tinkering," he replies, "can't fault me for that can you Ms. Potts?" His voice is gently teasing. He moves so he's sitting next to her and he sips his cider. This would give her a good look at him with his graying hair and the light patchwork of scars on the right side of his face and down his arm.

"You just get here?"

She knew she shouldn't have assumed this was the same Tony that she knew, but it was hard when his face and voice was so similar. His calling her 'Ms. Potts', however, threw her, and gained him a long look before she settled into her spot, she took a drink of her pumpkin spice.

"Just. You?"

"Been here about a month or so," Tony says quietly after another sip of cider, "it's not so bad mostly. Healed me up, gave me plenty of friends to keep from feeling lonely. I do miss my girls though. We've had a rough year and it hurts being away from them."Sent from my Galaxy Tab® S2

Her brows raised at the mention of 'girls'. If he was playing the field on her there was going to be wrath. If this was a different TOny, well, she would have to adjust to that world view.

"Tony, what's the last thing you remember?"

Tony considers and sighs. "I was in the training room at the Avengers Compound," he says, " Peter had a new hero friend of his he wanted me to check out and I was watching their training session and waiting for my wife and daughter to come pick me up for lunch. Then I woke up in the pod being told about the Dome."He turns and smiles at her. "I hope Morgan won't be mad I missed her birthday."Sent from my Galaxy Tab® S2

That didn't tell her nearly enough to gauge if he was the same Tony. It was possible that he was from a different time than her, or his wife could be someone who wasn't her.

"I don't know a Morgan where I'm from, and you're not married." She takes a sip of her latte murmuring a small "Yet". It was a gamble, but if he was married and from the same timeline as her, then they would have already made their wedding plans and been about to marry.

Tony smiles and there is a touch of sadness to it. He had been hopeful and while this indeed wasn't his Pepper..at least not yet, it was Pepper and that meant something. "What's the last thing you remember Pepper?"Sent from my Galaxy Tab® S2

"Losing contact because you were too far out of range." She can't stop her eyes from looking downward. She'd been so afraid she'd never see him again, still wouldn't. This could be a different Tony with a different divergence; but it was Tony.

Tony looks at her and while the smile on his face is still sad his eyes are shining. "That's gonna turn out okay..ish Pepper I promise. I'll come home to you. One last suprise. But if you go back home...enjoy the time you have okay."Sent from my Galaxy Tab® S2

Enjoy the time she has, that's more ominous than she'd like. "I'm going to lose you again, aren't I?" It's always been a constant fear, that one ay when Tony goes out to be a hero he won't come back. She knows that one day, it'll happen. At the same time, she knows she can't try to stop him; not really. This is something Tony has to do, it's something that's at the core of who he is, and she loves him for it as much as she loves everything else about him (mostly everything else.)

Tony nodded. He knows he got lucky. Loki and Strange took a risk and saved him, but it's clear on other Earth's the endgame was just that, the endgame. "You lose me but you aren't alone," he says. "and we have five great years together, best of my life."

She hides a soft, sad smile against her cup, eyes shining but not quite leaking. She's going to lose him. Of course, she would; she knew she would. Tony, as much as he loves her, had to make sure the world was safe. It was who Tony was at his core. She knew that when she fell in love with him and even more so when she agreed to marry him.

"But you didn't, die, that is?" She feels like she needs to know. She needs to know how he survived. Maybe, just maybe she could bring that knowledge back to her world and save her Tony too.

"It's complicated," Tony admitted, "Stephen Strange and Loki...they saw a spark when they looked at my soul and decided to pour power into me to save my life. It worked, but I lost the use of my right arm and right eye. There is only so much magic can do. But I was healed when I got here...I still have scars but I can work again."

She glances down a slight frown over her face. She knows how much the loss of his sight would have meant to him, but not being able to see was better than death. His Pepper was incredibly lucky to still have him, and she couldn't help feeling the twinge of jealousy now that she was facing down the knowledge that she would lose her own Tony once he miraculously returned to her.

It's hard not to reach out to him, to touch his arms and face and hair just to know he's really there. He's not her Tony, but he's a Tony, and knowing that at least one reality was able to keep that brilliant mind and bottomless heart within it is something to ensure.

"I'm glad. The multiverse needs at least one of you." Very few people would agree with her, she knew, but to her, Tony was the heart of the Avengers. Often callous and always obsessive, but Tony would do anything to protect the people he cared about, to cause the least damage to the people around him (at least that was true now). He tried, with all his heart, and that was what made her fall in love with him.

Tony sighed and nodded. "I know,' he says, "it isn't fair I lived and other Tony's didn't. That I lived and Natasha didn't." That makes him swallow hard. Nat deserved more time not him something Tony will always fell guilty about. "There is never a fair way to take someone out of the world."

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Fourth Wall Month!

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