First Entrance

[just_a_chemical]

[previously: Morning in Rapture. Contents include little girls brainwashed to drain fluids from corpses, as well as some who aren't quite dead yet; also dysfunctional family relationships, also injectables.]

Here come two more life forms, Enterprise. One you can't see: it's internal. Girls have their secrets. Don't you pay it any mind.

The one you can see is a lanky teenager, almost six feet tall, barefoot, wearing what looks like a 1940s nightgown (her little white sacrificial-victim dress), and carrying a book and a foil-wrapped pep bar.

This obviously wasn't where she expected to end up. She'd been headed into her room, where the quarantine door would lock behind her and she'd lie there pretending to read until the sickness subsided. Process all these new memories in peace, but this--

Either it's a very bad reaction to her latest treatment, or she's suffering a relapse in her mental conditioning, or... or she's suddenly in another place.

She's not sure which option is worse.

Comments

[splendid_roman]

"Both, really." He decided not to joke about whether the fish were to look at or to eat. He looked thoughtful at her description of teleportation. "Red shift, perhaps," he mumbled to himself. Louder, he asked, "Wouldn't the flash of light be distracting when you're eating?"

[just_a_chemical]

"I don't think people really went to that restaurant to eat," she says. "They went to be seen. Most other restaurants didn't have anything like that; my Aunt Grace worked in a nightclub and no one would ever do that there. But she was a singer, and it would distract from her performance if the waiters did that."

[splendid_roman]

"I know the sort of restaurant. We had that sort of place at home, although without the teleporter. Places that are not for us mere mortals." He chuckled.

[just_a_chemical]

"I liked the ordinary places a lot better. They had ice cream, and jukeboxes, and waitresses who all call you 'honey.' Maybe the food isn't as fancy, but I can't really taste fancy anyway."

[splendid_roman]

"Me too. I've never been that fond of fancy." He looked around. "This looks like a fancy sort of place, though." It was very plush.

[just_a_chemical]

"It does. I feel a bit underdressed--but then that could just be because so many people here are in uniforms. The rest of us look out of place."

All the clean lines, subtle colors and fancy lighting.

"It's nothing like what I'm used to. Even our fancy places at home... I could understand them. I knew their context. This could be anything."

[splendid_roman]

He nodded. "Why are they in their uniforms in a bar? Surely they're not working from here." No one looked like they were working, although given that people had arrived all of a sudden, it wasn't a surprise that they were looking around them and talking.

[just_a_chemical]

"Maybe it's a military bar," she says. "Maybe they're here after work--do soldiers wear their uniforms when they're done for the day? We don't have any soldiers, so I don't know. And even if I knew how things are back home... this isn't that."

[splendid_roman]

"Depends, I think. I never used to, but I was only in the military for two years on National Service." Maybe their uniforms were comfortable - or there was a weight limit, so they couldn't bring many civilian clothes on board.

[just_a_chemical]

"Were you in the war?" she asks. "I know a lot of people who were, but they don't talk about it much. Just that there was bombing."

And aggression, and dangerous ideologies, but no one really talks about that either. It was too recent for her city's history books to bother with.

[splendid_roman]

He shook his head. He'd been sure they'd come from different places, but it sounded a lot like the same war. "I turned eighteen not long after the war ended. My father fought in it, though."

[just_a_chemical]

"My mother wasn't a soldier, but she was a sort of missionary in Japan during the war," she says. "She's a doctor. She helped treat people who survived the bombing."

Why exactly the very English Sofia Lamb was in Japan during the war, Eleanor doesn't know. Her mother has never said.

[splendid_roman]

He was impressed at that. "That can't have been easy. She must have seen all sorts of horrific things out there."

[just_a_chemical]

"She did," she nods. "She survived it, but a lot of people she knew didn't--that's why she decided to move to our city. It's underwater, so it could never be bombed like that. She'd be safe there."

[splendid_roman]

He blinked. "You have a city underwater?" His tone was one of disbelief.

[just_a_chemical]

"It's at the bottom of the Atlantic," she nods. "They built watertight components to it above the surface, on these big platform ships, and then sank them to the bottom. From there, they just built outward and upward. We don't breathe water or anything; we've got bathyspheres and diving suits to get from one place to another, if they're not directly connected by tunnels or tubes."

[splendid_roman]

"So a bit like a big submarine?" he asked, trying to picture it. And wondering how he hadn't heard of it, when they both had parents with experiences in the same war.

[just_a_chemical]

"It's meant to look like Manhattan," she says. "Tall buildings, anchored to the sea floor, with lots of lights and windows--they have special glass that can withstand the pressure without breaking. It's supposed to be just like any other city, only outside the windows it's all water, not air."

[splendid_roman]

"It sounds like something worth seeing," he said with wonder, and despite being in a bar on a spaceship.

[just_a_chemical]

"It was beautiful when it was new," she says. "We had... some trouble, a while back, and it's not as well-maintained as it used to be. But in the mid-fifties, there was probably nowhere on Earth more beautiful."

[splendid_roman]

He shook his head - not because he disagreed, but because in the mid-fifties he'd never heard of it. "How was it kept a secret from the rest of the world?"

[just_a_chemical]

"Mr. Ryan wanted it secret," she says. "To keep it safe, in case there was a war. He financed it himself, and everyone had to sign contracts--if you agreed to work on construction, or you were one of the best-and-brightest he invited to move there, you were sworn to secrecy about it and could never leave. But I was born there. No contracts for me."

[splendid_roman]

"Bit of an oversight there," he said, eyes twinkling, recognising that if she didn't have a contract, she could anyone she liked about the place.

[just_a_chemical]

"My mother's in charge of the city now, and her only orders are that no one's to take a bathysphere up to the surface," she says with a small smile. "And I've done neither one. No harm there either."

[splendid_roman]

He chuckled. "You've definitely not done either of those. Not very foresighted of her, not giving you orders about telling people about the city, should you find yourself suddenly whisked into a bar on a spaceship."