damned_institute | Day 40: Greenhouse [Fourth Shift]

Entry tags:

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!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Day 40: Greenhouse [Fourth Shift]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject