damned_institute | Day 40: Recreational Field

Kio's breakfast ended on a much happier note than it had started. However, for once the announcement truly surprised him. He blinked as his nurse came to pick him up. Recreational Field? But.. but if they had a greenhouse, he wanted to go there. The prospect of gardening was a truly liberating one, an island of joy in this hellhole. He thought about going to the Sun Room and lying down, but it occurred to him that he hadn't had proper fresh air since being here. With a cheery goodbye wave to Honey, he followed his torturer outside.

It was much better than he had expected. The sun wasn't too hot (what time of the year were they in, anyway?), so he walked slowly along the walls, fascinated by the size of the field. He wondered if Sou-chan was alright. He hadn't even checked the board. Well, if Soubi wanted to apologize, Kio would be willing to listen. The place was so crisp and clean. He had to think if anyone had ever gone over the walls. What was out there? Freedom? Or a different sort of monster?

Leaning against one of the walls, Kio took as much advantage of the sun as he could. He desperately wanted a lollipop. One was quietly nestled in his pocket, but he would need to wait until the nurses were busy with other patients before he tried anything. Soubi had gone to some trouble to get them, the least he could do was make sure they didn't get confiscated. So with bated breath, Kio waited for a shift in the mood. He was, for once, content. Not happy, but not going crazy either.

[Sou-chan! Team Loveless deploy!]

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Imagine no pollution. He wasn't sure he could. Where would he go, what would get him up in the mornings? What would pay the bills? Switching from corporate wage slave to non-profiteer had saved his sanity and his stomach lining while it blew holes in his finances, but he still had a job. Catch a bad Nor'easter to Oz and he'd end up passed out in the poppy fields until he fossilized. "Trust me, it can. They don't call Jersey the Armpit of America for nothing."

"Kansas is a state, and it covers from about here to here." With each location, he tapped a finger on the paper and waited to let Scarecrow make any marks he wanted. "And I met a couple of guys from L.A. -- Los Angeles, here, and there's a lot of people from Japan, which is another country on an island," here he paused, measured some air with his hands, and then pointed to a location in thin air. "Right about here. And Spider said 'The City' like it was the only one in the world, which means either the future is even stranger than he told me or the bastard's from New York City, which is here. Assholes. Win a few pennants and they think they're the only game in town."

He was getting off-topic. The ins-and-outs of the American League were boring to everyone but the die-hard, which Sangamon was not. "Is there more than one city in Oz?"

More notes were quickly added to his doodle as Sangamon pointed out these new locations. It looked like the Scarecrow was going to need a bigger map of this country. He figured he'd have time to redraw it a bit later- maybe during dinner. His artistic skills were definitely under-developed, but surely he could reproduce this small doodle for his own informational purposes.

"There are several cities in Oz," he answered as he added 'Lost Angelus' to the map. These names sure were strange. "The Emerald City is the capital of Oz, but Gillikin country as a couple of cities, and there's Bunnybury in the Quadlings to the South. Not that I've been to any of these places. The citizens of the Emerald City don't like it too much when their king wanders off for some thinking time." He spoke from experience on that one.

"I'm not sure how any of those places compare to the ones you described, though," he added. "I'm sure that deep down, they're not that fundamentally different, although you don't seem too fond of the people from 'New York.' Do Witches live there or something?"

S.T. grinned, and affected a broad, terribly fake Nu Yawk accent.

"Naah, New Yorker's aren't all bad. They just forget that other places exist -- even the rest of their home state." Not that Buffalo was worth remembering. He dropped the accent and continued. "We don't have witches. Not the kind you mean, at least. No magic, no witches."

He'd forgotten the Scarecrow ended up King. Put an idiot with a big smile on top as an anointed ruler. Sounds familar. "A king that thinks sounds like a good thing to me. Would have saved us from Reaganomics."

"Hm," he said indistinctly. There seemed to be a lot of places without magic around this institute. Maybe it was just that the people all came from a similar region of the world- one without the art. "A place without Witches, good or bad? But who looks over all the people? Or do you have a king for each region?"

"And 'Reaganomics'?" he added with a confused look. "I'm not familiar with that term in the least. I don't think they have those where I'm from."

Explain the history of western Democracy in a hundred words or less, Sangamon. Great.

"We have elections. Everyone decides who they want for a ruler, and the person with the most votes wins. It's supposed to be fair." Sometimes, when money lined up against money and canceled each other out, leaving the issues up for actual discussion, it even was. "Cities and towns have mayors, states have Governors, and the United States has a President. Some countries still have Kings. And England has both."

"Reaganomics is crap cooked, frosted, and served as cake by our current President. A man with a head full of straw and no brains would be a vast improvement. Ol' Ronnie Reagan was a fucking actor before someone decided he'd play a good President." S.T. was almost snarling, but there wasn't any real anger behind it. You just couldn't be a good activist without ragging on the Gipper. But taking down the Groveler had been his political good-deed for the decade, and Reagan was on his way to an Alzheimer's ward and having to actually spend time with his batshit wife. He was done with politics for the year.

Edited 2009-04-05 00:51 (UTC)

Maybe politics weren't so different here. Didn't the Munchkin City have a mayor? He'd never met the man, but Dorothy had mentioned him once. He was really going to have to meet all the heads of the different towns when he got back.

"So, he used his acting abilities to trick the people into voting for him?" the Scarecrow asked. "I suppose it's a good thing I was elected leader by the Wizard before he left instead of putting it to a vote. I highly doubt I'd be in my position. Then again, maybe they would've had someone who wouldn't end up in some sort of strange institution in a foreign land, or someone who wouldn't have lost their brains in said institution." He was still kicking himself for that.

"It'd be quite a stretch of the imagination to blame you for landing here." Political careers had foundered or been made on less, but he had the feeling Oz might stray closer to the ideal. "And you have to have at least most of a brain. Human bodies don't work without them. You're breathing, putting complete sentences together. It takes more than just the autonomous nervous system to do the latter. I.e. a brain."

The packs of nurses were starting to circle. Shit. He was just getting comfortable, and it was time to move again. Joints protested as he stood, and the entire world see-sawed around him briefly. Still, once he was upright and fairly confident he'd remain so, he extended a hand down to the Scarecrow. "Your Highness," he said, with a grin that was mostly genuine.

Day 40: Recreational Field

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