( you wake up, alone in the dark. )
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. ( Read more... )
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. ( Read more... )
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.
Cave jabbed a finger at Zouichi. "Alright tell me everything you know, because you obviously know something. Did you meet me, or some kind of alternate universe version of me already? Did you and him/me engage in any unlawful acts of science, and what's this?" Cave held up his arm, numbers to show. "I might not remember how I got here but I don't remember this. Also--were are my pants?"
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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."
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"Science happened and for the record, if I did do something I can't remember exactly what I did or when I did it. Give me a few to get the hippocampus warmed up a bit." Eventually, Cave might be able to recall specifics of what he was last doing before he ended up here and now; whether it would actually be helpful or not was another story.
"I don't remember you, but I imagine meeting someone like the founder and CEO of Aperture Science would of been burned in your memory for a long while, even if it were just a day. I don't blame you. Aha--"
Cave found his locker, number 43. Inside was of course not his own clothing but after checking the tags it was exactly his size.
"Ha. Would you look at these?" He held the black uniform up. "I would of preferred something a little more formal for first impressions but this'll do."
As he started to slip it on he continued, "Although, technically you claim it's not your first impression, is it? Why don't you tell me more about it and maybe we can figure out what happened to the time stream here."
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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."
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"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.
"The way I see it, there's a bunch of alternate timelines running around so if you interacted with a past-version of myself then that would affect any present, or past-present, or future versions too. Wouldn't be surprised if there were a bunch of different yous running around too as a result. Time travel is tricky."
A pause.
"Doesn't explain how we got here but maybe this was an attempt at getting all these timelines back together. Some kind of space time continuum duck tape. Wouldn't be surprised if I thought of it."
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"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?"
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"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 anyway."
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"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?
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"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?"
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