thespherelogs | (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

Max is without a doubt entirely, exceptionally shit faced right now. He’s been chain smoking cigar after cigar and drinking all of the booze that he’d brought with him. Food is something that he hasn’t had in two days, just the sliver of bread that Laurie had threatened him with sedation if he didn’t eat it.

He just scowls as someone gets near him, and it’s clear when he shifts a pointed arm out from under the single blanket that he’s claimed that what he’s been holding onto with the hand he’s not smoking with is a battered, bear made out of old socks.

He just stares at Harry. “What the fuck are you talking about?!”

His sympathy went out to the man. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose a child only to have a robot built to look just like her, then have that robot betray him in the worst way possible, but he was supposed to be their leader, and that meant he didn't get the chance to fall apart.

"I'm going to need you to sober up. I know this is hard, but there are a lot of people depending on you, only a lot fewer than we thought."

"Once again," Max just snarls at Harry, his blue eyes narrowed in anger. It's clear he's spoiling for a fight and has been for a while. Probably since he'd first lost his little girl. If not before. "I'm going to ask what the fuck are you talking about? What, because those two hundred and thirty-seven people who I have personally known for years have just fucking disappeared? That the Sphere probably fucking murdered friends and lovers and people I cared about enmass? What the fuck are you talking about them not being real?"

"If it did, it happened before you all came here." Here meaning the dome they were all cramped into at the moment. "Those people who just up and disappeared did so because they were never here in the first place. Sober yet?" He crossed his arms, waiting. You know, as patiently as Harry Dresden waits for anything.

"I am the person who has been here the longest! Everyone who was here before me has been sent home and one point or another until others started to come. Laurie and Jon are the next longest. But they came in just like you and everyone else did! Appearing in pods. They lived and breathed and ate and drank and fucked. How the fuck can they not be real?" There's something in Max's voice, the smallest crack in it as he stares at this man.

"My best guess is a...simulation? Technology's not my strong suit." He shrugs, frowning sympathetically at the man. "All I know it it's not magic, and there's not real them for their belongs to connect to. They were never here, in this dome, touching this stuff."

“That can’t be true! I have things they’ve made, cards and scotch and fucking clothing. They have to have been able to touch things. I god damn touched them! I fucked them! It can’t all have been a simulation. It just can’t have been. This has to be some sort of bullshit test like going to the fucking Sphere or whatever!”

"Thanks for oversharing." He breathed a sigh. "I'm not saying they've always been fake, just that they were before they disappeared. I don't think they made it here, to the rec dome."

It looks hard for Max to breathe, and his hand presses against his chest as he staggers onto his feet. "No. That can't be true. They were them. They were all them. I ate with em. I drank with 'em here. I hugged them and listened to them cry and promised it would be okay somehow even though I knew it was being a fucking liar. But they were here. They couldn't have not been. Ya gotta be wrong!"

Harry shook his head, apologetic but not relenting on this.

"Magic doesn't lie. Eyes? Minds? Hearts? They lie. They don't want to see the truth that's in front of them, but magic? Magic is truth."

"Magic may be your truth!" The worlds are snarled as Max shakily rises to his feet, and he thrusts one finger in Harry's direction. "But what the fuck is your magical truth compared to this fucking place. You've been here approximately thirty god damn seconds. You don't know shit."

Shaking his head, Max seems entirely sober, and more than that Harry can probably feel Max gathering power of his own. Power than before now has been hidden.

"No, but I know how life works. It either is or it isn't and that is what my magical truth is."

And at the stirring of that power, Harry shakes his shield bracelet free of his coat sleeve, ready for whatever Max might be deciding to throw at him. "You really want to do this right now?"

“I just want to die in fucking peace! And you’re all coming in here and telling me that my friends ain’t real? The fuck kind of bullshit is that?!”

"If dying's what you're looking to do, I'm going to suggest you step down from your leadership position as soon as we get our collective asses out of the fire." He scoffed. If this was the sort of leader they had around here, it was no wonder there was no sense of unity. "It's just the truth, do whatever you want with it." But it's clear to Harry Max is going to be no further use and he turns to leave the man to his misery.