Mingle ∞ Log
No Lifeguard on Duty
Summary
What's going on?
An
unexpected heat wave in mid-June, coupled with the cycling shutdown of all air conditioning units in motels across the Blocks, has made the summer unbearable. Meanwhile, the ever-eager
storm chaser,
Felix Bjurstrom, has uncovered a
fancy resort with a pool in a diffusion zone only 1 hour out from Panorama. Lucky, right? Well...kind of. It's got some quirks.
When is this happening?
June 10 - 30
What should I know?
- This area is one of many diffusion zones that appear throughout the planet.
- A storm chaser is someone dedicated to studying the cosmic phenomenon in the Diadem. Felix is a pioneer in his field.
- A winding highway filled with old empty barrels will take you to the zone.
- Characters can travel with a friend to save on gas! Parking's limited, so it might not be a bad idea.
- At any given time, there's max several dozen visitors. Most work long hours, some are traveling through the diffusion zones, and others prefer not to risk the drive or waste precious gas, so it won't draw a huge crowd (but there's still a crowd!).
- This is a mingle rather than an event. Plot-heavy elements will be minor. The game's first proper event will be posted in July!
What does my character know?
- Having lost his phone, Felix will spread the word using good old-fashioned printed posters that he's put up around Panorama. A young woman is seen helping him. They appear to be close. Some say that's his daughter.
- Though the timing is impossible to predict accurately, Felix believes that due to this zone's unusual proximity to an anchor point, it has a high chance of persisting for 2-3 weeks.
- Directions are printed on the posters, though characters are also free to stumble across the zone by accident.
∞ Links ∞
Introduction
The resort looks like your typical upscale vacation spot: a beautiful pool, lovely cabins, and plenty of pool chairs. The sky is
perpetually nighttime and there are
two moons. One moon is smaller than its sister and glows purple. The other looks like the Earth's moon. The weather is
pleasantly warm. In fact, conditions are almost
too perfect.
Other
fluxdrifts are here, too, and you might come across them, all of whom are taking advantage of the pool. They'll converse superficially with you and will come and go randomly. You'll want to keep a close eye on your belongings. Other than cooling off, this isn't a bad place to start making connections. Life in the Diadem is better when you've got allies if not friends.
Just outside the resort is a
spacious parking lot, designed for visitors. Nobody's following parking rules so put your car anywhere it fits. If you get blocked in, well, that's a problem for when you leave.
At the end of June, the diffusion zone will flicker and morph into an unremarkable overgrown park, long abandoned to the decades.
Prompts
As you wander around, you discover deactivated androids in many of the poolside huts. These androids cannot be mistaken for any organic species: their chassis is metal, and their heads are shiny. Circuits and wires are visible. But each is dressed distinctly human in a way that borders on disturbing. You spot lipstick drawn on some of the metal faces, as though they're playing dress up...or as if they don't realize they aren't human. One android is frozen in place with a diary clutched in its hands. Another has a hairbrush for its nonexistent hair.
Something seems to have destroyed them—perhaps a powerful EMP wave that knocked them all out. All except one.
The Bartender
The poolside bar is at the eastern end of the resort. There are plenty of seats. A few are occupied by deactivated androids. The bartender is also an android and appears to be the only functional one in this place. He speaks with a modulated voice and has a neutral accent. He exhibits the following behaviors if you sit at his bar:
- Icebreaker. Whether you're alone or with a companion, he'll try to get you all to be friends, asking random self-generated icebreaker questions. He'll be visibly disappointed if you don't play along.
- Bartending. While cheerful, he can't make the correct drink: it's always too strong, incredibly weak, added salt instead of sugar, messed up the ice. He's obviously doing his best, but it's just not working. The harder he tries, the worse he performs until it becomes a comedy of errors with stuff falling over, ice dumped in your lap, champagne corks flying, and any number of slapstick mishaps. You can help him out by mixing the drink yourself.
If you're nice to him, he'll introduce himself as Thomas Lustras. He's happy to
tell you about his son. Strange, you think, but who says androids can't have paternal instincts? Yet, when the android takes out his wallet to show you a photo of his son—named Edward Lustras—the picture is that of a
human child, roughly 5 years old, in the arms of his
human father.
The driver's license in the same wallet confirms that Thomas is (was?) a real person. The picture on the license matches the human male in the photo. A half-scorched business card states that Thomas was a consultant at Outer Rim Resettlements. Thomas believes he's on a company retreat and wistfully declares he's eager to return home to his son.
Maybe don't look too closely. After all, this place will soon disappear. And so will he.
The Grill
It's not a vacation without a grill! Not a grillable item is in sight, though, so you'll have to rely on what you can bring out of Panorama. Some of the visiting drifters will pitch in to share, unloading hotdogs (some synthetic, others authentic, and some far past expiry), burger patties (same) and buns, and "kebabs" made of blocky frozen vegetable squares. The squares vaguely resemble corn, mushrooms, and pineapple. The texture is passable, like a flavor-infused block of tofu.
Fire up the grill and take turns grilling. You'll also have to manage the propane. The grill's also prone to sputtering out, requiring regular minor repairs to get it back up and going. Any loose bolts or screws can be taken out of the dead androids to replace the rusty ones in the grill. You're unsure if you should feel uncomfortable doing that or what, but it is a solution.
Parking Woes
Like any crowded event, the parking lot can get chaotic, and the lawlessness of the diffusion zones doesn't help. While some are happy to help barbecue, others are more interested in picking fights over who got to the parking space first. It won't take much for a fistfight to break out, and a knife fight isn't out of the question, either, though nobody'll be killed (this time).
You can let the troublemakers beat each other, or you can try to intervene if somebody who doesn't deserve it is getting harassed. Just avoid causing too much of a scene. Breaking noses is acceptable; gutting someone head to toe is not. There are Enforcers visiting the zone, and if you interfere with their nice pool time, they won't hesitate to haul away everybody involved and make you sit in jail for a few days.
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thediadem) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
diademlogs2025-06-08 10:11 am
no subject
At the question posed to him, Scott fleetingly looks back at Thomas again. He, too, was tempted to press for more answers, especially when he found the other androids who seemed like they thought they were human at one point. But he also knows these diffusion zones are temporary, so no need to delve in deeper. Even though he did jot down these observations in his little notebook. ]
Sort of. [ The future Charles told him comes to mind. How robots will try and exterminate them all. That must be far from the future. Technology isn't as advanced when he's from. ]
Companies have them to do factory work. I don't think they've invented ones that think they're human yet.
no subject
Since then, he's put aside the drive to dig in too deep. It's not really his area. Understanding the factions that make this place up is a better use of his time, and that includes understanding the flux drifts like himself. Getting a sense of the worlds they come from, getting a feel for how many of those worlds are like his own. Hell, getting a sense for how many are from his world exactly, seeing as he's already run into two separate people from his version of Earth.
Sort of matches what his own answer would be, too — it's only the commentary that follows that ultimately makes it clear that they're at least from different time periods, but more likely different worlds entirely.
He hums out a soft sound as he slowly brings his beer back up to his lips. )
Better off that way, trust me. They just started poppin' up where I'm from, and so far nothin' good's come of it.
( That shit that happened in Sokovia.... From what he saw on the news, it was a god damn mess. )
no subject
Like this conversation, for instance. The other man's answer clues him in that he's definitely from a point in time that's way into his future. He doesn't know how ahead he is. Maybe years. Perhaps decades. He also has no way of knowing if this guy's from his own world. But this is to be expected of most fluxdrifts. If some people from his own reality can arrive from the past and future, so can others. Does he have an answer to that yet? Only time will tell.
Scott's immediately brought back to what the Professor mentioned: robots exterminating mutants. Looks like wherever this guy's from, he's also heading to a future that's governed by machines. ]
How sentient are they in your time? [ He pauses, considers if he should ask. ] Are they being sent to kill people?
[ Is the future of his Earth similar to this man's? ]
no subject
Yeah, they were sentient. There was an incident a while back... two-three years ago, maybe, give or take? They, uh- ( He pauses, lips pulling back into a tight grimace, searching for the least fucked up way to put this. ) There was an incident with some that went rogue. They practically decimated a small country in Europe.
( Not that the press released all the details about what happened in Sokovia, but it was big news. International incident levels. Hard to miss.)
That's a pretty pointed question. You mind if I ask why?
no subject
There's a brief hesitation on his end to answer this man's question, but he was generous enough to answer his, so Scott thinks it's just but polite to return the gesture. Even if he'd like to be as vague as possible. ]
Just learned robots would decimate my people in the future.
[ He drops that with a matter-of-fact tone. No bullshit. Just facts. He's not even sure if he and this guy is from the same Earth, but he learned similarities often happen between parallel universes. ]
Whatever happened in your Earth might be a precedent to mine. Sorry to hear about that small country in Europe, though. [ To think robots going rogue can do that to a whole nation. What more if they're intentionally designed to kill. ]
no subject
Yeah, thanks. Sorry to hear about yours, too.
( Which feels woefully inadequate even to Frank's ears, so after a beat of glancing down at this beer, idly thumbing the label, he ventures to add a little more: )
For what it's worth... if the movies are anything to go by, the future's never set in stone. You know about it, maybe that means it'll change. There's this, uh- this.... group of people, special people, heroes, in my world. They were able to intervene before things got too bad. They stopped it. Maybe the same thing'll happen in yours.
no subject
Maybe it won't be so bad to ask. ] Who are these people, this group of heroes who intervened?
[ A pause, as he's trying to figure out how to best ask this. ] How exactly did they stop this in your world? [ Is it possible they might come from the same one? ]
no subject
( Breathe easy, Scott. The name might be slightly less silly, but the people who make it up are also slightly less awesome. Not that either of them know that. It's just an inarguable fact that Immortal Metal Claws Guy and Laser Eyes Guy are about ten times cooler than Guy Who Shoots Arrows Really Good. No offense, Clint. )
It's kind of... made up of people who can do stuff you probably wouldn't even believe.
( Ha. )
I don't know all the details, I wasn't there, and you know how international news gets watered down, but... far as I know, there was some central intelligence orchestrating them all. They plowed through a couple hundred androids, got to the sentient one in the power position, and put it down somehow. ( A beat, and then it occurs to him- ) Actually, one of the guys from the team is here. Pretty sure he was there for the fight. You wanna know more, you could probably ask him about it. Clint Barton, sometimes goes by Hawkeye.
no subject
[ Scott repeats, more to himself than to Frank, but it's audible and loud enough for the other man to undeniably hear. In his head, he thinks this Hawkeye person is probably someone who has x-ray vision of some sort. Not someone who can Shoot Arrows Really Good. Because they all have to have some powerful schtick to be able to take down sentient robots. If the ones he knows can wipe out mutants, people who went up against some should most likely be more powerful than mutants.
Hearing they're called Avengers, though, cements the idea that this guy is most likely from another version of Earth parallel to his. But it's still disconcerting to know they're dealing with (or will deal with, in his case) almost identical threats.
It's enough to make him pause and mull over everything he has been given. ] I'll try and look for this guy to know more. Thanks for the information. [ Both the name drop and the situation as told by Frank. ]
[ With a small smile, he extends a friendly hand. ] Scott, by the way.