middleofsomewhere | The Endless River

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.

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Grape jam? Really?

"It's not you, it's me." The tone is that particular blend of self-deprecating joke that says Ghost is using the ridiculous breakup cliche fully intentionally. The explanation comes - Being human's a buffer between me and everything else. Everything's louder as a Phantom, you included. No offense, but as much as I like you, it's not so much that I want to go piggybacking and echoing you like a shitty autotune echo.

Because that is definitely what Phantoms do, if the half-memory of Did we make that in one of the labs? that plays as an undercurrent to the thought is any indication.

He doesn't know, it's a color he can't really describe besides 'purple-black but with adventure.' So it's like going skinless. That's the best approximation he can come up with.

Murphy isn't an especially kind or compassionate soul, but maybe the camaraderie of being test subjects and the sheer inhumanity he feels sometimes makes him wish he could make that easier on Ghost. He lacks the knowledge to build anything like that but... who knows. Maybe he can network. He is good at doing that, even if he knows Ghost will be doing a bunch of that on his own.

Murphy just sits down on top of the mushroom.

Then human-ish it is!

He's used to 'inkblot' and similar descriptions, not that, okay. Occasionally the void.

You know, I'm not going to question that.

Networking is good! Even if it's just because two people will have different perspectives on a third. In response to Murphy sitting down, Ghost drops the picnic basket before sitting on the other side of it.

Kind of more like taking the windshield off, if you ask me. A passing memory, sea-breeze-stink and the wind whipping across his face - Hawaii's always warm, but the ocean can be chilly enough when you're on a boat going at a decent speed.

Murphy peels off his jacket, and he's legitimately got on white suspenders with a bold red stripe to go with his red shirt. He found what he could and lost his damn mind, apparently.

He uses it to put under him, lanky legs folded in front of him.

Hawaii was warm. Apparently they'd been in their own refuges. Gilded prisons on the same island. Zona had been easy to be normal in, and Murphy had drowned in its blessings. But he was aware that he was still a prisoner.

But his mind is easier right now. Like the sharp edges of his harder irritation and negative emotions are soothed. His 'voice' is clearer, even if his mind is little more muddled about recalling things. Good thing we're away from the river. That thing was killing me after I spent too much time there.

Ghost, apparently, is one of those people who makes mountains out of their knees as he sits straight on his ass. There's room to gesture over his legs, therefore everything is fine.

I didn't even get close to it. Ghost, at least, took the train's warnings seriously, even if not a single other person did. Got people to bring me rocks back and threw them in with telekinesis. It was probably more forceful than most people did so as a result, but whatever, if it works it works.

The memories draw a bit of amusement out of him. Too bad there weren't any government officials still alive to sign my birth certificate.

Yeah, or a death certificate. He thinks wryly back to Portsmouth. An edge of that memory carries through again, him pleading for them to stop the testing, the blue traveling through an IV tube. But he cuts it off before it can corrupt his easy mood.

Hey, I got the normal, average distance away that you're supposed to get, and it wasn't making me curl in on myself or anything but yeah, it was a little headachey. But he's since medicated himself. Only seemed to get bad when I listened. If I thought out? Not a problem. Like it didn't want us to look.

Weird fucking river.

He looks over at the picnic basket. "What kinda food have you got?" He has the munchies, ever so slightly.

Those are a lot less useful to the person whose name is on it, generally. Amusement.

I got that vibe too, but better safe than sorry. I will err on the side of caution and avoid fucking with any potentially eldritch consciousnesses as much as possible, it's bad for my health. There's a flash, there - Murphy has seen the Typhon enough, in both memories and just now chilling on a mushroom, but the thing Ghost is vaguely remembering is a lot bigger than that. It fills the windows, fills the senses -

Ghost shakes his head as though to shake the image of the Apex away, and instead responds to the out loud question, "You know, I don't actually know? I just kind of grabbed." He leans over and pops the lid of the basket open. "Looks like sliced watermelon and some kind of cheese platter to start with."

I could have had mine framed and put by my diploma.

The Typhon memories, visions, are always intense. That's a very large memory, overwhelming and pouring over with an uneasy sensation. The only time he's felt something even remotely like that was the terror of a horde.

~~Zombies could be afraid. People didn't know that. But they were often exactly that.~~

His eyes widen. Is that a part of you, or are you afraid of it, or both?

Wierd question. Whatever. Watermelon. It's been forever since I had watermelon. He scoots closer, settling into the mental communication. It's getting easier, the more he does it. What human food have you even tried?

"Absolutely fucking terrified." Ghost obligingly pulls out a chunk of watermelon and passes it Murphy's way on a levitating thought.

Consciousness-eating alien the size of an actual mountain and psychic presence to match? Morgan blew it up with a nuclear reactor before I was even made and the Apex still scares the piss out of me.

Oh, there's a couple club sandwiches under the thing of watermelon. Nice. Seems like asking for a wet bread sandwich, though. Not much. Mostly tropical fruit we could grow or stuff that could be made out of dried and canned goods, why do you think I went bananas for the fact that the train has actual perishables? I remember a lot more food than I've actually had.

Cheese and real eggs? That's the life of luxury.

It really is great, isn't it.

He plucks the watermelon out of the air, still insanely impressed over this relatively simple ability.

Wonder if the train snagged you because you'd seen something like that. He savors that watermelon like it's the last one in all of creation.

I'm only a little ashamed to admit that I would throw down against a mountain-sized monstrosity if it meant I could have cheese regularly. I mean, I already died once and came back. And he hit some pretty high pain tolerance limits in the process.

Technically, Morgan saw it. I just saw a simulation of it. There's a few devils in those details. But there's something serious in the way Ghost says, I wouldn't want to tangle with the real thing. Without a convenient nuclear reactor to blow, there's not really much one person can do against it. Except get eaten.

He pulls out a sandwich and tries to focus on that. Out-loud words are sort-of grounding, forcing him to feed his thoughts in specific patterns that keep them from cycling. "Anyway, I'm not about to speculate why the train grabbed me of all people," comes from the phone as Ghost unwraps the saran wrap from a sandwich and bites into it. "But I doubt it's for that. There's a little over forty people who escaped Talos, and a lot of them got much closer to that thing."

"How does that memory thing work, anyway? I've got a few memories in my head that I didn't start with. I know your brain works a hell of a lot differently than mine, but someone figured it out."

He flicks a few of the watermelon seeds away before taking another bite.

"Least technical version? My existing alien brain got modified by injecting a bunch of Morgan's neural structures into it." Ghost rolls his shoulder, and then gestures at his face. "So if you see this attached to anyone else, now you know what to call him."

He takes another bite out of his sandwich before pulling a piece of watermelon out himself. Slightly more technically, Typhon are lacking a lot of emotional and memory structures that humans have. So in order to make me more humanlike, they put copies of Morgan's into me. The thing about copying memory structures is that it also copies the memories in them, at least in patches and flashes.

He swallows, and gestures again. "And then they threw me in a simulation to test to see if I reacted like a human, or at least an alien that wouldn't try to murder them all the minute they let me loose. And that was all based on Morgan's direct experiences - he didn't sit around to watch, but he coded the whole thing the same way I'm talking to you."

Edited 2021-04-20 02:30 (UTC)

"So they messed with your whole neural make-up to do that... I mean, it's not like they didn't with mine. But not to that extent."

Which is some bullshit. But at the same time, Murphy had oddly benefitted from his forced empathy. It took damn long enough, but feeling the ache of the dead had softened a bit of the ruthlessness in him.

The bits that needed softened, anyway.

But rather than contemplate forced morality and whether or not an alien creature benefits from empathy it was never meant to have, a high thought strikes him. "So does that make you the mug and Morgan the mug and mug cake? Or would you still be a mug cake?" His brain has suddenly decided that it really wants Ghost turning into a mug and the fact he made mug cakes to be symbolism for something.

"...I don't think even telepathy will help me understand where you're going with that one." You're high, Murphy, your metaphors need according amounts of work.

And really, it's not like Morgan started out high on the rankings for empathy for other people in the first place. Probably somewhere near rock bottom, actually.

Ghost bites into his watermelon.

It's not really the same. You had a 'you' before everything that was done to you. 'Identity' was one of the things that had to get added in, for me. Phantoms don't have any of that kind of complex thought any more than, say, a spider does. The thing about evolution - it's not a drive towards more complex, but towards more effective. Even psychic predators don't need complex thinking when they're not using that as part of their hunting strategy.

"So you're not that different from a true zombie... Just in reverse."

Murphy closes his eyes again, this time focusing. This time it's a practically a full scenario. The perspective is from standing on top of a tractor in a small town. A massive, eerily big horde has kicked up dust thick in the air, stretching as far as the eye can see as they pass through.

And they're all just hunting. Murphy's safe. They occasionally scrape by him with tendrils of thought, little hungers. One or two stop by the bottom to look up at him, mesmerized, waiting for something from him while the others shamble by in their search.

His eyes open, Don't know how much of that got through. But... Zombies.

"Technically, I'm even made of corpse."

The answering memory is of a Weaver, tendrils extended towards a body, it starts to lift... and then suddenly, whoosh, Phantom on the other side of the glass. Except this one's sparkling with electricity and not staying in containment and whoops that's Ghost saying no more of that, mentally kicking the drawer shut.

The low-key hivemind thing? Is what Typhon normally are like. Getting stuffed full of Morgan put me on a different frequency and it fucked me up at first.

He jostles his head at how abruptly that ended. It was there and then it wasn't.

"So it is a lot like that, huh. Well, at least the guy made a good Rosetta Stone for you."

That bit he says out loud, flicking some of the watermelon seeds off at the ground. He briefly wonders if he'll hit anyone, then decides he'll hide under that bridge when he gets there.

"I don't know what this vaccine's going to end up doing to me. It changes me more and more."

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The Endless River

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