driftfleet | 001. accidental video/text + action.

Entry tags:

001. accidental video/text + action.

Who: Shinji Ikari and everyone ever.
Broadcast: Fleetwide.
Action: Marsiva, for all the new arrivals.
When: Right now, and he'll be available until the Shuffle, huddling in his bunk or counting the stars. Feel free to contact or approach him anytime.

[There's no explosion of sight or sound. No exposition. No questions. Nothing attention-grabbing at all. Just that omnipresent sci-fi hum and the sidelong view of a young boy, no older than fourteen or fifteen, lying on his back in one of Marsiva's complimentary bunks. The boy, Shinji, is staring straight upward at whatever is above him. He isn't animated except for the feeble rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. The only noteworthy thing is what he's wearing: it appears to be a form-fitting wetsuit with rib-shaped accents and other curious details.

Ten seconds later, he hasn't moved. He doesn't acknowledge that he's somewhere very new, with yet another unfamiliar ceiling. Twenty seconds later, he hasn't moved. Thirty seconds later, he hasn't moved. By now, most new arrivals would probably figure out they're not where they're meant to be, for better or worse. They'll address the network instead of continuing to stare into nothingness with a distinctly corpselike quality to their face. But, one minute later, he's still staring listlessly. Two minutes. Five minutes. Ten minutes. He isn't aware of anyone or anything near to him. This is undoubtedly the most boring show in the universe, which might make it avant-garde--fifteen minutes. Twenty. Twenty-five.

A full half-hour later, for viewers with the patience to stick around, he still hasn't moved or said anything. (Hopefully you aren't watching this live, so you can just fast-forward through the eerie silence.) It's thirty minutes and thirteen seconds, exactly, when he looks to the side with a dry, audible creak of his neck. He's looking at the communication device. Maybe he recognizes it, but it's hard to tell what he's thinking. Even he can't tell what he's thinking. Then, unsteady enough to resemble a marionette, he reaches over to grab the device from where it's resting. The view dissolves into the dark purple blur of his palm.

Just before the odd broadcast cuts off, he appends a text message.]

Sorry. I didn't know.

action, aboard the Marsiva:

[Eventually, although he doesn't remember how, Shinji hauls himself out of the bunk bed. He shuffles like a zombie through the hospitality deck, heading for nowhere in particular. He's just walking forward. Lost in his thoughts, you could say, even though his thoughts amount to little more than a ripple of confusion.

At the grand bay windows of the ship, he stops moving. He stares. He stares harder. He takes in the vastness of space; it's exactly what he was looking for without realizing it. Again, painfully stilted, he presses one of his palms against the reinforced window. He doesn't recognize the stars (except he kind of does?) (strangely?), which is why he's fascinated with them. In what must be a different lifetime, he was a self-taught student of astronomy.]

One...

[His voice is hollow and weak, nearly lost between him and the window.]

Two, three... four...

[If Shinji seems to be counting the stars, that's because he is. The longer he counts out loud, the stronger his voice gets and the more aware he becomes of what he's counting, of where he is or he is not. This time, he'll actually turn his head to stare at anyone who approaches him, or even comes close to him. There's a meager sliver of humanity to him now. He looks like he wants to ask a question, but he can't figure out how to say it. His lips are numb.]

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You have your pick of infirmaries, I think. We can go between ships. But there's people who will come running if you yell out that you have a scratch, probably, so it should be fine.

A piano...that might be hard to fit on one of these ships. You might have to settle for a keyboard, if someone can get you one.

I don't think you're here to play, exactly. But it probably helps ratings. [ Now he just feels...mildly bad. Ribbing aside, Shinji reminds him of someone who's very important to him, if only a little. ]

Hey. What's your favourite type of music?

Oh.

[Entertaining the masses. Ratings. Atroma. Ratings. A fleet of ships. Ratings. Shinji isn't too pop culture-savvy, but he's starting to piece together the bigger picture. Japan did have a thing for bizarre, life-altering game shows. The kids at school would talk incessantly about them.

He tries to focus on anything else. For now.]

I can't choose a favorite. I like everything. Almost everything. Do you like music too?

Yeah. My operator - he loves guitars. He still builds them sometimes. He plays a lot.

So I guess I got that from him.

No favourite pieces? Nothing you like to warm up with on the piano? [ Huh. That's something. ]

[All of this has got to be a dream, even though it can't be. There's just nowhere else Shinji could meet a stranger, and that stranger could ask him questions about himself like it's a perfectly normal thing. (Kaworu was the exception to the rule.)]

I prefer to warm up with scales and arpeggios. F-sharp major. B minor. They're nice.

Does that mean you play the guitar?

Edited 2016-01-28 20:58 (UTC)

[ Asking questions about people you don't know to get to know them better is a normal thing, even if Elecman's not that normal. Where have you been, kid.

~~Actually he can probably guess but none of those guesses are positive.~~ ]

Oh, that's pretty structured. Those are nice keys, though. [ To be honest, he likes a lot of things about music. A lot of it is just inherently structured, putting aside what it means to him. ]

Sometimes. I haven't found one here yet, though, so I haven't really gotten the chance. [ To be honest, he's more of a piano person himself, but...The guitar is stronger in his mind. ]

I like structure. There's nothing wrong with structure.

[He doesn't know how to live without a high degree of structure. Yikes.]

Maybe the music of string instruments is my favorite.

I like structure too. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but you need some chaos in your life. [ He's looked at too much structure before, though, and he hasn't wanted anything to do with it. ]

String instruments, huh...I'd say they were easy to build, but you usually need wood for the unique sound. [ That can be a project for later, maybe. ]

Sorry, but I've had enough of chaos.

I built a telescope once. Not an instrument. I don't know where to begin with an instrument. They seem really complicated.

[ He won't press that topic, in a rare moment of tact. ]

Oh, they're not too bad if you have the schematics. The worst part is getting the materials together. And for wood - preparing them. There's people who spend their whole lives just making one type of instrument, like violins. Electric guitars are a lot simpler, to be honest. [ ''simpler'' ] You like space? [ WELL, ISN'T THAT LUCKY IF YOU DO, BECAUSE LOOK AT WHERE YOU ARE ]

[Is it possible for a text message to be too much? Shinji's head hurts from reading all of this chatter... Of course, his head hurts anyway, so at least it's hurting for a reason.]

I see.

[Space, though. Space is a constant.]

I've always wanted to go into space. Not like this. But I wanted to. I have an interest in astronomy.

Edited 2016-01-30 17:13 (UTC)

[ He's a giant nerd when he gets the ball rolling on his favourite subjects - building things. ]

Not really the building type, are you? [ Though it might come across as judgmental, he's not judging. It takes all types to make a world, after all, and Shinji seems pretty harmless. ]

Astronomy... What's your favourite constellation? Most people seem to have one.

Edited (argh icons) 2016-01-31 01:22 (UTC)

I'd just end up making a mess. [Shinji is a walking weapon of mass destruction. Not exactly the type who's going to create something new.

Astronomy is so close to his heart, but it doesn't hurt. It never hurts him. Even the unfamiliar stars aren't going to hurt him.]

There's an asterism - a pattern of stars - known as the Summer Triangle. It involves the brightest stars of three constellations. I'm indecisive like that.

Making a mess is part of building. Doesn't mean anything. [ At least, it always was for his operator.

An asterism...he's not really one to pay attention to stars, but it sounds nice. And three is a whole number. ]

If you're going to pick something that's part of three stars, you might as well pick something that's composed out of the brightest ones. Seems pretty sensible, if you ask me.

My messes aren't just normal messes. They're ridiculous.

[Understatement. Shinji is tempted to explain that he's the worst thing to ever exist, but he isn't that much of an asocial weirdo. In due time, people will discover just how awful he is... (Ratings, oh god...)]

The three constellations are Aquila, Cygnus, and Lyra. Do you have a favorite?

That's a part of building, too. Making a mess is pretty much guaranteed when you start off, so it's no big deal. [ He just breezes past that.... ]

Aquila. I like eagles. Plus, it's named after a mythological eagle that carried thunderbolts, right? That's cool. [ Elecman...still shows flashes of a more kiddish side even with a serious nature.

And yes he only learned about that constellation because birds and thunderbolts. Elecman no ]

[... for the first time since arriving here, Shinji comes very close to smiling. "That's cool" sounds like something a kid would say. Touji, or Kensuke, or someone else from his school. Someone normal. He just wants to be normal, surrounding himself with normal people.]

You're right. That is cool.

Pegasus is sort of like that one. In the myth, a flying horse that carried thunderbolts. It's one of the bigger constellations.

Oh, I didn't know Pegasus carried thunderbolts too. That's interesting. [ And, yes, cool. ] Constellations don't usually have that many stars, do they? I wonder what Pegasus looks like, to be named after a flying horse.

[ He has no experience whatsoever with stars; his interest is in machinery. He'd tinker in a space shuttle rather than ever looking out the window, but if anything can broaden his horizons, it's this. ]

It varies a lot. Pegasus has 17 main stars, while Aquila has

I think it's 10 but I can't remember exactly

Sorry.

Pegasus looks like a square with some legs attached. I don't know how they saw a flying horse in that.

It seems kind of unpredictable on who decides what should be a constellation, to be honest.

Maybe if a toddler drew it, that'd be a rendition of a flying horse. But from the way you describe it, I would have thought it would be named after a jellyfish or something.

Maybe they hadn't discovered jellyfish yet. [ Or found them notable enough to name a constellation after. ]

Constellations were originally just a way of cataloging the stars' placement. It was later on when people started adding stories to them. Maybe they were easier to remember like that.

What's a jellyfish?

["Fish," huh? He might have seen one at the research aquarium, but he can't remember for sure.]

Makes sense. If you attach meaning to things, people become more likely to remember. [ It's not a navi thing, that's for sure. ]

You don't know what a jellyfish is? The main body is a soft dome, and it has tentacles coming out of one end. They don't even have organs. They just float around, eating whatever drifts into their tentacles.

They're 95% water, which would make them pretty easy to zap, but I can't really think of a time where I'd find it necessary to zap a jellyfish. It'd probably dissolve, anyway.

Are there lots of jellyfish where you're from?

I'd assume so. I mean, there's a lot of water, and the place we live is basically an island. There's bound to be a lot of jellyfish.

Do you know much about marine life?

No. Because most marine life went extinct in the year 2000.

Your oceans aren't dead?

They're doing well. There's an environmental monitoring system that keeps track of what humans output so they can keep the ocean healthy for future generations, too.

I guess you guys weren't so fortunate, though. [ That sounds sad to him. Even though he wasn't the type to get sentimental about these kinds of things, water had been a constant part of their lives after moving to Japan. He associates it with good things. ]

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astrobleme - 2016-02-06 23:12 (UTC) - Expand

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