Wilson P. Higgsbury (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
takethatnature) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
come_sailaway2023-07-16 10:26 am
takethatnature) wrote in come_sailaway2023-07-16 10:26 am
Deep into the night with the moonlight as my guide
Who: Wilson P. Higgsbury and you
What: Getting up to this and that before the excursion. If you're reading this after the excursion but before August and want a prompt for that I can probably hook you up.
When: First half of July
Where: Infirmary, Windjammer, the library
Warnings: None at the moment
1. I look up to the sky and I know you're still alive
Wilson got up way too early this morning, for reasons, and he's feeling it in the form of a gnawing headache that gets worse whenever he looks at something brightly lit. He's rummaging through the infirmary for some aspirin, having remembered after over a year in the Constant that he has the option to do that now and doesn't have to rely on eating candy or psychoactive mushrooms and hoping that solves the problem. Or going back to bed. There does appear to be a decent quantity remaining, more than the unfamiliar compounds - naproxen, acetaminophen, ibuprofen - that he finds in the same drawer, which were probably discovered after he was taken from Earth. He's just going to measure out some of that for himself, or wait impatiently if you've also come to raid the drawer of anti-inflammatories.
2. I wake up in the morning and I don't know where I've been
Wilson's hauled himself out of bed bright and early every morning this week to check the restaurants' breakfast rotation, even though he usually sleeps in past the point where Stellar switches over to lunch. When there's even lunch to be had. Today the buffet gets refilled, and there's waffles at Windjammer! Or... there were waffles at Windjammer. There's not many left. He's stacking up waffle after waffle, more than any reasonable person could eat in one sitting. And now he's stuffing what has to be at least a dozen combined plates of waffles into a wax-paper bundle. Only once he's done that does he sit down to eat breakfast. Which isn't even waffles. It's a bagel and slices of fruit.
3. I wonder all they know 'cause they don't die and they don't grow
So, the meat effigy was a bust, and he's just had a bunch of boards sitting around since March. But he's got new plans for them. Plans that won't fit inside the sharply limited floor space of his cabin. So you may encounter Wilson piling boards, stone blocks, and oversized transistors on the floor of the library, or assembling them into some sort of round machine in a three-legged frame that seems to notice when people get close to it and start spinning the part that sticks out on top with a mechanical hum, or frowning at it as he tests it out.
"I don't remember some of these recipes." His hands fly as he constructs a spear, and then disassembles it into some sort of sword.
4. Wildcard
Hit me on Discord or Plurk for plotting.
What: Getting up to this and that before the excursion. If you're reading this after the excursion but before August and want a prompt for that I can probably hook you up.
When: First half of July
Where: Infirmary, Windjammer, the library
Warnings: None at the moment
1. I look up to the sky and I know you're still alive
Wilson got up way too early this morning, for reasons, and he's feeling it in the form of a gnawing headache that gets worse whenever he looks at something brightly lit. He's rummaging through the infirmary for some aspirin, having remembered after over a year in the Constant that he has the option to do that now and doesn't have to rely on eating candy or psychoactive mushrooms and hoping that solves the problem. Or going back to bed. There does appear to be a decent quantity remaining, more than the unfamiliar compounds - naproxen, acetaminophen, ibuprofen - that he finds in the same drawer, which were probably discovered after he was taken from Earth. He's just going to measure out some of that for himself, or wait impatiently if you've also come to raid the drawer of anti-inflammatories.
2. I wake up in the morning and I don't know where I've been
Wilson's hauled himself out of bed bright and early every morning this week to check the restaurants' breakfast rotation, even though he usually sleeps in past the point where Stellar switches over to lunch. When there's even lunch to be had. Today the buffet gets refilled, and there's waffles at Windjammer! Or... there were waffles at Windjammer. There's not many left. He's stacking up waffle after waffle, more than any reasonable person could eat in one sitting. And now he's stuffing what has to be at least a dozen combined plates of waffles into a wax-paper bundle. Only once he's done that does he sit down to eat breakfast. Which isn't even waffles. It's a bagel and slices of fruit.
3. I wonder all they know 'cause they don't die and they don't grow
So, the meat effigy was a bust, and he's just had a bunch of boards sitting around since March. But he's got new plans for them. Plans that won't fit inside the sharply limited floor space of his cabin. So you may encounter Wilson piling boards, stone blocks, and oversized transistors on the floor of the library, or assembling them into some sort of round machine in a three-legged frame that seems to notice when people get close to it and start spinning the part that sticks out on top with a mechanical hum, or frowning at it as he tests it out.
"I don't remember some of these recipes." His hands fly as he constructs a spear, and then disassembles it into some sort of sword.
4. Wildcard
Hit me on Discord or Plurk for plotting.
3
Maxwell hadn’t seen any hint that there was an alchemy engine on board, but he’s grateful that there is. A number of resources had made their way on board with him, but up to this point, he’s had no way of processing them. He steps through the door, ready to take a closer look at the device, to see if it differs at all from the alchemy engines he knows from back in the Constant, and-
- he freezes as he catches sight of a familiar figure crowned with a familiar “W” of scribble-black hair.
“Higgsbury.”
no subject
harmoniumvoice, addressing him in a familiar way. And, oh, hey, there's a sword in his hand!"What do you want?" Wilson snaps reflexively before he even looks. And he does look, because Maxwell's not here - he was here, but Wilson saw him crumble into dust - and he probably just yelled at some random passenger for the crime of sounding similar.
What in the scientifically verified fuck. Wilson looks like he's seen a ghost, and he hates it about as much. "How do you keep doing that?!"
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He says that, but honestly, the scientist’s presence is a pleasant familiarity- even if it means there’s a weapon pointing in Maxwell’s direction.
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He studies the scientist's face, trying to get a read off of exactly why the man is so upset this time.
"Pal, if I didn't know better I'd say you watched me turn to dust all over again." Because this is definitely on the level of the response Higgsbury had the first time.
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He had, however, added one to the vanished passengers' memorial in May, aware that Maxwell was sufficiently fond of them to put a cigar in his projection's hand when he was still on the Nightmare Throne.
"You did!" Now Wilson's gesticulating wildly with both arms, including the sword-holding one; the tip sticks lightly into a bookshelf and rotates it 90 degrees counterclockwise, not that he's paying attention to that. "You were in one of the Captain's specimen jars on the bottom deck!"
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"As far as I'm aware, I've only been here since I woke up in my cabin. I have no recollection of being in a specimen jar. And as far as the cigars go, well, I suppose I'm just making my enthusiasm known."
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"You wouldn't have, since you went from unconscious to all over the floor as soon as I broke it open," Wilson counters, but at this point the evidence against his hypothesis is mounting and he knows it. Maxwell has no reason to pretend to be a new passenger if he's not; it's not even how he would go about it if he was winding Wilson up. And there was something in that binder about copies of the passengers and alternate timelines, and he'd have sworn he met another of himself one night in the Constant. Wanda would know more, if she was here to ask, although that doesn't mean she'd explain it in a way that made sense.
"It must have been another you," he concludes. "But I know what I saw. You weren't- or he wasn't, whatever- the only one there that I knew, either."
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"Were there other Survivors down there? Other people you knew, from back on Earth?"
Then a terrible idea crosses his mind.
"She's not down there, is she?"
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Most. Karkat's friend was one of the ones who didn't.
"I didn't see 'her'," Wilson says, making finger quotes to mock Maxwell's use of emphasis but aware of who he means nonetheless. "But the crew quarters are a big place and there were quite a few people running around breaking things. The same thing could have happened to her before Helena got me out or while I wasn't looking."
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"So, did non-passengers suffer a similar fate when their jars were broken open? Did they also turn to dust?"
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"More like previous passengers, from earlier voyages and some of the ones who disappeared on this one. That happens, by the way. Sometimes people just vanish, and we haven't found a way to determine why." This last is delivered in a tone of exasperation; the threat of falling into the Nothing at any time is just one more way for the boat to strain Wilson's patience. "But, yeah. One of the gray kids had the same thing happen when he tried to break out his friend, and a few of the people I saw in the jars were sufficiently memorable-looking that I would have noticed if I'd seen them anywhere before or after, so they must have. Like this one whose face was mostly just these big green horns."
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"So. How long have you been here, pal?"
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"Six months. Is it true that there's another me back where I came from? That wasn't the reaction I'd expect if everyone thinks I died in a tidal wave." Wilson pauses, and then raises his index finger. "Speaking of which, what happened to the moon?! Did any more of it fall off?"
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"Higgsbury, the 'moon' is an otherworldly horror that rivals Their power... and it has begun to invade and mutate the Constant. Is the tidal wave really the last thing you remember?"
How long have the forces of this ship had their eyes on us, if Higgsbury was lifted that long ago?
1/2
2/2
"Mutate how? Yes it's the last thing I remember. I was wondering where all the water came from since the ocean's not real. Thought the impact might have generated some sort of portal that warped me here. How long has it been for you?" It all tumbles out in a rush.
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"First thing I should say is that the ocean seems to be at least partially real now. You can sail on it, you can fish in it, and you can retrieve treasure from its depths. It's still a forbidden area, however. If you sink in it, you're either consumed immediately or the hands retrieve you."
"As for the mutations... the first victims were pengulls, spiders, and hounds. The pengulls have their flesh turn to moonglass, leaving their organs visible. The hounds seem normal until you kill them, at which point they rip out of their skins and come back to life. And the spiders have grown more grotesque, their bodies rocky in a way unlike you see with cave spiders, with jagged, pink crystals growing out of them. These mutations were confined to specimens that wandered onto the piece of the 'moon'- at first. As of late, we've been experiencing moon storms, unstable portal activity that spreads lunar contamination onto the mainland, and occasionally we have to contend with an avatar-champion of the 'moon.' Of course, we've also found uses for what these moon menaces have left behind."
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"As if pengulls and spiders and hounds weren't awful enough already. Is their behavior any different aside from the resurrection thing?" Wilson says, as he digests the rest of the new information. "Does it affect people? What makes the lunar giant attack? How often do the moon storms occur?"
He sets down the sword on the floor and rummages in the inner pocket of his waistcoat for a notebook and one of the space-age clogproof ballpoint pens that are so common in this futuristic setting (both Serena Eterna-branded), to write down what Maxwell describes of the horrifying new moon developments.
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After a while he sits down and leans back in his chair, still talking and answering the inevitable questions Wilson produces. Before long he closes his eyes, letting himself recall without distractions.
He can almost imagine his view of that rickety old shack, through a filter of radio static, during those long evenings he would make tiresome yet welcome conversation with a very unwitting scientist...
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"I'm in cabin 124, by the way," Wilson says, when he's run out of developments in the Constant to ask about. "That should be enough to let you pester me on these communication devices that are alleged to be some sort of telephone."
He waves his phone in Maxwell's direction. "Honestly, I don't see the resemblance, but that's what everybody calls them."
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He sends a message to Maxwell's unbreakable rectangle, which reads:
Made you look! -W
"Is he that bad? Maybe the Captain's rubbing off on him. Or did he just object to your pocket square collection taking up all the dresser space?"
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"I hadn't even begun to unload my things. He seemed to find my very presence in his cabin objectionable. Though we did eventually come to an agreement, I didn't appreciate him bursting loudly into the room without announcement."