to: all; blog post 01

[stations]

Hey, everybody. My name's Jack, and I think I should probably start this thing out with an apology and a warning.

This is probably going to get long, and I can almost guarantee most of you won't find it interesting at all. To be perfectly transparent, I think it's a pretty safe bet that if you have even the slightest disinterest in reading stories that are completely irrelevant to you, you're going to want to go ahead and magically mute this message. Seriously, this is about to be the definition of 'too long, didn't read'. Sorry for cluttering your heads-up display, I'm not really sure of a better way to make this thing opt-in.

This post is intended for people who are bored, or curious, or maybe just really, really desperate for something to read while sitting on the toilet.

Back home, I used to run a blog. For those of you from worlds that don't have blogs, it's basically like a diary or a journal entry that you post in a public space for strangers to read, and then make really judgmental comments about. I'm not selling the premise very well, but trust me when I say there's something reassuring about putting your story into the public domain. Writers probably get different things out of it, but for me, it's nice to have a sort of "reality check-point". For reasons I won't bore you with, there are times in my life where I question my memories, or the nature of my reality. Having other people in the world who can remember something with me, or who can shed some light on what happened, has literally saved my life once or twice. It was my therapist's idea. Sort of.

The thing is, my blog posts aren't actually about me exactly. They're about the truly bizarre, absolutely balls-out insane things that happen around me, or things that I get to see, whether I like it or not. Usually not.

Lately, it's mostly been the latter.

I think most (if not all) of us have been granted gifts by the singularity. I'm pretty sure mine have just been taking little things that already happened to me back home and amping them up about a thousand times. I've been seeing people's memories. I don't have a lot of control over it, it just sort of... happens. A lot of the time they're boring, inane things. People brushing their teeth, eating, waiting in line, stuff like that. One truly horrific memory of somebody beating somebody else half to death with what looked like a Hitachi magic wand, but I didn't see who exactly that one came from and I think I'm happier not knowing. Those aren't the ones I want to talk about, though.

Today, I want to talk about the ocean.



I've accidentally swallowed two memories lately that are nautical-ish. I don't think they're related, but maybe? There seems (sea-ms?) to be a lot of sea-related stuff going on, so who knows.

The first one is the story of a turtle. You guys might have seen him aboard that involuntary cruise we were all made to go on for Christmas. They called him Admiral Chuck, and frankly, he was fucking adorable. I would die for that turtle. I might just be biased, though, because I watched him get swept away from his home. Apparently my memory-thing also works on turtles, so that was a fun revelation.

One minute I was standing aboard the deck of the ship, and the next, I was him. I was the turtle. It was a simpler life, a simpler mindset, and I was happy. I lived in a city with my turtle family, and all I really needed for everything to be perfect was a ripe, juicy tomato.

And then... the storms came. I was on the streets at the time, making my way to where I knew my family would be: a quaint little garden with a nice gardener who always gave us those sweet, sweet tomatoes when the rain started coming down. It went from a drizzle to a downpour fast. I'm talking, cats and fucking dogs, buy the supplies for milk sandwiches, batten down the hatches holy fucking shit somebody build an ark levels of rain. The streets started to flood, and they didn't stop. I couldn't move fast enough. I don't give a shit about that old story about the rabbit racing the tortoise, that story was made of lies. At that moment, I would've happily been a rabbit just to get to my family in time.

But I didn't. The flooding was too much, the current was too strong. Before I could get to higher ground, it caught me, and it swept me out to sea.

The city was gone. Drowned. My family was gone, and I was alone.

That's all I got. I don't know what happened to Admiral Chuck after that, how he was found, or what happened to his family. Just that they were there, and then they weren't. I totally didn't cry after I saw it, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

The second memory is from a little bit before that.

It only lasted a second, but it felt like longer. For a few days, I was Rhy, and I was in hell. Not literal hell, no, I've seen that place once and it tottally sucked. It felt like hell, though, if hell was a beach. I think it might've been in the Horizon.

Back home, I'd only been to the beach once before. My best friend Jerry - some of you may know him, he's in Solvunn now - kidnapped me for an involuntary (but much-needed) vacation after we stopped a demigod from taking over our town with a bunch of brainwashed sleeper agent plant clones.

Wow, I just realized that's kind of a recurring theme in my life.
The involuntary vacations thing, I mean, not the brainwashed sleeper agent clones. That was more of a one-time thing, thank the Dark God.

Anyway, the beach we went to was at the tail end of a four-day drive to the west coast. It was sunny, it was warm. It was full of sand, tourists, and not nearly enough sunblock to keep my pasty ass from looking like a cartoon lobster by the time we left. I'm telling you this so you can picture whatever the exact opposite of that looks like. That's where I was stranded. Rather, that's where Rhy was stranded. It was desolate, it was emptier than a Mormon strip club on a Sunday. Everything about it felt... wrong.

Well, it wasn't entirely empty, I guess.

There were corpses fucking everywhere.

The more time I spent there, the more I began to deteriorate. I started hearing whispers, and I'm not sure if they were from me, or from Rhy, or from the beach itself — they were gentle at first, but undeniably insidious.

You deserve this.
You deserve to be here.
You belong here.
Fuck you.

Wait, what? I thought. Hold on a second.

That last one didn't sound like the beach. It sounded almost exactly like a girl I went to high school with. Southern, feminine, and super angry. Like, Carrie Underwood in that song about her boyfriend cheating on her.

"Hello? Is somebody there?" I (Rhy) called out into the distant, crashing waves of absolute nothing, feeling a little crazy about talking to the wind — but fuck it, right? What's there to lose? It's not like anyone's around to see (sea?).

The longer it went with no response, the more dread I felt — until finally, that voice broke through the relentless oceanic ASMR again. It called back, "Can you hear me?"

I'm not sure which of the two of us it was, but I swear to god I almost wept. I will never judge Carrie Underwood fans again. She's a queen and she was right to key that asshole's car.

"I can hear you," Rhy (I) said. "Keep talking. Please. Where are you?"

It was a question that never actually got a satisfactory answer. All around us was emptiness. It was like a perpetual sandy void, as empty as Donald Trump's soul, and as barren as his hairline. No matter where we walked, where we looked, or where we angled, we couldn't see another living soul. So how could we still hear her?

"I don't know where I am," said the voice, "It's like, a desert with a pink sky, and a thing in the sky that hums."

It's been a minute since I've visited a desert, but the last I checked, they don't usually come with oceans attached to them. Wherever we were, it clearly wasn't the same landscape. How in the hell could we hear each other?

I had no idea, and I'm pretty sure Rhy didn't either — but on the bright side, having somebody to talk to probably kept him from picking one of those random dead bodies to name Wilson. That probably would've been a little more morbid than carrying around a Volleyball.

We worked together as best we could through our universal separation. It felt like shouting through the walls of a boarded up house, it felt like being trapped in two separate but neighboring jail cells in the Horizon. Not-Carrie Underwood talked me (Rhy) through building a fire to help shake off the frigid waterside winds, and she even managed to send us a sweater — somehow. I've given up on trying to wrap my head around that one.

Eventually, though, she said something really interesting.

"Rhy. A few months ago. With the nightmares. Did you... did you try to come to the Horizon back then? Did you see somewhere else for a second?"

The answer came to mind instantly, and it was alarmingly appropriate.

"Y-yes. I saw something. Just a glimpse. I saw an ocean. A boat. Did you see something too?"

"Yeah, a few times. Always the same place. A field, at night. The grass was long. And there were two statues. Of people, but no one I know. They were connected by all these glowin', red threads. And every time, they were in different positions, but I never saw 'em move. And there was an Arcana in the sky. The Magician, I had to look it up later. I don't even know if I know anyone with that sign."

The memory ended shortly after that.

I don't know what any of it means, or if it means anything at all. I don't know if any of it is related. I don't even know for sure if all of it was real. I just know it was weird, and it seems like there might be a common theme that maybe somebody smarter than me can decipher.

I also know that thanks to my condition, I have a hard enough time keeping my own memories straight. I'm not entirely sure how to balance other people's memories into the equation on top of it, but a friend of mine recently got me a present for Christmas. It was a journal. Leather-bound and blue, with my Arcana on the cover — the moon. He left a note with it.

For when you run out of books again, to write your own stories.

It made me think about my blog. About how the entire purpose of the first one was to help me keep my reality straight when it seemed like my memories were starting to fall apart. So I guess this is me, keeping things straight again.

Anyway, I have a sudden, weird craving for tomatoes so I'm gonna go try and find one.

Thanks for reading, if you did. I hope somebody finds it interesting, or enlightening, or it at least helped pass the time. Let me know.

-GasStationJack.

( note: thank you to Lena for submitting this memory! anyone can read the original thread here. if you have any submissions for jack's next blog post, please hit me up on his blog submissions page, I'm constantly on the lookout for new things for him to blog about. as always, threadjacking is totally cool here as long as the other players involved are cool with it too. hit me at paingravy for anything. )

Comments

action, in the horizon cause i do what i want

[princessvegas]

[ Julie's immediate inclination toward this absurd screed covering the entire tabletop is to turn off the network in her mind. But she first skims it, just to make sure that she's not ignoring someone in distress or whatever. Or someone having a mental break that should be pointed out to proper, more suitable people to deal with.

Stupidly enough, it's the mention of Carrie Underwood that catches her attention first. Simply out of surprise that there would be a namedrop she's so familiar with. Julie backtracks and reads more carefully.

The more she reads, the more she feels heat build behind her eyes. Anger, yes, but also fear and anxiety. This person is spitting out information about her that she has only ever shared with Rhy, the statues and the strings. Running his fucking mouth about things that only she can do, her unrivaled connection to the Horizon.

All it takes is one person, just one, to recognize how different she is when it comes to this. Different in the way she can manipulate the Horizon, how it works for her in ways that it doesn't for anyone else. It's not a far stretch from that to the fact that she also has a unique connection to the Singularity. One person to discover it and then tell everyone else.

Doesn't this jackass understand that people have nearly been killed for less?

Luckily, he signs his name, and being in a fantasy world that doesn't know what gasoline in means there's only one fucking gas station Julie knows of.

Which is why, shortly after the message goes out, she stalks her way across the Horizon, a furious blur of bright pink hair in a gold club dress. She's carrying a shotgun, which she knows is an idle threat on a psychic plane, but she's too upset to think about that. She stomps up to the gas station next to Kyle's tower -- she can't believe she helped buy a Christmas present for the fuck who's invading her privacy like this. If it's empty, she'll stay there until it's not.

Either way, Jack will find himself face-to-face with her soon enough. She's angry enough to make Carrie Underwood seem reasonable. ]

Who the fuck do you think you are?

[stations]

( Jack, the poor dumb idiot that he is, has absolutely no concept of what Julie could be concerned about. He doesn't even know who she is, doesn't remember her name mentioned in passing in those blurry but intense memories, and so he's completely and utterly clueless about what's going on when she bursts into his domain.

It's not empty. He's behind the counter like he usually is when he's working, buried in a book he's already read a dozen times.

And then, like a whirlwind, there she is.

He blinks at the question. Glances down to the nametag pinned to his chest — the only uniform required in the employee handbook — to make sure it's still there. It is.

He gestures to it vaguely. )

Um. Jack.

( Perfectly polite, if somewhat confused. It's not a smartass answer, he's being utterly sincere. )

[princessvegas]

[ There is a long moment where she thinks about shooting him just for the answer. Not because she thinks he's being a dick, but because it's so literal that it becomes irritating on its own. She doesn't shoot.

But she does aim at his face. ]

Well, Jack, you get your kicks airin' people's laundry out for everyone to see? [ Her voice is furious, accusatory. ] Tryin' to get folks caught out?

[ I've given up on trying to wrap my head around that one, he'd said, and while this Jack is very clearly a moron, there are enough people who will be able to put two and two together that he'd broadcasted to. That she can not only manipulate the Horizon in ways that other people can't, she can do it when she shouldn't even be able to.

This fuck even pointed her out by accent. He might as well have broadcasted her name, too. ]

[stations]

( Bad news, Julie: Jack is, quite frequently, hyper-literal to a fault. Blame it on the brain damage, the lack of sleep, and the prescription medication.

He does obligingly raise his hands as she levels the gun at him — though maybe a bit more calmly than a normal person might. Not because they're in the Horizon, that part doesn't even occur to him. No, it's because he's been held at gunpoint more times in his life than he can count. At this point, he's figured out freaking out about it won't actually help anything.

Her question is met with a long, puzzled moment of silence.

He has absolutely no idea what she's talking about, and eventually just breaks down and asks: )

I'm... sorry, are you robbing me right now? I can't tell. Usually this is the kind of thing that ends in a robbery, but you're not really giving me robbery signals, so I'm confused.

( The fact that money means absolutely nothing here does not occur to him either. )

cw ableism

[princessvegas]

[ She can only respond with a similar moment of quiet confusion. Finally, she lowers her gun slightly. ]

Are you retarded?

[ The disbelief in her tone indicates that she thinks this is all perfectly obvious. How stupid can one guy be? Julie had once met a literal retard, and he was more on-the-ball than Kyle's "roommate" seems to be. This guy sends a novel's worth of shit searing across everyone's vision and then suddenly forgets what he did? ]

No, dumbass, why would I wanna rob you? In the Horizon?

[ Honestly, if Lloyd and Poke had a conversation like this, Julie understands why they opened fire. ]

This is about your big fuckin' mouth!

[stations]

( This is also not the first time he's been point-blank asked if he's retarded, coincidentally, so he shows about as much of a reaction to that as he did the shotgun.

She lowers it. Tentatively, he lowers his hands again.

One thing is starting to register, though — he squints at her for a long moment, and then lights up with a sudden recognition. )

Oh, shit! You're her, aren't you? You're- ( Shit, what was her name? He can't actually remember it, so he falls back on: ) Carrie Underwood!

( It's her voice. It's very distinctive. )

Wow, you sound exactly the same in person, just... louder.

[princessvegas]

That's not my fuckin' name! [ While Julie would ordinarily love being compared to someone as famous and talented as Carrie Underwood, right now, it just irritates her, and she sharply aims between his eyes again. ] My name is Julie Lawry, but you keep it out of your mouth.

[ It occurs to her that she's reached the end of the plan, and she doesn't know what to do, really. Dipshit here has already broadcast everything to everyone, and he has no way of telling her who tuned out and when. Who read deeply enough to pick up on what he was, unwittingly, giving evidence of. She's essentially just holding him at gunpoint because she's pissed off.

The noise that now lives in her head from that fateful time grows louder. She can feel the weight of the Singularity pressing into her -- her rage has apparently sent out a homing beacon for it while she's in this space. Close enough, even though she's not touching it. ]

Who did you tell about these memories 'fore you started yappin' at the whole Summoned population? Which, by the way, is a super dick move, asshole.

[stations]

( She aims the gun at his face again, and so he politely raises his hands again, because that seems like good gunpoint manners.

In a way he can't really understand, with senses he can't really explain, it almost seems like she's... resonating? For the briefest second it almost manifests as something he can see, but in a blink or two it's gone again, and he's left dismissing it as a product of his over-active imagination and sleepless mind. )

Nobody. I'm not really a... social person. ( Unless you count blog posts as social. Aside from that, he talks to maybe three people. And Jerry, obviously, but not about this. Not that Jerry would care. ) Listen, I'm sorry for... invading your privacy. I used to do this all the time back home, except I guess the difference is nobody where I'm from ever actually read it, so it wasn't... really a problem. I didn't think it was that personal, but I still should've asked you guys first. I thought it was really cool, what you did. Mostly the... sweater part.

[princessvegas]

No one read it back home 'cause it was a fuckin' blog and they had to find it on the internet. You just force broadcasted your long-ass ramblin' into dozens of people's heads, of course people read it. If I scrawled out the Constitution onto every fuckin' thing you saw, don't you think you'd wind up readin' some of it?

[ Her tone strongly implies that this is all extremely obvious, that even a child would have understood this fact. Honestly, even if he had just rambled about cheese for the same length, people would have started yelling at him, because it's incredibly rude to take up people's vision with lots of writing they can't opt out of seeing.

With an exasperated sigh, she blinks a few times, trying to quickly work all of this out in her head. At the same time, the Singularity's consciousness weighs heavily against hers, the indeterminate cacophony from the blob feeding off it and filling the space between her ears. She can barely think around it all, but she doesn't have a choice. ]

I don't know where you are or how long you been in Abraxas, but you need to learn somethin' real goddamn fast. Don't put spotlights on folks, no matter how cool you think they are. You don't know everyone who's readin' those messages. You don't know who's gonna turn around and blab it all to the nutjobs bringin' us here. And you don't know what they might do to us if they decide they want our cool powers or abilities or whatever for themselves. But I do know, and I ain't about to get crosshairs on me 'cause some dipshit saw somethin' they shouldn't've.

[ She leans in a bit closer, not paying attention to the fact that she is holding a shotgun in between them. If he gets poked, all the better. ] Now you listen real close to what I'm about to tell you. You never met me. You don't know my name. And you were fuckin' wrong about the sweater. Rhy made himself that sweater. End of story. And if I hear a single fuckin' word from anyone that says they heard otherwise outta you, I will make you wish you never learned how to fuckin' talk in the first place. And don't think you're safe just 'cause we ain't in the same place. The borders ain't stopped me yet.

[ Taking a step back, she lowers her gun and tucks it under her arm, then furiously snatches several candy bars from the display in front of the counter in one hand. She doesn't actually want them, she's just angry. ] And I'm takin' these, fuckface.

[ She turns on her heel and stomps back out of the gas station. ]

[stations]

( He stands there, largely expressionless, respectfully quiet throughout the entirety of her tirade. The only thing that makes him blink is the dig of the shotgun into his chest. His hands stay up, even after she takes a step back, even as she snatches candy bars.

In the end, the only things he says are: )

Okay.

( And a beat later, in a quiet, polite monotone as she blows out the door: )

Have a nice day.