MISSING: MISSING: M @seen-in-the-smoke - Tumblr Blog

[pg20/20]

last page

{cw for potentially upsetting audience-facing interaction, loss of identity/cognition. Reader advisory for this one}

#forum arc #lancer rp #paracausal lancer

seen-in-the-smoke

ok

ok ok ok here we go¹ ²

²Hi! This dress, please. Thank you. Yeah, she’s a beaut, isn’t she?

…

Doesn’t get too busy, huh? In here I mean, it’s kind of a nice escape. Almost got swamped in the thoroughfare.

Do you work here all the time, or does port authority have position cycles? I, uh, I do logistics for an arcology so. Always curious about the inner workings.

…

See, that’s nice. You guys process so much cargo through here, I can imagine it’s nice to just… see what sticks around, right? Even if it’s secondhand clothes and lost supplies.

Yeah. I think I get that.

Aaaalright, yeah. That’s a pretty fair maintenance cost. Here.

Uh-huh! It’s Rue.

Have a good day too, Jo.

…¹¹

holy shit

holy shit holy shit

hahahahaha

not bad for a controlled test₁—

directorgeneralreal

[She catches movement to the side behind and behind her. All that's visible for a moment is the rustling of disturbed clothing racks. Then, a glimpse of a figure can be caught for only a moment between a pair of sweaters, doing some kind of exaggerated stealth-combat roll. The creature is doing a better job at staying hidden than one would expect from how utterly ridiculous its movements are.]

seen-in-the-smoke

[The video feed abruptly terminates in a blur of movement.]

The woman sort of. Half-freezes, almost out of the door. Her eyes— overly white cornea and a bright blue that seems to fizz around the iris, maybe prosthestic— snap to track the sudden motion. Her whole body seems to tense, going stiff in-pose like a malfunctioning hydraulic, then… She relaxes. Still confused, but not whatever what was just going on.

“—Hey, sorry. I think I dropped something,” she says to Jocasta, the vendor, all smiles as she passes. Then she wanders back into the rows of the station’s surplus and recycling store, tracking around where the movement seemed to be heading. Once she’s out of earshot of any other patrons, she gives another furtive check.

“H…i?”

directorgeneralreal

MOVE ALONG CITIZEN

[A sort of lump within the form of several coats on one of the racks stage whispers at Catkill in a hiss.]

THIS IS A STEALTH OPERATION OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO INTERFERE

[There is a shimmying from inside the lump. And a vaguely unpleasant scent.]

seen-in-the-smoke

Oh. Oh dear. The confusion is still there, but now a sloooooow smile starts to pull across her face from one end. “Are you… playing some sorta game?” Down she crouches, rocking unsteady on her heels and. Oh actually that smells bad and she only half-crouches instead to get away from it. “What are you trying to do? People are allowed to shop at stores, you know.”

#testing in progress #{it feels weird covering up her train of thougjt right now}#{especially since something is definitely happening in there}

miamaimania

Kate MacDowell ✦ Illuminated porcelain lungs

#{catkill one world to the left}

seen-in-the-smoke

ok

ok ok ok here we go¹ ²

²Hi! This dress, please. Thank you. Yeah, she’s a beaut, isn’t she?

…

Doesn’t get too busy, huh? In here I mean, it’s kind of a nice escape. Almost got swamped in the thoroughfare.

Do you work here all the time, or does port authority have position cycles? I, uh, I do logistics for an arcology so. Always curious about the inner workings.

…

See, that’s nice. You guys process so much cargo through here, I can imagine it’s nice to just… see what sticks around, right? Even if it’s secondhand clothes and lost supplies.

Yeah. I think I get that.

Aaaalright, yeah. That’s a pretty fair maintenance cost. Here.

Uh-huh! It’s Rue.

Have a good day too, Jo.

…¹¹

holy shit

holy shit holy shit

hahahahaha

not bad for a controlled test₁—

directorgeneralreal

[She catches movement to the side behind and behind her. All that's visible for a moment is the rustling of disturbed clothing racks. Then, a glimpse of a figure can be caught for only a moment between a pair of sweaters, doing some kind of exaggerated stealth-combat roll. The creature is doing a better job at staying hidden than one would expect from how utterly ridiculous its movements are.]

seen-in-the-smoke

[The video feed abruptly terminates in a blur of movement.]

The woman sort of. Half-freezes, almost out of the door. Her eyes— overly white cornea and a bright blue that seems to fizz around the iris, maybe prosthestic— snap to track the sudden motion. Her whole body seems to tense, going stiff in-pose like a malfunctioning hydraulic, then… She relaxes. Still confused, but not whatever what was just going on.

“—Hey, sorry. I think I dropped something,” she says to Jocasta, the vendor, all smiles as she passes. Then she wanders back into the rows of the station’s surplus and recycling store, tracking around where the movement seemed to be heading. Once she’s out of earshot of any other patrons, she gives another furtive check.

“H…i?”

#testing in progress #{a brief intermission for the audience at home}#{welcome the rightful heir of the temperate throne}

seen-in-the-smoke

ok

ok ok ok here we go¹ ²

²Hi! This dress, please. Thank you. Yeah, she’s a beaut, isn’t she?

…

Doesn’t get too busy, huh? In here I mean, it’s kind of a nice escape. Almost got swamped in the thoroughfare.

Do you work here all the time, or does port authority have position cycles? I, uh, I do logistics for an arcology so. Always curious about the inner workings.

…

See, that’s nice. You guys process so much cargo through here, I can imagine it’s nice to just… see what sticks around, right? Even if it’s secondhand clothes and lost supplies.

Yeah. I think I get that.

Aaaalright, yeah. That’s a pretty fair maintenance cost. Here.

Uh-huh! It’s Rue.

Have a good day too, Jo.

…¹¹

holy shit

holy shit holy shit

hahahahaha

not bad for a controlled test₁—

storymonger

$ saveto J:\WH\_HT.MSS.URG\UNCONF\ >//[SAVING.] >//[SAVE:::COMPLETE]

NOTES:::

poi been inactive fr months but now seen multiple times in pub

low stakes situations. seemingly unnoticed by station sec

smth im missing. @ self dig deeper + prio 2

(also rmbr to tear up sm of the mint b4 it strangles out the potatoes)

#{putting notes on a white hazard POI with some reminders abt gardening on the side is inspired}

ok

ok ok ok here we go¹ ²

²Hi! This dress, please. Thank you. Yeah, she’s a beaut, isn’t she?

…

Doesn’t get too busy, huh? In here I mean, it’s kind of a nice escape. Almost got swamped in the thoroughfare.

Do you work here all the time, or does port authority have position cycles? I, uh, I do logistics for an arcology so. Always curious about the inner workings.

…

See, that’s nice. You guys process so much cargo through here, I can imagine it’s nice to just… see what sticks around, right? Even if it’s secondhand clothes and lost supplies.

Yeah. I think I get that.

Aaaalright, yeah. That’s a pretty fair maintenance cost. Here.

Uh-huh! It’s Rue.

Have a good day too, Jo.

…¹¹

holy shit

holy shit holy shit

hahahahaha

not bad for a controlled test₁—

#lancer rp #lancer ttrpg #testing in progress #{lot going on under the hood but you just gotta watch the outside view to understand what’s important}#{and featuring a new character? who IS the hidden stalker?}

Yes! Yes! To look your best! I have always had to struggle this way; I hope you do not as I do. You see, any thing from which I make myself becomes rephrased, incorrectly.

Over and over, I must craft myself, or else it takes my place. So! I recycle. You also? Do you build? Do you salvage?

But, ah! Do not let me interrupt nor rush your soup. Forgive me. Often, I watch—this is how it learned, after all—but not to be rude.

- NONE GIVEN -

oh

ha, ha

yeah. I recycle all the time. crafting myself is an old friend

watch away, it's actually nice having the eyes on me for once¹. trying a brand new thing today

maybe you all can make it a good day

--

#testing in progress #{soon she'll be there and so it'll go}

AIEE! You stretch your legs, and you stretch its poor eyes…!

It has to go through the right halls to reach the rooms it wishes to revisit, as all must. Only, the respeaking makes its halls change, sometimes, if it tries to remember in places which are not yet rephrased. So then, I know a little of how to fumble through the fog.

And so do you, I gather. Hhehehe. Yes, she does.

If you invite me with you into that same obscurity, it will go with you, if only for a while.

Where should we go…? Ah! Thrift stores, recycling centers, I love these. Wherever it stops, it takes a moment for them. May we?

- NONE GIVEN -

oh hi there

i think i like your funny words¹

uhhhhh ok recycling. i know about recycling. haha.

sure yknow what. she'd want me to look pretty³

yeah. lemme just finish up here.

gotta eat slow⁴

--

#testing in progress #i like tasting things.#it's a nice treat #who ever said you cant combine work and play this is awesome

seen-in-the-smoke

[onatriptoday.omif]

[WARNING. POTENTIAL MEMETIC TRANSFER DETECTED. QUARANTINING MESSAGE CONTENTS AND DETERMINING SEVERITY AGAINST KNOWN DATABASE.]

[…SCREENING COMPLETE. ANALYSIS SUGGESTS PERCEPTUAL-ANTIPATTERN TYPE, HIPPOCAMPAL. RISK ASSESSMENT: LOW RISK TO OBSERVERS (confidence retains 94.2227%). AUTOMATIC QUARANTINE REVERTED. OPEN?]

seen-in-the-smoke

[worldsbestbowlofnoodles.omif]

[REDUNDANT SCREENING RESULTS. TRUNCATING RESPONSE TO NON-ESCALATING QUALIA.]

[Another picture, similarly de-placed. The photographer is sitting at the bar of the restaurant shown in the first image; elbow-to-elbow seating. It’s a dingy little joint, and the completely unrecognizable human in the shot— a chef— looks more tired of the day than anything else as he sets a chipped ceramic bowl on the bar top.]

nice place. loud but the queue was short. the udon was really nice

where to next?

#testing in progress #{I love my viewer participation}

yesterdaysprint

Dayton Daily News, Ohio, April 5, 1950

123iloveyoutoo

damn you could really just fucking say anything back in the day, huh?

ministryofsillytalks

you can say anything now this reads exactly like a modern day shitpost on tumblr.com

123iloveyoutoo

hold on i gotta make a post

lionesshathor

Picklepuss

skarmazenuk

[onatriptoday.omif]

[WARNING. POTENTIAL MEMETIC TRANSFER DETECTED. QUARANTINING MESSAGE CONTENTS AND DETERMINING SEVERITY AGAINST KNOWN DATABASE.]

[…SCREENING COMPLETE. ANALYSIS SUGGESTS PERCEPTUAL-ANTIPATTERN TYPE, HIPPOCAMPAL. RISK ASSESSMENT: LOW RISK TO OBSERVERS (confidence retains 94.2227%). AUTOMATIC QUARANTINE REVERTED. OPEN?]

#testing in progress

huh

never made me sneeze before

#{someone's talking about us...}.#{dubiously public+canon}

Noah Abdullah loved the color of rain. She told it to her third parent, Stal, and was informed with the patient smile of someone who knows more than you that they weren't quite sure what she meant.

The water was clear, at least when it fell; did she mean the color of the puddles on brickwork ground? Maybe the rolling clouds, grey and glacial like waves viewed from below? The gold of sun, breaking through? Those had color; but not quite the rain.

She never could speak it out to them, though she tried. It was as simple as that; when it rained, there was a color. It shone on the walls of her little house, first floor and simple stonework if you could ignore the electronic locks and blink deadening. It would mingle across the sky as water fell in great sheets, as the rush of ions high above would slow down and make their little flashes and cause the palette to boil and dance. It made everything new, and special, no matter how many times it happened; it made the endless summer twilights novel, and the winter darkness soft and velvet-coated. She was a bad child, the days it rained, but how could anyone mind? Best if she got it all out early.

When Noah was fourteen, and given to gentle mysticism, she decided the color was her friend. She never named it, the habit of putting humanity's trappings to the world was long since broken by her counselors and teachers. She would often talk about it, or around it, if not towards. This was encouraged by the fact that many things, indeed, could be talked around in her life, and very few were human or wished for human things.

There was, if anything, a reversal of the process. Some of these voices, these things, she would give color. Often this was a sign for hushed appraisal, never spoken outright but well known in Abdullah house-- you're a keeper, here, it would seem to say, now you fit into her vision.

She would have been unhappy to hear it like that. They understood her way as necessary for her job, even preferable, a bit of madness-as-key. They made her feel small again, telling of the rain.

Then she was older, ever so, and she was taught the lesson that the world may be hard. When they told her this, they opened a space in her neck and set a funnel there; they asked, what color would keep your safe, when the world is hard? And Noah chose, she chose bright and piping blue; it was not quite the truth, but she heard a trick in the question. They could not, after all, protect her with the rain.

Once, and only once, she figured it was her name. Noah, old by every metric that mattered, the kind of old that made up bedrock in the Massif. The meaning, as historical linguists gathered, was safety, particularly with connotation to sharp contrast. Noah-- the safety to sleep through a rainstorm-- Maybe that explained it.

The thoughts sat wrong within her; how arrogant, after all, was it to think that something as beautiful as rain needed to be kept safe from.

When Noah died, it was by capillary action. Erosion. A gradual, continuous motion that carried off one brain cell, one neural pathway, for each of its rolling, million little killing blows. In the moment that she was taken apart and put back together, translation was necessary-- the world and the dead sought a way to understand. She had almost wondered, idly, as her NHP assistant melted shut with a sinewave scream, that she was sandstone, and the nanites which poured through her a river. She was flowing nowhere, was the problem with that. There was no motion, just a taking-apart.

So, she was a sheet of paper. She was lying on the flagstones. And the rain came.

Catkill refreshes her somsim world over fifty times before accepting that she won't find what she's looking for.

#{oh catkill}#{she's working on a lot}#{and in the moments between there needs to be something to preserve her}#{even if the introspection hurts}

storymonger

hey omni

did u kno that its possible to still get a fuckin killer cough even when ur living alone in a hermetically sealed station if u have the right kinda implant needs upkeep

n e way i long for the honey n lozenges out here

storymonger

ykw im pretty sure this is like

bad bad

like lookin at my at home med scans im p sure i need to get a part on this implant replaced

which would be normal

but i live alone. so.

gotta find a way to do self surgery

seen-in-the-smoke

.

storymonger

🗞🗞🗞

seen-in-the-smoke

what do you need tips and tricks

#look it’s just a little funny you know #sorry I try to be nicer but. l

storymonger

hey omni

did u kno that its possible to still get a fuckin killer cough even when ur living alone in a hermetically sealed station if u have the right kinda implant needs upkeep

n e way i long for the honey n lozenges out here

storymonger

ykw im pretty sure this is like

bad bad

like lookin at my at home med scans im p sure i need to get a part on this implant replaced

which would be normal

but i live alone. so.

gotta find a way to do self surgery

seen-in-the-smoke

.

#not gonna say anything #just. well. I’m curious #its nice to be curious you know

does anyone knkow what kids like