SET SAIL: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

[returnjourney]

SET SAIL: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

January 1, 2022 – January 7, 2022
Welcome to the new year and the Return Journey's opening event! We're starting with something light to get everyone acclimated and so no one feels they've missed too much if they app after the holiday season. We'd like to make it easy for any new players to jump in right away.

If you have any questions about the event, please ask here.

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1. What? My name is who? My name is—

Salutations! Now that everyone's respective warden and inmate orientations are out of the way, you've been given a helpful, mandatory name tag. It instantly appears on your shirt and can't be taken off, though where it appears on your shirt is a bit more unpredictable; it's an imperfect science, so it's just as likely to pop up on the back of your shirt as the front. If you try to remove your clothes, the tag appears on your skin; they're waterproof, so a quick shower won't get rid of it, either. What can we say — it's mandatory.

While the tags all follow the standard "HELLO my name is" format and have your name or most common alias, they also include some other information. For wardens, it features a space that declares "I LIKE" and one or two of your most choices hobbies. For inmates, it features these hobbies and "I have killed [x] people" (this may be a specific number or something akin to "a lot of" or "no"). Fun icebreaker, right?

2. Twenty Questions

Speaking of icebreakers, a brief announcement summons everyone to the observatory. Again, yes, it's mandatory; wardens must retrieve absent inmates before any more information is revealed. Better hop to it!

Upon arrival, passengers will discover that the Peregrine's resident bot force has reconfigured the observatory with small, portable cubicles, each with a transparent wall that retains a lovely view of the observatory's massive window. Each inmate is assigned their own cubicle and, upon entering, cannot leave without a warden's say so; the door only unlocks with a warden's CommLink.

Wardens are tasked with interviewing at least one inmate, to get a feel for their prospective charges. They can have as much time as they need to formulate what questions they want to ask, but that might leave some inmates waiting. Maybe that's on purpose, though. In any case, the exercise is over once an inmate is asked five questions and a warden receives five answers.

Archimedes will collect name tags after the interviews for incineration. The robotic owl is, notably, the only one who can remove them.

3. Polite Picnic

The greenhouse doesn't always have enough fresh produce to go around (and often what is collected is frozen and preserved), but given the circumstances — a new mission and new passengers — everyone can reap the rewards this month...if they share. A bot stationed in the mess hall mechanically tells anyone who crosses into range (whether they mean to visit the produce table or not) that they aren't to take more than three fruits and/or vegetables. If you choose not to abide by the rules...well, that depends if you're caught and by who.

The produce available are as follows:

Adalfane: Tastes like cocaine, but very nutritious, especially when eaten raw.
Tuadath: Smells awful, but very hearty when cooked, tasting a little like steak.
Tsanyi: Pure, sugary sweetness. Can be made into a refreshing drink, eaten raw, or sprinkled over a desert.

There are notably fewer tsanyi than adalfane or tuadath. But if everyone's nice and cooperates, each person can get exactly one.

Comments

[spanning]

"I don't have access to your file, so unfortunately—" ok, that unfortunately, at least, is unmistakably sarcastic, "—I can't give you that information. But you're not getting a phone call."

It's blunt.

"The best thing you can do for yourself right now is answer the question. Or is it incriminating somehow?"

[saklas]

"What on the whole gay planet are you going to do if it was incriminating? Take me away from my house and lock me up in a tiny cell?"

Volk raps on the wall of the cubicle.

"If you don't have my file at all, then you're just fishing. Are you going to ask me how I feel about every crime in alphabetical order? Arson, art theft, airplane piloting without a license ..."

[spanning]

Aki just rolls his eyes.

"Obviously not. I just asked you about devils, but you're dodging the question."

[saklas]

"Because no matter what I say or don't say, you're going to twist it later! I know how this works, you already decided that I did something, you're just trying to make me say something you can give to a judge!"

Volk waves his communicator like it's his paddle at an open pit auction.

"The first thing your little explanation told me when I got here is that I'm guilty! Why the hell-" He throws the CommLink off to the side, where it clunks against a wall and then hits the floor. "- would I cooperate with people that judged me before they even talked to me face to face?"

[spanning]

Aki's eyes follow the CommLink. Huh. Volk could have thrown it at him; it would've seemed more deliberate, at least. The fact he just chucked it, aimless...well, it reminds Aki of one of Power's tantrums, albeit dialed way down.

"You'll cooperate if you want to get out of here faster. It's like you said: You've already been declared guilty. You aren't being held for trial; that's over and done with. There's no reason to fish for information to give a judge, because you already have your verdict."

[saklas]

"Oh, listen to yourself. Does this really work on people? Coercing them to buying into the premise that they're bad and that doing whatever the group asks them to is the only way to fix it?"

Volk has stood up during this, fully agitated, his voice going tight and losing its coating of fake-sweetness. He sits down heavily now.

"What am I saying? Of course it does. I bet they're lining up at the Flavor-Aid table out there right now."

[spanning]

"If they've answered their questions, then yes, they're free to leave for other parts of the ship. That's the trade."

He doesn't say anything else for a moment. And besides that brief glance towards the CommLink, he never stops watching Volk, turning over what he's learned so far.

What a pain in the ass.

"Do you want to leave this box or not?"

[saklas]

The acid and sugar is back in his voice.

"I want to have not been detained in the middle of minding my own business. And I want my lawyer."

[spanning]

"Well, there's nothing I can do about that. If I understand where we are correctly, your lawyer isn't even in the same galaxy." He nods towards the window, out at the vast expanse of open space.

[saklas]

Volk snorts and turns his head away from both of them - the window and the cop.

"Yeah. Alright. Financially, what's the motivation in that completely imaginary scenario? Do you know how hard and expensive space travel is, and will likely always be? Why would they send people to space to punish them? The water and air alone must be astronomical."

He puts a fingertip on his cheek.

"Oh, I made a pun. Shoot me in the head next time that happens, it'll save my dignity."

[spanning]

"You have to have dignity in order to save it."

But Volk seems to like talking just for the sake of hearing himself talk, much the same way he seems to enjoy being stubborn just for the sake of being stubborn. So Aki slides his communicator towards himself and picks it up, thumbing it to life so he can go back to reading. It's obvious they'll be stuck in here a while yet, so he might as well do something productive while talking to this guy.

"So there are devils where you're from, then, if they're part of historical record." Aki Hayakawa, professional one-track mind.

[saklas]

It's not his fault that every time he enters a room he's always the smartest one in it and everyone else on the planet is an idiot asshole wasting his time. Godddd.

"Oh, we have a comedian over here. That's a good one, I see why your friends told you you're the funny one."

Dry as a bone.

"What do you mean 'where I come from'? Yes. We do. They're a law of physics. Augustin's three leading causes of death are meth, alligators, and physics."

[spanning]

Hearing devils referred to as a law of physics is a new one. Maybe not wrong, though.

"According to this supposed history text," and it's Aki's turn to wave his CommLink, if without even half the enthusiasm, "they don't exist. Every major historical event involving devils? Gone. Centuries of them. Even—"

His mouth thins and he sets the CommLink down a bit rougher than warranted, with a sharp snap.

"That should count as answering a question."

[saklas]

"What?"

That's... bizarre. Volk's hostility drops at the implication that they're actually both confused here. It's a piece of a puzzle - curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.

"Don't you work for the people who wrote it?"

There's no heat in the question, he's just confirming the circumstances at hand. Volk reaches halfway to spinning Aki's CommLink around to read it for himself, then stops. Oh, right. You can't just take a dude's phone, that's like weird red flag behavior.

"Can I look? I won't go through your pictures or anything, I'm not a fucking ... pervert."

[spanning]

Do not share CommLinks. The warning on the communicator page comes to him unbidden, though there's no sensitive data on his CommLink and it's not like anyone is going to break into a forbidden area when they're trapped in a box together.

He guesses Volk could try to use it to escape, even if asking makes that seem unlikely. Not important yet, in any case.

"Can you read Japanese?" Setting everything else aside for that, first.

[saklas]

The geography where Volk comes from is fucked.

Can he read a language he's never even heard of:

"Mm, not a chance. There's nothing in Mercsat in there?"

It's not the language he's speaking right now - that's Orcish, obviously - but more or less everybody speaks a little Mercsat, he can get through eighty percent of it as long as it's not too technical.

[spanning]

Aki isn't conceited enough to think he's heard of every language, but his head does tilt as he tries to place it.

"No. The library has books in other languages, but I only rented what I could read." Though he skipped most of the suggested hits for folklore and the occult.

"Whoever wrote it doesn't seem to be affiliated with...this. The Admiralty," he corrects, though he's still not entirely sure how to refer to his newfound career.

[saklas]

Okay, so - speculative fiction, that exists.

[That makes the most sense out of any explanation.]

[spanning]

It was listed as nonfiction.

[Said dryly and as he's possibly thinking he may be bad at navigating these terminals, but he isn't that bad.]

[saklas]

Yes, clearly, but they also said we're in fucking outer space.

[A broad gesture, to indicate the viewing window, and all of the fucking Outer Space.]

If you have access to it through that thing, it's programmed to feed you only approved things and propaganda. Trust me. I've been looking through it. The apps and OS are both custom, somebody bothered.

[Also, it's going to be SO annoying to have to type on a slightly different size of keyboard because they didn't just use Lito or Google?]

[spanning]

Have you been to the resource library?

[saklas]

No, I got here and they threw me in this cell with you.

[spanning]

Answer two more questions for me and we both get to leave.

[Yes, he's keeping count. Though he foregoes asking another question right away.]

Just out of the materials I can read, there are thousands—tens of thousands—of them. It isn't feasible to fake all of that.

[Barring, maybe, some kind of contract, but he isn't interested in entertaining that line of thought.]

[saklas]

[Volk spreads out his arms in a "how on Earth am I supposed to react to that?" gesture.]

What the fuck are you proposing here? And how do I even know you're not just making this up, conveniently in a language I can't read.

[spanning]

Once you're out of here, you can check for yourself. And whatever you think of that—it's your business what you do with it.

[Aki is confident Volk has no interest in actually being convinced, short of what he can see with his own eyes. But even then...]

Obviously, you don't think any of this is real. But if you can't find evidence to the contrary, what happens then?