dualislogs | i've been bitten by the bug ...

i've been bitten by the bug ...

WHO: Open to all residents
WHAT: Inoculation Season, plus your regular monthly NAPs session
WHERE: Throughout the city, with NAPs held at The Ax Hole.
WHEN: Sept. 10-30 for plague shots and associated side effects; Sept. 10-14 for NAPs
WARNINGS: Please use if applicable!

So tell me, what do you prescribe for these symptoms?

Remember that awful plague that wiped out the city's entire original population? You know, the entire reason you've been brought here? Well, the medical science community of Dualis has been hard at work concocting a cure for as long as anyone can remember, with minimal results. But during the morning of the 10th, news of a breakthrough is announced is a special city-wide bulletin. All media channels are overtaken with this message, and alerts hit every citizen's phone. The best part? Science needs your help!

There's no formal approval process for new vaccines and medications, just a series of volunteer trials before it's determined whether what's being tested is effective. All residents are invited to participate in these trials, with a bonus of 200 extra duos as compensation for their time and possible suffering. Simply head down to your nearest MedDualis clinic and inform the MedDroids supervising that you're reporting for your civic duty. Participants will be given a quick, easy, and practically painless inoculation shot in the arm, and will walk out the door 200 duos richer. Neat, huh?

Participants will be warned that like all experimental drugs, there may be side effects. A non-comprehensive list of those possible side effects includes: minor appearance changes (hair/skin/eye color), enhancing or reducing senses (smell, taste, hearing, sight, etc.), sudden mild development of extranormal abilities (telepathy, super strength, super speed, etc.), the ability to share dreams (if you're not tired of that sorta thing after last month), and/or loss of control over abilities you already possess, or those abilities misfiring. Hey, at least death isn't included on this list!

Any intrepid Dualizen who comes down with a case of weirdness as a result of doing their civic duty will find that weirdness will wear off by the end of the month. The Head thanks you for your sacrifice!

Don't you feel the fever like I do?

Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces - maybe even a few folks without faces - but hey, this city welcomes all types. Chances are, if you’ve just arrived, you're seeing some pretty crazy things, unless you're used to an eye-blinding amount of neon, robots, weird-ass technology, magic, and an omnipresent police force...and hey, if you are, congrats, you're gonna settle in juuuuust fine. But for the rest of you, the Head knows this has gotta be pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, since your quaint individual processing units are probably having a hard time, why not link up with another one? By which the Head means...

Hello, new citizens of Dualis,
and welcome to your monthly Network Adjacency Protocol~!

NAPs are a monthly community networking event similar to the Earth concept of speed dating! Two citizens (new arrivals and old hands alike) are placed at a table together with a handy cue card of queries to help break the proverbial ice. Ask queries and receive results, or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship! But don't be too shy, you've only got ten minutes together, and if you just sit in silence for the whole ten, the Network Admins are likely to come supervise and try to repair the uplink through a mild shock to the ol' central nervous system. You might find yourself saying all sorts of unintended facts about yourself if that happens...probably better to just make friends, right? Who doesn’t like friends?!

This month’s event is held at an exciting new establishment called The Ax Hole! The 'Hole is an indoor ax-throwing range plus bar plus mid-price grill-type restaurant, the first of its kind to find a home here in Dualis. You must be at least 18 to drink and/or throw axes, and if you are throwing axes, there is a limit of one drink per hour. The bartenders are very strict about enforcing this rule, and employees are available to give safety instructions on proper ax-throwing technique and supervise activities.

This is a family-friendly establishment, so anyone under 18 is welcome in the restaurant section and the viewing room between the restaurant and range to watch the ax-throwing action, but they are absolutely not allowed inside the range, even just to watch. In fact, anyone who wishes admittance to the range must sign a waiver stating that they understand the risks of participating and agree to hold the Ax Hole free of liability in the event of any accidents that cause injury or death.

If that hasn't scared you off yet, come on down and meet your new neighbors! Oh, and do try to exit with at least as many fingers and limbs as when you entered, OK?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Wanda walks to the next table and freezes.

The man, now standing and holding out his hand, looks exactly like her father. It is as if no time has passed though she only had the hazy memory of a ten year old to compare his image too.

She swallows the knot in her chest and reaches for his hand.] Wanda Maximoff. [Her voice soft and round, her accent thickening around the words as she tries to keep her tone steady. Wanda knows that it's just a trick but, after everything that had happened with her son's, her heart was fragile. She hadn't had time to fully recover.]

Excuse me. [She mumbles again, a little calmer this time, her accent less pronounced.] You look a bit like my father. I was surprised. [She doesn't want to get off on the wrong foot and Wanda feels as if honesty is the best way to handle that. Lies traditionally make everything worse and she hadn't been able to hide her reaction from him.]

[ There's something familiar about the woman. She's shorter than his memory wants her to be, which is how he knows she's not who he's thinking of. Though he's finding it difficult to put his finger on exactly who she brings to mind. Perhaps it's just a coincidental resemblance. When she speaks, the accent is familiar as well. ]

That is surprising. I have no living relatives.

[ He can't help the soft note of sadness in his tone at the statement. Not that he has any desire to dwell on that at the moment. He tilts his head slightly. ]

Maximoff, though. Are you any relation to Peter?

[Wanda's lips tilt into a frown.] Neither do I but the multiverse is a big place. [She's gotten used to seeing alternate versions of people during her two year stay in the village and while she doesn't know how many universes are out there, she imagines that the number is nearly infinite.]

My brothers name was Pietro not Peter.

We were born in Sokovia, it's near Russia. [Not many know the name of her home country. It's small and much like the small countries near Russia, it is contested land.]

It might be a coincidence. [Though Wanda doesn't really believe in coincidences.]

Sokovia?

[ He laughs softly and shakes his head. Those poor bastards. It's an expression of solidarity. Nowhere in the Balkans made it through the Soviet era without scars. ]

I'm familiar with the area.

[ He manages in heavily-accented Sokovian. It's with an unmistakeable Polish accent, oddly enough. Even polyglots can have things they stumble over. ]

That is something of a coincidence. I'm sure your brother is more tolerable than the one I know.

[Her lips curve into a warm smile.]

So I can tell. Maybe our worlds are similar, even if they aren't the same place. [She wonders if this man is more to her than what he seems; maybe more to another version of her like her sons world. There is at least one person still living in this city that she can ask but that will have to wait for later.]

That... I do not know.

My brother can be insufferable. He has trouble sitting still.

[ Erik nods. ]

Peter also thinks he is terribly funny and not at all annoying.

[ In reality, in Erik's estimation, it is the opposite. ]

Would you like a drink?

[ Erik gestures toward the bar. He plans to get a refresh on his whiskey, and manners dictate he offer to fetch one for her. ]

[Wanda can't stop the smile from lifting the corner of her lips. That really does sound like her brother. Maybe they are the same.... in a sense. It was hard to tell but she wasn't going to throw her assumptions at Erik. That hardly seemed fair to someone she'd just met.]

Yes.

[She glances down at her empty glass.]

Whiskey neat.

[Drinking alcohol straight is a by product from coming here from a cold climate. It's the best way to stay warm.]

[ Erik orders another round for Wanda and sips his own. It seems as though she's uninterested in continuing the conversation about the unusual coincidence of surnames. One he doesn't even have, he just knows a guy who does. A guy who isn't here.

He can't shake the feeling that she wants something from him, but it's beyond him what it could be. ]

Music's not bad.

[ He comments idly. ]

[Wanda accepts the drink with a smile and takes a small sip. She doesn't want anything from him specifically but traveling to new worlds has allowed her to make connections she'd never thought possible. It had allowed her to meet her son's and she hopes, that she can meet more of her family too.

This man, he seems like he could be a part of that but he seems as unsure as she is. Wanda hadn't really known her father in her universe but this man... reminds her of him.

It feels strange.]

It's not.

[She smiles a little.]

These meetings are always a little different. I never know what to expect but this place is nice. The last one was at a cat café. [With teleporting demon cats.]

[ The only daughter Erik ever knew he had died ten years ago. The pain hasn't gone away. It's changed, morphed into a different kind. Not the sharp searing stab in his heart but a persistent ache that sometimes flares back to life. Like an old injury that will never fully heal.

Anyway, while there may be some ghost of similarity in Wanda's face, he doesn't put much stock in it. He always searches for Nina. Seeing phantoms in every dark-haired woman of what she might have been if she had been allowed to live.

That kind of hope can kill you. Better not to pay much attention to it. He makes a face when she mentions a cat café. ]

Can't say I'm sorry I missed that. [ He points to himself. ] Allergies. I'm told I make a better first impression when I'm not peering through swollen eyes and speaking around sneezing fits.

[Wanda watches Erik for a moment, remembering a 10 years vision of her father. He'd appeared younger but older through the eyes of a young child. A small piece of her wishes that this is him but she knows that the world isn't so kind. Even if this is some version of her father, he doesn't know her.]

It's probably good you did.

[She smiles behind her glass, amused at the thought he'd painted in her mind.]

I wouldn't have wished that on anyone but they were cute cats.

[She pauses, pressing her tongue against the inside of her cheek as her thoughts slipped like sand through her fingers.]

Do you have a lot of experience with the multiverse?

They always are.

[ He doesn't really understand the point of pets but he doesn't begrudge others their comforts. He doesn't answer her question right away, because he's not quite sure how to do so. ]

Before this, I may have played a part in creating an alternate timeline, if such things exist. [ He hates time travel. ] A man convinced a group of us that he was from the future, and that we could change it by preventing a war. I don't know if it worked.

[ Because he stabbed him with rebar and threw him in the Potomac, but details. ]

If it did, then I expect we created an alternate timeline. But this is the first time I have personally experienced something like this.

[Pet's are a good distraction though if Wanda got a pet it'd be a replacement for her son's which is probably an unhealthy way to handle the loss.]

I think they do. It's happened in my world too though I wasn't part of the group that did it.

[She'd read the report and heard the details from Clint... the other Clint. Not the one that was here with her.]

Besides that, this is the second time I've been at a place like this. The last place was nearly the opposite. A lot of grass and trees.

[ There are worse ways to handle the loss of one's children. ~~Sorry, Cairo~~ ]

How do you know that for sure?

[ It's a genuine question. For all that Logan's plans benefited him personally, he still doesn't know if they accomplished anything. Well, anything more than their usual mayhem and nonsense. ]

How do you know you didn't simply eliminate the other timeline. Or if this was the only timeline. There's no way to travel between them, how do you know the other still exists?

[Wanda is silent a moment, gathering her thoughts.]

I met my children. They were twins like me and my brother. Except that I never had children and the man- [She clears her throat.] Their father is dead in my world but it is the same man I had dated in the past.

[She takes a sip of her drink.]

They existed but not in my time. They can't. But they were still here and in the village I was at before. I had returned home between then and now. Five years past.

[ Erik shakes his head at this description. ]

Well. As if one didn't have enough reason to have an existential crisis at being confronted with evidence of the multiverse, eh?

[ Of course, her explanation of events is somewhat convoluted, due to the complicated nature of the events themselves, and he tries to retrace it to make sure he's understanding her correctly. ]

So in another reality, you had children with this man you once dated. In your reality, he has since deceased but I'm assuming he lived long enough to conceive in this other one. These children are both here in this city and in... another village that you were all at but is also not your native reality? And in between living at the village and arriving here, you spent five years in your home reality? Is that correct?

That is correct.

It was jarring. [She admits but then a smile takes over her features.] But I am happy I got to meet them. I don't think I'll ever get to have children and while they aren't exactly mine, I do love them.

They aren't in the city anymore.

I had a child, once. She was murdered about ten years ago. It was better to want them and not have them, then to have her and lose her like that.

[ The pain isn't any less than it was. It's different. Not the searing agony of the fresh wound but a dull, persistent throb that haunts his every move. Still. Something of a heavy conversation piece. He shakes himself out of it. ]

So we can assume they returned safely to their homes, I take it?

I'm sorry.

[Wanda thinks back to everyone she's lost: her son's, her brother, Vision.

She shakes her head.]

I have lost everyone I've cared about. Sometimes, more than once, but I would never stop caring. Even if it meant that I wouldn't feel that pain anymore. [She offers him a sad smile.] I'm sorry but I can't agree with that.

I want a life with lots of love. Even if it always end in loss.

[Wanda nods her head to answer him.]

Yes. I think so.

[ He nods. Nina wasn't the only loss he suffered. It was just the most recent. The cruelest. The one that was due to his own personal failure. An attempt to heal the wound upon the world, at least in some small way, that he had managed to survive when the rest of his family had not. Her life snuffed out before she even fully understood how special she was. It still strikes him as an unspeakably cruel and selfish thing to do, to have a child when he knew what kind of man he was and what kind of life he had lead and how she would be forced to bear the consequences sooner or later.

He will need to find another way. ]

Loss is inevitable. Isolation is a choice. Sometimes choices we have made preclude others.

[ There are things he would have done differently. But it doesn't matter, now. He nods at the confirmation at at least the young men she spoke of might still be alive somewhere. ]

Small blessings.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i've been bitten by the bug ...

NAP; Hope late is okay!

Of course!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject