goneawayworld | 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’.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It is not rude," Gepetto replied simply. "We are from different worlds, it is only natural that I might resemble something from your world. I am part machine and part paracausal--'magical', if you will. It is possible that these Fairies fill a similar role in your world that I do in mine."

"Besides," Saint added, "Gepetto loves talking about these kinds of things. He's something of a scholar of the Traveler and the Light."

Gepetto bobbed in the air, seemingly proud of himself at that, the segments of his shell spinning and rotating not unlike a Rubik's Cube.

"Oh!" She looks deeply curious, and then takes a breath, lowering her shoulders and cooling her metaphorical jets, uncomfortable with the enthusiasm immediately. "I wouldn't want to pry, though ..."

But she can't really help herself. "'Paracausal' - like the 'time travel' sense of 'outside cause', or the 'prophecy' kind?"

She has some theoretical familiarity. Can't chase infinity without some notional work towards the basics of breaking relativity on some level, after all, and Moebius expected the general Labyrinthian populace to meet a basic grasp of scientific principles most human cultures would find frankly - well - labyrinthine, to memorize, no matter how intellectually "wanting" the algorithms might have determined them to be otherwise ... still. She really doesn't want to overstep. Everything's so strange and unsteady, both the Rig itself and all the "new hires" like herself just adding even more undefined variables - the last thing she needs is upsetting everybody before she even knows what the absolute penalties for upsetting anybody will be.

"Sorry, I'm not really an expert, but the ... the ideas aren't unfamiliar."

Saint chuckles at the girl's enthusiasm, and Gepetto himself seems to be excited to speak on his favorite topic. His shell twirls enthusiastically.

"It is no secret, in fact I quite enjoy speaking of the Traveler and its Light," he replied politely. "Paracausal refers to outside the standard definition of causality, often being powers that can result in effects being willed into existence."

He pauses for a moment, and then pulls back a bit. Suddenly, he begins projecting a three dimensional image made out of glowing blue light, depicting a vast city, above which floated a gargantuan floating orb.

"This is the Traveler, above the Last City of Humanity. It is the source of the Light, one of several sources of paracausal power. It is thanks to the Traveler that I have life, and that Guardians like Brother Saint-14 exist to defend humanity. By channeling its Light into Brother Saint-14, I grant him the strength and paracausal abilities to combat the powers of the Darkness."

Saint's already warm expression gets even softer seeing an image of the City. It's obvious he takes great pride in his home.

Setsuna's eyes take it in, wide and delighted. "Wow. It -" she catches herself before she continues, and her expression shutters, some of the happiness flickering as she hesitates, suddenly deeply unprepared to continue this conversation. She wants to feel like she can talk about this - who, after all, is it going to hurt? Who indeed, except herself, perhaps, somewhere down the line, for failing to consider her situation properly? - but the ways this could all go wrong if she steps wrong are terribly vertiginous and profligate.

When she gets her voice back she's quieter, more somber, the wariness of paranoia heavy in the set of her shoulders, and a sad cast to her eyes. "All those squat square buildings, like little chips soldered onto each other and the circuitboard of the city itself ... it's just ... a little familiar. We don't have anything like that hanging over our city, though ... not anymore."

"Ah," Gepetto replied in a worried tone, the projection vanishing suddenly as he carefully floated closer to Setsuna. "I apologize, I had not considered the possibility that such images might invoke an uncomfortable response..."

Saint places a gentle hand on her shoulder before he speaks.

"You need not speak of it if you do not wish to," Saint says, "but I am willing to lend an ear if you need one."

Setsuna visibly flusters, her hands reaching up in a pacifying half-flail. She shakes her head, quick and forceful. "No! ... no," she continues, softer, "it's not that. They're good memories. Your city reminds me of a place I, um, love very much."

She presses her lips together in an unhappy frown. "But, remembering it, talking about it with other people, in, um, a place like this, they're ..." She looks ceilingwards, then rubs a palm, thumbside, against her breastbone, awkwardly. Against where the nanochain they've all been threatened with the use of went in. "Makes me worry about whether they're useful memories, you could say. Or ... dangerous ones?" She takes a deep breath. "And .. maybe not all happy, either."

Saint listens thoughtfully as she speaks, nodding slightly.

"I believe I understand," he replied when she was finished. "Memories like that can be a tricky thing, sometimes. They can be your hope. Or they can be used against you, often by those seeking to break that hope. Or sometimes that hope itself can become painful, if held on to too desperately."

By the way that he spoke, he seemed to be speaking from experience. The seemingly downcast look on Gepetto's 'face' seemed to imply they both went through something similar.

"But, my dear," he continued, returning to his normally bright and cheerful self. "We are not alone in this. I can promise you that Gepetto and I are on your side, at least. You are among friends. And I'm sure there are many others here who would say the same."

He glances out across the rag-tag group assembled throughout the room, eyeing some of the more...contentious people he'd run across so far.

"Well, eventually, anyway."

He was an optimist.

She gives Saint a reassuring smile, though her expression is still mostly sad, the regretful kind that doesn't ever really fade, only dim, with the passage of time. It makes her look much older, and more worn out, than any kid her age really should. "It's fine. Painful memories are what make us cherish the joyful ones even more, right?"

That, also, reflects a hard-earned experience for her. She laughs, though, gentle and warm. "And friends, too, of course. They're ..."

She can't help a somewhat yearning glance in, oddly, Gepetto's direction specifically, as she searches for the right words. "... what makes the pain survivable, in the end." Her smile bends, wry, as she shakes off the melancholy and follows Saint's gaze, briefly, before returning to the Guardian's own rather unique face. "No matter what form they come in."

SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

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