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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... Well. That is certainly what's written on the tin, huh. Straight to the point.

He could appreciate it if he was a little less off-guard by the whole thing.

"You're not; I'm not as human as I look." He shrugs, a little self-consciously. "Alien hybrid, but most people don't take too well to the giant ominous looming shadow thing."

Also, having people see him that way that are total strangers feels almost like getting caught with his pants down, though that's a metaphor that might be lost on this person, considering her state of dress.

"A hybrid?"

Merwen can only think of this in terms of genetics. "The lifeshapers of your world must be very clever," she remarks, then rethinks that. "Perhaps, anyway. It's true I've never met anyone who looks like what I saw," which is putting it mildly, "but you show every sign of having a soul, so what are appearances in that case?"

'Lifeshapers' isn't translating exactly, but it's closer to the truth - the emotional truth - of how he was born than anything he's heard yet, so there's a moment of bitter, internal laughter. Yeah, his creators certainly shaped his life, alright.

"Too clever for their own good, most of them." That's said with something like a chuckle, a momentary smile and an almost-silent huff of a laugh. "Souls really aren't my area of expertise, but the guy I know who cares the most about them would probably agree with you."

Damn, but he misses Aaron, now.

"It seems I've spent a lifetime looking for souls where some of my sisters wouldn't see them," Merwen says, with a wry roll of her eyes, "and in people far more recognizably human. But I can hardly claim to be an expert either."

She shrugs.

"Is that why you speak from your," she waves a webbed hand vaguely in the direction of the phone on his belt, "your device?"

"Oh, no, not really," he says. "There's something just wrong enough with how my brain and my mouth relate to each other that this is much easier. I'd be struggling for enough words for any kind of conversation, otherwise."

He has no idea where her technology level is at, but that's probably a good enough explanation to get started with.

"Oh, I see. Like a support for a healing leg. How clever." Her interest is genuine, at least, even if her understanding of the more technological sorts of devices is somewhat lacking. It's just not how her people do things. "Certainly I prefer to share speech to you struggling."

"More like a true prosthetic, since it's not going to get any better." I'm sorry, but it's permanent. Ghost mentally shoves the echo of a memory aside before he winds up repeating it aloud, and says instead, "If I had to have only one thing with me from home, I would have been pretty screwed if it wasn't this one."

"It would have been regrettable to have your voice taken away," Merwen agrees.

There's a lot of questions bouncing around in her head, but at least a few of them are probably too rude to ask someone you just met. She knows that. She's trying very hard not to ask them.

Instead, she decides to offer an invitation. "Would you like to walk with me, for a time? I'm sure there's much we can learnshare from each other."

"Regrettable might be an understatement." Again, a bit of that self-deprecating laugh. "I tend to focus on the practical side a little more, and it would have been a pain in the ass."

He nods to her question though. "Sure. I'm trying to avoid getting too close to the river, though."

"You don't enjoy the river?"

She tilts her head; that's a pretty baffling concept to her. "I admit, I'm disappointed that we aren't to swim in it. Not that I'm about to go chasing wild currents like a reckless child, but it still would have been nice."

"You remember the train mentioning that people with certain abilities should avoid it? Well, I'm smart enough to listen to something like that." No, he's not going to specify exactly where he falls on that 'extrasensory abilities' chart.

"I'm not much for swimming anyway," he continues. "The sensation of water on my skin is a little too much. You look like you're built for it, though."

She lifts one webbed hand, and smiles. "Shora is all ocean," she says by way of explanation. "The people here look very strange to me, I admit, even when they're close enough to my own species."

Merwen is quiet for a moment, then adds, "Though they have been kind to me, and I must share as much strangeness to most people here as they do to me."

"Entirely? Wow." He shakes his head lightly. "Hope you don't mind that I'm not exactly eager to visit." Sounds like a mild form of purgatory for Ghost personally, though there's probably some people who would like it fine.

He smiles, though. "I think most of the people here are pretty good about it," he says. "Better than I expected, at least."

"That is true. We are so varied here." Merwen smiles a little, her expression soft. "And everyone I've shared meeting with is eager to accept each other as sister species. That hasn't always been my experience, and I'm glad to share in something better than that."

She glances at him sideways. "Do you really find water so terrible?" There's more than a hint of disbelief in her voice.

He hums for a minute, considering how to put it. "Have you ever been a room that's just too loud, no matter how you try to block it out? More water than a shower is kind of like that, but for feeling things on my skin." So it's not a pleasant experience overall.

"But there's a saying where I come from - 'Takes all kinds.' If everyone was the same, then that'd make it pretty hard to solve problems or even see where the problems are, if you ask me."

"That's insightful," Merwen says, warmly. "I should remember that. Perhaps that's the strength of us as a group, on this train. 'Takes all kinds.'" She says it like she's trying to commit it to memory. "I'm sorry that water shares such discomfort with you, but I do know the feeling for other things."

"Yeah, especially with the variety of situations the train must throw us into." In some ways, it's a more extreme version of what Ghost is used to. Everyone has a niche; it's just a bunch of more extreme specializations.

"Yes. I would find it more interesting if it wasn't also coercive." Merwen gives a wry sort of smile, half a grimace. "I'm sure there would have been some who would have been glad to come share in this. Not myself, but some."

She's still a little sulky about that, maybe.

"I probably would have," Ghost admits. "Maybe not exactly the when I was pulled from, but..." He was made to help people, save people, or at least try, goddamn it. "Can't say I blame anyone who's pissed about it, though."

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The Endless River

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