As friendly as Leela had been, Rita was glad to be escorted away from her, for fear that some of that crazy might have been contagious. Abducted by aliens. Yeah, right
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No worries! XDshorttankApril 29 2010, 08:01:02 UTC
"Not... exactly." She'd been over it, plenty of times, but she was trying to sound normal here. Then again, when they got to the topic of Leela having been a cyclops until very, very recently, all that would go out the window anyway. Elaine was from Earth, though. That was a good start. "I've been to the moon?
"I seem to come from later than most people. The thirty-first century." She braced herself for the inevitable reaction to that. Mason seemed to have come around, but Leela had realized she was a little out there for most people in this place. It was an interesting novelty, actually. When your circle of acquaintances included a disgusting lobster and an amoral robot, you tended to fade into the background no matter how many eyes you had.
The salad was less suspicious than breakfast had been, and Leela finished it quickly. She idly picked up a pair of scissors that were sitting on the table, and found that they were duller than an underpants-by-the-pound catalog. Somehow, she wasn't surprised. She doubted she was the first person here to want to stab staff members.
Re: No worries! XDselfrescuerApril 30 2010, 19:02:44 UTC
"..."
Had Leela said something like that before Elaine had been transformed into a gold statue and apparently spirited away to an unfamiliar place at least seven years in the future, Elaine would probably have said "That's nice" and left the clearly insane woman to her own business. Even after said events, she was still tempted to do just that, and the "Are you quite serious?" expression on her face said as much. She could maybe believe in some voodoo power interfering in time a little bit, but bringing in people from over 1000 years in the future? She was pretty sure that even the blackest of magic didn't have a reach that far.
She didn't know for certain that it didn't, however, which gave her enough reasonable doubt to stay and perhaps let Leela explain herself further. "That's... not exactly the easiest thing in the world to believe, Captain, considering it was the late 17th century the last time I checked, " she answered back with her suspicious eyebrow raised extra high for good measure. "Do you have any proof of that?"
Yep, there it was, that look that said the other person thought Leela was several tiny bananas short of a crudités tree. "I've been to around this time before. 1947. Which doesn't prove anything, I know. They changed the way I look, and my wrist thingy's gone! It's just got a lojackamator, and Tetris, and a laser, but it's more advanced than anything I've seen here so far." Of course, she could have made that up too, if she were determined in her insanity. Hm. How the hell could she prove it? Arguing you were totally normal, even boring, in your own time didn't carry much weight with people who obviously hadn't run into time travelers before.
"I could ax you the same thing, you know. Can you prove you're from the 1600s?" Leela wasn't entirely sure what the differences were between that time and when Fry had come from. They'd had hand-cranked televisions or something? Elaine looked modern enough, but if she'd started out wrapped in pelts, the hospital would've made her change anyway. "I've met one other person from Earth here, and he said he was from 2010."
Elaine instinctively reached up to where her head scarf would normally have been, and frowned when her hand found only hair there. She was certain that the tag inside would have marked its maker, year, and proper washing instructions, but alas, she was out of luck. Right. Note to self: find new bandanna, she thought as she lowered her hand again, looking back down to the paper in front of her. With the safety scissors, she began cutting across the pages of her notes to make thin, vertical strips, and then horizontally across those strips to make a collection of tiny paper squares.
"I would be able to prove myself, but they seem to have taken even my non-destructive possessions. I can see your point," she relented for the moment as she did her cutting. That didn't mean she believed Leela or this other person claiming to be from the future yet; however, considering her own situation, the strange terms Leela was using, and the fact that Leela seemed genuinely unaware that 1947 felt nowhere close to the 1600s did put her story closer to the realm of possibility. For the moment, Elaine was willing to at least accept that Leela didn't think she was lying.
With the squares finished, she picked up the glue and started dabbing a pattern of dots on the black construction paper and sticking one square to each dot. They might have resembled an abstract piece or a random pattern to the untrained eye, but if one studied how the pattern was being laid out for long enough, it could be seen that there was a small map of the halls and rooms Elaine had visited thus far nestled amongst the randomness. "What reason would someone have to bring in people from vastly different time periods, then, I wonder?" she asked, a perfectly general enough question that could be answered whether or not what Leela claimed was true. "And changed the way some people look. What was it you said they did to you again?"
[OOC: Sorry for the wait. T_T Want to backthread a bit?]
Leela didn't see a pattern in the squares, but she'd only seen a map on paper once, and had found it really odd. It hadn't talked or self-updated or anything. She was still having trouble wrapping her brain around the idea that she was in a time where everything was like that. But the evidence was piling up. All the things here were manual, and none of them looked a thousand years old. If only she could find someone else from around her time and compare notes.
"Some kind of experiment? To see how we react in a hostile environment?" She'd been in hostile-er, sure, but that didn't mean she was in a big hurry to settle down here. She had deliveries to make, and a chance to find out if it was possible for a guy she was dating to like her too much. She had meals for the next two weeks waiting in her freezer!
"But I don't have any idea why they'd change me." Maybe it had been to keep the other patients from freaking out even more, she thought, frowning slightly and picking up a purple marker. Or maybe it had been just more evidence of Leela's not-craziness that they'd needed to remove. She drew a quick sketch of a woman with a purple ponytail and one big, purple eye, then flipped it around to show Elaine. "That's what I'm supposed to look like. I know, you've probably never seen a cyclops before. But if I were making up the way I looked, I would have made my hips smaller." She figured even a woman from 1400 years in the past could relate to that, no matter how tall and thin she was. "Why do you think they abducted all of us?"
Elaine looked about at the child-friendly art tools, the coddling nurses, and the ultra-safe, non-toxic plastic tables and chairs around them for a moment before turning back to Leela. "...Define 'hostile.'"
She gave Leela a wry look to assure her that she was mostly joking when she said that. She understood the woman's main point, which was that this could be an experiment of some sort. It wasn't completely implausible, at least no more so than everything else so far. She added the idea to her mental list of possibilities, albeit a little bit lower on the list - somewhere above "voodoo mastermind with odd ideas about how to gain friends" but slightly below "extended fever dream."
Idly, she continued plotting squares on the paper while Leela drew up her sketch. When the drawing was finished, she picked up the paper to look it over. While she had to admit that the woman's artistic abilities were not half-shabby, Elaine was still not entirely sure about what the picture conveyed. Certainly, she had met plenty of people with only one eye in her time (most of them voting citizens of hers, in fact), but Leela's cyclopian appearance was clearly different from the eyepatch-sporting buccaneers she knew. Still, she couldn't exactly argue with that point about hips, and that purple hair was looking less and less dyed the more Elaine studied it. Hmmm...
"Honestly? No idea yet. Assuming I'm not dreaming or still cursed or anything of that sort, perhaps somebody needs us for something?" she suggested. "Maybe they plan to use this facility to integrate us into their own society somehow? That would explain the uniforms, the new names, and the changes in appearance." She shook her head even as the words left her mouth. That simply raised the question of what qualities were needed in subjects such that pulling people from different time periods was required. "Or perhaps some sort of epic cross-era battle royale is planned for later?" She didn't have much more confidence in that idea than the last, and her tone conveyed as much. It was probably worth it to throw as many possibilities out there as they could, however. They had to keep the gears of their minds turning if they wanted any hope of figuring out what was going on.
"Maybe I'm too hostile for it, then," Leela joked. That was what happened when you took a woman's boots away. It pointed to a diabolical intelligence running this place. That, or someone with terrible fashion sense.
A battle was an interesting concept. Level the playing field by taking away everyone's stuff and making them all human. But something bothered her about it, and after a moment, she realized what. "The technology is wrong. If they're pulling people from all sorts of different times, they have to be able to control when they yoink us from. Or maybe they can't, and that's why we're all from different times and places." Or maybe they could, and just liked to mess with people.
That wasn't any weirder than Leela's leading theory, so she decided it was safe to share it. "Maybe we're in some sort of exhibit, or a human-sized rat maze. Maybe they just want to study us." If that were the case, it was a good thing they'd picked her. Fry would've planted himself on one of those couches and stared at any screen with moving objects on it until the batteries gave out. Zoidberg would probably still be in the cafeteria. Leela was confident she would represent her time with something like intelligence and dignity.
Elaine raised an interested eyebrow at that idea. It wasn't a situation she hoped to be in, but it was a distinct possibility along with a few of the others. From what little she had seen of the hallways thus far, she could certainly see where a maze might enter the picture. With so many doors and identical, sterile-looking halls, it would be much harder for the "patients" to find their way around or get into anything potentially dangerous (read: useful). That still left her wondering what this big hub in the middle with the sunny area and the connected rooms was for, but that could be rationalized as simply a resting point in the center of the maze.
"Maybe. I can see that," she agreed with a nod, filing the possibility away near the front of her mental card catalogue, along with the battle theory. "Whatever the truth is, I don't think the technology level's got much to do with it, though. They could easily be hiding the real technology somewhere else, or not even be using technology at all. This sort of thing could conceivably be done with voodoo as well." Maybe the time-traveling patients part was a stretch, but it was possible; Elaine knew a few voodoo recipes and spells, but was far from knowing the full depth and breadth of the art. Where was the Voodoo Lady when one needed her? Perhaps she would appear whenever Elaine got around to finding Guybrush. The woman always did seem to be around whenever Guybrush needed her, it seemed.
Leela didn't think Elaine meant the kind of voodoo Hermes meant when he talked about his zombie grandma. She was pretty sure zombies, like ghosts and pine trees, were mostly extinct, anyway. Now she wondered what sort of voodoo someone could do so well. There wasn't much that science hadn't explained in her time, but enough downright bizarre things had happened to her before this that she liked to think she had an open mind. It was refreshing that Elaine seemed to have one, too. But she did come from before the Stupid Ages.
"Good point. They wouldn't leave any of that sitting around where we could find it. I've only time-traveled by accident, but I guess it could be some kind of magic. That girl I was talking to before said she came from a place where it worked." Still, something like this probably had a more reasonable explanation. Leela snapped her fingers as an idea occurred to her.
"What if someone made a bunch of parallel universes, and the people here are just using them? I wouldn't count on a mad scientist to keep track of their universes."
'A place where it worked'? Elaine thought curiously. That implied that Leela was more familiar with a world where it didn't. Granted, Elaine wasn't too big on the whole magic and supernatural field herself, but even she could see that it worked, at least. If they were both from Earth, she couldn't easily imagine something as ancient and handy as voodoo dying out, even in the thirty-first century.
Then there was the fact that Leela had mentioned worlds at all. Someone claimed to be from an entirely different world altogether? That was yet another interesting piece to this puzzle, made only more interesting by the suggestion about parallel universes. "I expect we won't know for certain until we find the person responsible for all this and pin them down for a good, healthy session of retribution." Preferably with some satisfyingly blunt and heavy enough objects to help them out. Elaine was very much in the mood to see more people getting on the wrong side of cannonballs after seeing LeChuck go down under one. "I know I'm not exactly familiar with the characteristics of parallel universes, after all. Are you?"
"I've poked my head into a few," Leela said. "This one doesn't really feel parallel to me." If it were some kind of Past-o-Verse, she probably would have run into an alternate Leela in a hoop skirt by now, and she didn't think they worked that way, anyway. The differences seemed to always be obvious at a glance, and as for the time, it had always been, well, parallel to her own universe's. Then there was the question of where the other people had come from. Elaine seemed to be from the past of Leela's own universe, but maybe that was a bit of Universe A elitism creeping in because she liked her. Leela didn't know enough about Mason to say what sort of universe his was (other than a rude one), but Rita and her belief in magic didn't quite add up, even assuming she'd been abducted from an unexplored planet.
She approved of the way Elaine's mind worked as far as coping with the complex challenges and implications of their being here, and gave her a smile. "If you mean beat them up 'til they let us go, I'm so on board for that. I'll pin, and you can retribute, and then we can swap."
"I seem to come from later than most people. The thirty-first century." She braced herself for the inevitable reaction to that. Mason seemed to have come around, but Leela had realized she was a little out there for most people in this place. It was an interesting novelty, actually. When your circle of acquaintances included a disgusting lobster and an amoral robot, you tended to fade into the background no matter how many eyes you had.
The salad was less suspicious than breakfast had been, and Leela finished it quickly. She idly picked up a pair of scissors that were sitting on the table, and found that they were duller than an underpants-by-the-pound catalog. Somehow, she wasn't surprised. She doubted she was the first person here to want to stab staff members.
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Had Leela said something like that before Elaine had been transformed into a gold statue and apparently spirited away to an unfamiliar place at least seven years in the future, Elaine would probably have said "That's nice" and left the clearly insane woman to her own business. Even after said events, she was still tempted to do just that, and the "Are you quite serious?" expression on her face said as much. She could maybe believe in some voodoo power interfering in time a little bit, but bringing in people from over 1000 years in the future? She was pretty sure that even the blackest of magic didn't have a reach that far.
She didn't know for certain that it didn't, however, which gave her enough reasonable doubt to stay and perhaps let Leela explain herself further. "That's... not exactly the easiest thing in the world to believe, Captain, considering it was the late 17th century the last time I checked, " she answered back with her suspicious eyebrow raised extra high for good measure. "Do you have any proof of that?"
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"I could ax you the same thing, you know. Can you prove you're from the 1600s?" Leela wasn't entirely sure what the differences were between that time and when Fry had come from. They'd had hand-cranked televisions or something? Elaine looked modern enough, but if she'd started out wrapped in pelts, the hospital would've made her change anyway. "I've met one other person from Earth here, and he said he was from 2010."
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"I would be able to prove myself, but they seem to have taken even my non-destructive possessions. I can see your point," she relented for the moment as she did her cutting. That didn't mean she believed Leela or this other person claiming to be from the future yet; however, considering her own situation, the strange terms Leela was using, and the fact that Leela seemed genuinely unaware that 1947 felt nowhere close to the 1600s did put her story closer to the realm of possibility. For the moment, Elaine was willing to at least accept that Leela didn't think she was lying.
With the squares finished, she picked up the glue and started dabbing a pattern of dots on the black construction paper and sticking one square to each dot. They might have resembled an abstract piece or a random pattern to the untrained eye, but if one studied how the pattern was being laid out for long enough, it could be seen that there was a small map of the halls and rooms Elaine had visited thus far nestled amongst the randomness. "What reason would someone have to bring in people from vastly different time periods, then, I wonder?" she asked, a perfectly general enough question that could be answered whether or not what Leela claimed was true. "And changed the way some people look. What was it you said they did to you again?"
[OOC: Sorry for the wait. T_T Want to backthread a bit?]
Reply
"Some kind of experiment? To see how we react in a hostile environment?" She'd been in hostile-er, sure, but that didn't mean she was in a big hurry to settle down here. She had deliveries to make, and a chance to find out if it was possible for a guy she was dating to like her too much. She had meals for the next two weeks waiting in her freezer!
"But I don't have any idea why they'd change me." Maybe it had been to keep the other patients from freaking out even more, she thought, frowning slightly and picking up a purple marker. Or maybe it had been just more evidence of Leela's not-craziness that they'd needed to remove. She drew a quick sketch of a woman with a purple ponytail and one big, purple eye, then flipped it around to show Elaine. "That's what I'm supposed to look like. I know, you've probably never seen a cyclops before. But if I were making up the way I looked, I would have made my hips smaller." She figured even a woman from 1400 years in the past could relate to that, no matter how tall and thin she was. "Why do you think they abducted all of us?"
[Sure! :D]
Reply
She gave Leela a wry look to assure her that she was mostly joking when she said that. She understood the woman's main point, which was that this could be an experiment of some sort. It wasn't completely implausible, at least no more so than everything else so far. She added the idea to her mental list of possibilities, albeit a little bit lower on the list - somewhere above "voodoo mastermind with odd ideas about how to gain friends" but slightly below "extended fever dream."
Idly, she continued plotting squares on the paper while Leela drew up her sketch. When the drawing was finished, she picked up the paper to look it over. While she had to admit that the woman's artistic abilities were not half-shabby, Elaine was still not entirely sure about what the picture conveyed. Certainly, she had met plenty of people with only one eye in her time (most of them voting citizens of hers, in fact), but Leela's cyclopian appearance was clearly different from the eyepatch-sporting buccaneers she knew. Still, she couldn't exactly argue with that point about hips, and that purple hair was looking less and less dyed the more Elaine studied it. Hmmm...
"Honestly? No idea yet. Assuming I'm not dreaming or still cursed or anything of that sort, perhaps somebody needs us for something?" she suggested. "Maybe they plan to use this facility to integrate us into their own society somehow? That would explain the uniforms, the new names, and the changes in appearance." She shook her head even as the words left her mouth. That simply raised the question of what qualities were needed in subjects such that pulling people from different time periods was required. "Or perhaps some sort of epic cross-era battle royale is planned for later?" She didn't have much more confidence in that idea than the last, and her tone conveyed as much. It was probably worth it to throw as many possibilities out there as they could, however. They had to keep the gears of their minds turning if they wanted any hope of figuring out what was going on.
Reply
A battle was an interesting concept. Level the playing field by taking away everyone's stuff and making them all human. But something bothered her about it, and after a moment, she realized what. "The technology is wrong. If they're pulling people from all sorts of different times, they have to be able to control when they yoink us from. Or maybe they can't, and that's why we're all from different times and places." Or maybe they could, and just liked to mess with people.
That wasn't any weirder than Leela's leading theory, so she decided it was safe to share it. "Maybe we're in some sort of exhibit, or a human-sized rat maze. Maybe they just want to study us." If that were the case, it was a good thing they'd picked her. Fry would've planted himself on one of those couches and stared at any screen with moving objects on it until the batteries gave out. Zoidberg would probably still be in the cafeteria. Leela was confident she would represent her time with something like intelligence and dignity.
Reply
"Maybe. I can see that," she agreed with a nod, filing the possibility away near the front of her mental card catalogue, along with the battle theory. "Whatever the truth is, I don't think the technology level's got much to do with it, though. They could easily be hiding the real technology somewhere else, or not even be using technology at all. This sort of thing could conceivably be done with voodoo as well." Maybe the time-traveling patients part was a stretch, but it was possible; Elaine knew a few voodoo recipes and spells, but was far from knowing the full depth and breadth of the art. Where was the Voodoo Lady when one needed her? Perhaps she would appear whenever Elaine got around to finding Guybrush. The woman always did seem to be around whenever Guybrush needed her, it seemed.
Reply
"Good point. They wouldn't leave any of that sitting around where we could find it. I've only time-traveled by accident, but I guess it could be some kind of magic. That girl I was talking to before said she came from a place where it worked." Still, something like this probably had a more reasonable explanation. Leela snapped her fingers as an idea occurred to her.
"What if someone made a bunch of parallel universes, and the people here are just using them? I wouldn't count on a mad scientist to keep track of their universes."
Reply
Then there was the fact that Leela had mentioned worlds at all. Someone claimed to be from an entirely different world altogether? That was yet another interesting piece to this puzzle, made only more interesting by the suggestion about parallel universes. "I expect we won't know for certain until we find the person responsible for all this and pin them down for a good, healthy session of retribution." Preferably with some satisfyingly blunt and heavy enough objects to help them out. Elaine was very much in the mood to see more people getting on the wrong side of cannonballs after seeing LeChuck go down under one. "I know I'm not exactly familiar with the characteristics of parallel universes, after all. Are you?"
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She approved of the way Elaine's mind worked as far as coping with the complex challenges and implications of their being here, and gave her a smile. "If you mean beat them up 'til they let us go, I'm so on board for that. I'll pin, and you can retribute, and then we can swap."
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