TDM NO. 2

[silentspringmods]

TDM № 2 : February 2024
Part I; Chapter 3. Out of the Mist Your Voice Is Calling

premise & faq rules application invite requests NPCs calendar story so far taken

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—or, if they're under 18, they awaken as the legally recognized child of the aforementioned couple. 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.

OOC TDM plotting/who's who

Openings

As of this TDM, a total of 18 player slots are open. Players may app up to two characters; one of the two will not count toward a player slot.

There are 8 openings for players who app at least one Wife;
There are 4 openings for players who only app a Husband;
and there are 6 openings for players apping at least one character under 18.

Game Tone and Blanket Warnings

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.

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 February 2, 1961.

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. Smoke gets in your eyes

A few days after characters arrive, a large tower of black smoke begins to rise against the February sky, a dark column at the treeline just beyond the cooling towers that mark the location of the distant Sweetwater Atomic Energy Plant. The radios, if characters turn them on, advise of a two-day controlled burn going on in the forest during the dead season, managed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and suggest that characters keep windows closed to minimize “nuisance smoke” in the home. The whole town takes on the faint smell of smoke as the wind pushes it toward the patchwork of subdivisions: not the pleasant smell of wood burning or food cooking, but something much less organic, a close neighbor to the smell of burning plastic. Characters may, from time to time, notice the faintest passing metallic taste in their mouths.

Otherwise, it’s a slushy, snowy Maryland winter like any other, and the previous month’s snow—which had mostly melted by the time of the controlled burn—returns before too long, dusting the town in a few shallow inches of brilliant white. It’s enough for school to close for a few consecutive snow days—perhaps a good time for newly assigned children to explore the town or earn a few dollars shovelling driveways?

The salt trucks and plows do a pretty good job of keeping the streets cleared, but something odd begins to surface on the surface of the pavement as they continue to salt and scrape: numbers spraypainted on the pavement, varying by location: 1, 2, 3, or 4. Characters have about a week to realize that the numbers correlate to sectors in a quadrant covering what seems to be the entire town before roadblocks appear at the major street junctions connecting adjacent quadrants, manned by civil defense and the Sweetwater police force.

A disaster preparedness drill, the radio informs them, will be taking place for the next week. Characters who do not have critical business in a sector other than Sector 4, where Haven Street and the neighborhood bunker is located, will not be allowed to pass through, and those that are allowed to pass through for critical work (such as at the hospital in Sector 3 or the fire department in Sector 1) are subjected to trunk and body searches.

Unfortunately, most of the shops in town, including the grocery store, are clustered around the town park in Sector 1, unavailable to Haven Street’s residents. As the week goes on, neighbors may have to swap and borrow to make sure that they have everything they want—not need, of course, because the government of the town of Sweetwater would never let this go on long enough to create a serious need without providing for the citizens trapped contained within the cordoned sectors. Might as well get to know each other!

III. Everybody's somebody's fool

You didn’t think Valentine’s Day would come to pass without a quintessential 1960s cocktail party, did you? On the 14th of the month, Marjorie again plays hostess in the large, well-groomed neocolonial at the end of the cul-de-sac, offering a spread complete with cheese balls, deviled eggs, and fondue. Or maybe shrimp are more your character’s style? Either way, there is no shortage of rather… quirky hors d’oeuvres and assorted canapes to blunt the effect of the cocktails her husband mixes up, or her signature punch, if characters would rather have that.

While characters’ closets contain an item or two of cocktail attire from the 1960s lives they’ve stepped into, there are also a lot of other things in their closets, things that would catch some glances or invite gossip by the NPC partygoers. It’s best to avoid a faux pas in an environment like this - maybe some second opinions on outfits are warranted? And of course, it wouldn’t reflect well on one spouse for their partner to show up underdressed… or to not show up at all without a pretty good alibi.

Characters may notice, at various points in the night, that Marjorie’s gaze wanders from person to person, that at times she seems to be watching different partygoers. This probably isn’t the best place for subversive speech, but it’s a good chance to meet one’s neighbors, and perhaps an even better chance to try and get some information out of Marjorie.

IV. Don't tell me why, kiss me goodbye

cw: non-graphic depiction of woman in labor

When characters go to sleep on the night of the 15th, the edges of the town again begin to merge with their unconscious minds as they did on New Year's Eve, a sequence of fragmented images: a beautiful young woman’s face contorts in agony, the bindi above the bridge of her nose crumpling between tight brows as she pants through bared teeth, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. Two older women, both with salt-and-pepper hair, stand on either side of her in an urban hospital room, rubbing her back as it jerks with her weeping. The roots of her hair are drenched with sweat; tears stream around the hand of her mother-in-law as it rests on her flushed cheek. A young woman with hair tucked under a scrub cap leans over one of her elders and says something to the soon-to-be mother.

Two occupied pairs of loafers face each other on a glossy tiled floor. A woman’s voice echoes over a speaker: Now boarding, Flight 17501, DCA to LaGuardia. First-Class passengers on Flight 17501 from DCA to LaGuardia may now board. The same hand that wound into the telephone cord reaches out and shakes a broader one several shades darker, decorated with a proportionally heavy chain-link watch.

“Professor.
My congratulations to your daughter.”


A few days later, the televisions downstairs crackle to life, playing in black and white a short video. The young woman from the dream stands in front of the camera in what appears to be a walled garden, wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a plain but brightly colored sari flaring out across it sidha pallu style and holding an infant; her thick black hair is now in a long braid tucked to the right, capped off with trendy Sadhana cut bangs. She waves at the camera, then holds up the baby’s wrist as to wave too. The child is small, and young—maybe one month old.

She says something, her brown eyes warming, although of course the soundless film doesn't capture her words. The camera comes closer to the baby, showing her face, giving different angles, then pans out, sweeping across the garden: well-kept, clearly maintained by someone who cares about it quite a bit. Guava and Chinese hibiscus border the brick wall with a well-pruned mango tree standing sentry, and the compound leaves of a young neem tree sway gently in the breeze in the foreground. One of the women from the delivery room, somewhere in her fifties or sixties, steps into the screen to stand beside the new mother, looking into the camera with the same eyes, her own creased at the edges with decades lived.

Be careful. I love you, she mouths in Hindi, although the video has no sound—and characters, even without any prior knowledge, will find that somehow they know the exact content of what was just expressed—and more than that echoes in their minds.

Be careful.
I love you.
Ishani needs her grandfather.

The young woman smiles a little thinly at the the camera as the video comes to an end, her eyes glistening, and says something in parting, again waving and holding up the baby’s hand as though to wave too; the older woman presses a hand to her lips and blows a kiss with a wistful smile that holds a trace of pain—and briefly, characters look at the screen and realize that her face has metamorphosed into that of someone they care very deeply for, holding direct eye contact with them, visible to any other parties in the room. The video ends, leaving them—and, if they’re unlucky, another member of the household—standing in the living room, staring at a blank screen.

V. Becoming what we are, collapsing stars

Characters attending the community college’s Spring/Summer semester to begin training for their new careers may notice a sign-up sheet posted outside of some of the classrooms in the science and engineering wing: a series of talks on astrophysics, open to the public, is being held by visiting lecturer Vikram Ravichandran, a tenured professor in the Physics Department of the Indian Institute of Science holding degrees in astrophysics and theoretical physics from the IIS and Oxford University, respectively. It’s quite an honor to have someone so qualified teaching in a little town like this, isn’t it?

If any characters puzzle about what might bring a man across the world to give talks in a town like this, their curiosity is dismissed, and they’re simply told that the professor is teaching while he looks for a quieter suburban life outside of the frenetic pace of Bengaluru. Who wouldn’t want to live and teach in America? His choice seems self-explanatory enough to the Americans of Sweetwater.

On the 19thth, the first talk is held, a thoroughly normal lecture on recent academic thought on the origins of the universe, followed by light refreshments, offering attendees a chance to meet their new classmates or perhaps to introduce themselves or pose questions to Dr. Ravichandran—although how much can be safely shared with him, as always, remains a looming question mark.

For the most part, though, Vikram has an approachable air—he's tall and speaks with a deep voice, and is certainly very intelligent in an eccentric sort of way, but he smiles and laughs in conversation throughout the night, diving deep into explanations with evident relish when asked. He gives the impression of someone who has been in academia for quite some time; with tenure has come the ability to relax. As odd as his presence in the town of Sweetwater is, he does seem to sincerely enjoy teaching—those particularly attentive to their surroundings might notice his name on the cover of one of the communal textbooks left out on one of the tables in the science department’s study area on their way back to the parking lot.

Notes:
— The Community College is now open! It features a cafeteria, campus center, library, gymnasium, athletics field, pool, and assorted classrooms. Characters who are registered as students have free access to all parts of the campus; characters who aren't students can access most of it, although they can't check out library books or access the gym or pool.

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!

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Comments

hunter aloysius "hap" percy | the OA

[angelhunter]

[ ooc / New blood, here to try out this real piece of work in the setting. There's a little info on him here along with content warnings; his canon point is Part I. He'll be under the initial impression that he came here voluntarily (after a fashion: he just chose to leave his universe, not knowing where he'd end up) and essentially bodysnatched this version of himself.

Prompts written in action but I'm happy to do prose too. ]

arrival. content warnings: chemical overdose, references to human experimentation and imprisonment, gaslighting

[ He's alive. He's awake. Working backwards: He was asleep.

Hap sits up in bed, touches his face with both hands. Tests his features. He's him. The same. And someone else, somewhere else. The first effects of the sodium pentathol poisoning have vanished like the last weak murmurs of a dream. He laughs, though not as hysterically as he might if he'd shifted into a fully alert body, or the trip had been at all taxing. It didn't feel like he thought it would, crossing universes. Slipping into another consciousness (pushed aside or snuffed out?) is seamless, as it turns out. No more disorientating than a blink.

It worked. The years of research, the sacrifices and isolation, the suffering of his subjects, and every gouge out of his conscience to construct a greater understanding of the universe -- a goal he accepted couldn't be achieved in his lifetime -- came to impossible, unbelievable fruition.

And he could do it again.

His glasses are within reach on the nightstand. He puts them on and takes in the room, starting with the body beside him. Not someone he recognizes, and that tempers the elation rushing through him. He was expecting Renata or Rachel. (Won't think about Prairie and what he did to her.) But why should he? They could be anywhere in this world. Or they could be in his basement.

He opts not to disturb the woman who may or may not be his wife. Best he acquaints himself with their life as much as he can, first. In the framed photo he finds, she's no one he recognizes from his past. He has no right to be disappointed by that so denies that he is. Their home is mundane. It doesn't take him long to work out that the sixties flair isn't just aesthetic. The suggestion of time displacement has him all but forgetting about the woman upstairs (though he does take a peek down the underground stairs. Empty).

Unwilling to suspend his disbelief based on the available, potentially fabricated evidence, Hap returns to the bedroom to dress. ]

i. the missus

[ If his partner wakes while he's changing, he turns to her while buttoning up his shirt. ]

Ah. [ He has no reason to think she's never seen him before, and tries to act normal. Pleasantly generic. ] Good morning.

ii. in town

[ Hap scrounges up his counterpart's, now his, wallet and keys. Birthdate on the driver's licence lines up with his age and the supposed year. It's disconcerting; he's not going to waste energy contemplating all the ways it will be extremely inconvenient, if true. In his car, he follows the roads without aim until he's satisfied no architecture is going to surprise him. It's unfailingly uniform to the time period.

He stops in town and goes on a walkabout, popping into several stores. Making polite conversation with shop clerks, purchasing a thing or two just to blend in. Nobody and nothing seems out of place. Hap is standing on the sidewalk, magazine in hand, paused on an advertisement for asbestos-lined oven mitts, when someone nearby practically knocks him off his feet with a casual anachronism.

A modern tune, hummed. A reference or some slang. Crass behaviour unbefitting a fine citizen of Silent Springs. Whatever it is, he folds the magazine shut and steps urgently up to them. ]

Sorry, what was that? Just now?

iii. don't tell me why

[ Hap watches the broadcast with arms crossed, brow knit. Nonetheless, his posture is at ease compared to the tension that comes over him near the end. One fist tightens against his side, the other grips hard at his forearm. She's not here. She couldn't be. He left her behind.

But if anyone could find a way to follow him...

No, she wouldn't. She would have no reason to except to pursue vengeance, and Prairie doesn't have that in her. She doesn't care about him that much. Hap pulls his glasses off, rubs at the bridge of his nose. Is, for the first time since he woke up in Pleasantville, glad he left her. It's only then that he notices the person beside him is having a reaction of their own.

He stresses a neutral tone. The line of his shoulders remains rigid. ] What did you see?

iv. wildcard

[ Open to all other prompts and scenarios, and happy to plot out smth beforehand, including some light assumed CR/handwaved intros. PM or PP verhoeven ]

ii.

[poleaxed]

Joan has already had a certifiably bad experience from standing out, and one would think this would make her more cautious. In a way, it has; her first instinct is fear. It's just that her infraction-- telling a mailman to fuck himself-- seems so small. Are they really going to punish her for that? She ought to see the limits of what she can get away with. She needs to start forming a plan.

So she does, in her own way. "What are you, a narc?"

[angelhunter]

There's a lot to read into from that response. He's not an expert on colloquialisms but he doesn't think "narc" was coined or perpetuated by slacks-clad young women. To say nothing of her defensiveness, the content of the question itself, which begs further: Who would he narc to?

Hap shakes his head, mustering a bemused smile to try and put her at ease. "No, no. Nothing like that. I find that kind of language refreshing, honestly." If her behaviour is considered out of the ordinary, then he can be a bit weird too. Mutually assured destruction.

[poleaxed]

Unaccustomed to positive reinforcement, Joan balks, a muted scoff coming from her mouth like a burp. She takes a half step back, her hands on her hips. "Bullshit." She bends forward, trying to get a better look at him. "What's your angle?"

[angelhunter]

He splays his free hand, and in the other, the back of the magazine faces her in full. She doesn't seem amenable to answering questions but she's giving him solid hints of what ones merit asking.

"Curiosity."

[poleaxed]

She stands up straight, satisfied with directness. "Thank you. Jesus Christ, why's it so hard for people to talk straight?" She leans against the mailbox behind her, all shining blue paint. "You're trying to figure out, what? What they lock people up for? Is that it?"

It's what Chell was curious about; it seems like a safe bet.

[angelhunter]

The mouth on her reminds him of Scott, one of the most unpleasant and proudly unlikable subjects he's ever had, so he's pleasantly surprised when she doesn't carry on being abrasive for abrasiveness's sake. Hap folds the magazine and wedges it under his arm, slipping his hands into his pockets.

"More interested in who 'they' are, for a start."

[poleaxed]

It makes her think, which is annoying but ultimately productive. It's not like not thinking has gotten her anywhere-- don't worry, she's tried.

"If we figure out why," she says, "don't you think who'll follow?"

[angelhunter]

Hap holds back a sigh. He doesn't really care what comes first, just that he can understand something before the day is out.

"Depends on if we're really asking the same questions." He cants his head. "Why aren't you and I like everyone else?"

[poleaxed]

People don't usually ask Joan questions that require her to stretch her mind, her imagination, her analytical process. This is enough of a rarity that it draws her in. She sits down next to this strange, professorial man on his dainty little park bench, and she thinks about her experiences in this world.

"What if they were? Like us, I mean." The theory of torture and control seems the most logical. "And they got ground down."

[angelhunter]

That was a bit of a gamble, admitting he too is out of place. He's content it paid off, told him she is somewhat like him: not from around here. Hap sets the magazine down on the the side opposite his now companion and angles slightly towards her.

"Through what? Banality?"

[poleaxed]

She gives him a look of mild confusion, but understanding dawns quickly enough. "They haven't tortured you yet."

[angelhunter]

Her initial reaction suddenly makes sense. His concern is measured, drawing on bedside manner to exacerbate any lingering trauma as little as he can when he clarifies, "You were tortured."

i. the missus

[aperturesubject0001]

[ The first sound that comes from Chell as she wakes is a deep breath and a sigh, then the rustling of bedclothes as she rolls onto her back and stretches. Where one might expect a groan or a yawn, she's silent, blinking up at the ceiling fuzzily. Huh. Waking up in a generic room. That's something she's done before.

Being greeted by a voice in the room, rather than a pre-recorded set of instructions, is not. When Hap speaks, Chell startles upright and stares at him in obvious confusion. Not fear, though -- it's more the wide-eyed look of someone encountering an animal in an unexpected place. One of her hands lifts to her chin. ]

Who are you?

ty nonplussed hap is a rare delicacy

[angelhunter]

[ Her initial stirring seems at ease. Comfortable. A stark contrast to her reaction to him, as if at first glance, she can somehow see right through him. They are married. There are more photographs around the house to confirm it. Mail is addressed simply to Mr. and Mrs. Percy (both helpful and not; he has to find out her name). 

And her immediate use of sign language suggests he should know it. Shit. It's the last setback he expected. It's clear from how his hands pause over a button that he's at a loss for a response. He can't improvise properly if he doesn't know what he's working with, and he has no idea what she said. ]

mild cw for implied surgical fuckery

[aperturesubject0001]

[ Oh, okay. Total incomprehension. That's not really that unusual in her experience. Sometimes you wake up and you're told to say "apple" and a robot stares at you in befuddlement, sometimes you wake up and a guy says "good morning" like he knows you and then stares at you in befuddlement. Potato, potato battery.

Chell looks at him looking at her for another few seconds, before deciding he is not helpful and throwing the covers off to get up. (Hap might notice old, gnarly scars on the outsides of both her knees, as if something was surgically attached or removed there without much delicacy.) When her gaze lands on one of the framed photos of Mr. and Mrs. Percy, her eyes widen again.

Picking up the photo, she turns to Hap and points at it in obvious confusion. What is going on? Who are you? ]

[angelhunter]

[ Those scars don't fit the picture perfect lifestyle artfully constructed around them. He notes them, and eyes her as she moves about the room. Goes first to the framed photo, exactly like he did. Wondering what he wondered? The chances that she traveled like he did are astronomically minimal, but then so are the odds of propelling his consciousness across dimensions through nothing but a series of movements.

More importantly, they're greater than her miraculously sensing he's not who he appears to be. They have precedent. Something like a metaphysical intuition is a reach, he tells himself. Paranoia. ]

That's us. [ She may be deaf. He gauges her reaction to determine whether or not she can read lips. ] Do you... remember that?

[aperturesubject0001]

[ She's definitely tracking his conversation, though whether it's because she can hear him or read his lips isn't totally clear yet. She shakes her head at his question, emphatic. She doesn't remember him, or this house, or ...

Frankly, there's a lot of things that are kind of fuzzy before the last ... little while. Actually, she's not even sure how long she was testing. GLaDOS did say that thing about adding adrenal vapor to the oxygen. And she was asleep for a long time, wasn't she? Long enough for plants to overtake so much of the lab. And maybe to get some brain damage.

GLaDOS. Is this something GLaDOS is doing? It's got to be. Another testing chamber, albeit with another person in it this time. No portal gun, no boots, nothing but the two of them and these photos she must have cooked up while Chell was in the elevator. But the tests always come down to the same goal: escape.

Narrowing her eyes, Chell gestures for Hap to wait a second, and goes to try to the door. When it opens without issue, she looks a little surprised, but waves for Hap to follow her. They should get out of here, no? ]

[angelhunter]

[ They should get out of here... in that? He's never seen someone in a nightgown move with that amount of purpose before. But there's plenty to be investigated in the house. He'll have a chance to stop her before she goes spilling out onto the street.

Hap follows, curious what will catch her eye. How disoriented is she? He could save her some time, tell her what he already checked, but that might let on too much about himself. His impatience grows with every second. He wants to direct her to the calendar, the newspaper, the television. Anything with a date on it. Because if that strikes her as strange, then she must be a traveler.

They could learn a lot from each other, then. They'd be one step closer to getting out of here, if they want to. Three left after that. ]

[aperturesubject0001]

[ Though her first instinct is to head for an exit, she does pause in the living room, where a pen and a pad of paper lie on the side table by the telephone. She detours over there, grabbing them, and waves them at Hap with an ironic raise of her eyebrows. Look at that, they'll be able to talk!

Then she heads for the front door. Her state of undress doesn't seem to bother her; if not stopped, she's going right out onto the front stoop to see what's going on outside. ]

[angelhunter]

[ Exasperation builds with her incuriosity. Does the sixty-years-ago of it all not register with her? Then why is she treating him like a damn stranger?

Hap steps forward when she goes for the door. Her scrutiny is about all he's up to handling at the moment. He doesn't need the neighbors questioning what the hell's going on in the Percy household before he can figure that out for himself. ] Hold on --

[ He still doesn't know if she can hear him, so sets a hand on her shoulder. ]

[aperturesubject0001]

[ She pulls up short, giving him a puzzled look, and then huffs and scribbles on the pad. ]

WHERE ARE WE?

[angelhunter]

[ Thank Christ she's not entirely without sense. It'd be a poor start to his time here, having to subdue and imprison the first person he meets. ]

Sweetwater, Maryland. It's on the mail. [ Which she'd know if she had checked. ]

[aperturesubject0001]

[ Oh. Mail. Good idea, checking that!

Maryland, though. That can't be possible. Aperture was in -- where was it? Michigan, that was it, she remembers. She stares at Hap for second -- you can practically hear the fans whirring as she tries to put this all together -- and writes: ]

IS THIS ANOTHER TEST?

[angelhunter]

[ He does his best to collect himself. Bring his heart rate back down so he can think and act calmly, not react and lose control of the situation. They're communicating now, that's good.

She's expressive, easy to read if he knew a single thing about her. Looking down at her writing, his gaze sticks there for a second. He shakes his head, brow pinched quizzically.

The word "test" might cause alarm but that was never a part of his or his subjects' vocabulary in the study. Just a coincidence. He's not going to acknowledge that the last significant coincidence of which he was a part changed his life and contributed largely to him being here right now. Definitely not going to acknowledge that he shared that coincidence with another young woman, blind where this one is mute.

Think and act calmly. ]

What kind of test?