unknownseas | Ladies and gentlemen, your mayor...

True to the word of the random pieces of paper next to your desks, at exactly 1:30PM New Rapture Standard Time, there's a chime on all radios in the whole area - and there are a lot of radios. Both the portable radios you've all been issued and speakers all over chime before a pleasant woman's voice calls out to all of you, slightly tinny and distorted.

Greetings, prospective citizens! Please make your way to the lobby for a personal address from Mayor Fontaine! Presented by Fontaine Futuristics, where we bring your present into your future!

Upon everyone's arrival into the lobby of the hotel, several televisions set into the walls light up with:

Until, after a few moments, the screens flicker and cut to the face of... someone, in silhouette, just like the rest of Rapture. There are no features to make out, though, as the top of a huge leather armchair raises above their head.

Mayor Fontaine is watching.

When the Mayor speaks, the speakers seem to have trouble getting it out. There's heavy distortion and static over it, but the voice seems clear enough - male, from the sound of it, and slow and purposeful. A thick Bronx accent, for those of you with a New York to compare it to.

"So. Welcome to New Rapture. I got some things to say, but I'm gonna bet if I just open the floor to questions they'll come up and it'll save us all some time. But to cut a couple off at the pass, so to speak: yer not leaving, this is real, et cetera. Now, ask me some questions, would you kindly?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Nodding vigorously at this.]

That's right! They've gotta be...they've gotta be ghosts or something!!

[Oh boy here we go.]

[… Okay that

Does knock him out of his spiral.]

If they were ghost, it seems strange that our captor wants us to murder them.

What's so strange about it? Exorcising a ghost is like killing it again, right?

[...]

N-Not that I wanna be right about them being ghosts or anything!!

I'm a ghost?! Why didn't anybody tell me?!

I guess you missed the message.

Do they text you when you become a ghost? Cause I haven't looked at my phone in a while because of pool and also demons. [He looks well and truly devastated he might be a ghost and nobody told him.] Aw dip, I shoulda asked Michael if he texted me to tell me I was dead again!

There's a whole system prompt and everything. [ He says with a nod and a smile that says he's leaving out a whole lot. ]

Who's Michael? A friend? Or your officer?

(no subject)

hellaethics - 2022-06-16 01:40 (UTC) - Expand

buriedstar - 2022-06-16 03:10 (UTC) - Expand

hellaethics - 2022-06-20 00:52 (UTC) - Expand

buriedstar - 2022-06-20 17:02 (UTC) - Expand

[Hagakure raises his hands up in prayer as he simultaneously backs away from Jason in fear.]

I'm so, so sorry to be the one to break it to you!!

This sucks, man! First I find out I died and then got put back, then I got tacos and married, then I was in Canada and now I’m a ghost in a hotel! I don’t even get to be a spooky sheet ghost!

[Okay, ghost or no, even Hagakure can sympathize with all of that.

He thinks for a second...]

We could find an extra sheet in the hotel and deck you out in it?

hellaethics - 2022-06-16 01:45 (UTC) - Expand

sixthnonsense - 2022-06-16 16:25 (UTC) - Expand

Don't be stupid, ghosts look nothing like these guys.

They- They don't?

No, they're all transparent and blue and shit. I mean, you get one in a vessel of some kind, obviously that's different...

Oh, yeah- duh, I knew that. This is obviously the second option. They've gotta be advanced models.

[Advanced models are ghosts with vessels now. Making this shit up as we go.]

fuckingguy - 2022-06-13 11:54 (UTC) - Expand

sixthnonsense - 2022-06-13 16:03 (UTC) - Expand

fuckingguy - 2022-06-14 00:27 (UTC) - Expand

sixthnonsense - 2022-06-14 01:32 (UTC) - Expand

Ghosts fit in the same category as Atlantis, meaning they don't exist.

[Says the woman who if you look carefully looks slightly transparent]

Edited 2022-06-12 23:44 (UTC)

No, ghosts definitely exist in some universes. Whether or not they exist in every universe is a different story, but they definitely exist.

[Just. Real casual.]

That logic is...

[Fallacious, she was about to say, but...she can't bring herself to do so. Given the people she has talked with today, she can't say Joy is wrong, welp]

Nevermind. You may be correct.

I mean. I know I am, because I've seen ghosts but also? The multiverse is so, so much weirder than you're capable of understanding.

pairtner - 2022-06-13 01:05 (UTC) - Expand

allatonce - 2022-06-13 01:20 (UTC) - Expand

pairtner - 2022-06-13 01:47 (UTC) - Expand

allatonce - 2022-06-13 03:13 (UTC) - Expand

[This conversation is getting super deep and Hagakure's panic-induced brain is only focusing on one thing here:]

They're as real as spirits!!

[THEY'RE THE SAME THING.]

What's the difference between a spirit and a ghost?

[Asking that question is all she can do to not say something about how spirits aren't real either]

[I wouldn't blame her for it though.]

Easy: ghosts are dead people, spirits have never been a living person to begin with!

But all ghosts ain’t dead—-

[Wh-]

What? That's literally the definition of a ghost?? Dead person???

Naw, sometimes a ghost is just a person with ghost powers!

[Hagakure's mind is utterly blown.]

How does that even work??