JUNE EVENT: CAMP

[sailmods]

early on June 10th, Friday's morning announcements end with a request for everyone going on the latest excursion to meet her in the atrium. she seems in noticeably better spirits than she had been last time, and she leads them cheerfully to the tender. once they are all aboard, and the door is securely shut, the interior fills with gas, and, perhaps, their last thought before they slip into unconsciousness is "oh shit, not again."

passengers wake up on a rickety old school bus, driving down a dirt road surrounded by woods. what is it that they notice first? that, no matter what they were wearing before, they are now wearing a camp t-shirt and legitimately horrifyingly short shorts? the overstuffed backpack between their knees? the words "take one down and pass it around" dying on their lips? the fact that Friday is absolutely driving the bus?

or, maybe the fact that it's already slowing down, pulling up in front of a massive wooden sign, saying:

 

 

 

 

 

CAMP AION

when they get out of the bus, Friday is the one to divide them up into their cabin groups, and she is the one to give the counselors their very official-looking clipboards and whistles. she explains that they are in charge, and that she will be back to pick them up in a week, and... very little else. she responds to nothing outside of whatever is on her unseen little script, and she gets back on the bus shortly after, leaving them there.

welcome to camp. let's make some summer memories!

Comments

[hellonspectacles]

Stories of children wandering into the woods have faded from history by Palamedes’ time, but he understands like Nostradamus means. “Or a mushroom remembered by someone who hasn’t seen the real thing in a very, very long time.” All evidence points to the idea that they captain is terribly old, so old that he might have forgotten anything beyond his own creations. Maybe this is all he can imagine when he thinks mushroom, or when he calls forest to mind.

It would be a little sad if he weren’t so intent on torturing them all.

“I understand the theory behind it. Well, a potential theory behind it. But the scale is outside my imagining.”

[nostradamnit]

"Great power, great scale, but it lacks in precision. The ship feels more fully-realized, but there's no attempts to genuinely mimic life there. Unless we count the 'ghosts'. I'm not sure we should, though."

He drops the mushroom on the ground, stomping on it with one foot. It crumbles in an unsatisfyingly non-mushroom-like way.

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes grimaces as Nostradamus squashes the mushroom underfoot. Something about the way it crumbles unnaturally sends a shiver down his spine. “Have you heard of the uncanny valley? It’s the idea that something artificial,” here he plucks a leaf from the nearest tree,” can start to appear so real that it loops back around to artificiality.” He closes his hand over the leaf, and though it folds up as a leaf should, the epidermis doesn’t crack, and no little lines of deeper green appear at the creases. “I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been taken to the uncanny valley.”

He drops the leaf to the ground, nodding along. “Which implies that this is a temporary pocket universe. It isn’t worth his time. The ship, on the other hand, is his home.”