Reverie

So here's something our life here puts me in mind of, often.

In eighteen something something, the Mary Celeste set forth to cross the Atlantic with a hull full of alcohol, with a full crew, a devoted captain and his little family on board.

The ship was found several weeks later without a soul aboard. Nearby Morocco was famous for pirates, but the valuables were still left all in their places. The beds were neatly made. Baggage had not been packed. Food was in the pantry, tables were neatly set, and all the barrels of alcohol were intact- except three or four, which were made incorrectly, and which sat empty, apparently having leaked into the hull.

The lifeboat was missing, and a long rope hung from the back of the ship. Most of the sails were furled. The ship had taken on water, but not nearly enough to be dangerous; more likely the result of having been abandoned.

When the men who found the ship checked the log, the last entry was dated ten days before the ship was recovered. The sailors of the Mary Celeste noted that they had sighted land- there was some evidence that the ship's chronometer wasn't working, which doesn't matter to the puzzle except that the crew may have been disoriented, and may have believed they were closer to Gibraltar or the nearby islands than they were.

What say you?

Hey so...................

Does anyone know what we do if something happens to our food supply?
Not like if it gets really gross or drugged or whatever!
But like.........

What do we do if it stops working and we don't have backup food?

Just wondering.......

[[Forward dated to one good nights' sleep after the music ends.]]

Well.

[Says Ricki's voice, with that very distinct perfectly calm tone that manages to convey that something is probably actively on fire.]

Is there a doctor on board?

[The feed disconnects rather abruptly. What's happening in Ricki's room isn't pretty. Brightly, he adds;]

And if so is he free right fucking now?

( Things in Ricki's room are getting bloody. )

[ The question Haruto wants to ask is simple, but he doesn't want to risk the "Hideki Matsukawa" persona he's built up for himself. So, he posts using his other, anonymous communicator. ]

if you could help, but doing so would put yourself at risk, would you?

If anyone out there needs someone to talk to, I'd like to extend my services.

I have some specialized experience in dealing with high pressure situations, if that helps. I've got a room on deck 6, or we can just get coffee in the mess hall. As formal or informal as you like.

You can contact me here or privately.

For those who aren't interested, or if you want to get to know each other better first: what's your favorite memory from home?

[ jessica jones doesn't want to be here — transported from one hellhole to another. and even worse, one in goddamn space. jesus christ.

an eternal misanthrope, she's kept to herself since her arrival, for the most part. however, because it's the middle of the night and she's feeling restless, she decides to grace the network with her presence. will she offer a few words of wisdom or perhaps a message of hope to console those whom miss their home?

yeah fucking right. ]

why does all the booze in this dump taste like shit?

[ at least she has her priorities in check. ]

[ The camera filming is the one from the console in the wall of the garden, the one that Haru put together. It shows Amos, fingers brushing along the plants hooked together along the wall. He has a smile on his face, and his touch seems incredibly gentle, his lips parted as he looks at the greenery. ]

Have you ever seen something more amazing? These plants are keeping us alive. Literally. Scrubbing up the air we breathe, putting it back out as something we can use. They take so much work, so much patience, so much knowledge. To keep them alive, help them grow. So amazing.

[ He stops, his face closing up all of a sudden. His jaw ticks with a muscle under the beard, and his hands turn into fists. He pulls away from the wall. It seems like a sudden change in mood, something like a switch has been flipped, all of a sudden. His posture tenses, his eyes start stinging. ]

This place is killing us. It's - it's killed my friend, already. He's more than a friend, really. He's my brother.

[ If you've met Amos, had a chat with him, you might realize that this video is pretty... well, unlike him. He doesn't seem to really recognize that fact, though, looking straight at the camera with his eyes slightly teary. ]

Be careful. This station does shit to us. [ Pause. Amos wipes at his eyes. Sniffles. ] Oh and by the way, guys, it's a station, not a ship. Don't make me say it again.

[ He doesn't sound angry, even when he says this, tired of having to repeat himself. There's a suspicious complete lack of anger throughout the whole entry. ]

Seriously, we need to get off this barge. All of us. If you think there's nothing you can do, I promise you, there is. We gotta work together.

Being here reminds me a little of the time I spent working in Kowloon. The walled city is an old Song military outpost in Hong Kong, that everyone poured into some centuries ago. Instead of sprawling out the town went dense, some thousands of refugees pouring their way in and cramping in tight up against one another. I was there in '63, well after the fires and before the police started bothering the cathouses and opium dens.

[Ricki's voice is low, and close to the communicator. The hour is late, and he sounds tired, like he's sitting alone with a drink. His accent is fuzzy, too, British-Australian via Penang, Singapore, others. Indistinct, impossible to place, and cultivated over the years into something level and hypnotic.]

There were thirty thousand people in less than three hundred buildings, piled so tall and crisscrossed with laundry and walkways so thick that sunlight seldom reached the lower levels. You stepped from single cobblestone to cobblestone or else splashed through shallow puddles by the light of the few flourescent bulbs that had been wired in to light the lower market stalls.

[There's pause, and then a quick breath, like he's shaking himself out of it. He doesn't quite chuckle, but you can hear that it's a near thing.]

I'd take that over this if I could. We're just as flourescent and barely lit, but the food was better. My Cantonese is shit, I can order tea and apologize sincerely, but I still think I understood more there than I do here. Better bars, too.