Day 34: Sun Room

[scarletspeedstr]

[One speedster, free to a good home! Plays well with others and has had his shots. Adopt today!]Wally followed the steady stream of patients from the cafeteria towards the showers, but was prevented from entering by one of the ever-present nurses

Comments

[i_dont_paint]

[Waiting for Rude.]

Tony couldn't say he was disappointed to be ushered in a different direction than the bulk of the other adult patients, especially in light of the not-so-veiled warning issued over the intercom. Communal showers would have been aggravating enough without the threat of rampant groping.

The bulletin board caught his attention immediately as he entered the sun room. He headed toward it, waving off the nurse's suggestion that he 'go make friends'. Friends, so far as the term could apply to fellow inmates in an asylum, could wait. The collected discussions and notice postings were infinitely more likely to prove interesting. And, he decided, gaze skipping over a few of the more bizarre ones, entertaining.

[i_dont_paint]

Tony glanced up from the string of messages he'd been absently reading and nodded slightly in return. Being naturally curious, he didn't immediately return to his reading, his eyes instead absently tracking to the message the other patient had seemed to be replying to. After an instant's hesitation, over the notion of possibly provoking one of the people who really belonged under the care of the nice men with the butterfly nets, he craned his neck to get a better look.

Huh.

Fighting to suppress a look of amusement, he asked, "How's now?"

[i_dont_paint]

"What, with that?" Tony raised an eyebrow, torn between being amused and somewhat insulted. He settled on the former and shrugged. "Building a simplex system's easy. The actual transmitter's kid stuff, and grafting it on so you can send and receive on the same channel's not much harder." The latter was not, strictly speaking, entirely true. Perspective had never been his strong suit; if he considered something simple, surely it was so. "Of course, you'd still have to deal with range and interference. Walls would play hell with the signal."

[i_dont_paint]

"I've been here..." Tony feigned checking the watch he very much didn't have. Time sense had never been his strong suit, and the number he settled on was pulled from thin air rather than any effective estimate. "Four hours, maybe. But I doubt they'll leave anything useful just lying around. If there's a maintenance area, that's probably the best bet. Assuming you can get to it."

[i_dont_paint]

Tony's expression took on a faintly skeptical cast at the mention of monsters. Modern-raised and possessing the sensibilities of a scientist and engineer, he found that part even more difficult to believe than the possibility of the patients all coming from different worlds. Yet there was no surprise at what he was hearing, and he was not quite as disbelieving as he had been before he'd had a chance to look over some of the board's contents.

Oh, people were definitely seeing something at night. He couldn't question that any longer; mass hallucination only stretched so far as an explanation. The real question was the true nature of what people were seeing.

"Yeah, I got the brief rundown," he replied, grimacing slightly. "Use the buddy system, don't wander blind." He considered, then added, "I'll see what isn't locked down." For his own reasons rather than out of the goodness of his heart, and he made no real attempt to hide that sentiment. But it was cooperation of a sort.