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Who: Everyone
What: The open July log.
When: The month of July.
Where: All over.
Notes: N/A

July Open Log

Time to shine, sparkle and become renewed.

So the fighting has finished, the filtering system is turned back on and the water has retreated. Of course, all that water rushing in and having been there for so long means that there is a giant mess in most parts of the Sphere, where water alternated between coming up to one’s ankles, all the way to one’s knees. Even the smaller private domes were affected with lesser amounts of water, leaving dirt and sediment and kelp behind along with an assortment of other sea life.

Now we all remember what happened last time something grew inside the Sphere right? Thankfully, there’s been a fair amount of supplies that have been accrued, and it involves gloves, face masks and a good damn amount of bleach to go with those large scrub brushes. There’s also huge pails of soapy water that are used to clean up things from the bleach. Everything is wet and it smells a bit like an indoor swimming pool, but it’s definitely safer to be safe than sorry.

So pick up a brush and pitch in. Those who do may find a little extra something from the Council delivered to their homes in a basket. Those who don’t may find themselves a little bit on the Council’s unofficial shitlist. And given that Max runs the Black Market, it’s not a great place to find yourself. Maybe you were sort of shoved towards this and were doing it haphazardly. Maybe you give a damn. Either way, food and water will come to you, and everyone will be better once this place is cleaned up.

Or so people keep telling ya anyway.

about that bucket of water that you’re wearing.

Of course, if there’s one thing that history and eighties movies have taught us, it’s that where there’s giant buckets of soapy water around, and hoses, and big sponges, then there’s bound to be one thing that happens: a water fight. And a big one at that. Kids (or kids at heart) have been not so subtlety wandering around with buckets filled with cold water, or sponges dipped in them and a few of them have hoses. There’s no bleach in them thankfully (because it’s all fun and games until someone gets a chemical burn) but the water fight is a good way to let off some of the tension that the folks in the Sphere have been getting up too.

So are you a victim, or are you a perpetrator. Do you care either way? But it doesn’t matter because this fight is huge and when there’s this much water flying around, there really isn’t any space for anyone to be a bystander here. Sorry.

with a suitcase full of summertime

Do y’all know what we happened to miss while we were underwater?! The summer solstice. And once things are all cleaned and cleared up, your resident summertime goddess ain’t gonna let it pass without knowing it, and it’s something the inhabitants of the Sphere take to like ducks to water. Wine and dancing is flowing all around and there’s a few fiddlers and jazz musicians dancing around. Because when the queen of the underworld prods ya gently, you get up and do it.

As the night and people’s alcohol levels rise, people start to become more daring with the fire. After all, everything is all cleaned but probably still slightly damp from what had happened, so there’s no problem with people swinging poi around, or using hula hoops set alight. There are even some among us who happen to be going out and jumping over bonfires in order to create good luck for the new year to great cheers of the people around them.

and baby you should see me in a (flower) crown

Do you know what else is a thing during this? Flower crowns. There are tons of flower crowns and various people are sitting around and teaching people how to make their own. The materials, including fresh flowers of all varieties are scattered around the field in the agricultural dome, and people are sitting criss-cross applesauce in order to add ribbons to the stems. For those people who are loathe to wear them, it almost becomes a game for other people to plant them on those resilient folks heads. People use magic or guile or just plain old tossing them in order to make it so that they land on people’s heads. More than that, a group of people will audibly cheer each time one lands. (And of course jeer when they lose one.)

exploration: teeth and bones.

After what had happened, there really is no putting back the seals on the doors to the places that were opened up, even though the council has tried with some of them. There are some doors that are deemed too dangerous to let anyone go inside of (lava and ghosts are not good things to let loose inside the Sphere, no matter how fun it would be at the time) but the door in the infirmary (in the morgue) needs to be open for practical purposes. Which may not be great for people who work in the infirmary, but there it is.

Once people drop through a hatched hole in the floor of the morgue, there’s tunnels extended out for several hundred yards, into the dark. If you have a flashlight, it’s clear to see that here and there the walls are etched with Latin, carved into the stone of the tunnels themselves in what looks more than a little bit like scratches rather than anything that resembles tool marks. The words are repeated at first, over and over: ”cave veniunt!" And "ossa et dentibus illius ruminandum!" Along with the repeated: “cave.”

The skeletons inside are supposed to have been all taken care of, but you can’t help the uneasy feeling that moves down your neck in the darkness, or the way that you can swear you can hear more than a little bit of a hiss of bone. There are things discarded here on the floor of the hallway, gathering more value with the deeper that you go, but is it worth being down here in the dark with the dead for that?

let's go to the movies, let's go see the stars

So, Alex made a post, and then she went and badgered Max into giving them the money to do it, so in the middle of the merchant dome, a large screen has been set up, and there’s space for people to have blankets or chairs from home set up in front of the screen. Various vendors have set up carts or stalls here and there, selling the sort of foods that one would expect at the movies (popcorn, homemade candies, soda, juice, wine and beer, nachos and that sort of thing) along with some that one may not expect: (full curry dinners, burgers, basically a bit like a food truck festival. If you can imagine it it’s there.)

Before the movie, there’s cartoons running, some familiar, and some not, and this is an event that people have seemed to have taken to well. Children run around here taken with the idea for the movie, and it’s a fun, summery festive sort of atmosphere with a community vibe, despite the wine and beer for sale.

we're heckling! it's good to be heckling again!

Well, at least until the movie starts anyway. Groundhog Day has a fair bit wrong with it honestly, and people are taking notice of that. After all, it was from the 80s, a period that wasn’t exactly known for its political correctness or sensitivity. And there’s the small fact that Bill Murry is kind of the worst as well. So, there are some people who have taken issue with the movie that has been chosen. Those people are definitely taking the Mystery Science Theatre approach to this movie, while others are taking issue with them doing that.

So which crowd do you join? Are you watching the movie quietly? Are you joining in the hecklers? Either way, it definitely seems like a fun night out.

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[ She shrugged nonchalantly. Despite her best efforts of giving off an air of indifference she was tense and forced. For thousands of years Zealot had been a rival, an enemy, and a sister. Zealot was always a touchy spot for her filled with a lot of different emotions all at once. ]

What goes on between you two isn't really my business. That entire team is just a bunch of fucked up people with even more fucked up [ she waved her hand ] associations.

[And to spite everything, the years of betrayal, of loss, and all that other shit, Cole still has a spot in his heart to defend them. Even as he speaks, he's surprised at himself.]

Yeah, we're still a team, though. We do what we gotta do, when we got to.

Must be nice to think that. [ Does she actually believe that the WildCats have each other's backs? No. Not in the slightest. In the end each of them had loyalties that went beyond that team, loyalties that she knew they'd chose over their team. It was complicated, messy, and one of the reasons she kept to herself when she'd been around their little team. In the end she knew some of them long enough to believe that if it came down to their mission or their team, they'd pick the mission without much contemplation.

She also knew each one of them kept enough secrets to drown an empath. ]

So what do you make of all this. [ She moved a hand to indicate the situation. ]

I've made a career out of lying to myself, Charis. I don't see a reason to stop now. [He's not an idiot, to spite what appearances would suggest most of the time.

He follows her motions around at the place with his eyes before looking back to her, rolling his shoulders in a shrug.]

It's not organized enough to be an active research facility. It might be old and malfunctioning, but I got no idea how we got here.

I guess that's something we have in common. [ Maybe it's just the one common thread with all of them.

She frowned. ]

Guess there are worse places to be. [ Like their home. ] It feels calm. Which doesn't feel right. [ Calm was suspicious. Even if she looked back to her time on Khera she couldn't remember actually being calm. There was always a fight of some kind to be waiting for. Strangely though this made her more uneasy than anything like that. ]

[He laughs, and it's a sick, self-deprecating sound.]

What the fuck does that say about us that calm is weird?

[And that is to say he agrees. He might not be able to actually feel it, but it's a sense. There's a peace here that he hasn't known in, well...his entire life.]

That we've lived very exciting lives. [ Lived is notably in the past-tense but she doesn't really pick up on her choice of phrasing there. It's the truth though. At least she could say that. No matter what at least her life had never been boring. Maybe that would change now though. ]

Some of us were able to handle the exciting better than others though. [ She remembers when he passed out after she kissed him. She will always remember this. ]

"Exciting" she says.

[He pauses for a moment, narrowing his eyes at her.]

Hey. There were exstinuating circumstances, alright?

[ The narrowing his of his eyes isn't lost on her. She notices and she smirks in retaliation. There was something nice about being able to pretend that everything hadn't gone to hell. Maybe it was wrong of her to be faking it like this, but it was better than discussing the truth of everything. ]

Like the damage you'd already taken from your signature "falling on the enemy" move?

And all the bullets, yeah.

[His eyes just stay narrowed, because really, Charis? Really?]

Sometimes I forget you're human. [ And so a few bullets would really hurt him. Sometimes she wondered why they'd let him come in the first place. She'd never really been a fan of involving humans too much. ]

Is that supposed to be some kind of backhanded compliment?

[He smiles, because he's pretty sure Charis might be one of the few Kherans who doesn't actually feel that way.]

[ She laughed and rolled one shoulder in a half shrug. ] You can decide. It could go either way.

I'm going with yes, then.

[And he winks.]

So, uh...have you been here long?

Not that long. Few days at the most. [ Give or take a few. If she was honest she hadn't really been paying attention. It wasn't something she really wanted to be honest about though. ] You?

Three days. [Things like time were important to people like Cole. Humans. People who should have expiration dates.] Have you taken stock of other people around here?

[ She gave one nod of confirmation at his question. ] Nobody else is here that I know. [ At this point she hadn't decided whether or not that was a good thing. Every time her mind had wandered to thinking about their home she'd found something else to distract her from it. ] Haven't spoken to many but I've watched some. What about you?

It's kinda funny. [He moves to a stack of boxes situated off and to the right, retrieving his shirt and pulling it over his head as he continued.] You can just think back over this network thing and see who's here.

I'd classify that as kinda creepy personally. [ And invasive. Then again considering what she could do was she really someone to talk about what is or isn't invasive? ] I take it you've thought through it?

I'm working on it. [Yeah, Charis. Now we can all do what you can do...sort of.] There are people from other versions of Earth, other planets...what I don't get is why.

Why's always the big question. [ She shrugged with a large degree of indifference. ] But does the why really matter?

Why wouldn't it? [In fact, he's pretty sure it's key.]

If we ever want to get home, we need to figure out the common thread, right?

[ She shrugs. What was there to go back to? Nothing for her. And was there really much for him either? She keeps those thoughts to herself though. ] Right. Guess we have to try to pick up on that.

[She doesn't sound too stoked about the idea, and he's pretty sure he even gets why. Nodding, he rolls his shoulder in a shrug.]

I know. Earth's shit, but it's mine. It's the only home I've ever known and...we all helped get it where it is. I can't just walk away from it.

Some of us helped more than others. [ In her opinion she'd helped most of all and she still held that weight on her shoulders. ] You really think you all can fix it?

cont. from TDM

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