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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[There's a disgusting amount of silence on end for a very long time. Charlie isn't supposed to be here. She's supposed to be safe and ... not here. It could be some sort of trick, but it's probably not. People have been arriving for all times and places this month. Charlie could be one of them.]

Charlie?

[Very eloquent, Richard. That's showing that intelligence you have.]

[Well, no one has a voice like her Dad, so when he says her name, she just smiles.]

Hi Dad. This place is really weird. What are we doing here?

[Give him a few minutes to reboot.]

existing, mostly.

[He's going to start making his way to the market now.]

The artificial intelligence that brought us here is working on repairing the glitches that brought us here, until then we're to wait.

[He's not happy about it, but one of his PhD's isn't in anything dealing with AI or advanced computers.]

Seriously? Dad did you like fall and hit your head on something?

[Because that doesn't sound like her skeptical father at all.]

It's hard to refute factual evidence.

[He tried, Charlie, oh he's tried.]

My best hypothesis is that whatever is happening has something to do with the communicators connected to our brains. Unfortunately, I've seen what happens when the device is removed.

[The second part of that is much quieter. The memory of Alex's brains on his hands is still something that unnerves him.]

You've seen what happens?! Dad, are you okay here?

[She sounds concerned. Really concerned because yeah.]

For now ...

[There's a quiet pause.]

I'll explain when I get there.

[Somehow it feels wrong to ask if she knows about his relationship with Alex over the network. She's his daughter, she deserves it face to face.]

[Charlie knows that her father would definitely prefer to have conversations in private, so she just keeps an eye on the area she is in around her. Like her dad, Charlie Strand is tall, and it's easy for her to see her father coming through the crowd towards her. She's not running, not exactly, but she's moving at a hurried pace before she reaches him. It's a slightly hesitant thing, but Charlie just reaches her arms out to hug him.]

[It's not something he would generally do in public, but it's been quite some time since he's seen his daughter. With everything going on both here and at home, he pulls her into a tight hug.]

[Charlie knows that it's not something that he'd normally do, but she just hugs him back tightly, because now she can't help but to be worried.]

Are you sure you're okay, Dad?

There's been a lot going on.

[His face is stern when he says it, but he leads her to a small coffee shop so they can sit down.]

[Charlie just blinks at him for a moment, but she follows him to the coffee shop, and drops down at a table in it, watching him. It hasn't been all that long since she's seen him last, but it seems like he's got more shadows in his face than he'd had in a while.]

Okay, explain?

[The frown on his face once they enter the shop is severe. Charlie is a logical woman, he raised her to be. He knows none of this is going to sound real to her.]

Whatever this place is, it affects the mind. Once a month it drags memories from you and broadcasts them across its network. Other times, it takes the things you're afraid of and manifests them as real. Several months ago Alex died.

[His lips press tightly as his hand reaches for the bridge of his nose.]

If this is some sort of simulation, I can't tell who's the subject and who's part of the simulation. I haven't been able to prove anything to my satisfaction, yet. So it's easiest to assume it's all real until I find the flaws that'll lead to the fact of it.

[Charlie looks horrified and it’s for a lot of reasons.]

Alex is dead? Oh god Dad I’m so sorry. I know you were fond of her!

It's not just fondness. Alex and I are,

[He can't help the pause. Telling his adult daughter that he's involved with a woman who is younger than you while you are still (more or less) married to her estranged mother was - difficult.]

Involved.

[Charlie isn’t surprised by her father getting involved with Alex. She’s listened to the show. Her father talked about Alex when he was with her for three months. Charlie strand is not an idiot. She knows how her dad looks when he cares about someone.]

I’m confused. I thought she died? Are you saying people come back from the dead here?!

That's exactly what I'm saying.

[He doesn't look happy about the situation it puts his logic-driven brain into, but this is one anomaly he can't refute.]

The only logical conclusion I can make is that this is a computer simulation, but even that seems fantastical.

I really don't think that computer simulations are that advanced. So, this needs to be some sort of parallel world or splintered universe or something. Occam's razor, Dad.

How long have you and Alex been together?

Multiverse theory hasn't been proven yet.

[Although he can't deny that it's crossed his mind on more than one occasion.]

And since she came back from Turkey. There's more to it though.

[His frown grows even more severe.]

Apparently, your grandfather's alive.

[Not that he thinks she'll remember this if she leaves this place.]

It seems Thomas Warren is holding him and your mother hostage to get me to Geneva.

[And he'll go, of course, he'll go.]

What?

[It's not articulate. It can't be. The things that he's said are too big for her to even attempt to be articulate over. Her grandfather was never someone that Charlie knew other than her father's hatred for the man, so she doesn't feel any real connection to the fact that he's alive or not, other than empathy for her Dad.

Her mother, however, is another matter entirely.

Her father had explained everything to her before it had been posted in Alex's show, and Charlie had been hoping that Coralee would reach out to her, or to her grandparents. Her grandparents had been hoping so too, but the three months her father had spent with her in Italy as they reconnected to how they redefined their relationship when they were both adults and the two months after, there had been no word from her. There was no messages, no weird calls or emails, no nothing. Coralee Strand wasn't dead for Charlie anymore, but she was still every bit as much of a ghost as she had been for the last twenty years.]

Did you talk to her?

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Fourth Wall Month!

Voice: un.TheStrandInstitute

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