text, un: lunettes ( dated before the holiday mingle i.e. today )

[allweather]

[Reim understands absolutely nothing about... outer space, even after the initial orientation, so there's only one solution: writing himself a report about it. It's a force of habit, and he doesn't intend to share it at first (hence the strange heading) but he figures he might as well use it to present his various inquiries. He's going to be writing it anyway, so...

Well, it's better than looking out any windows and getting ulcers from space.]

CONFIDENTIAL/FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Report 1 (Rough draft) | Month X/Day X | Author: Reim Lunettes

We appear to be in outer space.

The author (hereafter "I/me") is unfamiliar with the concept of "space" as it has been presented here (more accurate word: the Heavens? This lacks the atmosphere of something heavenly...) but has taken up the task of organizing the information presented haphazardly during "Orientation."

I was able to speak with the attendant upon (...) waking, but unable to ascertain any pertinent information. The conversation began as follows:

Q. (to attendant) What is going on here?
A. All of your questions will be answered in a moment at Orientation.

While perhaps my demeanor had been more frantic than can be accurately portrayed here in words, all manner of simple questions were regarded in this fashion. Then, proceeding into the next room to watch a moving picture that continued to make absolutely no logical sense, followed by being presented with the following and left to my own devices:

• An uncomfortably small uniform. I do not think it will fit me.
• Some kind of pendant.
• This device.
• Additional information that still has yet to explain in full what a "starship" is but does at least provide some helpful rules and regulations to adjust to living aboard one. Whatever it may be.
• The stars are outside. I will have to ask someone for medication to eliminate vertigo.
• A transcription of the moving picture that still does not make an ounce of sense.

To this end, being left to my own devices as I am, I am currently making arrangements to seek additional counsel about what is actually going on here and why this bag has been referred to as a "duffel." Interviews with those who have been here longer than I will be conducted in the following format:

Respondent:
Time:
Place:
Notes:

Q. Hello. My name is Reim Lunettes and I would like to have a moment of your time. What is your name?

Q. Have you ever been to "space" before?

Q. How familiar are you with the items found aboard this "starship"?

Q. What items were packed inside your "duffel"?

With these questions, I believe I will be able to report back with a more thorough understanding of the situation.

[Anyway, hope everyone enjoys this report that is half serious and half fed up with not understanding why everything glows and the pictures move. This is probably deserving of ridicule, but only a little.]

Comments

[allweather]

[He'll never know what a British is.]

Not this far, certainly. [Ha ha jokes, jokes to stave off panicking about being in space again. He peers at each of the shops as they approach with just a little more focus than necessary, too, just to think about something else. His new toothbrush will really help his nerves as soon as he gets his hands on it, yeah...]

Business trips, extensive errands for my... [hm] other employer—I've certainly traveled before. The difference is simply that I can go home when I'm through. [He pauses, giving Victor somewhat of an amused look. Barely. It's strained.] I suppose I'll have to get used to it like everyone else.

[genice]

( It's an act they all have to put on. For those who find it less of an act, so far he's only noticed a similarity in accepting space travel as normal, almost commonplace. For the rest of them used to a life confined within one atmosphere, it was a reality almost too big to hold.

Part of him loved it. Talk about surprises beyond anything he imagined. Another part of him didn't like it, didn't appreciate the uncertainty for finding the parts of his life that didn't come along with him and Makkachin to this ship amoung the stars. He'd just been learning what strength was without having to rely just on himself and that incessant need for reinvention that'd driven him for years. Yet now?

Now all he has is that same resolve that drove him through his career. Twenty years of habit and stubborn, incredible focus. Twenty years of self reliance, of being emotionally alone. It wasn't what he'd planned on reclaiming for himself. )

You won't have to get used to it alone, for what it's worth. We're all caught in the same unhappy coincidence. The only home that came with us is in here.

( He brings his hand up, light catching off the metal of his ring as he presses his fist over his breastbone. Home is where the heart is. He flashes him a smile, eyes more grim than his expression would otherwise imply. )

It was stationary you wanted first, right? We're about there.

( He nods his head to the right, indicating a store labeled in a language he didn't speak. The wrist comm is useful for bridging those barriers, he finds, and in another setting he'd be endlessly fascinated. Here he's mostly unhappy with yet another reminder of just how far from home he is. )

[allweather]

[Oh—goodness, Mr. Victor Nikiforov sure is an... open man. Perhaps most people wouldn't think that after a few seconds of waxing poetic about the heart and home, but for someone from a culture as reserved as Reim's, such generously offered empathy from a complete stranger is something of a surprise. Reim blinks. Alright.

He can't help but think a little cynically about it, however; how many of them don't understand what a battery is? Even among all these people caught, as Victor says, in the same unhappy coincidence, he still feels decidedly out of place. Time and effort will fill in most of those gaps, but he suspects he isn't going to feel as close to these comrades of happenstance as he could going forward.

Because he doesn't understand batteries, among other things. But if he has to be the bumbling oddball from too far in the past, he supposes he'll grow accustomed to that, too. So, pens.]

Ah, yes... At the very least they haven't completely done away with pen and paper, even though they have these- things. [The wrist device, indicated with a little movement of his hand. The thing he doesn't think too hard about because he'd short out again.

Ah, hang on-] How is it that your pet managed to come with you?

[the only home that came with us, please, come on victor not everyone got to keep their dogs]

[genice]

( Imagine if Break had come along with you, Reim. Imagine if that was your home right here, on this spaceship.

He nods, sticking with affable over laughing. He figures the laughing might not be as helpful as being more practical, so he settles into that "role" over the rest. Reim's question takes him as surprise, even as he turns and heads through the door of the stationary store. )

Makkachin? I don't actually know. He had to have been taken like I was, but when I last remember, I was thousands of miles away in a different country. Is there any indication these anomalies only take people like us?

( He frowns, looking back to his dog, who has trotted right alongside them both into the store. The person at the counter leans over to see Makkachin, then shrugs, seemingly unconcerned with the canine's presence. )

I wonder.

[allweather]

[Reim develops thirty ulcers overnight and dies, home isn't worth it in the end.

He's already making a beeline for the nicest pen selection he can find, while he hums over "anomalies" like any of this process makes sense to him.

...Well, actually.] I've heard... Well, I've seen the evidence of a place that refuses to obey the laws of time and space and will just as soon transport a person fifty years in an instant as leave them back where they came from, as if nothing had happened.

[You know, normal stuff. He picks up a very nice fountain pen to consider it.]

Perhaps the "anomalies" here obey nothing at all, and your dog really is only a coincidence.

[genice]

( Congratulations on surprising Victor, Reim! He's trailing along after him to stay in comfortable conversational distance anyway; the sheer ease with which Reim discusses something so incredibly absurd to Victor has him laughing lightly in response. Disbelief not in the possibility, but in the fact he's even considering said possibility with any seriousness. )

Wait, really?! You've seen evidence of something like that before?

( All his attention is on Reim now, and he's definitely bridged the distance between them to lay a hand on his arm... and then pull his hand back, knowing better than to push through people's personal space bubbles unless there's a functional purpose to do so. It's just nothing he's heard about before. )

[allweather]

Besides all of this? [Because, well,] Yes.

[He says this again like it's perfectly normal, although he supposes it was never a given. Leave it to Reim to completely accept being moved through time via mysterious anomaly, but to panic about batteries.

Anyway, it probably doesn't matter if he chatters about the Abyss for a bit here, since he's in space or whatever. But where does he begin...]

Ah, have I finally pulled ahead of the rest of you? [Is this his moment?? Give him a second to take this seriously, again-] I suppose the existence of other "worlds" has always been something "real," from my perspective...

[genice]

Apparently you have. ( He says, waving off Reim's skyrocketing into the lead on this particular topic. ) Other worlds and moving through space and time feel like different things, but you're telling me that there's a way to control how it happens? Deliberately?

[allweather]

Well, maybe not deliberately. [At all. Ever. Maybe you have to be an eldritch abomination of a person to do that? His adopted eldritch abomination is at home, where he can't ask!!] But it does happen.

[genice]

( That brief spark of hope banks into an ember just like that, Victor breathing out in a sigh and visibly frowning. He's a practical realist, or so he likes to think; in reality, he has to be enough of a practical dreamer to make what he does work as well as it does on the ice. Facing the reality he's living in is necessary, so he does. )

I'd have preferred a deliberately, but the possibility in more than one place is better than nothing.

( In his opinion, knowing nothing of advanced Physics or how any of this works in the first place. )

It means it can happen. We'll just need to figure out what's necessary to make it happen, no?

( He hasn't been here anywhere near long enough to give up on a hope of getting back to his home one day. Sooner is appreciated; later will be accepted, if that's what happens. He turns his face to the side, making himself relax and settling into a more neutral disposition. Idly: )

Ah, looks like they're having a sale on pen sets.

[allweather]

[Don't worry, Reim is already holding no less than three pen sets. Now that there are office supplies in front of him, he's feeling much more calm... The inevitability of just going along with whatever happens around him at any given time is there, but he's used to that.

Once he stops panicking every time he looks out a window, he'll be golden. But anyway, arms full of pen sets already,] I suppose you'll need someone who understands what a computer is to make anything happen around here.

[sorry buddy........]

[genice]

( It would be a lie to say Victor isn't eyeing the pen sets that Reim's picked up, deciding that he agrees at least one of those is acceptable. He's not particularly motivated by office supplies, but he appreciates what's worth appreciating in a given moment.

He nods, shooting him a half-grin. )

It's not something people are born with, and I'm fairly good at them from the user perspective. Looking for some tips?

( He can teach SNS like nobody's business. Or like what his business might end up being like, why is he marketing and sales??? He can sell an image, he guesses, but that's not quite the same thing. Anyway, there he is, offering Reim tutorials in electronics. )

[allweather]

[They're all acceptable and he loves them, thank you Victor. But oh, what's this??]

Another generous offer...? If you think I'm teachable, I can do my best to learn.

[At least he'll know what hashtags are, which is a 100% increase in knowledge of hashtags compared to right now.]

[genice]

Anyone willing to listen can be taught.

( so he theorizes. to some degree, it must be true! that said, he gestures to his own wrist comm. )

Have you seen how this takes photographs yet?

( countdown to hashtags and selfies 101 in 5... 4... 3... )

[allweather]

[The blank look on his face before he looks down at the wrist comm probably answers that question thoroughly, but-]

It takes pictures...? Where- forgive me, I just know how this is going to sound- where do they keep the film?

[genice]

( He grins, already bringing up his interface for the photo function on the wrist comm and moving closer. He indicates toward it, holding it up for both of them to look at the selfie mode reflecting their mirror'd faces back. )

It's the amazing thing about cameras like this. They stores their information in different ways. They don't use film anymore. See this?

( Actually, he smiles and makes a peace sign at the camera, meeting Reim's gaze through the eyes of the lens. )

This is showing the picture we'll be taking. Smile!

( SELFIE TIME )

[allweather]

[At least they're something of a height, or this selfie would look even dumber. It looks absurd mostly because of Reim being too confused to smile in time, and then wondering when it's actually over... Is it over now?? Is he allowed to stop making this uncomfortable face?]

I don't—that's the picture? It's quite small.

[genice]

( Victor seems well pleased, tapping on his comm and bringing the photo up so he can zoom in on his interface. It's a nice, clear shot of exactly how cheerful Victor looks while leaning in toward the incredibly confused Reim. )

You can zoom in to make it bigger! If we had computers with us, we could look at pictures on there — we're only limited with how big our screen is right now.

( He turns his comm to Reim and demonstrates how he uses two fingers to zoom in and out again. Another flick of his finger drags the image to one corner, leaving them looking at nothing all that remarkable. Part of a shelf? )

Here. You try.

[allweather]

[Oh—oh, that's not flattering at all. Reim looks sideways at Victor imploringly, please, destroy the evidence...]

What should I...? Alright.

[Now he has Victor's comm in his face and he hoverhands around it delicately, as if it's not the exact same as his own device. It's different when it's someone else's, surely... But, ah, what should he take a picture of? He doesn't understand the appeal of selfies already.

Since Victor is standing right there, he supposes he'll just take a picture of him, while he leans expertly out of frame himself. Shutter noise, surprise!!]

[genice]

( He catches Victor putting on a pleasant public smile, giving a peace sign and feeling somewhat amused at how Reim is leaning out of the frame. Still, the point of this is having Reim use the camera feature; Victor's used to being in front of a lens. Having it be part of a form of photojournalism most his generation and the one following his embrace makes it just as natural to smile in reflex. )

Great! ... Did it turn out like you were expecting?

( He moves to look at the photo Reim captured, curious about the end result. )

[allweather]

[Well, the angle is a little strange because he pressed the comm to take the picture at the same time he moved out of frame, but it's a perfectly normal picture of Victor otherwise.]

Yes, I think so. [Like, maybe some of his shoulder is still in the frame, but whatever.] I think I prefer taking these tiny portraits to being in them.

[genice]

( Victor seems amused by the end result, but he nods nonetheless. Even moreso to what Reim says. )

Photography is meant for using however you like. You can practice taking all the tiny portraits you like, to keep track for your lists, if you want. It's useful when you're trying to capture the idea of something, but don't quite have the words.

[allweather]

That has never happened to me.

[He's dead serious. What kind problem is that? Unprofessional, that's what. That must be something that happens to other people, Victor.] But I see your point.

[genice]

Wow! ( he laughs, lifting fingers to his mouth and holding them there for a touch. he's impressed, Reim! ) What a silver tongue you must be blessed with.

[allweather]

[tadaaaa]

I suppose. I write a lot of reports, so you could say I've practiced. Most things require a certain level of well-spoken professionalism, so... [Shrugs! Ignore that he had like 8 panicked episodes on his first day.]