Big City Living (Midpoint Mingle)

[midpointmods]

The town of Midpoint: called thus because it is at the exact center of the game arena, a busy little Western town full of strange people, many of whom don’t look remotely human, because this is where all the players gather and live. Midpoint Saloon: called thus because it is the only bar in Midpoint. It’s also the biggest building in town, four stories high, dotted with windows, painted a jaunty yellow and decorated with red and green flowers in all the window boxes.

This is where your veteran teammate points you. Or just stomps off to and hopes you follow.

Downstairs is a bar and tavern, Old West style, right down to the upright piano in one corner and a raucous crowd of locals - largely locals, but with a healthy smattering of unusual or downright alien faces that clearly indicate the presence of other Players - eating, drinking, gambling, and getting into trouble. There’s a broad, bearded man behind the bar, waving cheerfully at you as you enter.

The rest of the night and the next day is yours to do with what you see fit. Explore the town, take a long nap in your new room, try to get to know people... everyone is here for the next twenty-four hours before travel to the mission site, so it’s a good chance to scope out the competition, at the very least.

Comments

[unofficial_ambassador]

Thanks to her years of training in controlling her reactions Inara manages not to drop her food in surprise, but it's a near thing.

"What? How are you doing that?"

[cicadashell]

Is he... cackling? Yes, because he's a child. He turns off the watch and there's no fancy shimmering into view or anything. He's just suddenly there.

"Magic."

He reaches over to steal whatever he can get his hand on from Inara's plate.

[unofficial_ambassador]

She's a vegetarian, so he might wind up being disappointed with his haul.

"Have you been sitting there this whole time waiting to make that joke?"

[cicadashell]

"No!" which is an obvious lie.

The vegetables aren't disappointing, as he tends towards them himself. Meat is a last resort when animals are your friends.

"You been in this shithole long?"

[unofficial_ambassador]

Ah, teenagers. It seems they're like this everywhere.

"No, I've just arrived." The business casual shop clerk dress paired with various necessary cowboy accoutrements from the jail probably give her away. "What about you?"

[cicadashell]

"Same."

Seems a lot of people arrived recently. Jiro took nothing from the jail, looking like he's come from a black-ops mission or the like, minus the weapons.

"This whole thing sounds fucked up, right?"

[unofficial_ambassador]

That's not exactly how she’d have put it, but, "Yes. It does. I'm not looking forward to dying again."

Inara looks at her half-empty plate. "I could just get another plate if you're that hungry."

[cicadashell]

"Yeah? Thanks."

He will take her up on that probably joking offer.

"You died? How many times? Is this some fucking hell dimension?"

That might even make more sense than the reality.

[unofficial_ambassador]

Look, she gets it. He's a (huge) teenager. Boys eat a lot. Inara sighs and sets her plate in front of him.

"I did. Just the once, about a year ago. In the place where I was at the time, there was an artificial intelligence keeping us alive, so the condition was temporary. I understand it's like that here as well, but I doubt they're using the same mechanism." No one has mentioned pods yet, for one thing.

[cicadashell]

"Some kind of automatic life support thing?"

He's only familiar with generic sci-fi concepts of AI or preserving the dead. His own deaths involved more archaic revivals.

"I died twice."

[unofficial_ambassador]

"There was a crashed space ship near the city where we lived and if you died, you'd wake up in a pod on board afterward." Sometimes there were annoying robots there who would accuse you of being a nudist because the pod doesn't recreate clothes but that's probably not a usual occurrence.

"Twice?" Somehow that seems significantly worse than her single death. Maybe because she hadn't really understood what was happening the first time.

[cicadashell]

Holy shit. She's another one from some other planet.

"Like a restart, that's pretty creepy," he's now wondering if she has robot parts. "But yeah, twice. Long story, but the first time I got impaled through the heart and I don't know what the fuck the second time, organ failure or something."

It's what they told him would happen anyway.

[unofficial_ambassador]

"It was a strange experience. I was so new there that at first I didn't even realize what had happened." She’d thought she’d simply fallen unconscious until later she met the team investigating her murder. Very disconcerting.

Likely not the same experience as someone who’d been impaled. Inara winces, studiously not thinking about her friend Wash dead in his chair with a spear through his chest. "That sounds awful. I'm sorry."

[cicadashell]

"Yeah, it sucked," that's about all the detail he'll get into. "You think everyone's dead?"

[unofficial_ambassador]

"No." And not just because she's Buddhist and doesn't believe in this sort of afterlife. The major thing that she'd learned by dying is that it's an experience you don't forget. Even if she didn't realize she had died, she'd know that something terrible had happened. "But I don't know if we’re real. I have a friend who - a copy of her was sent to a terrible place while the original woman lived with us unawares. It could be like that."

[cicadashell]

"Not real?" he sounds disbelieving, though it's not any stranger than other things he's already encountered. It's only that it spurs some kind of existential pondering he doesn't want to have. "Wouldn't you know if you're not real?"

[unofficial_ambassador]

"If you're a perfect copy with all of the original’s memories, how would you?"

She hadn't asked Kaylee many questions about Mayfield, both because she hadn't wanted to think too much about it and because she hadn't imagined that it would ever happen to her. She kind of regrets it now.

[cicadashell]

It's not a topic or a situation Jiro's ever thought about at all.

"You wouldn't. But at that point, you're separate people, so maybe you're both real. Just a different kind of real."

[unofficial_ambassador]

"Hm. Maybe 'real' isn't the right word. But if we’re copies, they can take whoever they'd like and no one would notice, since we aren't missing." It also means that even if they do escape they can't go home, but it's probably best not to bring that up.

[cicadashell]

He laughs then.

"I was 'missing' at home too. They wouldn't need a copy."

[unofficial_ambassador]

Inara raises her eyebrows in disbelief. "No one in the world knew who you were?"

[cicadashell]

"They did, but," he has far too many long stories for things that happened only a month ago. "I was kinda kidnapped by the government and they did that 'you don't exist anymore' thing where they get rid of records and whatever."

[unofficial_ambassador]

"Ah." Maybe that's really calm for the situation he's just described, but she's seen that before a few times. "I'm sure they won't be happy if you're suddenly not wherever they put you."

[cicadashell]

"Ha, yeah," he looks pleased about that. "I hope we're not copies then."

[unofficial_ambassador]

Inara laughs at the smug expression. "People like that do not like it when things don't go their way. You're probably safer here."