THE FRACTURED WORLD: ARRIVAL

[modormenace]

 

A

rrival for some goes all but unnoticed. It's a sudden shiver, the sensation of being watched... and then nothing at all. Life continues serenely as it always has. The only indication of any change comes with sleep, wrapped in dreams: vague and distant echo imagery of another life, melting away in the morning.

 

F

or others, arrival is a sharp jolt. In the space of a single blink, they find themselves in an unfamiliar world, surrounded by the trappings of a life they have not lived. They are replacements, spirits taking possession of bodies belonging to people very much like themselves...

 

A

nd for the rest, arrival is a procedure. Routine. Those ported in to the Fractured World wake hazily in the comfortably dim light of the Porter room, laid out on an exam table. Their wounds, if they remember having any, have been healed— and even those who remember their own deaths find themselves miraculously restored. As they regain consciousness, an automatic audio-visual presentation is triggered. Regardless of their backgrounds or physiology, all imPorts 'see' and 'hear' this message as if in their own language:

"Greetings, imPort."

The voice is calm and gently authoritative, almost certainly selected by committee.

"On behalf of the Synod and all imPorts it represents, we welcome you to the planet Earth."

A decidedly non-humanoid robotic arm holds out a palm-sized device and rather insistently demands the new arrival take it. This is the imPort's comm, used for accessing the Porter's database of information, as well as the communications Network— though it won't receive communications from outside the Porter building until carried through one of the many Gates set up in a long, crescent-shaped array on the far side of the room.

As each Gate is approached, information about the faction it leads to flashes up on the comm device's screen. Which will you choose?

THE WHITE TOWER SANCTUM AURORAE KRAKOA HOUSE OF M EMPIRE OF LIGHT EQUALITY BEFORE LAW THE TWIN CITIES OLIN VALE EDEN SEEKERS OF THE NEW DAWN NORTHWESTERN IMPERIUM GREEN PIECE MAD BURNISH LUMINARY

Comments

White City Citizens

[dragony]

It'll look bad if I don't, won't it?

[ The voice is a familiar one, light and teasing as always. As one of the younger members of the White Tower, Ruka's never held any real position of esteem or authority, but as one of its longest-term residents, she's as much of a fixture as anyone else. No one would expect a child to pick sides, and though she's now finally emerged into young adulthood, she's continued to maintain the simplistic, reductionist approach: the best solution is the peaceful one where everyone gets along.

In a way, it means she's on everyone's side; more accurately, it means she's on nobody's. ]

Think of the new arrivals! We can't expect them to have a good time if we're not.

[timestones]

[Shifting a slight glance toward Ruka out the corner of his eye, if there's any sign of amusement it's very subtle indeed, the kind of thing someone might only catch if they keep an eye on him over many months or years.]

That sounds like a diplomatic way of saying we're trying to encourage a 'monkey see, monkey do' mentality. Is that fine as long as we're happy monkeys?

[dragony]

Have you seen unhappy monkeys? Because, you know, they're very difficult to clean up after.

[ An overly literal interpretation — it's the kind of deflection that leaves the listener to interpret it as they please. For the girl who grew up here, dodges like that are a great way to avoid obvious alignments, and play dumb enough to slip out from any burden of responsibility. For the girl who's here now, it's the best way to suss out what part she's supposed to play. ]

Unless... these kinda things bore you no matter what, huh?

[timestones]

I have. And if you want to see difficult to clean-up I promise you'll see it if you sneak your way into the afterparty.

[He scans a brief look around, like he's keeping an eye out for something or someone in particular and at the same time it's not like he's ignoring her at all.]

And if you mean in the general you, who is to say. If you mean me specifically, then please, you're talking to the real life of the party here. But no, a bore isn't precisely what I'd call it.

[dragony]

[ She hums a little thoughtfully at the first suggestion, weighing the options. On the one hand, it would help her get a better idea of what kind of situation she's really in. On the other, she's been awake all night until now — doing as much research as she could to get through this without anyone realizing what's happened. It's a bad situation, and there isn't anyone she can trust.

There's no way she'll be able to keep composure with sleep deprivation and alcohol in the mix. ]

I think I'll take your word on it for that. [ That's probably an expected deflection... everything's fine. ]

But... hmm, if not a bore, what would you call it? 'Precisely.'

[timestones]

[Deflection is almost Stephen's middle name at this point, full of cryptic wizard bullshit and mysticism that he either can't or won't share because something-something timelines and dimensional structural integrity something-something. It's just part of the territory of the job.

But what word indeed. And precisely.]

Anything Tony Stark hosts is never going to be boring by design. Personally, I'd call these events informative, one way or another.

[dragony]

Hmm... I suppose that's a way to look at it.

[ She says it with a little affectation of boredom — as if she's not also here for information. But even if they're both dancing around substance for different reasons, there's a line to grasp. ]

... You're from the same, mmm, neck of the woods as— [ she bites back before she says the name alone—Stark, with all the wrong weight—and corrects. ] —as the High Chancellor, right? You've known him longer than anyone. He's never bored you?

[timestones]

[Stephen doesn't hold back a very faint snort at that little combination of things all clustered together, still finding the title obscenely grandiose and yet knowing it's really quite fitting for Tony in this capacity.]

We're both from the same version of Earth, yes, but different points in time.

[It's true though and something people don't often make note of--Stephen has, technically, known Stark the longest along with Wanda, except she's off living her best life in her own faction. And also, technically, Tony has known Stephen as long as anyone else he met for the first time in this universe.]

But no, Tony's not boring. [Stephen's eyes narrow slightly at one of the various digital displays of the High Chancellor.] He's almost incapable of being boring on a molecular level no matter what universe he's in--everything always seems to hinge on him. Which, in a lot of ways, is really quite irritating.

[dragony]

Things do tend to shake up, when he shows up. [ She hums a little, considering what else to say. He's not wrong, but it's not like she can tell him about the other world — the other worlds, the other Tonys, the way everything started and changed all those years ago.

But then, they're not the kinds of things she would say, even if they were on the right parallel of Earth. ]

It's just... in a way, he's been in my life for most of my life. [ It's a truth on a very slim technicality, but it counts. ] But, I can't say I really know anything about him.

That's pretty irritating, too.

[timestones]

My condolences.

[The incredibly dry way he says that probably makes it hard to tell if he's joking or not and he's certainly not going to say otherwise.]

And what about it makes that irritating? You think that because he's been a part of most of your life that you should be part of his?

[dragony]

[ She can't help the immediate reaction: her nose scrunches and her lips pull back in a grimace, as though suddenly biting into something citric, sour and rotten. ]

Not when you put it like that. Eugh. [ He's so old. She doesn't need substitute parents or anything of the sort. Hard pass. ] No, I meant more like... if you live somewhere with seasonal flooding, you wanna know which seasons have the floods and which ones are dry. Or, like, earthquakes. That kind of thing.

You want to know because it affects you.

[timestones]

[In turn, Stephen's head tilts slightly and he squints one eye like he's trying to parse the metaphor.]

The last thing Stark needs is someone comparing him to something as grand and overarching as seasonal changes. A natural disaster, maybe, but even then that's pushing it.

But even if you know each year will have a monsoon season, you can't know how hard it'll rain, or what it'll do to which rivers, if banks will break, where floods will flow. It honestly wouldn't matter if you knew him as well as his wife, those aren't things you'd be able to anticipate.

[A wry little smile briefly crosses his face.]

I promise you, you could watch Stark go through the same moment tens of millions of times and every single one he'd do something different.

[dragony]

You think I'd say something like that to his face? I'm not that dumb.

[ She's young, and from what she's gathered, this-her isn't involved in the political machine — and she's seen how she talks. She's allowed to be a little bit teasing-mean. Honestly, it probably helps his image to have someone like her be out of pocket. ]

It's hard to imagine having the patience for that kinda thing, though. Watching one person go through the same thing over and over again.

[timestones]

[Stephen makes a slight face with an upward flick of his eyes, not looking to comment either way on what he thinks Ruka would or wouldn't do; he doesn't know her that well.]

It'd be a form of torture, I'm sure. But I'm speaking figuratively, not as a directive or a recommendation.

I mean, seriously, can you think of anything worse than groundhog day with Tony Stark?

[Maybe hanging out for a mini-murder eternity with an all-power trans-dimensional life form. Maybe that's worse. Jury is out.]

[dragony]

[ The specificity catches her off-guard.

It shouldn't; if heart and memory always worked in orderly, logical ways, it wouldn't. But, can you think of anything worse, and of course she recalls worse: the looping 'groundhog day' that ended and reset, over and over, in the cumulative agony of a city wiped off the map in a nuclear blast — and hastily drawn back on to repeat the cycle. Anything worse, and she thinks of something halfway shrouded, the waterfall downpour of seven billion regrets, and a world dying beneath her feet. Anything worse, and... the list goes on.

It was meant to be a joke, she knows, but for a moment her throat is too dry to answer, and her focus pulled too far outward, too far inward, to remain in the present moment. ]

... A few things come to mind, [ she says, finally, a little wane. With effort she shrugs, and crosses her arms, and forces a smile through it. It's probably not very convincing. ] But that's top ten, for sure.