COMMENCE VOYAGE

[bathymetric]

Fun Fact: Did you know the Atlantic Ocean has a surface area of 41.1 million square miles? No reason.

...

There's something uneasy in the air as you come to.

Well, "come to" is an interesting word in this case. It implies waking up, which is not exactly what happens. None of you are in beds, nor are you really asleep in the traditional sense. One moment you're somewhere else, doing something else with your time, and the next? You're somewhere on board a massive cruise ship - maybe lounging on a deck chair by the pool, maybe getting some Gains in the exercise room, maybe enjoying the tasteful décor in the buffet - and you have no idea how you got here or how you might get back. This is not your beautiful house. If you have a beautiful wife, she isn't here.

What you do have, apart from 25 other unlucky souls, is a small smartphone-like device in your pocket with only a handful of things on it: a clock reading 11PM, a pdf of a ticket in your name on a special Atlantic Liners New Year's Eve Cruise, an app labeled Passenger Profiles with some basic information on your traveling companions, and a message:

Welcome aboard, passenger! Please feel free to partake of any of the facilities while you wait for the big event! Remember: when midnight comes, you better make your way to the theatre at the back of Level 1 for the main event! The Captain and the First Mate will be there to take care of you all personally, and to help you ring in the new year in style!

Well, that's a start. But what you do until then, it seems, is up to you!

Comments

[onlyyoucan]

It turns over to the new year, of course, at least from the perspective of where we are. And according to that message on the device here, that's when there's an announcement or some sort of party. Meaning whoever put this together is going to show, if not their hand, what they expect of the people they've kidnapped. That's what you're getting at, right?

[jibunwo]

Precisely. It's obvious there's some purpose to our presence here, and if those responsible planned such a grand reveal as midnight on New Year's, then it can be safely assumed it is no small or harmless thing.

[onlyyoucan]

There's... the profiles list just over 20. Not a large group, but enough to be noticed. What's going on here?

[jibunwo]

For that, I have no answer. But no one who would kidnap so many with such preparation and decorum would do so for anything other than malicious ends.

[onlyyoucan]

Mm. [She studies the phone.] This isn't Deague. If they want something, they just tear through until they get it. And not... But who else?

[jibunwo]

...Deague? [The helmet tilted just slightly, as if the eyes behind it narrowed in confusion.]

[onlyyoucan]

The empire we've been fighting against for... [Sara looks up.] It's not just one or two people, then. Nobody here knows who they are, or the Union. Someone didn't even know what a planet was. What is this?

[jibunwo]

Wait.

[What.]

I can see plain as day that you don't know who I am. But then, if I were to name the Holy Britannian Empire, you would claim to know nothing of it?

[onlyyoucan]

[She frowns, looks back at the phone, and then back at him.]

No. The war's between the Union and Deague. It's been that way for hundreds of years, accounting for relativity. ...The year. It's 7008 SE, right?

[jibunwo]

...I’m unfamiliar with both your terminology and dating system. It’s September of 2017, by the Imperial Calendar.

[onlyyoucan]

[The confirmation takes her aback, and she studies him with eyes wide.]

There are people who don't know what a planet is, and one girl's profile says she's "from space" as if there's one place that's not "space" and everything else is. The man in the armour talked about "different worlds" as if he meant alternate universe theory but couldn't find the words for it. And you aren't using the Standard Era year. But that's impossible, isn't it?

[jibunwo]

Wrong--it is not impossible at all.

Consider what is more likely: that each and every one of us suffers an individual and wildly varying delusion we know to be fact, or that such separate universes do in fact exist, and all of them have somehow converged on this location.

[Occam's Razor, baby.]

I would venture a step further and say that clarifies a few things--namely, that a supernatural abduction is vastly more possible than a traditional kidnapping. At least in my case, it would have been beyond impossible for anyone to take me away from where I was utterly unnoticed and unimpeded. If we are to account for a supernatural factor, that makes 'impossible' into 'improbable.'

[onlyyoucan]

And I can't have left the Libertad normally. Even if we hadn't been off-planet, I was just starting a sync test, and I know I must have been under surveillance. But if there's something that shouldn't exist causing all this, that accounts for the people talking about magic, too.