and these tired eyes should be inside
My name is Jessica Drew, and I was grown in a tank by a man named Otto Octavius, who did it just to prove he could. To demonstrate that he could take the essence of someone -- one particular person, in fact -- and twist it. To show that he could pervert a person's very genes.
His take on it, not mine. I don't feel like a perversion of science.
Well, maybe sometimes.
It's left me with a pretty narrow view on unchecked science. Not science itself, because science is awesome. But science without reference to ethics or conscience, in the hands of corporations and madmen, which seems to be most of it, back home. It looks like the case here, too. Not what the people are doing -- plumbing, electricity, I walked past what I could swear is a phone booth at one point -- but what the place itself is. A pocket universe, wrenching people out of their lives. I didn't have much of a life to be wrenched out of, but it was mine, I was just getting used to it, and now I've been taken from my city and dumped in some backwater part of the cosmos. I didn't get a say in it. Someone or something decided for me, just like Doc Ock sat down and decided he'd make this next clone female, just for the hell of it.
Maybe it's science, maybe it's magic. Whatever it is, it's suspicious, and so I scope the place out before I even think of going near the major features. I check out the beaches, from in the treeline, staying clear of people. Study the little communities that people have built, from a distance. Walk the jungle. I head out into what they call dinosaur territory, walking for a few minutes past the fence until I see a triceratops, at which point I hum the Jurassic Park theme.
Unchecked mad science in the hands of corporations or madmen, I will give you that one. That one was pretty cool.
My inability to stop humming the theme ruins my attempt to continue my people-free streak; on the way back I run into Wolverine, of all people, because apparently that guy gets everywhere. A Wolverine from another universe who is just as weird and sketchy as the one Peter knew back home. He sort of stares at me, asks if he knows me from somewhere, and when I tell him he really doesn't -- which isn't even a lie, because I never met any variety of Wolverine, but annoyingly it feels like a lie because I have Peter's memories of doing so -- he sniffs me. He sniffs me. It's a good excuse to make an exit.
So that's my first few days. I eat a lot of fruit, because it doesn't look like the kitchen in that compound of theirs is ever empty. I miss take-out already. Ultimately, it's the basic needs that drive me to actually accept that lurking in the shadows isn't going to achieve anything, as fond of it as a strategy as I am. I stop off in the kitchen, take some food, and then hit up the basement for clothes.
The clothes box, that's an experience. I've heard it's magic, or at least Differently Scientific, and so in my head I had something pretty grand. I expected a chest. Wood from Narnia, maybe, or a metal contraption crackling with energies, eldritch or otherwise. I did not expect... cardboard. A cardboard box the size of a steamer trunk, apparently being used to store the clothes deemed too over-the-top to use in the music video for "U Can't Touch This."
It is magically awful, that's for sure. I'm not sure about its other features until I actually start rummaging, coming up with a t-shirt with the 60s Batman logo on it that isn't bad. I'm pretty sure that wasn't in there when I started looking. So I stick my hands in all the way, see if I can push through the bottom of it, maybe, where I will enter a magical world of adventure.
No magical world of adventure. Probably for the best, it'd just be full of magical things trying to kill me. It's how it works. I don't stop there, though, I gather up and pull out everything inside it, to see if it fills up again. Which... it doesn't. So I carefully note everything I pulled out, and then stuff it back in and start rummaging, and the moment I see something new, I upend the box, sending clothes cascading around me.
But only as much as would fit inside. I was half expecting a neverending flood of clothes to fill the room. Instead it's just me sitting in the kind of localized mess found on teenager's floors. I'm still holding the box up, so I lower it over my head, to get a better look inside.
It doesn't become any less a cardboard box when my head is inside it. I realize two things: That was pretty pointless, really.
The other... "Someone else just came in while I'm sitting here with a box over my head, didn't they?"
Let me tell you, I make a great first impression.
[Probably ST for a day or so, and then should speed up. Open to tags through the weekend.]
His take on it, not mine. I don't feel like a perversion of science.
Well, maybe sometimes.
It's left me with a pretty narrow view on unchecked science. Not science itself, because science is awesome. But science without reference to ethics or conscience, in the hands of corporations and madmen, which seems to be most of it, back home. It looks like the case here, too. Not what the people are doing -- plumbing, electricity, I walked past what I could swear is a phone booth at one point -- but what the place itself is. A pocket universe, wrenching people out of their lives. I didn't have much of a life to be wrenched out of, but it was mine, I was just getting used to it, and now I've been taken from my city and dumped in some backwater part of the cosmos. I didn't get a say in it. Someone or something decided for me, just like Doc Ock sat down and decided he'd make this next clone female, just for the hell of it.
Maybe it's science, maybe it's magic. Whatever it is, it's suspicious, and so I scope the place out before I even think of going near the major features. I check out the beaches, from in the treeline, staying clear of people. Study the little communities that people have built, from a distance. Walk the jungle. I head out into what they call dinosaur territory, walking for a few minutes past the fence until I see a triceratops, at which point I hum the Jurassic Park theme.
Unchecked mad science in the hands of corporations or madmen, I will give you that one. That one was pretty cool.
My inability to stop humming the theme ruins my attempt to continue my people-free streak; on the way back I run into Wolverine, of all people, because apparently that guy gets everywhere. A Wolverine from another universe who is just as weird and sketchy as the one Peter knew back home. He sort of stares at me, asks if he knows me from somewhere, and when I tell him he really doesn't -- which isn't even a lie, because I never met any variety of Wolverine, but annoyingly it feels like a lie because I have Peter's memories of doing so -- he sniffs me. He sniffs me. It's a good excuse to make an exit.
So that's my first few days. I eat a lot of fruit, because it doesn't look like the kitchen in that compound of theirs is ever empty. I miss take-out already. Ultimately, it's the basic needs that drive me to actually accept that lurking in the shadows isn't going to achieve anything, as fond of it as a strategy as I am. I stop off in the kitchen, take some food, and then hit up the basement for clothes.
The clothes box, that's an experience. I've heard it's magic, or at least Differently Scientific, and so in my head I had something pretty grand. I expected a chest. Wood from Narnia, maybe, or a metal contraption crackling with energies, eldritch or otherwise. I did not expect... cardboard. A cardboard box the size of a steamer trunk, apparently being used to store the clothes deemed too over-the-top to use in the music video for "U Can't Touch This."
It is magically awful, that's for sure. I'm not sure about its other features until I actually start rummaging, coming up with a t-shirt with the 60s Batman logo on it that isn't bad. I'm pretty sure that wasn't in there when I started looking. So I stick my hands in all the way, see if I can push through the bottom of it, maybe, where I will enter a magical world of adventure.
No magical world of adventure. Probably for the best, it'd just be full of magical things trying to kill me. It's how it works. I don't stop there, though, I gather up and pull out everything inside it, to see if it fills up again. Which... it doesn't. So I carefully note everything I pulled out, and then stuff it back in and start rummaging, and the moment I see something new, I upend the box, sending clothes cascading around me.
But only as much as would fit inside. I was half expecting a neverending flood of clothes to fill the room. Instead it's just me sitting in the kind of localized mess found on teenager's floors. I'm still holding the box up, so I lower it over my head, to get a better look inside.
It doesn't become any less a cardboard box when my head is inside it. I realize two things: That was pretty pointless, really.
The other... "Someone else just came in while I'm sitting here with a box over my head, didn't they?"
Let me tell you, I make a great first impression.
[Probably ST for a day or so, and then should speed up. Open to tags through the weekend.]