[During the Fourth Wall]

[itsananimalthing]

So I guess most of you went to Italy or somethin'. The rest of us went to Plathville, on Belljar island. Guessin' some of you will remember that place. I did. For anybody who don't remember it, basically an island with little city where you showed up from some other world and got stuck there forever. Big-ass forcefield kept everybody in, even underwater, and supplies got ported in from somewhere. We showed up, grumped around and made people angry cuz we were stuck differently from their kind of stuck, then disappeared again without actually solving the mystery, or whatever we were supposed to do there.

It's changed a lot since then. It was pretty much abandoned not long after we all vanished-- and we did actually vanish, even the ones who didn't show up in liminal again after, from the sound of it. There were riots and shit, they burned the Hotel California out, and everybody wound up getting evacuated.

Whole place looked like some kinda surveillance state shit. Cameras everywhere, dimensional portal in the basement of the hospital controlled remotely, underground bunkers with office desks and training grounds, the works. Not sure if the evacuation was an end to the experiment or whatever it was, but might've been.

Anything else I missed that the rest of us should know? I got out of contact with a lot of the kids exploring around the island, but I heard back from some of you.

Comments

[amadine]

Raidou and I came across another subterranean structure, on the manmade island near the barrier. A staging area for their guard detail, I'd wager - there were weapons and armour, and robots that resembled some of the less sentient equipment from Gehenna, along with sensor stations.

[itsananimalthing]

Gotta love how the people in the island before us didn't even know about all this shit. Can't think it's all just cuz it was well hidden. Unless they just weren't telling the Travelers everything, which I guess I wouldn't blame 'em for.

[amadine]

I'd imagine they were preoccupied with the obvious threat, and didn't think to look for the hidden ones.

Of course, that's assuming their captors weren't keeping control of them with poisons, or mind control, or neatly dispatching anyone who stumbled across their secrets.

[itsananimalthing]

Yeah, I was kinda thinkin' the rest of that, maybe.

Though wasn't much in the way of obvious threats, so long as you stayed out of the worst parts of the jungle. You just got dumped there. The only real "problem" was that you couldn't go home again.

And we proved that one wrong, just by showin' up and then leaving again, they figured.

[capital_asset]

Adding to what Sabetha said, the older rabbits on the island mentioned that they used to hear strange noises that frightened them away, but the noises stopped at least a few years ago - their sense of time is different enough that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly, but I'd guess that the noises stopping coincided with the evacuation of the remaining population.

The entrance to the bunker was hidden under a boulder, although if they truly wanted to keep it hidden, they probably shouldn't have shaped the island itself to look like a star. Then again, they may not have expected people to be able to spot it from the air.

[amadine]

Or it was well enough defended when it wasn't empty that they had no real concerns about anyone spotting it. Assaulting a guard post is a fool's errand at the best of times; unarmed and hampered by the difficulty of the crossing, it would have been suicide.

[capital_asset]

True... they did have all that weaponry stored there. And the shape of the thing isn't really the important part, anyway.

I'm wondering if it wasn't someone's idea of humor somehow.

[amadine]

Which part?

[runawaystory]

...Nice to know what happened, I guess.

[as long as evacuation isn't a euphemism for something else]

[itsananimalthing]

As well as we can from old radio backups and shit, yeah.

[He's moderately sure it wasn't a cover story, anyway. There would have had to be some sign of a mass extermination of people.]

Mostly it was nice to find out the rest of us weren't left there.

[runawaystory]

[on the other hand, they don't know where everyone was evacuated to. maybe the mass extermination was on the other side of the portal or whatever.]

Where do you think they are, then?

[itsananimalthing]

Don't know. Could be lost on walkabout. Could be they went home. That happens sometimes, too.

[claudiometer]

Hotel California? Seriously? [No really seriously.]

I think I'm glad I missed out.

[pseudologist]

What, you mean you don't want to visit a giant prison with a bunch of creepy references in its naming scheme?

[Okay, he might have brought a little more than magic back from teaching in teenaged sparkle hell. Don't judge.]

[claudiometer]

Already done my time in the bell jar, thanks. And dealt with Sylvia Plath's soul-sucking typewriter.

[pseudologist]

It says something about the kind of weird shit we've all been through that I'm not actually sure whether you're being figurative or literal.

[capital_asset]

...Does that mean something in particular?

[claudiometer]

It's from a song. Last line's 'you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.'

[capital_asset]

...Ah.

[That's... moderately sadistic.]

[pseudologist]

...Well, shit. Any luck figuring out what was going on this time?

[itsananimalthing]

Some kind of experiment. Found the dimensional portal we all got dragged in with, us and them alike, found the guard bunker, found the office bunker, found the surveillance... they were watchin' everything we did.

I'm just pissed we didn't figure it out while we were there. Wasn't that hard to find.

[pseudologist]

The danger of being at each other's throats. And I'm guessing it was probably easier to move around without annoyed locals getting in the way.

[canbebrave]

I suppose out of all of that, we can be glad none of ours were trapped there, after the few of us that left did.

[itsananimalthing]

That's probably the best take-away from all this, yeah.

[canbebrave]

Do you think they're all still out there, lost?