[Open Broadcast]

[protect_and_serve]

Who: Everyone on the telepathic network (which is everyone)
When: Just after the new arrivals show up.
What: Joscelin attempting to get things organized.

[There’s a lot of chatter going on, literally making it hard to hear yourself think, between veterans gossipping and speculating what the new wave of Travelers means, and accidental broadcasts by panicked new arrivals, until one hard-edged thought cuts through it all.]

Enough.

You all need to stop this before we drive ourselves insane.

Anyone with experience on the Network, I want a few organized broadcasts offering help and information to newcomers. We don’t call them Fools.

If you’re new, stay calm. No-one can overhear you unless you’re projecting. Try to divide yourselves as evenly as you can between the people giving you answers. That much is instinctive, you won’t have trouble as long as you can imagine it.

Anyone who’s been here longer and wants to speculate? Don’t do it publicly. Find your own little corners, or keep it off the network.

New telepaths. You’ll need to find someone more experienced more than anyone else does.

And everyone be ready for a new Jaunt.

Comments

[superieure]

[None of that means anything to her. The words are familiar, but put together in that order. He might as well have explained why a raven was like a writing desk.]

[Instead, she searches for it directly in his mind.... and hears nothing.]

[Not the low murmur of background voices she's used to, that she thinks of sometimes as music. Dead silence.]

[Her eyes narrow and within seconds she's in his personal space, has him by the throat and back to the wall. Her grip isn't vice-like, just enough to hold him in one place. He's a mutant. She has no desire to hurt him more than necessary.]

What have they done to us?

[notinthecards]

[Despite himself, Remy flinches. He flails. There's a moment, maybe, where he could have reacted, but he lets it pass. He doesn't want to escalate things.

Pressed against the wall, he sighs, and shrugs, as best he can with his trenchcoat bunched and pulled taut, suspended as he is.]

They pull us all into this space, and they link our minds. But the power doesn't come from nowhere. Every telepath and every teleporter in this place is brought down to level.

[superieure]

[Fear. She smelled it before she saw it, and it's that assertion that she still has the power to instil it - however fleetingly - that pacifies her. She relaxes her grip, though she doesn't let go just yet.]

Fine.

You said you've been here a year?

[How can they keep us that long?]

[notinthecards]

Just a guess, chere. Three jaunts ago we were sent to a world that played with our minds. Now, everything before that is a bit of a blur. But a jaunt averages a month, and I've been on thirteen.

[superieure]

[A hollow laugh. She lets him go, finally.]

So they make us dance for their pleasure too?

[notinthecards]

[He pauses to straighten his coat.]

Oh, we do a fine fais do-do.

The Trumps don't let us see it right on, but they have an agenda. Every world, changes to be made. They don't talk to us direct, but they have ways to let us know what they want anyway.

[superieure]

Perhaps you do. I'm not inclined.

[She won't have a choice in the matter, but for now she's extremely unwilling to accept that.]

Do we even get paid?

[notinthecards]

I have cash from seven worlds in my pockets. Even from one I don't think I've ever been too. How well you think that spends back home, chere?

[He laughs, and shakes his head.]

Non. You salvage what you can, maybe learn a few new tricks... a few people used to think we'd get rewarded at the end, but just like everybody else, they never make it there, so how likely is that?

[superieure]

If you get it to the right people, quite a bit.

[There's eccentrics, and the underworld, but she's sure Remy knows more than her about that. She's just being deliberately contrary.]

We're not animals learning the cha-cha. There's an office here, mark my words, I'll find it.

[And with that, she flips her hair and stalks off. One could almost see the smoke blowing from her ears.]