the girl from the spaceship

Entry tags:

five

the girl from the spaceship

WHO: Five and anyone!
WHERE: The network
WHEN: Now-ish I guess?
WHAT: Introduction and a question about socks
WARNINGS: None expected

[A video feed of a green-haired girl, short even for her age of 16 years, sitting on the floor of her Libra apartment, in a pile of mismatched socks.

But she'll get to that in a second, first:]

So, I guess this is where I'm staying for now since I can't find a way to get back to the Raza or contact my friends from there. Hi? I'm Five. [Yeah there's a story behind a name that weird.

She gives a little wave to the camera.]

This pile of socks showed up in my apartment and I currently live alone so I really don't know where they came from and I'm wondering if anyone is missing any socks? There are some pretty cool ones here. Like this one looks like a black cat and is pretty cute, [She holds it up with a small smile.] I think I'd be sad if I were the one who lost it. Oh there's some holidays ones as well...? But none of them match!

[She pauses, wondering how to end this, and gives a shrug before picking up her phone from the floor so now only her face is shown.]

Yeah, so just let me know if you want your sock back?

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I think I'd be interested? It sounds like fun, anyway.

[She gives a little shrug, going back to sorting through some of the socks. She's surrounded by multiple stacks now, all in different colors. Plenty of the individual socks are actually technically multicolor, but she went by what she thought was the most prominent color.]

And... Yeah, recharging makes sense, I guess. This magic stuff is pretty new to me. Not just my own ability but even like... Just the concept being real? It's kinda wild.

[She perks up even more when he says "mechanical engineering," grinning wide.]

Oh, yeah? Me too! A little more like... Electrical and computer, but I do mechanical too!

Sure! I'd be happy to.

[At least there are some matching colours... but boy are they different sizes. He picks up a trainer sock and a knee-high sock, exactly the same pattern. He pulls a face, before dropping them in a pile together- it might be as good as they get.]

Hah, yeah. I'm used to magic being real, but it's definitely never been something I could do myself before.

[Seeing her perk up does bring a wider smile to his face.]

Oh wow, really? I'm still getting used to electrical and computer systems, it's...uh, beyond my time, but that's cool! What sort of mechanical things do you do?

[She laughs when he pulls a face at the matching but different sized socks, and kind of leans towards him and lowers her voice, grinning.]

Can I tell you a secret? [Before waiting on an answer for that:] I would definitely still wear some of these socks, mismatched or not!

[As for mechanics...]

Like, mechatronics and robotics? And working and fixing things on our ship... Um, some of it may be more beyond your time again, if electrical and computer systems are beyond your time... [She shrugs.] Basically I just like tinkering with stuff! Stuff with fuses and wires, it just all makes sense to me in my head. If I ever had any official training or schooling or anything though, I don't remember it, because my memory is kind of messed up.

[A wry smile crosses his lips at her little confession.]

I'll try my best not to judge your fashion choices. ...Openly.

[Because friendship is all about gentle shit-talking, right?]

Oh wow, that's cool! I made automatons once. [And then tried to kill everyone with them, hmm, best not linger on that.] But that's cool! I never had training either, people who aren't nobility don't really get to go to...school in my time. So I just figured it all out on my own, too. It's better that way.

[The rest of what she has to say does pull a surprised frown from him.]

Your memory is messed up?

[She wrinkles her nose at him playfully for that first comment, but she's still smiling before she goes back to the socks as she explains herself, oh-so-casually and breezily.]

Yeah. The story is kind of complicated because I don't think this place has the same technology we have in the 27th century? Which is where I'm from. It involves a computer virus and stasis pods, and basically resulted in me and the rest of my crew aboard the Raza losing access to our memories. They're still in our heads but we can't recall them on purpose. As for me, I also have the entire crew's memories in my head.

[Sorry, Five, you're going to have to give him a moment as he stares at her.]

The 27th century? Two. Seven? [He points at himself.] I'm from the 19th century. You're so far ahead of me.

[Those are SO MANY CENTURIES!!

He doesn't understand what she's talking about- he's never heard these terms before. It's wild.]

Oh....wow, that's... a lot. Having that many memories in your head. I um- what are stasis pods?

[She looks pretty surprised at him when he mentions he's from the 19th century as well!]

Woah, yeah that's... Quite a ways apart in time, huh? That's crazy that we both ended up here...

[She nods, then shrugs just a bit.]

It's five other people, we were a small crew, but yeah. It helps that it's not like buzzing around in there all the time, mostly it's just like... Sometimes stuff floats to the service, bits of information and stuff, but also I've relived some memories before while I'm sleeping.

[As for the stasis pods...]

They're like these chambers you can go into during space flight that let you just sleep for a long period without needing food or water or anything. Well, technically not actually sleep, it's kind of more like it puts your body on pause?

Yeah, it's wild to think that this world can pull people in from such wide time disparities.

[Like what the hell, Kaisou.]

Hm. I have seen people with missing memories. [He helped cause it, he thinks bitterly.] It happened that way with them...the lost memories just kinda started coming back. Slowly, but they did come.

[He hum softly.]

So...like a coma? But in...space? And...controlled?

Really wild. But... Kind of cool, too, since it means meeting all these different people you wouldn't normally meet, right?

Yeah, they seem to come back when it's something related happening to whatever the memory is, mostly. But sometimes it's hard figuring out who the memory belonged to...

[She smiles brightly when he gets it.]

Yeah, like that!

Oh yeah, to be sure! There are people I've met here I could never even imagine back home.

[It's certainly made like interesting. ]

I can see where that would be tricky, especially if you've got nothing to really link it as yours. Did you think about maybe keeping a journal? Writing them down in one, and then having some separate ones for your crew? Once you've figured out who a memory belongs to, you can shift it to the respective journal.

[Varian can offer practical solutions to your problems, this is where his skills lie. ]

That's amazing! I mean, I guess it makes sense, there's a lot of space, right? To be able to travel it and still...be alive to actually experience reaching anything of note, I guess you would have to be sleeping without...uh aging.

That's a pretty good idea. It might be a lot of writing and shifting around though. And it would still be difficult to narrow down without my crew here with me, I think. But... To be honest it also doesn't really bother me? I don't care so much about my past as I do my future, I guess.

[She shrugs, again casual.]

Well, we have FTL drive too. That's Faster than Light. But you can't always use it in every part of space, and sometimes it needs repairing, stuff like that makes the stasis pods handy.

...Yeah, that's true. It would get uh...complicated. [Varian's so deeply focused on his past, that the future is something that rarely crosses his mind. ] I guess it's easier not to worry so much about it when it's all...jumbled, huh?

[But hey, this is cool as all heck, the socks are definitely forgotten in favour of this.]

So you can travel faster than light. I did wonder about the ageing thing. That's incredible! What's it like out there? In space?

Yeah. And when everyone I was with was in the same situation, too. Even here, everything is pretty new, all new people, so... I don't see a whole lot of need for my past right now.

[It's in a way both freeing and also kind of depressing. But what can you do?]

It's... Big. But you could probably already guess that. [She laughs.] It can be kind of scary, there's always this chance of getting stranded somewhere without enough supplies or the right parts to repair with... There are space stations though and those are a big help!

...That's a good way to put it. I mean, it's like building a whole new life for yourself here, right?

[He doubts he could do that himself. Even if people from home weren't here, he doesn't think he could ever truly step away from his past. But then, he remembers it, crystal clear, in every awful detail. There's a lot more to put aside. ]

Hah, yeah, I kinda figured. And wow, I never thought about that. I mean, it would be pretty...empty between... are space stations like... taverns?

[Well, doing it again here would be harder, since she's very attached to her crew, and still has memories of them because they all bonded post memory wipe.

So maybe she should have said she doesn't care so much about her distant past. Just her more recent one, and the family she'd made out of her crew. She's still hoping maybe the others will end up here too, or maybe they'll find her.

Five gives a little shrug again, though her expression is sadder. ]

That might be my only option.

[More cheerfully:]

And space stations can have taverns? Drinking places? And food, stores to shop in, places to stay, even a doctor! They'll often have a lot of entertainment too, like movies and gambling and stuff.

Maybe, I don't know. I'd like to think there are better options yet.

[But that's a sad, desperate hope. Rapunzel taught him that it was okay to hope for something better again and as much as he tends to lean towards pessimism, he can't help but let a little optimism sink in. ]

Oh wow, really? That's pretty cool. They sounds like little cities in space!

Yeah. There could be? I guess I'll just have to see... I don't really feel like I have a lot of information yet about this place and how everything works, so. For now I just have to keep looking.

Some of them definitely are like that! There are smaller ones too, but most of the ones I've seen are pretty big. I mean sometimes they have to be if they're going to dock ships, because those can be really big too.

That's not a bad idea, honestly. Better to be as informed as we can be, huh?

[Shame he doesn't put that into practice in researching his portal, though.]

That makes sense. I mean, I'm imagining spaceships have to be pretty big themselves to get up into the stratosphere. Stands to reason where they dock has to be pretty big, too.

We have some smaller ones too, the Marauder for example is just for taking some passengers and not a whole lot of cargo down to land. It's easier to land and dock than the Raza because of its size, and it fits inside the Raza when we're not using it. But yeah the Raza has to at least be in orbit for the Marauder to reach it from the ground.

[She explains all this while still sorting through the socks, apparently also now making a pile that she's silently labelled as "ones I would wear."]

Oh, that makes sense. So it's the equivalent of a small horse and cart as opposed to a couple of horses pulling a huge caravan. You adapt your spaceships for what they use it.

[She is so welcome to that pile, Varian will take the mismatched oddities honestly, he's a weird kid, he can live with being weirder.]

That sounds pretty fascinating. The most I've ever been in the air is in an airship held up with hot air balloons. [A beat.] And this one time I was in a tower, like, two hundred feet in the air but that wasn't in a vehicle.

[Oh wow. That's a really old-timey comparison, huh? They did figure out they're a substantial amount of time apart, but she doesn't know a whole lot of history so it was hard to gauge from that exactly what the technology gap was.]

I think that's a pretty apt comparison, yeah.

I've never seen a hot air balloon! That seems pretty cool because you'd really get to feel the wind. And that's a really tall tower, was it part of a castle?

[He's so very old-timey, Five. He's the most old-timey. It's tragic.]

You do! It feels like you're a bird, it's pretty amazing!!! [Hot air balloons are SO COOL okay?] I managed to upgrade one so it doubled the speed! It was pretty neat.

[He pauses, considering how to explain the Black Rock Tower without implicating Cass.]

A lot of them are attached to castles, but this one was free-standing. It was the uh... stronghold of someone who wanted to harm the Kingdom.

[It's cute that he gets so excited about the hot air balloon. She definitely gets it. They seem super cool!]

I don't even know what the regular speed of a hot air balloon is, let alone double speed!

[She laughs, trying to imagine it. It's gotta be slower than the Marauder, right? But faster than an actual bird, maybe? Who knows?!]

Oh... That's kind of scary. The harming the kingdom thing, I mean. How do you get up and down a freestanding tower in your time period? Did you have elevators?

[He's SUCH a nerd, and now she's clearly given him an opening for MATH so:]

Oh well, a normal hot air balloon travels at five or ten miles an hour. They're pretty slow, it's more about...floating along, really. But mine went much faster.

[He's so proud of the damn thing and it shows!]

It was...complicated. [SO complicated.] Hah, no elevators. Just lots and lots of stairs. It...took a really long time to get up there.

So, a regular hot air balloon is more dependent on air currents? And yours had a power source of some sort?

[Look, she can be a nerd too, she's interested in this and is engaging with the conversation!

She wrinkles her nose a bit at "lots of stairs." Not that she has a hard time with physical activity, but a huge tower's worth of stairs? Sounded tedious.]

No kidding. Android had to do that once, climb a huge building using just a bunch of stairs because she had to be stealthy. And she was losing power the whole time too so it took her even longer.

the girl from the spaceship

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