this is the part where prison is more or less dave and busters

[saklas]

Passengers: Everyone who wants to come see what the weird vending machine is about for the first time it is open to them! This is an open mingle/party style log.
Location: "a corner," the location of the Commissary
Date: February 1 - 7 on year one of our cool and sexy journey
Summary: 14 space idiots squint at the ATM that can supposedly make elk meat and clown shoes for them
Warnings: Will add as needed! I'm 90% sure someone's going to ask for drugs or blades, just as a weather forecast

Comments

[saklas]

"Yes. I am also tough, and you should tell girls about it."

A little wince at the next question.

"I don't freeze up. Other things happen. It won't get in the way."

[rank1]

Travis could have winced at the first. Maybe it's just the girls Travis knows, but he can't imagine a single one of them going for this guy. They'd eat him alive, poor guy.

"Other things like what?"

[saklas]

Well, okay, now he has to make something up.

...No, nothing. He can't think of anything on the spot like this. Okay he will tell like a third of the truth.

"Magic flares. They're harmless, my Court just makes butterflies and rabbits and stuff."

Okay, so more like a... tenth of the truth.

Flares are embarrassing, but they only happen when someone has more than one kind of magic and one effect can accidentally trigger the other. Implying that he's got two kinds of magic at twenty six, when most people don't develop personal magic until their middle age, makes him look like a cool child prodigy. So, it balances out.

There are no holes in this logic because they aren't in space. Everyone is from Nephele. Thanks.

[rank1]

Travis does think this is pretty fucking cool, and his eyebrows shoot up in unabashed surprise, but hey, he is also a man from a world without real magic.

"Chicks don't dig bunny rabbits?" he asks. He's sure he could have turned that into something impressive, a handful of years ago. "But I can see how that wouldn't be helpful when, you know, trying to escape."

[saklas]

"It won't hurt or help, they'll just be annoying."

Volk crosses his arms. This part is all lie.

"Chicks ... do? They do. I get a lot of uncomfortable DMs. Look, relationships are hard."

He's been to conventions. He's had teenagers wait in hours-long lines to propose marriage to him, while dressed as one of his characters. It means something is working, at least. That thing, however, is not Volk himself, because people don't usually stick around after being irradiated by his actual personality.

[rank1]

"Ah," Travis says, like he's found a lead. "But you are getting DMs! Some guys can't get any girls to look their way."

Not him, of course. Not in his former line of work. Can't say the gaze has always been normal, though.

[saklas]

Volk draws in enough of a breath to sigh.

"I'm a little famous."

He's in a shitty spot where the autograph lines make C23 organizers wildly underplan for the volume of people and the queue overflows into the room next door - but his apartment is still awful. He made a finance magazine's list of Thirty Rising Leaders, Stars, and Entrepreneurs Under Thirty - but most people who have seen his work don't actually know who he is. Did you watch Passage? Sure, yeah, I loved it. Who showran that? Uhh, I don't remember.

God.

"They don't want to be in my personal life. They just want my personal life to be exactly like they imagined it."

[rank1]

A little. Travis nods. That shit's always on the road, but it's that little flick of the eyes up to the rearview mirror that puts his stomach in an ugly place.

"What do they think they're getting?"

[saklas]

Volk moves his neck in a way that's not really a shrug and not really a head-shake - just something that expresses that he's having trouble articulating.

He goes to stories, as usual. Peter Pan's shadow is always running off and escaping him. It has to be chased, caught, sewn back on. When all of this started, he thought of himself as Peter, manipulating his shadow to make spectacular shows in Plato's cave - but life has a way of making everything turn on its head. He's sure he's the shadow, these days. Mute, restless, gone already when exposed to too much light.

"Somebody better than me. Smarter. Funnier. Has his shit together. Has a plan four steps ahead, to keep everybody guessing. I'd just be getting in his way."

He lifts his arms, drops them.

"People always say they thought I'd be taller, which is annoying. How'd we get on this subject. Nobody cares about this. Um. The owl has commlinks?"

[rank1]

"Fuck the owl," Travis replies, curt and swift. This shit is real, and it gets under his skin quick –– who doesn't care? He's here, isn't he? "Look. Maybe you're not that guy, but you're you. You're here in space prison and you're the only person making a serious effort to get out of here, that sounds like enough for me."

He's almost testy about it:

"And the pithy shit you say on the network is funny as fuck. Don't ever cut yourself down for being yourself. It's the only thing that matters!"

(This is a terrible take.)

[saklas]

Volk looks a little startled, and pulls backwards into the collar of his coat in a turtle-ish way.

"Uh. I don't know. Thanks. ... I mean, I know lots of ways that who I am could be better, but I definitely don't want people telling us how they think we'd be better."

His eyes go flinty. "Not their call. My life's mine to decide on. If you choose your own actions and then get slapped on the hand and told to try again, it's not even really a choice, is it? It's just a trap."

[rank1]

"Worse than a trap," Travis says. "You've been set up for life. And who knows where the line is? How long we can be here before this is just the rest of our lives?"

[saklas]

"I'd rather they just pretend it was a punishment."

Completely serious.

"Or revenge. The blurred line here between restorative 'justice'"

Volk's eyes go wide and creepy-doll-like as he does air quotes.

"-that supposedly focuses primarily on the good of the universe and just weird punitive shit where the focus is on making us bored and uncomfortable is non-existent. Just say you set up a fucked up tiny society with an artificial class system and made us lower because you think we're bad, man, stop acting like it's for our good or safety."

What good is it doing the universe, in aggregate, for him to not be able to have coffee in the morning?

[rank1]

He's been so busy thinking about the cool shit and aesthetic trappings and the surface-level fuckery of being considered a space criminal that justice hasn't even crossed his mind. It puts a sour twist on his face.

"I don't even how how making us into other people is supposed to do good in the universe," Travis replies. "We're just a couple people."

All he ever did was kill people who killed other people. Is that really a problem?

[saklas]

"It isn't.

If they really meant what they said, we both know who'd actually be in here. Stemrock and her shit. The Prince of Vanishing. Anybody running Jurchen. Probably the POJ. Those guys having to admit they did something wrong would change things.

I think they probably just picked up a bunch of people nobody would believe."

[rank1]

Well, that's certainly Travis. He knows it. Sylvia wouldn't even let him finish talking before blowing him off.

"For what, though? Why? Is some Truman Show shit where we're entertainment for someone?"

And no offense to the guy here, but he'd expect way more hot babes for something like that. It's not 1998 anymore.

[saklas]

"Why's anyone start a cult? Why does anybody - kidnap people and stick them in a suburban basement for eight years?"

People are just kind of fucked up.

[rank1]

"Yeah, but this place is way more expensive than any fuckin' basement," he replies. "And people in cults are giving money to be there... I don't think repossessing my trailer and selling my collectibles would be anywhere near enough."

[saklas]

"I don't know."

It's frustrating. It's the big donut hole in the center of this argument.

"Honestly, if the story they're telling is completely true? This is more expensive than it needs to be. Why are we in space? There is no reason to be in space."

[rank1]

Space is cool, Travis thinks, for what must be the hundredth time. It just is. No wonder so many incredible stories are set out here.

What he says is: "If you think about it, prison is fucking expensive no matter what. But if you're gonna have a prison like this, it'd make more sense for it to be Escape from New York rather than Lockout. Have you seen those?"

Fucking alternate universes are gonna make this so complicated.

[saklas]

"Haven't, but I get the idea. But, why not like, an island. It's cheaper and it comes with oxygen."

[rank1]

"I guess because if people on an island riot, there are easier ways to get away."

Space get more and more complicated the more he thinks about it.

addiction discussion

[saklas]

"So is the objective for us to kill the wardens, in that event, or -?"

Volk's brain is so good at thinking of things that could go wrong that he's currently on medication to try to make it be less prone to doing so. It is doing that thing right now. He's staring at a blank piece of wall over Travis' shoulder.

"Like, we are SO far from actual police, or spaceship engine maintenance, I guess, or a hospital. What if we need a medical thing that's more complicated than the stupid tube can handle? What if someone has a stroke, you can't fix a stroke with surgery. I had to go cold turkey and it sucked sharp rusty robot asshole, and there's just nothing they can do. Imagine if someone comes in here addicted to something stronger than salted caramel vape.

The cost of shipping food and soap and toilet paper alone has got to be gong show, right? Like, the overhead of this place. Who the fuck is up there looking at their books every quarter and going 'yeah, this seems like a good use of resources'?"

Re: addiction discussion

[rank1]

"But there's what, a dozen of us in this place? And the storage complex is huge, it probably has enough stuff to feed us for a lifetime. Did you see the whole fucking cow in there?"

There's gotta be a lot of cows in there.

"Guess it's so lax because they figure we can't do shit about it anyway."

[saklas]

"I don't think that's real."

The cow. Volk toes at the floor.

"I mean, obviously. A lot of this is just way easier to fake."