quietplacememes | TDM #003

TEST DRIVE MEME
You wake, standing. A thick, muddy red dust coats your skin and clothes - it sticks to your tongue and blocks your vision. Inhale and it chokes you, exhale and your breath puffs out in front of your face in a transparent maroon cloud. It tastes of copper, tangy and harsh. Movement is difficult, every limb tingles and aches. Look to your left, your right. Evenly spaced in each direction stands another person indistinguishable in every way from the next. You're disoriented and lethargic, unable to grasp onto a single thought. A pinprick of light blooms ahead and grows steadily larger; a door has opened.

Hands grip your wrists, push at the small of your back and guide you out of the darkness into a room with four walls and a thin, sagging ceiling. The plaster is peeling, the air is musty, and the floor is slick. White plastic piping juts up from the center and curves into multiple spouts, clean water flowing in uneven streams. Those hands pull your clothes off and clear the dust from your body, redress you in handsewn jumpsuits.

A finger is pressed to your lips. Kind eyes meet your own and a single word is whispered - hush.

Led out of the room in a line, you’re taken down a short hallway and into another, much larger room. There’s a woman waiting for you there, a child hugging her leg, and a cloth bag in her hands. She reaches in and pulls out a device, passes one to each of you. Once finished, she begins to move both hands in graceful gestures, a language. One of the people who helped you lifts their device and the screen lights up, tracks the woman’s hands. Letters appear on the screen and you understand the device’s purpose. She tells you what she knows and it’s not much.

This world is haunted. Noise attracts them, so it is not allowed. Communication is through body language, soundless writing, and the device. She tells you that your feet must be light and your mouth never used. There is a community outside these doors, where you can survive together, but only if you agree to one thing: complete and total silence. You'll have time to talk it over. Acceptance allows you to journey outside. The ground is marked in pathways of sand, lining the paths to each building and everywhere in between. You notice that the locals hold their devices always, aloft and glance to it often. It will not vibrate or make a sound to signal a message.

Notices appear. Rules. Guidelines. Feet on the sand and never anywhere else. To open a door you brush your fingers along the hinges - oiled and you may enter. If not, take the brush from the can sitting nearby and coat the metal with the dark liquid. You're to settle into your new home.

Caught me unawares
Content Warnings: Confusion, disorientation
Themes: Survival, horror, it's like groundhog day

The ending of the floor has caught me unawares. This must be the reason why I’m falling down the stairs.

That night, when you fall asleep, you dream of your life before The Quiet Place. At first it's the happiest moments of your life played on repeat, over and over. Everything good and sweet and fun. The second night, it's much the same. You go to bed anticipating another restful and pleasant sleep. But on the third night it changes.

For everyone, it starts the same. There's a long hallway with a door at the end. You walk towards it with nowhere else to go. You twist the knob and when you step forward, the floor ends and you fall. Falling lasts for seconds, minutes, or hours and when you land, it's with a jolt and a cloud of red dust all around you. There's someone else next to you, stumbling, coughing and choking on that familiar dirt that coats your tongue and mouth. When your eyes meet, everything blurs and you're falling again - this time, when you land, it's inside that dream from the first night. Only you're not alone. They're with you. The only way out is to experience the dream together. And when you do wake up, for real, that same red dirt is on your hands.

Falling down the stairs
Content Warnings: Confusion, disorientation
Themes: Survival, horror, it's like groundhog day

The ending of the floor has caught me unawares. This must be the reason why I’m falling down the stairs.

That night, when you fall asleep, you dream of your life before The Quiet Place. At first it's the worst moments of your life played on repeat, over and over. Everything bad and sour and awful. The second night, it's much the same. You go to bed anticipating another restless and dreadful sleep. But on the third night it changes.

For everyone, it starts the same. There's a long hallway with a door at the end. You walk towards it with nowhere else to go. You twist the knob and when you step forward, the floor ends and you fall. Falling lasts for seconds, minutes, or hours and when you land, it's with a jolt and a cloud of red dust all around you. There's someone else next to you, stumbling, coughing and choking on that familiar dirt that coats your tongue and mouth. When your eyes meet, everything blurs and you're falling again - this time, when you land, it's inside that nightmare from the first night. Only you're not alone. They're with you. The only way out is to experience the nightmare together. And when you do wake up, for real, that same red dirt is on your hands.

OOC
From your mods:

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NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ the person on the other end of the line with the very suspicious username (and billy knows not to just trust things as simple as usernames) is right: speed is (haha) descriptive of many things, and now billy’s holding his face in both hands because he should’ve thought about that too. way to go, b. ]

he’s been missing for a while and he’s important to me.

[ wait. billy, you’re a freaking warlock. on a hunch billy attempts a magical phone tracing spell, and— ]

does the word “avengers” mean anything specific to you? like, a group of people, maybe?

He's your brother, of course he is important. [ Missing for a while doesn't sound good, though. ] I have not seen him yet, but I will look.

They are a team, headquartered in America, yes? Captain America and a supposed god and some millionaire's bodyguard? What do they have to do with this?

[ the other's response answers some questions, but not all. all right, something to work with, billy thinks - the multiverse is officially at play. ]

see, we're kind of the junior squad. my brother and i, we're part of a team, we call ourselves the young avengers (sometimes) and there's someone with your alias on the senior team and does the name magneto mean anything to you too?

you know, just wondering.

[ nailed it. ]

[ .....

????

(Did the Avengers just steal his alias???) ]

Nothing I would care to discuss on a public frequency, I think.

oh, yeah, definitely! i wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable!

would you like to meet somewhere?

[ it's the least he could offer, and maybe he'll finally confirm or disprove any of his ongoing suspicions about the man too. ]

[ This much friendliness has to be a trap, right? But this person's brother, if he exists, sounds like another mutant in trouble, and that's not something Pietro can just ignore.

So, somewhere public. With lots of exits. ]

By the fountain, in 10 minutes. Don't be late.

[ what wouldn't billy do to get tommy back? very little, but a touch of friendliness couldn't hurt. he flies over to the fountain and quietly lands on the sand scattered around it. ]

i won't be! i'm here!

[ For once, Pietro is not the most prompt. He could have crossed the distance to the fountain in seconds -- milliseconds, 3.2 to be precise, but not without making a sound. Silence requires being careful about the amount of air he displaces, how his weight falls, the amount of force with which he hits the ground -- none of which he loves, for the record.

So if he's looking a little irritable about it when he walks up at the pace of a dying snail (or, normal, other people would just call that normal), well, that's not Billy's fault, and to be fair that's sort of just his face. Pietro squints at the other teen for a beat, then taps out on the device (rather swiftly), ]

Well, you don't look like much of an army. Would you mind telling me who Magneto is to you, exactly?

[ the man that greets billy puts to rest the... well, rest of billy's doubts. the man in front of him looks a lot (a lot) like uncle pietro. a much younger version of him, in fact, and billy has a sinking feeling about the answers he's going to get out of this meeting. tentatively, billy starts texting, worrying his lip as he does so. ]

he's my grandfather.

i may be overstepping here, but is it safe to assume he's your father?

[ Pardon.

World's foremost mutant terrorist, had been more what Pietro had been expecting. Enemy, maybe. Ally, if he was lucky. He isn't lucky. His jaw clenches a tic while he stares at the words, wondering how the devil he's supposed to answer that, and if perhaps turning around and running the other direction would be an acceptable alternative.

But then he looks up at this young man, who-- well, doesn't look so much like him, at least not in the coloring, but does have a pair of eyes Pietro knows the shape of very well. And misses very much. He exhales unevenly. ]

I had hoped not. [ But here we are. ] You're certain?

[ ...ay yi yi this is not good already. way to go, billy? the teen wrings his hands a little and visibly hems and haws before deciding to stand firm in what he's already communicated thus far. ]

well, if you're quicksilver and your sister is the scarlet witch, then yes.

she's my mother.

uhm, i'm from your future?

[ This is worse than alternate universes. Or duplicates. Or whatever had been happening on Avagi station. Pietro scrubs at his face with one hand, nodding. Yes, that's who he is, and that's his sister — so Magneto, the one who looks at Pietro like something he's scraped off his shoe, is more than likely his father.

But this isn't all bad. Wanda has a son. They both live long enough to have children. Her children survive to adulthood. The fear that none of those things would happen in the world he knows isn't anything he's ever voiced, but presented with evidence to the contrary he looks like he might have a softer emotion about it for a second — and promptly squashes that back down, wow. ]

Who is your father?

[ Just wondering. ]

[ oh yikes this question. uh. how to explain vision to others without sounding like a— oh, you know what. ]

the scarlet witch created me and my brother out of the fabric of the universe, so technically there's no father. it's pretty judeo-christian when you think about it, actually.

it's

we do not have the most conventional family, and she really wanted kids. uhm, sorry?

[ he's going to pay for this omission of truth much much later, he feels, but it's better than essentially saying "mom fucked a robot and had magic kids as a result", you know? ]

[ Well.

That seems fine.

(Better than having any deadbeat potential husbands to chase off, he supposes.)

After a few beats staring into the abyss, Pietro texts back, ] Have you eaten yet?

[ Let's just. call that enough brain-melting conversations for one night. ]

[ oh hey, that reminds billy - he hasn't eaten anything since arriving here, and he's hungry. even his belly chooses this moment to let its interests be known, and billy stares it down at its betrayal. ]

i haven't eaten, no. it's been a while.

uh, i also don't have my wallet with me?

TDM #003

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puts a bow on this

aaaaaaaaa