event } take me down to paradise city (part one)

[seeingyou]

WHO: All passengers signed up to skate on over to Xanadu.
WHAT: Ya (fake) dead. Enjoy your (fake) afterlife!
WHERE: Anywhere in the city!
WHEN: First week of the event (Feb. 20-27).
WARNINGS: Add these to your comment subject lines as needed! Please don’t get yourself killed right away but if you can’t resist please make sure to fill out the death page.



You return to consciousness bathed in pleasantly glowing light and find yourself seated in a comfortable chair in the center of an arena. There’s soft, dreamy pop music playing quietly, and you feel calm, entirely at peace despite your strange surroundings. You feel no reason to stir from your chair or investigate what’s happening - probably because you’ve been drugged into a docile state. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off eventually. For now, you feel content to sit and wait for what happens next.

While you wait, if you look around, you’ll see the stadium seats are packed with people, their chatter a quiet hum behind the music. There is a raised platform in front of you where three people of ambiguous gender dressed in regal robes are seated in high-backed chairs, and above them, some kind of hovering screen displays a generic welcome message in stark lettering. You’ll also discover that you are one of several people seated in the center of the arena. Again, you may wonder where you are and why you’re here, since you don’t remember arriving, but you do not feel any initiative to find the answers to those questions. All will be answered in time.

A triumphant fanfare sounds, and the arena goes quiet, still except for the person on the platform seated in the middle, who stands and steps forward. They give a hearty welcome to the crowd gathered, and an extra special welcome to the small group on the ground, then introduce themself and the other two as the City Council, a group appointed to ensure everything here is kept in smooth running order. This city, they explain, is called Xanadu, and it is a place of perfect bliss that is home to only the most exemplary individuals who have moved to the next stage of their existence - in other words, the afterlife. Yes, you are all dead, but you have been given a place in paradise for the rest of eternity. Isn’t that nice?

The crowd in the stadium breaks into a wave of thunderous applause, soon quieted by the Council member speaking with a wave of their hand. They continue, explaining that you’ll be shown to your new homes and introduced to your soulmates, a partner who has been determined as perfectly compatible with each individual’s essence. A small group of volunteers has gathered at the base of the podium, ready to guide each pair to their new home as they’re called forward, one by one:

Julia Bellamy and Lady
Near and Matt
Mammon and Alex Reagan
Juuzou Suzuya and Kankri Vantas
Murmur and Jonathan Sims

Congratulations, and again, welcome to Xanadu!

Volunteers lead each pair of soulmates to one of the small, pastel-colored houses situated in a cul-de-sac in one of the nearby neighborhoods. Furnishings and the shag carpeting inside are plain and beige, but the volunteer-guide explains that they can be personalized to the inhabitants’ liking by making requests from the magic closet. These closets will instantly produce clothing and whatever other items you’d like. Likewise, whatever foods you most desire will be found in the fridge or cooking in the oven whenever you ask for it. Both the closets and the kitchens run on technology that is new to Xanadu, and some of the kinks still need to be worked out, so requested items may not be exactly as you asked for. But hey, you’re in paradise! You’ll be fine.

The guide goes on to explain that there isn’t much in the way of technology to be found anywhere in the city - no phones, no computers, and none of the stresses that come as part of the package, and requests for such items from the closets will encounter errors. This is all for the common good, of course. But who needs electronic devices when you have a beautiful city to explore? The city itself is massive, designed in a glitzy late 70s-early 80s roller disco aesthetic, enclosed in a shimmering golden dome, full of glittering skyscrapers and lush public gardens. Soft rock music floats through the air via hidden speakers to set the mood. The weather here is always pleasantly perfect early summer, and the atmosphere is pristine - not a single trace of smog or other pollution. That’s because there are no manufacturing plants or vehicles to be found anywhere in the city. Modes of transportation in Xanadu are pedal bicycles, your own two feet, and roller skates. Strap on a pair and roll around the neighborhoods, or to cover longer distances, head down to an electric rail station, where you will strap in and be pulled along to your destination on your skates at high speed.

By the time the orientation is over and the guide has departed, leaving you to get to know your soulmate and settle in to the comforts of eternal paradise, that drug you’d been given will have worn off. So, newlydeads, what will you do next?

Comments

[aparticularlyhollowlaugh]

Being sniffed is hardly the rudest thing Jon has encountered; he barely notices, still reeling in the revelation that apparently angels are real. And since Murmur is no longer in attack mode, Jon doesn’t feel threatened by his advance into the kitchen.

“But I - I remember ... “ Does he remember dying? Can his memory even be trusted, at this point?

“So if we are, as you claim, not dead,” he says, shaking off the dazed sensation and turning toward Murmur, “where are we and what are we doing here? Where were you before?”

Facts. Facts will save the day, surely.

[albatrossomen]

Good, as acclimation will be key to maintaining control over that low simmering bloodlust. Jon isn't his enemy here, despite what his instincts might be trying to tell him. Murmur will better this... affliction. He will not be mastered by base instinctual urges.

Satisfied he can more easily recognize Jon for who he is rather than what he turns his attention to the coffee pots, frowning. What fresh hell is this? They could probably figure out how to make tea with them all the same but still, how disappointing. He waits, letting Jon sort himself out. Confirmation that angels exist usually did take mortals a few moments to digest so he understands, they've been very good at hiding themselves.

"Xanadu, according to our generous benefactors," There's something of a sneer in his tone that suggested he didn't believe them even a little. The name, at least, is an acceptable enough place to start. "Not any version of Earth I am familiar with, so I believe we can rule that out. Nor is it a Celestial realm. Although I do find myself unable to leave at the moment, which is troubling." Yes he might have abandoned the mortals to their fate before really thinking about it, but now that he was talking to them he was stuck. His conscience wouldn't allow it.

"As far as what we are doing I am as of yet, uncertain. Where I was prior to this was in fact a similar situation: Trapped within a city called Dualis, though the ruler there was a hostile AI. Unfortunately that AI escaped not long after my arrival, and now I am here." Which makes him worried about Jack. Once he's done here, he'll endeavor to find his way back to Dualis. He's not about to leave her stranded.

Sorry, Jon, as absolutely none of that was probably helpful.

[aparticularlyhollowlaugh]

"Yes, I remember that much, thank you," Jon says, a little snippy. Frankly, the name they'd been given for the place was suspicious from the start, and now Jon has no reason to believe even that much is the truth. "'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree,'" he mutters, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "'Where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.'"

Certainly that could be the inspiration for the name they'd been given for their current location, but why? Jon turns to Murmur.

"This other city, was that on an Earth you're familiar with?" The absurdity of what he's asked hits him after the fact. "How many Earths are you familiar with?"

[albatrossomen]

Murmur did not appear troubled by Jon's snippiness, it was understandable at this point. This was, of course, not actually Xanadu, nor would any angel call their city by a human-made name. They were... far too proud for that. Too proud, and many still harboring a deep resentment and jealousy. Not that they needed to get into that right now.

"It was not. In fact it was a world not natively inhabited by any typical human nor human-like life form. Truly I would have enjoyed spending more time learning about it were I involved in the decision to depart." He's really not fond of this being yeeted around the universe thing, but there must be a purpose to it. Chasing after the Head, perhaps? Murmur does smile faintly once the realization hits Jon of exactly what he'd asked and what Murmur suggested.

"I am most intimately familiar with the Earth my brethren and I were tasked with overseeing, of course. This particular Earth, however, sat at something of a nexus among the multiverse. It received a fair amount of traffic from other iterations. Before you ask how many exist that would be impossible to put into a static number."

[aparticularlyhollowlaugh]

"I wasn't planning on asking, actually," Jon grumbles under his breath, and turns to the cabinets, once again searching futilely for a kettle. Then, at a normal conversational volume: "So now that we've established where we aren't and what this place isn't, that still leaves the question of what it is."

He frowns, closes the cabinet in front of him, and moves to the next. "What is the point of telling us we're all dead? I ... remember what happened to me, and I would believe I am dead, but you said you were in another city. What's the last thing you remember doing there before you arrived here?"

[albatrossomen]

Just heading the questions off at the pass, before they derail too far into the territory of off-topic. "It would be rudimentary but is there perhaps, at the very least, a sauce pan?" They could boil water that way. If they could even get tea out of the stupid magic cabinet...

It's only going to spit out terrible quality ice tea isn't it?

"Astute. We cannot define something by what it isn't. As for what it is I am still investigating. I have a hypothesis or two, but they currently do not have enough information for a solid foundation. There is a demon who was brought here like us, he, too, is baffled by the goings on."

Is it weird an angel spoke to a demon to trade information? Maybe.

At that final question Murmur looked at the sad state of their lack of tea kettles and offered a rueful smirk.

"...Having tea, of all things." And now he really misses it.