http://machinesgoping.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] machinesgoping.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] taxonomites2009-07-05 01:11 pm

[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.”

[holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-06 07:33 am (UTC)(link)
"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.

[holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-07 03:13 am (UTC)(link)
"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."

Re: [holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-08 12:33 am (UTC)(link)
"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.

Re: [holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-08 03:17 am (UTC)(link)
"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?"

[holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-08 10:53 pm (UTC)(link)
"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."

[holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-09 08:05 am (UTC)(link)
"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.



[holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-11 09:18 pm (UTC)(link)
"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!

[holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-12 05:15 am (UTC)(link)
"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.

[holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-13 02:22 am (UTC)(link)
"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."

[holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-13 08:23 pm (UTC)(link)
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."

[holo]

[identity profile] hearts-of-gold.livejournal.com 2009-07-13 08:53 pm (UTC)(link)
"With a population this small and space being limited, I'd say it's probably a certainty. Take care, Topher."