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Who: Everyone!
What: December's welcome log.
When: Dec 1st-7th
Where: The Merchant Dome/The Pools
Warnings:
Notes: This is your December welcome log. Come in, go nuts.

It’s the most wonderful (welcome) time of the year.

The Council knows that being a newb and not knowing anyone (especially when one might be living in close quarters to them in the very near future) can be a real pain in the ass. So, every month they throw a welcome party, the theme and location tend to vary. The theme for December is Holiday Cheer and this month’s party takes place in the Merchant dome. But it’s not the everyday appearance of the merchant dome. No, for the next five days the Merchant dome’s appearance has been altered to look like a sort of Bavarian Christmas Market. There are small clusters of tables every so often, so people can just sit and chat and eat and drunk.

Some enterprising person has even managed to make it snow through some unknown means. It’s not cold, but the snow is soft and steady and slowly building up.

The entire dome, all of the streets and all of the merchant stalls are practically glowing with white fairy lights that are strung everywhere. Vendors in their stalls gleefully cry out to paterons passing by, offering them free food or drinks. The food consists of the sort of things that one might expect to find in a place like this: sausages on buns and on sticks, pretzels, pizza, loads of cookies of every variety that one could think of, including elaborately decorated gingerbread, chocolates, fruits, french fries. Think winter fair food, and be as absurd and as complicated and extra as you want. It is a fair, after all. Go nuts. Drinks are also along the same line: hot cider, mulled wine, hot buttered rum, hot chocolate both with booze and without, as well as all the normal things: water, coffee, tea, milk, soda, and a variety of fruit juices that you’ve both heard of and not.

But food isn’t the only free thing that people are giving away! They’re also offering characters hats and gloves and scarves, small toys, books, delicate ornaments, perfumes, wine… it’s a giant welcome party after all, and these people are cheerful and happy. Even offering to pay just gets met with laughter and being told not to worry about it.

There are even some carnival rides set up! A medium sized ferris wheel, a carousel, a giant slide and ice skating ring are all along the outside of the stalls.

At the far end of the dome, the snow has fallen deeper and held to several inches. Wouldn’t you know it just happens to be perfect snowball snow! So, there of course needs to be a snowball fight! What did you think those free mittens and gloves and scarves are for after all? The snowball fight can be organized into teams, or one on one depending on the player’s choice. This is a friendly fight, of course, so no rocks or slush balls or anything. Well, probably not. No one in the Sphere is your mother.

However, the meeting isn’t just about socializing! the opposite end from the snowball fight, there are smaller tables set up with people sitting behind them. In front of the tables are homemade brightly colored signs that advertise things like jobs and clubs. The people and interests here in The Sphere are hugely varied and people are just so earnest to tell newcomers about them. They’re earnest to the point where they may just actually reach out and grab a person in order to force them to stop and to listen to whatever spiel they happen to be working on. Booths that are in attendance for jobs include: Agriculture: “help grow the food that feeds us all! Farming is life!”, The library: “No skill needed! We’ll teach you what you need to know!” The school system: “Teachers wanted! Education is the right of everyone!” Maintenance: “Help keep the domes clean!” As well as various restaurant booths looking for help for both servers and chefs.

For the hobbies involved they are even more varied. Book club: “we live in a multiverse, let’s read the books from it! With wine!” Garden club: “we want to grow stuff on our terms!” Sprinkled among are various skill learning clubs, among them: woodworking club, smithing, robotics, technology, first aid. It seems that despite the fact that no one is required to work in the City, people are still offering skills as needed.

If discrete enough 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 gumdrops.

Inside the black market is large, but much more dimly lit than the regular market dome that the welcome party was held inside of. 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 a 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 addicting properties.

But seriously though who cares about Christmas?

While the welcome party rages on in the merchant dome, people have made a smaller party in one of the recreation domes. Around the pools, as a matter of fact. There’s almost like a small barbecue clustered around the largest of the three pools, and the light is constant and sunny here. The large pool is olympic sized, and is a sparkling blue. It’s fresh water, and probably clean enough to drink. I still wouldn’t drink it. The second pool is slightly smaller and more kidney shaped with a gradual sand mound at one end of it. This pool is salt water and looks a bit more like a beach than a pool. The third pool is a kiddie pool, complete with a splash pad, that’s running. Buckets drop, it’s got one of those mushroom things, and sprinkler jets. There aren’t any kids though, so people are welcome to go nuts.

Bathing suits and towels are provided in the changing rooms. There’s frozen and fruity drinks flowing freely, along with finger food and snacks. Loud music is playing from a local band that’s just generally of a pop sort. There’s people dancing rather in a rather haphazard fashion, but the dance floor is there and present!

Wildcard
Go nuts, choose your own adventure!

Inspiration images

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He held up a hand, turning down her gift. "It's okay, really. We're not starving, there are other communities we've started trading with. We're rebuilding." There were still zombies around, but that seemed like a small thing, something that was becoming...normal.

"It wasn't something we could have stopped. It was too fast, too...all-encompassing. It was our meteor, really. Like the dinosaurs. That one didn't kill all of them off, either, but what came out on the other side was...different. We'll build a new world, but it's not going to be like the old one. I...get that now."

Alex just frowned when he turned down the offered gingerbread, and she left it between them anyway, because honestly this wasn't something that she knew how to fix. Honestly, it felt more than a little bit like something that she couldn't fox. Fixing this wasn't something that was within the power of one Alex Reagan, so she did what she did best instead: she listened.

Alex focused and she listened, and she nodded because she understood. Well, as much as someone could understand when it wasn't something that she herself had lived through. Thinking of the apocalypse was something that Alex had spent the last year doing, so it was easy for her to picture it, but she knew the reality of it was something that was quite different than the literal demons that were in her head when it came to how her world may or may not end. Simon seemed to think that it would. But maybe it didn't need to end entirely. Oh, she had no illusions that either she or Richard would be around at the end of it, but she had hope that someone like her would.

In the end, she just nodded, "as long as there's people like you, I have faith that you guys are going to put things back together."

He smiled and chuckled bashfully, looking down. Aaron had never been good at accepting praise, and he didn't do anything he did for the recognition. He did it because...well, he had to. It wasn't out of a sense of obligation or duty, though. He was simply incapable of seeing another person in need and not offering a hand.

"Well, when I get home, I'll do my best to remember that." He reached across the table, then, taking the gingerbread cookie and breaking it in half, moving one back to her side. "But we're not in Kansas right now, Dorothy, and I get the feeling the undersea nation of Oz has more than a few men behind curtains." He made a motion to her half of the remainder of the cookie. "And we'll figure that out together."

"God, it's gonna be so weird to remember this when we get home." Alex frowned a bit, and she looked up to the ceiling of the dome, so high above their heads. It made her wonder how the hell someone did it, go back to the moment that they left and yet also had all of this time lived here too. It was almost enough to make her think that she was going crazy. It was... Not something that she was going to let herself think about.

Alex picked up her cookie and she laughed softly, shaking her head a bit. "I'd never thought that I would ever have that said to me in real life." She was amused, clearly, that even in all of the weird things with the Tapes, no one had said that. But she did nod. "We definitely will. I'm a reporter after all, and sticking my nose where it doesn't belong is kind of what I do best."

He chuckled awkwardly at her assessment. Everything here was so...normal and yet so alien. It wasn't an environment he was used to, but it was sustainable and free of any sort of apocalyptic diseases that he could see. It was, for all its faults, something like a paradise and he wasn't sure if he should trust it.

Of course, that's also what investigation was for, and while it wasn't his main focus, it wasn't something he was incapable of. He spent the majority of his recruiting days listening in on potential recruits for the safe zone with spy equipment, after all, and those he deemed unsafe to contact never knew he was ever there.

"Sounds like we'll make a good team." He smiles. "I'd say you could be the Velma to my Fred, but I don't think I could pull off the ascot."

"Honestly," Alex said quickly, and she leaned in a little bit as if she was telling him a secret. "I don't think that anyone actually pulls off an ascot. I think that they just tell themselves that they do so they've got the confidence to not look like a total idiot in them." There's a little laugh following it, before she drew back and adjusted her glasses, trying to keep her face all-serious like. It wasn't something that held on particularly well, before she broke into her grin, but at least she made the effort before she added, "well done on guessing I'm Velma though. I'm definitely Velma."

A beat before she added, "you should really know though, I kind of tend to be more than a little bit of trouble. Even when I'm not needing to be. My boyfriend thinks I'm missing a sense of self preservation." And so does her stalker, but she's not mentioning him.

He laughs at that, shaking his head. "Hey, my partner, Eric, pulls off an ascot pretty well, but...he's sort of...eccentric. Me? Give me a flannel shirt and a decent jacket and I'm good."

The same could be said of Aaron in a lot of respects, particularly when people needed help, and he nods. "The risk is worth it, though."

"Well, if he pulls one off, we're definitely going to need to add him to our Scooby gang. Though we need someone to be Daphne. I'm definitely not going to be good with that whole kidnapping thing. I'd probably talk my kidnappers to the point where they ended up like... trying to give money to give me back or something." There's not a single bit of doubt mingling there with that amusement, because honestly it's probably the best case scenario for someone kidnapping her. And she's kind of got the basis for that already, given everything with Coralee's rescue/kidnapping, depending on the day.

"It is worth it," Alex can't help but agree, and think a little bit back to home, and the inevitable choice that she knows Richard is going to make. Brazil is a nice idea, but in the end, they're going to Geneva.

He laughs, shaking his head. "As much as I'd never volunteer my partner to be kidnapped on a weekly basis, Eric can be my Daphne anytime." He smiles, fondly. Just thinking about Eric warms him from the inside out. "And he'd probably annoy his kidnappers into releasing him, too. He's...pretty opinionated." But if Aaron's tone is any indication, he's not annoyed by that fact. Quite the opposite, really. Aaron's never been good at standing up for himself. That was a role Eric took to without even asking. He was Aaron's rock, and he didn't know what he'd do without him.

"You know, I can't say I've ever thought about journalism. I didn't really get into photography until after the fall, really, at least...outside of personal stuff."

"Yeah, honestly, my partner would too. Richard can be a handful. Clearly we're going to need to get them into a room and see what happens." Yeah, Alex looks immensely amused just considering that actually. Because honestly, it's one of her favorite things to watch when there's a low pressure situation and Alex's not the one who needs to go toe to toe with him in the ring. She does of course, but she's been used to pulling her punches for a long time.

"Well, I mean if you try here at least it's relatively low stakes. Pictures of the parties or the meetings or whatever. I mean at least until we get into whatever the hell is actually going on." There's no doubt in Alex's tone that eventually she will get to the bottom of this. She can't not. "So you're totally welcome on my not really radio show, not really podcast not really news paper thing if you want to be!"

"Hey, Eric loves cooking for people." He smiles. "Maybe we can have you guys over for dinner?" It was worth a shot at least. He's not really a big gathering person, but a few people aren't bad.

"And that sounds...pretty cool, actually. I've never been on a radio show before."

“Richard loves cooking too so they’d have something to talk about other than the two of us getting into trouble I guess.” Alex just laughs softly, because she already knows what he’s going to say. Well. Sigh really. He’s going to sigh. “I’ll work on him. Besides he might wanna know who’s in my corner now that Nic isn’t here.” Even if he doesn’t like Nic very much.

“Well I mean it’s gonna be a weird sort of podcast tv show newspaper hybrid.... Which sounds awkward as hell actually.” Alex laughs easily before she shrugs. “We’re gonna need to come up with a better name than that.”

"Oh, I'm sure they will. Eric loves to talk." And while that statement could be slightly mean-spirited, it's spoken in a tone of fondness. Aaron isn't precisely the most talkative of people. It's nice that one of the many ways Eric compliments him is by making up for that deficit.

He nods, though, interested. "Who's Nic?"

"Richard... loves to hear himself talk." There's that same fondness in Alex's tone as there is in Aarons, because it's definitely a little bit of a taking one to knowing one. "But I'll convince him to come anyway." One way or another. Alex is very good at convincing, actually.

"He's my best friend at home. And sort of my producing partner and boss."

"You know, I kind of got that impression." There wasn't a meanness to his words or anything. He's met men like Richard before, men who felt their opinions were more valid than others for one reason or another. It was rare they were actually malicious, just...at times conceited without merit. He'd yet to determine into which category Richard fell.

"Well, I won't try to fill those shoes, but I'll my best. I'm not exactly the best with production equipment. Give me a camera and I'm good. A...stillcamera."

"Yeah, he's definitely a pompous asshole." There doesn't need to be a meanness to his words, because Alex knows Richard and has for three years. She's definitely called him worse to his face honestly. And much worse behind his back to Nic. "But he does know what he's talking about at least most of the time. And he is a good man, he's just got his reasons for being the way that he is." Reasons that were Richard's to give, now that she's not home with a show to run based around him.

"Well, having a camera is going to be an adjustment for me at all, actually so we'll be on the same page! The joys of having a podcast: sitting in the recording studio without needing to worry about hair or makeup or wearing something besides comfortable jeans."

"Maybe so." Aaron doesn't agree, and he also feels he doesn't need to know what caused Richard's demeanor to feel that way. "I just...think no matter what happens, we always have a choice. Situations like...loss, the end of the world? They change everyone, but...but we get to choose how and how much."

But he's fine with agreeing to disagree. He doesn't let the state of his world change him. If Richard does, that's on him. "That doesn't sound half bad. But hey, you're more experienced with this reporter thing than I am, so I'll follow your lead, okay?"

Alex knows that for herself, Alex isn't going to let the end of the world change her. Much. She also knows that if they go to Geneva, there's a good chance that she's going to die. Dying to save the world is something that she's mostly alright with, as long as it works. But it's not something that she's going to think about too hard. At least not while she's here. Back at home, it was a present nightmare, but for now it's just a vague thought, buried under the idea of figuring out what was going on here and how she was going to find her way home. Their way home really.

"I loved it, honestly," Alex was glad to focus on that. "Pacific Northwest Stories was a huge thing back home, a radio program that a lot of people know. I worked there for three years before I started doing my own show." And her world got turned upside down. "But there's parts of being a journalist that are universal, so that should help."

There's a little bit of a beat and Alex leaned forward before she almost sort of stage-whispered, "but the most important trait is being nosy."

He chuckles at that. He can certainly follow along well enough, but Alex was going to have to do the talking. "Fair enough. You handle the talking and I'll handle the exploration. That...I'm pretty good at."

"That works for me." Honestly, she tended to do most of the talking kind of often when it came to Strand too, so it was easy for her to just slip that into her own professional sort of how to be. "Did you do much exploration at home?"

He nods at her question. "Yeah. I've never been one to be able to just sit idly by and wait for anything. The walls around Alexandria keep us safe, but I've explored the sewers underneath us, a lot of the ruined communities around us. We found an old camera store some months back, and that was cool." He chuckles, looking bashful for a moment.

"I collect things, I always have. When I traveled a lot for work, it was bookmarks from different places. Now? License plates. My goal is to get one from every state. I...actually only need 13."

"So I take it you picked up a lot of cameras." But something was nudging at her, so Alex couldn't help but ask: "Did you guys have electricity for digital photos or did you need to do it the old fashioned black room way." Which she knew presented its own set of problems honestly just from the chemicals that were involved in them.

"Wow. Only thirteen. So like Alaska and Hawaii." Because those ones were obvious, because the cars were incredibly rare even in Alex's relatively unaffected world. "What were the other ones?"

"We had electricity, but I wasn't lucky enough to find any working digital cameras on any of my runs. I found an old camera shop and a really nice polaroid, which kind of took care of the problem with chemicals, but the development left a lot to be desired, and the lens needed cleaning." He smiles. "I loved that thing, though."

"I'm never going to find Hawaii, but, believe it or not, I found Alaska recently. I...didn't include it in my list because I had to use it as a makeshift weapon but I found one on a shipping truck, and that was pretty cool." He smiles. "The other 11 are," and he began listing them off on his fingers, "Washington, Nebraska, North Dakota, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, Idaho, Iowa....uh, Arkansas, Mississippi, and....Vermont.'

"Weren't you in Virginia?" Okay, that just sounded excessively Canadian when she said it, but Alex does have some sort of basic measure of geography. Maybe. Sometimes. It comes and goes a little bit. Or at the very least it is shakily based on the differences between worlds. Or so we're calling it these days she supposes. "You'd think that they're be different cars from closer places to it. Like the South." Confusion marked itself into her skin for a moment before she looks embarrassed, "Virginia is in the south, right? Near DC?"

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