DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL - INVESTIGATION

[goneawaymod]

DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call...The Twilight Zone.

LINKS
OOC FAMILY INFO/WORKSHIPPING
PLOT PART 1
NIGHT EVENT
NETWORK POST

MAP


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Darlington High School: The town's high school, home to various cliques of teenagers, and containing secrets that can only be discovered after dark.

Sheriff's Station: The sheriff seems like a typical sitcom sheriff, neighborly and helpful, but the sheriff's station has carefully guarded files that might be of interest to the New Hires.

Abandoned Factory: In such a sunshiney town, why is there an abandoned building?

Library: Information about the town can be found here, including a section with town records.

TV Studio: The possible source of strange broadcasts that can be found on TVs in Darlington.

???: A completely unassuming house.

Abandoned Mall: Another abandoned building, and one that's outside of time. This shopping mall is a decade or two early for the time period in the sitcom. Perhaps something useful can be found inside.

Murnjgod Appliances: The TV's in the window of Murnjgod Appliances sometimes display cryptic messages that might offer clues or puzzles to be deciphered.

DETAILS

The first night and day don't leave them much freedom. The sitcom scenarios keep them occupied periodically during the day and evening and then whatever brought them there dragged them "home" the first night around 10 pm and then battened down every door and window of the building they were each in.

The second day is much the same. Forced scenarios, some free time in between. It's only at night fall that something relaxes, like the world is letting out a sigh. There is a sense of pervasive fatigue like whatever was pushing them through this has just exhausted itself trying to control all of them at once.

That means the doors and windows stay unlocked that night, allowing some of them to move around.

The streets are empty - emptier than streets often are in reality. There's no one driving home from a late shift or walking their dog. There are no barking dogs for that matter, either, despite them sometimes being visible in yards around the neighborhood.

Sitcoms tend to move to interior settings at night. So the streets are eerily quiet and empty. At 10 pm on the second night, instead of dragging them home and trapping them, every light in town other than their own house lights and the street lamps turns off simultaneously.

Their doors lock once but almost as if it's for show, a bluff to make them think they're trapped again. They can be unlocked and opened this time. The houses all have flashlights, and sheds full of tools that can maybe be used to break into places.

It's time to get to the bottom of this.

Comments

[paganpoetry]

"That's true. He wasn't as tall as all that, though. Certainly more in terms of presence than in terms of actual stature." She leafs through the books, and upon returning to the library proper stands in the light of the microfiche to see if having the color from the photograph projected onto her feels any different, allows her to be a little further from the black-and-white American "Wendy" that this place has cast her as.

"It appears not. Good eye." She plucks the note from Merton's hand. "This group of us, all us slaves to the Jorgmund...do we tend to cooperate, or are we a relatively disorganized unit?"

Because if everyone can be trusted to alert the others when they've explored somewhere or found something, the way they'll report this back to their communicators will be very different.

Rowena takes the colored photograph off the microfiche and tucks it into her purse.

[freakenstein]

He shrugged, giving her an exaggerated 'I don't know' expression.

"Not sure from experience. I'm pretty new here. But from what I've seen from the network archives, we seem to be a mix. Disorganized, with no set structure or leader, but cooperative about it. Hard to believe anyone would have found something like this and not reported it to the rest of the group." He lets his assumption that the note-taker wasn't one of them go unspoken. Partly because it feels obvious, and partly out of a fear that if it isn't obvious, it will make him sound paranoid.

"Was there anything useful in the books?"

[paganpoetry]

"Really?" Rowena smiles and raises her eyebrows. "From so many people, too? Whenever I've been in a group of more than a half-dozen action-prone adventurers, at least someone's stabbing everyone else in the back for their own agenda at any given moment."

Covens are nasty hives of cattiness and backbiting, and the only thing you can trust a Winchester about is that they'll always protect each other before anything else.

"Only enough to determine that the Darlington we're in appears to be a fanciful cover-up for the mundane horrors of American history." The whole country's younger than Rowena by a wide margin, and she'll never be able to imagine it as anything but a squalling baby of a nation anyway. "So, Dingle. How long have you been under the Jorgmund's thumb?"

[freakenstein]

"Really? Never really worked with a group that large before. But I could see how that would turn to chaos pretty quick." He couldn't help ideally wondering just how often she was one of the ones doing the stabbing but quickly pushed the thought away. That kind of suspicious speculation of an impromptu ally was far from productive. Instead, he latched onto the topic of what was in the books, responding with a shorty, dry, nervous laugh. "Heh, so in that way, it's like most American towns."

The question of how long he'd been on the rig gets him to worry at the edge of his lip, brow creasing at the realization that he actually has to think about it. That was...kind of unsettling.

"Three weeks I think. Time gets kind of funny when you don't see the sun and every day is pretty much the same. I've been mostly keeping track of the days based on our training schedules. If I have to be in the gym by five, it's a day that starts with a T and we begin by getting drop kicked into heck." It didn't take being on the Rig long to figure out he wasn't a fan of their training sessions. Never again would he complain about a vanilla gym class. He'd always had the opinion that physed teachers were sadistic but Planker really took that to a whole new level.