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

Would you do it? If offered to you?

What kind of offer are we talking about? The real answer comes down to benefits, it does for anyone. This place doesn't have what I want. Giving me power inside of a dungeon is simply asking me to ignore the locked doors and pretend these iron bars don't make a cage.

But if you were offered the same kind of peace of mind afflicted by all other neighbours in this village, you would not even know that you were in a cage.