Event № 1 : January 2024

[silentspringmods]

Event № 1 : January 2024
Part I; Chapter 2. Silence tells me secretly everything

universe/setting information, role assignment, and FAQs

I. A Thought Is Haunting Me

January 1st.

CWs: nonconsensual memshare/receiving of memories, flashbacks to combat zone and injury, blood, hearing loss/burst eardrum, panic attacks.

Just in time for New Year's Eve, the town square that held a magnificently decorated 15-foot Christmas tree last week now has a glittering silver ball to rival New York's own waiting atop a flagpole rooted in the same spot. Strings of lanterns illuminate the snowy brick courtyard, lined with stands offering hot cocoa, ciders, and various warm snacks, or perhaps characters are more interested in obtaining a pair or two of silly New Year's glasses that allow them to look through the numerals 1961. Eventually, though, all goes quiet for the exciting countdown.

'Five... four... three... two... one!

The ball drops, and confetti streams down onto the square (and the people standing in it!) as the Sweetwater High School Marching Band picks up a jaunty rendition of the New Year's classic Auld Lang Syne—but characters will likely find themselves distracted by the dark spots that appear in their fields of vision, gradually expanding until everything is eclipsed entirely by soft blackness. They feel less and less of the world around their bodies, numbness starting at their fingertips and toes and creeping up their extremities until they feel touchless, floating, completely absent of sensation. Then something replaces it: fragments, or perhaps all of what follows.

The world flashes black, then returns, hazy and doubled, half obscured by smoke as you lie face down on the hard, rocky earth. One ear shrieks, a whine that grows higher and higher. Hot blood streams down the other earlobe and drips onto your neck, washing off sweat and grime as it trickles toward your collar. Pain slices through what you think must be your eardrum like a jackknife shoved into your skull. You cough, throat burning, ribs protesting the movement. A coppery taste, a warmth, fills your mouth. You check with your tongue and all of your teeth are there; the blood is coming from your broken lip. The hair on top of your head feels hot and wet. You know your cheek is scraped open from the gritty sting taking up most of your face.

The doubled image of a medic gets into your face, his lips silently moving. You try to shake your head, to communicate that you can’t hear him over the shriek of your own tinnitus, but your neck is too stiff. Your brain slams against your skull and your head feels like it’s been hit with a brick. Blood drips off of your brow and into your eye.

The medic squeezes your shoulder and pushes off, scrambling across the debris until he disappears in the gray-brown smoke. There’s a moment of irrational fear: he’s leaving you here to die. You’re hit somewhere and you’re last in triage. You’ve heard about soldiers not feeling the gunshot until much later. When he and his buddy come back with a stretcher, surprise mingles with the dread of being lifted.

You shut your eyes tightly, trying to recalibrate your vision, but it still swims with the pitch and yaw of the rocky earth beneath you. When you open it, he’s trying to look into your eyes, hand on your shoulders, his lips finally moving in a pattern you recognize: Going home. Going home.

Going home.

You close your eyes.

*

You stare at a long tawny finger as you wind it into the red plasticized cord of the phone set, doing nothing when it begins to throb against its tethers, the single physical sensation anchoring you in reality.

“Listen to me. I need you to be calm and handle this. Someone will be there in thirty minutes, Ron. You need to keep it under control until then or we’re going to be in a world of shit you can’t even imagine—Put up roadblocks. Say a convict got loose. I don’t care. Do what you have to. Don’t call me unless it’s resolved or someone’s fucking dying, Ron, do you understand me?”

*

The door opens as the emergency light comes on, flickering. The room fills with the suffocating stench of diesel. A candystriper’s golden-brown hands wrap around your thin wrists, pulling you as she rocks back on the heels of her wet tennis shoes with all of her might. Tears stream down her cheeks, strands of relaxed hair hanging in her eyes. She chokes her words out around sobs of her own, eyes wild with terror, screaming: Miss Ruby, you have to get up! You have to get up, Miss Ruby! But your legs won't move. Your breaths shudder ragged in the air just like the volunteer's.

At 12:01, characters return to consciousness: but there are little changes, twinges that make this a bit realer than a dream. Perhaps their index finger twinges as blood returns to it and the impressions a tight phone cord left on their skin fade, or maybe they find themselves wiping a few droplets of blood from the corner of their jaw. Perhaps their ears ring, gradually giving way to clearer sound—or maybe they awake sitting on the ground with their arms around their bent knees, face wet with tears, overcome with a raw panic unlike anything they’ve ever felt. How very odd.

Notes:
—Characters can experience all of the memories, or players can pick and choose.
—Characters do not have to be in the square to receive the memories.

II. In the Valley of the Dolls We Sleep

January 13-15th.

CWs: violence, entrapment, hypnosis, living mannequins, dismemberment.


'New year, new you!' the cheery saleswoman on the radio and television ads for the local two-story department store proclaims ad-nauseam, becoming more and more of a regular guest in characters' homes as time marches on toward the 15th of the New Year. There are great sales to be had, and would you look at that, characters have a few gift cards to this very store in their respective purses and wallets! Over time, the voice of the young woman in the advertisement almost seems to grow more insistent, even though the same ad plays every time: surely it's just familiarity altering one's perception of her voice, right?

On the morning of the 13th, characters wake up to the sound of every radio and television set in the house turned on and blaring the ad. The saleswoman reminds them that time's running out, and that the sales will only last for another 48 hours before they're gone. If characters can't hear, they only make it as far as the living room before the television screen comes into view, the same message scrolling across the bottom of the screen in large close-captioning... even if they haven't turned it on. This time, something feels different, and characters find themselves compelled as though by a supernatural force to go check out the sales being advertised.

Characters may notice once they're inside of the building that it's only new arrivals here: the townspeople of Sweetwater seem to have already done their shopping! Fortunately, there are still some great items left. It may be when looking at that cashmere sweater or a nice pair of snowshoes that characters catch a tiny flicker of movement out of the corner of their eye: but when they turn in that direction, there's nothing except a faint, nagging sense that something's not right. It happens again as they pass through the store—and then, with no warning, the faceless, eyeless mannequins throughout the store burst into motion at the same time as the sales associates collapse to the floor unconscious, attacking characters with inhuman strength and whatever items they have at their disposal with the intent of bludgeoning them to death.

If characters try to escape from the way they came, they will find that the automatic doors and fire doors are all locked as though from the outside. The windows cannot be opened or broken, nor can the glass of the doors—they're trapped here. Really, truly trapped.

To make matters worse, the mannequins, unlike the salesman, seem truly impervious to... everything. Guns can pierce them, but they have no blood to lose or brain to damage. They can be dismembered, but they're strong, and hard to pull apart; even if a mannequin's head is removed, the body will still function. Characters have one advantage, however: the mannequins are not as intelligent as human beings, and seem to mostly lack object permanence. If characters can stay silent and out of sight after finding somewhere to hide, the mannequins will drop their pursuit after about fifteen minutes of trying to get to them.

The mannequins stay alive for 48 hours, and the doors stay locked for the same amount of time. Characters who do not find a way to sleep risk sleep deprivation symptoms similar to the ones detailed in the explanation of modes of torture in Sweetwater, and will be slower, weaker, and less able to fight off or escape from the mannequins. 48 hours is also a very long time to go without water, which can only be obtained from the sinks in the bathrooms... both of which feature nicely dressed mannequins in one corner.

Notes:
— The departments of the store are as follows:

- Women's Clothing
- Men's Clothing
- Children's Clothing
- Furs
- Baby/young child supplies
- Home appliances
- Kitchen
- Decor
- Furniture
- Toys
- Hunting, Fishing, and Outdoors (hunting-style guns, ammunition, snowshoes, fishing rods, flies/fly-tying equipment, dog beds, hunting blinds)
- Tools ( Limited. There aren't any electric saws or more specialized tools like bolt cutters to be found, but simpler "Little Joey picked this out for you, Dad!" wrench/screwdriver sets, branch loppers, lawnmowers, snowblowers, etc. - in general assume that there aren't any power tools player characters can use to bulldoze the mannequins with, but there might be some tools that could help with other things... )
- Fine Jewelry/Watches
- Ladies' Gloves

— Deaf characters and characters who wear earplugs to bed will be awoken by their spouse moving, or will randomly wake up even though they can't hear the ad.
— Players who wish to opt out can say that their character simply slept through it and woke up after the doors to the department store had already locked.
— The mannequin limbs are inert after they've been removed, but the mannequins can still operate without a head.
— Characters may try to investigate at the risk of leaving cover. If a character is able to get close enough to the service desk on the second floor, they may also notice that one of the customer service associates, a teenage girl, lies slumped over the counter as opposed to on the floor with her coworkers, an unlabeled, recently installed button depressed beneath her shoulder—she was leaning forward before she lost consciousness. If her body is moved, the button stays anchored in place. If characters check it again, hours later, they'll notice that it can't be depressed or lifted, but seems a little higher—almost as if it takes a set amount of time to return to resting.

III. Drill it in like J. Paul Getty

Throughout January.

CWs: torture, non-fatal electrical shock, restraints, medical/psychiatric abuse, nonconsensual drug administration, altered states of consciousness, needles/injections, gaslighting, brainwashing, sleep deprivation torture, antipsychotics overdose, smoking.

Should characters discuss the horrors of the month on the network, over the telephone, or in places where townspeople can hear, they’ll face the consequences. They go to bed the night of the offense as usual—and come into consciousness in a dark room, a basement of some sort, bound to a chair with leather restraints buckled onto their wrists, their ankles. A leather strap runs across their chest, holding it to the back of the hard wooden chair they’re bound to. A few feet away, the static electricity of a television box provides some measure of light as noisy waves ripple across the screen.

Upon further examination, there’s one more thing on characters’ left wrists, directly north of the leather straps holding it to the armrest: a set of electrodes and thin wires that run down and across the room.

“You’re awake. Good morning.” None other than the town’s private practice doctor, Norman Pollock, greets them, with the same matter of fact tone he’d use during a standard physical exam. “You seem to have lost sight of what makes Sweetwater so special, so we’re going to watch some videos, get your head on straight. We can’t have this kind of subversive behavior when the country’s already under attack, Sweetheart.”

He presses a button on the television remote—which characters might notice has a second, less refined one taped to its side—and a program comes on: What Communism Will Take From Us.

For the next 36 hours, the hour-long video plays on repeat, showing idyllic scenes right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, detailing the joys of the American way of life, emphasizing all of the ways subversive thoughts and actions undermine it, and how they hold the door open for the Red Menace. This is what’s at stake, what little towns like Sweetwater, Maryland have to use. Norman sits in a chair nearby, smoking cigarettes, reading issues of the New England Journal of Medicine, the remote never leaving his hand. The moment characters’ eyes close for longer than a single blink, the electrodes on their wrist deliver a nasty shock to help them wake up, growing in intensity with every additional offense. His never do for longer than a regular old blink.

By the end of the 36 hours, characters can expect reality to begin to blur at the edges, and may be experiencing auditory hallucinations, paranoia, and their minds wandering in ways they haven’t before. At 36 hours of sleep deprivation, the body cries out for it, desperate to rest. Maybe they erupt into hysterical laughter, or weep uncontrollably, or panic. Norman is unphased by all of it.

If characters try to fight back, or prove too argumentative and unwilling to learn, Norman will produce a glass syringe and draw up a thick fluid from a dark glass bottle, which, if characters have the necessary visual acuity to see, reads haloperidol. He jams the needle into their gluteus and injects; within 10 minutes, characters will feel very, very sedate, almost catatonic in their stupor. Effects vary from person to person, but it is not a pleasant experience: in addition to the deadness it brings on, hearts race and mouths go dry. It gets harder to swallow, or maybe a character’s vision begins to blur. The limbs contract in fits and jerks in the immediate and for the week the drug lasts. The face twitches uncontrollably, muscles ache in their rigid stiffness, and it becomes hard to stay upright throughout the week as the drug interferes with the character’s balance, making them dizzy and confused.

THE TOE TAG
If characters fight Norman, however, they may find that he backs against the nearby metal filing cabinet–knocking loose a piece of paper hanging from a half-open drawer when he does. It’s recognizable as a photocopy of a toe tag, the kind affixed to corpses in a morgue, but characters have seconds before their vision doubles and blurs too much for it to remain readable. Characters who are injected with haloperidol for subversion, either for talking about the murder or a different offense, may comment to the event post under the designated mod comment to take a shot at reading the tag. Remember, though, it’s probably best not to advertise that they saw anything out of the ordinary, or to even mention what happened to them, on a publicly visible communications channel…

They wake up in their own bed shortly after losing consciousness, and spend the next week corpselike.

IV. It's Freezing and I Am Watching You Shovel Snow

January 7th onwards.

It's a cold winter for Maryland, characters will hear their neighbors complain, and within a few days of the New Year they have reason enough to complain too: the snowstorm everyone's been talking about in the neighborhood clubs comes on the 7th of January, dumping a foot and a half of snow. Better grab that snow shovel, or find someone to help you if you can't! A snowstorm like this takes multiple visits outdoors to keep up with, so maybe now would be a good time to practice divvying up responsibilities with characters' new spouses or children—or for bachelors to seek out the help of a neighbor. Characters may also have to deal with a power outage lasting up to 14 hours—better visit a house that has power if they need anything, but at least this is the kind of experience that brings a parent and child or a new couple or even two members of the same community closer. At least in theory.

It’s not all near-death experiences, psychological torture, and power outages, though! Characters who find themselves in need of some R&R will be pleased to know that the local fire department has tested the municipal park’s pond and found the ice is now suitably thick for ice skating. Characters will find lace-up leather ice skates in their size hanging from their tied-together laces in the garage, though this probably isn’t the best way to learn to skate if they haven’t before, given the lack of rail to hold on to–unless they have a friend to help them balance?

navigation

Comments

[inaxorable]

He reaches for the book, fully planning on taking it and leaving, but as he leans over to pick it up, he catches a glance of what the stranger is writing. 01/01/1961. 12:01. It takes him a moment to mentally translate the time and date — they use the Gregorian calendar here, and even the length of the year in America is different — but when he does, he stops. One-one, January First. Directly after the midnight. But what would this man be writing about that night for, unless…

The book abandoned, Raskolnikov says sharply, “did you see those things too on New Year’s Eve?”

[freakymagoo]

Half-expecting to never see the book again, Bucky is pleasantly surprised at the turn of events, the new line of questioning. He pushes the vacant chair out from the other side of the table with his shoes, inviting the other man to sit while his right hand busies itself stacking some of the folios and books scattered around the table into a neater pile.

"I saw. Something." He's not so much wary of talking to someone else about what happened so much as he is distrusting of his own perception of reality. The only reason he's willing to even say anything about it is because he saw with his own eyes that he wasn't the only one who blacked out and hit the floor at the town square.

[inaxorable]

Something. That isn’t particularly specific, but then again, Raskolnikov can’t blame him. It’s as good a confirmation as any, and more importantly, it’s safe. That’s what matters, here. Safe, cautious words; nothing suspicious.

He takes the man’s invitation to sit down, and inclines his head in greeting. Polite niceties aren’t his style, but it’s all part of the part he’s expected to play.

“What a coincidence.” He gives the stranger a sharp, pointed look. “I saw something too. Perhaps there was something in the drinks.” Or some mass hallucination, he thinks is more likely, but he doesn’t say so. “I’ve heard the experience wasn’t entirely uncommon. It’s strange, don’t you think, that the Americans —” meaning the local townspeople “— didn’t seem to have anything similar happen?”

[freakymagoo]

Bucky snorts and recoils a bit. Look here you little shit, do you even know who you're talking to? He's like, so American? Captain America's BFF. Captain America's only friend, because Sam Wilson is an asshole nobody else wants to be friends with.

"Means it wasn't in the drinks," Bucky says a little curtly. A lot of people who got something from the drinks stall didn't seem to experience anything. Is it his accent?

"How do you know it only happened to--" Bucky waves his hand. He's not going to say transplants. They're more like experiment subjects or kidnap victims at this stage.

[inaxorable]

He shrugs off the point about the drinks, noncommittal. It hadn’t been a serious theory anyways, but he isn’t sure what else it could be.

“I’m not entirely certain about that, but at least in the town square, the only people affected appeared to the, ah, recent arrivals. I’ve been asking around, and none of the…” a pause, as he tries to find the right word, “…locals know anything about it, either. They could also be lying, I suppose. They’ve given us no reason to trust them.”

The words hang heavy in the air, as though they have a weight of their own.

[freakymagoo]

"I don't think they're lying." It's a kind of denial... conditioning... patronising thing they're doing. Nothing is wrong dear, you will love this town and the family in your home sort of thing. It's a different kind of lie compared to saying 'No, I didn't see anything at midnight on New Year's Day' outright.

"You're right, but. Not sure we can trust each other either." They haven't exactly all banded together and tried to make a coordinated, concerted effort to either escaping this town or attacking their captors or anything like that. Bucky doesn't blame anyone for that - he's a bit of a lone wolf himself, prefers to suffer alone.

"I'm looking for the medic." Whether that's just a proclamation of what he's doing or an assumption that they both saw the same thing and a request to work together isn't clear from his tone.

[inaxorable]

Raskolnikov nods, because that bit about the trust is more than fair. He certainly doesn’t trust anyone here, not when nearly everyone seems to be hiding something. Well, that’s fine, because so is he.

Without asking for permission, he looks over at whatever it is the man had been reading. A book of photos. A good idea, really; Raskolnikov wants to kick himself for not having thought of that earlier. It would be so much easier than flipping through books that haven’t been updated in half a century.

He’s partially lost in his own thoughts when the man finishes, and he startles as he realizes he’s expected to respond.

“The medic?” He hadn’t seen a medic. Only the telephone in the first hallucination and the terrified woman in the second. Had this man seen something different? He must have, which isn’t a comforting thought. “Did you see anything else?”

[freakymagoo]

Well, Bucky also has some background information about America in 1960 compared to most other... 'non-locals'. He doesn't have as much interest in some of the books compared to other people.

"The medic." Did he stutter? Now he's a little confused. "...no. Kind of busy bleeding out." Bucky narrows his eyes and tears his gaze away. It's not a trick question, he knows. But he can't help but go back over what he saw, how he felt. Should he have noticed anything else? He was in such a state - it's not like you can deal with being in shock better just because it's the second, third, tenth time experiencing it.

"Did you?"

[inaxorable]

Slowly, carefully, Raskolnikov says, “yes.” And then, realizing he should clarify, he adds, “I saw two different things. One of those telephones, in the first one. I was talking to someone. Something had happened, something terrible — some sort of emergency. We needed to do something about it, to make up excuses…”

He trails off, blinking rapidly.

“Then there was a girl. She was wearing red and white, and trying to move me somewhere.” Another pause. “She called me Miss Ruby.”

sorry didn't get this notif

[freakymagoo]

"A telephone?" That's. Not at all familiar. Sure there was some urgency in the situation but. No phones. Or anyone who might fit the description of 'Miss Ruby'. Eyebrows furrow deeply as Bucky purses his lips and considers the possibility that they didn't all see the same things. Either they're all going crazy and independently hallucinating, or...

"I didn't see those. I got shot or blown up or something, on a battlefield." There wasn't enough detail to go off of, like the colour of their clothes or name tags.

"Maybe they're all related somehow."

all good! it happens lol

[inaxorable]

Really, Raskolnikov wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people here are crazy. Sometimes he wonders if even he has gone mad. Still, the visions he’d seen hadn’t felt like those of a madman. And the other man had also seen something, even if it had been something else.

Even if it had been a battlefield.

Raskolnikov has never seen war. He has seen starving women and children, has watched people die, but has never seen true war. The Crimean War — that humiliation for the Russian people! — had never reached far enough into his country to truly affect him, and none of the other rebellions and revolutions that Russian had fought were anything close to successful. Even the uprising in the Kingdom of Poland, which had lasted for something like a year, hadn’t touched Petersburg.

The visions he’d seen had been disturbing in their own ways, of course, but to see a battlefield? Raskolnikov can’t even imagine such a thing.

“I can’t imagine how your battlefield could be connected to the telephone,” he says morosely. “Unless the emergency I spoke of was a war. Have there been any wars fought recently? Since the invention of the telephone?”

[freakymagoo]

"Wars have been started over less than a phone call," Bucky points out. Every time a bunch of petty, rich and powerful people have a disagreement, the poor march rank and file to their deaths. He doesn't know what was discussed though so it's hard to draw conclusions without then knowing what each other saw in much greater detail.

"How recent? Pretty sure phones have been around since before World War I." So, yes. Bucky tips his head a bit. How many wars had there been since then? "Russia, Ireland, Spain, World War II, India... um, Korea... Vietnam. Israel and Palestine?" Basically, a lot. Not all of them concerning America but he can't be absolutely sure that the soldier whose eyes he saw through was American. Hard to narrow down which conflict it was, in any case.

[inaxorable]

A long pause, and then, “can you go back to that bit about the world wars?”

[freakymagoo]

"What bit," Bucky says flatly. Honestly, his memory of last month is a little hazy, so going all the way back to his childhood is a really long time. Feels like multiple lifetimes ago. The world and everyone's understanding of it has changed a few times since then. He's been three completely different men since then, or so it feels like.

"Phones have been around since before World War I," he repeats himself, although he spares them both the humiliation of repeating himself slower and louder. "1918? Ring a bell?" If he's one of these hipster millennials whose memory only goes back to the 1980s or 1990s, Bucky is going to find a way to ungracefully exit this conversation.

[inaxorable]

Oh, so he had heard him correctly. World War I. Raskolnikov’s pretty sure that he can guess at what that means, and it’s an incredibly unpleasant thought. And the other man had said that there had been two of them. Two! How many lives would two world wars take? How many people would die? He opens his mouth to speak, but no sound comes out, so he closes it again. His head spins, and he puts a hand on the table for balance. He wants to lie down and not be here in this world with its two world wars.

With a valiant effort, because the other man is still watching him, he manages to force out, “ah. I see.” And then, in a desperate attempt to explain, he adds, “I am…not from around here. Where I am from, we did not, ah, have world wars.”

Because that’s better than saying I travelled in time, right?

[freakymagoo]

"Oh. Okay." Bucky doesn't know of that many places that weren't touched by one of the world wars at least, but. Maybe Raskolnikov is from another planet. He doesn't know anything about those. Somehow, the fact that he might be talking to an alien, or a time traveller, or a robot avatar of a person doesn't seem to faze him much.

"...what did you have?" Conflict seems kind of universal, so... Bucky is struggling to imagine a kind of society, even an alien one, where there wasn't some kind of violent way to deal with their disagreements.

me over here like “let me use a little bit of this funny thing called *obvious foreshadowing*”

[inaxorable]

“We had wars, of course.” He’s surprised that Bucky isn’t pressing the issue, but he isn’t going to complain. “Nothing truly on a global scale, though I suppose one could make an argument that the conflict with France and the United States and England was at least somewhat global. But that’s not the point! Do you have any idea what war you were fighting in during your vision?”

There. That’s back to — ironically — more comfortable territory. Speaking of these visions might raise eyebrows, but surely nothing horrible will come of it.

😏

[freakymagoo]

"So you are from Earth." As if that was ever in dispute. Bucky seems a little confused if his head tilt is anything to go by. Where in the world could one take shelter from both world wars? Bizarre.

"Not sure. But it's-- old. You know, first half of the 20th century, or before." It felt like shrapnel or one of those kinds of explosives he's familiar with. Not like horses and swords. And not like laser blasters and EMPs either.

"Wasn't. You know. Alien." Bucky is a little shifty-eyed but otherwise seems perfectly serious.

[inaxorable]

Of course he’s from Earth! What sort of question is that? He looks at the man with increased suspicion, though it shifts quickly to indignation as he continues. As if it were not bad enough that the townspeople hate him for being foreign, now this stranger is calling things alien with some sort of strange look on his face.

“I’ll have you know that I am an alien,” he snaps. “A foreigner. An immigrant. Whatever you prefer.” It does not occur to him that Bucky means ‘from outer space’ — how could it, when he predates that meaning of the word by fifty years?

[freakymagoo]

"Not like that." It's Bucky's turn to be indignant. He might be a little 'old fashioned' Captain America's dumb friend or whatever but he's not one of those Americans.

"I mean alien. Like. Thor. You know." Doesn't everyone know about the Asgardians? Or the trees and raccoons from outer space that that can talk?

"You know where France is but you don't know about World War One? Or Two?" That's even more living under a rock than Bucky has been, and that's nothing short of a miracle.

[inaxorable]

Raskolnikov gives Bucky his most skeptical glare, which, as it turns out, is quite skeptical indeed. He’s about to snap something about how of course he knows where France is, he isn’t stupid, but then thinks better of it. He doesn’t want to disclose just how out of place he is here, but…Agathe also had come from a different time. And this man had said ‘first half of the 20th century’, as though it were foreign. Strange.

Slowly, cautiously, he asks, “what year was it, before you arrived here?”

[freakymagoo]

"2024." Despite his confidence, his voice might have wavered just a little bit. He doesn't doubt that he thinks it's 2024. But he's also aware that he doesn't have a very good sense of time, or place. He relies on other people and other cues a lot to tell him what year he's awoken in this time, and where he is. He might have spent a lot of time getting himself grounded in reality when he was in Wakanda, but it was a shortlived period of his life, all things considered. He was also blipped out of existence for five years, or so everyone who was left behind tells him, which hasn't helped.

"Why?"

[inaxorable]

2024. Raskolnikov lets out a long, slow breath. He can’t even imagine what the world would look like in 2024. Will humanity have solved world hunger? Will they have cured disease? It’s enough to make his head spin.

“It was 1866 for me,” he confesses, eyes darting around nervously.

[freakymagoo]

"Oh."

Bucky doesn't seem too fazed by the revelation, beyond the fact that it's rather uncommon to meet someone older than him. He doesn't really know what 1866 was like. Especially beyond, you know. Settlers. Cowboys. That sort of thing. He is very interested though.

"Um. Diseases killed more people than war, back then," he explains, although he's not sure why he feels the need to explain.

"Figured out your house yet?" It must be all rather new. Even the little things like push-button light switches and washing machines can be very foreign. The refrigerator must have blown his mind.

"1866 where?"

[inaxorable]

“The electricity is difficult to understand,” he says reluctantly. “I knew of it, back home, but we didn’t use it in the same way. We didn’t use it at all, really.”

He hesitates before answering Bucky’s final question, but the man had already said that he wasn’t the sort to hate immigrants, so with the air of a man confessing to a heinous crime, he mutters, “Saint Petersburg in Russia.”