synopsychic | [Open Broadcast]

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[Open Broadcast]

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.

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Remy LeBeau. The boy might have a stick in an impolite place, but nothing he just said was wrong. I'm just a little busy now, hanging off the ceiling over your heads, but you find the charming Cajun in the trenchcoat, and I'll tell you what's what.

Edited 2014-04-05 05:15 (UTC)

Gambit.

[In the haze of voices in her head, far more intrusive and unpleasant than the low murmur she's accustomed to, she latches on to the first familiar thing. (not true, the first familiar thing is being called a fool, and she returns the favour with a few choice, muttered insults at the perpetrator.) But he is there and his voice is the same as she remembers from her research, and the fact that someone here already knows more than she does is an affront.]

What is this?

Monet St. Croix, no?

[There's a curious slant to his mental voice, but also an edge of amusement.]

You've just been shanghaied onto a journey into mystery, chere.

M, [she clarifies; better that than demand he call her madamoiselle.] I'm not in the mood for games. Whose neck do I have to wring?

How much do you know about tarot, chere?

[He still sounds a trifle amused. The explanation has an order to it, and he's not ready to let it be rushed just yet.]

Superstitious nonsense. [She places one hand on her hip, breathing more steadily now, slaking her anger by imagining him in a headlock.] Next.

Edited (icon) 2014-04-05 16:41 (UTC)

Here they take it seriously. It's why they call you Fools. The first card, the one with zero on it. Zero jaunts, zero investigations, zero experience. if you lay out the Major Arcana in order, they tell a story. The Mystic Journey, going from one strange place to another, pulled by unseen strings of fate.

We're on that journey. If you're a Fool, then right now I'm Death again. I've been doing this a year or more. And I haven't seen any necks to wring. The trumps like to keep out of sight. If it weren't for the way they play with telepaths, we wouldn't even be sure they exist.

[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?

[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.

[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?]

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.

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

So they make us dance for their pleasure too?

[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.

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superieure - 2014-04-08 15:53 (UTC) - Expand

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notinthecards - 2014-04-08 18:36 (UTC) - Expand

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superieure - 2014-04-12 07:54 (UTC) - Expand

[Curious, Zelman glances up and then turns and, without any thought or hesitation, simply walks up the side wall and along the ceiling until he stops a few feet away from Remy.

And then he offers a small half-smile and arches a brow.]

Remy LeBeau, Zelman Clock. It's a pleasure to meet you and I believe I am interested in hearing what's what with this place.

Only too glad to help. To begin... this isn't a place, so much as a spot where different places overlap.

[He arches an eyebrow and bridges a deck of cards between one hand another, back and forth, rapidly.]

When you look, hard to tell where one card ends and another starts, no? It's a little like that.

[Unfortunately, Zelman's eyesight is considerably sharper than that of most human's, so the explanation isn't the best example - he can see each card perfectly. The point, however, he gets and so he simply nods a bit.]

And just how did we get to this overlapping space? Or more to the point, how do we leave?

We were brought here by somebody with bad manners and good taste. When they have something for us to do, we get sent out to do it.

And what incentive could this person possibly offer me to get me to do his bidding.

[He shrugs and starts to pull a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.]

I'm not exactly the 'at your beck and call' sort.

Half the time, mon ami, they don't give you the choice. They send you to the new world believing you were born and raised there. The other half... until you do the job, you don't come back. And they don't send us to many delightful vacation spots.

[Color him still unimpressed.]

So we're to perpetuate this continued control by playing along during the times we're aware?

I still fail to see how this is incentive. Perhaps...

[And here he gives a slow smile as he taps out a smoke and lifts it to his lips.]

These controllers need the proper incentive to let us go back to our own place sooner, rather than later.

And if they send you away, mon ami, are you so sure you know where they'll put you? Sometimes people vanish, and sometimes they come back. Nobody ever claim to go back home again.

Twenty-two Jaunts, that's the theory. After we do that they let us go.

Seems naive to take a kidnapper's word, but that's just me. Besides... if they leave me someplace else, that's fine.

[That said, he lifts his free hand to touch his fingertips to the tip of his smoke and, with a flash of crimson eyes, lights his cigarette to take a deep inhale.]

The last place was getting a little boring anyway.

No word to give. No proof they even exist, except that someone has to behind it all, no?

[Remy smiles, produces a cigarette from within his own coat with a flourish, and holds it up, in a clear "got a light?" gesture.]

But generally speaking, they don't let us get bored.

[There's a second flash in crimson eyes, igniting a discreet little flame before the other's cigarette as he shrugs.]

Behind it, sure. So where'd you get the twenty-two caveat from then?

[A beat as he takes another hit, lets it out slowly.]

...How so? Because a place like this can only entertain for so long.

Superstition. Twenty-two Major Arcana in a Tarot deck. One service to each trump, and we're released. But nobody's ever done twenty-two.

[He takes a long, slow pull on his own cigarette, exhaling a precise stream of smoke into the air, and shaking his head.]

This is where we relax. Outside... back in the worlds again... that's where the real work gets done.

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