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
[ Not like there'd be consequences for the robot losing bottles under his watch or anything, and Amos himself isn't concerned about retaliation; he's noticed the supply here doesn't seem to actually dwindle, so...might as well enjoy a few bottles for himself. ]
Some kinda small town, everyone knows everyone's business, that kinda shit? [ Just — the way she describes the school being against teachers doing stuff like that on their free time, it sounds like a small place where word spreads fast.
New Hampshire, at least, is familiar. Never been up that way, never been more north than New York for a brief time, but he knows of it, at least. Not much, but, it's a reference point. Her being a teacher seems to fit somehow, from their brief interaction so far. ]
no subject
[It's a little bit funny, the brands and things she's come across here. There's brands that are familiar to her - she saw an RC can in the trash at the motel last week - and then ones she's never heard of. And an absence of ones common to her - she hasn't seen a single Noz cola in all of Panorama.]
And yeah, exactly like that.
[Nadine nods with a wry little chuckle. There's no asking to clarify what New Hampshire is, or any other details in what she'd said. That implies he's familiar, roughly, with her time and place of origin.]
And also heavily Catholic. So really, really judge-y. It was a great job, I loved the kids a lot, but the parents...oof. It's honestly pretty nice to be an anonymous face in a city crowd.
no subject
[ He doesn't have as much familiarity with sodas, which ones are good or not, but while he's grabbing bottles, he'll look for anything that seems decent enough. Figures they must have mixers of some kind.
Anything about cities and towns like that, or what she's describing, are the distant past. Jobs like hers — they still have teachers, but it's hard for anyone to get them these days. Most end up on Basic. So what he does know is the kind of knowledge you get from history books. But he didn't have a formal education himself, either, so it's just what he'd gathered coming up in Baltimore. ]
So this is — better? Than where you were?
[ Maybe that's too much of a leap to make. He's just curious. ]
no subject
[Nadine has no problem talking about that part of her world and former life. Captain Trips and the end of civilization as they know it was safe territory. And usually explained away anything anyone found odd or reclusive about her. It was just normal end times trauma, nothing more.
She doesn't find the question rude, either. If her current bar buddy is perceptive, it's not surprising he picked up on the fact she isn't that bothered by her situation.]
The life and world I knew already ended a year ago, so this...isn't as big a change as you'd think, at least for me. It's getting back to normal, in a lot of ways. I have a car, I pay rent, I have an actual paying job...those things were starting to become part of the past.
no subject
While he does wonder a few different things about her situation, he's also not typically the type to question someone a lot about their life and their past. Now, if they volunteer information and it seems like they're good with sharing, he'll pick up the thread and follow it. That's why, though, his response is maybe a little more restrained.
Given what she's said, yeah — anything would be better than where she was, he figures. ]
How'd your world end?
no subject
[And still there were so many people left, just in the US alone. It really put into perspective how many people there were.
But that was another world, and another life. One that's surprisingly easy to put behind her here - at least outwardly. This is the new normal, this is Nadine's life now. A boring, mundane, eking by life in the aftermath of an even weirder apocalypse.]
It was pretty awful, but I'm here now, and by all accounts, there's no leaving here. Which is okay with me. Have you been here long?
no subject
[ This kind of talk — at least for the moment they're in it — warrants an actual decent drink. So rather than wait to take a bottle, he just gets up without explanation, going back behind the bar, tapping their robot friend a little on the shoulder to essentially shoo him away. And he grabs a bottle of tequila, setting it down on the bar first.
Then he starts to look around for some soda, like she said. But he speaks to her over his shoulder. ]
This place kinda did you a favor, then. [ Some of the bottles clink a little as he searches. ] You like — Dr. Pepper?
no subject
[Nadine shakes her a little and laughs. That was probably much too enthusiastic a reaction. She couldn't help it, though. That sudden sting of familiarity....]
Sorry to sound so excited, but that's actually a brand I recognize. I've gotten way too used to stuff I've never heard of, like Blitzo Cola and Aggropelter's Best, I just expect it at this point.
[A Dr. Pepper behind this bar is like finding a Tom Cruise movie on the moon as far as she's concerned.]
It's the same with TV and books. There's some I know, but most of them...
no subject
Most of it I don't know. [ He grabs the bottle opener, prying the cap off the bottle and handing the drink to her now. ] The food here's been kinda familiar, though. From when I was on Earth.
[ People on Basic generally couldn't afford to eat much beyond enriched rice and textured protein. Once he'd made it to space, he'd actually had a way better variety. Amos nods to the bottle he's just handed her, though. ] That's the only bottle they got.
[ So. Make it count. ]
no subject
[Nadine tips it in half thanks, half toast. She fully intends to nurse it, who knows when she'll have a Dr. Pepper again.]
And yeah, it's been the same for me. Boxed pasta is familiar, even if the brands and logos aren't. Canned meats and soups, cookies, that sort of stuff. Eating a lot of canned food these days.
[And not just because of cost. She just trusts cans more, when the origin of the food is an unsolvable mystery.]
Uh...weird question, but, what year are you from?
no subject
In a lot of ways, the food here has reminded him of being back in Baltimore, though even the canned goods are a hell of an improvement over what they were eating there.
But when she asks the question, he shakes his head briefly. ]
Talked to a few people here from other times, so — good to ask. Year's 2350 for me. You?
no subject
[It stands to reason if there are past guys, there would be future guys. This is the first one Nadine's met, at least that she knows of. Three hundred years in the future...that's one hell of a gap.]
I met someone from the seventeen hundreds, too. This place really does pull people in from all places and times. Just...the drainage trap of the universe.
no subject
[ He doesn't think much of it really, one way or another, in the sense that it's about the least strange thing this place has going for it. The fact that they're here, well, guess it means anyone else from any other time can be here, too.
He nods at her soda, though. ]
That good?