silentspringmemes | TDM NO. 1

TDM NO. 1

TDM № 1 : December 2023
Part I; Chapter 1. Fires We Don't Put Out

premise & faq rules application invite requests activity NPCs calendar

Hey, neighbor, welcome to the very first TDM for Silent Spring, a semiprivate suburban 60s horrorgame based loosely on the likes of We're Still Here, Holly Heights, and similar. Characters wake up in the uncannily idyllic early 1960s suburbia of Sweetwater, Maryland, an integrated bedroom community of Washington, DC - in the same household as a complete stranger to whom they have apparently always been married, at least according to the eerily and unwaveringly chipper neighbors who seem to know a little more than they should. This TDM will give you a place to test out the setting and get some sample threads if you're going to apply for an invite. Right now there are at least 20 slots available to the general public.

This game and its world, including this TDM, heavily feature nuclear panic, the Red Scare, conformism, sexism and restrictive gender roles, heteronormativity/gender binarism as it relates to being forced into a 'nuclear family', surveillance, gaslighting, brainwashing/propaganda, disinformation, pollution/contamination, poisoning, loss of control, and uncanny valley. IC consequences can involve anything from social shunning to sleep deprivation torture, brainwashing, and nonconsensual administration of large doses of haloperidol. These are the crux of the game and cannot be opted out of — this game offers a very specific flavor of horror and it is up to players whether or not they want to engage. The atmosphere is a dystopia, and while people can certainly bond with each other in extreme circumstances, the point of this game is not an ingame domestic AU, found family, 'adopting' other characters, etc. Although this TDM has been opened for everyone to enjoy, I ask that you be respectful of the work I've put into cultivating a very specific environment. You have full permission to borrow this setting/premise for PSLs focusing on those things.

universe/setting information, role assignment, and FAQs

I. National Everyone-Smile-at-One-Anotherhood Week

Maybe you were on your deathbed, taking your last gasping breaths. Maybe you had just drifted off into sleep. Or maybe you were just in the middle of another ordinary day—but whatever the case may be, you now wake staring at an unfamiliar popcorn ceiling, dressed in a coordinating pajama set or nightgown straight out of the Sears catalog. A complete stranger lies asleep beside you. Perhaps a dog or a cat you don't recognize lies sleeping on a red tartan bed on the floor behind the mahogany footboard.

This is your house, but it’s not your house: on one of the twin dressers in the room, the morning light reflects off the cover glass on a framed photograph of the two of you standing side-by-side and smiling like figures in a Norman Rockwell painting, maybe with a third, also unrecognizable younger party in the foreground between you. A Civil Defense booklet titled ”Survival Under Atomic Attack” hangs halfway off the corner of the dresser, its pages and cover curling upwards with wear atop a dogeared Macy’s Christmas catalog. The other dresser hosts a watch box and a compact radio: yours, if you’re the one wearing the coordinating flannel shirt and pants, or your new husband’s, if you’re in a babydoll-style nightie.

It’s not immediately clear if you’ve found yourself in the fifties or the sixties, at least until you throw on the robe hanging on the back of the bedroom door and head out into the driveway at some point. There you find a rolled newspaper tossed onto the concrete beside a shiny new car, dated December 1, 1960.

Prompt Details:

— All characters wake in a normal human body with any disability aids (including glasses or contact lenses) converted to the most common form of them in the 60s unless a modern development like a sip/blow powerchair is needed for them to be playable. Although cutting edge technologies like myoelectric limbs were just starting to come around at the time, they were not common and readily accessible, and therefore are not allowed.
— Characters have no powers, and regains will not happen in this game. If they biologically need something to function that is fantasy in nature (ex: have to drink blood), that need is gone and replaced with only a normal human’s needs.
— Characters will find their belongings, up to 3 items from home, around the house in normal places for each item to be: a book on the shelf, a framed photo on a flat surface, etc. Items that don’t exist in the regular universe in 1960 may not be brought (ex: gameboy, pokeball, wizard’s staff).
— Characters may bring one normal, non-livestock pet, or may meet said pet for the first time when they wake up in Sweetwater. They can also be petless.
— No items or weapons from after 1960 are allowed, and no weapons more powerful than a hunting rifle or handgun can be brought with them. One weapon per character.

II. Death of a Salesman

You haven’t had much time to acclimate to your new life—maybe a day or two at the most—before there’s a knock on your door. When you open it, a man in a hat and a brown two-piece suit smiles at you, holding a briefcase in one hand and a brand new vacuum cleaner in the other.

“Hey there! My name’s Charlie and I’m here to tell you all about the latest in vacuum technology. Is the man of the house home?”

Regardless of what you say, Charlie the vacuum salesman finds a way to barge into your home and set up his briefcase and vacuum in the center of the living room. He insists that everyone in the family join him to watch, and then the demo begins as he tells the family how inadequate their current vacuum is and how the dirt it leaves behind will make you sick and make your wife look like she can’t keep up with running the house—but if she just buys this vacuum, she’ll be the envy of all of her friends, and isn’t it great timing that there’s a Christmas special on this very unit right now?

He tells the family he’ll give them ‘a moment to think on it’ while he fills up the water canister for the steamer function in the kitchen sink. Characters can hear the faucet running and then shutting off, but the salesman doesn’t emerge with a water tank—he emerges with a butcher’s knife.

“You took too long!” He announces. “I better get to the next house!”

With that, he charges, and begins to attempt to slice or stab whoever’s closest. You’re in luck, or at least it initially seems—it’s two or maybe even three against one. But once you attack him, you’ll notice something odd—the salesman doesn’t seem to react to being sliced at or stabbed, and if your character has a gun, gunshots don’t stop or even slow him. Shooting him in the head, cutting his jugular vein, or beating him on the back of the head are the only ways to kill him - good luck!

Should your household manage to kill him before he kills you, something even stranger happens. The moment he takes his last breath, lying in a pool of his own blood, there’s a knock on the door. If characters ignore it or say “one moment please!”, the knocks get more and more vehement until the hand is practically banging on the door. If they still ignore it, the neighbor strolls around to the window and looks in to see if they’re home, cupping her hands to the glass— but doesn’t react to the dead body. Instead she just smiles brightly, gives an enthusiastic little wave, and points to the door.

When characters finally open the door to let her in, they’ll notice that she’s holding a mop and bucket, smiling brightly.

“I thought you could use a little help cleaning up the mess!”, she says, barging past just like the salesman did before her. At no point does she stop smiling, or seem to register that it’s a dead body—she just starts mopping up the pool of blood, occasionally dunking her mop into the soapy pink water of the bucket, never referring to it as anything other than the vague “the spill”.

If characters ask her for help disposing of the body, she’ll bring in her husband, a similarly cardboard figure who assists the ‘man of the house’ with digging a grave-sized hole in the back yard and dropping the body in. The next day, the ground is undisturbed.

III. We'll become silhouettes

Whoa there, Neighbor! I hope you and your picturesque new family didn't get so comfortable you lost sight of the looming Red Menace. No, it's not just confined to the silver screen: the Communist threat is everywhere, maybe even in your own home—and the skies above. Around 1:15 PM on December 20th, they hear the sound: the air raid sirens clustered like bananas atop the tall poles dotting the city come to life like singing frogs on a bank, sending out long, drawn out calls in a chorus of overlapping pitches. The radios in every room crackle on as if by magic, and a man's transatlantic voice reads the announcement:

"Your attention please. This is Ron Chapman, one of your official civil defense broadcasters with a special message. Military authorities have advised us that an enemy attack by air is imminent. This is a red alert. You are advised to go to your nearest shelter area immediately. Find shelter. There is not time to leave the city.

Your state civil defense director has just issued the following instructions: Please remain calm. Every precaution will be taken for your protection. Keep your radio tuned to this place on the dial throughout the alert period for information. Telephone service to your home may be cut off to permit military and civil defense authorities to carry out vital operations. Do not attempt to join your family or children if they are now separated. They will be cared for where they are. Obey your civil defense warden and find shelter NOW. Take shelter in your basement or in your nearest shelter area. If you can plug in your radio in the basement, take it with you. Use a portable radio set if you have one. Otherwise turn up the volume of your radio so that you can hear it in the basement. Keep calm, don't lose your head. If you are at work, obey your civil defense authorities. Go quickly and calmly to their designated shelter. If your children are at school, they are being directed to shelter by their teachers. If you are in an automobile, pull over to the curb and then go immediately to the nearest shelter area. Do not leave your car where it will block traffic.

This station will continue to stay on the air throughout the alert period to bring you authentic information and official instructions. Stay tuned to 640 or 1240 kilocycles on your radio for official information. Refuse to listen to unauthorized rumors or broadcasts. This is your official civil defense broadcast . . . Your attention please. This is Ron Chapman, one of your official civil defense broadcasters with a special message . . ."

If characters are at the high school, teachers will usher them out of the classroom and down a single packed cement staircase in the direction of the basement, past a yellow and black sign on the wall over the hand railing that reads FALLOUT SHELTER. They don't visibly panic—but it's clear to almost everyone that the teachers are just as afraid as they are, if not moreso. They've simply been deliberately trained not to show it, though there is a quality to the eyes that training can never reach.

The portable emergency radios echo off of the cement floor and stacked barrels of drinking water lining the walls opposite unopened boxes of survival rations. Teachers call roll in strained voices, accounting for every student left in their care—and then, once everyone is in, the heavy metal door to the shelter is closed, shutting out the aboveground world as Principal Jones tells everyone to stay quiet so they can hear the portable radios.

Characters at home have the option of going into the basements of the homes they awoke in, which have some survival rations but hardly qualify as fully outfitted bunkers, or disregarding the civil defense office's commands and risking it to seek safety in the community fallout shelter beneath the Sweetwater Fire Department. It is up to each "couple" whether they split up or seek safety in numbers, whether they prioritize immediacy or amount of protection.

If characters decide to hunker down in the fallout shelter under the fire department, they will be joined by dozens of their terrified neighbors. Responses vary dramatically: some seem almost catatonic, as though unable to believe that the events before them are really unfolding; others weep with fear. A woman breaks free of her husband's arms, screaming that she has to get her son, but a firefighter keeps her from climbing back up the staircase more and more people stream down.

Regardless of where characters choose to shelter, they are trapped there for the next five hours, listening to the Maryland civil defense director's warning circulate over and over in the claustrophobic space. Now might be a good time to field any questions to Dick Clark, your town Civil Defense Officer and Police Chief.

—until at last, the message changes.

"Your attention please. This is Ron Chapman, one of your official civil defense broadcasters with a special message. Military authorities have advised us that the anticipated enemy attack has been diverted. You may now leave shelter and rejoin your families. This concludes the red alert. Your attention please . . ."

Uh oh. Hope you didn't say anything in the heat of the moment you might now regret.

IV. There's no place like (~~your new~~) home for the holidays

What a stressful week–even if the townspeople don’t seem too phased by it. In fact, they’re acting as if nothing’s happened at all, and will laugh off any suggestion that anything different might be the case. The neighborhood Christmas party at the grand neocolonial home of HOA president Marjorie Taylor proceeds as planned on the 22nd of the month–Characters’ wardrobes, of course, already contain some cocktail attire, but if it doesn’t suit their tastes, they can find all of the latest fashions on display in the completely normal department store.

Punch made by Marjorie herself is served in a tremendous green Tupperware bowl, though those who would prefer a simple cocktail will have no trouble finding one on any of the bar carts around the house. Mistletoe dangles from the arch leading to the secluded hallway lined with doors to the guest room and downstairs bathroom, out of the sight of those who might judge a character for stealing a kiss from someone other than their new spouse. Married couples dance in the living room while their friends perch on the couch like an overloaded liferaft to watch. The air of the room is bright, jovial, loud - the red threat looms in the dark unknown beyond the windows, but for the moment, all is well. Enjoy yourself, neighbor!

V. Slip a sable under the tree

Three days after Marjorie's successful neighborhood Christmas party comes Christmas morning. When characters head down the stairs (or step into the living room on the same floor, if they're the 'child' of one of the newly introduced couples), they'll find the fully decorated Christmas tree that greeted them upon their arrival now has a few presents wrapped in metallic reds and silvers resting at its base, one for each party in the household, addressed simply with From: Santa.

The catch? The wrapping paper is impossible to open, the ribbons are impossible to tie and uncut, until everyone sits down as a family and opens them together in a true representation of an old-fashioned American Christmas morning.

Characters will receive 1 extra item from their homeworld abiding by the starting inventory guidelines—but the item has to be deeply personal, and something that they're uncomfortable with others seeing... which, judging by the similar reaction their new housemates have to their own presents, almost seems to be by design. It could be a compromising photo, a piece of subversive literature, a relic of who they were and things they'd rather remain hidden... but whatever it is, they've now been seen with it.

Players may keep TDM threads canon if both players are admitted, and TDMers are encouraged to play around with multiple possible family member matches. Have fun!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If she were a woman particularly prone to panic—or violence, clocking how quickly the man is capable of rounding on her—, this might be a good time to do it. She's in a place she shouldn't be, in the company of a stranger she doesn't know who looks as alarmed as she feels. And maybe if it were two years ago and she were still in a place where any part of this might be remotely possible, she might actually know a bite of fear.

But it isn't, and she isn't. That's baffling enough to knock the hard edges off the thing, which means the big man has taken two steps back—three now—and Maureen has only just gotten one foot out from under the covers to plant down on the thick carpet.

Her own hands come up, a forestalling motion. Easy there.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I thought you were my husband."

And if Maureen believed in a higher power, that would've made for a hell of a cosmic joke.

Scare... Husband... Both words leave Wrench's mind spinning in opposite directions in an effort to correct or make sense of the assumptions. The latter proves to be the stranger of the two, but as if by serendipity the tall man catches sight of the glistening band wrapped around the finger of his outstretched hand. For a moment his focus on the unfamiliar woman slips and he holds his hand up to his face, as if to examine the bit of jewelry.

The strange surroundings are one thing, but the fact he's dressed in a sleep suit he's never seen in his life with a wedding band wrapped around the finger of a brutally scarred hand is something else entirely. Wrench is immediately certain he isn't dreaming this, but that is where his sureness of anything begins and ends.

Who the hell are you? he signs, expecting no response to the unvoiced language but testing the waters anyway.

If he didn't look at his own hand first, it might have taken her minutes longer to clock the jewelry on her own finger. It is the least bizarre part of this. —Only no, it isn't. She hasn't worn her wedding rings in months. More to the point: these aren't them. And these aren't her clothes, and this room isn't possible even if she's certain it's real.

Something in her face has already begun to shift from baffled surprise to burgeoning concern before he starts signing. It promptly deepens.

"I'm sorry. I don't understand."

Her confusion, at least, comes as a relief. Maybe one would think that Wrench was hoping for some miraculous comprehension, but the expression leveled back at him is familiar and welcoming. If the stranger suddenly knew the language, he might really think he'd somehow died or been captured or drugged. It would bee too great a coincidence to ignore.

Of course, the absence of certain evidence leaves Wrench with the same questions. The woman doesn't seem to be advancing on him. It all seems too elaborate to be some kind of a ruse aimed at capturing him, anyhow. Why not just pull out a gun and shoot him on the spot? Something in his shoulders seems to relax as he accepts that he's probably not in any immediate danger. So Wrench pinches his fingers together and makes a motion as if he's writing in the air. There has to be a pen and a paper around here somewhere, doesn't there?

Unfortunately, his hunting around the area for some kind of writing utensil is cut short by the framed photograph sitting cheerily atop the dresser. Wrench recognizes himself immediately, though he looks different somehow. In the photograph, his green eyes seem brighter. His smile is more genuine, and the curls of his currently overgrown hair are perfectly coiled and styled into a gentle elephant trunk flip on his forehead. His arm is around the waist of a woman at his side. A woman he recognizes now as his unwitting bedfellow.

Wrench grabs the photograph and thrusts it towards the woman.

She hasn't set her other foot on the floor. Not yet. There's plenty enough about the room, and the man moving through it, to be clobbered over the head by that springing to her feet doesn't seem instantly pressing. Instead: Think, Maureen. Connect what you know. Let's say the wormhole pulled you in and spat you back out somewhere you don't belong. Maybe the Resolute had already deployed a fleet of maintenance pods to steer them back on course, and they'd been pulled through too. That could explain how they could be strangers to each other. So, a crash landing? If so, where? This room can't be on Alpha Centauri; the manufacturing isn't right. So it has to be back on Earth. But that can't be right either, because—

It's a rapid series of thoughts, clamoring for her attention in the brief moment it takes the man to cross the room. They keep her momentarily pinned there, half in the bed and half out.

The photograph gets her moving.

She's on her feet in an instant, for the moment unconcerned by the absurd sleepwear flouncing gauzily about her as she rapidly closes distance. Sorry did he want to keep custody of the frame? Because she's reaching for it, angling it to get a better look regardless of whether he lets go.

Not that an up close examination really clarifies anything. It just gives him a close up vantage on her confusion before her attention cuts over to the dresser from where the photo came. She siezes on the pamphlet booklet there, and is already turning through it as she whirls toward the bedroom window. So much for being stuck in place.

"This isn't possible." She's skimming two paragraphs of text before she gets to the window and throws the curtain back. And stops, physically arrested by the view beyond the glass pane. Her hand with the booklet fall to her side.

It's as if only one of them can be in motion at a time, because the moment the woman approaches Wrench, he goes still. She easily tugs the framed photo from his hands. Nothing about it feels like something he'd like to hold onto. It's an eerie reminder that there's something that's been done to him here. The two of them have been acted upon in some way to bring them to where they are now, dressed like something out of a salacious classic sitcom, playing the happily-married couple in someone else's dollhouse.

Instead of following the woman, he starts opening drawers. To Wrench's surprise, they aren't empty. Every handle he tugs reveals evidence that the home has been lived in. From neatly-folded shirts to rolled socks to... a gun?

Wrench abruptly closes the dresser drawer, then slides it open again. Sure enough, there on top of a stack of undershirts is a familiar .45 caliber pistol. He shoves it into the pocket of his full-length sleep pants and momentarily gives up his search for a paper and pen. Instead, Wrench stalks to the window and gazes at the mild scene outdoors. A row of cookie-cutter homes greets him, with their manicured lawns and bare trees, and he shakes his head in disbelief.

The rasp of drawers opening and closing (and the discovery of the gun, and where it goes) makes for unobserved background noise. It's only when he joins her there at the window that Maureen reels the broad flicking point of her attention back from the brick and siding houses, the neatly parked cars, the morning frost thick on shingle roofs, and the sky unfolded above it like a cold blue cardstock backdrop.

She's seen a clear sky recently—on a remote planet, impossible distances away. What she hasn't seen in years is a clear sky over Earth. It's incredible that this the one that currently counts as entirely alien.

There's a buzzing in her head as she turns, eyeline fleeting across the man who has the decent to look more real than his photograph does, and then roving back across the contents of the room behind them as if a second (third, fourth, sixth) scan might yield a sensible detail instead of offering up matching terrycloth robes and dog-eared magazines, the tiny vase with a sprig of baby's breath and a bundle of small silk flowers on one of the two matching dressers.

Okay. Fact: They're not doing all that great so far. So: time to start improving the odds.

With that hum of overwork still between the ears, Maureen flips to the back page of the book. There's space to write around the triangle badge of the Civil Defense printed there, so she folds the back cover all the way around the rest of soft sided booklet and offers it to him.

"Let's find a pen."

Wrench stands at the windowsill alongside the woman he suspects is intended to be his wife, her awe matched in his own. He takes in the scene outdoors with equal amounts of disbelief, not knowing that what he regards as a vast and oppressive expanse of civilization might look to her to be utterly microscopic. Never in his wildest dreams has he envied the cookie cutter lifestyle depicted just beyond that pane of glass, nor reflected in the matching wood accents of the bedroom furniture or the his-and-hers touches strewn all about the home. It stifles him, makes him long to pad outdoors and find the nearest patch of wilderness that he can escape into.

No such luck, unfortunately. It takes the woman snapping to her senses to bring him around to his own, and Wrench watches her intently, never seeming to take his eye off her face no matter where she turns. A pen. He realizes she's folding the page for his benefit, and springs back into action to continue to pull open drawers. It's in the little nook of his own bedside table that he discovers just that, laying atop a small spiral reporter's notebook like someone's prepared this half of the room with him in mind. He grabs both, pressing the fresh page of the folded booklet against the cover of the notebook for stability, irrational though the effort is. Wrench presses the tip of the pen to the page, then stops. What the hell is he supposed to say?

Assume you're not from around here either?

She's been checking the drawers of what constitutes her own side of the room, but is quick to abandon the effort when he beats her to what they're after. Rounding the bed again (she really is quick on her feet when she isn't being shocked, however understandably, into going stock still), Maureen closes distance once more. If she's crowding a little to get a look at the page while he finishes writing—antsy to put her eyes on the letters as soon as they leave the pen, a sense of momentum beginning to build under the skin even as she's standing there with a hand absently turning the wedding band that is and isn't hers about her finger—, then so what?

"No," is automatic. Maureen wrinkles her nose immediately after, and makes a motion after the pen. Trade her.

In brisk, slanting handwriting: No. I'm one of the colonists.

They may be strangers, but even with the gun in his pocket Wrench shows no hesitation in letting the woman crowd next to him. As he hands the little bundle of communication supplies over to her, he perches himself at the edge of the mattress, leaving enough room for her to do the same. From his vantage point he watches her as she writes, though her expression has already given away her answer.

Something about the strength of her reaction amuses him. Maybe she just doesn't want to be associated with whatever is going on in this place, or the people who brought them here. Or maybe it's something else she takes exception to altogether. Wrench takes back the pen when it's offered. If this method feels particularly cumbersome to him, he doesn't let it show. The tall man seems eager just to have an outlet for some words.

His own handwriting is half-script, casually rounded but tidy enough to be easily legible. Colonist? Go back. Where did you come from, and do you know how you got here?

She's not sitting. Not immediately, anyway. First, Maureen strips the rings from her finger, setting both the band and its diamond studded partner on the side table before joining him on the edge of the bed.

Go back. She almost laughs, but can feel how manic it would sound and sets her teeth around it. She's had a lot of practice with that lately (Isn't this survival situation fun, kids?). You're telling her, guy.

You're not with the Resolute. It's not a question. She's stating a fact. Long story/have a hunch. What's your name? When are you from?

No, wait. She isn't done.

Maureen Robinson--->

He can't blame her for wanting to strip away every bit of what's been imposed upon him, even if Wrench doesn't share the same sentiment. It's not that it doesn't bother him, to have woken up here in a bed that isn't his, dressed in clothes that aren't to his style yet somehow perfectly fit his 6'4" frame. It's just that it seems wiser right now to show no value towards it whatsoever. He could take or leave the whole lot. Eyes forward, keep the focus on whatever the hell is going on.

Wrench is already shaking his head when he reads those words over his shoulder. The Resolute? It doesn't mean anything to him. Another syndicate? Some kind of political resistance movement? Whatever it's meant to stand for hasn't made its way into the consciousness of a man who's spent the last several years living off the grid in the backwoods of Minnesota. But then again there's really no surprise there.

He reaches for the pen, recoils when she does, then reaches again.

My name's Wrench. From 2016, last I knew. I fell asleep camping somewhere in Minnesota. Then this.

The real problem is that she wants to be away from this—the room, sitting here at the edge of this bed, hobbled here not opening every door she comes across until she satisfies the buzz that's screaming in her head: Where the hell is her family?

In spite of it, her attention remains pinned firmly on the page. One thing at a time. The kids can make it. John can take care of himself. So, Wrench. Got it. 2016—

Maureen sits back. Nevermind that it functions as workable confirmation for that hunch. There's a difference between off the cuff hypothosizing Major Quantum Shift and having the evidence actually written down. It sparks along at the senses, prickling at the small hairs on her arms. She's still sitting straight up when he finishes writing, freshly de-ringed hand having moved to touch her mouth in an absent gesture of thinking very hard. She doesn't immediately lower it to accept back the pen.

It's not hard to recognize a thrill of excitement in her. Even for a stranger. Even when it's paired with that sense of urgency thrumming through her.

When she does take the pen again, Maureen writes just four characters. She raises her eyes to look directly at him.

2046

A bubble of air catches in Wrench's throat as he tries to stuff down an incredulous smirk. Maybe it's no more impossible that she's come from 2046 than it is that they've been transported back to the 1960s. It's only that one has already definitely happened, while the other remains to his mind a scant possibility. Wrench has never put much of his effort into envisioning the future. Better never to assume that he'll be there to greet it. And even if he were, what hope could it hold for a man who's done the kinds of things that he has? It's not as though he'll suddenly be able to experience it.

Someone else might rush to ask a thousand questions of Maureen. It's a time not so far out of the grasp of a man from 2016. Instead, though, he greets her eyes with a spark of levity shining behind his own. It's all just beyond preposterous.

Not because it's his first time experiencing what feels impossible or otherworldly, but because he can't envision a circumstance that would draw the two of them together and fling them into this space. Put wedding bands around their fingers and presume to ask them to simulate some kind of Leave it to Beaver fantasy. Not him.

Wrench takes back the pen. Are you important somehow? It's a clunky way of asking the question, but he's grasping at straws. What could this place want with them?

There are people who might prickle at that spark of flippant disbelief. But it is barely believable, so how can she fault him for it? She'd seen the wormhole open, space bowing to draw them in, and even that only makes her presence here narrowly explicable at best (and only if she's really stretching for a theory). It doesn't explain how he's here, or what here even is. It doesn't point to how to fix it. In her experience, that much uncertainty usually leads in one of two directions: losing it, or this.

She can work with skepticism.

Doubly so if it comes offset by a curious streak healthy enough to interrogate that doubt. So the question is a good sign. She promptly takes the pen back, turns the booklet, and squeezes her answer into the remaining open space along the page's edge.

No, but my son is. Can you help me find him?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

TDM NO. 1

way to beat me to tagging the version of this prompt on your toplevel

oh yay! ♡

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