#thread.camelot

[charlie-s-illusions]

CLOSED STARTER for @lindiwe-in-camelot location: NEAR THE ODYSSEY timestamp: POST EVENT 02 / THE DAY OF CHARLIE'S ARRIVAL

One moment he was in his study, incognito tabs open for cheap last minute trips to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris from Heathrow airport in London, with dates either the next day early or somewhat into next week. One-way tickets as well. The next moment, after what seemed like the blink of an eye, he woke up on a beach.

The temperature change was the most notable. He did like to keep his apartment at a manageable twenty-one degrees Celsius, enough to fog up the window when the night had been especially cold.

There was a breeze on his face and the warmth of the sun up ahead on his trimmed hair.

For a moment he thought he was manifesting, pretending he was on a Hawaiian beach - though it wasn't warm enough for that - before realising that he had not in fact laid down anywhere. Not consciously at least.

So he must've passed out.

Dreams could almost feel like reality to the dreamer, sensations so vivid that it began to make sense. The mind was powerful, it could trick anyone into believing an alternate reality.

He sat up and touched the sand, smelled the breeze, tasted the salt in the air. He could see a beach, a large cruise ship slightly tilted in the water. A figure approaching from nearby, the sound of her feet in the sand. "Where am I?" he asked, reminded of so many movies and shows where characters were transported to new realities. But also of his mother's stories.

[little-baski]

CLOSED STARTER for @lindiwe-in-camelot location: AT THE HUB timestamp: EVENT 02: PART 01: THE DRONES

The buzzing was not fun. Not fun at all. Sure, Baskar knew exactly where the Hornets were, they knew where they were flying off to, what places they might appear in next, and so forth. But it was also far too much noise. Too much sensory overload that even if they were aware that if they headed to the left they’d run into a swarm of them, they also barely registered it. Running into the next group of them scooping over the area looking for a next target. What were they doing? 

They didn’t want to know. They wanted them to finish whatever it was that kept them busy and then disappear. There were tears in Baskar’s eyes. Their teeth gritted together, every new almost altercation left them five seconds away from freaking out. But intensity was something they could handle. It hadn’t ever left them unable to cope, survival mode was in their blood. 

So when they did run into the next swarm, they were quick to shoot away and seek a place to hide. Running past the hub’s kitchen and scooting low to disappear behind the bar. Not the most well-hidden spot, but hopefully a bit too crammed for the large robots to fly into. 

They weren’t alone in thinking it a safe spot. 

Despite not having been to the meeting - because it had been far too busy - they’d seen Lindi a few times before. They recognised her without needing to hear her voice. 

Though right now it seemed a good idea to keep quiet for a moment. They pressed their finger against their lips, because they could clearly still hear the buzzing. The never ending buzzing.

[charlie-s-illusions]

The figure turned into a woman, her gaunt was slightly careful, her face open and warm, if she carried pity, he couldn't so quickly find it. Another manifestation of his dreaming mind? She reminded him a bit of his niece, who would inevitably answer with directness when a question was posed. No beating around the bush.

He frowned at the question, trying to make sense of it - and this place - from the standpoint of someone who had... in fact... just been transported to another reality. There was very little known about death, about where the soul - if such a thing existed - went after it had been pushed out of the dying body. Could it be one went to a beach like this?

There was also very little known about where the mind was when people went into a coma, though there were more stories to be told from survivors. If it all led him to dream, then perhaps it wasn't such an oddity that the dream he had would be most reminiscent of his mother's old stories. The ones where regular people disappeared into fantastical lands to speak with animals that mirrored real people.

"I... think that might be what's happening," he agreed. Just arrived. Recently transported.

Perhaps his conundrum had been too much for his mind, and his body had shut down to save him further stress.

Strange did not begin to cover it.

But for now, Charlie decided to accept the strangeness, as he reflected a look back at the cruise ship, the frown deepening. "I assume it didn't stay with twenty?" he asked.

He decided to settle into the familiarity. Small talk, introductions. He offered his hospital smile, the one that was kind and reassuring. "Charles Gano," he said, "But you can call me Charlie." His accent thickened at his name, and always gave people the assumption - rightfully so - that he was from Paris. "I'm from Brighton," he said. "It's... nice to meet you, Lindiwe."

Morning on the beach was peaceful, when there weren't robot hornets buzzing around, or high pitched noises that made women explode into pillars of salt. Lindi was determined to make the most of the peace while she had it. The tide was going out, the damp sand she walked on was cool on her feet. Lindiwe closed her eyes and took in a deep breath of salt-scented air. The wind was crisp against her skin. The kind of grounding that therapists dreamed of prescribing. She was here, and for a moment, everything was peaceful.

When she opened her eyes again, she spotted someone sitting on the sand. Assuming it was someone she knew, Lindi didn't approach in any hurry. His aura was mostly calm, the kind of movement she saw when people were consumed with their thoughts. It was only when she was closer that she realised that he was a stranger. In a half-daze, with a French accent, the stranger asked her where he was.

"I... I don't know," Lindi admitted to his question, that nasty little caveat to this island paradise. She paused, and then came a little closer, sitting herself down on the beach besides him. "Have you just... arrived?" she asked cautiously, unsure of how to do this. She'd been on a few welcoming committees during her time, but this was decidedly different. There was no aspect of choice to this move.

"This is all going to sound strange, but um..." Lindi smiled, searching for the right words. Were there any right words for this? "A few months ago, myself and about twenty other people all woke up on that cruise ship, plucked from our normal lives. We've been here since. There's no communication with the outside world, no apparent way out of here..." Lindi's heart started pumping fast in her chest, and she suddenly hated herself for enjoying even a second of this place. "But there's plenty of food, shelter..." She couldn't promise him safety.

"My name is Lindiwe, what about you? Where are you from?"

[little-baski]

Baskar had not expected that. Maybe he should've? Should've seen the horror on her face and figured she wouldn't want to stick around. Though... personally he would just like to stick around, mostly right there, hidden from the Hornets, not drawing their attention.

Lindi didn't seem to have many thoughts as she bolted.

And he also had very little thoughts as he ran after her. "Lindi, wait!" he yelled, which hurt his own ears more. It might not even be audible through the sound of the buzzing hornets.

Buzzing that came closer and go further, most of the hornets seemed to not care about them, but some were visibly interested, following Lindi around. He whimpered, knowing he didn't want to anger the robots, but also worried that Lindi was doing just that with her running.

"Please, stop running! Hide somewhere!" he yelled, as tears sprung to his face, there were too many sounds. And the buzzing was more sporadic as the hornets focussed on new targets.

Lindi shuddered as the stranger eased himself out to look for the robot-hornets, shame curling around her chest. Wasn't she supposed to be a strong, independent, single mum now? She was supposed to be fearless, a bastion of feminism to encourage Paige to push herself further, and here she was, trembling in a corner while she got another man to face the threat of the hornets. The stranger peered over the edge of the bar while Lindi quivered pathetically, berating herself for being a useless coward.

He returned and confirmed that the hornets were still around, that they didn't want to leave. Lindi nodded sharply, breathing out a long, slow breath through pursed lips. "I can't… I can't be around them," she explained, casting the stranger a guilty look. "I'm running," she said, the only warning she gave them. Lindi scrambled to her feet and ran. She squealed as a robot-hornet swooped close to her head, but she kept moving, kept going until she was out from the Hub, in the open air. But even that wasn't a true freedom, because the robot-hornets were everywhere, buzzing in the air, nestled on the side of a building. Were they ever going to fuck off and leave her?

Lindi cast a look back at the Hub, hoping to see the stranger behind her. She truly was a horrible coward.

[little-baski]

Baskar wished he was more capable of paying attention to anything but the buzzing. But it was so intense that it took over most of their processing power. Their brain couldn’t help wanting to know where every individual buzz came from. To want to make a distinction. How close they were, how many, what state they were in. Everything. But they couldn’t, because they didn’t have enough energy or mental space to even try. 

Staring at Lindi was like seeing a vague form of someone else there, and simply acknowledging he wasn’t alone. Even if he did recognise her, it was all he was capable of doing before his hearing took precedent again. 

Her whisper was much louder than the buzzing however, and his face shot back to meet hers after he’d turned it away. His head was leaning against the wood, pushing one part of the headphones hard against it, in the hopes to lessen the noise. 

He nodded, then swallowed. “They’re still out there,” he whispered. He wished he could tell her how many, how close, he wished he could tell her that they could get out, get to safety. But he wasn’t sure. He could hear the buzzing, but he was unable to make a distinction, unable to say if the ones he heard were close by or far away. They were everywhere. 

“I’m going… to take a look,” he decided. She sounded far more scared than he was. He wasn’t scared necessarily, overwhelmed definitely, but more frustrated than scared. He wanted to scream, only feared it would simply add to the pain in his ears. 

He slowly pushed himself back up, grabbing the edge of the bar and pulling himself up far enough that he could look over it. 

He quickly shot down again, wrapping his arms around his legs, pulling his knees against his chest. “There are four of them, hoovering about,” he whispered. “They don’t seem to be thinking of leaving.”

Lindi wasn't one to let the roaming hoards of swarming robot-hornets put her off her daily activities. No, but she had been meaning to spend some time writing down notes in her bungalow, and then some additional time deep cleaning her space, and then she had to test out different layouts of her bungalow furniture. All of this had meant that, naturally, she had spent as much time as possible indoors and away from the robot-hornets outside.

(Although, sometimes, she swore she could hear scraping and scratching underneath her floorboards, and she couldn't sleep from the whirling and buzzing noises they made.)

Finally, hunger had won out. Lindi had merely intended to dip into the Hub, grab some communal food (hopefully), and then go back to her bungalow. But just as she had approached the fridges one of the horrible robot-hornets had swooped at her, and then it had decided to sniff around the kitchen.

Lindi, in her wisdom, had decided to curl into a corner and press herself into the corner of the bar, while she rode out the ensuing panic attack. Her heart ached as it thumped hard in her chest, her palms sweating and shaking from the unfettered adrenaline. This was it, they'd been set upon this island to be hunted one by one by horrible mechanical beasts.

Okay… Okay… grounding Lindi. She could feel the cool wood of the bar against her back. She could see the floor, she could smell warm grease, like someone had recently fried a fish.

But all she could hear was them, the buzzing, the ceaseless, fucking buzzing. Oh god, were they getting closer? Fuck, fuck, fuck!

The last thing Lindi expected to see was someone else joining her. Lindi flinched away at the movement, scared that it was a robot-hornet, but it wasn't. It was one of the newcomers. She hadn't caught their name yet. She stared at them, curled up in on herself, body twitching from barely restrained panic, feeling for all purposes that the world was going to push and squeeze and compress her into a cube like car scrap. They put a finger to their lips, and Lindi nodded.

"Are there… Are they still out there?" Lindi whispered, trying not to sound scared out of her wits.