Day 32: Sun Room (2nd shift)

[heraldric.livejournal.com]

After the couple glasses of water Leon managed to gulp down during breakfast, the mage felt immensely better. He was still a bit tired, but that was nothing a little lounging on one of the sofas wouldn't cure. Stretching his arms above his head, he couldn't help but wish he'd had the chance to grab one of his new doctor's coats before leaving his room that morning. Maybe they would have let him get away with wearing it. Maybe.

He grabbed an empty sofa, pulling out the journal he tried to keep on him at all times. It was nearly complete now. Just a couple more pages to go. It might not improve his spellcasting that much, but any improvement was better than none. It was getting to where it might be too dangerous for him to use spells at all, if it left him so worn out without even finishing a monster off.

Comments

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

"I'll take that as a no, then," Tyler replied with a crooked smile. "Look, this place... it's not normal. It might look like it is during the day, but at night, everything changes. It's like something out of a horror movie or a survival video game. The place changes and we get let out to fend for ourselves. And there are monsters and other things to get in our way."

Scraping his fingers through his hair, he shot John a rueful look. "I know it sounds crazy and maybe it's one of those things you need to see to believe, but I figured I'd better warn you all the same."

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

John listened carefully to what Tyler was telling him. It would be easy to dismiss what he was saying as crazy talk. Look where he was, for instance. It probably wouldn't be odd to see someone claiming themselves to be Jesus or Moses or some other religious person. Still, it would be hypocritical of him to brush it off as pure fantasy. All he had to do was say 'In the future, I send my father through time to meet my mother so they can have me' and he'd be placed in the same category as Moses Jr. And that wasn't even mentioning the Terminators.

John bit his thumb, thinking deeply before turning to Tyler. "I guess it's better to be warned then to find all of this out the hard way," he shrugged. "Can I ask you a question? It's going to sound weird but I figure you've already told me about monsters that come out at night so, how weird can this sound? Do you know what year it is?"

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

"That... seems to be the other weird thing around here," Tyler answered with a chuckle. "Ask every person in here and you'll get a different answer from each. Ask them where they're from and you'll be told cities and countries and even universes you've never heard of. This place... whoever runs it, knows how to do things that should be impossible. Everyone here was yanked out of different places and times. Some of them shouldn't even exist."

"Before I woke up here, it was 2006. Now? I'm not so certain, but I'm guessing not too far off of that. But there are other people here that'll give you different answers. I've been watching the bulletin board and there are people from 20 years in the future and others from 200 years in the past. There are dragons in human forms and elves and death gods, among other things. I met Clark Kent yesterday, and I ran into Pyramid Head in the back garden the other night. This place defies what should be possible."

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

The name Pyramid Head didn't ring any bells but...

"Clark Kent?" John sputtered, not at all expecting that. "Superman? Are you... ok, hold on. Let's think about this for a moment. This is a hospital of some sort. There are nurses. I'm assuming that it's a center for people with mental illnesses and so far, I haven't been proven wrong. I'm willing to take your word that there are strange things going on, I've seen my fair share of strange things, but... Superman? I think that might be stretching it."

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, that's what I said," Tyler snorted, shaking his head. "What's worse is I got told by someone else that in their world, my life was a movie. They knew things about me that they should have no way of knowing, things that were secret. I don't know how this place does what it does, or why, but there is something seriously strange going on."

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

John shook his head. "Imagine waking up one day to find out that you're a star of some movie," he snorted. "No thanks. I've enough problems then to worry about people knowing things about me. That sort of information could be very dangerous."

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

"And you think you're the only one with secrets?" Tyler replied ruefully, giving him a knowing look. "I think everyone here does. Almost everyone here is... special or different. They have a secret or an ability or a role that sets them apart from most normal people. I think that's why we've been pulled here. If you talk to people here, you'll find that pretty much none of them are who you could consider 'normal'."

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

What Tyler said left John feeling unsettled. Everyone had a secret here? Well, John could argue that no one felt particularly normal, even if they didn't have Terminators coming after them or know what their future held, sort of. Still, he didn't think that Tyler meant your run of the mill problems or secrets. There was something about this place that bothered him, something that made him feel as though it wasn't ordinary and that his mother wasn't planning some daring breakout.

"I'd really like to find a phone and talk to my Mom," he said, beginning to plot the easiest way to swipe a cellphone off someone. "It's 2006, right? The cellphones are small enough."

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

Tyler blinked at that odd phrasing. "Small enough? What do you mean? And oh, that's the other thing. If you can even reach your mom out there... she might not be the person you know or remember. Apparently we get visitors here from the outside occasionally. I... haven't had any myself, but I've heard about it. They remember things differently. They've been brainwashed by this place. They tell us we're here for our own good and that we've had mental breaks and that everything we think we remember about our old lives were delusions. That's the cover for why we're here, you see. Why no one here will believe us. They tell us all the same thing, and since most of us aren't from anywhere that's anything like this place, we do sound crazy."

He snorted and shook his head. "We all think it our first day here. We're all sure there's some mistake, and we'll be out of here in a snap. It's not that easy. Those of us that have... special abilities, they limit us, steal or seal or block whatever we can do. We're closely watched all day and there's monsters and horrific things to get through at night. There was a riot here one morning in the cafeteria. You'd think with all of us patients here working together, we'd stand a chance of overtaking a few nurses, but they had orderlies pouring in from everywhere and the whole patient group ended up sedated. We took people down with us, of course - just about everyone you'll meet in here is a fighter of some sort - but that doesn't mean we actually got anything accomplished with a show of power."

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

"Cellphones are small enough to slip into your pocket without anyone really noticing," John explained. "While if this was ten years ago it'd be harder to get away with. They were bigger and bulkier though a lot better to hack into but I'll see what I can do. It shouldn't be too difficult."

John wasn't worried that his mother wouldn't be the same here as she was anywhere else. What were 'they' going to do? Make it so the Terminators weren't after them and that Judgement Day wasn't going to happen? Hallelujah, John would throw whoever was in charge a damn parade and ask him how he managed that. Unless, like he had thought before, Judgement Day had already happened and he was pulled to some time after the fact.

He was pulled from his thoughts when Tyler mentioned the fight. If everyone had turned against the nurses then they should have been able to get a bit further then the cafeteria. "Was someone leading the fight?" he asked. "Telling everyone where to go or was it a free for all?"

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

"There wasn't even time, I don't think," Tyler answered with a shake of his head. "Or I could have missed part of it. I was trying to protect one of the girls in a wheelchair, but we both got taken down. I've heard it was started by a girl named River, and I know where I saw her fighting, there were these other big guys with her, but it happened so fast, and then there were just orderlies everywhere. I don't know where this place keeps them, I've never seen so many at once, they were everywhere."

He shot John a curious look. "I don't know if it's 2006 here. I haven't seen anything remotely resembling technology here yet, other than they have electricity. No computers, no phones - they do everything on paper still. It's hard to judge what year it is. How do you remember what cellphones ten years ago were like? You had to have been what, five or six? You were hacking cellphones as a six year old?"

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

River started it? Well, that was another thing she had similar to Cameron. The similarities were eerie and John really didn't want to think about that. Not right now. "That could be why it failed," John pointed out. "With everyone going all over the place there was no real point to the riot. There wasn't a common goal so it was every man for himself, generally speaking. It was only a matter of time before the orderlies gained control again."

John looked down at his hands, trying to think of an explanation. "My Mom still has some of her old phones," he said with a shrug. "I've played around with them, opening them up to see how they worked, stuff like that. That's how I hacked into the phones. Mom doesn't like me hacking, though. It gets me into trouble."

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

"Well, if there was a point, they didn't let us know beforehand. There could have been one, but it could have had an impromptu reason, too. It wasn't a planned one. People seem to think we'll have the most luck breaking out of this place at night. I guess the monsters and mutants are easier to deal with than the staff."

Tyler grinned at the explanation, understanding that. "I get you. I've never hacked phones, I admit, but I've played around online with stuff occasionally. Usually with a good reason, of course," he added with a sheepish laugh and a crooked grin, scraping his fingers through his hair. "I doubt my mom would approve, either."

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

"Moms don't usually approve of anything fun," John grinned back. "It's always 'Remember not to go to far' and 'What did I say about computers?' and 'I'm doing this for you, John'."

John sighed and shook his head. "I bet she's going crazy right now, thinking the worst. I hope she doesn't do something rash... but knowing my Mother she'll probably sneak into the police station looking for information. Or make Cameron do it. I just really hope she doesn't think I'm dead."

John didn't want to think about what that would cause his mother to do.

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

"You sound like you come from a pretty crazy family," Tyler admitted with a chuckle. "Most people would ask the cops for help."

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

"The Connors and the police don't mix," John said, the last name slipping out before he could catch himself. "I mean, we just don't have a good track record. My Mom was a bit rebellious in her day and I just sort of picked up the tradition. It's nothing too bad, though. Parking tickets, you know. Minor things."

"I'm sure there are other families who don't trust the cops," John said quickly, glancing around him to see who could have heard the last name. No one stood out as being entirely suspicious which was a good thing.

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

"I'm sure there are," Tyler agreed with an easy smile, recalling that he and his friends had avoided the cops more times than he could count.

Then the name sunk in and he blinked. "Wait, your name is John Connor?"

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

John was quiet for a moment and stared at Tyler intently. "Who wants to know?" he said softly, suddenly very afraid that he'd let it slip to the wrong person.

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

Tyler almost dismissed the coincidence as just that - a coincidence. But the fact that he'd met Clark Kent and Pyramid Head and knew that Harry Potter was wandering around in the flesh gave him pause. "Is your mom Sarah?" he asked, looking surprised and hesitant, unsure how to find out if he was talking to who he thought he might be talking to, without coming out and saying 'oh my god, I watched you in a movie' even though this John was way older than the one in T2.

There was a chance it was a coincidence, after all. Maybe his mom just liked Arnold Schwarzenegger...

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

John caught his breath and looked around him, trying to decide which was the best exit. Why did this always happen to him? He couldn't tell a Terminator in front of him if his life depended on it... and it did depend on it which made it even worse.

"No," he said, prepared to jump up and run if he had to. "I don't know what you're talking about."

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

"Wait, wait!" Tyler held up his hands to show he didn't mean any harm. "Calm down, I didn't mean to startle you. You surprised me just as much. I'm not here to hurt you. It's not like I could in here even if I intended to. The lucky thing about this place in daylight is that you're safe. Unless, of course, you tick off a nurse, but they're not really scary, just armed with needles."

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

Safe? He could hear his mother's voice now. They were never safe and the moment they thought that it was all over. "How do you know her name?" he demanded, figuring that if Tyler was going to whip out a gun and shoot him he would have done it already. "There are only a handful of people who know that name and most of them want us dead so how do you know it?"

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

Tyler hesitated for a moment before sighing, realizing he had probably bungled this badly. "Uhh. You remember when I said I'd met Clark Kent? And other people that are purely fiction in my world, but they're walking around like they're perfectly normal and have no idea? And that to someone else I came across here, who knew about me because in her world, I was a work of fiction? Even though everything I experienced for me was reality?"

[lost-turkey.livejournal.com]

"So you're saying that you know me because I'm fiction?" John laughed harshly. "I wish that were true. You have no fucking idea how much I wish that were true. But it isn't. It's all real. I don't know how you know my name. Maybe it's after Judgement Day and I jumped time, or jumped to a different time where we failed the last time at stopping it, but whatever the case is, the Terminators are real, it's all real. And I need to find my Mother fast because if she thinks I'm dead there's no telling to what she'll do."

[shyboyblue.livejournal.com]

"Fuck, you really are..." Tyler trailed off, blinking at him. "Look, I'm not saying any of us are fiction. I know I sure as hell aren't, despite whatever anyone else might have seen in their own worlds. It seems pretty weird that all these... dimensions or something are connected this way, but maybe they are. I don't know. Maybe in your world, I'm fiction there, too. As fucked up as this sounds. This place screws with your head," Tyler replied apologetically, hoping he hadn't pissed the other boy off.