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(no subject)

Who: The People Staying behind and those who go to the Sphere
Where: The Agricultural dome, the tunnel to the Sphere chamber, and the Sphere chamber itself.
What: The Choice plot.
When: ICly: August.
Warnings: Sudden disappearances, despair, depression, violence.
Important Notes: This is the final log for the Choices plot. This log only covers Those staying. . The other choices will have their own logs up. Please remember to warn for things that need warnings in these threads.
Additional important notes for this part of the plot: Important NPC threads will have their own threads. Max will have one, Annie will have one and so will the Sphere obviously. If people would like Laurie, John or any of the other NPC interactions for additional clues in the investigation, let me know and I will do my best to accommodate you.
Each person who goes to interact and try to convince the Sphere can have their own comment unless you decide not to.

The First Three Days

The doors out are closed, and no matter how hard you try, there’s nothing that you can do in order to get them to open. It seems like whoever told Enis that they would only open once was entirely correct. So it’s all you can do is wait. There’s an anticipatory feeling in the air, whether you’ve got abilities or not, and it’s the generalized sense that the sky is going to fall down around them. Even if it already has. While it’s getting cold and it is the temperature seems to linger at a livable 45, but it’s still cold to those who were living in a perfectly climate controlled environment. The air is stuffy, but it’s not enough to do any real damage yet. Instead it’s more like being in Denver with all that implies: altitude sickness. People may experience something that is close to having the worst hangover of your life: headaches, nausea, fatigue. Additionally, because of the hunger combined with this and everything else, tempers are short and flare hot when necessary. The effects get worse if people end up trying to be more physical, so most of the NPCs in the Sphere don’t. They just sit or lay down with a generalized sense of apathy; for them there is a lack of hope that almost seems infectious: no one is going to fix this, and none of this matters.

Food continues, the rations getting smaller as the Council tries to keep feeding people for longer. All of the blankets are removed from storage, and people huddle together to try and sleep.

Some try and make music, or hold conversations, but other than what the player characters are doing, an eerie stillness hangs over the Sphere.

The Great Departure

No matter how apathetic the general population is, when it comes to times where food is being distributed, they all line up to make sure they’re eating. Even the worst of them do. Being in the food time is the place where they seem most themselves, and most animated. Like in the days before, they try to barter and steal other’s rations, even if attempts to raid the storehouse proper have largely stopped. Perhaps they are even trying to steal your rations. It’s not like they haven’t tried before, honestly. So, there’s nothing for it but to just try and stop them, and try not to let the lack of oxygen get to you.

But then it happens. There’s no flash of light, no sound of thunder or a booming. Even if you were making eye contact with someone they’re just all of a sudden they’re not there. Whatever they were holding drops to the ground in a clatter left vacant in the wake of two hundred people vanishing. A third of the population is just gone without a trace.

Then the screaming starts: people who have lost loved ones, people who lost friends or enemies, they all just scream out. Wailing and screams echo off the top of the dome, and reverberate around them as people realize what has happened. All of the empty spaces and anticipatory silence are lost in the din of loss and fear.

Loss and fear permeates the Dome, spreading almost like an infection. Whatever lingering hope that might have remained in the NPC population is entirely gone.

The Investigation.

While despair is spreading, the Council does something that it hasn’t done before. Or at the very least Max hasn’t. There are secrets that he’s been holding about his time here at the Sphere and it’s time for him to spill them if people ask. Additionally, there are clues hidden around, pieces among the camps of the missing people that had vanished in that first wave. Picture frames that you know you’d seen people longingly looking at before, are just empty frames, missing even something like a stock photo.

Rations and things that NPCs may have taken from player characters are in the tents entirely untouched. There’s a stockpile of rations and water in each tent as if someone had just come back to these tents and deposited them.

The beds are made still, as they were when the refugees first started streaming into the domes en mass. An outline of people remains on them, but it’s nothing more than that. Despite the chill, it’s clear to people who have looked that once people had gone into the tent, they hadn’t needed to cover themselves with blankets anymore.

Even the remaining NPC population has an odd vacancy in their eyes that has never been this apparent before. They answer questions in a flat voice with no affect. Questions are answered in the simplest ones of yes and no as if they can’t grasp anything more complex than that. It’s a frustrating effort, but perhaps one worth making.

Max, however, sits on the top of one of the picnic-like tables, with his foot resting against the seat of it. In his hand, he holds a good smelling cigar, and there are spent ends of others all around the ground on him. More than that, he’s also got a bottle of whiskey that he keeps drinking from. Whatever is going on with the other NPCs isn’t affecting Max in the slightest. Instead his eyes simply just offer resignation, a quiet sadness and the pain that has always been there is moved to the forefront. “Well,” he barks, but most of the force is missing from it. “Go ahead and fucking ask me.”

The Second Departure.

The next day after the first one, thirty more people vanish. This time it’s not as showy as it was in the lunch line, but it happens nonetheless. Those who disappear this time however are those who seemed to be the furthest gone with the despair. Those who couldn’t respond to questions. And anyone who could. All of those who talked to anyone investigating are gone in the second round of disappearances.

A Ghost from the Past

On the day after the second disappearance, Annie makes herself known to those in the agricultural dome. It starts quietly, the anger about this. NPCs murmur and mutter as she walks past. Those who remember her or those she hurt are welcome to try and stop her or talk to her. She will. Unfortunately for you, whenever she decides she’s had enough, Annie just moves on. It’s that simple, really, she moves on and there’s nothing that can be done to stop her or hurt her as much as some people might want to.

In the end, Annie ends up in front of the crowd at the dinner line. Standing on a table, she makes an Announcement and all of her responses will be on there. Then she walks into the crowd and seems to disappear.

Depature/The Tunnels/Reaching the Sphere

Perhaps Annie is worried about Max (or possibly others) attempting to stop her, but when she arrives at the door, it’s five to six and she seems to appear out of almost nowhere. She looks the same as she did yesterday, the look of resolution on her face. At precisely six am, Annie stares at those assembled and then she nods. Raising her hand a bit, the knuckles of her fingers extend outwards, and she presses them against the side of the dome. Unlike the two other doors, this one almost seems to dissolve slowly like it’s in a movie. As the well-light hallway behind the door lights up with golden light, fresh air whips through the door, showing just how stuffy their oxygen had been before. Just how bad it’s getting but they don’t notice because they’re essentially frogs in a cooking pot as the water starts to boil. The opening itself is wide enough to allow people to go three abreast if they chose to, and this time Annie steps through the door after the last person does.

When the door closes, the dome disappears. The hallway is warm and clean and clear, the familiar illumination giving familiar animals swimming in the deep sea that same shadow it always did. The walk isn’t as long as the others, hours instead of days. Annie doesn’t talk but she doesn’t mind if you do. Instead she just steadfastly leads you forward always somehow three steps ahead.

At the end of the tunnel,‘you can clearly see the Sphere on the other side of what has been, until now anyway, sealed behind the dome of its own. Annie touches it, and it just dissolves away, leaving the ten feet around the Sphere open for anyone who wants to look at it. The Sphere up close looks like it’s always looked, large and shiny and gold and metallic, even if there doesn’t appear to be any other sources of light in the room other than the Sphere itself.

Annie allows you to walk around it, be awed by it before she just softly says: “Come on.” And walks right into it.

Do you?

Inside The Sphere.

Walking through the outer barrier of the Sphere feels like the tension in the air before a thunderstorm. It doesn’t hurt, and no one gets wet. Do you remember before you woke up in your domes and there was the white room where you talked to the person who was most trusted by you, and they explained not to be worried? You’re in the same room now. Perhaps the person you’ve trusted most has changed during your time here. Perhaps not. But for the most part you’re alone with that person, sitting facing them on comfortable sofas and speaking.

The Sphere’s voice is soft and kind for all of the tension of the situation and it just says through that familiar mouth: “what is it that you wished to say?”

photo inspiration

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So watching me die a slow and painful death from asphyxia and cold and hunger is better than taking this chance? We don't know what happened to everyone else, Richard. They should have been back by now. But the power's still off. The air's getting worse. And now people are fucking vanishing.

What's worse? Having me literally vanish in front of you? Suffocating to death or trying. I don't trust her either. I know you think I'm an idiot for even thinking of this, but I don't want to die gasping for breath. I don't want to disappear on you. I don't want to lose you! I don't want to watch you die.

Trying is better than not!

There are plenty of other who'll go.

[There's not much else he has against her. She's right, and he knows it. He knows that there really isn't another choice, but he wants there to be.]

Someone you'd think would be better at talking the Sphere into saving us than me?

[Alex just gives him a look with her head tilted to the side.]

This is something I would be good at and we both know it. Hell, you could probably argue it into saving us too, Richard!

If she even takes you there.

If she doesn't and I'm wrong then I'm wrong! But I don't want to stay here and suffocate, Richard. I don't want to die when there may be a way to live. I don't want to watch you die. I know trusting her is dangerous, but I'm willing to take the chance, almost any chance that you're okay. I know you're willing to do the same for me! Please. Please, my love. Please help me with this. I don't want to lose you.

[Alex's voice becomes very soft, and she just breathes at him.]

I love you. I don't want you to lose me again. Or ever.

Then I'm going with you.

[Everyone knew this was how it was going to go. Alex was an immovable object and Richard was logical enough to know when he wasn't going to get anywhere unless he knocked her over the head with a brick.]

[When he says that, Alex just steps closer and wraps her arms tightly around his neck. Leaning into whisper into his ear she adds, as a measure of thanks because she knows this is more important to him than that. ]

I promise to be safe as possible while we’re doing this. No stupid things. I’ll even hold your hand if you want.

Don't make promises you can't keep.

[He reaches over and squeezes her hand.]

I did say as safe as possible, and I meant by my definition, not yours, Richard.

[Alex gives him a little smile, trying to find the normalcy in the way that the two of them teased and bantered, even in a situation that was anything but that.]

You also said you wouldn't do anything stupid.

[They both know that's not an option for her.]

I mean, you shouldn’t expect miracles, Richard.

[It’s an Alex Reagan bad joke and she gives him a little smile. ]

I love you. And no matter what, I don’t regret this time we had here you know.

We're not going to die when we return.

Of course, there's the possiblity that they don't really exist anyway.]

Still, if we get sent back home in the middle of this, it'll be out of the frying pan and into the fire. So I may not get to say it then.

[And it's not like they get to remember this anyway.]

I suppose you're right.

I know I'm right. And you know I'm right too.

[There's a long pause, and she brushes her fingers across his cheek. Honestly, she's just as worried about this not being real as he is. She can't help it considering all of the things that she's seen.]

I'm real, you know. Harry checked. The people who disappeared he couldn't sense anything about but myself, himself, Max and Annie were all real.

[Senses can be tricked, as can Harry's whatever.]

Are you claiming that they weren't people?

I don't know what I'm claiming.

[Alex just sounds exhausted, and she is both emotionally and physically and she's cold and worried about people.]

But I know that two hundred people disappearing isn't good.

No.

[He agrees. He moves closer, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close.]

Neither are their voices fading off my recorder after I play the files. Or the books just saying things like words.

[Alex is just going to hold onto him very tightly for a moment. ]

Have you been able to find them after you played the tape?

I'm still here, so...

[Yes, she's bracing herself for him to be upset about it.]

[He pulls back and glared at her.]

You played your own tape?

Of course I did. I'm on every tape, Richard. It just means that playing my own means that we have a common denominator, in case I was going to disappear because of the others.

Think about that for a moment, Alex.

[What would have happened if she's disappeared?]

I already knew I was real! I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t. But if I had done it to you or Seregil and he was wrong...