a gent of good intent who's content to be ( OPEN )

[checkingin]

Who: Everyone!
Where: The initial arrival rooms, the main lobby, all over the place.
When: March 3rd
What: Welcome, newbies.

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 a warmly crackling fireplace, to your right is a lobby desk. straight ahead are three large sets of doors, though only one of them is open to the public. 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.

terribly sorry for the inconvenience.

SCREENING ROOM.

on a long pull-down screen, a silent version of the phantom carriage 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 popcorn and a large hot drink dispenser full of hot water, but without any tea or hot chocolate packets around.

OTHER.

the ballroom is currently closed, and the grand doors locked.

there is no main door leading to the outside, good luck trying to find one.

the doors to the courtyard and breakfast hall are unlocked, but looks like you've missed the morning meal. sucks for you.

ROOMS.

you've a room key with your assigned room number on it. all the new guest residences will be located on floors three and four. 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.

it's late when the newcomers arrive, there's a good chance you'd been about to go to sleep (or just waking up, who knows, your mom's not here to tell you when to go to bed or get up). but if you're paying attention, you might hear the hustle and bustle in the lobby below; or maybe you're just drawn there because your gut told you to go join the commotion. whatever the case may be, go mingle!

Comments

[youcantransform]

Harry smiles slightly.

"Spoken like a scientist," he says, and there's the slight upward inflection of a question as he offers a hand. "Harry Hart."

[ourlastbesthope]

"Physicist," he answered and reached out to grip his hand tightly. "Dr. Robert Capa. Capa, if you want. I'm used to that." He stepped back and wiped his damp hands on his pants.

[youcantransform]

"It's a pleasure, Dr. Capa." If a person went to the effort of acquiring a doctorate then one can take the split second of courtesy to acknowledge that, in Harry's view. "Have you encountered anyone else? I'm afraid I've only seen a handful of others in passing."

[ourlastbesthope]

"Conversations with a couple," he acknowledged, his hand moving to his hips. "But I only ever get more questions than I started with. That's not really...discouraging, though."

[youcantransform]

"You think not? I think I'd like a few answers, at this stage."

It's not true - Harry far prefers to have questions to address himself, than answers which may be lies or incorrect or misleading - but introducing an element of disagreement gives the other man a reason to keep talking.

And he is genuinely interested in his perspective on the situation.

[ourlastbesthope]

"We'll get them," Capa predicts. "When we find them out ourselves." Once again, his gaze drifted to the door. "Um...you want to go inside?"

[youcantransform]

He glances over his shoulder at the door. It's not as if the fresh air is proving as, well, refreshing as he might have hoped.

"After you, Dr Capa," he offers.

[ourlastbesthope]

Capa didn't hesitate. He went straight inside and right to the fireplace, knowing that if he didn't, he would stand inside and freeze. But he didn't face the flames. Instead, he turned his back to them and folded his hands in front of him, waiting on the other man, should he want to follow.

[youcantransform]

Harry shuts their door carefully behind him and follows Capa to the fireplace, carrying a bit of a chill from the outdoors and decidedly in need of the warmth. The cold and damp has pushed an ache into the covered wound in his shoulder, but the bleeding hasn't started up again so it feels perfectly safe to just ignore it. He angles his head toward the armchairs.

"Shall we?"

And he'll wait for Capa to choose one of the (handsome, but balding) armchairs before taking one nearby.

[ourlastbesthope]

Capa chose the armchair farthest away from the flames and sat down, folding his hands in his lap. He didn't know what to say or what they were doing, but he was actually content to sit in the silence. It allowed him to think, which meant that he was able to form a question. "What is...your home like?"

[youcantransform]

"Very pleasant overall. Always busy, sometimes chaotic, and the weather's dreadful most of the time - but it's home, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else." A maudlin half-smile, because anywhere else is exactly where they both are. "I live in Knightsbridge, incidentally. London."

Though now he's been primed by the Doctor (who he's now wavering on re. the is-he-isn't-he issue of severe delusion), he's wondering if he ought to have specified a country, or a planet, or possibly an historical period. Certainly, the way the question was phrased is interesting. Most people move from generality (where are you from?) into specifics if necessary (I've never been; what's it like?). There's a handful of reasons you'd move straight onto the second question, and one is that you know you won't have any context for the first.

"And yourself?"

[ourlastbesthope]

"America," he said quickly and leaned forward. This was the first interaction he's had with someone from a place he had actually heard of. But there was another question that he wanted to know. He linked his fingers together, trying not to come off as too intense. "When? I mean...what year?"

[youcantransform]

"Twenty-fifteen." Harry leans forward in kind; mirroring, to put the man at ease. "I...presume that we have some differences there?"

[ourlastbesthope]

He lets out a breath. It was a direct answer; Capa didn't think that he would see many of those. "No," he breathed, "2057. Or...8 by now. It was '57 when we left." At that revelation, that this man had been alive before he had been born, Capa sat back hard. It was a fact that he had suspected, but didn't know for certain.

[youcantransform]

Harry watches him for a moment. He's seen a lot of utmost strangeness in his life, witnessed things that the average man on the street would have dismissed as madness, but those oddities have always sat within the laws of physics. If the young man in front of him is telling the truth, then the hotel...the hotel is a place so far from his own experiences that he can't even see his own life from here.

Yesterday it would have been completely preposterous. Impossible to accept.

But it's been a long damned day.

"Left...?"

[ourlastbesthope]

"Earth," came his quick answer. "I lost track of time not long after." He found himself thinking back on it. "But even in 2015, we knew something was wrong. I was born in '27 and we were already working on finding a way to stop it." He looked up. "How is the sun? Where you're from?"

[youcantransform]

"...not in need of fixing," is Harry's eventual response, then makes a small addition for diplomacy's sake: "Not that the public have been made aware."

He's party to a lot of information that the average man on the street is not, but, well. More things in heaven and earth, and so forth.

[ourlastbesthope]

Capa nodded. "Yeah," he agreed. "Good. That confirms that we are all, really, not from the same place at all." He folded his hands in his lap again, thinking. He had been talking less to Harry and more to himself, as he was attempting to make sense of it all. He needed the reassurance, and he wasn't going to ask Harry for it.

[youcantransform]

Now they've gotten past time travel, he finds himself remarkably sanguine about the notion of parallel universes. He has, at least, read around the subject.

"Am I the first you've been able to ask about this?"

He did say he'd spoken to some others. Maybe Harry's simply been unusually forthcoming about where and when he hails from.

[ourlastbesthope]

Capa suddenly remembered that someone else was sharing this conversation with him and he looked up, his face registering a gentle surprise. "Oh. No. But you're the first person from a city and place I recognize."

[youcantransform]

"Glad to have been of help, then."

What else can one say?

"I would wonder if we've all been drawn from different...worlds, entirely, if I hadn't already encountered a colleague of mine," he ventures quietly.

[ourlastbesthope]

"Colleague? You know someone here?" he asked, suddenly interested again. He didn't think that was possible, but, admittedly, he wasn't yet familiar with the rules of this particular kidnapping.

[youcantransform]

"He arrived today, as did I." He wavers over the additional information, then decides it's not so important as to keep to himself: "Though we've compared notes. The date he came from is a little later than mine."

[ourlastbesthope]

"How odd," Capa admitted and lapsed into silence for a few moments. "How far from your date?" He wanted to know as much as he could so he could record it upstairs. He needed the data, especially when it was a strange case like this one.

[youcantransform]

"Not long. Days, I'd say. A week or two at the most."

Harry gives him a sidelong look and a half-smile.

"I'll be privy to the results of any research I'm contributing to, I hope?"

He doesn't particularly mind being the subject of the man's questioning. If this were a more straightforward mass kidnapping, his specialist skills would be good currency. They may very well still prove to be. In the meantime he's more than happy to play civilian and observe his companions at work.