chatsville | (no subject)

living island

["Living Island." That's it. There will be no responses from the source of this post, though characters may discuss as they see fit.

At midnight, however, long after all the stores in Santa Rosita have closed and all the houses in Shadyside have turned off their lights... all the television sets across the neighborhood turn on, volume at full. Blaring garbled noise and static, their dials move as if guided by invisible hands. It doesn't take long before the picture settles into something watchable as a series of strange images begin to play:]

[Grainy and soundless, a camera travels down a dark hallway. At the end of it, a light can be seen, dim, at a fork that branches off into another hallway. The operator moves slowly, one step at a time. When they reach the end, the image cuts out. Opens to another.

There's a metal sign bolted to a grey and featureless wall. Through the washed out color and fuzzy quality, the symbol comes into focus as the camera slowly zooms out, as if the person holding it is moving backwards: three inverted triangles stacked within a black circle. The sign looks old, rusted. Another cut.

The camera is sitting stationary at a low angle, possibly the ground. It faces the door in a dark but not completely pitch black room. The door is cracked open just enough to see the distinct shadow of a person moving behind it, only the outline of their shoulders and one of their arms visible as they pace back and forth. Eventually, the shadow disappears entirely. The camera remains trained on the door for a few long moments before another figure walks into view behind it, stops, and crouches low like an animal. Half of a face, distinctly human but with a strange mask-like quality to it, sways back and forth as it tries to peer into the room. Crawling on all fours, they push the door open. The footage skips.

An out-of-focus light bulb in a dark room. The footage is blurry and made nearly incomprehensible thanks to the light and the way the footage keeps popping and skipping, but there's audio this time. Distorted and low, a voice croons a song as a louder, shrill noise layers over it that sounds a bit like a bell, ringing over an intercom. The camera, slowly moving backwards, manages to catch the impression of a mural on a wall that simply says, in sweeping, childish yellow and red cursive script:

LIVING ISLAND

The broadcast ends there.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i've seen the triangle thing in movies
it's for a shelter for if people start dropping bombs

[Sans has never seen one in real life, though, and being in actuality a monster who lived under a mountain, the specifics of nuclear fallout aren't exactly his wheelhouse.]

no idea what living island means
maybe it's the name of that place?

Okay, what's a bomb? Are shelters for these things public or are they private to groups?

Yeah, I'm thinking the same. Either it's proper name or an unofficial name, like you give to a place marking something meaningful about it.

bombs are these big metal things they drop from the sky and then they explode
i've seen movies with big ones and small ones
no idea how big real ones usually are
if that's a thing here maybe the people from here know

I can try asking at some reasonable, daylit hour, or poke around that library. Finding information there's been an interesting puzzle on its own. Did you know, there's no records of births in the last few years? Not that I've found yet, and that's even ignoring the fact this is 1961 all over again.

weird
there's definitely kids living here
but i've never checked how old the youngest ones are

Yeah, an assortment of juniors, but not any swaddled at the breast. I can't think of any healthy population that'd face that kind of problem, and families, or the illusions of them, seem to be a big deal here.

maybe that's why this place is dragging people in
if you want to figure out why people here aren't having kids though you're gonna have to find a doctor
or maybe a paper on it
but i bet they wouldn't leave that kind of thing lying around

And the doctors here might not have answers that aren't beyond asking if I'm sure, but I suppose I could run with "my wife I never married and never met before the start of the month and I were thinking about having baby Weis, what do you have around here to help make that happen and can we talk to expectant parents" to see what answer they'd even have.

( if he knew invitro was a thing, that could be an angle to ask on, but he uh.

... doesn't. so. )

couldn't hurt
maybe
i guess you can never be sure with this place

Unless talking about infants sets someone off. Have you noticed any particular sensitive topics in asking around?

just that they don't like talking about things that don't fit in
babies should fit in with the whole family setup they have going
but maybe since there aren't any it might be a problem

Who knows, they set you up with two beds, maybe the concept of sex is too taboo and babies are supposed to be found in the centre of an unfolding lotus blossom.

that might explain why everybody's so weird here

( admittedly, in his post adrenaline crash bubble over here, he laughs at that. )

Because no one has sex or because babies sprout? Why not both?