maskormenace | Entry #004

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Entry #004 | Video

[ Here is Gansey, looking a little strange. He’s wearing a navy-blue sweater emblazoned with a raven – an Aglionby school sweater, over what appears to be ordinary clothes. His shoulders and hair are damp, like he’s been rained on, and he looks strangely pale. Despite that, he’s displaying a welcoming smile, and his hazel eyes are bright and vital with some emotion he’s holding back. ]

Apparently, I vanished yesterday.

I say apparently because it feels more like several weeks ago, but according to this – [ he holds up one of De Chima’s daily newspapers – a tabloid, headlined with speculation about the upcoming import elections ] – it’s only been a day.

A lot can happen in a day. Sometimes things that give you perspective.

Can I ask – the school year is almost over. Some of you will be graduating. I will. Which is odd, because I was here for eight months, and then I went home and it was Fall again, and Senior year was just beginning. I’m not completely sure what age I am now. I turned eighteen a couple of months ago.

[ Which, he actually never mentioned. It had seemed like there were more important things to be getting along with, and the thought of getting older in the wrong world had annoyed Gansey anyway. He’d kept quiet. Now, if he could do that over again, he thinks he’d celebrate it more – even though he’s only mentioning it now because it’s relevant to this. ]

Then I go home, and I’m seventeen again, so now I don’t even know what counts. Graduation will, though, I know that much.

So: to everyone else who’s graduating. Or even if you’re not, even if it’s just that you see change coming for you. What are your plans? Will you work, will you travel? What would you like to do, ideally? I think I’m ready for it to be summer again.

Private to: Billy Kaplan, Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch, Noah Czerny, Matthew Lynch

[ This part goes to everyone’s private inboxes. Gansey’s smile is less presidential here, but his eyes are even sharper. He seems energized, like he’s on the edge of something. His voice is trying not to sound like it. ]

Hey, everyone. I very much hope I didn’t worry you. I think I was mid-conversation with you, Billy. I’ll have to blame my rudeness on the Porter.

Listen, I’m on my way home. Could someone bring the car and pick me up? I’m getting pizza from that Italian place near the porter in De Chima. I’m absolutely famished.

I’d…like to know if anyone else vanished, too. Ronan, Adam?

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It's weird, isn't it? One time, I was gone for, like, a week, but for me it was months. I think you just gotta go with the age that you wanna be, unless you want to screw around with all that math. I say celebrate your birthday when it happens here anyway, and you'll be solid.

[That's the way Jaime's been doing it, anyway... not that he actually celebrated his last birthday.]

I graduated last year, and just went straight to work. Been doing some school on the side, but that's just to up my paygrade. What're you planning on doing?

I don't know yet. At home, I hadn't made plans.

[ This is very true, despite him being in Senior year. It hadn't been a lack of foresight; it had just been that he didn't know what time he had left, and planning for time he didn't have had seemed foolish.

Now it's different. It's still difficult to get his head around the fact that it's different, but it is. ]

I think I can't discount the time I spent here. I think that makes me eighteen, and I think I have time to make plans. My girlfriend wanted to travel. She isn't here, of course, but...

It's a possibility.

Oh -- I didn't know you had a girlfriend! Congratulations!

[That's always something worth congratulation, in Jaime's opinion. Having someone to share your life with in that way is great.]

It'll be different without her, of course, but you got friends here, right? You should totally do it! I mean, what've you got to lose?

Thanks.

[ Gansey lifts his eyebrow. Jaime sounds unduly surprised by that. ]

I have a lot of friends here, yes. I don't think they would all want to travel, but I'm thinking about it. I'm not sure I want to go to college right away, even if it wasn't too late to start thinking about it.

[Sorry, Gansey. Most people he knows are on their first relationships, and Gansey's always seemed a little to cerebral to do a whole lot of sleeping around... especially considering his protestations during that misfired texting mishap.]

I figure college is the kinda thing to do only if you really want to go. If you're just going for the degree, there's no promise you'll be here long enough to even finish your first year.

[ Gansey almost laughs at that. It would have an edge of hysteria to it, but as with everything else he's feeling right now, he keeps it locked down tight. He smiles, instead. ]

No one ever has that guarantee. I'm trying to be less fatalistic about my life. I think taking time away from...what needs to be done, may be no bad thing.

Yeah, that's what I meant, mostly. You dunno what's coming next, so you might as well do what you want to do, right? So if that one thing is, I dunno... snorkeling with sharks, you should totally do it. Except maybe not with sharks.

[He offers Gansey a little smile.]

Last summer, me and a bunch of my friends did a roadtrip down to Disneyland. Disney might not really be your thing, but... it was good, just doing something fun like that.

[Everyone from that trip save for two is gone now. He's glad to have those memories on his side, and to see their smiles in the picture on his wall. It was stupid, sure, and frivolous, and ill-planned, but that's what everyone needs.]

That may not be a bad idea. Especially the road trip element.

[ That makes him pause, though. He thinks about the Disney element, and about Florida in general. He frowns. ]

You mean Disneyland, in California, right? I'm used to thinking of Florida when I think about that, but in this world, I think they're preoccupied with something else.

Yeah, that's the one. It's kinda weird that the geography's different, but this world is missing entire countries from where I'm standing, so I've learned not to question the little changes too much.

Is it really?

[ That lights Gansey’s interest. He smiles. ]

It’s missing my hometown, too, but it’s gained De Chima. It hasn’t lost entire land masses.

Is that what you mean, or are they just named differently?

Both, actually. There are cities missing in America, I know -- major ones. Metropolis, and Gotham, and Star City, and Central City... but there are entire landmasses missing too. Kahndaq and Kasnia and Bialya and a few others are completely off the map. It's super weird.

And yet it's definitely still Earth?

That's hard to imagine. Not impossible, though, I mean, in theory...continents could form differently. That's the whole point of an alternate universe, I know, but it's still strange to get your head around.

[Jaime grins at him.] I promise you I'm still from Earth. Just a differently formed one. Trust me, it's just as weird for me to look at the map and see all of these missing places, you know? Maybe we should talk about that stuff more, see how many other people are missing entire countries. Make a whole map out of 'em.

Multiple maps of multiple Earths.

[ Something about the way Gansey's eyes light indicates he likes that idea. Although there's also still a kind of frantic energy about him, as there has been since the beginning of this post. ]

I wonder how many there can be. An infinite number, in theory. But it would be interesting to see how many different ones are reflected here.

Not as many as you'd think, I don't think. For all the different universes that the Porter could grab us from... so many of us are from really similar ones, don't you think?

Oh yes, they certainly are. There's been an astonishing number from my universe, for example.

[ He shrugs. ]

But I don't think that's necessarily because there's nowhere else out here. I suspect it's because something makes the Porter focus on those particular worlds. Or perhaps those particular people.

After all, don't you think it's strange that it would take so many of us who know each other? My world has billions of people on it, and yet the Porter keeps kidnapping my schoolmates.

It's more than just the world that's attracting attention.

[He actually laughs.]

I don't think it's by chance either, dude. Trust me, I got spreadsheets on the subject. There are pretty clear trends, if anyone bothers to sit down and look at 'em for a while.

Trends which you've noted on spreadsheets.

[ A pause. Gansey has a notebook full of this research. It's all back at the Meadows. ]

Would you mind if I bothered to sit down and look at them? You've been here a lot longer than I have, you're bound to have seen things I haven't.

Naw, I don't mind at all. The more the merrier. It's a lot to read through, but if you're really interested about it, then I've probably got one of the best logs around. I mean, other people kept track too, but I'm the one that's still here.

Yes, and that's a point very well made. An excess of reading has never put me off research before.

[ In fact, it tends to enthuse him all the more. Gansey is a college professor waiting to happen. ]

I'd like to read. I'm not...so desperate to get home as I was, but still, it's a phenomenon. I'd like to know more.

Even people who wanna stay want to know more. So they can know how likely they are to leave, or whether or not they can expect any more of their friends to show up. Y'know?

[He contemplates Gansey's willingness to stay, then asks,] What made you change your mind, anyway? You start to like it here?

I wouldn’t say exactly that I want to stay. More that I’m in less of a hurry to leave. Let’s say that there was a chapter I needed to finish, and now I have. It leaves the future with more of a question mark than before.

[ He’s a lot happier about that than he thought. Or, perhaps, it’s more accurate to say he’s relieved. ]

It’s not a bad thing. Makes me want to take this world slower, this time.

Huh. Congrats on finishing it up, then. I know that no time passes back home while we're here, but that doesn't make it any easier, for a lot of people. And there's a lot that this place has got to offer, when you're not itching to go back home.

[Mostly the people.]

It ended okay? [He's not asking what it is because he assumes Gansey's being vague for a reason, but hey, he has to make sure.]

[ Gansey considers that. It's a very complicated question, and his expression works exceptionally hard to stay clear. It can't quite avoid a fracture. ]

It...didn't end the way I hoped. I found what I was looking for, but it wasn't what I thought.

After that, I think things turned out better than I thought they would, but it wasn't...pleasant, to get there.

I won't be sorry to put it behind me, actually.

I'm glad it turned out okay for you, at any rate. Better than the way there being good, and the end being bad.

[He still gives Gansey a sympathetic sort of look; he knows how it is, going back home to something bad, then coming back here, like nothing had changed.]

Least now, you can move on. And this isn't a bad place to do it in.

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quaerit - 2016-07-15 21:53 (UTC) - Expand

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