the_last_resort | 4th Wall Event

4th Wall Event

Who: Various
What: 4th Wall Event
When: M12 D3-D5 (on Mar 7 - 15)
Where: Around Blackway and Blackstaff
Notes & Warnings: Please attach any warnings necessary to thread subjects. This does count for game canon. All 4th wall threads go here, and information is available on OOC and news. The game's navigation is here.

Welcome, ladies, gentlemen, intersexed, androgynes, robots, energy beings, and life forms of all kinds. I am Jeffers, your servant, host, and resort AI.

Let me extend gratitude to you all on behalf of the entire community for agreeing to come and render service in the wake of our unfortunate incident with spontaneously frictionless surfaces. Your assistance in rebuilding is greatly valued.

Visitors, I encourage you to speak with the other Imports. Imports, I ask you to help our guests enjoy their stay.

Please consult with any terminal or one of my android drone avatars if you have any questions that cannot be answered by the residents. I most sincerely hope you find your time at Blackstaff a pleasant one.

For those of you who enjoy “fun” [Jeffers says as if he’s not sure that any of this really qualifies as fun in his book], Mr. Jellicles’ Emporium requires extensive repair. There are broken windows and bottles hither and thither, and do be careful of the broken glass; we wouldn’t want any further injuries. Broken arcade games must be fixed. Furniture repaired, or, if it is beyond hope, taken away. And small, colourful plastic balls are scattered asunder and must be gathered up to be relocated into a “fun cage,” but worse and far more deadly are the skiballs and bowling balls. I must insist no one drop one of those on one’s own or another’s foot

The local restaurants require new food to be brought in. Because of the quarantine, food shortage is somewhat of a danger, therefore any food will do, but I for one would especially appreciate champagne and truffles. In addition, new dishes must be unpacked, furniture repaired, and cooking areas cleaned. I expect the cooking areas to be able to pass the most rigorous of health inspections once the cleaning is finished. Not that we have a ministry of health and safety here, but it is the principle of the thing.

With the clinic having been overwhelmed by recent events, they are currently understaffed to handle the full scope of injuries. Assistance treating the wounded and the ill would be a very great help. Do note that only persons with appropriate physician or nursing qualifications will be able to assist patients with direct care. It would not be at all appropriate to have, for example, vehicle mechanics performing surgery. Unless perhaps the patient is a sentient robot car. Then the clinic will make an exception. Many other tasks are available for other volunteers who desire clinic duties, however. In particular, wounded patients may require assistance retrieving personal items, sending messages, or returning home. Furthermore, as always, the clinic would be grateful to receive donations of medicines from your homeworld

The loss of friction created an extensive mess around town and I so dislike messes. I would like it very much if knocked over displays were righted, broken glass cleared, and disabled vehicles removed from the streets. Let’s have a nice, tidy village, shall we? Furthermore, some residents misplaced pets during the hullaballoo and would very much like them found and returned. (Not to mention the havoc stray beasts are having on the songbird population.) Shelves in various shops must be restocked with new, unbroken merchandise, and many storefronts and signs are in need of general repair.

And with Jeffers announcement to the population, the town was opened up to anyone willing to help. Some of the citizens who had tended towards suspicion towards imports for some time (an as-of-yet unidentified one took part in sabotage against the town) have changed their views and are now extremely welcoming, offering whatever they can to in return for the help they're getting from the visiting imports.

While the guests are here, they have free rein of the village, and even visiting the wilderness if they have a permit. First they must be instructed on how to defend themselves against the planet's hostile species. A guide is still recommended, but with the busy schedule one is not absolutely essential.

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Oh. Well. Having my secret past revealed and potentially exploited in a place that I wanted to form a new life in. How different and out of the ordinary that would feel to me.

[She says wryly, sarcastically, without real interest in his threat.]

Unless I was here temporary performing a short service as requested by your AI boss, and I happened to know the extents to which you would go to seduce one person. To the point that you would threaten the fate of a planet or offer severed body parts in exchange for cooperation.

[She sighs as she pulls out a scanner, goes to a woman with a poorly wrapped wound, and encourages her to hold still so she can seal it. And by encourage, one means "orders".] If you are done pretending that you have power over me Mr. Pottinger, I would like to inform you that you've done very little to invoke my kindness. And I do have it, you're just done nothing to appeal to it.

Threaten the fate of a planet? Now, I'll admit to severed body parts and some other...perhaps excessive actions. But I think I'd remember if I put the entire bloody planet at risk.

[Oh. And now she's with another patient again. He has to be careful what he says now. He continues to keep his voice low.]

Look. I'm not trying to say I have power over you, I'm trying to say that...I'm attempting to make a new start here. And if you were thinking of doing the same it would be only polite if neither of us did anything--or said anything--that could spoil that.

Do you remember how you reacted when I was trying to stop the Kaziri?

[She finishes what she's doing with that unfortunate victim and starts to carry her bag to the next.]

Threatening people in kind language isn't polite, Niles. But since you seem so obsessed with the idea, I have no interest with interfering with you and if at all possible, I would like to avoid you altogether. [She can't rightfully say that she doesn't think she'll change, considering how casually she took her work until empathy in her grew. But considering this reintroduction her hopes aren't exactly high.]

The Kaziri? I don't know what you're talking about. The last I heard the only thing you were trying to stop was Datak Tarr making an ass of himself after being released from Camp Reverie.

You don't remember? What did that ego device in your neck do to you? [And she grabs his shoulder to forcibly turn him around, not caring if people are around while she looks.]

[Niles reflexively raises his hand to touch the spot on the back of his neck (inconveniently getting in the way of Doc Yewll examining it), as she turns him around.]

You tell me. You're the doctor around here.

[It looks as though it's healing normally, once she forces his hand away, and she steps back when she's done.]

The Kaziri ark brain was possessing Irisa. It attempted to terraform the planet and destroyed New York. I had to go into hiding after your plan was found out and you blamed the entire thing on me. The only thing that saved me was finding the ark brain, figuring out a way to destroy it, and then being able to come up with a pile of shtako to keep your girlfriend off your trail so you wouldn't kill me.

Nolan ended up finding an alternate way of stopping Irisa, but not without punching me in the face first. [And she sounds incredibly bitter about all of this.]

You have a lot of priorities in controlling how other people think of you because you can't stand rejection. You might want to take care of that if you're really planning on starting over.

Good to see your as blunt and tactless in your opinions as ever, Doc.

[But the rest...]

...

[...]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'd remember all that. My plan never happened at all. Mid-way through I got exiled to the Dakota Reaches by Mercado because of his bad intel about a Gulanee. I'd still be stuck there now if I hadn't been picked up by a Travel Agent and brought here.

[She goes quiet, wondering what's going on. Then she blinks.]

What about a Gulanee? [She wants to hear how this went.]

A piece of Ark fell near Defiance. A big one. I took a squad in to scavenge and, somewhat against my better judgement, brought Nolan as well. It turned out that there was a Gulanee in there. Alive, active, not in stasis, and pissed as hell at all humans, thinking that the war was still on. Not that Viceroy Mercado never bothered to mention any of that to me. I lost the squad and destroyed the Gulanee. [Well, Nolan did. But he helped. And Churchill. Churchill did more than anyone.]

It was just a week or two after the mess up with the E.G.O. implant. And Mercado send me away. I never had the change to see my plan through to completion.

...That's not what happened for me. [What did happen for her hurt, though, and not that her trust in people has been exemplary but she has been jarred since then. The most untrustworthy man in Defiance has proven her best friend, surprisingly loyal.]

[She picks up her bag once more.] I worked for you back where I left.

Strange...

[Then a thought pops into his head and he raises his index finger.]

No, wait. I've been learning about this for my job. It's...um...divergent timelines. We're clearly from the same universe, the same basic reality, up until my exile. But in your timeline, either I was never exiled at all or I was, but then I came back, whereas in mine I was sent off to the Reaches and then came here.

Well? What do you think? Am I right? [Said like an eager student wanting a gold star.]

Well, that explains the confusion.

I ended up living in a subterranian hell for two weeks, my food being ruined by pests and being driven to desperation while you resided in the McCawley home in luxury. And you had no trouble blaming everything on me.

So, congratulations, you were stopped a week before condemning me. But it doesn't change what your plans were, or the fact I think you would have.

Yeah, I probably would have. [He freely admits.]

But I didn't. The "I" that's here now didn't. I'm making a new timeline. Anything can happen.

[He wonders if, as a Travel Agent, he can go back in time and convince Connor Lang to come here instead of dying in Defiance. Or if he can't do it because of some dimension-breaking rule, perhaps Una could. Maybe instead of just pretending to save Kenya Rosewater's life, he can in truth save Connor Lang's. Or Connor's and Kenya's. Then they would have cause to be grateful to him and it wouldn't even have to be an Indogene trick.]

Then hopefully Amanda will be less doubting when Nolan comes to her with news of the Kaziri. Or Erep won't try to use Irisa as a weapon again.

[She turns her back on him again, irritated that he is so flippant about his potential to change the future. She's relatively sure that his intentions would be selfish. Her abrasive nature makes people assume the most of her- but hers is mostly of a fear of being hurt.]

[Considering she's already been tortured once, it's valid.]

You are lucky I have some empathy, or I'd smear your name across this town relentlessly. But all I really want to do is to be left alone for my chance at a new, clean life.

[She turns on him.] I've had that chance taken from me in Defiance, thanks to you back home. So you should probably leave. Before my empathy runs short. [And she's so, so grateful she's in a position where she can say that to him. It's freeing.]

[He wants to argue, but...he's not mayor here. And she could make his life very difficult here if she wanted to.

So he just raises his gloved hands in surrender.]

Okay. I'm going.

[And he backs away a few steps then turns and departs.]

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4th Wall Event

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