goneawayworld | SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

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SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

SHEET CAKE MEETUP

“Who the fuck is Linda?”

The question pops up every few minutes, a little tack of punctuation above the offensively-inoffensive music being piped in*. The room the hires have been ushered into is clearly just a conference room, with a layout that requires either sitting at awkwardly-spaced intervals around a giant table or milling and scooting around the smaller folding table, where the “big surprise” the corporate officers promised them is on display: a sheet cake.

A sheet cake that that still bears HAPPY BIRTH DAY LINDA in blue icing across the top, although someone has, at least, gone to the effort of writing welcome, to the team new hires in Sharpie on a purple flashcard and used a Popsicle stick and tape to plant it like a dismal flag right in the middle of Linda’s “DAY”. Dedication aside, the cake itself looks pretty suspect too, not as if it were poisoned but more like if it were salvaged. The cake part looks dry, and the frosting seems strangely...sweaty. No one’s eating yet, and yet there’s already a piece missing.

However, there’s no lack of enthusiasm around the room. A projector hooked up to a laptop casts an off-center, warped rectangle of WELCOME TO, THE BEST TEAM. NEW HIRES!! onto a wall. The many paper plates have a festive print, although they all seem to be Christmas themed. The table cloth looks as if it came from both 4th of July and potentially a war, given the scuffs and tears. The shot-glass sized paper cups are inadequate to hold a satisfying amount of sparkling cider, but at least they don’t leak. There are many more plastic knives than forks, which could prompt some hires to give in to their animal instincts and just use their hands, or perhaps start a barter economy for the better utensils.

“I’m so jealous,” a corporate employee keeps saying as she ushers hires into the room. “We haven’t had a good party in this office since Kelly’s baby shower, and that little girl practically has teeth now!”

(An eagle-eyed hire may suspect that the box of donuts next to the sheet cake might have come from said baby shower, on account of the fact that the few stale hunks of donut remaining have Pepto-Bismol pink strawberry icing and that there’s still the paper envelope for a gift card with ITS A GIRL written on it.)

Most of corporate slips out after the hires get set up - this is clearly an event for the hires to do some “team building” and work on “rapport” in addition to filling their bellies with cake that tastes remarkably like sand. There’s a karaoke machine in the corner, but hires are instructed not to touch it because, as an employee points out, last year’s Christmas party demonstrated that karaoke is the worst thing in the entire world for morale (“in any world! even before this one got eaten away by the bombs!”).

There’s an additional big glass jar filled with scraps of paper, which the hires are informed are filled with prompts for ice breakers and activities in case the party needs a pick-me-up. Any hire who investigates will find that most of the ice breaker activities start with three benign questions (“what’s your name?” “where are you from?” “what’s your favorite animal?”) and somehow, always a fourth question that feels a little invasive (“what are your feelings on unions?” “under what circumstances would you kill an innocent person?” “do you use the same passwords for all your accounts?”).

“Please enjoy yourselves and all the desserts Jorgmund has generously supplied you with,” one of the employees says on her way out, “and don’t worry about making a mess, janitorial gets paid too much to sit around as is.”

*All music that can be summarized as ’grocerycore’.

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<My queen.> It might take some looking around to find Alloran. Thought-speech is weird and it takes a lot of experience with it to find it directional. Until then it seems to come from everywhere or nowhere. Fortunately he's a blue centaur and it doesn't take a lot of looking.

Alloran's tone is dryly amused. On the strength of one meeting he hasn't actually accepted Elsa as having authority over him, as he once might have accepted a Prince, and he's not sure he wants to look to anyone that way. But he likes the bit of formality. <Not enjoying the generous hospitality of our hosts, are we?>

Her head perks up when she hears the now-familiar thought-voice, and she totally does a twist-in-place kind of thing to look around and see where it's coming from. Luckily, he's pretty easy to spot, and when she sees him, she breaks a real smile. She perceives the dry humor in the tone, and it helps keep the title from feeling as uncomfortable or heavy as it otherwise might. The magic creature is teasing her, but not unkindly.

"Prince Alloran," she replies, and inclines her head back at him. It's a genuinely friendly greeting, but the nod is too deep to be natural, and one of her feet crosses behind the other; she's very carefully respect-teasing back. Then, Elsa straightens and sobers. "I think our hosts have an unusual definition of hospitality," she says, fingers unconsciously going to the back of her neck, where she's told the mechanism they're using to punish and control has been placed. It can't be frozen out, not like the so-called lie detector they put on her.

Then, she glances over her shoulder at the unfortunate recycled cake, and pulls a less serious, more displeased face.

"I've never seen a cake look that damp before."

Alloran smiles, a subtle expression all in his eyes, and sweeps that immense bladed tail in a formal gesture, slowly enough to track the movement. He's had a vague idea that it will be good if people don't understand how fast his tail can be, though of course that's meant having a rising desire to lash it like a bullwhip.

<I understand their reasoning, but that doesn't make it any easier on the poor fools who end up at their mercy,> he muses in a private channel that only Elsa will hear. <Does it still hurt?>

He swivels a stalk eye in that direction. <Is that what it is? Here I thought it was ancient cloud-art.>

She can't help a chuckle when he calls the cake cloud-art. It's a good joke, one she appreciates. But there's something more serious to talk about, so the mirth fades again.

"No," she says, glancing away. "But I can't forget that it's there. That it can be used to hurt me, control me if I don't do what they want."

Elsa looks back up, upset, brows drawn up. "I don't understand, Alloran. What kind of reasoning could there be to do something like this?" Her voice isn't raised, not above the level of conversation around them, but the emotional intensity in it has a similar effect.

There is a static pop of feeling that's probably going to be difficult to quickly interpret. It's a moment of cynical laughter that someone very young is saying anything like this, quite innocently, to the Abomination. A kind of ironic amusement wreathed in despair.

He decides to take the question seriously. <Their world is in the main destroyed, or changed past recognition. Their people dead or likewise. Those who survive do so by thin margins. Perhaps something can be salvaged, reclaimed by great effort and sacrifice. But ah, here are aliens with useful skills and abilities. If they die for the cause, it means their own people will not have to. That kind of desperation and opportunity can justify much worse than this.>

Alloran laughs darkly again, now without amusement. <I understand something of the feeling. I could sing it for you, but this would be a poor place for it, and it would doubtless be upsetting for us both.>

That's a terrible feeling, and Elsa wonders what it is she said to set it off, but doesn't ask. Don't pry. He's been through something, and even if he wanted to talk about it, a forced party is not the time or place.

She hears out what he describes, and for the first time since arriving, feels a pang of sympathy for the people in this world. Perhaps she would have felt it sooner, if her introduction to the place had been less violent and less like they were trying badly to coerce happiness and camaraderie out of her, but the bizarre corporate culture she has no reference for and the treatment much crueler than anything she's experienced so far have left Elsa keeping her sorriness for herself, caught up in hurt and confusion. Her sympathy is not for her captors, but the people she has not yet met. They can't be all bad, can they? It must be hard, living in a broken world, and it must be tempting, if they can bring in people from other places with powers they don't have.

The idea of it being worse, of committing true atrocities to save a world, is frightening. Elsa wraps her arms around herself again.

"No," she says quietly, agreeing with his last statement. "No, this is not the place. I--I don't think I want to know what that feels like."

She draws in a steadying breath, running over her feelings. "But they could have asked," she goes on, brows drawing up again. "They could have asked for help. Arendelle is peaceful and prospering. If we had known they needed it, we would have helped them. Surely we aren't the only ones." Elsa gestures around the room with one open hand, palm-up, indicating all the unique and powerful people gathered together to enjoy terrible sheet cake. "People might have come from any of their lands to aid the survivors. They could have gotten willing help!"

But it's true that Elsa doesn't know this for sure. She does not know the mechanisms behind how they were brought to become new hires for Jorgmund.

"And even if they couldn't," she goes on, a little more personally. "Even if this was the only way, they don't have to treat us like this."

To really understand would change her, and in ways she wouldn't like. Even the best djafid he could muster, devastating though it would be, could only go so far. Alloran cants his ears, acknowledging without comment, and then remembers the human gesture and gives a stiff nod. He's got less neck flexibility than a human would.

He's not exactly convinced, but Alloran decides not to comment. Would he have come if this was optional? Maybe. He owes humanity, even some strange alternate version. They would also be right to be suspicious of him and not to immediately extend trust. Yes, nothing here is ideal, but he understands wanting some form of insurance.

<That's true enough. I know something about cultures of commodification. You've noticed there's been an attempt to frame us as willing participants and benefitting from some opportunity? They don't need to do that. They could have us in cells and trotted out when there's need,> he muses. <Someone is trying to ease a lingering conscience and pretend things are more ethically sound. Count on it, there are people here not happy about the decisions handed down to them.>

And that could be an opportunity, though for what he couldn't say. Alloran doesn't know enough about what's going on yet.

"That's not what I--" Elsa begins a little crossly, because cells and being trotted out aren't at all the direction she was referring to, but then the rest of what he says sinks in. Elsa, personally, has hated the framing of willing participation -- she doesn't like them telling her she should be happy to be here, or them pretending what they're doing isn't as horrible as it is. But Alloran turns it around into a new light, and it brings her up short. "Wait," she says. "Do you mean the fact that they're trying to pretend we're happy about this actually means they're not all bad? That someone in Jorgmund is having second thoughts about what they're doing to us?"

This is, weirdly, one of the most hopeful things about their situation Elsa has been told so far. And it actually makes her feel better about the bizarre and confusing presentations and calcified sheetcake. Are they really signs that someone's trying to make this better? Or, if not better, to at least make themselves feel better about doing something they know is wrong?

<That's my belief. Plenty of these people do not care and see us as expendable, not true people.> The translation of that phrase is a little weird. 'True people', 'real people', 'people like themselves'. Thought-speak isn't always a perfect analog to vocal speech. <But not everyone, at least not all of us. It may be worth paying attention. The Jorgmund humans are in a bad position that incentivizes them to see us as different and more expendable, but they will not be a monolith. No group ever is, even if it goes to considerable effort to maintain conformity.>

At least not in his universe, where there's no such thing as an all-evil or all-good species, only systems and individuals. Even Yeerks are people, and if Alloran can believe that of brain parasites that crave the senses and hands of other species, he can believe it of anyone.

Elsa begins to pace -- not far, only a couple of feet, but enough to get some movement going so she can think. Her hands work restlessly in front of her, elbows in by her sides. "You're right," she says, sensing the same opportunity for something Alloran does. "You're right, they are different. Some of them know this is wrong. Some of them might be willing to help us, or at least look the other way so we don't get punished."

This is exciting, and it makes the whole thing feel much less hopeless. Instead of being stuck somewhere she doesn't want to be among hostile captors who she doesn't understand and have no reason to let her go, it's possible, just possible, that things might not be As Bad.

He's distantly pleased by the change in her attitude. It's appropriate for young people to be miserable sometimes, but also to have hope and expect that they can change things. Sometimes they even can.

Watching her Alloran cautions, <This is probably not something to be much improved in a day or a week. I would expect allies to need to be grown and tended rather than appearing fully in flower. But I also believe this is soil that can support them. It's not wrong to feel hurt and angry over this, only don't let it close your eyes.>

That makes sense to her. Elsa's seen the general attitude toward "new hires." It's forceful cheer at best and dehumanizing control at worst, and he's right that no one on the rig is being encouraged to treat them any different. It'll take time. It won't be quick or easy. But it's not entirely hopeless. She stops pacing and turns to face him.

"I am angry," she says decisively, fists by her sides. "But you're right. I wasn't thinking about anything but how unfair it was. What they're doing to us is despicable, but it's more important to look for a way out. And to understand what's really happening out there." She glances up and away, meaning outside the rig. "I don't trust anything they're telling us about what that world is like. Not until I see it for myself."

Edited 2020-04-19 23:46 (UTC)

<Good,> he says approvingly, canting his ears again. They are more mobile than human ears, if less so than the deer ones they resemble. <Anyone can react, but a leader should be capable of questioning, thinking, choosing when and how to act, inasmuch as is possible. You have a point about questioning their story.>

Is Alloran angry? He probably should be. At one point he would have been. What he feels, though, is so much closer to a weary cynicism. He is once again a useful creature.

"If they're going to use us the way they say they are," Elsa says, gesticulating thoughtfully again, "then they will send us out there. That's when we can get a look around."

She looks at the door, and breathes out a sigh, her shoulders slumping.

"Until then," she says, giving a small, resigned, but not-so-heavy shrug, "all we can do is wait, and try to avoid attention. And the cake," she adds, just comfortable enough to add a touch of levity to the end.

Alloran nods, human style. There are ways to make use of them that would involve never seeing the sun again, but it would certainly be a waste. He is inclined to believe that this offshoot of humanity has ruined its world and is in, as he was saying earlier, desperate straits.

And he doesn't really have anything more to add on the subject yet, so he readily returns to the more frivolous topic. This conversation is going amazingly. No one's been beheaded or even threatened yet - he still keeps half expecting Esplin to speak up or do something horrible, and it keeps not happening.

<Is it so unpleasant as that? I suppose it's not worth morphing human to try.>

She's about to say something about how she saw a piece crumble under its icing layer like sandy gravel, but Alloran's next words confuse her.

"'Morphing human'?" she repeats, clearly not sure what's meant, and from the way she pronounces the first word, not familiar with the word morph at all. "I'm sorry. What is that?"

<A piece of technology. I can acquire the DNA of animals, humans included, and become them for short periods.>: He looks at her for a moment and adds, <'DNA' is the pattern living things carry inside them that tells their bodies how to be shaped and function. I can copy the pattern and use it myself.>

It's probably not the most elegant explanation, but it's certainly delivered neutrally. Alloran has considered if he just doesn't want to morph at all and if he can afford to choose that, Aria aside. He's still thinking.

"So you can change your shape," she repeats, digesting the information and putting it into a context she understands. "You can become a copy of another living thing."

Has she got it right? She thinks she's got it right. What a strange and wild power to have.

<Yes, for two hours at a time. It's some effort and highly disquieting to watch, but it's a useful tool. My people traditionally use it for espionage but there are other applications. Don't repeat that part. Just now, only you can hear me.>

Jorgmund knows he can become a human, the first human who came to mind when he realized he'd have to morph, and they know a few things about thought-speech, and they've noticed he has a tailblade. But they're broadly ignorant about everything else he can do, and there's something thrilling about being able to keep that to himself, to dole that information out on his own discretion.

She nods solemnly, and presses her mouth shut.

"I understand," she says, a neutral enough phrase -- she's not repeating aloud that she's been asked to keep a secret, even though there's no one from Jorgmund around. Alloran's solemnness about it has impressed on her a need for caution.

He smiles, that subtle movement of the eyes and a bit of the ears. Alloran might look vaguely like he has a jawline but the more familiar with him one is, the more that seems to be coincidence.

<Good. It's a terrible power, but even here I'm not rid of it. And now it's at my discretion. Even the knowledge of it. That is a wonderful thing, Queen Elsa.>

He probably could just call her by her name.

He must have been a prisoner somewhere. Somewhere worse than this.

"I'm glad," says Elsa quietly. She's still not going to ask, but it is said with sympathy.

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SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

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ugh she's making like three different faces in this tag, here have the first one

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