August 2023 Test Drive Meme

[singmod]

AUGUST 2023 TDM

PROMPT ONE — ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST: A group of newcomers find themselves lost in the frozen wilds and vulnerable to the dangers of nature. With luck, they make it to the town of Milton, and to a friendly face offering food, warmth and shelter.

PROMPT TWO — HOPE NOBODY NEEDS THIS ANYMORE: Once recovered from their journey, newcomers are free to explore the town of Milton for supplies and find any signs of the townsfolk.

PROMPT THREE — THE SIREN OF MILTON BASIN: A mysterious woman haunts the frozen lake of the Milton Basin, trying to lure newcomers to their deaths.

ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST

WHEN: Day One.
WHERE: Milton, Milton Outskirts.
CONTENT WARNINGS: potential animal attacks, potential injuries, potential cold injuries/hyperthermia risk.

’You are the Interloper. You are not part of nature’s design.’

It’s the last thing you hear. A dark, deep voice. Impossibly ancient. You feel afraid. Maybe you’re dreaming, maybe you’re wide awake. You saw the lights, and then your world went dark. But you hear it in the blackness, you won’t forget those words.

You awaken. You are not where you were before. It’s different for everyone, there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern in where you find yourself. You may open your eyes to find yourself in a cold, dim and dank cabin. The air is stale, dust hangs in the rays of weak sunlight that shine through the tiny windows. Someone lived here once, but they aren’t to be found. You look around, it seems like no one has been here in several days, maybe longer. The fire is cold, the dishes in the sink are a little mouldy. It is quiet. The wood creaks around you. Or perhaps you may awaken to find yourself shivering in the yawning maw of a cave, the freezing stone below you. Or maybe you’re unfortunate enough to sit up to find yourself lying in the snow, in the middle of the wilderness. Snow lies thick around you. It’s freezing out. You haven’t felt a cold like this before in your entire life. Cruel and biting. You have no idea where you are, and what’s worse — you are completely alone.

You may feel different, too. Any powers or magics you may have feel... absent. Disconnected. Things that may not have affected you previously now do. Something in you has changed.

You know you can’t stay where you are. You’ll need to move, try to work out where you are and how you came to be here. So you walk, head out into the unknown, in hope of finding a trail or a road. You’ll find one soon enough. It’s here you may find someone else in the same boat as yourself, equally freezing and confused. You’ll both need to keep going. It won’t be easy. You hear howls of wolves around you, and the terrain is difficult: slips and falls are likely. You’re completely vulnerable out here in the open.

But it won’t be long until you see it: the lazy trail of smoke rising in the air. Fire.

Follow it, and soon enough the way you’ve taken will certainly become a path or road. Unfolding before you in the mountainous forests, you’ll see the most welcome of sights: a small mining town tucked up in the valley. Battered, rusted road signs will direct to “MILTON, POP. 947”. You’re almost there, you keep going, and it looks like other people have had the same idea as you. As you head into the outskirts and further into town, you’ll find it’s a little easier to walk but the cold has gripped you hard. You’ll find the buildings, both shops and homes, are dark and lifeless, some of them are boarded up. Other than those heading in the same direction, towards the smoke, you won’t find any townsfolk coming to greet you, or even looking at you from behind curtains. … Where is everyone?

Towards the center of town, you’ll find the building from which the smoke rises: a school-house of sorts, or some kind of community hall. Perhaps both. You’ll find more and more people all drawn to this place, each and every one of them in the same position as yourself (and your companion, if you’ve found one). Some are in worse states than others: some are bloodied, nursing bite wounds or cuts; others might have some other kind of injury sustained in the journey here from falls. Others may look as if they could faint from the cold at any second.

The door opens, and you’re greeted by the gnarled, wizened face of an elderly man, dressed in thick furs. He has a kind face. He smiles warmly, and with pity, ushering you in with haste.

“It seems like a great deal of you have come.” he muses finally. “I am Methuselah. I welcome you Newcomer, although I’m sorry for how you’ve come to find yourself here. Please, warm yourselves. Eat. Get your bearings. Mother Nature has not been kind to you.”

The room is dim, lit mostly by the weak natural daylight through the windows. A roaring fire sits at one end of the huge hall. It crackles, bright and cheerful…. and warm. Even as big as this place is, the room is pleasantly warm. You’ll also find basic cots set up down one side of the hall, places to rest for a moment and get your bearings, or just trying to recover from the cold or any injuries. Down the other side are tables and chairs, and long, foldable tables laden with food, drinks and bottled water similar to one might find at a soup kitchen.

There are canisters with hot herbal teas and coffee, along with soup and stew and trays of charred moose, deer and rabbit meats, instant mashed potatoes, and tinned vegetables. It’s very basic, but it’s hot and filling. A feast. The old man has been busy. And Methuselah will continue to busy himself, still; there is plenty to do. He will fetch blankets, tend to wounds, serve food and drinks. He does not have much time to talk. More and more people seem to be coming in from the cold. He will not stop to sit and rest until everyone is seen to, taking up a place by the fire to gaze silently into its flames. He is troubled, thoughtful.

If you ask him where you are, he will simply respond: “This is Milton, of the Northern Territories.”

If you ask how you came to be here, he will shake his head: “Something has changed. The sky, it was… full of light. The Flare. I felt you coming, a great arrival. But I cannot say for certain how, or why you are here.”

He is regretful, genuinely so. He wishes he had more answers for you, but he does not. Instead he will simply insist you rest, get warm and eat. There is plenty to go around. Eventually, when you feel well enough, Methuselah will gesture to the door: “When you are ready and able, explore the town. Many left, others could not make it out. I have found no one but the dead. They will have no use of the place now, perhaps you might in the meantime.”

HOPE NOBODY NEEDS THIS ANYMORE

WHEN: First couple of weeks since arrival.
WHERE: Milton.
CONTENT WARNINGS: frozen dead bodies, unexplained deaths, suicide, murder.

Other than Methuselah in the Hall, the town of Milton is void of life. While not a particularly large town, there’s a few stores and even a gas station. Life here is rustic. Function over form. Homes are simple but sturdy and warm, it’s a rugged place and one can easily deduce that the folk living here led simple, self-sufficient lives.

Commercial buildings and stores of note include a bank and post office, a hunting/fishing supply store, a grocery store, and a clothing store. There is even a church just on the outskirts of town. The buildings are ripe for picking, with most of them still with the doors unlocked, including the residential buildings. Others are locked, but can be broken into easily enough. A few are even trickier, with some of them boarded up or with entrances blocked. In terms of contents, a third of the residential buildings seem to be almost empty, as if the owners moved out long ago. There might still be things left behind of use: old, warm clothes good for the wintery weather, tools and cooking utensils — but little in terms of food. Even if the former residents move some time ago, they didn’t completely empty their homes.


Most of the homes in Milton seem to be left as if the owner stepped out only a short while ago, and with very little disturbance. Some houses, however, seem to be abandoned in a hurry, with a mess of items strewn about in some last-minute dash to grab essentials: keys, identification, treasured personal items, supplies for a quick exit. Cupboards are typically filled with an abundance of canned goods, and some chilled goods might have survived in the cold weather within the fridge-freezers, but it might be a gamble if one wants to try and eat them. Any and all electronics within homes: televisions, computers, mobile-phones — although dated, will all appear cracked and damaged, and will not function or turn out at all. The same will go for any vehicles around the town: there is no hope of starting any of them.

Diaries and journals kept by the former residents may remark on a change in the weather, with the cold and harsh climate becoming more hostile as of late. Others remark strange lights in the skies, dating several weeks or so ago, strange noises in the air, issues with power and electrical items. Some make mentions of changes to the wildlife, with wolves coming close to the town even when they had never done so before. One or two mention problems on the Mainland, with increasing difficulty of reaching out to loved ones who don’t live in the Northern Territories, or deliveries being unable to arrive. The growing trend is that something odd and terrible has been happening, although no one can truly explain what, and the problems have been growing increasingly worse and worse up to the final entries. You might note that the actual years and dates might not line up with your own: the current year given in these entries is 2014.

The newcomers are free to take over these homes, if they wish. No one appears to be stopping them, and even Methuselah seems to shrug about moving in. And as he’d mentioned, he has found no one but the dead: and plenty of them can be found.

Bodies of the town’s former residence can be found scattered over the town. In homes, in stores, out in the snow. They appear still relatively fresh, although it may be hard to tell if it’s from the cold or if it’s from very little time passing. Most appear to have died from cold exposure, some appear to have simply dropped dead on the spot. Others may be found with a gun in hand. Some, worryingly, appear to have perished by another’s hand. You won’t find the entirety of the town’s population, but there’ll be at least several dozen. Men, women, children.

Methuselah seems to have begun laying the dead to rest, but there’s too many for one man to do. Maybe you can work out what to do with them, try to bury them in their backyards, or try to take them to the churchyard.

THE SIREN OF MILTON BASIN

WHEN: Until the next Aurora.
WHERE: Milton Basin.
CONTENT WARNINGS: mental manipulation, malevolent mythical creatures, falling through ice, attempted drowning/possible successful drowning, potential character death.


Those who venture further south of the town will find themselves traversing the steep, winding paths down towards the Milton Basin. The way down is treacherous, but if enough care is taken you should be able to make it down in one piece. The water is just about completely frozen over down here, thick and sturdy enough to walk over for the most part. Within the Basin there’s more wildlife to be found: deer and rabbit are plenty. And there’s even plenty of foragables, too.

Out on the water are two small ice-fishing cabins, enough to fit one or two people inside comfortably, which hold a few forgotten supplies to try out some ice-fishing if you want to see if anything bites. Both even hold little log burners to keep warm. An old hunter’s shack can be found along the water’s edge, for those not quite brave enough to travel out onto the ice, to take shelter in for when the weather gets a little too difficult, with an old log burner still working within it.

But it’s calm down here, for the most part. Peaceful even. It’s an excellent place for fishing and hunting, and a little more sheltered from the freezing winds.

Until you hear the voice. Something soft and feminine, echoing across the ice. The Basin helps to amplify the sound, and for a long time you can’t quite be sure of where exactly it’s coming from. It’s singing, she is singing. Something old, in a language you can’t quite understand. Maybe it’s not even a language at all, but simply melodic vocalizations. It’s... beautiful, you’ve never heard anything like it before in your life.

And then you see her: a woman standing upon the frozen waters of the Basin. You realise she’s probably the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen in your life, even if you can’t quite even begin to describe her. She appears different to everyone who beholds her, some one might see her hair is long and dark, others might see her with neat red curls. Some swear her skin is dark and rich, that looks almost plum when the light hits it just so, others claim it to be cool-toned that glistens like sunlight on snow. Whatever someone might find aesthetically pleasing is how she’ll appear, and even then to describe her to others will bring you at a loss for words. And she’s singing… to you, for you.

You’re compelled to go to her, although you can’t explain why. You’re drawn to approach her, to hear her better, see her better. Your feet carry you onto the ice, out into the midst of the Basin. You ignore the calls of everyone and anyone around you, fixated on the woman before you. She smiles when you’re close enough, beckons you a little closer.

… Then everything changes. Without warning, the woman leaps for you, her face contorting into something hideous, mouth opening to scream to reveal rows upon rows of tiny, needle-like teeth. She collides with you, and the force (paired with the slippery ice below you) is enough to send you off your feet. As you fall back, the ice cracks beneath you with an almighty sound, plunging you into the frigid depths below.

The woman fights to put you beneath the water’s surface, those needle-like teeth bared like some ferocious beast. She can be fought off easily enough, but she might just drown you before you’re able to. If you’re lucky, someone might be able to help pull you out. Tools or weapons made of iron or silver are especially harmful to her.

Once you’re pulled from the water, getting somewhere warm will be the utmost priority — otherwise the cold will kill you quicker than the woman would. The woman, you’ll find, will have vanished, and the ice where you’d fallen will have restored itself, as if it had never been broken at all.

FAQs

ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST

1. Items characters have brought from home can be found either strewn around them when they awaken, or in the community hall — as if someone left them out for them to collect. Methuselah will not know how they got there, and will be quite bemused by the happenings.

2. Reminder that all characters are now depowered upon arrival. They can choose not to notice it at first, or can immediately sense something is different about them.

3. If asked any personal questions, Methuselah will smile and say "Oh, you don't want to know about an old man like me. But I have lived all over in these parts for all my life." He will be more concerned with trying to help Newcomers, and is genuinely concerned for them and their well-being.

4. If asked how he knew that the Newcomers were arriving, he concedes that although it is a strange thing to know, it is much like how one knows a storm is coming.

HOPE NOBODY NEEDS THIS ANYMORE

1. Characters are welcome to take up residency in any of the homes of Milton. Methuselah will strongly advise characters to leave a huge, dilapidated house — known as Milton House — well alone, due to extensive fire damage.

2. More information about Milton can be found here.

THE SIREN OF MILTON BASIN

1. Characters with hearing impairments will not be susceptible to the Siren's song, or may only be somewhat susceptible depending, but may be entranced to a degree by looking at the Siren. However, this will be far easier to snap out of.

2. The Siren cannot be killed, only fought off. She will disappear for a length of time to recover before she attempts to lure her next victim.

Comments

vasiliy yegorovich ardankin | original — historical/(secret) revenant

[m1895]

[ vasiliy was born in russia in 1910, the son of two first-wave bolsheviks, and came up a genuine and devout believer in marxism-leninism. his career in the communist party eventually led to him being transferred to the NKVD (stalinist secret police) when the head of the personnel department where he worked was appointed NKVD chief. he spent four years, including those at the height of the yezhovshchina, as an interrogator tasked with posing as a friendly figure and emotionally manipulating hundreds prisoners into signing false confessions. when the man who brought him in was executed in 1940 because he fell out of stalin's favor, so too were vasiliy and his cadre, poisoned by association; he experienced the very same arrest, interrogation, and execution everyone who passed through his hands did.

but his story didn't end there. for reasons unknown, he awoke in the middle of nowhere in 2015, alive, well, and carrying the documents of a man by the very same name born in 1985. he fled to america as soon as he was able to learn english and train in a desirable skill, fearing that he'd be discovered and executed if he remained in russia; over the past three years, he's been an EMT in chicago, gradually coming to terms with what happened to him, (still) unlearning stalinist programming while trying to be a better person in general, and trying to balance out some of the cosmic harm he did over his four years in stalin's regime in an attempt to find some respite from the overwhelming guilt. he defaults to english, which he's mostly but not entirely fluent in, because his patterns of speech/tone/inflection in his own language are 'old timey' in the sort of way old voice recordings are.

at his best, he's generous, communal-minded, brave, compassionate, and self-sacrificial. at his worst? he's a follower highly susceptible to cults of personality, he's deeply paranoid and closed-off, and views everything through a lens of ideology and greater meaning that tends to make him attribute motives and underlying traits to actions that simply... aren't there. ]

I. I've been told I was born to endure this kinda weather
METHUSELAH'S FEAST.

For the second time in his lives, Vasiliy awakes on his back in the snow, squinting up at a wet gray sky. For a moment he simply lies there, taking stock: he can feel all of his limbs. He doesn't feel like he's been injured in any way. With one shaking, pink-flushed hand, he feels along the front of his body, fingers brushing over the familiar pockets and buttons and rough fabric of a Chicago municipal EMT's dark navy winter uniform. He's not sure what he expected, exactly. Last time it had been the prison clothes he died in. He's still dressed as he was in his last waking—living?—memory here, too. And the gun's still tucked into the front of his waistband, beneath his belt.

’You are the Interloper. You are not part of nature’s design.’ They knew. Whoever they might be, they knew—that he didn't belong, that something went awry. He should be dead in the ground, and maybe this is his punishment.

Vasiliy unsteadily rises to his feet, grateful for the thickness and traction of his work boots. His surroundings don't look unlike Russia in the winter, like the landscape that whisked past the windows on the rail line from Petrograd to Moscow, when he'd first been transferred to the NKVD. His chest twists and aches as he stares at the treeline of tall snow-dusted conifers, some immaterial longing that leaves him almost nauseous even after three years of getting used to not living in Russia.

He follows other human footprints, revolver drawn, until at last he comes to a sign and the fleeting mixture of hope and anxiety evaporates. Milton's American or Canadian, not Russian. He's safer here, but he's not sure he wanted to be. Three years is a long time to spend a stranger in a strange land that embodies everything you despise.

There's smoke coming from one of the chimneys, so he tucks the gun back into the front of his pants, zips his jacket over it, and heads in that direction.

After the man calling himself Methuselah has given his speech and answered what questions he can, Vasiliy takes a few things to eat, but he doesn't sit down to do so, not when there are so many people cold (some on the verge of frostbite) and injured. He joins the old man in walking among the people sitting on the floor as he eats, strap of his kit bag slung over one shoulder, eyes quickly scanning exposed digits and comparing their color against a background of experience—medical and as a Russian.

A.

[ When he sees fingertips that are far too flushed or pale, dangerously so, he approaches, regarding the owner with a degree of grimness. It's clear, no matter the language characters hear his words in, that he's deliberately speaking a language that he's not completely fluent in. ]

You have frost-nip. You need to warm your hands or you could lose fingers.

B.

[ Or it's possible that the chief complaint is more egregious. To most of those from the 21st or late 20th century, Vasiliy will probably stand out as an island of (medical) authority, a part of the establishment to come to for help—he's standing upright and confident, wearing a heavy navy jacket emblazoned with EMS in seven-inch reflective letters across the back and embroidered with a silver-dollar sized star of life on the front, trimmed with reflective tape for good measure. Maybe your character's the one wounded, or maybe they came and grabbed him to tend someone with wounds. Either way, he's dropping his kit bag on the ground and crouching down, voice firm and reassuring. ]

It's alright. You're okay. Can you tell me what's going on?

II. Heavenly shades of night are falling
HOPE NOBODY NEEDS THIS ANY MORE.

[ Something shuts off.

Vasiliy doesn't remember when he developed the ability to split his mind and emotions so thoroughly, probably some time after he learned to interrogate. Maybe much earlier, when his mother ushered him away from a frozen body outside of a Petrograd liquor store on their walk to the factory he worked in when he was seven years old. Maybe when he saw fresh bodies crumple after the Tsar's bullets pierced them, or twenty years later, when his friends' did the same.

Regardless of when he learned it, the disconnection had come naturally, by the time he was riding in the back of ambulances, declaring deaths on the scene, watching other human bodies hemorrhage blood, mutilated in horrible, unnatural ways.

It is, if one were to ask Vasiliy, a quintessentially Soviet urge: Survive. No matter how unhappy you are, or how much better it might be to die, survive.

So he does so here. He volunteers to help with the corpse disposal; despite being shorter than most of these people at 5'7", he's stronger by virtue of a lot of exercise, most of it with the intention of being able to lift bodies heavier than his own. He's also better able to handle it, emotionally, than most of the people here; he gets the sense that for the most part the new population is a civilian one.

Fellow volunteers may note that Vasiliy works without stopping, without complaint, without request for food or water—like a mule that's spent the entirety of its life canalside, he simply settles into the rhythm of it and doesn't surface.

At least until he needs to smoke. He pauses after he and the other person carrying the latest body—a man's—lower it into the ground and fumbles for a cigarette in his breast pocket. With an unlit smoke held in his lips he taps another out of the pack and holds it out in their direction. ]

You smoke?

III. Out of the mist your voice is calling
THE SIREN OF MILTON BASIN.

[ All at once, the desperate thrashing in the icy waters jolts Vasiliy from the trace that brought him here. He sees it then: there's blood staining the choppy black waters, bubbles floating to the surface as it churns like a shark is devouring a seal beneath the ice. Briefly, a human head surfaces, gasping for air like a carp before the woman shoves it under again; arms fly out, clawing at her, pulling her hair.

A.

He fumbles for the gun in his waistband and extends his arm, cocking the hammer as he waits for her to emerge again. ]

Get away from it! Don't fight, get away!

[ With a spray of icy water, she bursts from the surface again, sending shards of ice skittering across the lake's cover. He fires once, twice into the center of the woman's chest—but she doesn't drop dead, or even bleed. She does, however, let out an unholy, reptilian screech and momentarily let go of her victim, creating an opening. ]

B.

[ As soon as the thing's gone, he gets as close to the edge as he trusts he can without breaking the ice, crawling on his belly and extending a hand for the frantic victim to grab. ]

Take my hand. You're going to be okay. You're going to be okay.

III. You're a drifter, a shapeshifter
WILDCARD.

[ vasiliy will mostly be trying to contribute where he can - putting in a lot of physical labor and medical work. it's possible to catch him ice skating prior to the appearance of the siren - if your character's doing similar and looks like they could use some instruction, he's your guy. if you'd like to plot something out or have an idea that's not on here shoot me a pm or pp bluehellgazette! ]

IA

[solitarysoul]

[Levi sat on the floor near a wall, figuring someone else could use a table or a chair more than him. He's placed his rifle on the floor next to him while he picks at a plate of meat. He's not sure what kind of meat, but he doesn't care. It was free and warm.]

Hm?

[He looks up at the man, taking a moment to register than someone said something to him.]

Frost-nip?

[He's heard of frost bite, a slow death to ones fingers and toes as the cold seeped in, perhaps it was something like that? Levi had been lucky enough to never get it, but he's seen it. He frowns and looks at his hand.]

Can-can it be treated?

[Back where he came from, it usually wasn't.]

[m1895]

Yes. It is easy to treat at this stage. You are lucky. Stay there.

[ Vasiliy holds up a hand, then momentarily leaves, returning with a bowl of steaming water which he crouches down to set on the floor in front of his new patient. ]

Keep your fingers in this. Even if it starts to prickle or burn.

[solitarysoul]

[Levi chew on his lip, looking over his hand while Vasiliy goes to fetch the bowl. He's not really sure he can see anything different, so he'll just trust the doctor. Or whatever an EMT was.

He's also not sure if its one hand or both, so when Vasiliy returns he puts all his fingers in the water.]

I just need to leave them there? Is that it?

[m1895]

Until flushing is gone and feeling returns. They will prickle and sting. That is normal.

[ Vasiliy cants his head to the side ever-so-slightly, regarding the young man. ]

Do you need blanket?

[ He has one to give, the same style of mylar emergency blanket the Americans' FEMA uses. (That's one thing that comes easy to him—remembering all of their bureaus' acronyms. The Soviets had a distinct love of them, enough so for a period of time to pass in which children were named things such as Ogpu.) ]

[solitarysoul]

[He nods. Prickling and stinging was probably nothing compared to what he'd been through before coming here.]

Uh, no I'--[No, don't say you're fine. The doctor won't believe it]...I don't need one. its nice and warm in here.

[He's mostly covered up anyway, just no gloves and short sleeves.]

ii.

[patchwork]

[ They make an unusual and rather lopsided team. Grace is a half head shorter than him and much slighter, though she holds her own as they move the poor dead man from one spot on the ground to another: there is some reserve of strength in her that has not gone entirely squandered in fifteen years of isolation in the penitentiary, because she has not truly been isolated. She has, of course, been penitent. It is easy to be penitent when one is on one's hands and knees scrubbing scuffs from the floor. That, Grace thinks, is the natural state of penitence.

As soon as the body has been moved, Grace wipes her brow with the back of her hand. She is dressed quite incorrectly for her surroundings, though the precise nature of this incorrectness differs from many of the other arrivals here. Many of their number are simply wearing too few clothes made of strangely thin fabrics; Grace, at least, has the virtue of several layers of petticoats and a kerchief. Her auburn hair is covered by a simple white cap. The women she has seen here have done away with theirs already, or did not wear one in the first place, but Grace finds it difficult to truly let go of hers.

She wipes her forehead with her sleeve pulled over the bend of her wrist. At first the man's question doesn't register as one aimed in her direction, but when he receives no reply, she wonders with some incredulity if he really did mean to ask her after all. ]

Me, sir? [ She shakes her head. Her accent is Irish, her voice high and soft. ] I've had no opportunity to develop the habit.

[m1895]

[ Vasiliy has, in the brief time he and the Irish woman have been hitched together, decided that she's good company, a fellow worker he can relate to—even with minimal conversation—much more than some of the others here. There's something decidedly Russian to her countenance, something that reminds him of the party women he knew back home. Maybe it's the shared tendency toward tragedy among their people, or at least long bouts of grim weather.

There's also the matter that he can tell that she, like himself, like the engraved revolver tucked into his waistband beneath his jacket as he works, far predates this place. She's dressed like some sort of domestic servant; the way she puts her head down and simply works seems to corroborate that fact.

She calls him Sir, though, as if she doesn't see that he, too, shares her class background, a decidedly uncomfortable feeling. Nobody's ever misjudged his status as a part of the proletariat before, in Russia or in America. Maybe it's the uniform; to someone from what he assumes to be the 19th century, the bright reflective tape and richly dyed navy fabric probably seem like quite a luxury, not something that's very easily mass produced in Chinese sweatshops. ]

Please. We are equals. No need to call me 'Sir'. [ He extends the hand with the box again. ] Please, take it. Do you know how to smoke cigarettes?

[patchwork]

[ If she were asked why it had come out of her mouth, that pesky little word sir, she would likely have attributed it to a slip of the tongue, a bit of instinct, the same as coughing when there's a tickle in your throat. Whatever it was that made her say it, it's likely also the reason for the apprehension that crosses her face as she eyes the neat paper package of cigarettes.

Grace wipes both hands on her apron. It is not for her to look gift horses in mouths, but it is for her to decide whether she ought to reach out and place her hand between the teeth. A bite from a horse, she has heard, is a painful one. ]

I've seen others do it, and I suppose it ought to be quite simple, but all I've ever done with smoke in the past is choke on it. I don't think I'd get much use out of a cigarette, sir. [ Consternation touches her face, her lips pinching down at one corner. ] Forgive me, but I'm not sure what else I ought to call you, if we're to be equals. And if I can be entirely honest, I have always found it difficult to let go of a habit once formed, so please don't hold it against me if I slip up now and then.

[m1895]

[ Fair enough. Time in the "modern" world has, at least, given Vasiliy some time to adjust to the idea that smoke is quite offensive to some people; though he knew a few people back in the Lubyanka who didn't smoke, they never complained about everyone else who did. Normally he would wait to smoke in light of that bit about coughing, but he's already put off addressing the need as long as he can in the interest of continuing to work. He needs it.

So he lights a cigarette, takes a painfully long drag and turns his head to exhale smoke away from the woman before answering. The soothing rush of the first drag is immediate; he already feels a little bit better.

Comrade, he wants to say. Call me Comrade. Because that is a true signifier of equality, and three years later, it's still ingrained as the most appropriate way to address a fellow worker. But he remembers himself, and where he is, and what's at stake, and tamps down the urge. ]

Vasya. What is your name?

[patchwork]

Grace.

[ She takes note of the way he turns his head away to exhale. It's much appreciated. She doesn't much like the smell of tobacco, and it shows only that he's polite enough to consider her in the midst of an indulgence.

Now she has a name for him, at least, she can pin it to the image of him steadily growing in her mind. He would turn her head if she passed him on the street, perhaps just because of the intensity of him. Vasya. ]

If you don't mind my saying, I've never heard a name like that before. Which place does it come from?

[m1895]

Russia. I am from St. Petersburg.

[ Hers is a polite way of asking, moreso than he's gotten used to after three years in America: usually it's something like You're gonna have to spell that for me. He's not even giving those people a diminutive, either; it's the very common name (and, though he didn't realize this when he was filing his papers, uncommon spelling) Vasiliy, just Vasiliy, like the name of Stalin's son. Too much for Americans in their dimwitted complacency to consider spelling out, though of course he's supposed to know how to spell names like Gloucester and Tappan Zee and Benld. ]

You are Irish? Scottish?

[ He recognizes the general sound of her accent, even if his untrained ear can't really differentiate between the two localisms. He hadn't encountered either accent prior to coming to the U.S., so hearing his own native language spoken in such a way makes it a bit harder to definitively identify her voice as either being that he lacks any frame of reference in Russian. ]

[patchwork]

Irish. Although I've spent over half of my life in Canada, so I can't rightly say how much Irishness I have left in me, and how much of it is just in the sound of my voice.

[ Grace is excited. Her face is carefully neutral, though there's a glimmer in her eye that she can't quite hide – she's talking to someone from a place so far away from what she knows, whose entire world must be so vastly different than hers as to appear almost alien. All she knows is that Russia is a place in the world, and a very large one, and parts of it are terribly cold. But there must be more to it than that. On the precipice of all this new information, and the freedom to go about absorbing it however she wants, Grace is almost giddy. ]

It's a very nice name – Vasya. If I had read it without knowing you first, I might've thought it was a woman's name, but I suppose that's only because language is so different from one place to the next. It suits you very well.

[m1895]

[ That bit about losing Irishness resonates, terribly, an outward reflection of his worst fear tossed around like it's an unavoidable fact. He wants to assure her, too emphatically to strictly be for her own good alone, that that's not true, that it's something woven into the very tapestry of her being, this question of Ethnic or National Origin, inalienable.

But she jumps to the next topic before he can, clearly interested; there's a certain brightness to the woman, a sharpness that's a welcome reprieve from the dull, mule-like eye of most of his fellow workers in the West. There's something beaten out of them that she hasn't yet lost. ]

Thank you. I have heard this before. These are the diminutives. A stranger [ or interrogator ] calls me Vasiliy Yegorovich to be respectful, a friend or coworker calls me Vasya. It is common for these names to end with —a in men and women.

[ It's faster than he'd usually entrust someone with his diminutive, especially someone from the West, but he finds it difficult not to feel an immediate sense of kinship with the woman—she's clearly poor, working class like himself, with very limited travels. He'd never left Russia until he emigrated, and he's hardly more knowledgeable on Ireland than she is Russia. But he has a general sense of what the colonized populace has been through, and it speaks to his own experiences as part of a population ruled by an unjust crown. ]

[patchwork]

I see.

[ Though it sounds strange at first, Grace only has to think for a moment to realise that the world she grew up in abides by similar customs. She wonders what her diminutive would be, if she had one. There's not much shorter her name can get, and though there's a pleasant sibilance there, it ends quite abruptly. Grace. Perhaps if she had heard her own name without knowing better, she might think it a man's – but what is it about an abrupt ending that instinctually presses her towards an assumption of masculinity? ]

Does that make us friends, then, or coworkers? I suppose we have a goal in common in this place.

[ And they've certainly been doing work together: moving bodies, which is a ghoulish undertaking but must nevertheless be done by someone. ]

[m1895]

Your fellow workers are always friends. Comrades.

[ Vasiliy answers as automatically as if she'd asked him the color of the sky on a clear day; the cold of their environment and the short days certainly do little to mentally place him back in an environment where that isn't the most appropriate answer. It's an indulgence, uttering the word; truth be told, he probably shouldn't let his guard down so much as to say such a token phrase in such a pronounced accent as his own. But that's what she is to him, how he refers to her, in his mind: tovarisch.

She'd do well, in the Soviet Union. She's strong, quiet. Hasn't once complained, hasn't once tried to use a Western notion of femininity to shirk working alongside the men, and seems convinced in her own equality. Impressive, given the status and (presumable) time she comes from, though it's not as though the line between masculinity and femininity was ever nearly as distinct for people of their ilk as the Romanovs or the landed gentry. ]

All workers have a goal in common. Though especially here.

[ He shrugs, turning his head slightly to exhale around the cigarette between his lips as he picks up a shovel, beginning to push some of the mounded dirt at the edges of the open wound in the earth down and over the frozen body. ]

But—friends sounds good. Grace.

[patchwork]

[ A friend, then. Grace has never had a male friend before, and she's not entirely sure how to comport herself. Usually she can tell when a man has designs on her: it is the way they look at her, with wide black pupils and a superior look that feels to her as if she is being imagined naked – or, not naked, but skinless, a more violent sort of vulnerability. Vasya may be a stranger to her, but he is not, at the very least, giving her a look like that.

She wipes her hands on her apron. ]

Comrades. I've only ever heard of that word being used in the context of war, from one soldier to another. Do you mean to say that work is a kind of war? My friend Mary Whitney would have been very taken by an idea like that. She was a person of very democratic views.

[m1895]

[ If only you knew.

It's been so long since someone was receptive to the truth, it's almost jarring, this openness and curiosity. The American workers take personal offense at the idea of their own liberation—less so with the woman named Grace, maybe because reactionary propaganda hasn't had as much time to sink its roots in whenever, exactly, she is from.

Or maybe it's just the fact that, if he had to guess, she probably comes from an industrialized area, prior to the reforms. A background closer to his than the servitude embellished with meaningless consumer goods that marked the status of the parents of the past few generations. He has far more in common with her than most of these people, and certainly anyone in Chicago.

Vasiliy takes a drag, plucking his mostly-spent cigarette from his lips and exhaling into the open air now that he's facing the crude grave as opposed to his conversation partner. ]

There is dignity in labor. But most labor is a kind of war between workers and bourgeoisie—factory owners, wealthy, Lords, your English gentry. These people who want to own you and your labor, like you are mule, not human being. It is the struggle.

[patchwork]

[ Grace is quiet as she absorbs this. He certainly sounds convinced of it, and Grace knows well enough that there are employers who care so little for the wellbeing of their workers that it amounts to abuse by inaction. The most she has ever felt like a mule was in the penitentiary, before she was given the position in the governor's household, but she had sometimes felt mulish at Mr Kinnear's house when given particular orders by Nancy that had seemed to Grace to be spiteful and only to cause resentments.

But that is all irrelevant, of course. ]

I don't doubt you, because I was born poor, and I've often thought there's not a fair way out of it for most like me. I started work when I was a girl, yet I never earned enough money to have something of my own. I suppose it's easier for men, but then it's not as if a man of similar circumstance would have been able to become a doctor – he wouldn't have been able to pay for the schooling. If you don't mind my asking, what is it you do for a living?

[m1895]

[ She's right, she's right, and she's speaking to an inherent truth that was as real and as omnipresent as the sky above every single day of his life under the old regime. He was born in the slums, and there he would have died, were it not for the Revolution. He pities her, that there was never a revolution for her to see.

He knew already, of course, that Grace had the right class background—he's always had what the Americans call a sixth sense for that sort of thing, an ability to identify one's own. It had been critical to survival before the advent of a classless society. ]

I am Emergency Medical Technician. It is like... a nurse, but for emergencies. I ride in a ambulance and go to scenes of accidents. My job is keeping the patient alive until they get to hospital. What is it that you do?

[ He gets the strong sense that she's a domestic servant of some sort based on how she dresses—and the submission that seems beaten into her—but he doesn't put words in her mouth; she's worthy of more dignity than that. ]

[patchwork]

[ Any of the curiosity she might have about such a position in an ambulance is slightly dampened by an immediate feeling of horror that this man she’s conversing with is a doctor of some sort. She looks down, expecting to see a leather bag at his feet with a saw and other sharp implements protruding from it, and then feels silly when she sees nothing. If he was going to measure her head or something worse, he likely would have done it already. ]

I’m a maidservant. My first situation was in the home of an alderman in Toronto, and then after that on a farm in Ontario. [ Grace pauses, her lips pressing flat. He seems trustworthy enough – she has only now learned of diminutives, but it means something already that he has given her his – and also sympathetic. He talks of dignity in work, and of the exploitation of the working class, of people who often cannot do anything but be exploited.

It would certainly behoove her to have a confidant here, one with medical knowledge, who may be able to assist her if she is injured. And she does not feel as if she is being observed by him from a distance, with a grasping and prying attention, but rather simply looked at, one to another. ] I would like to tell you something private about myself, Vasya, if you can swear on whatever would hold your promise that you won’t share it with anyone else.

[m1895]

[ How many tens of thousands of private things was he privy to, back in the interrogation room?

He supposes there were also private things he kept to himself: his own small deviations from the image of the ideal communist, and that of the people he cared about. Everyone was hiding something, keeping something to themselves: feelings, thoughts, past actions. He has every intention of keeping a fellow worker's privacy, especially seeing as it's likely a medical concern.

(The fact that she doesn't immediately assume him a Christian, or the sort to swear to any God, doesn't go unnoticed or unappreciated.) ]

Of course.

i-a

[rescapee]

[ La'an doesn't handle doing nothing well. She'd entered the building with the intent of warming up and getting answers, and she'd managed the former while consuming a plate of food. Answers have eluded her, however, and all she's managed to find are even more questions.

Sitting as far from the fire as she can while still benefiting from its warmth, she's nursing a cup of not-entirely terrible coffee when the man addresses her, his manner of speaking catching her attention as much as the words themselves. She looks down at her exposed fingers which are still quite red despite her time indoors, then turns her gaze back to him, noting the jacket and bag she recognizes as being a historical precedent to what is still used on Earth in the 23rd century. Another moment passes and then she sighs heavily, sets the cup down on the tabletop, and answers in her own tired British accent. ]

What do I need to do? [ She's not a great patient by a longshot, but if he's a medical professional, she'll listen to him in order to avoid losing the use of her fingers. And she's trying not to berate herself too much — she should have recognized the tingling in her hands for the sign it was, but she's not exactly on top of her game at the moment. ]

[m1895]

You need to soak them. Let them warm up gradually. Stay there, I will bring you warm water.

[ Vasiliy sets his kit bag down next to her, then heads toward the galley kitchen, returning with a small ceramic bowl of water. Steam rises from it, but more an effect of the cold air around them than the heat in the bowl: hot water, he knows, isn't the way to approach this, even if it's many people's first instinct. He knew that long before training as an EMT, or even entering the "modern" world—a child's small fingers get cold easily, and there wasn't a ready source of heat in the tenements of Petrograd.

He sets the bowl down in front of her. ]

Soak your fingers in this. They will tingle. Pins and needles. But that is normal.

[rescapee]

[ Unhooking her sleeves from around her thumbs, she tugs them up past her wrists before slipping her fingers into the warm water. There's another sign she should have noticed — the temperature of the water feels strange, both too hot and not hot enough at the same time. She'd just assumed the odd sensation when she'd held the warm cup was from being fresh out of the cold, and then she'd gotten used to it and hadn't noticed the continued problem. It was a rookie mistake; one she will not repeat in the future. ]

Thank you for your help. [ Looking up at him, she frowns slightly as she again studies his uniform, taking in all the details but lacking the context for placing him precisely in time. ] Have you been here long?