lieutenantantichrist | [11] Video/Action for Route 39

[Carter doesn't know he's gotten used to it until he wakes up alone.]

[What's supposed to happen is they get up, bitch about the cold, make some coffee and breakfast, bitch about the cold some more, pack up, and hit the road.]

[Today there's just the sound of birds.]

[When Carter sits up, the other sleeping bag is flat. There's a fat, fuzzy teddy bear thing sitting on top of it, and a crab perched on the pillow, where a head full of messy blond hair should be.]

[Both of the animals look at Blake expectantly.]

[He fumbles for his phone and hits the key that dials Dirk. He sits very, very still while it connects.]

[The prerecorded voice tells him what he already knows.]

[He drops the phone and leaves it to chirp out its message to nobody. He pulls on the nearest clothes to hand and crawls out of the tent. The bright light makes him squint. He walks toward the edge of the clearing. They'd found a good place this time. Level ground, no tall grass, surrounded by pine trees. You couldn't even see it from the road. Honestly, Carter doesn't know how Dirk knew it was there.]

[Blake rests his head against a tree and breathes in deep. The bark is cool and rough on his forehead. The air smells like pine needles.]

[Dirk had a good eye for these things.]

[He slams his fist into the trunk as hard as he can.]

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

[Over and over, and when he finally stops his knuckles are stinging and it's all silence except for his panting.]

[He turns and goes back to the tent.]

[Inside, the fuzzy thing is trying to open up his backpack. Its claws are giving it much luck with the ties. Blake unties it and dumps everything out on the floor. Soap, pokeballs, clothespins, socks. Some oranges roll away, and the thing goes right after them and starts gnawing. Doesn't even take the peel off.]

[There's something thin and white in the pile. A piece of paper. Blake picks it up and reads it.]

[He reads it again.]

[He sits there for a while as the teddy bear thing munches, and there's a low thrum and a shadow through the tent's wall as one of those ladybugs passes by.]

[He digs the little sewing kit out of the pile. He turns his backpack inside-out and opens up the seam at the bottom. He tucks the note in and sews it closed again.]

[By the time he's done, it occurs to him he's pretty hungry. Usually they'd be having breakfast by now. The fuzzy thing's gone through a lot of what he has already. Carter doesn't really feel like fighting it. For the crab's part, it's just watching with wide, unblinking eyes. It has a pair of mushrooms stuck to its back.]

[Carter remembers hearing those are edible.]

[VIDEO]

[Blake is sitting on a stump. He looks contemplative, and somewhat withdrawn. His beard hasn't been trimmed yet this morning. His pupils are a little too wide.]

Hey. You out there.

After a while here you figure things come and go. There's no point in bitching. You just gotta keep moving forward and keep your hooves on the ground.

I figure I might as well ask. I kept putting it off, thinking maybe I'd get home. But that's not happening anytime soon, and it has to be past by now. So if anybody here is from 2013 or so, maybe a little later, I got a question for you.

And all of you. Talk to me. [He thinks, then nods, and taps on the phone's screen.] Tell me something you'd want to know about what's going on at home. Wherever you're from. If you could find out one thing that's happened while you've been gone, what'd you ask?

[He looks out at the trees, his eyes a little glassy. He seems to forget the Gear is on. A moment later, he abruptly cuts the feed.]

[ACTION]

[If you venture down Route 39 today, you might come upon Blake staring out at the horizon, contemplatively chewing on some hay.]

((ooc: Blake's in a bit of an odd place right now...He'll be mostly coherent, but anyone who talks to him may get hallucinated into something unique. The Paras has one mushroom left, so you could also come join him on a spirit journey.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

breaking bad, man! wht happens? i figure hteres no way walt and jesse are getting out of it alive. its the cartel, right? the mexico guys . thers gotta be some of them arond n d pissed. what about hank? does hank die?

[...HE WAS SERIOUS.]

They made a spinoff about the bad lawyer, but that's all I remember. I was too little to watch things like that.

saul! saul mkes it! thts good to know, fuckin love that guy. even thogh i hate the rael scumbag lawyers. but sauls great.

you must be from the real wrld

I'll have to take your word for it.

[Just...going to slowly shake her head and move on.]

As opposed to...? This world, or someone else's delusions, here?

wtch it when youre old enough. you old enough? are yo fro the future or somethig? sometimes people are. its a pain in the ass to try to kep track.

you know . the real world. not space or a video gmae.

From your future, apparently. I'm twenty or maybe twenty-one, now. I'm not sure I'll really have time to watch it when I get back home, though.

[There's a few things she has to do...]

Assuming you mean a world with Earth: the Blue Planet, third planet from the Sun with a single moon, where we can venture space and play video games but not originate in either, then...yes. I am from the real world.

Maybe? don't you know your brithday? somebody shold get you a cake.

[Blake gets excited.] thats great! fucking rare around here. i miss it. everbody here is sfrom another planet or japan

Edited 2013-12-11 09:32 (UTC)

I'm not sure what time to count.

[It's complicated, okay? Even without all the stuff going on back home, the time-related shenanigans here made it harder to pay attention to age. Plus it just...really doesn't matter, so much. But cake might be nice...]

You know Japan is on Earth, right? It still qualifies for the "real world" label.

whatever time daylight savins isnt. that never made sense.

maybe tnchnically. bt its japan. all fulla robots and monsters.

Edited 2013-12-13 10:39 (UTC)

How does it not make sense?

...I'm pretty sure that's just in the movies.

you take one hour form here and put i over there. you cant jst do that

i dont know you ever been there to see

They do that so you spend more of your waking hours in actual daylight -- during winter, it starts to get darker earlier, so you move the time earlier one hour in the hopes of exposing more people to sunlight. Not getting enough can have negative effects on one's physical and mental condition. Since they add the hour in again at a later time, I'm okay with it.

[...What even is this argument.]

You clearly haven't.

[Blake is staring at his screen for a long time.]

shit. just
mov
time

who
s they? they never asked me.

nah but i heard about japan. theres picutres. who needs to leave the contry anyway? it's the best one, everybody knows that.

I wouldn't think about it too hard.

[And this dude was definitely American. If there was even any doubt left...]

If you stay in one place your whole life, you'll never get to see the world from another perspective. You've learned things after coming to this place, haven't you?

you made me now its gonan bug me

[Damn right, Blake's as American as the Second Amendment. Heh. Bear arms. They're all hairy.]

yeah, lots of weird shit. i never asked to. and noe pwople leave without asking too.

Edited 2013-12-23 11:02 (UTC)

[And so we have reached the reason for the odd typing... Probably, anyway.]

It may be difficult to realize sometimes, but the world doesn't revolve around any one person -- that includes yourself.

[...And if she were someone else, she might realize that that sounds RUDE AS HELL, but she's Phi, who likes to make jokes she shouldn't.]

wait it

[Blake's mind is blown here]

it

it doesn

fuck!

then how've I been spinning?

I think that has more to do with whatever you took before you decided to talk with us all today and not the universe itself.

all i did was gte some breakfastfrom a crab. snce whn is thwre some kinda law aginst schedule 1 controlled substance psilocybin

Edited 2013-12-31 09:11 (UTC)

Remembered, did you?

Why were you getting questionable food from a crab when you could go out to a restaurant and eat crab itself?

i rmember. somethin g to do with hippies. ahh hell. am i a hippie now?

what the hell cell phone im not letting nybody cook my crab
he ws a gift
from somebody i mgiht not see again

I don't think mushrooms are restricted to hippies.

[Wait does he think...]

This isn't your cell phone. My name's Phi. And I didn't say you had to cook your crab, just a crab. One that wasn't a gift and that probably doesn't have a name.

good, i'm not lstening to any fucking grateful dead

ive been crrying you around for months now and i never even askd if you had a nmae

see, you nevr know wht might have a name if you ask. hit maybe the crab dip all these years hs been bill and dave nd martha

crab dip's stil pretty fuckin good though

[11] Video/Action for Route 39 - "4 THE MARE"

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]

[text]