( you wake up, alone in the dark. )

[habitformed]

CHARACTERS: EVERYONE.
LOCATION: The Medbay, the Locker Room, the Passenger Quarters. Pick your poison.
WARNINGS: I didn't write this. The wonderful wonderment that are the mods did. I'm only borrowing so we can get this party started.
SUMMARY: You wake up. Now choose your own adventure. (Start a new thread, tag someone else's. Whatever, people.

Comments

[thats_asbestos]

Waking up nearly butt naked in some kind of giant test tube andor relaxation vault with a breathing tube shoved down his throat was one hell of an experience, Cave decided. He was not the young, robust Cave Johnson of the 1940's and 50's, but well maintained for a guy his age. His experiences with moon rocks and moon rock-related experiments had not been kind to his health, evident in wrinkles around his face and shimmers of gray peeking through his light-brown hair. For the record, none of those grays dipped into his sideburns, which he was still proudly rockin' as he sprawled out on the floor like a disorientated newborn fawn, soaking wet.

How in the...?

He ambled to his feet with a grunt, faltered, then stood upright, unable to even see his own hands in front of his face amidst all the darkness. There was a dull ache all over his body, but not enough to deter him from keeping balance.

"Caroline?" He rasped, hoarse and deep--enough to stir up an aching cough from deep inside his chest. Right. Vocal chords and lungs still worked,

[zouichi]

That voice.

He knew that voice.

Zouichi turned around, staring at Cave Johnson Not the Young, Robust Cave Johnson of the 1940's and 50's.

"What are you doing here?"

[thats_asbestos]

Not the Young, Robust Cave, no, but a nearly naked one. And it would seem his reputation proceeded himself, nearly naked or not.

"What do you mean what am I doing here? I own the place." He wiped some leftover water from his face and wheeled around at the sound of the voice.

Unless here wasn't where he thought he was. Definitely a facility, definitely big. Had Black Mesa finally snapped, so jealous of Aperture that they would stoop so low as to capture their almighty and benevolent leader? Preposterous! But possible, if he was being greeted like that. Cave sure as hell didn't recognize the black-haired man.

"...I think. Where'er we at, kid?"

[zouichi]

"My first guess would be on a spaceship. Beyond that, I really couldn't tell you. I'm not sure anyone else here could, either; there don't seem to be a lot of answers to go around."

He frowned at Cave. 'Kid'? "Have you seen anyone else from the Transmigration 9?"

If Cave was here, maybe some of the others were here, too. And this was some kind of bizarre Mission Gone Wrong.

[thats_asbestos]

"A space ship?" He parroted. "Did I build it?" This was clearly important.

"Transawho? No, never heard of it."

Something was bizarre and something went wrong somewhere.

[zouichi]

"I doubt it." Zouichi gave him a funny look. "The Transmigration 9? Big, organic spaceship? Humid and slimy?"

It was kind of hard to forget something like that. Oh. Wait a second.

"Maybe you're from a different time period or something." WAIT WAS HE POLLUTING THE TIMELINE AGAIN? "Uh, forget I said anything. I'm Zouichi."

[thats_asbestos]

"Different time period? Shoot..." He groaned and brought a palm to his forehead.

Cave wheeled around again, eyes darting around the medbay looking for anything useful as his mind began to churn ideas. Lockers with numbers on them over there... everything certainly looked very futuristic, if this was The Borealis of the future, or the future in general. Maybe there was some kind of time machine here, or he could make a collect call to the past...

"Lab boys warned about that." And as his timeywimey self concluded at Transawho, at this point, it could not be possible to muddle up the timeline any worse than it was, so there would be no harm in doing just that if it got him back to his own time and place. He had to get there (or, bring there to here) because someone was getting fired

[zouichi]

"Wait, you knew this was going to happen? What exactly did you do?"

Actually, wait a second. If Cave had been at least in part responsible for what had happened, didn't that mean he might have some means of putting things back the way they had been? WAS CAVE JOHNSON THEIR LAST BEST HOPE?

"I only met you for a day, actually. And I don't know where the tattoo came from, but you need it to open your locker -- er, retrieve your clothes."

[thats_asbestos]

"Science." Cave answered as he moved for the lockers and skimmed along for a matching number. 20... 30... 37, 38

[zouichi]

"Well, I can't argue with that. It was definitely burned into my memory." Zouichi was being tactful AND truthful!

He thought it just as likely Cave wanted this information for more SCIENCE as for repairing whatever had happened to them, but... well, so far, this man was his only lead.

"Recently, you appeared on another ship I was on, called the Transmigration 9. It was part of a... sort of Visiting Day, I guess, designed to make the crew feel better. It was only designed to last for about a day, after which you'd be returned to the pods. You mentioned something about science and job opportunities, and I suspect you were planning to toss me out an airlock as part of an experiment. After that, you went back to the pods with all the others. But I don't see how any of that could have caused this."

[thats_asbestos]

And Cave took it as a compliment.

"Pods? You mean something like those giant cryo-tubes back there?" He jabbed a thumb to the grav couches. They didn't look anything like Aperture's Extended Relaxation Centers, but Cave could see the similarities in purpose. "Or alien abductee pods?"

Everything else Zouichi was saying sounded pretty legit. He would have talked about science and job opportunities and possibly airlock tossing if it was in the name of science. (As it was, his mind was already straying in that direction.) Said science never slept, after all.

Once Cave was mostly suited up, he riffled through the rest of the locker to find a bottle of pain pills. He wasted no time in popping more than necessary into his mouth, only to later pause with a thought.

How many was I supposed to take? Caroline always took care of this crap for me...It quickly became an after-thought as he swallowed, and shoved the bottle into one of the many pockets on the black uniform, done mulling over the the other man's testimonial

[zouichi]

"I'd say they were more alien abductee pods. They were organic and filled with slime, supposedly designed to maintain us in suspension. Not that it was very pleasant when you were finally released."

"Perhaps you're right. I've never encountered another version of myself, though. ...besides that one cloning incident." Actually, that was a disturbing idea. Clones. He looked around the room briefly, taking in the information that flowed in through his visual readouts. Nothing really out of the ordinary, for practically the first time since he'd awakened on the Transmigration 9. If he was a clone, they'd duplicated his cybernetic systems, too, and with impressive accuracy.

"And the result of this... merging of timelines was ending up here? Why? Is this some kind of space-time purgatory?"

Zouichi watched as Cave downed the pills, frowning slightly. "Are you ill?"

[thats_asbestos]

Slimey space alien abductee pods. HM. Maybe they were all clones. Ah, yes, Zouichi seemed to have the same train of thought. YOU WERE THINKING JUST LIKE CAVE, SON.

"You got me." Cave gave a muted cough as the dry pills ran down his throat, then his eyes unintentionally followed Zouichi's, immediately getting lost with the idea of exploration of this strange new world. "Lotta' questions, not a lot of answers." Even with the startling lack of his facility or anything remotely familiar, he seemed excited at the prospect of finding out. Life, lemonades--you know. Surely science would solve all.

As for his question, Cave shrugged. "Just a little deathly ill." NO BIG DEAL. "Would you believe me if I told you ground up moon rocks make a great portal conductor? Because they do. Ground up moon rocks are also coincidentally pure poison. We were doing extended testing with portals to see if they could leach the lunar poison out of a man's bloodstream but we haven't had a lot of definitive successes yet. I think we might be on to something

[zouichi]

OH GOD NO he was thinking like Cave. In any case, as tempting as it might be to assume everything was somehow the fault of Cave and SCIENCE, there were just too many questions here that were unresolved. And Zouichi was more interested in resolving these questions and getting back to the ship than he was in blaming a guy with... uh, moon rock poisoning.

"I'm sorry." Wow, was he feeling sorry for Cave Johnson? This was definitely weird for him, but it also helped that Zouichi was unaware of GLaDOS's fondness for deadly neurotoxin. "I wish I could help, but I'm not really a researcher." For someone like Cave to be laid low by one of his own science experiments must be pretty awful. Who was going to grind up all those moon rocks when Cave Johnson was gone?

[thats_asbestos]

Pretty awful but Cave of course saw it as just another one of those challenuities to overcome. Just think what else he could accomplish if he could cheat death, somehow!

"Don't be, but thanks kid." He flashed a smirk. The pain in his chest was a dull reminder that he would have to take care of himself until he could get some faithful employees back under his wing. Maybe even this very man in front of him. Zoui... Zanachi... Zee. Yeah, Zee would do for now.

"What do you do? ...Or did you do?"

[uncodlyawwesome]

Eridan was singlehandedly about to answer every last doubt and worry in Cave Johnson's brilliant mind.

Namely by coming out of the locker area, fiddling with his glasses, catching Cave's last question and responding in a completely flat voice, "Wwhat the hell does jawwin' evven mean." And then, for added effect, he grumbled, "Fuckin' humans."