milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Jordan is supposed to stay and wait for the guards to come back. But maybe her friend Lincoln's curiosity is finally rubbing off on her because she can't sit still. She's going to the Island, but the wait is making her crazy. She has to get out of this white room, but how? She can't go out the way she came, and there might be guards on the other side of the door. She's about to give up when she spots a cracked bit of ceiling tile. Standing on top of the bench, she can just reach it...

She nudges it aside, and getting a good grip, hauls herself up. I'm just going to take a peek, then I'll go back, is the promise she forgets as soon as she hears strange noises that sound like people talking. She heads towards the noises until she finds another loose board overhead. Maybe someone else has been this way before? She repeats the process that got her into the ceiling and finds herself rising up out of the floor. Weird.

This place looks like the evening commissary--a bar, as one of the censors called it--but unlike the one from the Institute. She takes a seat on a stool, wincing at how dirty her uniform is and staring helplessly at a menu. Where are the fruit smoothies? There isn't even a vegetable-protein frappe. Time is short, and she isn't at liberty to puzzle out all the words she doesn't recognize all on her own. She has to get back soon, or she'll miss her ride to the Island (not to mention the fact she'd get in trouble for exploring without permission if the guards discover she's left) and she so wants to know more about this place.

Won't someone help her figure out what to do?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Contamination could be one problem, yeah. No matter how well we fit, we're just from totally different worlds. Plus, you know, I used to be a turtle."

She really is a sweet kid.

This is...unexpected. Dumbly, Jordan looks at the napkin in the one hand and the man she holds onto with the other.

"Is this...a joke?" She never did have much of a sense of humor.

[ooc: gotta hit the hay here, but will pick up tomorrow if interested...it's been swell! Thanks for showing a new girl the ropes!]

"Only in the Gee, the world is sometimes a funny place to be sort of way. In my case the term Human Comedy takes on a whole new meaning."

[ooc:i'd be delighted. thanks for playing!]

"The world?"

At this point, she is both battered by curiosity and suspicion. He talks about the world at large as if it weren't merely the extent of the contamination-free Institute or the Island. As if it really was the whole world. Maybe that's the secret Lincoln thought he found with the bug. Maybe.

"Where do you...live? In Sector Five?"

"Well, for the time being I live upstairs. But I'm from New York originally.
...
Planet called Earth."

He adds hastily.

"Well, of course you're from Earth," she laughs a little loudly, wildly relieved. He lives upstairs, in the Institute after all. Another tiny bit of jealousy crops up. He remembers his original home; she can only recall it in brief flashes. And she had never been to New York.

"New York? Do you actually remember it? What was it like?"

"Well, yeah. Of course I do. It's um...it's kind of hard to explain it to someone who's never been there. I guess it's big, smelly, and the most beautiful thing you've ever seen at night.

What planet are you from?"

By now, the combination of smoothie and smoothie-diluted alcohol has made her quite sedate; otherwise, she might understand this to be a serious question.

"Earth, of course, but I'm from Kansas." That is cemented in her memory unlike so much else. "I used to have a bike with pink streamers from the handle bars. I've never been to the city." At night, the only things she sees are the inside of the bar and her room. "I would have liked to have seen the lights. New York was so bright...before."

"Well I guess that makes us even then, I've never been to Kansas. Or had a bike with pink streamers before. Forget that even stuff, you win."

Something bothers him about her tone...well, her tone and the use of the word....before.

"Before....what, exactly?"

"Before the contamination." She's lived her life in fear of it, whereas the workers at the Institute never really concerned themselves with it--they were never leaving the safe-haven of their work, so what did it matter?

"I understand," she says, sympathetically. "At times, I didn't want to remember. Now I can't. I guess it's just the way we survive."

"This is one of those future things, isn't it? I don't want to know, don't ruin the ending for me."

"Future things?" Jordan blinks at him. "What are you talking about? It's 2019. This is all in the past." She thinks about it for a minute and, suddenly uncertain, adds, "Isn't it?"

"Well for you maybe. But for me it's 1996. I knew it, the future is doomed. Maybe I should just do all drinks 75% off due to the end of the world?"

Jordan's brow peaks with concern. 1996? But that gave him 14 years until the contamination. No wonder Dr. Merrick and the community announcer always said they were special; maybe a lie was the only reason the staff could accept their positions.

"It's not the end of the world," she reassures him. "There are many people who are special and survive. And there's the Island, too. It's safe and clean. No contamination. You can do whatever you like there. Not everything is hopeless. It's good to believe that things can get better--because they will, really."

"Well, I kind of figure it's not the end of the world....That's the end of the world."

He gestures towards the observation window. Outside the universe crunches and bangs it's self away to wile away the day.

Jordan falls off the stool again. This time, a bit more coordinate but a lot more stressed out, she instinctively reaches out for Mike's arm and shakes him hard. That looks nothing like the docile view she has had at the Institute for four years. That looks like the sky, only really, really close.

"What is that! Whatisthatwhatisthatwhatisthat?"

"Okay ow ow....you can lighten up on the grip...anytime...."

Mike succeeds in prying her hand free from his arm.

"That's the Universe. You know, space?"

"But that's supposed to be up..."

Jordan stops, thinking about the elevator ride she took up to the white room she then abandoned to go exploring. She didn't think she went that far up...

"Where is this place?"

"Not sure, exactly. I can tell you it's somewhere at the end of the Universe. And that it's called Milliways."

Secrets. She is learning secrets. All the mystery, all the suspicion, all of it revealed so easily, as if it were nothing! She can't wait to tell the others on the Island, Lincoln, too, when he gets there.

"Milliways." She likes the sound of it. Like Mike's name, it just seems to...fit. Like her clothes, the names are tailored, perfect, without fault. Still, it doesn't all make sense, which is probably why they never taught it to her at the Institute. Why bother when there's this chance to learn it on the way out to the Island?

"But how can there be an end to the universe?"

"Yeah, I haven't quite figured that part out yet. I mean, I guess it has to have an end, since everything does. But then I realize that the whole problem requires far too much thinking, and I leave it up to people who do the thinking better than I do."

"I understand," she says, nodding. "I'm not all that smart, I get it. My friend, Lincoln? He's very smart, and he says I'm just too trusting. But there are just some things I don't understand and it feels like I never will. I don't see why I should be upset or worry too much about it." She stops herself and looks pained. "I didn't mean you're not smart--you're a lot smarter than a lot of people I know, really--I just know what you mean about thinking a lot."

She sipped her smoothie. "I don't see what's wrong with letting the people who do the thinking just do it. They obviously know how. This is all...new to me."

"I pretty sure it's new to everyone, if you want my honest opinion.
...
Lincoln? Not like Abraham Lincoln, is it?"

"Isn't he dead?" Jordan shook her head. "No, Lincoln Six-Echo. Have you seen him around? He's about..." she held a hand about half a foot over her head, "that tall, has blue eyes, and a mole right here," she pointed to the center of her forehead.

"Last I heard, yeah he was. Can't keep a good man down though, especially around here."

Mike scratches his chin and gives her discription a good deal of thought.

"Okay, I hate to say it? But I think that might just be a bit vague for me. I can tell you that I haven't heard anyone calling themselves Lincoln meandering around."