idolpro

[If his camera works, he's going to take a photo of that.

[Going to make a note of where he is by finding another piece of street furniture to embiggen. He settles on a tree this time, AlcheME! Was Here Too. It points up, right? Sort of like a giant location marker so it should be obvious where he is even from the air if... well, he's not sure what he expects to happen but at this point it could be pretty much anything. Then he heads for the nearest of the buildings and starts looking for a way up.]

[ The building seems to just be some sort of freestanding stack of apartments - like all other non-functional buildings in Tokyo-F there's nothing actually inside, but the outside has a series of balconies one could scale up to reach the top. ]

[Gonna take the balcony route to the top. YOLO.

[Fortunately(??) K has a particular set of skills and is used to taking himself places he's really not supposed to be, so he climbs them fairly easily. That doesn't mean he's not swearing quite creatively as he does it, but he does it.

[What's the view like from up here?]

[ Which is to say that fog begins to set in the higher you go - at the top, visibility is completely obscured past the point where looping would occur. ]

[THAT'S NOT OMINOUS AT ALL.

[Good grief he really is in a computer game and the draw distance is total total shit.

[So: everything loops, but not quite; and everything beyond a certain distance is... is what? Being made up as it goes along? Since K is still not on Zrael and still can't just fly, he settles for taking a photo of it, and-- well, crap, there's really not a lot he can do about anything from up here. He's got a better idea and that's DRIVE RIGHT INTO THE FUCKING FOG, but he's going to have to get back down first. So he climbs back down and goes back to find his bike.]

[ His bike is exactly where he left it! The fog recedes as he climbs down. Or rather - as he's less able to see into the distance. ]

[All right, gunning the fuckin' engine. This was an interesting digression but he's clearly not going to get any more out of this place than what he's already gotten before just by poking around in copypasted outskirts hell.

[Let's go find some proper hell.]

[ It takes a couple hours, but eventually…you hear a noise and feel your body flicker,

and then in front of you is a singular pillar of identically textured concrete cubes. Huh. There looks like there's something at the top? ]

Edited 2021-02-18 03:25 (UTC)

[The noise makes him start.

[It's familiar, too: it's a '90s reprisal, and he's used to that. The flickering is less welcome, and he brings the bike to a sudden, screeching halt just in case it's contagious. No. That's not the word.

[He doesn't think about it any more. He's too busy getting his bearings. This is not the copypaste suburbia of his last few hours. This is something entirely different and while caution tells him that maybe this isn't the kind of thing to investigate alone, K is not inclined to listen to it today either. What's he gonna do, drive back and pile his friends into a minivan and bring them all here for beer and a barbecue and the worst road trip ever? That would be stupid.

[Climbing up the concrete cubes and taking a closer look at whatever that thing up there is? now that's a different flavor of stupid he can get behind, so let's do that.]

[ The area you're in seems overlaid over itself but slightly off grid, creating a strange flickering effect across every surface. The ground constantly seems to change from being even to uneven in spots, as well.

If you listen carefully, you can hear two things: whatever sounds were present before you touched the door, trapped in a stuttering loop from that exact moment. More distantly, there's also the churn of machinery.

At the top of the pillar is enough space for you to stand, as well as...a door. That seems to lead to the open air at the edge of the pillar and nothing else. It's a completely ordinary door otherwise, aside from the fact that it's completely freestanding - in fact, it looks just like the doors found most commonly on the empty buildings in the city. ]

What the fuck...?

[Am I in a glitch?

[The sounds are strange, discordant - another nineties reprisal checking right in, that moment when a CD gets stuck and starts endlessly skipping and juddering back over the same few seconds, faster and far more alien than the scratch and kickback of a broken record - and he's stopping to listen. It feels like he's fallen off the edge of the map. Like he found the invisible wall all right, but instead of getting bounced off it and turned back on himself, he's somehow torn right through it...

[Fuck. I liked that bike--

[Probably best to just write it off as lost at this point and if he manages to find it again it'll be a nice bonus. He turns back to look over his shoulder at the... wherever he's found himself in: the word he's looking for is liminality, but he doesn't have that one to hand. And then, noting ventured, he pushes open the door. Whatever other sterling features this place might have, it's clearly not somewhere to stay.]

[ You attempt to open the door and fail. Your hand passes straight through.

On a second look, though, the door is actually open. But it's also closed. There are two doors here, both perfectly aligned and the same in all ways. One open, one closed, leaving a doorway you still seem to be unable to walk through. Weirdly, the open door is the one you failed to open. That is; your hand just passes through on contact with it. ]

[So they both exist, but don't? Schrödinger's door.

[This is going to give him a headache if he so much as looks at it too long, never mind tries to work his way round the implications. Instead, he thinks about something else. Maybe this is a sign this was meant for someone smarter, and he should head back and try and retrieve one.

[On the other hand, K doesn't feel any account of today's events so far that ends 'and then I went back' just as things were getting weird is going to even prove satisfactory, still less persuasive.

[If his hand can just pass through it, what about the rest of him?]

[ The rest of him does in fact pass through the open door. ]

[All right, that's not weird at all.

[So. Weird door into... somewhere. Stepping through, then. This is probably a perfectly reasonable thing to do and not remotely likely to cause any problems for anybody any time down the line. Now what?]

[ You step through the closed door, or attempt to. Unlike the open door it seems to result in touching a normal, solid door - so you just sort of faceplant into a door. After that moment though, the pillar vibrates intensely with a loud stuttering propeller-like noise, sending you careening through the pillar, the door, and eventually the ground below you, straight into darkness. ]

[ You can't see anything.

Are your eyes closed?

They're not, but you feel like they are.

Seeing is just a matter of willpower, isn't it?

Just a mechanical function.

Nothing more.

The sound of machinery is almost deafening. The scraping of metal, the grinding of gears, the low bassy hum of industrial work - it surrounds you, blankets you, cushions your fall through the void.

Do you choose to see? ]

[This

[was

[a

[bad plan

[idea

[it wasn't a plan. a plan implies planning.]

[there is no good version of this story that ends here, either.

[Fuck it. He's choosing to see.]

[ Your eyes are open, and you have chosen to witness what is before you.

And what a grand sight it is! A whirring complex of steel turbines and gnashing gearwork, a single structure working in concert that's far larger than any one thing ought to be! Electricity surges through conduits of thought and soul, and in between all of this machinery there is no room for inefficiency or flaw. No room for the singular acts of sentient beings, organic or otherwise.

The sense that this is what the world is, and it's so obvious when you choose to look behind the curtain is palpable - but before you can dwell on it too long there's a strange sound you find yourself outside - back in Tokyo. ]

[ The streets of wherever you're at now seem as empty as Tokyo-F. It actually...looks basically like the outside of the building you were just in before falling through the door? So you must've exited, right?

The world isn't overlaying itself anymore, but there's an odd shimmer obscuring everything, somewhat like a heat haze. Accompanying this is a distinct sense of everything being frozen in place even if there's nothing to really indicate that's the case - you're definitely capable of moving, anyway. This certainly isn't wherever you just were - but it's not Tokyo-F, either.

The street you're on, sandwiched between rows of buildings, seems to twist and turn into infinity. If navigating that isn't appealing, there's also a side alley between the first set of buildings, which seems to go...somewhere? ]

Wha--

[What the actual fuck?]

Oh, shit.

[K doesn't understand.

[Perhaps uniquely, he's sure it's not for want of something in himself. That he could have been with anyone, anyone at all, and they'd no more be able to understand it than he did. The city doesn't feel right any more: even if it was his city, his - his little human box, where they keep the humans to keep them out of trouble - it wouldn't feel right.]

Uh. Hello?

[He tries that first.]

[ There is no response. ]

[Good.

[Didn't really want an answer, anyway. It's infinitely more reassuring to be here - wherever here is - by himself than with whatever might actually belong here.

[Next up... he takes a look down the alleyway. Faced with whatever the fuck this is, he can't make a sensible choice between two paths without some idea what he's saying no to.]

Edited 2021-02-18 05:08 (UTC)

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