damned_institute | Day 40: Greenhouse [Fourth Shift]

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Day 40: Greenhouse [Fourth Shift]

Most days, fish and chips (and a cold beer or three) was pretty goddamned high on S.T.'s list of perfect expense-account lunches. Today, the idea of picking at greasy hunks of unidentified bottom-feeder odds-and-ends (politely known as scrod, to the delight of teenagers all across the Northeast) didn't appeal.

He begged off and collapsed into his bed, after using his damp shirt as an excuse to surreptiously check the contents of his closet. Bingo. His nurse watched his little show, unimpressed but (more importantly) unsuspicious. Not that his hairy chest was much of a catch today, pale and sweating from fever. At least she didn't tuck him in.

The intercom woke up up right on schedule, and pulling the sheets back over his head almost won. But a handful of unanswered missives and a vague sense of duty dragged him out to the bulletin, and from there it was easier to stagger over to the greenhouse.

It was warm inside -- a deep, humid warmth that actually penetrated to the aches in more joints and muscles than he could remember the names of. Like a sauna, without the hassle of finding someplace to look that wasn't a mound of pasty middle-management cellulite. Or a sweat lodge, without the opposite hassle of being conscious that he was the only white guy in the room. In fact, besides the nurses in holding patterns, he was the only person in the room.

He located a tray of tomato seedlings going rootbound in their tiny six-packs, and a potting bench whose location was a quick-and-dirty approximation of equidistantly far from anything blooming. He assured his nurse he knew what he was doing, and after a couple of successful repottings, gently sliding the little seedlings out and loosening the tangled roots, she seemed to agree and backed off. It was, by far, the most fucking theraputic thing he'd found in this hellhole so far, and he let himself sink into the rhythm of the task.

[Free!]

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Claude was glad he'd gotten a chance to talk to Dias, and he felt like it'd gone pretty well. At the very least, it was a comfort to know his rival had his back for all of this. But he also knew that Dias was right in saying it'd be difficult to keep his lie up. No doubt it'd come back to haunt him later if he didn't clear it up. Still, he'd have to think carefully on how he wanted to word what he was going to say. Having to explain it away in the first place was going to be weird enough.

But now the next shift was starting, and, despite his nasty experience the first time he'd come here, Claude had to admit he enjoyed spending time in the greenhouse. His nurse had suggested he learn how to pot some plants this time around, but, really, he was content with just gazing at all the herbs and flowers.

He was about to do just that when he caught sight of Dad sitting alone at a workbench. Part of him remembered what he and Dias had discussed, but he reminded himself that he didn't want to go into that today. And yet...his dad was really here. Granted, a younger version than he was used to, but still his dad nonetheless.

Once he realized he was just sort of staring at him from a distance, Claude shook himself out of his thoughts, took a small breath, and approached him. He tried to think of something smooth and light to help ease into a casual conversation. It should have been easy, especially with how interested Dad seemed in the plants.

"Um, hi," was ultimately all he could think of. Then, after a brief pause, he added, "What are you looking at?"

He wondered if there might be a point in coming back once night ended in order to get hold of more of these plants. He didn't know how thoroughly the rooms were searched by the staff, although the mention of weapons and metal being collected suggested that it was particularly difficult to hide things. Which was strange. He'd have thought that such a place would be rather careful about removing any potentially dangerous items, then again, it wasn't exactly a normal hospital.

He turned around when some greeted him, and smiled when he recognised Thomas from the previous day. "Oh, I was just looking at some of these plants. I was wondering if I could make anything useful from some of them. There's some good medicines and healing items that you can normally make from things like this."

He returned the smile, and another fleeting wave of disbelief washed over him. Talking to his dad like this, about compounding, of all things! It was an almost comfortingly familiar topic, and yet so strange because it was Dad bringing it up.

"You can, actually," Claude replied after a moment. "One of my Expellian friends and I...we made a few things from the plants here once." All of their work had disappeared along with Ashton and Axel, but he didn't let himself dwell on that very much. It didn't seem to matter much in the face of losing friends. He could always find more flasks and herbs, but if only he knew where Ashton was...

He was about to sit down on the bench beside his father, but paused and rubbed the back of his neck. "Um, do you mind if I take a seat?"

That made Ronixis pause for a moment, looking thoughtful. "I might have to have a go then," he replied consideringly. He'd need to find the equipment to actually perform the compounding and to store the resulting mixtures, and it would probably result in a few failures, but it might just be worth it if he could come up with something usable. Enough people seemed to get hurt that healing items could be very useful to them.

Ronixis shook his head when Thomas asked if he could sit down. "Be my guest," he said amiably, moving to lean back against the bench himself. "You look as though you have something on your mind, if you don't mind me saying so," he added, looking the young man over for a minute.

He wasn't surprised when his father expressed an interest in trying it out here. Compounding was actually on Claude's list of projects, but these days he'd been too busy with securing a weapon and exploring the basement to get the ball rolling with that again.

"If you come here at night, it might be a good idea to come with someone else, even if you've got a good weapon on you," he suggested. After a brief pause, he gave an almost nervous smile. "I mean, not that I'm saying you're incapable of taking care of yourself, 'cause I'm not, I just...it's good to be careful, you know?"

Claude still remembered how that scorpion had attacked him the last time he'd come in the green house at night, and he wasn't about to let Dad make the same mistake. Then again, Dad wasn't stupid, so maybe he didn't have anything to worry about.

But he was still allowed to worry about his own father, right?

Claude was a little distracted as he sat down beside the man, and his remark caught him off-guard. Surprised, he looked over at him. "Y-you think so?"

He'd been making an effort not to seem so transparent, but, well...he was still trying to get used to this. His stomach turned a little. "I guess this past week has been pretty crazy," he admitted. "But it's not like I'm the only one here with problems, so..."

Ronixis nodded seriously. He hadn't seen anything untoward last night or the night before, but Dean's condition assured him that there definitely were things lurking around during the night. Besides, monsters hadn't exactly been uncommon on Roak and the best way to stay alive was to travel as part of a group. "I'll see if I can find someone," he agreed with a small nod, half wishing that Iria was there to watch his back. They made a damn good team.

He smiled warmly at Thomas and made a noise of agreement. "Just a bit, yes," he agreed. "You don't need to tell me if you don't want though. I know we only met yesterday." It wasn't as though they knew each other and trust could take a long time to build. "You just look a little preoccupied." He shrugged at Thomas' mention of everyone having problems. "Doesn't make your own any less important."

Hopefully he'd able to travel with somebody. At least he'd be trying to find someone, which was more than Claude had done that night he'd gone off to the greenhouse. The fact Ashton had shown up had been a fluke, really. And a lucky one, at that.

And there he went, thinking about Ashton again.

Claude wasn't allowed to dwell on those thoughts for too long, though. For a moment, he hesitated -- should he go ahead and come clean? Dias was right about not being able to keep the lie up, but how would he explain it? And what if it somehow screwed up his name in the future or something?

"There's, uh, just been a lot going on," he finally explained. "With the new captives that come in and all. It's too easy to run into a familiar face sometimes." He scratched his cheek and looked over at his father. "But what about you? How've you been adjusting?"

He hoped he'd been able to meet a few reliable people. Normally he might have asked as much, but Claude didn't want to come across as nosy. To him, this man was father, but to Ronixis, he was more or less a stranger.

This was so weird.

"I can understand that," Ronixis agreed, glancing around the crowded greenhouse at all of the other patients. And this wasn't even all of them. "I think that's fair," he agreed easily. "There are enough people here that keeping up with everything has to be nearly impossible." There were enough people here to make up a small town on Roak, or the crew of an entire spaceship. "I suppose it must be. It isn't really the kind of place you ever want your friends to be trapped in." Even if he'd like the backup, he wouldn't want his friends to be stuck here. The thought of Iria being subjected to this place made him feel rather ill in fact.

"Me? I've been alright," he replied cheerfully enough. "I went outside last night though. The stars are, well, they're wrong."

Boy, though, wasn't that the truth. And if you threw in all those crazy time differences, that was just a recipe for disaster. Well, if no one was careful, anyway. Not for the first time, he wondered what Martin Landel was even trying to accomplish with all this. Claude had been here for over two weeks and he still didn't know. But there had to be some way to find out, right?

For now, though, there wasn't anything they could do except sit in the greenhouse and try to enjoy the plants. Claude inwardly sighed and tried not to let it get him down too much. They'd find a way through this...somehow.

Claude hadn't expected his father to mention the stars, but when he did, he couldn't help but look at him with mild confusion. "Wrong?" he echoed. "What do you mean? Do they look different or something?" He hadn't gone out of his way to look at them, but, then...it hadn't occurred to him to check, either.

Ronixis nodded seriously, a frown appearing on his face. "My roommate wanted to take a look at them and I went with him. It was interesting. But the thing is, the stars were, well, I should have recognised the constellations. Even taking into account the time time of year and the differences in location, I should have recognised at least some of them." If not most of them, considering his job. Knowing the stars and their locations was important, even in this era of high technology. "It was a little disturbing to see," he admitted. It was one thing to have foreign stars on other planets, but when they were supposedly on Earth? Yeah, that was more than a little worrying.

"You didn't recognize any of them?!"

That wasn't what he'd expected to hear.

If it had been anyone else, Claude might have doubted them, even just a little. At the very least, he would have felt the need to go check the sky out himself before coming to a definite conclusion. But Claude knew very well that his dad knew what he was talking about, and, dammit, if he said the stars in the sky were wrong, then, well...there was definitely something wrong.

...Which was actually bad in this case. Why couldn't Dad recognize any of the constellations in the sky? That just didn't make any sense! And why hadn't it even occurred to Claude to check? He'd been here this entire time and hadn't bothered to examine the night sky -- not even once! Granted, he'd either been set on a mission or running for his life the few times he'd been outside, but still.

And yet Dad had already gone and identified something this huge within less than 24 hours of arriving. Even after all the things Claude had been through since he'd left the Calnus, he still wasn't quite at the same level as his father, was he?

"But what does that even mean?" Claude asked once he forced himself to calm down a little. He still sounded a little more anxious than he would have liked, though. "Are you saying we might not really be on Earth after all?"

Ronixis shook his head slowly, his expression becoming much much more solemn. "None at all. It doesn't matter the location or time of year, there should have been at least one or two constellations that I recognise. Even account for time differences, the stars shouldn't have changed as much as to become unrecognisable." The stars changed at a rate that was so much slower than humans could ever hope to grasp. It should have taken millions of years to make all of the constellations unrecognisable if they were on Earth.

"I don't know exactly what it means," he admitted. "But not being on Earth would be my guess. That or this multiple-worlds theory is true and it's an Earth where even the stars have formed unfamiliar constellations." He paused for a moment, thinking it over. "The only other option I can think of is that we're in a time far enough removed from 'modern' Earth that they've changed drastically. But that would mean being millions of years either in the past or in the future, without there being any appreciable difference in technology." Unless this was something similar to the Muah; a highly advanced race who had since died out leaving the world to return to the most basic technology.

Now that Claude thought of it, he'd been unable to find any history books in the library or the bookstore in Doyleton. Was it because history as they knew it had been lost somehow? Still, that didn't really make any sense. There had to have been some record of the world that spanned over the last several hundred years, at least.

Maybe Landel was purposely trying to keep them in the dark. But, if that was true, did that mean the townspeople were in on it, too? That wasn't exactly the most encouraging thought, but Claude knew he had to accept it as a possibility.

He scratched his cheek, thinking on all the implications. "If we're not on Earth, then they're really bending over backwards to give the allusion that we actually are. But, I mean, supposedly we're in the United States right now, so if that's the case..." Claude trailed off, eyebrows furrowed as he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Geez, this was starting to give him a headache.

"Well, either way, I guess it boils down to us being on an Earth that's not really our own," he added with a frown. Claude wasn't really sure he liked where this was going. "Everyone's been saying we're stuck in the early 21st century, and from the kinds of technology that's around, I wouldn't be able to argue with them. But if the stars are all wrong, then that's the most definitive proof anyone could ask for, isn't it?"

It was a pretty disturbing theory, Ronixis had to admit. "Things certainly do seem that way," Ronixis agreed. The stars were something that had been relied upon as an indicator of location for centuries, millennia even. It was easier to change a setting that it was to change the heavens, he thoroughly believed that. "The technology definitely seems to match that period," he agreed. "And maybe it is that period of time on the Earth in this world, but that doesn't mean that it has any relation to our world's version of Earth, or any other world's for that matter." It was quite the problem. "Unless they're hiding the true extent of their technology from us and this is a different time period altogether. I'm not about to ignore any possibility at this point."

"Well, if they're able to pull people from other times and planets like it's no big deal, then their technology is probably even greater than anything the Federation has," Claude pointed out. "But if that's true, why even bother with this whole act? There's even a town not that far from here, with people and everything."

This version of Earth, that version of Earth -- what was Martin Landel's purpose with all this? If he wanted to keep them in the dark about when and where they were, there were far easier ways to do it than to put up an entire charade involving doctors, nurses and townspeople.

"Do you really think this could be another version of Earth?" he added slowly after a moment. "I know some people have been kicking that theory around, but so far I've been seeing more evidence of memory alteration than alternate worlds." Special counseling and the patients who conveniently forgot their previous time here were examples of that.

Edited 2009-04-12 21:17 (UTC)

"It would seem that way," Ronixis agreed thoughtfully. "I can't think of anything the Federation has which would be able to reach through to different univeres." The Muah though, now that was a possibility considering they'd reached into the demon world. He wished that he could say it didn't sound like them, but he really didn't know enough about them to make that kind of judgment.

He thought that next question over for a few moments before answering. "I can't really say I admit. I haven't been here for long enough to see the town and other bits of the place. It just seems like it would take a lot of work to permanently alter people's memories and there's always the risk of it going wrong."

"That's the thing, though," Claude said as he crossed his arms and gazed at some of the plants. "They already take people for experiments, brainwash others...and sometimes captives disappear, only to show up again with no memory of being here before. By this point, I really wouldn't be surprised at all if they were tampering with our memories somehow."

And, really, he wasn't so sure if that would take more work than messing with space-time. Then again, it was probably better for everyone if there were just alternate universes to worry about. On the other hand, though, it was probably going to be a huge mess to sort through when it came to getting back home.

"I guess it just needs more investigation," he added quietly. "We're only setting ourselves up for a nasty surprise if we jump to conclusions. Still, though..." Claude shook his head to himself. "The stars. I never even thought of that."

He frowned at the mention of experiments and brainwashing. This was the darker side of the Institute obviously. "I suppose taking that into consideration, it isn't so far fetched," he admitted. "I just wonder how possible it would be to do that on so many people without even one of them noticing something amiss, or remembering differently. I doubt it's a precise art."

Ronixis looked a little embarrassed when Claude mentioned the stars. Was it really such a big thing? All he'd done was go outside and look up. "It's nothing really impressive," he said awkwardly. "People have more important things to do than stargaze. I was just tagging along with my roommate." It didn't seem such an important discovery. The point was that they weren't at home, and they already knew that, so how much use could it be?

"Well, there are some differences of what we remember, even among my own friends," Claude said after a moment. It wasn't something he discussed very often, but he felt like it'd help illustrate his point. "So, right now the only explanations I can think are that we've either been brainwashed, or we've been brought in from alternate universes."

He fell quiet, and he averted his gaze. "To be honest, I'm not real sure what to think anymore."

Claude hadn't meant to put his father on the spot with all that star stuff, but he personally thought it was a pretty important discovery. "It's not just stargazing, though," he pointed out. "It's another piece to the puzzle that we need to be figuring out, right? After you've been here for a couple weeks, those start getting harder to come by, you know."

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Day 40: Greenhouse [Fourth Shift]

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