driftfleet | Second Pirate Transmission

Who: Panem!Bucky and anyone + Some closed
Broadcast: Yes
Action: Wherever, if wanted
When: Now

Closed: Sam (AU)
[His first thought was little more than a blurry observation. The recycled air was a soothingly familiar sound. He felt stiff and weary, like all the nights of rest he'd missed over the past eight-plus years were weighing on him as one, but that sound was almost enough to lull him. It had been a source of frustration in his early years of Thirteen, but now it was a gentle constant. A small reminder things were okay.

The larger reminder was the warm weight against his back, more comforting than anything else in Thirteen or even Panem. A smile stretched across Bucky's face even as the weights on his eyes still won out. Blind to the room, he reached out behind him to find some part of Sam he could touch.]

Closed: Natasha
Think you forgot to mention the part where sometimes they flip an off switch.

Open: Text
So, being comatose for no reason is apparently normal here. Good to know, even a little late.

That part definitely wasn't normal where I come from.

Made me think: what else is similar or different between places that steal people from where they belong?
Comas, method of getting people there, motivations, anything. If this isn't your first time in a place like this, I'd like to gather some intel. See if we can't draw some lines.

It might be nothing. But it also might be something.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I haven't been in a place like this before, so can't help you there. But I work at the Space Bar now and you'll have a glass of water waiting for you if you want to come in sometime. We could compare general notes.

My oversight. It does happen.

Sometimes it happens, and you wake up with with new memories. Injuries.

[Hair.]

You okay?

You must not have been paying attention then.

[ way to sleep on the job, super spy. ]

What kind of intel are you hoping for? Even if you do find a point of contention then what? It simply means their methods are adoptable or similar.

Welcome back to the land of the awake. I don't know that we've properly met yet? [Which is to say, he's not sure if this Bucky would know him from a hot minute of fighting in an airport parking lot or not.]

I've only been here myself, but I had a close friend from another world with a similar kind of mechanic. She said it was the work of a powerful corporation, and that they brought in "new blood" to combat a virus - something like a zombie virus, though not exactly. They grafted ports onto their subjects' spines, and they could certainly cause comas and other sorts of interference. I do know for a fact they could rewrite memories and do a bit of personality tweaking, as she had been altered so badly her memory was little more than a lacy construct.

Is that the sort of information you're looking for?

This has come up before. It's a topic of much discussion among those of us who get lucky enough to see more than one of these places.

Do you? Well that's certainly just as helpful to know.
Do you like the job or did you simply get bored?

Edited 2018-09-08 02:20 (UTC)

I'm not sure those are mutually exclusive. Can't have a busy bar all the time, even here.

Good to know.

Doesn't look like anything's new here, same old injuries and memories. Has that happened to you? Is it common?

[There's a pause in his response to her question.]

Honestly? Rattled. The last time I was in a coma, it was for medical reasons. This wasn't normal in Panem.
But ultimately nothing that can't be recovered from.

[He does what he does best with smart-ass responses: ignores them. It's not the first time, won't be the last.]

If you know how to make something, you know how to break it. Any similarity could be important and we just don't know it yet. I know the inner-workings of the device that took people from their homes and brought them to my world. Perhaps there's something similar at work here.

[Calm patience...that was the best thing when dealing with Offworlders. That or indifference. He was not going to be snappish back. Definitely not.]

Edited 2018-09-08 02:28 (UTC)

Glad I'm not the first, then. Don't suppose someone helpfully wrote it down somewhere?

I don't believe we have, you never showed up in Panem
Your name is Vision, right? I'll admit, I've only really heard of you, I don't know much about you.

[And that news pulls a heavy sigh from him on his end. That sounds pretty bad as well. He wished he could say Panem had never messed with anyone's memories like that when it came to the Offworlders, but then there was Thor and Sam, perfect examples of what happened when the Capitol got their hands in the heads of their Tributes. It had left one dead and the other scared and paranoid.]

That's exactly the sort of information I'm looking for. I'd be surprised if you knew, but did she ever find out how they were stealing people away?

Guess that's fair. The bars in Panem were always busy, far as I know.

But you still didn't say whether you liked it.

I do like it. I don't want it to be my career, but I've always enjoyed slinging drinks.

Then I'm glad to meet you, and I am indeed the Vision. I'm an android created by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, among others, and I'm currently on the Twin Roses.

Not that she knew of, or perhaps not that she remembered. Her government wasn't exactly forthcoming with accurate information.

Her city was called Proles, though, and the world was named Zeus.

It's not uncommon. Just how often it happens... depends on you. Some people seem to get more often than others.

I'd say, usually no more than a couple of times a year?

[Is that better? Or worse? Natasha's not even sure anymore.]

Not really a fan myself.

I did a little bit of research like this, if you're interested in it. Here.

[And he sends along his findings.]

I didn't ask about comas...it didn't happen the last place I was, as far as I remember. But people did just go missing for short periods of time. Sometimes there were explanations.

Oh? And what kind of device was it?

Edited 2018-09-08 07:12 (UTC)

I did, though I don't have it on me. I can give you the cliff notes version. There's a multitude of different places way too similar to this one out there. They all have the same elements: 1) Something stupidly powerful calling the shots; 2) Weird stuff going wrong on a regular basis; 3) People coming and going from different times and places, and vanishing without notice But they all have different excuses for our being there. You can take them all with a grain of salt, I bet.

Everything and nothing, is the short answer. Coma's weren't uncommon in Paradisa, though it sometimes used more creative methods to make someone inactive for a period. A friend of mine was once turned into a statue for a week, for example.

I imagine it requires being pretty social. It seems fitting.

I'll be sure to visit as soon as my watchful falcon lets me go out again.

Those two? You certainly must be something. It's nice to meet you too. I'm on the Wonderduck most of the time, myself.

Governments being dodgy certainly isn't new or singular, unfortunately.
But, unsurprisingly, I haven't heard of either of those. Not in that context.

Still, anything is better than nothing, so thank you for that.

Fills me with confidence and relief.

Thanks.

[Yet another thing being done to them that they, seemingly, can't do anything about. He hadn't even been able to fight it, he'd just gone to sleep as normal as ever and woken up less so.]

Thank you, anything that stops us from repeating ourselves makes this easier.

Any small detail could help.

What were some of those explanations, if you remember?

A gate.

Well, more like an interdimensional cheese grater, but far worse. Stuff came through but couldn't go back. Not the same way.

I didn't think I would say this, but I think I prefer the coma.

Was there a causation?

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