come_sailaway | one, i'm still sleeping, and this, i'm just dreaming it [open]

Entry tags:

one, i'm still sleeping, and this, i'm just dreaming it [open]

Who: Phil and you!
Where: All around the ship
What: Exploring, orienting, experimenting
When: Early June
Warnings: None yet

(( ooc: a note before you read, if you haven't seen phil's ooc post, please keep in mind that he's a CRAU! mostly this means that he has a big pair of eastern screech owl wings stuck to his back. ok bye <3 ))

three, it's flashback from when i was twenty and ate magic mushrooms (meta)
So.

He's been spirited away. It's not the same as the last time this happened. The last time, it was a whole alien planet with a whole entire city--multiple cities, actually, and he could actually arrange his whole housing, get a job, get insurance, the whole shebang. He built a whole new life that lasted for about six months before the Magic Moon Apocalypse kicked in. It's also different than the longest day of his life.

This, though unlike the others, bears similarities to both of those things: first, in all three, death was never permanent (though in the second it had consequences). Second, like the last one, people from other realities have gotten pulled into the fray.

He doesn't know what that means. It's something he'll need to get a bigger sample size for before he can draw any real conclusions on it, and he doesn't really want to.

i. four, it's some kind of reality show

[ Knowing that this isn't a real vacation, and dubiously confident that the captain(?) here will do any actual announcements about inclement weather or that there is any crew that is both capable of reading and keeping an eye on weather maps, Phil has decided to put his skills to use. The bridge is completely locked off, meaning he can't access any of the actual, professional forecasting equipment. Meaning he has had to make do.

He's perched on the highest deck on the edge of a rooftop, dead center of the ship to minimize the rocking. In front of him his a collection of items that he's had to reach into the farthest recesses of his memories of middle school earth science experiments to construct:

- A barometer made of an upside down wine bottle in a glass, filled with some water and marked up with sharpie.
- An anemometer made of plastic straws, paper cups, rubber bands, and a pencil.
- A wind vane made of plastic straws and cut-up postcards. This and the anemometer are both stuck into one of those plastic cups with the lids and filled with water, just so they're reasonably anchored in place.

All of this, plus a fridge magnet thermometer and a compass keychain. They're cheap shit, but it's all he's got. He's been checking on these things for the last three hours. Occasionally he'll mark something down in one of those cheesy notepads with a Serena Eterna brand pen, but every reading has been the... exact same. It's only three hours, not the biggest timeframe, but still... ]

ii. five, it's amnesia

[ Music has always made him feel better.

He doesn't have his sheet music with him, which is kind of a pain, because that's part of what he finds so comforting about it. Not too much improvisation; everything he's being asked to do, laid out in detail before him. But that's alright. He'll do just fine.

So he sets up. After the Billy Joel set in John's, Phil sets up and dinks around on the keys a little bit, warming up his stiff, weathered fingers. He knows he's in a public place. He knows that practicing and warmups never sound pleasant. He doesn't care.

After about fifteen minutes, he picks something and starts to play. ]

iii. six, it's a stroke (wildcard)

[[ Got anything else? hmu! ]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Trapped in a ship that's smaller by the square footage than some neighbourhoods in her city, there's few places Darcy can go that doesn't have people. The rooftops is usually one of them, as she shimmers up in the shadow of one of the tall pole-thingies she didn't know the name of. Someone else up here would usually be a sign for her to leave the same way she came, but the owl wings are familiar, and Phil wasn't the worst company. Nearly-silently, she came to sit herself beside him, legs folded neatly underneath her. ]

What's with the straws and shit?

Jesus—!

[ Phil startles and drops his pen. He turns to see Darcy having suddenly appeared next to him, and wipes a hand down his face as his feathers smooth back down. ]

First of all, please don’t do that, [ he says as he quietly tallies this as a habit she’s probably going to continue. ] Second, they’re forecasting instruments. Or what I could make of them anyway.

[ He gestures to each as he talks. ] Atmospheric pressure. Wind speed. Wind direction. Last two’s self explanatory. It’s not perfect, but any real onboard equipment’s in the bridge, and it’s been locked every time I checked.

Wasn't doing it on purpose, pay more attention to your surroundings, [ She deadpans. Darcy glances over the equipment, squinting at it as he speaks, then at the end she raises a hand to pause him. ]

You know the Captain is in the bridge, right? The asshole keeping us here? It's important to me that you know that.

[ She's not gonna blame him for staring death in the face for more information, but she wants to make sure he knows what he's doing when he does it. She glances over his notes, ]

I don't know what the numbers mean, but it doesn't look like they're changing.

Yeah, I know. That's what a bridge is for.

[ While he's been given the sort of loose rundown of the idea that the man would make for extraordinarily shitty and vaguely unsafe company, no, Phil has no clue of any of the real points of what makes the Captain dangerous. Nothing beyond "he's the guy who brought us here and traps us here." ]

They're not. I mean, it's not as if these things are that accurate-- [ hell, the way he's getting readings off of the anemometer is by tapping a beat into his metronome app by how many times the red cup makes a full revolution and seeing what BPM comes up, ] --but... yeah. I know it's only been three hours, but there should probably still be some variance, especially over the ocean. The wind vane hasn't even changed. It keeps pointing southwest. I'll keep checking tomorrow, but...

It's probably not going to change, if it isn't already. The Captain is... lazy. I don't think he thinks about how things work. You know there's no plumbing in here? The taps and drains don't go anywhere. And the temperature's been about the same since I showed up here.

[ Darcy restrained the urge to fiddle with the instruments. They were spinny, she wanted to spin them more. ]

[ They sure are spinny.

Phil pauses. He thinks about how he's never seen hide nor hair of land, or even much change in the clouds in the few days since he got here. ]

You're saying... he made all of this. [ He gestures in a circle with a finger. ] The ship, and the weather, what, and the ocean?

Yeah.

[ Obviously. It's not like they were on a real cruise ship in the middle of a real stretch of ocean. That would be ridiculous. ]

All of it. It's like a dollhouse. Or a movie set. All magic, and no, I don't know details beyond that. I just know that fucker made it.

I got the whole fake place part. My roommate sniffed that out the moment she landed here. I just didn't know if the captain was the one who put this all together, or if he's just another... well, you know. [ He waves a hand. ] If he's actually the one at the top of the food chain.

[ Phil looks down and prods at the spinny anonemeter. It pauses for a moment, before it's back to plugging away, beating out the same rhythm to the same breeze as it has for the last three hours. ]

Makes my job a little unnecessary if it's the same forecast all week, eh.

He is, as far as we know. It's what he says. It's hard working out how much of what the Captain says is complete bullshit, but he... is apparently mostly honest. When he actually answers your fucking questions.

[ A shrug. If they had any other means of working out things about this place, Darcy would be quite happy to disregard everything he says. But they don't, so she can't. ]

Probably. But a lot of us are kind of useless while we're here. All I'm good for is punching ghosts and stabbing people, and I haven't really been able to do either.

[ Phil raises an eyebrow. ]

So you've spoken to the man. He's not just some kind of... [ he gestures loosely, ] vague, shadowy figure who holes himself up in the bridge the whole time.

I've stabbed the man.

[ A pause. ]

It didn't really do anything. But yeah, he looks like a person sometimes. I don't know if he is one, not really, his insides are... weird. But yeah, if you see a dude with a kind of shitty beard and a fancy hat, who answers to 'Hiram', then that's the Captain. Hiram isn't his name, it's just a name he likes.

[ ... Hm. ]

That sounds like Hebrew. What's he like that one for?

Something to do with King David? I think that's what I heard. No idea why he likes it, this is third-hand at this point.

[ A shrug. ]

Just... be careful if you do run into him, ehn? He... has this way of getting under your skin. I know I have a bad temper, but it's more than that. Like he knows how to fuck you up specifically. I've seen him do it to someone else while I was there, too. But he likes a bargain. And apparently he likes knives.

[ He pauses, and two different things in his expression harden and soften at once as a particular soberness passes through him. Darcy doesn't seem like the sort to caution lightly. Phil's regrets, his fears, he moves through them every single day, their shapes under the surface unrecognizable to everybody except anybody who actually knows. And, well. He supposes the Captain knows.

What an unpleasant-seeming guy, from the god-complex feeling he's getting about him. Phil will extend the same courtesy to him as to anyone, though. This warning takes its place on a high but visible shelf, and if he ever has to speak with the Captain, he will... try to be kind. Benefit of the doubt.

Phil reminds himself to let go more often. ]

Okay, [ he says. ] Got it. Anything else about this place I should know, or do I have keep getting info sprinkled on me over the course of several weeks?

Edited 2022-06-16 03:19 (UTC)

We all have to deal with the information-seasoning. I don't think I even know everything about the ship. Someone should make a pamphlet or something.

[ Darcy will probably end up getting involved in its creation. Because of course she will. Meddling is her protocol. ]

So you were a weather forecaster, back home?

I ran the weather channel. [ He puts on a smug aura for a second before casting it aside. ]

No, not really. Did a lot of the forecasting, but I wasn't the only one--you know, weather's as fickle as just about anything gets, everybody's always complaining about unpredicted rain on the weekends, so there were a couple of us to double check each other. I was the face though, and plus it had my name on it. "Good Weather with Phil Connors." [ He even puts out his hands like he's gesturing out a nameplate. ] They always send me out on assignment to cover this, uh, tiny little weather holiday in some small New England town. Groundhog Day.

[ The name is so practiced on his tongue, it almost feels like home. ]

Groundhog day is real? I always thought that was something someone made up to make fun of Americans.

[ Look, forgive her for not assuming there was actually a rodent-worshipping ritual in the middle of nowhere that was of national significance, and that it wasn't an elaborate joke on the scale of 'birds aren't real' or 'Australia doesn't exist'. ]

I always kind of wondered how that worked. Like, how you predict the weather. I kind of just chalked it up to witchcraft.

[ And had never been curious enough to google. ]

[ Yeah, no, he doesn’t blame her. God knows he used to think it was complete horseshit. He still kind of does, honestly, but he just doesn’t deride it anymore; he loves the silly superstition. ]

Well, first, you go to school and get a degree in atmospheric science.

[ Smartass. ]

I’m not kidding when I say it’s complicated, though—look, the reason people get the weather wrong is because you have to look at a lot of stuff all at once and then figure out what it all means, and then you have to hope it doesn’t switch on you. Wind currents, oceanic currents, different humidities at different altitudes, air fronts, land geography…

[ She’s really got him going here. Phil never raises his voice or changes from an even cadence, but it’s clear he could keep talking about weather for a while. ] We work off of dozens of computer generated predictive weather maps, and each of them have another two dozen data points to crunch through. So if those are wrong, then we’re wrong. Not to mention that they’re only good for large areas. I could say it’s going to be rain, and then it comes down in one half of a city and it’s completely dry in the other. Then what, huh? I don’t make the weather.

[ Darcy actually snorts at his remark, appreciating a good bit of smartassery. Honestly... it's kind of boring, and Darcy fidgets while he explains. It's geography, maths, and science; her worst subjects by far. The only thing that could make it more unappealing would be if Phil revealed that being a weatherman also required you to be emotionally vulnerable. ]

That sounds like it kind of... sucks as a job, then. At least even if I don't win every fencing tournament, I at least like... know what I'm going to be doing at the tournament. If sometimes swords just like, stopped working and we had to interpretive dance instead, I'd quit.

It’d suck for you, [ he corrects. ] Which is why you’re not a forecaster. It sounds like I’m complaining, and I am, but we’re the people who actually enjoy a conversation that starts with, “so how about this weather, huh?” I like this job. I’m good at it, too. And I get to be on TV.

[ TL;DR he’s a big fucking nerd, as all scientists are.

But he gets it. Not all scientists are even built for his kind of science, where you have to sit in front of computers all day and crunch down a bunch of data points about what happens when a cold front pushes off of the Alleghenies, and then explain it to people who don’t know what that means. Instead they travel five hundred miles to the desert to look at cool rocks. Or something. ]

Hey, you fence?

Oh, so boring people, [ She jabs back lightly at him. It's a function of growing up that you learn the world is wider and more boring than you could have imagined as a kid, governed as it is by data and money and statistics. But whenever she's checking the weather now, she'll know there's a group of nerds crunching numbers about it. Like a scar, it will always remind her of here, and Phil, and this moment. ]

Yeah, I fence, [ She pats the sword at her belt, ] I'm pretty fucking good at it, too. Individual and team sabre. I was in the top ten for cadets across Europe for the last couple of years, and my coaches said I had every chance of making it to the Olympics by the time I turn eighteen.

[ He whistles, impressed. He was wondering if that sword was just one of those teenager things that they do, but it's good to know she's not just posing. (Why'd she bring it here, though?) ] Damn. Atta girl.

You know, I've always wondered. Does any of it translate to practical combat swordsmanship?

[ Aka literally why are you carrying it around ]

[ She visibly preens at the compliment, as she always does. Hell yes she's good. But his question gets a wiggly hand-motion, as she prepares to launch into her own nerdy explanation. ]

Ehhh... Sort of. Fencing is a bunch of different skills in a trenchcoat; footwork, tactics, actually handling the weapon, fast-twitch muscle training, and that's before you sort out things that each weapon brings. You don't get far in sabre if you're not training offense, but your average épée player is going to have different defense training, because we score differently. Some things definitely translate. My fastest time from standing to touché is less than a second; if I can get my sword in your throat before you can blink, the rest really doesn't matter. But there's some things that it doesn't train you for. Fencing is a sport. There's points, rules, that shit. None of that matters if I'm fighting a dude on the street.

[ A small incline of her head, ] I'll probably win against anyone with less fencing training than me just from a standpoint of speed. The only exception is if they're trained in something like HEMA, then I might struggle, I've only been studying that sort of thing for a couple of years, and it's way more practical. Like, sabre just kind of assumes you win if you get the point first, it doesn't teach you to defend against a counter-attack after you've hit. There's people on the ship who lived in times when sword fighting was just a thing you like, did, and not just a sport, too. I wouldn't bet on me against Blackbeard, for instance. Probably fifty fifty odds there.

[ None of which answers why she just has a sword on her. ]

[ While Darcy may have gotten bored during his ramble, Phil is listening intently and with genuine interest. Hearing people talk about themselves and their lives and their experiences is his fuckin' bread and butter, baby, and plus, he's the kind of guy who likes to absorb a lot of facts about things, especially when they're first-hand accounts.

Hang on, ]

Wait, Blackbeard is here? Like the pirate guy? Like, the Peter Pan guy-- [ that's Hook, ] --or the real, historical, whole entire Blackbeard? He's not gonna mug me, is he?

The actual, legit, historical Blackbeard! He's my Captain- [ She adds with no small amount of pride, ] -well, sort of my co-captain with Stede. Stede Bonnet, he's like, a historical pirate too, but he's kind of like a deep cut. You know, everyone knows Blackbeard, but only cool people know about Stede.

[ Darcy says, as if she had any fucking idea who Stede Bonnet was before arriving here. Someone's got to be this dude's hype-man and it isn't going to be Lucius. ]

But no, he's not going to mug you. It's not like there's money here or anything. And I think he has more important things to do than mugging weathermen.

I

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