riverviewlogs | The Sound of Silence

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The Sound of Silence

who: Closed to Breq's exploration team (Steve, Peter, Jim, Beverly, Sigrun).
what: With the team gathered, it's time to venture down into the dead zone.
when: July 17
where: The Abandoned City.
warnings: Potential injuries, ambient creep factor, and some telepathic weirdness.

Mingle Prompts

i. Outside

The team is gathered: After feeling out some contacts through the Perimeter Guard's roster and connection, Breq had put out the call, and this team had answered. Not only that, but helped to arrange it themselves, in some cases. Now they have everything they need, and it's time to go out and investigate. Thanks to Jim's handy offering of a shuttle, getting the entire team out to the crater is a quick trip, just long enough for the shuttle's passengers to get to know each other, fall asleep, or work their way through whatever pre-mission rituals they might care to partake in.

Not much more than an hour or two, from the moment they lifted off to the moment that Breq interrupts her humming to point out the spheroid depression in the earth, surprisingly stark against the ruins of the city that rise up around it.

"There. Careful of the field around it."

Descending the steep walls is a simple matter, again thanks to the shuttle. Whatever caused it-- impact, sinkhole, or some other, stranger source, there's enough space for them to find a stable, relatively even place to set down and step out. Despite the strangeness Breq had observed, the inside is surprisingly lush, filled with a variety of plants that seem to be taking advantage of the natural reservoir the crater forms. Living things are everywhere, hunting and running and flying.

They all hardly seem to make a sound.

In fact, nothing in the depths of the crater seems to make a sound. The members of the team will feel like they've walked into a soundproofed room, or like they're trying to listen through noise-cancelling headphones. It takes effort to hear one another speak, and if they pay attention, they might sense a sort of buzzing, fuzzy feeling, as though some pitch is playing just beyond their hearing.

The strange podlike building stands in front of them, shimmery and nearly untouched. Strange triangular panels both large and small, all colored strangely opaque, seem to be set into the sides in place of doors. It might take a few creative solutions to open them.

ii. The Capsule

Inside of the pod, the not-quite-there buzzing feeling only gets stronger, and the silence feels that much heavier. It's taken on an urgent strength, It's like the feeling of an unexpected hand at the nape of your neck, the ache of something sour in your mouth. The source seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Inside, the capsule is dim and featureless. The corridors are awkwardly rounded at the corners, meaning the footing is never quite solid and flat, but the paths twist with seemingly no reason. Even worse, every time a member of the team turns around and tries to go back, it never quite seems to lead back in the direction they remember, though if they keep walking, it still returns to the places they were trying to go.

iiia. Meet and Greet

They're around corners and through doorways. They're clinging to the ceiling. They're scuttling along in strange, meandering paths when the members of the investigation team come across them. 'They' are strange, triangular robots, ranging in size from roomba to obelisk, with strange, sharp, spinning tools that come off of arms along every point of the triangle. The rest of them is covered with a strange, dull grey metallic carapace that gives no sign of their internal workings.

Even stranger, is the way they react to their discovery. Their reactions seem to mirror the actions of those who find them-- aggression or fear will be met with the same, and be careful-- those tools of theirs are devastatingly sharp.

iiib. Did You Say Something?

It's hard to get a sense of direction inside of this place, but the team members will get a strange sense, as they continue wandering, that their paths are taking them closer to the "center," whatever that might be. Nothing else seems to change, in the branching paths and random doorways.

What does change is that there-but-not buzzing. It grows more powerful with each step, until every member of the team seems to feel their head fill with fuzz. Thinking slowly begins to feel like struggling upstream against the current, and to get a coherent line of thought together, everything feels, mentally, like shouting. A thrumming need seems to fill them, driving them onward wordlessly. It feels like something is beginning to whisper inside their heads, words just beyond the range of hearing, just too far away to make out. Something like another mind touching theirs.

Some of that noise in their heads isn't on the edge of their hearing, though. Some of it is much more audible, though still disjointed-- and it sounds a lot like the person they're standing with-- even though they're very sure they didn't say anything out loud, just now.

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[ He has to stare at her for a moment or so so try and parse out what's being said, but in the end Peter just shakes his head. ]

If there's a spell like that, I don't know it.

[ And just in case the words don't make it over there, Peter gives a large, helpless shrug. That should get the point across. ]

Pick a direction?

Left.

[She accompanies the gesture with a point.]

If one of the other teams doesn't take it instead, we'll double back to it.

[And with that she begins to lift her gun and steps forward, obviously intent on taking the lead.]

[ Peter nods and falls back behind her, clearly more than happy to let Breq take the lead. He's got his fireballs for sure, but a gun is going to be much more helpful if it comes to that point.

He keeps there werelight up though, hovering just over their heads as they move. He's going to have to keep an eye on how long he keeps that going, but for now having a light he can be sure of is worth the risk. ]

Have you experienced an effect like this before?

[The further into this strange field she goes, the warier Breq seems to become. She keeps tilting her head, not like she's trying to realign her ears to hear better, but like some sense in her head is slightly off, confounded by something inherent to this building.]

[ He shakes his head wordlessly in reply, once he's managed to catch the muffled words. It's almost like being underwater or putting on noise-canceling headphones, only Peter's done both of those and neither are quite this unsettling. It feels oppressive, like they should have something weighing them down despite the fact that it's perfectly easy to move.

There are plenty of ways to dampen sound waves, but as they get closer Peter silently rejects them one after the other. There's something else wrong here, and without thinking he lets the werelight overhead go out. Some strange instinct tells him he might need the magic soon, and he honestly can't tell where the thought is coming from. ]

Do you...

[ He trails off, shoulders drawing up tense despite himself. ]

Do you feel that?

[Breq's immediate answer is a sharp nod, accompanied by a tightening of her fingers. She glances around briefly, as though looking for a source, before she stops herself. Whatever it is, it's definitely not visible in this dim little corridor.]

I've only felt something even close to this once.

[One of Anaander's devices that cut off ancillary technology-- but this isn't quite the same thing, even if she feels the same kind of isolated. And the fact that Peter is affected as well makes it clear that it's not just her ancillary implants that are causing it.

It doesn't stop the feeling of aching alone-ness from echoing out of her for a brief moment.]

[ That gets Peter's attention. He twists towards her, though instinct mean he can't help but keep and eye down the rest of the hall. ]

What caused it? Can we turn it off?

[ If it's anything electronic, he might have an edge there. And it would be nice to hear properly. And stop his hair standing on end. ]

It was a device, hardly larger than fifteen centimeters. It affected all sorts of communicators, including some that shouldn't otherwise have been.

[Vague, but 'it cut me off from the rest of myself' is a difficult concept to explain in normal circumstances, let alone when half the words require pantomime.]

To turn it off, I had to destroy it, but this effect may be similar. We would have to find it first.

[ Well destruction is certainly something Peter can do, and as vague as it might be, he does feel a bit better with a goal in mind. Maybe it's not quite like sensing vestigia, but Peter has gotten used to tracking down strange sensations. Maybe that will make it easier to find the source of whatever this is.

Without thinking, he steps up ahead of Breq, concentrating as hard as he can to see if he can tell where the disruption feels strongest. ]

I think maybe this way.

Lead on.

[Breq lets him step forward, but she dogs his heels, the silver glow of the shield still around her as she does. She can't trust the thorough but slow inspection she would do if left to examine this place on her own terms, so letting Peter take the lead only makes sense. While he's focusing on finding the way, her attention is on their surroundings, and looking for any potential threats--

which she catches onto a few corridors later. Some skitter of movement from the vents, that has her reaching out for his shoulder to grab it and pull him to an abrupt halt.]

Stop. [Somehow, despite the muting of her voice in this place, that one word seems to echo strangely.]

[ Peter instantly freezes, a well-trained response to that kind of a command. He does glance over at her, waiting for a follow-up, but he's also studying the hall around them carefully. Trying to tell exactly what Breq just stopped him from stepping into. Not that he doesn't appreciate the effort. ]

What did you see?

Something moving by the vents.

[With the most minute of gestures, she indicates the one in question, where something silvery seems to be moving around, apparently undisturbed or unbothered by their presence.]

[ There's a long moment where Peter stares off in the direction she's indicating, then nearly jumps out of his skin as he spots the movement. Something about it twitching like that with the sound all weird is even more startling than it probably should be. ]

I see it.

[ Perhaps unnecessary, but anything to break the oppressive lack of noise. ]

Looks. Metallic? Not like an animal.

It doesn't look like anything I've seen in the forest.

[Which isn't a guarantee that it isn't something from the outside, considering the amalgamated state of the moon thanks to the portal, but it's unusual enough to catch her attention.]

Too small to be any sort of human. A robot?

Might be.

[ It sounds just a touch dubious, but really there isn't anything else it could be. Unless it's some sort of radio controlled thing. Peter slowly begins to creep forward, trying to get a better look.

Whatever it is hasn't reacted to them, at least. ]

Looks like it belongs, at least. I'd wager they came with the place.

Surprising that it still works.

[Breq makes the observation quietly, as the thing turns its attention to something or other on the grate. Whatever it is seems difficult to determine with the sound so muted around them.]

Something must be maintaining it for it to work after so long.

You think?

[ She certainly sounds like she knows what she's talking about, so Peter's happy to defer on it. Considering the rest of this place, Peter wouldn't be surprised if they'd just been built to run forever or something, but he's also well aware that most of his ideas on robots come from too many bad sci fi movies. ]

Maybe they maintain each other.

Entirely possible, especially if they have some supply of power or materials.

[The fact that there's some sort of power here must have something to do with it, in her mind, or else there wouldn't be this field to reckon with. But she shakes her head and starts to step them back, away from the line of sight of the grate.]

It doesn't seem bothered with the intrusion. Just keep watch for more like it.

[ Peter makes a sound that seems to be a vague agreement, though he gives the grating and the little robots one last lingering suspicious look before he turns away. ]

So something is still running in here. I wonder if the sound thing is a...byproduct.

[ Accidental, rather than purposeful? It's hard to tell, but it's as good a theory as anything. ]

Maybe we can follow those things back to the power source.

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The Sound of Silence

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