YOU'RE THE NEXT CONTESTANT

[sictransitgloriamundi]

WHO: the Captain + You
WHAT: contractually obligated price is right game
WHEN: 11/18, like nightish?
WHERE: Bellona Theater
WARNINGS: N/A, currently

[you've heard the announcement, the sound of Friday's cautious optimism as she spoke it. you've waited all day. now, it's time for the game.

the amount of effort that has gone into this production at Bellona can be safely defined as “minimal.” there are three podiums, with three slate boards and three pieces of chalk. there is another podium, currently empty, next to a plain folding table. there is a tablecloth draped over the table, covering a lumpy, inscrutable shape.

the most remarkable thing is the giant wheel set up on the other side of the empty podium. the slices of the giant circle are colorful, but also completely blank. the Captain actually spends 30 minutes prior to the start of the event simply sitting in front of it, back to the audience, and spinning it, listening to the loud clacking noise pick up and then die down again, before spinning it once more.

clackclackclack clack clack. clack. clackclackclackclackclack.

it's gonna be a long night.]

Comments

[latersgators]

We all contributed to the binder, with everything we've experienced and found out ourselves. It's like our own wee Wikipedia project. [Although she probably doesn't know what that is.] I'd be the last person to tell you not to hope, or strive for something better than this. [Steven is one of the most buoyant and optimistic and hopelessly naive person on the ship, for better or worse. This holds especially true for the tiny cohort that is his age group.]

I'd just hate to see you get hurt attempting something that someone else got hurt doing before, that's all. We aren't here because we haven't tried various ways of escaping. You don't have to believe everything you've read! I think that's a good attitude to have. But if someone's died and documented their experience, you don't always have to fling yourself off the boat to verify it for yourself. I mean plenty of us believe the Earth is round... but apart from yourself and a couple others maybe, we haven't gone up there to check for ourselves.

[astrogator]

[He doesn't want her to be hurt, and she can't respond to that kindness with sharp words, no matter how she feels. She nods, and speaks in a low voice.] If it's recorded that leaping off the ship is fatal, verified by someone's experience, I'll see no need to repeat the experiment. Don't fret over that sort of thing. It's the sweeping claims - that it's impossible to go home, when all they mean is that whatever attempts have been tried so far have failed - and perhaps not even that. People have disappeared, could have gone anywhere. There's a lot of- [she waves a hand] -unsubstantiated metaphysics. That's what I dispute.

[With a small smile, she adds, gently:] If you doubted that your planet was round I might think you were foolish, but I wouldn't demand you just believed me on account of my spacer authority. I'd tell you to look at shadows - your moon, or even just a stick in the ground. Or to watch a ship sail over the horizon. Evidence, not blind faith.

[latersgators]

[Steven wonders if he's been taking all these things as gospel, and if he should be questioning more. But he's found a few things that corroborate what the binder says, and he sees no reason to keep running up against the same brick wall that people who are smarter and more powerful have already come across. Things are different, for him. He's got Marc here. And not much to go home to if the binder is to be believed. So naturally his focus is on their lives here.]

If there's a way back, I do hope you'll find it. [It seems very important to her, and he's not about to interrupt career aspirations with his perspective as someone who's never had much of one and recently died before being pulled on board this ship. Work didn't really amount to much at all for him, in the end, and he's not sure it would have meant much more had he something more resembling a career.]