taxonomites | [HOLO] Arrival

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[HOLO] Arrival - 1

Topher had sat down in the little lounge area of his suite to play a few video games, intending to use them to pass the time until Echo was brought up for programming. He was proud of this new little idea of his, and he’d probably explain it to Ivy when she came in.

Unfortunately, the couch he sat on vanished, as did the rest of the room. Luckily he still had his PS3 system? Topher got up from where he was now sitting on the ground.

“Well. That was unexpected.”

After going around twice, he stopped to look at the tablet. He picked it up and examined it. Now, Topher knew a great deal about technology, especially cutting-edge stuff, but as far as he was concerned, this was still fictional.

“Dude. This is awesome. Where am I? Heeeh-lloooo? Alien kidnapping overlords? Can I come out of here?”

As he said this, he noticed a way out. Pocketing the tablet for further examination later, he picked up the video game console, slung the controllers over his shoulder, used the other hand to pick up the small TV, and walked awkwardly towards the door.

“I sure hope there’s somewhere I can plug these in.”

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"If there are alien kidnapping overlords, I'm afraid that they haven't shown themselves yet," Inara said with an amused smile, watching the broadcast of Topher's arrival. This was one way to get herself more active in the...well, for lack of a better term the community, helping people with information and adjustment as they arrived.

Like an Ambassador, she thought a touch wryly.

"You're in a city called Taxon, and...what are those?" She quirked a curious eyebrow, gesturing to the game system and the television, her explanation momentarily waylaid.

"Whoa..." Now there was a lady talking to him.

"So... you're stuck here, too? Showed up in a crazy little teleporting room?"
Well, at least he wasn't alone. Though it would be cool if the alien kidnapping overlords did show up.

"Taxon? And oh, this? This is a PS3 system. I think it's about my favorite gaming system, except maybe that one Wii I redid so that-"
topher had started to talk faster and gesticulate with his hands, but he stopped on that word, and brought them back together in front of him in a sort of clap.

"Which is not really important. Heh. So where are we?"

"I did indeed! We all did, I'm afraid," she said with a little grin. He sort of reminded her, just a little bit, of Wash.

Little did she know that he would likely have quite a different reaction to seeing Wash than most might.

"Oh, I see...it plays games? What sorts of games?" As with everything else in her world, there was quite a divide between what was available on the Core Alliance worlds, everything up to fully immersive holographic gaming technology, to people being limited to old-fashioned cards and dice and whatever else they could get their hands on or make themselves out on the border worlds.

In a petri dish was what she nearly answered his next question with, but really that was only just her personal theory. "Well...nobody really knows for certain. We're in this place called Taxon, which is either underground or in some sort of massive cave with a projected sky overhead. We're from all different times and worlds...universes, really, is the best way to describe it. If there's a purpose to it, though, nobody has seen any sign of what that purpose is."

"We all? How many is 'we all'? And, um, video games. with the controllers, and the shooting, and the sound effects? Mostly the shooting, sometimes other things. On a monitor." He mimes using a controller, hoping that she at least has a vague idea what he means, considering she could be from anywhere. Or anywhen.

He thinks over this information for a little while, grinning ever so slightly. It was a new puzzle, and possibly the best he had ever encountered.

"I would say about...fifty people? Definitely less than a hundred. It can be a little hard to tell because some are rather quiet, and some have disappeared since their arrival..." The disappearing part was worrying, really, but she didn't let herself dwell on it. She dwelled instead on video games, which sounded very much like the more advanced ones she'd heard about on Sihnon. Shooting, why did it always involve shooting, really?

Really, it probably should have concerned her that he actually looked eager to be kidnapped to a place as uncertain as this. She didn't really have the heart to clarify to him that he could be bitten by a vampire or blown up by a rogue god or something awful though...if he was going to discover that he would do it soon enough. Instead she poured herself some tea as she waited to see if he would have more questions, a deeply practiced and artful gesture.

He nodded, taking the news of disappearances as proof that they would eventually be returned home. Also luckily, she seemed somewhat familiar with the concept of video games, which left him free to ask more questions of his own, yes, a little eagerly. As far as he was concerned, so long as they didn't kill him, this was about the best kidnapping ever. He could probably learn a lot about the technology here... and maybe bring that new knowledge back with him. Although he entertained the notion that the aliens might not allow him to do so, he was used to being able to outsmart everyone around him, and trusted that he would be able to do something.

He did have a few more questions, though. "So... what are the people like, here? Mostly human or humanoid? Are they from different universes altogether, or different parallel universes or different times in the same general universe?"

"There are some people who are reportedly...not exactly human. At least from what I've heard. And one who very much doesn't look human at all, even if I've only seen him sparingly. Mostly, though, I think that everyone is just a person. Mostly people are from the early twenty-first century, although a few of us aren't," she flashed a brief smile with this, blowing on her tea and taking a sip.

"As for universes, everyone seems to have at least heard of Earth That Was so I'd have to venture a guess that it's all...parallel? Only some versions of the world have supernatural elements and others don't. It's also odd in that when you figure in the sheer number of universes and times that there should be to draw from we seem to arrive in...clusters?" She pondered this briefly, deciding if that was the best way to describe it, and finally settled on the fact that it worked well enough. "There are five other people that I knew prior to my arrival here, even though thus far we seem to have come from different points in time. For example, I wasn't even traveling with the others anymore when I appeared here."

He caught the smile, and then had to ask. "So, where are you from?"

"Clusters. Like one being picked up tells them something about who else to pick up." Because he's clearly still shipping the kidnapping alien overlords model.

"Well. Where...when? I come from, the year was 2518. Earth That Was had long since been used up and abandoned, and humanity moved on to a new solar system where we colonized close to a hundred planets and moons that were made habitable through a technology called terraforming. The world I was born on was called Sihnon, and it's where a good deal of the people from the regions of China and Japan settled..."

Normally she would have broken that down into more manageable bits and pieces, it tended to overwhelm people all at once. She had a feeling that he could keep up, though. If anything, it would likely be the other way around as she tried to think of answers to all his questions...she was generally familiar with the lonely scientist type, and he had all the earmarks. Isolated men with high-paying careers were very frequent patrons of the Companion houses traditionally, especially on the Core worlds where they were more common than bureaucrats and noblemen.

"And hm...it's possible. It makes one wonder if simply wanting someone to appear enough would make it more inclined to happen, if that were the case." She couldn't really say, personally...it might be nice to have Simon here, especially with River running about loose and unsupervised. But for the most part everyone she could hope for was already here, made terribly convenient by the fact that everyone she could hope for was just one person.

"Colonization. Awesome! And yeah, my money was always on terraforming as opposed to finding a huge number of systems..."

Isolated men with high-paying careers, hmm? Funnily enough, he seems to be the only one with access to the Dolls for free who doesn't use them that way... he just makes himself friends.

"Possibly. I mean, who knows, really. The Placebo Effect could just be the tip of the iceberg."

"Well, even with ships that can get from world to world it would still take a prohibitively long time to reach another system. Faster-than-light travel is of course the goal I believe, but we still haven't achieved it." Spending a lot of time in conversation with aforementioned isolated men - and yes, often only exercising the companionship angle of being a Companion - had given her access to a wide and eclectic array of information about her time, if not the details behind them. "For some reason terraforming entire worlds and moons was easier."

As a result, she was quickly out of her depth. "Placebo effect? In what sense?"

"Right, right, sci-fi was filled with faster-than-light travel, but really? That's next to impossible. And even if you could send an object like that, it can't be good for an organism. the biological processes might stop, because they're definitely limited by the speed of light. Or, electricity, really, because everything starts in the neuron pathways."

And he was just warming up.

"The Placebo Effect basically works like this: they want to get better, so we give them something and say it will work, and voila! It does. The basic premise is that wishing makes it so. The accepted reasoning behind it usually assumes the affliction was psychosomatic in the first place... but I don't think it always is, and even then, it was wishing that created the affliction. If we have so much control over our body, it stands to reason we have some control over our environment - science is starting to prove that, now, and it probably continues into your day... maybe never mainstream, though."

"Ah, see, it was the affecting one's environment part that I got hung up on, I've heard of placebos in medicine but I wasn't sure that it applied in a more practical, everyday sense," she said with an amused smile, watching him as he got the wheels of his reasoning spinning. It was similar to watching that Spencer Reid man who used to be around, unfortunately one of the disappeared now, talk about circles in time, or one of the conversations she'd had with Simon on Serenity about medicine. There was nothing quite like conversation with a person who was excited about and interested in what they were talking about, even if she didn't always follow.

"Oh! And I should also mention, once you've got your tablet there you'll be able to exit the room you're in. The place we all start out is called the Sanctuary and it's roughly in the center of the city...you may or may not have a red blip on your screen there that tells you where something of yours is here after that. For me it was my shuttle..." she gestured around her at what looked almost nothing like the interior of a shuttlecraft with all the furnishings and decoration tossed over practically every surface. "Others have what seem to be their homes or vehicles."

Topher noticed the amused smile, which told him she was at least following. He'd settle for that, of course, but he did hope there were people here he could really debate with.

"So they want us to keep it with us, then. And okay, yeah, thanks."
He very much doubted he had a home or vehicle here, as neither was terribly important to him, but he also very much doubted they'd give him his lab. His office, maybe - he'd check later.

"Oh, and I'm Topher, by the by - Topher Brink." Because normally he introduced himself before getting carried away and explaining things like his personal musings about the Placebo Effect...

"I'm Inara Serra of Companion House Madrassa. It's a pleasure to meet you, Topher," she said with a friendly smile and an incline of her head that was something in between a nod and a bow. She still tended to add on the of Companion House Madrassa part even though there were very few people here who would even know what that meant who weren't already well aware of the fact, and even though she hadn't actually been a part of Madrassa for a couple of years now. It helped her hold on to her overall sense of who she was just a little bit.

Topher, of course, isn't one who would recognize it. Instead, he takes the name of the House and her very refined manner to mean she's nobility of some sort.

"D'you - mind if I call you Inara?"

"That would be just fine, yes," she says with a smile, setting down her tea and folding her hands.

"At any rate, I hope that you enjoy your stay here...or at least as much as one can enjoy captivity by unseen forces. Having access to the hatches makes things notably better than they could be, even if they're just a bit unsettling. They're a little too much like the bars that animals in a zoo press down on to get food to me, but they can make any number of useful things."

Like tea, and fancy dresses, and incense. She doesn't imagine that he'll put it to the same purpose, though!

"Oh, I probably will." He grins. "And yeah, I should find those. Do you know if there's anything they won't make?"

"Living things, people," she said with a sigh. "One of the girls here keeps trying to make her brother. Which...xiè tiān xiè dì she hasn't had anything even like success, one can only imagine...she just keeps making what looks like his clothes. Making food with meats works just fine, but I don't believe that you can make a living animal. And...I'm not certain how it works in terms of making things like books, if it takes the item from your memory and so it wouldn't contain what you don't know, or if it pulls it, as we were pulled, from somewhere in which case it would be possible..."

That was an experiment worth trying, at any rate.

No people, no animals... hold on a second, that was Chinese.
"You speak Chinese?"

"Yes...most people where I come from do, at least a little. Especially on Sihnon of course where the culture is much more strongly influenced by the region that the language originated in on Earth That was, but Chinese and English are equally spoken generally."

"I knew it! Ha-HA! If only two languages survive, it had to be English and Chinese." Topher is elated to be proven correct... but then, he's excited about most of this anyway.

Topher's enthusiasm is infectious and she laughs, nodding. "Well, you were right. At any rate, I'll let you go and get acclimated and find your red dot, if you have a red dot. If not...well, I'm not sure what happens. I think that you can actually stay in the Sanctuary, and there are a number of empty houses about. If you need anything there are a lot of us in the same situation, you can use your device there to ask questions and for help."

"Okay. Thanks then... and probability says I'll see you around sometime."

"With a population this small and space being limited, I'd say it's probably a certainty. Take care, Topher."

"You too, Inara."

Inara. What a pretty name. But it fits such a pretty lady... heh!

Topher is slightly embarrassed by the direction his thoughts are taking, (nothing too graphic, mind you. This is still mostly in the "Ooh, so prity" zone) but she's left, so it's okay... right?

Xander is a man of priorities. Greeting newcomers in a friendly, warm and professional manner? That was one of his priorities. Greeting newcomers with GAMES CONSOLES, well. That was an obligation. He grins broadly at the tablet and waves.

"I certainly do know a place where you can plug those in, and it's called 'my place'. Or the place of my best friend, technically speaking, but she's very reasonable about power outlet usage. Please tell me you have Call Of Duty?"

"Heyyy! Excellent, this will work here? And..." He pauses as he checks the box. "Nope. I have that one back in my office, but all I have here is Zombie Apocalypse."

Topher stopped for a moment to think. "Do we all have, like, pre-programmed places to live, here?"

"Hey, Zombie Apocalypse is not to be sniffed at! ...That is unless it's an actual zombie apocalypse, because let me tell you, those guys are per-ett-y ripe."

Happy that the games situation has been clarified, he moves onto the more practical matters, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "No, not all of us, although the building that you're currently in, The Sanctuary, is full of empty guest rooms where you can stay temporarily. You seem to be adjusting pretty well, kudos-- most people do a lot more of the panicking and the flailing. Not including myself, obviously." He adds hastily, as an unconvincing afterthought.

Topher snickers at that. Really, he prefers Zombie Apocalypse to Call of Duty, but it would still be better to have more games, if the alien kidnapping overlords intend to keep him for very long.

"Cool, so I can probably stay there for a while? And yeah, not so much of the panicky flailing, more of the flailing about the chance to see advanced technology. Because I'm assuming I've been kidnapped by alien overlords who will let us all go when they've finished... doing what ever it is they do. Watching us, I dunno."

Xander nods his confirmation cheerfully. This guy seems to be like his... relaxed and probably far smarter alternate self. "Yep, the Sanctuary is a comfortable if not exactly luxurious home. 'Alien overlords' is one of the more popular theories though, yeah-- watching seems to be all they're doing so far-- thankfully I haven't heard any horror stories about probing, although they do seem to carry out bizarre experiments on us from time to time. Locally known as 'glitches'."

He steeples his fingers as he continues the explanation. "Oh! If you're interested in advanced tech though, you should check out the hatches. They're in the walls, they look a little like fancy microwaves? You can use them to imagine up pretty much anything you want. They're also the only food source, important sidenote."

Edited 2009-07-05 21:38 (UTC)

"Glitches." He nods, taking it in. "Like what sort of glitches?"

Topher grins. "High Tech is kinda my forte. Imagining up things is good - also food, food is always good."

"Well so far I've categorised them into two distinct types-- the death and mayhem kind, as for example when someone gets randomly turned into a vampire. Or the horribly embarrassing kind, for example where the entire female population fall in love with you. Both true stories."

Oh, if only he were joking. Xander looks suitably impressed by the hi-tech thing. "Really? Would that be professional experience or are you just a recreational gadget fan? Oh-- and I'm Xander by the way. Xander Harris."

"Huh." Well, that was odd. But it sounded a little like programming, imprints, and Topher knew all about those. Best to keep on his guard, but still fun.

"Definitely more of the professional experience-type. Heh. Also just a fan of gadgetry, though. I can't wait to take this one apart and figure out how it works." Little did he know he would not be able to.

"I'm Topher Brink. And hey! We both go by non-standard nicknames. At least, I assume that's short for Alexander?"

[[ooc: and now mun is wondering if non-standard nicknames come with the Whedon territory... seem to.]]

"Ah, sorry to be Mr. Buzzkill, but the 'little cell-phones that could' actually don't come apart. We've tried everything barring molten lava." Alas, Xander felt he was under an obligation to break that news before Topher proceeded to waste half of his life in the futile attempt.

"Nice to meet you Topher-- that'd be Christopher, right? And yes, I'm Alexander, although I tend to only go by the full name when I'm never."

[[ooc: ooh, trufax! Well spotted.]]

His reaction is one of slightly squeaky disappointment.
"Seriously? Man... that sucks."

He sighs a little. Well, one puzzle stolen from him. But it can't be the end of the world - so many more! Right?

"Yeah, Christopher - and same-same on the never."

"That it does, my apologies. Oh-- another thing." He lifts his arm and waves it illustratively, to show off the bracelet on his wrist.

"We all have these, and they refuse to come off. On the plus side, they don't seem to actually do anything other than be passively annoying."

The name thing is another factor on the list of things that are progressively making Xander suspect that Topher is some kind of alternate dimension him. Seriously.

"Yeah. I noticed. But they probably do more than you think."

Topher... is not feeling the same. He thinks they might be able to passively be friends, though. Not quite as fun as a friend he could create himself though.

This is Faith. Bored, hanging out in the one place she both never wanted to see again and longed for with all the poetic longing she can drum up-- which... isn't a whole lot, but she can do more longing sans the poetry-- and therefore, taking a break in angsting in her own special way (read: punching things) to troll the new guy on the Network.

"The guys pulling the strings don't seem like the hands-on type. And you're in Taxon."

Terribly helpful, she is not.

Topher notices the new voice and glances over.

"Yeah, so I've been told."

"Cool, the Welcome Wagon already hit you up." Which is good, because Faith is not welcoming or terribly knowledgeable.

She waves, vaguely. "Story seems to go you'll figure out a place to stay. Somewhere from wherever you're from."

He nods in a kind of "okay, that's chill" way.

"Cool, cool. I'll probably stick around here for a little while, and then, you know, wander. Heh."

He notices as he says this that she looks like Echo... only if this is Echo, she's imprinted... and won't know. He'll have to figure that out later, maybe find her in person.

"The cell phone looking thing's got a map in it. Should be able to get you around."

No, she's not offering much more than that. Also, Topher would be wise to tread carefully about this 'Echo' person. Faith tends to punch first, ask questions later.

"Cool, thanks."

Yes, well... seeing as he creates the imprints, a little in-person small chat would be all he needs to know that she's just a look-alike. He's good at recognizing his own work.

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[HOLO] Arrival - 1

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