Piper 90: Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goneawaymod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
goneawayworld2021-04-02 06:31 pm
goneawaymod) wrote in goneawayworld2021-04-02 06:31 pm
Entry tags:
DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL - FINALE
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
Click for larger map
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
Day has broken and the town is still acting...strangely. The townspeople are milling around like normal, living their lives, but some of the monsters are still roaming around, too. People can avoid their attention by playing their parts whenever they're around, and they don't automatically attack everyone just for being outside.
Something is also wrong with whatever's controlling this place, like their searching and prodding around has somehow unhinged something. The mechanism that was shoving them around different places has stopped. The laugh track sometimes goes out of control, laughing at random moments.
The different groups are free to move around and prepare, with one pair going to fix the machine, and the other pair heading towards Joshua Nichols' house and then the TV station. Once the machine is fixed, others can start herding the townspeople out of town and the area's effect.
no subject
He says it like it's common enough in his world - because it is. There's always some upstart demagogue or another trying to cause problems that need to be put down.
Mass murder of civilians would fit into that but to be fair, people sometimes to find excuses for it on all sides.
There is a sound like he's trying to grind down a part that's gotten corroded, to make it smooth again.
no subject
"Pretty much. They're callin' it the 'Global Culture War'; Union wants some big, monocultural society. Thinks the world's put 'peace' over 'unity' or... something like that." She rolls her eyes with a huff. "Course, their idea of unity is totalitarian as sugar."
Two of her teammates have had up close and personal experience with the oppressive force of the Union's singular culture. Yaz's parents, taken away for being 'intellectuals'; her now only comfortable wearing a hijab in virtual spaces. Val/entina, unashamed as anything, including sharing the fact that under the Union they had not been able to be who they are.
"Half of North America's already under their thumb, we're trying to push the line back bit by bit." Trying being the key word. "Only recently got up close and personal with it all myself. Lot different on the battlefield than on a TV screen, let me tell ya."
Seventeen and thrown into the front lines of a global conflict. She's entirely too casual about that fact, considering.
She starts running some checks to make sure she hasn't fucked anything up whilst messing around.
no subject
"When you're finished over there, help me refit the power modulator. Everything in here is corroded. If I didn't know any better I'd think someone poured something acidic inside."
He considers what she said before that.
"Th is Union sounds tedious. Their miniscule little brains would probably explode on contact with the United Planets. Billions of different cultures in relatively peaceful coexistence."
He nods his head back and forth a little and yanks out another component, just tossing it over his shoulder like it's useless.
"Not that the peace isn't sometimes hard-won. That's my team's job, of course. Anything that disrupts the fragile existence of functional, peaceful, multicultural -" because it bears emphasizing the importance "- galactic civilization - from attempts to foment conflicts between worlds by people who seek to gain something from it, to totalitarian demagogues trying to rise to power, to xenophobic maniacs trying to kill other species - we have to stop it."
no subject
“Billions?” she says, standing back from the generator and looking his way with a note of awe. It makes sense, across god knows how many planets, but— “Wow.”
She’s pretty sure she’s got everything redirected, so she comes away from the generator entirely to help Brainy refit the power modulator now.
“Yeah, I think that would definitely explode a few heads back home. We can’t even get the whole Polity to cooperate within itself, sometimes.” She grumbles slightly at that. That mission was a pain in the ass.
no subject
"The United Planets was started because of the vision of one man, RJ Brande. A human. Faster than light travel was possible but it took weeks, even months, to travel between worlds in our galaxy. Then RJ invented the stargate, which made travel almost instantaneous. He went even farther, after, and tried to influence the various planetary governments into considering closer ties. Without being a politician or elected official, he brought enough people together that they decided we would be stronger as a United Planets."
That utopian world of billions of cultures stated with Earth.
"Earth was overwhelmingly in support of it and had been open to nonhuman immigration for a thousand years. The UPgov Council is still located on Earth."
A slight smile.
"The Legion itself was created when the three founding - nonhuman - members saved RJ's life at random from an assassin hired by a business associate. He explained how they'd acted like some of the heroes of Earth's past, noble individuals who united against against monumental threats, and offered to bank roll the team."
He finally looks at her sidelong. Briefly.
"Humanity is...resilient," he says, "and in many points of its history, capable of much more than it realizes. In almost every universe and time period I've encountered it, there have been at least some grains of good. And in some of them, like my own, humanity did more than resolve its conflicts, it...sometimes helps other species resolve even more. I've always found Earth to be more welcoming than my own planet. It may just take more time for your version of your people to do the same. Once you manage to stop your war."
no subject
She stalls a little in what she's doing as she listens, to properly take in the story he's telling her.
"Wow. That's... nice to know. Genuinely, no sarcasm," she says, as he finishes, snapping out of her focus enough to keep working. "Gets hard to have hope, sometimes. Not bein' able to see beyond the worst of it that's right there in front of us and all. Nice to have some perspective."
She chews the inside of her cheek, thinking. "The doc always said we're meant to be something special. My squad. He had this grand vision of what humanity could be, I think. But he only had us five." Six, if Sinclair hadn't been kidnapped or whatever happened to him. "Maybe we can be somethin' anyway, though. Something new. Sure feels it when we're uploaded. Which uh— that's a weird thing to say without context, it's a long story. Sometimes I'm a robot, is the short of it."
She shakes her head.
"Point is... yeah, maybe my world can get there, one day. That'd be nice."
no subject
He pulls off another internal panel and his eyes go wide.
"I don't think this machine broke down on its own. Look."
He pulls out a wire to show her. It's clearly been cut.
"Sabotage." He pulls out another component, stained brown, then sniffs it. "And I believe our caustic agent may have been someone's coffee."
Someone had cut some wires and tried to damage it with liquid as much as they could.
"Once we finish, we need to get to the others. I know everyone agreed to not kill the Jorgmund scientists or leave them to the Wastelanders but we need to make sure they adhere to that decision. Someone trying to resist Jorgmund may be in that group."
no subject
Cammie's eyes widen as what he's saying becomes clear, and she squints at the damaged components, the cut wiring.
"Oh, shoot, you're right," she says. "You think the sabotage is why the scientists all seemingly packed up and joined the sitcom cast? Messed up the machine, but exposed them all to the effects of this place in the process, bye bye scientists?"
If so, she wonders if they actually knew they'd end up subsumed, too, or if things had gotten out of their control.
"Okay, yeah, some of those guys were awfully gung-ho about the violence option, so... quick as we can, I guess." Then a beat, before she adds: "And yeah, I'll tell you about it sometime when we're all back; it is pretty cool."