Day 56: Intercom, Late Evening

[damned-intercom.livejournal.com]

Despite the rough start and the heavier snowfall, the buses managed to stay on route and on schedule. With minutes to spare, they arrived at the gates of Landel's Institute, back to the waiting arms of the military. All pretenses seemed to drop at this point, and the soldiers again took on their patented gruff exteriors. Patients were filed out of the buses in an orderly manner, eventually being escorted to their rooms for dinner in much the same. There, as promised by the personnel, well-behaved patients found their purchases among their returned possessions. A few even found new faces, though whether they brought as much joy as bought goods remained unseen.

The woman manning the intercom seemed to have missed the notice about the day's trip as her announcement remained no different from the usual. "Attention all subjects and personnel," she said. "Lights Out will commence within the hour."

A pause.

"I repeat, Lights Out will commence within the hour. All personnel: please report to your stations. The General will begin his address once preparations are underway. Thank you."

The intercom clicked off.

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Comments

[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

With a mouthful of food, Peter could only nod to Sam when he first stepped in. Even though the spicy food was making his nose run, he wasn't so distracted that he missed the fact that his roommate had a book in hand. It was a pretty thick volume of something, too. Peter would have noticed that during their talk earlier in the day, so he had to assume that Sam had bought it after that conversation.

After swallowing the curry and then wiping at his nose with a napkin, Peter turned in his seat and gave a proper greeting. "Evening. Looks like we survived the zombie attacks again, huh?" He was as relieved as anyone else that there hadn't yet been a repeat of two weeks ago, though he wasn't ever ready to count it out. This place sprung stuff on you when you least expected it, after all.

"What did you buy?" he asked, gesturing with his head toward the book. He noticed that Sam wasn't even sitting down to eat at this point, probably because he was back to the pink gunk. He hoped that his roommate's rank moved up soon, since it seemed like Sam had been here longer than most anyway.

He would have offered his food, but curry wasn't the easiest thing to share and Sam hadn't been up for it last night. Peter hoped that the other man realized that the offer was always available, though.

[boyking]

Sam smiled, unsurprised that they both had that night on their minds. He knew he sure as hell wouldn't be forgetting it anytime soon, though the night with all the portals was pretty up there, too. And, uh, when he'd died, but actually hadn't.

Okay, so maybe there was a lot he wouldn't be forgetting anytime soon.

"Yeah, guess we did." He glanced at the book when Peter motioned towards it and flipped it around so the cover was visible. "Research," he said. "Though I'm thinking I might've bought myself a headache instead, but I figure it's worth a shot."

Quantum mechanics was by no means his forte—he was a law student, and expert witnesses existed for a reason—but all he needed right now was theory. In other words, he didn't have to know how anyone came to their conclusions, he just needed to know what those conclusions were.

That was usually the idea, anyway, when it came to this stuff. It hadn't failed him before. Much.

"What about you, did you buy anything else?"

There wasn't a lot of options in town, but it wasn't impossible to find a few things. Sam had a feeling he might've been more interested in some of the innocuous stuff if he'd been less of a hunter. 'Cause, you know, he used to buy little things he hadn't technically needed. A four year period had, in fact, existed where his shopping listed consisted of more than just ammo and salt.

[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

And here Peter had thought that Sam might have just gotten himself some light reading to pass the time during dinner. Honestly, he knew Sam better than to have believed that, but part of him had been hoping.

Instead, he'd apparently bought himself a book on quantum physics, which wasn't the sort of thing people thought about unless they were majoring in a subject related to it. As someone who had learned all about the different systems of the body, which included molecular biology and organic chemistry, Peter was still pretty sure the stuff in that book would be completely over his head.

He whistled, both impressed and surprised. "That's... not exactly what I was expecting. What are you hoping to get from it?" Peter knew it had to have some sort of connection to what was going on here, but he wasn't sure what that could be.

Remembering that he still had some food that he would rather didn't go to waste, Peter took another bite of the lamb and then shook his head in response to Sam's question. "Nah, just the bag. I didn't really have any other ideas." It felt like a waste, but he'd gotten what he was looking for so that was what mattered.

Maybe the money would roll over to the next week, although he kind of doubted it. That seemed too generous for someone like Aguilar -- or Landel, for that matter.

[boyking]

"I'm not sure," Sam admitted. "I only ever took one philosophy class and we glossed over the many-worlds stuff. I've been trying to figure out how this place works, but the multiverse theories I know of are mythological so I thought...well, if I tried the other side of the equation, there could be, you know. Something there that I'm missing."

He didn't expect finding all the answers in one book—he had a feeling an entire library might not even have what he needed, and the one here was pretty sad in size, to be honest; it made his room's bookshelf look like a public library...before it all burned down, that was. But, uh, yeah, anyways—if he could sort out as much as he could, then he could find someone to talk to after that. It was usually impossible to have an extended conversation around here, so narrowing the subject down would probably make things go quicker if he got around to that.

Sam nodded at Peter's response. Looked like Peter hadn't found much to buy, either, and with the size of their room, it wasn't a good idea to stockpile what you didn't need...or the size of their boxes, these days. It wasn't a huge surprise to know that the institute was well aware of the patients' "hidden" possessions, but with the illusion completely gone, it was a little disconcerting. And made him twice as likely to expect the bullets to be missing whenever he checked his gun each night.

Man, his gun was also way overdue for cleaning, too. Which unfortunately couldn't happen.

"It's kinda hard to think of what to buy," he agreed. "Though I also have more paperclips than I'll ever need." He shook the box lightly. Even the tiniest available box came in fifties. "If you ever wanted a second option to kicking down a door. They should work on simple locks and, um, handcuffs. If that...ever became an issue."

He had a feeling that this probably hadn't ever crossed Peter's mind and he couldn't imagine where anyone would pull out a pair of handcuffs in here, but on the other hand, he was pretty sure he'd seen someone in spandex once walking down the hall, so what he couldn't imagine apparently didn't apply here.

[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

So that was what this was about. Sam seemed to have fixated on the whole idea of the "altverse" that Landel had supposedly mentioned, and Peter couldn't entirely blame him. It did seem like a big clue, but all it did for him personally was answer a question or two. He didn't know how to go about finding out more than that, but apparently Sam had a few ideas. It didn't seem like that book was going to be easy to get through, though.

He could agree that science was probably a better explanation than myth, although it was pretty hard to tell with this place. Gargoyles weren't supposed to be real, for one thing. He kept coming back to that, but it was a good reminder of how little he could expect.

Other universes, huh? Discovering that he had an ability had really only been scraping the surface of what was possible in the world, it seemed. Someone like Sam had at least been a little more prepared, knowing about demons and monsters and all that.

"I don't know how much good I'd be with something like that, but if you ever need someone to talk things out with, I'll do my best." Sometimes it was good to just have another perspective when it came to stuff like that, or so Peter guessed. He didn't mind being a sounding board of sorts for his roommate. It was the least he could do.

At first, when Sam showed him the box of paperclips, Peter was at a loss. He hadn't seen Sam stockpiling patient files here or anything like that, so what was the point? But his roommate explained soon after, and Peter slowly nodded in understanding. Lockpicking. It should have been obvious, but it wasn't like he'd ever had to consider such a thing before coming here. Apparently Sam had, seeing how he'd had the idea to buy them in the first place.

"Well, I wouldn't really know what to do with them," he admitted. He could straighten a paperclip out and then jostle it around inside a lock, but he doubted that would be good enough.