tramitem_log | EVENT LOG: Bright Lights

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EVENT LOG: Bright Lights

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... And when my good dream came to an end, I woke up more than ready to bend ... Full Game Navigation

Before February 12: I. Event Aftermath This text is taken from the Welcome page. Thread headers utilizing this prompt may be responded to by Mr. Martin. Simply add “closed to NPC” to your thread header to receive a response. It hits you from out of nowhere. One second you are going about your day, and then for ten or thirty seconds, everything—your surroundings, your sense of self—changes. You see a moment from another life. When you come back to your senses, there is an elderly man waiting for you, and a team of workers administering to the people in your immediate vicinity. They seem to be doing something intrusive to those other people, but they are leaving you alone. How did they get there so fast? Mr. Martin introduces himself—he is the Head of the Department of Containment at the Bureau of Interdimensional Activities. His accent is hard to place. But he begins to explain the multiverse, and now your world has turned upside down. “In summary, what you’ve just experienced is the memory of a past life. You will receive more, but I cannot tell you how many, when, or what they will be... You are one of The Different now... The Bureau will be keeping an eye on you,” Mr. Martin says, and he hands you a card with the acronym ‘IBA’ on one side, and a street address and a forum website address on the other. “There are others like you, experiencing memories from a past life,” he continues. “The Bureau has set up a network so you can connect, find support… work out your confusion.” There’s something sinister about the way he says that… maybe? It’s hard to make sense of everything happening so quickly. “And one more thing—do try to stay out of trouble.”
February 12: II. Support Group There’s a generic spread of food on a table off to one side of the room: donuts and muffins, coffee and lemonade. Maybe you’re hungry enough to try it—it’s free after all. Or maybe you can’t stomach anything, given the event you’re attending. The space is a local rec center, reserved for the evening. The beige-painted cinder block walls and the fluorescent lighting are a terrible combination. The meeting was interesting—who knew there were so many people like you, receiving memories of a past life? The group was led by someone from The Bureau—the Department of Medical Services. Some people are staying in their chairs and chatting—they must know each other from previous meetings. Some of them are gravitating towards the food. How do you feel about tonight? Has it helped you come to terms with the dream of memories you’re having? Maybe it’s time to talk to others, get an understanding of their experience.
February 16-20: III. Bright Lights The first clue that something has gone wrong is the brightness of the lights around New York City. Every lamp post you see, every fluorescent tube light in the office, even the LEDs in the microwave display, glow brighter—but not consistently. The lights pulsate and flicker, buzzing furiously, and sometimes they even burn out. It’s not just that, though—even small appliances start malfunctioning, because the use of them trips the breakers. Refrigerators have to be turned down so they don't freeze the milk. When questioned, the city administration, headed by the office of the mayor, directs questions to the Bureau. That’s probably your first clue that something is really, really not right. After all, the Bureau is meant to be an unknown, isn’t it? The Bureau being put in charge of answering questions about this phenomenon almost seems to be an accusation from the mayor—and the fact that the Bureau’s PR arm does respond seems like an admission of guilt. Something else happens that night, though. The Northern Lights, in pulsating waves of green and red and purple, descend over the night sky of New York City. The people of New York pour into the streets to witness the phenomenon, raising their phones to take pictures. Normally, this would never be possible, because of how far south New York is, and how much light pollution the city experiences at night. How is this happening? And why does it subsequently happen for the next 4 nights? The rumors begin the morning of the 17th. They grow in intensity over the next few days, and the appearance of the Bureau’s spokesperson on the Network does little to assuage any fears that are being experienced by the population in the city that includes the Different. People who remember their Event are disappearing, one by one by one. Sometimes they reappear after a short time. Sometimes, it seems, they’re just gone. What does this all mean?
... What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause ...
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Anakin was still trying to make sense of everything. In a way, he was grateful for this meeting, because he knew he couldn't bring this up with his current therapist. Adding 'I have a past life and I'm getting memories of that life back' wouldn't be accepted by anyone in society.

But there was something about this whole Bureau that made him mistrustful.

And then there was the part about his memory including someone he loosely knew. They were only on a first name basis, and only saw each other a few times in the park.

"Ben Kenobi," Anakin said, putting the full name together. Staring at him now, it was so odd. In his memory the man was younger, or seemed younger - maybe it had been the hair cut.

"Anakin Skywalker," he gave his full name and shook the man's hand with his robotic hand.

He only glanced down at the hand after he'd taken it to shake, and that was purely from being startled at sensation that he didn't expect.

He still closed his fingers around it and gave a perfectly reasonably handshake after that point.

"The last time I saw you, you were-" He realized he wasn't sure. "Much shorter." That much he knew. That bit of a glib remark out of the way: "This is all so strange."

"Ya..." Anakin said, hesitant. Ben had been in his memory, but Anakin hadn't explained very much in the meeting.

"I've been the same height since I saw you in the park." So, putting two and two together... "You saw me in your memory?"

"I did. Unless there is more than one Anakin Skywalker being introduced to Obi-Wan Kenobi." A pause - an awkward one. "You were very cute?" In a very, very young way.

Anakin wasn't sure how to take that. Maybe it was because he didn't have anyone left in his life that knew him as a child.

But maybe it was just more that they had shared memories of a past life.

Yes, it was mostly the latter.

"Look, do you wanna go talk about this somewhere not weird- less weird?" He looked pointedly at the Bureau member there.

He glanced in that direction than back to Anakin.

"Yes. Let's take a walk." The meeting was mostly breaking up, anyway, and he already had his coat on.

Anakin didn't like the cold, it hurt his arm. But it was better than this sad room and the reminder that everything in his life was now weird.

He nodded his head towards the door and moved that way. He pulled his hood up against the cold.

Once outside, walking next to someone who was essentially a stranger - which was somehow more comforting that that room - he finally asked. "Okay, what did you see?"

He didn't enjoy the cold either; it didn't do his knees, in particular, any favors. Compared to someone who'd lost an arm he had little to complain about.

Mostly, though, he chose to work on a sheet of ice and really had no room to complain.

He pulled gloves out of his coat's pockets and pulled them on as they walked, all the same.

"Not much," he admits. "Just someone introducing me - as Obi-Wan, actually, to Anakin Skywalker - who was very young. I was crouching, we shook hands. That was ... really the extent of it."

"That's..." Anakin sounded unnerved. "That's what I saw. Someone was introducing me to you. But I was a kid."

He walking in silence a moment, and then looked over their shoulders before asking. "What do you think that means?"

"I wish I knew." He did not look back over his shoulder, but he wasn't lacking caution. The entire involvement of these people was - "Either that we've lived another life and are remembering that life, or that there's a very interesting experiment going on and we're having memories implanted, somehow."

"Which option do you like more?" Anakin asked. He didn't know which he liked more.

The former threw his whole understanding of the universe on its head. The latter made him profoundly uncomfortable and paranoid.

"The first does not bother me at all. The second makes me incredibly uncomfortable, particularly when it comes with veiled threats and clear ...tampering of other people."

Those people who had been there after that flash of memory....

"I guess the first isn't that bad, it just changes The Answer from forty-two... The second is definitely worse. "

They were walking, but Anakin didn't know where they were going.

"Do you want to grab something to eat?"

"Yes."

He didn't know where they were going, either. He didn't feel any particular need to have a destination but going somewhere for food wasn't a bad idea. It wasn't as though he'd just eaten.

...In truth muffins and coffee did not count.

"What was forty two the answer to before it changed?"

Anakin had avoided the food at the meeting, in case the food was laced with anything. He was probably more than a little paranoid even if he chose the option of past lives as the answer.

"It's the answer to life, the universe, and everything..." He paused, waiting to see if the sci-fi reference struck true. It was a layered joke by Douglass Adams, in going back through programing languages, '42,' in on language, was the placeholder for 'anything you wanted it to be.'

"Do you have any food restrictions?"

"Oh. Adams." He'd read that book, actually, which might be some kind of miracle because he actually was behind in a lot of pop culture references.

Just not, mostly, literary ones.

"I don't have food restrictions, anymore, and they were never really the sort that would kill me. Pick literally any place we come to that's appealing to you."

That... was an odd answer.

But they happened to just then come to a pizza place and that was good enough for Anakin. He grabbed the door and held it open for Ben- Obi-Wan.

"Okay," he said, following him into the shop. "What name do you want me to call you?"

He knew it wouldn't be easily understood by someone who wasn't a quasi-professional athlete and depending on sport some of them wouldn't have understood.

It was still the most honest answer he had.

He slipped past Anakin into the shop and glanced up and around immediately, then got out of the way. "It doesn't matter to me. Most of my closer friends actually do call me Obi-Wan, but I answer to Ben just as readily. Did you... pick up anything about the person who was introducing us?"

A server lead them to a table and dropped off a few menus for them.

Anakin already knew his order so didn't open the thing. Rootbeer and pepperoni pizza.

"Some kind of hippy?"

He actually did open the menu but glanced up at that remark. "Well, clearly, but he felt really familiar to me. I take it he didn't to you?"

He fingered the edge of his menu and just before he answered, his phone started chiming an alarm. He pulled it out and hit 'snooze'.

"He seemed vaguely familiar, but I didn't get a lot of detail."

Their server showed up with water and to take their orders.

His order was a confusing mix of thin crust, light sauce, every vegetable in the place-

then absolutely doused in a variety of cheese and extra cheese.

...and diet soda.

Then he handed the menus back with a very politely murmured thank you.

"I didn't get much in the way of detail, either." Then he just, somehow, sets the entire topic aside. "I don't think I've ever seen you away from a chessboard."

Anakin smiled through that order - his being so simple and greasy and Obi-Wan's being fussy and... well... not 'healthy' but as healthy as can be in a place like this.

Which brought them to another point.

"I can say the same about you." And maybe it was because his mind needed a break from thinking about past lives, and secret organizations. but he glommed onto this topic.

"I guess you don't play chess all day- what do you do?"

Yes, good, a past break from working a single snippet of memory to death was exactly what he'd been after with that less than graceful subject change.

"I'm a figure skating coach. Sitting down in a park is a nice change of pace. Chess is just fun. What about you?"

"Figure skating?" he blurted out. "Really?" He said it without thinking about his tone or delivery. He realized his mistake almost immediately.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly. "There's nothing wrong with that. I just didn't expect that answer. That's pretty cool."

Obi-Wan and Anakin

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