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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Bob squawks, somewhat annoyed as he lands on the ground nearby for lack of a branch.

Casper barks and lies down in front of Ghost, paws in the air. Play? Pet? Pet or play? It's not like he's lost his mind while in dog form, but it's easier to just be silly. Besides, most people like dogs even if they don't like other people.

See, the thing is, Casper, you're not an especially convincing dog, not to him.

Also, he doesn't really know what to do with a dog, especially when that dog is in fact a person.

It's probably obvious on Ghost's face, really.

"... So is now a bad time to mention that I can feel minds enough to know that you're not a dog?"

He barks in laughter and flops on his side, turning back to his normal form in the blink of an eye. "Aww. No fun." But he's grinning, so he's not too put out. "I'm used to being hooked up to a psychic network and can communicate like that, but it's not here." It's very annoying, because being a dog is fun but being unable to communicate is not.

"That'd be too easy." It's said with amusement, but Ghost's expression is a little more thoughtful because damn if that wouldn't make his life either infinitely easier or infinitely more of a pain in the ass, depending on how exactly it works.

"To be fair, I would have questioned it anyway, given your buddy's never far from you." A nod at Bob. Hey Bob. "And he's not exactly a dumb bird, either."

Yes to both options.

"... True. We've kind of got a special sort of connection - he can go out a ways, but not too far. There's a limit." Bob preens a bit at the compliment. He knows he is, but it's nice to see other people recognize it.

You're a cool bird, Bob, but don't get smug about it.

"Why a dog?" Yes, that's clearly the priority. There's enough magic here that he's given up on 'how' for most circumstances.

"... I got shoved into the head of someone who could turn into one during my time in the last place. A few of us were pulled off of the main mission and shoved to another world where government agents were trying to get information on transformations that happened to people in a specific area once every five years. Guy I got put into was an old hand at the transformations and helped out the other Travelers. ... He was a dogsledder, too."

Hm... "I wasn't aware when I was basically inhabiting the guy. But that transformation stuck with me... maybe 'cause of the whole 'werewolf boyfriend' thing."

Well. That's not an answer he expected. It's weirdly familiar without being an exact match to anything.

(Really, the unsettling part is that the way Ghost is 'human' is a lot like that.)

"You know, I kind of know the feeling."

"Yeah? ... Huh." He rolls over slightly to look Ghost in the face a bit better. "At least someone other than Q'uila does. It's super hard to explain... we usually remembered what 'we' had done, it was just kind of hazy..."

"I'm made out of a large portion someone else's brain," Ghost says with a shrug. It's getting less weird to say so every time. "For the first while that I was alive, I'd slam face-first into his memories instead of having any kind of normal dreams, and sometimes when I was awake, too." And that's not even counting the simulation. He doesn't really want to talk about the sim right now.

"... Huh. That sounds pretty rough. Are you sleeping any better nowadays? I can help if you need." It's on the table, even if most people don't like magical sleep aid.

"It wasn't really bad sleep in the first place, but thanks for the offer." A shrug of one shoulder. "I don't need as much sleep as a human does, anyway, so what the train makes people get is actually more than I need."

"That's fair." And also lucky. "Sadly the magic 'go to sleep' spell doesn't work on yourself, only other people. It's really annoying."

Magic is Weird, Ghost.

"Sometimes after the train wakes us up I just try to go back to sleep. I'm not a morning person."

"I'm not, either, but probably not quite in the same way." If the train didn't enforce bedtime, it wouldn't be that uncommon to see Ghost got to bed at midnight and then be up and kicking around the dining car at five. Alien brains just hit different. And anyway, sleeping in for corporate science scumbags is like, 8am instead of 5:30.

"So tell me more about your other place?"

"Enhanced senses means the lights are extra bright before I get a chance to adjust." It's mean and he doesn't like it.

Liminal, though... "Are you familiar with the Major Arcana of the standard tarot deck? It's relevant, I swear." He just... has to have that established before he explains.

"Oh, I know that feeling." Maybe not in the same context, but, y'know, that's kind of what happens any time y'all are having a party on the train.

"And I can't say I'm super familiar, no. Not my particular line of psychic bullshit." Is he going to dismiss it? Honestly, not at this point. But Morgan lived and breathed the hard sciences, so that's what his frame of reference is.

"Right, so... briefly, it's a set of twenty two cards numbered zero to twenty one, from The Fool to The World. They're archetypes representing stages of life or things encountered on the journey - from the innocence of the Fool to the hope of the Star. ... I am aware that sort of thing probably sounds like bullshit to most people."

Anyway. "So the place we were dragged to had beings with the names of those cards that embodied those archetypes and 'drafted' people for their teams. I got drafted for Moon, I disagree with her assessment, but my werewolf boyfriend's happy with his placement on her team. Supposedly the Arcana that won their game would have influence on The World until their next game."

He gives Ghost a moment to absorb that. "The 'game' consisted of us going to a world and fixing whatever issue was going on there, kind of like the missions here. Two Arcana would be competing per world, and whichever archetype our solution resonated with the most was the winner. Everyone's optimistic for the future? Might be a Sun victory. Everything's been left in a state of chaos? Might be a Tower victory."

Or it was, until some people decided it was a good idea to bust into Tower's pocket dimension and kill them.

"So are aliens." It's bland, but an amused kind of bland. No one in this conversation can can say bullshit to anything anymore.

He's quiet and patient as Casper explains, though if Casper is paying very careful attention, he might notice the too-quick flash of text - literal mental notes - on Ghost's phone screen. "That's definitely something," he says when Casper's done. The details might be lost on him, but 'competition between not quite gods' is close enough, probably. "Not sure what nouns or adjectives are appropriate beyond that, but something."

"'Something' is about right, yeah. But we learned how to mold the space to make doors that led to rooms and stuff. Some people made restaurants, even though we could just make food appear. I made a big Norse-style hall with rooms on the sie for me an my friends."

"See, that part is cool and would actually be useful around here." It's so hard to get real private-feeling space on the train. Also food being basically endless would be a huge plus, even if Ghost has to just pretend thermodynamics isn't real in order to accept that it's possible. "Even if mine would end up being some kind of Neo Deco lab space because I'm not that original, it'd still be mine."

And have psychic shielding.

"I mean I ripped the basic initial floorplan from my mother's hall, but not terrible and full of... gross smells. I set it up kind of like one of those dining halls you see in pictures of summer camps, with the split log benches and a pass through to a kitchen."

He frowns. Uh. "What's... Neo Deco?"

"Art Deco volume two: computers and even more corporate dystopia edition."

Ghost pulls his phone off his waist and fiddles with his phone for a minute before showing Casper a picture. "That kind of shit."

"Ah, yes. Corporate bullshit aesthetic." He does not have a very high opinion of most large companies in general.

Ghost openly snorts, taking his phone back and replacing it at his waist. "In space," he quips immediately. "But yeah, you're really not wrong about that one."

"Even better. Not sure if it's better or worse than government bullshit aesthetic - we had to deal with the coroner's office a lot and that's in one of those big T shaped concrete buildings that has twelve million windows." Dealing with the coroner's office directly sucked so much. Even though autopsies were fun, the paperwork very much was not.

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