she is too real @item2656-blog - Tumblr Blog

heirinherent‌:

John frowns. He pulls out his own holophone, saying, “Alucard, right?” Scrolling through the list of names, he doesn’t see anyone. He even checks E, cause maybe his name is just pronounced weird? Nope.

“Maybe he’ll turn up? Like they’re doing maintenance on the directory and things got switched around!” John says, optimistic. He hasn’t really known anyone to just disappear here. That’d be weird. “I’d be glad to help you, still, with cooking. It can be really relaxing when you get the hang of it. Even baking a pie!”

Reed hears him speaking, but doesn't respond. She's already starting to feel like his voice is far away as she slips into thoughts of what could have possibly happened to Alucard. The young man is offering a possible explanation, she can tell, but whatever it is, it isn't going to convince her that this isn't a bad sign.

"Hmm, yeah," she mumbles after a moment. She blinks, shakes her head. "I mean, yeah, baking a pie sounds great. I can't shake the feeling that something's wrong, though," she adds. "I mean, we all arrived here suddenly, without explanation...if that can happen, then I guess people can disappear suddenly, too?"

Ideas are forming in her mind, rapidly, too rapidly almost. She's feeling dizzy. It reminds her a bit of how she felt with the scan - the failed scan, where she had the seizure. Now isn't the time to be stubborn, she thinks.

"I think maybe I should sit down," she says. "Is there a bench near here?"

#john 01

heirinherent‌:

John nods. Bear shopkeepers wouldn’t lead someone astray. “It’s probably fruit, then.”

John frowns. He’s not the best judge of age or anything, but the woman is definitely an adult. Her life must have been really rough, if she doesn’t know how to cook.

“Hey, that’s awesome. That you’re learning to cook, I mean. I can give you some tips, if you want?” He gestures to the fruit with the hand not holding his grocery bag. “There’s lots of things you can do with fruit, even some alien fruit like that. But usually you have more than one ingredient for a dish. Like… A fruit salad, which is simple, cause you just cut up a bunch of different fruit and put it in a bowl basically. You could make a pie, too. But that’s kind of advanced. More advanced that grilling a cheese for sure.”

“Oh, yeah,” Reed says, “I'd appreciate extra advice. Pie might be too hard – I haven't had a pie in a while, but if the texture isn't right...” She shrugs. “If I messed up a pie, I don't know if I could make myself eat it. Depending on how I messed it up. I'm a little particular about food, I guess.”

She pulls out her holophone and starts looking through her contacts. “If you do want to help me become less of a disaster in the kitchen, I don't think Alucard would mind. I can ask him, though...”

Reed frowns.

“Huh.” She double checks that she's in the right section, then scrolls through the list of names starting with A again. “That's weird. I thought he was in my phone. I thought everyone was in my phone,” she adds, looking at the young man as if to ask him if he knows what's going on.

#john 01

heirinherent‌:

John shrugs. “It’s okay, I wasn’t really watching where I was going either. No harm done.”

The woman is disoriented, distracted. She’s focused on this thing she has, John’s never seen anything like it. If she got it here, it must be food, but John isn’t sure what you’d eat it with, or if you eat it by itself?

He asks, “What have you got there? Looks kind of weird, do you eat it?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you eat it. I think it’s fruit?” She frowns a little. “I called it fruit and the bear...the shopkeeper, I mean - didn’t say it wasn’t fruit. So either it is fruit, or I’m wrong but they were too polite to say.”

She thinks about her plans for the fruit. Or lack of plans, as it might be, considering that she doesn’t know the first thing about cooking it.

“Actually, I was bringing it back to my building, I have a friend there who was teaching me to cook. I don’t really know what to do with it myself, but he seemed to have an okay grasp on things.” She smiles a little. “I can grill a cheese now.”

#john 01

all3flavors-blog

Imitation is the best way to make a greeting

item2656-blog

all3flavors‌:

@item2656

Reed blinks a few times, but the woman in front of her doesn’t disappear. The woman in front of her, who is a perfect copy of her. From her clothes, to her eyes, to her hair...everything except for the smile, which seems a little more genuine than any she’s seen her own lips form.

"What the fuck?” she blurts out. It’s not tactful, but it’s honest.

The idea that the world she’s come to inhabit recently could be a simulation never really left her, even as it became apparent it was unlikely. Seeing this strange copy of herself in front of her brings her doubts about the reality of her situation to the forefront again. What happened at Pathos-II was disturbing - the way her coworkers had come face to face with robots that talked like them, and were convinced that they were them - but those robots had appeared exactly as they always were. They hadn’t looked human.

The idea that this might be an earlier scan of her, and that she might be in a simulation - if not Cath’s Ark, a similar one, with the same name, even - comes back to her full force. It’s still disturbing to think that maybe the real Reed is actually dead, and that she - and this copy - are all that’s left.

There’s no telling what will happen with this other Reed, either. Almost without thinking, she changes her posture to something a little more alert and defensive. She curls her hands into fists, tightly at first, then loosens them. Maybe it’s better not to start a fight.

#neo 01

heirinherent‌:

John needs to go grocery shopping - this is a fact that has been true for the past few years of his life. It is especially true now that he wants to make something nice for the people he’s met here. The kitchen on his floor is nicely stocked, but he thinks getting ingredients yourself is a nice part of the cooking experience.

He takes it as an excuse to take the road less traveled, as Jane’s dad would probably put it. He doesn’t trust the food in Crises much, and he wants to keep this a secret from Jade. So he heads for Tranquility.

After getting what he needed from a store, he passes by a farmer’s market on the way back. He doesn’t really need to go there, but he remembers going to places like this with his dad as a kid. Nostalgic, he wanders the stalls a bit. Not exactly watching his step, he bumps into a woman, nearly knocking her over.

Helping her steady herself, he takes in the woman, who seems kind of freaked out. “Hey,” he says, “Are you alright?”

Reed looks at the young man who just bumped into her. Or possibly who she just bumped into - she’s not really sure either of them were paying attention. He’s younger than her, and evidently has also been shopping.

Thinking of shopping reminds her that she’s carrying something important, the first purchase she’s made here - that fruit, or whatever it might be, that she intended to bring back for her next cooking lesson. She checks to make sure it’s all right. It seems okay, she thinks, inspecting it, but can she really be sure if she’s not familiar with the fruit here? Maybe it’s already bruised, and unsuitable to eat. Maybe they have weird fruit that does that.

She realizes a moment later that she hasn’t offered any answer to his question.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she says, casually, still fretting a little over the fruit. “Thanks for asking?”

Her voice raises at the end of her reply, as if she’s asking a question. She’s not really sure if that’s a normal thing to say to someone who just bumped into her. Or if she bumped into him.

“Sorry,” she adds. “I wasn’t really paying attention.”

#john 01

thesleepingmessiah‌:

Alucard’s lips curve faintly, and he says, “Please, do not fret about that. I am aware that it is not a common name- it is unique even where I am from. That is, the province of Wallachia, in 1475. It is a name that I chose for myself. Though I will say also that I have never heard the name ‘Imogen’. Is it common, where you come from?”

He can be patient with her- it’s clear she’s having trouble, though she doesn’t seem the type to admit it.

He pulls out the butter, two pieces of bread, and something that…. is probably cheese, from the fridge, then begins to look through the cupboards for a pan. “It is,” he adds, “very simple to recreate, which I hope will be of use to you. Though it seems we are possessed of an unfailing amount of money, here, and if you wished, you could likely purchase food for every meal. Still. It is good to know how to provide for yourself.”

She whistles. “1475. That’s only a handful of centuries away from my time,” she says. It’s sarcastic, but light, the sort of tone she usually adopts when trying to appear friendly. And it’s genuine, mostly - she’s adapting to the idea of receiving help, even if it is embarrassing to admit how badly she failed at her first attempt.

“Simple sounds good. I mean, I am an engineer, I can handle complex stuff - but I started with the basics there, too.” She pulls out her holophone. “I guess this is where that unfailing amount of money is?”

She’s not unfamiliar with digital currency, but the idea of an unlimited supply of credits for what she needed is astounding. Maybe a little too good to be true, she thinks. She doesn’t really know how Alucard knows that, either.

“Oh, and yeah, Imogen is common enough,” she adds, remembering his earlier question. “I think I’m used to hearing Reed more often though, at least from my...the crew,” she says, faltering slightly, not entirely sure whether the mistake was in almost saying they were her friends, or in not saying it after all.

#alucard 01

It's embarrassing, really, how long it takes Imogen Reed to figure things out in this world. She feels ill equipped for the vastness of it. Pathos-II had a lot of sites, with ocean in between, but it was pretty contained, all things considered. She's still not over the shock of discovering, in her efforts to find a way out of this strange place, that there's a train, and that the train travels to other worlds, and that these worlds together are collectively referred to as “the Ark.” It's a little too close for comfort.

She's starting to put the pieces together, though. Exploring the world, exploring her holophone and the information it contains, and talking to other new arrivals – it's becoming easier to navigate the strange and unfamiliar. So when she first sets foot in the Sea of Tranquility, she's gently curious, instead of just searching for answers or an exit. Her life isn't in any immediate danger, and people have been friendly enough, and whatever's happening back at her old job, in her old life, is probably considerably less interesting. Several inhabitable worlds falling into her lap like this, or her falling into them – it beats the uninhabitable Earth she left. When she finds her way to the farmer's market, she immediately thinks of Alucard, and his efforts to teach her to cook. Maybe she'll find something she can buy and bring back to the kitchen on her floor. She strikes up a conversation with one of the bears about a particularly beautiful looking...fruit? She's not actually sure that it's a fruit when she asks about it, but she guesses. The bear doesn't confirm that it's a fruit, but doesn't correct her either, so she thinks she must be right. She's figured out how to make purchases with credits by now, so she decides to buy the fruit and take it back to show Alucard at some point. Probably some point soon, if it's anything like fruit that she remembers – waiting too long would likely result in rotten fruit, which she might still stubbornly try to eat, which would likely result in more disapproving stares from Alucard. As she finishes the transaction, she asks how long the fruit will last, and after the bear replies, she thanks them and wanders off, occasionally bumping into people in the crowd and mumbling apologies. Sometimes it's other bears, but once in a while she'll bump into other human (or non-human) inhabitants of this world, however temporary their status as residents here might be.

#john 01

thesleepingmessiah‌:

Alucard inclines his head. No false modesty here- he knows what he is good at, and cooking falls under that heading. “I am willing to lend my aid,” he says, slowly, then looks back at the pan before he says, “but I do not believe that can be salvaged.” He moves to look in a cupboard, then in the fridge, before he says, “There are a good deal of things that could be made, here. Perhaps, though, something simple, as you will need food you can effectively recreate.”

He pauses, considers, then says, “My name is Alucard. What is your name? And have you ever had… a grilled cheese sandwich?”

That would be simple, and quick. It isn’t something he has a great deal of practice with- though it showed up in the castle from time to time, it was not of his own time, and so he had rare opportunity to experiment with it. Soups and stews might take too long, though. Cooking can be tedious for those first learning.

"Oh! Yeah, I’ve had grilled cheese, but I haven’t had one in...” She trails off. It’s hard to remember when her last grilled cheese sandwich was, since it was definitely before she went to work at Pathos-II. A couple of bites of someone’s attempt at grilled cheese once she got there doesn’t count, she assumes, especially because it was not something she enjoyed.

She snaps out of the memory. “I’m Imogen Reed,” she tells him. “What kind of a name is Alucard, anyway?”

She’s vaguely aware that her question sounds rude, like she’s making fun of the way his name sounds, and if her track record with communication is anything to go by, it probably sounds even worse than she imagines. Talking to people politely has never been her strong suit.

“I mean like, where is it from, and when, I’m not commenting on how weird it sounds,” she blurts out, then sighs, closing her eyes. “Okay, yeah, I’m gonna just...yeah. Not talk now.” She cringes. “Sorry. Grilled cheese. I’m listening. Observing.”

#alucard 01

thesleepingmessiah‌:

Alucard peers at the container in the woman’s hand, then walks closer to examine it more carefully before he lifts his hand to remove the lid and smells it. “It is ground cardamom,” he determines, and then lifts a hand to run it back through his hair, trying to tame the mess as he moves over to the sink. “I live a floor above, on the sixth floor, and have not spent a great deal of time here yet.”

He peers into the sink, then does the same she did, dipping his finger into the water and tapping it to his tongue. “This,” he declares, “Is inedible, and if not inedible then it would at the least be a crime to eat regardless. I hope you are not intending to put your body through the rigors of digesting whatever this has become.”

He looks over at her, getting his hair more or less in order and straightening his shoulders, beginning to wake up a little, be more aware of himself. “What,” he asks, voice steady and even, “were you attempting to make?”

He’s here now. He might as well try to help.

“A floor above? Geez, it was that bad, huh.” She tries to laugh it off but it becomes a groan. “Honestly? Not sure what I was going for with this. Where I was before, I never did much cooking. And our equipment was - well it wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot harder to mess up the stuff I was able to make. Which was more on the instant side of things.”

She sighs.

“Okay, I’m willing to admit I might need a little help. If you can recognize a spice by smell, you’re probably pretty good at this. Not just better than me, because that’s pretty easy to be, but better than the average person. So...since I clearly am not an expert when it comes to recipes, what would you suggest making with what we have here?” She offers an attempt at a friendly smile. It’s tired, but genuine.

#alucard 01

biwasaka‌:

“Hmm… Interesting.” Living at the bottom of the ocean… He’d hate that. He’d constantly feel like he was being caged in… and probably with no way to get out, too. “Well, at least you have the penguin as a reminder of your old life, you know? I don’t have anything like that here.” Not necessarily a bad thing, of course.

“Ah, I never did introduce myself, did I… Such terrible manners. My name is Eiji Biwasaka.” He smiled at her. “What’s yours?”

She laughs a little when he says that about the penguin, but it’s hollow. She’s not sure if he’ll notice. She’s also not sure if the penguin found its way to her by design or by chance. If she were back at Lambda, she might have had the opportunity to ask Cath about it, if she ever had the courage, or the desire, or the ability to talk to her like a normal person again. So it’s sort of a nice reminder, but it’s bittersweet. Eiji has no way of knowing the history of it, except from what she tells him, so of course he thinks it’s nice.

She sighs, and watches the bird-people running around, not really taking in what they’re doing as distinct actions, but noticing the general sea of colorful plumage and the sound of their conversations. She’s not sure how many minutes pass before she realizes that she hasn’t answered his question.

“Oh, yeah, I’m Imogen Reed,” she replies. “Sorry, I guess I got a bit distracted for a minute. This whole world is a lot to take in.”

#eiji 01

thesleepingmessiah‌:

When your home is Castlevania, you do not cook for yourself. Things have a way of going sideways- the castle has a way of taking petty offense to the smallest of things, and what may be perfectly edible in theory can be incredibly dangerous in reality. It is much better to sit back and be a good guest, even if you live there full-time- much better to be rewarded for your patience than to risk the castle’s wrath.

Living at home, however, with Lisa Tepes, there is no such luxury. From the beginning she taught Alucard with a careful hand and cautious eye how to mix and brew, mash and stew. Often when his father was away for long periods of time, he would be the one to serve meals to Lisa rather than the other way around. She never complained, and so he has been led to believe his cooking is, at the least, edible. And he has not burnt food for many a year.

Still, when he wakes from his twilight-doze to the unmistakable scent of something once edible burnt to a crisp, he thinks, for a single befuddled moment, that he is a child again and has fallen asleep rather than tending the stove. Sitting up dispels this notion as he sees his surroundings and recalls the events of the past few days-

The past weeks-

The past year-

- and then he is standing and making for the doors, following his nose down the stairs to the seventh floor, where he enters the common area with no warning, standing sleepy-eyed and muss-haired and wearily alarmed, hand on the door as he surveys the scene, the red-haired woman and the mess in the sink.

“… Pardon,” he says belatedly, voice a gravelly rumble as he fights to wake himself up. “I smelled… something burning. Are you in need of assistance?”

Reed looks at the man who just entered, taking in his disheveled appearance and his general expression, and realizes he probably just got out of bed.

“Sorry, did I wake you up?” She looks at the spice container she’s holding. “You can go back to sleep if you want, I think I’ll be okay now. It’s not the worst thing I’ve had to deal with. I think at this point all the help I really need is figuring out what this is,” she says, waving the container at him. “It looks really familiar, and I think it would probably taste kind of salty, but I never did much cooking before I got here. At least not much that wasn’t pretty much instant. So it could be something sweet.”

She frowns at the container.

“Or scouring powder. Or bleach, or something. That’s why I didn’t just taste it to check.” She pauses. “I haven’t seen you before. Are you living on this floor too?”

#alucard 01

illumitrixwielder‌:

The Red Age Illumina didn’t really need to sleep. As a being made of light, she doesn’t really need to recharge. Sure, she can get hungry. But sleep isn’t really needed for an Illumina like her.

She was scrolling through her holophone, examining it’s contents, before she heard knocking on her door. Placing the object in her hand into her pants pocket, she got up from sitting on her bed and went towards the door. She didn’t expect a visitor so soon! Especially since Stella was still getting used to her new home (along with the fact she has to go on without something important for a while). She took a breath and opened the door.

Stella put on a friendly face and smiled to her visitor. “Greetings!”

“Uh, hi,” Reed says, trying not to look too taken aback by the room’s inhabitant’s appearance. She’s adjusting to the idea that not everyone in this world is human, but thus far most of the people she’s met (besides the bird-people) wouldn’t look out of place back at Pathos-II. The one in front of her, however, is certainly humanoid, but she looks unlike anyone Reed’s met before.

“I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything. I’m Imogen Reed, and I live on this floor now, I guess. I’m really tired, and I got the wrong door,” she explains. “Did you get here recently?”

She thinks it’s probably fair to assume that she’s talking to another new arrival, since everyone she’s met so far has been from somewhere else. Reed briefly contemplates asking her directly where that somewhere else was, but figures it’s probably pretty rude to ask, or point out that she’s clearly not human.

#stella 01

scatteredsunlight-blog1

item2656‌:

@scatteredsunlight

It doesn’t take long for Imogen Reed to figure out her holophone once she decides it’s time to learn about it. It’s similar enough to technology she’s seen before for her to pick up the basics quickly. It’s certainly less clunky and more aesthetically pleasing than a lot of Pathos-II’s equipment, but she wonders if it’s built to last.

Sitting on the bed - which she figures is intended to be her bed now, though it’s still hard to adjust to the idea - she scrolls through the contact information somewhat aimlessly. There’s a noise outside her room, a clanging that sounds like it might be someone dropping something in the kitchen. She looks up from the phone for a minute, and when she looks back, it’s dialing someone called Alvis.

“Shit,” she says. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you.”

He freezes as his phone trills in his pocket. The sudden brring, brring, brring somehow manages to unsettle him more than the general air of the Sea of Crises, shocks him out of the reverie he hadn’t realized he had been in. He looks at it for a moment; quickly, though, the curiosity overcomes him, and he can’t help but click the green ‘accept’ button. He hears a soft voice, hardly understandable, and quickly holds up the device closer to his ear.

Managing to hear the end of her words, he … tilts his head, and pulls away from the receiver just to look at it, turn it around in his hands. He hums at it softly for a moment, before pulling it back close and answering.

“Call you?” he repeats, but doesn’t wait for an answer before launching into another question, “This is … a long-distance communication device?”

item2656-blog

“Yeah, I mean, it’s a phone,” Reed answers, glad that this Alvis doesn’t seem bothered by her mistake. “Evidently. It has a bunch of names stored in here, too. I clicked yours by mistake while I was checking it out. It looks like it has video calls too, and texting...”

The words “communication device” echo in her head again. She remembers her earlier conversation in the plaza and how the man she met there was from somewhere different - but surely he’d known what a cell phone was. Their two worlds had a few things in common, too, but if people were being taken from various places - not to mention times - it was possible this new person was actually totally unfamiliar with the concept of making a phone call.

“Wait - do you not know about phones? Are you from somewhere where they don’t have this technology?”

#alvis 01

@illumitrixwielder

When Reed returns to what is now her building, she’s tired. Having spent the day around so many of the colorful bird-people, and having had a long conversation with another apparent new arrival, she feels like she’s had enough excitement for one day. Maybe she’ll be able to get some good sleep - the bed seemed pretty soft when she was sitting on it earlier, scrolling through the holophone.

She makes it all the way to her floor in a bit of a daze, feeling the beginnings of that kind of exhaustion that permeated her days at Pathos-II. It’s still weird to think of them being over, or at least put on hold for the time being. She stifles a yawn as she tugs on the handle of her door.

It doesn’t budge.

She blinks. And looks around again. And realizes that this is not her room.

She also realizes that maybe this is someone else’s room, and that maybe that someone else might be trying to sleep at this hour too, and maybe they might think she’s trying to break in. She decides to knock. At the very least, if the resident is home, she can apologize, and explain herself. And maybe she’ll get a little more insight into her situation this way. It can’t hurt to have more allies, either.

“Hello?” she calls out tentatively. Then she raps her knuckles on the door in what she’s always thought was a friendly pattern. The sort of knock she reserved for coworkers who seemed to like her a decent amount, or who at the very least were polite to her. She hopes it does the trick.

#stella 01

biwasaka-deactivated20190122

item2656‌:

“I haven’t heard of Astral Syndrome before, no,” Reed answers. “Or Mobius. The simulation I was thinking of, it was called the ARK, eventually. It was supposed to preserve copies of us, to preserve…what was left of humanity. Most people seemed to like the idea. I didn’t.”

She sits down next to him.

Keep reading

Homes…? Eiji had to suppress a laugh about that. What home? Mobius - and this - both were better than the horrible jail cell he had been living in before Astral Syndrome took him. But, it’d make a terrible first impression if this person knew that… that’s why he never did or ever would talk about his past with his “friends” at the Go-Home Club. They didn’t need to know. He was almost happier here, too; at least here, that no-mouth brat wouldn’t get in his way.

But to her other points…

“Mobius wasn’t so much about preservation and copying people as it was about… creating a utopia for people who had suffered in the real world. It did a pretty shitty job at it, if you ask me. It was more like a gilded cage…” He seems sad as he talks about it, but was it genuine…?

Something about “she’s not me” piques his interest, but Reed didn’t seem too willing to talk about that just yet. Better not to pry - and she hoped he wouldn’t pry with him, in turn.

“And… homes… That’s a good question,” he said. It was - his body was definitely still in the real world when Astral Syndrome took him, but… what about this? Was it a virtual world within a virtual world? Would his Mobius avatar - agh, this was annoying to think about.

“Astral Syndrome is… was…? A big epidemic in Japan. My body was probably taken to a medical facility when I went to Mobius, but… what about now…?”

He shrugged. “Ah, well. Best not to worry about it too much, I suppose. That’s a cute penguin; where did you get it?”

item2656-blog

The location of his original body was something he didn’t want to worry about? Reed felt some unease at his casual tone. She knew better than to be nosy about it, though, so she turned to the matter of the penguin. She still wasn’t totally clear on how it had become her penguin in the first place, but she started to tell as much of the story as she could.

“Well, before I got here, I was at the bottom of the ocean. I worked there, at Pathos-II, which is a research facility,” she explains. “People usually had some things around their rooms there, personal stuff, maybe some photos, you know. Anyway, I didn’t have many things of my own when I first arrived. I’m not very sentimental, I guess. But once in a while someone would give me something of theirs, to try and make friends, or because they were relocating to a different site and didn’t want to take it with them. Or because the something in question was a cactus. Not everyone knows how to take care of a cactus. It’s more likely that you’ll kill it by giving it too much water than too little. So one time I got a dying cactus from someone else, and I left it alone for a bit, and it got better.”

She looks thoughtfully at the penguin again, somewhat aware that she’s not just talking about cacti.

“Some people thought it was kind of funny that I had this cactus, since I guess I have a reputation for being prickly. Anyway, someone else had the penguin, and sometimes people would trade things, so I thought about trading for the penguin, but I never did. But eventually it got mixed in with some of my stuff when I moved to a different part of Pathos-II. So then it was in my room there, and I must’ve been holding it when I got taken. Assuming someone actually took me to this place, somehow. I don’t know what happened to the cactus,” she adds. “It’s probably still back in my room at Lambda.”

Reed sighs. Talking about the past - the very recent past, really - isn’t something she’s done much of lately. Hart tried probing about her dispute with Cath a few times once they got to Lambda, and Reed shut her down completely. It bothers her a little that she was suddenly so open with an almost perfect stranger.

“Hey, I still don’t know your name,” she says.

#eiji 01

@thesleepingmessiah

“Shit!”

The smell of burning food hits Imogen Reed’s nostrils before she notices that that the green material (some kind of unfamiliar seaweed, she thinks) that she was attempting to heat up in a pan is now turning black and too crispy. The smoke rising from the pan is dark and thick. Is there a fire alarm here? Some kind of sprinkler system? Reed really doesn’t want to find out.

She takes action before it can get worse, grabbing the hot pan by its handle and taking it over to the sink. She throws the faucet open and fills the pan with water, realizing after a moment that the stove is still on. At least it’s not an open flame, she thinks, as she reaches over to turn it off. She sighs, then surveys the pan. She seems to remember that it’s possible to damage hot cookware by pouring cold water in it, but the pan looks fine.

Its contents, however, look less than fine. Reed frowns at the blackened vegetables floating in the water, now an unappetizing brown color. She sighs. It wasn’t her intent to make soup. She didn’t believe in her ability to recreate her usual meal, especially since it came from an automated machine, and during her few dinners at Lambda before she wound up here, she’d avoided any part of the cooking process. And the eating things other people had cooked process, also, so she didn’t have much to go on when it came to recipes.

She looks out through the glass wall. No marine life near it for now - maybe her cooking scared them off. She dips her finger in the blackened seaweed broth and tastes it. Naturally, it’s awful, but it’s flavorless too. Maybe with a little salt, it would be tolerable, and she wouldn’t have to waste it.

The smell of her cooking disaster still hangs in the air as she starts sorting through what appear to be spices, looking for anything that might turn this meal around.

#alucard 01

biwasaka-deactivated20190122

item2656‌:

Reed frowns.

“Yeah, I was just about to sleep, but I don’t know if I even made it to my bed. You don’t look like anyone I know, either. I thought…”

She hesitates for a moment, then decides to go forward with her plan.

“You don’t have any memories of being scanned, do you? Like, a brain scan, someone making a virtual copy of you? Because someone did that to me, and it’s possible my file got corrupted, and I want to rule out the possibility that this is a simulation that got screwed up somehow. Or didn’t.” She smirks a little to herself. “For all I know, this might be what Cath had in mind all along.”

“Scanned…?”

He lets that word roll around in his mind for a second before continuing.

“I think… something like that happened to me, but not recently. Does the term ‘Astral Syndrome’ ring a bell to you? I was afflicted by it a few years ago, and after that, I woke up in a virtual world called Mobius.”

Was this person from Mobius, too? he wondered. But… “Cath”? That name didn’t ring a bell.

“At any rate, the virtual body I woke up in wasn’t an exact copy. For some reason, I’m still in it.” He gestures vaguely at himself, as if to say ‘this is me, now.’ “I’m much older than I look, actually, but due to the, uh… quirks of Mobius, I’m stuck looking like a high schooler. Whether this is a simulation or not, I’m not sure… but I’d like to find out and get out of here, if it’s at all possible. But to your question, I don’t have any memories of this happening recently, so I’m inclined to believe it’s not a simulation.”

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“I haven’t heard of Astral Syndrome before, no,” Reed answers. “Or Mobius. The simulation I was thinking of, it was called the ARK, eventually. It was supposed to preserve copies of us, to preserve...what was left of humanity. Most people seemed to like the idea. I didn’t.”

She sits down next to him.

#eiji 01

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