[ota] February/March Catch-All

[aperturesubject0001]

Who: Chell and her new neighbors!
When: Some February, mostly March
Where: Around and about!
Open/Closed: Noted in starters
Applicable warnings: Feb TDM warnings may apply; descriptions of agoraphobia. Anything that comes up will be in the comment headers.

a. The Errands - OTA, early February

Once the smoke clears, and people are allowed out of their houses again, Chell is faced with a brand new test: grocery shopping.

It's not like she's never done it before. She knows she has. Her memories of life before waking up in Aperture may be hazy in places, but she certainly knows that she used to go to the store and buy food and probably even make it sometimes, although she also has a feeling she used to eat a lot of microwave meals. That's not an option here. And her household has gone through most of the easy-to-prepare stuff like canned food during the lockdown, so now she needs to go restock.

And the thing is -- the thing is, Chell has faced down giant mashy plates with spikes and arrays of turrets training their sights on her and bombs and floors covered in toxic waste. A grocery store should be no problem. And yet, faced with the aisles of food, the people, the constant mechanical whirr and ching of the cash registers, Chell is finding herself uncharacteristically overwhelmed. She can't see the exits when she's trying to pick between oatmeal and cream of wheat. Everyone else seems to be moving with certainty and purpose where she's a welter of indecision and nerves. What if she picks the wrong thing? What if everything is poisoned? What if something comes through the door? What if she throws up? What if--?

All of which has resulted in Chell standing in front of the freezer case for at least five minutes, looking more like a deer in the headlights than a shopper. She moves out of the way when other customers need to get past her, but she doesn't seem quite able to shake herself into either picking something or moving along herself.

b. The Zoomies - mid-March, OTA

It's been several weeks of adjustment, and the idea that Chell doesn't need to be running for her life and probably isn't going to be put into cryosleep unexpectedly is starting to sink in. That hot urgency that propelled her through testing chamber after testing chamber is being replaced with a cool, prickly unease that never entirely goes away.

Unease, and boredom, particularly as the weather gets nicer and there's reason to be outside. Mid-March finds her in the park pretty regularly, despite the masses of pigeons, power-walking laps around the pond and the edge of the park. Occasionally -- very occasionally, and usually only if she thinks she won't be observed, because she's already gotten some odd looks for it from the locals -- her energy gets the better of her and she breaks into a sprint for a few dozen meters, her skirt fluttering indecorously and her jacket flapping behind her. Then she brakes to a walk again, breathing hard.

Who'd have thought that a whole town could still feel as enclosed as a salt mine?

Comments

[aperturesubject0001]

Oh, a mountain man, wow.

She lifts her rising hand quite high at the end, up towards the top of his head: presumably not the first time in his life someone has joked about his height.

Why not run off to the woods?

Talking to someone seems to be grounding her a little, at least enough that when another person comes up to the freezer case, she doesn't jump like a deer, just moves aside and keeps signing to Wrench.

None of us belong here, anyway.

[wwrench]

Wrench watches as the wordplay transforms Chell’s response. Even though it’s his height most people notice first — the thing virtually everyone mentions, if they gather the gumption to acknowledge him at all — he smirks. This time he doesn’t even try to hide it. The sound is a lot clearer, and a lot more appreciative. The light reaches his eyes even when no smile crosses his lips, and for a moment he doesn’t look quite as pissed off as he usually does.

My partner is here too, he taps the tip of two outstretched fingers against their counterparts on his other hand, obfuscating the nature of the relationship. So there are two of them here, but what that means is left a mystery. Wrench doesn’t give the other one a name, just points to the side, an ungendered acknowledgement of the aforementioned. They wanted to leave as fast as we could, but I said no. It seems smarter to play along while we can. Try to figure out what’s going on.

[aperturesubject0001]

Oh -- Chell blinks, nodding, surprised at herself that she hadn't even considered that anyone here might have someone they were worried about. Sure, the last time she had an escape partner it ended in death traps, but maybe that was an outlier?

They sound smart, bluntly. What do you think is going on? You can't believe whoever is in charge brought you here for a nice vacation with cake and ice cream.

[wwrench]

Yes, Wrench ticks his fist agreeably, accepting the compliment on Numbers' behalf. It's not the first word that would jump to his mind when considering his partner's traits. He's brash, self-confident, and more than just incidentally bitchy. But he's smart, too, and Wrench still wonders sometimes if he should have listened better that first day and followed Numbers to the end of this godforsaken town. He'd been so scared that whatever had brought the other man back to life would lose its magic on the other end of that invisible boundary, though. He's still not sure how long it can manage to hold.

That train of thought is a direct line to self-pity, so he shakes it off and considers the question. No one's offered me cake and ice cream. Did you get cake? He feigns jealousy, then snorts again. We seem more tolerated than welcomed. It's hard to think they want us here.

[aperturesubject0001]

There's never actually cake, she signs, with a surprisingly bitter sigh. Usually it's a goddamn incinerator instead.

Then she snorts, turns to the freezer case, and rummages for a carton of ice cream to hold out to Wrench.

There you go. You don't even need to turn on the stove for it.

And this seems to have finally gotten her back to herself, enough to grab some frozen TV dinners out and drop them into her cart. That should keep her from starving to death.

The town might not want us here, but someone must, she continues. Unless we're just falling through wormholes or something.

[wwrench]

If that's the moral of some popular fable from her world, Wrench is entirely unfamiliar. It's poignant nevertheless. He gets the meaning without needing to know a thing about the story it comes from, and he finds himself smirking again despite himself. True biz, he cosigns.

Somehow it's never occurred to Wrench that he could simply buy himself the ice cream. Even standing here in the middle of the grocery store with a paltry but earnest amount of money in his wallet, the man has only been thinking in terms of necessity. Only ever thought of life in terms of necessity, for that matter. What he wants and what he likes are stones yet to be uncovered. Moreover, they're dangerous territory. Having wants is having weakness, and it's always been easier to simply deny himself the opportunity for both. But he actually smiles at the carton, baffled by how Chell's gesture seems to have been the easiest thing in the world.

Is that common where you're from? Wormholes. Has the fabric of reality ever just ripped open before? It might seem a bit like he's mocking her, but she wouldn't be the first. It's beyond the scope of his comprehension, but Wrench knows that isn't the case for everyone here.

[aperturesubject0001]

Oh, yeah, I had a gun that made them. Little ones, though, she clarifies, pursing her lips. Just to move you from place to place, not into the past. If Aperture invented time travel, I wouldn't be surprised, but ...

She glances around the store, at the other residents going about their shopping, and shakes her head.

Can't be just time travel. Something brainwashed a whole town into thinking I've been here all along. A shiver. It makes me feel crazy.