voidtreckermods: (train)
VoidTrecker Express Mods ([personal profile] voidtreckermods) wrote in [community profile] middleofsomewhere2021-04-10 06:25 am

The Endless River

On the morning of day twenty one of the month of Kazoo there is a message on the ICP screens around the train. Their SCA's will light up the colour of the Void and show the following information.

World #398050 is a void nexus known locally as Tshering. As a void nexus this world has strong links with the void and the connection through worlds. World #398050 is home to the Endless River. Legends speak of this river being powerful enough to send thoughts from one heart to another across any distance. All that is needed is for you to know who it is you wish to reach.


On-board

The dressing carriage is open, filled with clothing best suited to a pleasant spring day. Light, airy and in a rainbow of joyful colours and florals. One closet is entirely filled with wide-brimmed hats bedecked with ribbons, feathers and ornaments. A stack of picnic baskets and containers filled with an alarming variety of passenger-suitable foodstuffs and flasked drinks sits in one corner, next to rolls of thick, weatherproof blankets in the four team colours.

The large box marked Do Not Use Yet, filled with small, empty jute bags, is hopefully still sat in the Luggage carriage, ready for passengers to grab handfuls of its contents as directed by the announcement.

Upon landing (after an appropriate countdown), the train remains on the surface, its carriages partially curved to form a gathering site for the day. Welcome to Tshering, the eighth void nexus!



A Day for Picnics

Tshering, system #398050, is a strange place, only habitable by grace of the passengers' SCAs. The sky is shot through with colours, a cascade of sunsets, and through it, the void shimmering through it in seams like a child's painting of the milky way. Still, there's a beauty to the chaotic mash of colours that soaks through its landscape, and in the shelter of the forests of towering funghi that dot its surface, the Void can go unseen by its visitors.

The temperature seems mild, suitable for the provided clothing, and if there are weather patterns around the world they've taken the day off. The funghi are sturdy enough that what air flow there is doesn't disturb their stalks, and carved grooves and holds in some of the larger examples indicate that climbing them to sit atop their glowing crowns is eminently possible, and, in fact, encouraged.

the Endless River

The Endless River is a font of pure chaos, flowing from a multitude of small rivulets across the area to a central reservoir, from which it pours directly upwards, away from Tshering's surface and out of sight, beyond the world's atmosphere.

Anything bagged and placed within the Endless River will also flow upwards and soon be out of sight, passing, presumably, into the Void. Scattered across the surface of Tshering are small, glittering pebbles, as described in the announcement.

The stones are pleasantly cool to the touch, and all passengers need to do is feel. Messages can be in any form that the Voidtreckers wish. Perhaps words, perhaps feelings, perhaps an image from their mind into the stone. Perhaps a mixture. Once they begin their message the stone will glow slightly and continue to glow as they secure it in the bag and cast it into the river. They will feel, almost instinctively, that they need to focus as they do so, thinking of the person they wish to reach all the while.

There are plenty of bags and many more stones; passengers will not be limited in their sendings.
blue_ice: (staredown)

[personal profile] blue_ice 2021-04-11 03:33 am (UTC)(link)
"Emotions are imprecise," he says with a shake of his head. "And not something I tend to dwell on, if I can help it."

Often, he can't help it. And he has softened somewhat lately.

"But if it were to work, hypothetically...I wonder. Could you feel that this 'sending energy' was working as you did it?"
Edited 2021-04-11 03:33 (UTC)
ballseeker: (05)

[personal profile] ballseeker 2021-04-14 04:59 pm (UTC)(link)

"They are, but they're also important." Bulma, the woman who tends to be very heart on her sleeve, sort of smiles gently as Kaiba says he prefers not to dwell on his emotions. It reminds her of Vegeta, really, but through the years she's come to learn just how readable and emotional her husband can be despite all of his guff and complaining about how well she knows him.

"It's hard to explain.." Bulma pauses, thinking of terms that might make the idea a little easier to understand. "You can feel it kind of.. come together and escape out of your fingers. And after you're tired, like you've been exerting yourself for one reason or another. Like a long work day or.. if you've spent a really long time hyper-focused somewhere and it's all completed."
blue_ice: (draw)

[personal profile] blue_ice 2021-04-17 02:36 am (UTC)(link)
Kaiba listens, his head slowly bobbing up and down in agreement. He's started to learn. It's a long, difficult process, but he'll get there.

"Huh. So...I wonder if this is like that," he says as he rolls the bag in his hand. "Worth trying?"
ballseeker: (04)

[personal profile] ballseeker 2021-04-17 08:28 pm (UTC)(link)

"What's the harm in trying it?" Bulma smiles gently, her little nod the push she hopes he needs to just try it, for better or for worse. The worst is that it doesn't get back to their worlds and no one receives the message, so far as she can tell. So.. no harm, no foul, and they will probably never know.

"In the end all we have is hopes that it will reach them anyway."
blue_ice: (brooding)

[personal profile] blue_ice 2021-04-22 04:16 am (UTC)(link)
Kaiba takes in her words, and it's indeed enough. He squeezes the stone, then touches his locket with his free hand.

"I have a younger brother at home. We were inseparable for most of our lives, and everything I've done was to look after him. I've been thinking about how he's carrying on without me..."
ballseeker: (03)

[personal profile] ballseeker 2021-04-23 12:35 am (UTC)(link)

Bulma, for a moment, clearly debates what she's about to say. She could completely invalidate what she just said about putting the effort forward regardless, with the Verens version of things. Or.. she could play it a little safer. In a way, she wonders if things are still moving along without her and Vegeta in their world, and just how that's going.

Surely Trunks would be complaining copiously by the time they returned about either being in the big expanse of Capsule by himself, or staying at the Son's, which was so different from their own home -

"I would think, if you've taught him and all, that he would be carrying on while waiting for you. Does the train... give any idea of how things carry on while we're on it?"
blue_ice: (tired)

[personal profile] blue_ice 2021-04-28 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
Seto shakes his head. "No. All we know is that it believes time moves on. The train also has some ability to travel in time, but it takes considerable power to do so."

Another problem he's not sure can be fixed. "I trust him, I just hate that I had to hurt him by leaving."
ballseeker: (02)

[personal profile] ballseeker 2021-04-28 08:16 pm (UTC)(link)

"Makes sense. If it can travel through universes and such then time is accessible to it." What, as if time travel was hard? If she can figure it out and then send herself a notebook with the notes to replicate it again, time travel isn't that convoluted or out of reach for people with the ability.

Bulma hums a little in thought, but then offers : "I'm sure you can make up for it by coming back, at any rate."