#col22starter

tuesday. april 11th,  2163. outside delma house.

[ Rosalind Stein is not unintelligent (no matter what her long-buried chemistry exams might say), though she’s starting to question the legitimacy of such a claim. A woman had directed her up the stairs and to the right, said “that’s where your house is,” and let her loose with her bag and her sketchbook. Still, Rose finds herself sighing in front of the wrong door, with the wrong symbol, in the wrong wing. The logical solution would be to look at the map available to colony members on her PDD. The implementation of this solution is lost somewhere between the fact that semi-regular system updates are keeping the map from loading, and an unhealthy dose of stubbornness that insists she doesn’t need a map anyway.

Rose is so incredibly lucky, she thinks, that she hadn’t been left to her own devices in the wilds of the earth for four and some years. Screw statistics, honestly, but there was at least an 87.69% chance she’d be dead. ]

[Of the many coping mechanisms Maddie had developed over the years, few were healthy. Most were just benign; not really helping, but not hurting her either. Some, perhaps more than would be acceptable in a functioning society, were actively harmful. Drinking was not one of those habits. Firefighters had to be sober whenever they were on duty, so she learned early on to keep a tight lid on her alcohol consumption. The lid had loosened slightly after D-day, but it still kept her worst impulses tightly under wraps. Most of the time.]

[Once in a while, as today, she let it all out. Took off the lid, let herself go wild. It was good for a once-in-a-while outlet, especially when she was, as today, having an absolutely shit time. Unfortunately the amount of tokens she was allotted did not account for absolutely shit times. Fresh out of both alcohol and payment, Maddie turned to the unfortunate patron next to her.] Buy a pretty girl a drink? I'm absolutely parched.

when: wednesday 12th april 2163 where: a corridor, by a supply cupboard who: open!

[So many black clothes. Isha doesn’t like cleaning them as much; white clothes are easy because you can bleach them. Dark clothes show every little hair and bit of fluff, and she’s spent the better part of the last hour with a lint scraper trying to clean up everyone’s funeral clothes. When she gets send off to get some more laundry detergent, she suspects it’s because she keeps sighing so fretfully while everyone else is chatting and trying to establish some sort of normality after Kaiser’s death.

Isha is fine with that, gliding down the corridor and slipping into the nearest supply cupboard. She has to stand on the lowest shelf to reach the detergent, which is far back on the highest shelf, and while she does so the door swings shut behind her.

It’s very dark, all of a sudden. Isha always needs to know where the nearest exit is, and she fares poorly when she’s trapped somewhere like this. Her PDD does nothing to open the door, but it won’t bend to brute force either; why doesn’t she know how the bloody doors work? Is it a mechanical error? A computer thing? Someone in the tech department is playing a joke on her? The light of her PDD is painfully bright as she types out an indignant message to the first IT person she can think of, that Paxton person, to say that she’s stuck.

In the meantime, she’ll try slow deep breaths like they always tout in therapy. It’s only when she hears someone coming along the corridor outside that she slams her palm against the door.]

[Dylan, as she’d quickly discovered, did not like being on a tiny island. She especially did not like being stuck in a tiny colony on a tiny island. It made her feel itchy. Claustrophobic. Grey clouds hung over everything like a lid, cutting her off from the vast expanse of sky she was used to. Some days even the sea seemed to be closing in on her, waves crashing high on the shore and cutting off all thoughts of leaving.]

[On those days, Dylan convinced the person in charge of overseeing the grounds to let her take one of the horses for a run. They needed the exercise, she argued, since only the Elites rode them and not nearly often enough at that. Usually she managed to charm her way into an hour’s ride through the wood surrounding the colony. It wasn’t a large area, but it was enough to get her horse up to a gallop, and that helped relieve some of the anxiety gnawing at her gut.]

[This time, it hadn’t really helped at all. Maybe it was the weather- more overcast than usual- or maybe it was the fact she was celebrating Passover alone rather than with her family like she should’ve been. Whatever it was, riding didn’t scratch the itch under her skin. She pushed every limit available; the horse, the grounds’ boundaries, her own abilities. Even the time. An hour passed in the blink of an eye, and before she knew it she was late coming back. She galloped back as fast as she could, stampeeding through the gates and praying no one had noticed her absence, and, in the process, nearly running some poor soul down.]

[She pulled back, skidding her horse to a stop and dismounting in one smooth motion.] Oh my god I am so sorry! Are you okay? Please say you’re okay.

MONDAY, 3 APRIL 2136 — Mid-Morning.

[[ Quinn is used to be being picked last. Or second to last; he was never the first option in the playground, in gym class. He was the ‘we have to pick him or else we’re stuck with that kid’ kid. He’s been relegated to last choice now. One benefit of being Chancellor during training is that he can pick and choose what he does or doesn’t participate in. Joining in to set an example, show some solidarity seems to be met with mixed results.

Wouldn’t they also complain if he didn’t participate?

At least that’s the answer he gives everyone else. Truly, it’s to make sure that if he ever needs to physically defend himself he can. He trains alone, too, roping in other reformists when he gets a chance. Something that oaf Charlie has proved incredibly useful for.

Today, they were in pairs but Quinn chose to work alone. It’s a fairly laid back circuit practicing with long range weapons. The trainer even tells the rest there will have to be at least one group of three, understanding that Quinn setting off before being dismissed meant he was working alone this afternoon.

Settling in with a sniper type weapon, he steadies the shot, looks through the scope. Finger moving to the trigger, ready. It goes black. Either they’re willfully irritating, or are truly oblivious. Quinn leans back, eye off the scope, to see who’s being an obstruction. ]]

[[ The assessment Caleb had been given of the colony’s overall care availability was decidedly bleak; ‘transient’ and ‘half-qualified’ were the terms of the day. Often those he saw on their way passing through 12 hadn’t encountered a proper dentist since the end of the world, either, so he was disappointed but not surprised. It was difficult enough to get people to floss even before they started developing superpowers.

He’d been given a curtained-off corner of the infirmary for the time being, while they presumably cleaned out a closet for him or something. His patient’s seat was a stiff office chair that reclined just barely enough, and Caleb had co-opted a tall, rolling stool and a small metal table for himself. He took the mediocre furnishings and the already-packed schedule of appointments in stride, as he routinely reminded himself of the benefits of Elite status.

A figure appears at the open corner of the curtains but Caleb doesn’t look up from his bag. ]] Hi. I’m Caleb. [[ He’d never been terribly professional even before D-Day — largely because a certain casual air tended to put people more at ease in a traditionally anxiety-inducing setting — but the blithe quality of his greeting is offset by the deft and clearly knowledgeable way he inspects and sets out his meticulously looked-after and well-maintained tools. ]]

Monday, April 10th Kaiser’s Wake, The Chapel Thread Status: Open

[The rain pounds at the roof of the chapel, echoing the heavy hearts and weighty silences in the air today. And Teilo stands, staring at the hand-sketched portrait of a man whom apparently no one really knew, a glass of red wine resting still and somewhat forgotten near his lips.

There’s meaning in this—in all of it—and though a part of him wants to inspect it inch by inch, he worries about what he’ll find. But one thing is for sure: today is the marker of change.]

[[ After spending the morning running in circles, Rosalind was ready for a nap. Getting out of bed had been hard today, for some reason. She had almost been late to her chores rotation. Once she’d finished that, she had practically bolted for the dining hall to make up for the breakfast she had missed. She was absolutely positive that her stomach would have devoured itself if she had made it wait two seconds longer. The couple of stares she’d gotten as she wolfed down her food hadn’t even mattered to her.

Now that her belly was satiated, she headed back to her room. The pillow on her bed was the only thing in her mind. It called to her; seducing her every thought. There was nothing sexier in this moment than a nap. Alas, it was not to be. So focused was she on her nap fantasies, she walked straight into someone turning a corner. ]]

Oops! Sorry!