reveriance | OCTOBER TDM

001: WAKE UP Were you asleep or were you unconscious? It doesn't matter: when you come to, there's an odd taste in your mouth and there's a low-level mechanical hum in the air. Your head hurts and you feel nauseous. You aren't anywhere you know: everything around you is metal, from the floor you lie on all the way to the ceiling. You are dressed in a jumpsuit you definitely weren't wearing before.

"We tried to save the world. I think— I think we did the opposite."

The message repeats on a loop. If you look for its source, you find a comms device on the floor next to you. The logo on its wallpaper says REVERIE TERMINAL. Upon closer inspection, you find the same logo on your jumpsuit.

Welcome to your new home. What choice do you have but to explore your surroundings?

002: FADE A few days have passed since your arrival on the station. After becoming accustomed with your new environment and learning of the decks and their various uses, things begin to seem increasingly habitual. Fancy yourself some time at the gym. Take in a read at the library. Replicate something that... might look like food from home, but lacks the comfort that such rations would provide normally. The hours seem to pass maddeningly through, but stay in one area long enough and you're bound to hear whispers and echoes from the long corridor ahead of you. Try to chase after it, and the sound only grows fainter the closer you get to it. Sometimes the whispers are mundane; it might seem like chatter between station Operators as they go throughout their day. And sometimes the things you hear were things you wish you never had.

Cries ringing out; the sound of people you don't recognize. Some are begging for air, suffocating and gasping as oxygen seems depleted from their lungs. Coughing that seems to rattle from deep inside the lungs, unhealthy, and you can almost taste necrosis in the air. A gruff voice, pleading with someone that won't respond to it, begging and bargaining to last out just a few more days until it can be figured out. You can try to give chase, or try to run away, but these tortured sounds begin to follow you.

Something has happened here. But it's hard to say what that something might have been.

But you can feel something's grasp, slowly... carefully... pulling you backward. Your airways feel tight, and you think, for a moment that maybe the sound you had just heard was your own voice. It might last a few seconds and pass, or linger on as you struggle to make sense of an empty corridor and no one else in sight.

003: SIGNAL TO NOISE Peering down at your communicator, you notice the time. 0829.

One full minute before you had planned to wake up, but it feels like the span of 60 seconds between this and the next has an unsettling sort of effect on you. It's hard to really place your thumb on it, but it seems like an echo of a moment you've had before, like a song's chorus that gets stuck in your head and you can barely remember the words, but the beat is still there, vibrant and pounding. You wait for the clock to turn to 0830 before getting up out of bed, and your body feels like it's got a trajectory of its own, auto-navigating to the bathroom, dressing yourself for the day, and exiting your crew quarters.

You seem to have a wave of déjà vu wash over you as someone greets you in passing. You might stop for conversation, talk about plans for the day, but as you look into your fellow Operator's face, you get the gut wrenching feeling that you've somehow done this before. You've actually done this 3 times before already.

Somehow, you've been living the same span of time over, and over again. You might begin to ask questions, scope out if someone else feels the same way that you do, and after a while, it begins to click for them as well. When time is the only thing you have on your hands, what do you do? Try to find a way to last through the same day repeating the same steps you had in the last 24 hour cycle? Find freedom in your actions knowing that whatever you decide will have no consequences? Perhaps you'd rather drink yourself to boredom? Whatever the case is, when you go to sleep, you'll find yourself waking up to the time blinking on your communicator. 0829. Rise and shine.

004: DRIFT Upon passing up to the observation deck, you notice outside the window a scene you've grown familiar to. In the distance, a lonely planet taunts you enticingly to escape from the station and stretch your feet on terra firma. Stars, from galaxies you don't recognize form constellations that you can draw pictures of in your mind but lack context or the ability to help you understand where- or when - you are. You might have visited the hangar before, seen the ships, but no matter how hard you try to gain entrance, a lock code refuses to allow you entry. It begins to sink in that you really are lost to the great void of space.

But something in the distance catches your eye. It takes a moment for you to realize that an object is drifting closer at nearly a snail's pace. Upon further examination, you can clearly begin to make out a jumpsuit. One you've seen before at the airlock exits of the station. And it doesn't take long to realize that whatever is out there has no control of its own body as it floats weightlessly in the vacuum outside. You don't know who it could be, but you know that whoever is out there, they're an Operator, just like yourself.

If you make it to the airlock and convince yourself of your own heroism, you might be able to drift out and rescue the person. Oxygen tanks don't last forever, after all. And try as you might to make your way to the object, it's an uphill battle. The closer you get, the farther away the image does as well.

Hopefully someone on the observation deck sees you, the same way you had seen that lone drifting body.

Because your propulsion system has just given out.

MISC. [ NETWORK ]

The comms device you found next to you when waking up connects to a station-wide network, REVERIE NET. You have the option to post video, voice or text messages.

What will you share?

[ WILDCARD ]

The station features a variety of locations, from sleeping quarters free for the claiming to a dirty swimming pool and a bar that still holds alcohol (though some of the bottles seem to have been opened a while ago).

Go wild, but don't wreck the place. It's your home for the foreseeable future, after all.

☆ code by kimmiserate ☆

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I. WAKE UP

[ it has been a long time since nightingale had last woken up without remembering how he'd come to be where he was. it had happened briefly after being shot and waking up in hospital, but he'd been able to put two and two together quickly then. now, he is at a loss. none of his surroundings look familiar.

in fact, they look decidedly unfamiliar. as does the piece of technology - he hesitates to call it a phone - he finds, playing a message on repeat. his clothing isn't his, unfamiliar and far rougher in material than even his cheapest suit. ]

Excuse me. [ he starts when someone walks past, tone polite and expression not betraying the nausea he feels. ] Where am I?

[ just a mild-mannered middle-aged man with a posh british accent, nothing to see here. ]

II. BOXING

[ aforementioned mild-mannered middle-aged man with a posh british accent has found the gym. he isn't particularly interested in the various machinery, but he's tied the arms of his jumpsuit around his waist, leaving him in a white undershirt, betraying broad shoulders and wiry muscle as he punches the bag, over and over again. it's methodical and he's working up a sweat, but he doesn't look particularly satisfied with it.

perhaps a boxing partner is what he needs? ]

III. NETWORK (id: nightingale)

Does the existence of this station mean that aliens are real as well?

IV. WILDCARD

[ ooc; find nightingale anywhere else on the station or lmk if you'd like to have a personalised starter re one of the other prompts (esp fade or drift)! ]

OCTOBER TDM

thomas nightingale | rivers of london