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checkingout2015-05-08 12:39 am
checkingin) wrote in checkingout2015-05-08 12:39 am
Entry tags:
I USED TO DREAM THAT I WOULD MEET A PRINCE
Who: Everyone!
Where: The initial arrival rooms, the main lobby, all over the place.
When: May 7th
What: Feed me, Seymour
Where: The initial arrival rooms, the main lobby, all over the place.
When: May 7th
What: Feed me, Seymour
ARRIVAL.
you wake up when you hit the floor in a dark room, and the air is knocked out of your lungs. the carpet is threadbare, worn with use, kind of dusty. and you're not the first person to endure this crash landing. nor will you be the last.
once your vision rights itself, you can see the well-lit hallway through the doorjam straight ahead of you. not to say there’s monsters in the shadows, but something propels you towards that door and out into the bright hallway beyond.
and once outside your room, you can hear it: the steady thrum of rain outside.
MAIN LOBBY.
there's a staircase at the end of the lengthy hallway you tumble out of. grab your suitcase and follow the dull green exit signs on the ceiling until you reach the disappointingly bland stairs that lead you down to the ornate old fashion hotel lobby.
to your left is an richly crackling, rather excessively smoking fireplace, to your right is a lobby desk. straight ahead are three large sets of doors, all three of them thrown wide open and welcoming. and outside the few (curtained, permanently dark) windows is the continually steady hiss of rain. once you leave the hallway you wake up in, you won't be able to return.
welcome to the hotel.
FRONT DESK.
though there is a bell and a plaque designating the desk to be the main desk, the customer service desk, there are currently no staff members behind it. none shall answer your calls, either. there is, however, a pad of paper and a pen neatly aligned with the desk edge. you know. for notes.
terribly sorry for the inconvenience.
SCREENING ROOM.
on a long pull-down screen, a silent version of alice in wonderland will be playing on loop. at the back of the room, between the neat rows of fold out chairs, mounted on a wobbly table is the old-timey projector, and mounted on the walls are some rather old speakers that warble out "terrifying" old music.
along the curtained windows is another long table, with a large bowl of chipotle cheese popcorn corn and a large hot drink dispenser full of hot water, with a few cups and some old looking packages of apple cider mix.
DINING HALL.
is tragically, painfully empty.
OTHER.
the ballroom is currently open, and the grand doors unlocked.
there is no main door leading to the outside, good luck trying to find one.
the doors to the courtyard are unlocked.
ROOMS.
EXISTING GUESTS.
you've a room key with your assigned room number on it. all the new guest residences will be located on floors one and two. while there is an open elevator in the main lobby, and the buttons light up inside, the doors will not close. all in all, you'll be better off taking the stairs.
while they're the same stairs you undoubtedly came down to get to the lobby, the door to the endless hall everyone woke up in will not reappear between the main floor and the subsequent residential halls.
there are twenty rooms per floor. feel free to get to know your surroundings; or your neighbors as they trickle in around you.
EXISTING GUESTS.
are you dreaming of omlettes and regretting complaining about the constant pancakes and weak ass coffee yet?
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A new neighbor is interesting enough to get her back out of her room. She doesn't have answers but she's willing to share what she knows. "Hey," she calls through the door, knocking in case he somehow missed the hey was directed at him. "You okay in there?"
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"Hey..." he greeted back cautiously. She was attractive and noticeable. He definitely hadn't seen her before. "What is this place?" The question came as an answer to hers. If the woman wanted to know how he was, Trip was mostly confused and disoriented. He wasn't in the way of her entering in the room if she wished though he didn't give a formal invitation. It wasn't like him to be less than cordial with someone who wasn't threatening but this wasn't an every day occurrence.
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"Anyway. I'm Cashmere, I'm in 103." And she's here to check out what kind of person she's going to be living next to.
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On his bed was the suitcase opened and bag of crackers shared space with a small stack of photographs on the top of his clothing. The tablet was on the bed next to the piece of luggage. Trip followed her eyes in the room then returned to look at them. "Antoine Triplett." His friends referred to him by a different name but he had yet to fully establish if that was the right category to put her in. She sent up a flag by peeking in his room but he couldn't quite call it a red one.
He'd cut her off if she made a bee line to his luggage. If Cashmere was hungry, that was fine, but he wasn't ready to share familiar faces with her. Then again... What if she recognized some of the faces from around the hotel? No. He couldn't take the chance and put anyone in danger. She could be a scout for Hydra, sent to gather intelligence. He didn't let his doubts show on his features but cooly strolled to his suitcase--pulling out the bag of crackers before closing the luggage shut.
"Was there someone in this room before me?" he casually asked, doing his own investigating. Little did he know the starvation everyone had been through. Hunger wasn't on his mind but snacking gave him a less threatening appearance. He wasn't ready to smile just yet since she hadn't.
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The crackers have her attention, though. She'd had a stockpile of leftover breakfast bits and Easter candy but that's gone now. He probably shouldn't go waving his snacks around the hotel - at the very least somebody will probably try to guilt him into giving his crackers to a kid.
"Yeah," she nods. "There's been some people who've disappeared since I got here. Somebody had your room when we arrived but... that's been a while." But about those crackers... "did your suitcase come with food in it?"
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He didn't miss what she uttered of people disappearing and her use of 'we' but she gave him insight on something that proved this wasn't a wayward dream. "Want some?" Trip offered and made it clear she was allowed in. "My friends call me Trip." He felt the need to be friendlier with how hesitant she appeared. Hydra wouldn't want to eat anything he had. In fact, only until the moment he attempted to share did it occur to him about questioning the package.
"Most the stuff in the suitcase mine. I can't say I've ever packed crackers before though."
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"I can't take those from you. The only food we have right now is anything someone hoarded and, well, your crackers I guess. You should keep them - all of them." As much as it pains her to say that. "Besides, I already ate." Being a good person is horrible and she regrets promising that she would do so.
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The news on food rations would have explained her advance if she readily accepted his offer. He opened the package and poured a handful. "I just got here and I'm not the slightest bit hungry. What kind of neighbor would I be if I didn't offer you some?" Trip didn't bother to ask how she already ate yet warning him of a food shortage. He hadn't missed the growl of her stomach and preferred to play along with her possible lie than make her feel uncomfortable.
"It'll be our secret," he uttered through a smile and wink.
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Cashmere studies him a moment. She wouldn't call him distrustful, but he's wisely protective of what's his, but he's either assessed her to not be a threat or he knows an opportunity to make an ally when he sees one. He's friendly and he's offered her food. She's generally slow to warm up to people, but he's off to a good start.
"So, got any burning questions about your new temporary residence? You obviously already figured out the tablet." Which means wherever he's from is relatively technologically advanced.
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Trip picked up the tablet and checked for any notifications when she continued. "Yeah. The standard who, what, where, when and why. Like... Is there any staff here? I haven't found anyone who wasn't as lost as I am down in the lobby. And any idea where this place is? How many of us are here? --You can take your time and finish eating. Highly doubt I'm goin' anywhere."
With another nod of his head, this time motioning for her to have a seat with him at the table in the room. He couldn't help note that the table would be good for card playing...should anyone have a deck of cards. For now, they'd use it to got to know one another.
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"No staff, that we have evidence of. There's some hints that someone is around. We haven't been abandoned here. If you rip all the sheets off your bed and leave the room for twenty, thirty minutes when you come back the bed's made." It's as weird as it sounds. "So we don't have a lot of details. As for where, I don't think it's anywhere any of us come from."
How many people are there? She has to think about that, running through the faces she knows and those who have left. The hotel is small, so coming and goings are fairly obvious. "With you newbies?" she smirks, and it spreads into a wider smile. "Close to forty, I think. Mostly from different places - worlds. There's people from my home here." People who she wouldn't even have counted as allies at home, much less friends. But they're from home and that means something.
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There were evil smiles, of course. He never took those kindly. It was one thing to be mischievous and another to enjoy the misery of others. So far he only saw kindness on her features and actions. Trip had looked a little off guard at her explanation of housekeeping but he quickly recovered and filed away the information in his mind. Everything sounded like the games Hydra had been playing.
"Worlds? Really?" The questions were more rhetorical than anything. He didn't speak with much surprise, more of a confirmation of what she said. With everything he'd been through recently, throwing aliens into the mix wasn't all that shocking. "Where is home? If you don't mind me asking," he uttered gently. The question was personal compared to what he'd asked before so he gave it delicacy.
She looked to be from Earth but he couldn't really pick up on an accent that told him what region.
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"We call it Panem. Nobody else has heard of it. So far anyway." She doesn't share that Panem used to be North America, which she's decided to keep to herself ever since learning that people in the hotel happened to be from North America. It's less to protect their feelings and more about avoiding questions she can't answer. Her accent's fairly unremarkable. She sounds closer to American than anything, but America's only a memory in her time.
"What about you? Where are you from?"
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"America. I was raised on the west coast but my granddad took me east a lot. He's from the south east. I guess you can say that I don't really see myself belonging to just one place in the States. I've visited other countries and enjoy the culture in a lot of places. And the--" Food. Trip stopped himself. She didn't need to think or hear about food. He could always share that once things improved. He remained hopeful regardless of the circumstances. There was always hope to be had.
"--people. I was raised to value the differences in people," he concluded with a friendly smile. "What's Panem like?" There. Back to getting some more insight from her.
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She smiles back, but glances away when she thinks of home. Cashmere looks back as she answers. "It's small. We don't have states, we have Districts and they're isolated from one another. People don't travel unless it's on government business. The districts produce goods for our Capitol, and they take the best of everything and leave the scraps to their favorites. My district's always been loyal so things were better than most." And also children fought each other to the death, but she thinks she'll skip that detail for now. "We're all still paying the Capitol back for trying to overthrow them 75 years ago."
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"I've been to places with similar governments. Definitely not what I'm used to. You mind me asking how the districts are decided?" He found himself looking at her with different eyes. She hadn't appeared initially like someone who'd been deprived from more than food thanks to whatever was going on with the strange hotel. Cashmere was beautiful and quick on her feet based on what he'd seen.
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"Uh," she doesn't know, really. Panem's history is only what the Capitol wants them to know. Which isn't much. "Tradition, I guess. Some of it's geographic. We have diamond mines so we make luxury goods. Twelve has coal mines so they mine coal." And his assumptions aren't so far off. She's never been hungry at home, not the way she is now. Because she'd gone to the Academy she'd been given everything she ever needed.
"What are other places like?" The concept itself is fascinating. "All the countries get along?"
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"Countries all don't get along, no. There's unrest within some and wars between some. And some have treaties where the people travel easily between their countries. There aren't global wars at least."
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