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

That...was a big rabbit. Hare? Rabbit? Saint didn't actually know the difference.

"If you scrape off the crusty parts, it's at least somewhat edible," Saint replied in a thick Russian accent, trying to be helpful. He seemed to be busy doing just that, scraping off the more unpleasant parts of the pieces of cake as he cut slices for anyone brave enough to try some.

"You don't even want to know what I had to do for food when I was stuck in the Infinite Forest and ran out of supplies."

Whether the idea of a robot that eats strikes Bunny as weird is up to him.

". . . What, didnt strip pine bark for the edible underlayer? Ate bugs and rodents? I already know people do that. There's a lot of food in a forest."

Of course, he says all this whole side-eying the speaker, because it's true - he has no idea what a robot eats, much less eats in a forest.

"Food for me, anyway, but I'm guessing your diet's different."

"Hah, no, despite the name, the Infinite forest was not 'forest'," he said, making air quotes at that last word. "It was Vex simulation engine. Nothing in there was real, yes? Nothing in there was real."

He looked kind of distant at that last part, staring off into the distance for a split second before he quickly snapped back to attention.

"Sorry, sorry, spend a few centuries in there, you have to remind yourself sometimes."

He taps the side of his head with a forefinger.

"I am Exo. Human mind, robot body. I still eat food to fill psychological need, not physical."

That trail off gets Bunny's attention, aang's he looks at the ... Exo more closely, to see if he's still all there.

The idea of simulated centuries strikes a fearful chord with him. Centuries are long enough when you know you're living in reality, and centuries of something else's imposed reality is enough even to drive an immortal to the edge ....

... he thinks. When he tries to think back a century, he finds theres not anything specific he can latch on to. Just that same itchy mental surety that he should remember more than he does.

"Have you always been this way?"

Someone not born to live forever might deal with imposed centuries worse than an immortal.

"What, as an Exo?" he asks, not exactly getting Bunny's meaning. "I mean, no, like I said, human mind. I was once normal human, but this I cannot remember. I am a Guardian, you see. Like all Guardians, I died, then was resurrected by my Ghost, and I have no memory from before that. But like all Exo's I would have had to have been normal once."

He thinks back, scratching his chin thoughtfully.

"I stopped counting how long it was since I was brought back after the first two centuries, and that was before the Forest. To be honest, I do not know how old I am or how long I have been an Exo. But this is common for Guardians, few of us actually try to keep track of our ages."

That's sketchy. Who would do that? Bring someone back to life and give them a mission, but not their memories?

(The irony is lost on Bunny, missing an amnesiac teammate as he is.)

"Oh yeah? I'm a Guardian too. Did you pick that, or did this ... Ghost pick it for ya?"

Saint cocked an eyebrow when Bunny called himself a Guardian, but simply shrugged in response.

"Bringing me back was Gepetto's choice, but fighting as a Guardian was mine."

A small, drone-like machine with a pointed, segmented shell materialized suddenly out of thin air, glancing at Bunny and bobbing politely in what seemed to be a bow.

"Greetings," Gepetto said. "I was created the moment the Traveler died in the Collapse, with the in-built imperative to find someone...'worthy'. Many of my kind do not know specifically what it was we were looking for, we simply knew them when we found them."

"It's not a perfect process," Saint adds, "given that in the early days of the Dark Age many of those who were chosen simply hid, or worse, used their powers to become Warlords and ruled cruelly over normal humans. But between the Iron Lords and their Decree, and Fath...uh, the Speaker choosing to found the Last City beneath the floating ruins of the Traveler, nearly everyone chosen these days in turn chooses to become a Guardian to protect humanity."

The segments of Gepetto's shell rotate and swap with each other, like a Rubik's Cube trying to solve itself.

"That was a lot of terms that might be exclusive to our world, Brother Saint-14," the little Ghost finally added, before turning back to Bunny. "Please feel free to request clarification if needed. We have experience in dealing with alternate timelines, but alternate realities are somewhat new to us."

". . . sounds familiar," Bunny manages, trying to parse through how much clarification he should ask for, while also staring at the tiny flying robot(?). "Chosen by something older than yourself to protect humanity? That's us too."

Of course, none of the Guardians he's one of turned on humanity, but he can only say that because he doesn't remember that the Man in the Moon tried to offer Pitch the job once.

"First questions," he goes on, raising his paw, holding up two digits. "Who was the Traveler, and Collapse of what?"

He heard those capitals.

"Then as one Guardian to another, I bid you greetings, friend," Saint replies with a laugh. "I am Saint-14, and he,"--he points to the Ghost--"is Gepetto."

When Bunny asks about the Traveller and the Collapse, he seems to light up, seemingly excited to talk about it.

"The Traveler came to the Sol System centuries ago," the little Ghost starts, "Marking the beginning of what would become the Golden Age of Humanity. It first arrived on the surface of Mars, but would from planet to planet, slowly terraforming each and making them habitable for human habitation. It...is still debated as to what exactly the Traveler is, and even Golden Age documents recovered indicate that even back then they knew little about it. All we know is that it manifested itself as a great machine, spherical and vast, and that by studying it, Humanity developed advanced and often wondrous technologies. Such was the case that human lifespan was measured in centuries, rather than decades. At the time, little was known about the Light that the Traveler carried within it, but given the lineage of Speakers, who could commune with the Traveler in ways still not understood, they were aware of it in some manner."

"But it did not last. Eventually, the Traveler's nemesis, the Darkness, descended upon Humanity. It is unknown exactly what happened during the Collapse, but it is known that the Darkness swiftly destroyed everything that Humanity and the Traveler had built up over the Golden Age. Only by the sacrifice of the Traveler did anything of Humanity survive."

"In its dying moments, the Traveler created us, the Ghosts. We carried its Light, finding those who we felt strong or worthy enough to defend those who survived and gifting it to them, making them Risen. Those who heeded the call of the Traveler would eventually become known as Guardians, while those who used their gifts for their own ends would be Warlords. Thankfully, since the dawn of the City Age, when the Last City was raised beneath the remains of the Traveler, Warlords are a thing of the past."

The Ghost's eye lights up, projecting a three dimensional projection of a vast city beneath a floating white orb.

"In the time since then, the City has expanded, and thanks to the effort of a particular Guardian, the Traveler has awakened and begun moving once again. Though it still has yet to make any overt actions as of yet, as it has not yet fully healed."

SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

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