Participants:
| Scene Title | Call Me When You're Sober |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Eve and Des share the results of their Refrain experiment with Ray, who is less than impressed. |
| Date | March 14, 2018 |
Cat’s Cradle: The Oracle Room
Down the stairs leads into a small hallway lit by dimmed down by blue christmas lights, at the end are two doors, a white painted one with a padlock and a black painted one. The black door has an old fashioned clock embedded into the wood. The gears seem to be spinning backwards.
Inside of the black door there is a room that is almost always filled with a smoky haze. The vents in the corners of the room help with the place not becoming too stuffy a couple large fans are positioned to help with the smoke if it becomes too much. Fabrics of various vibrant and muted colors and large comfy pillows fill the room, there is a work area in a corner filled with blank canvases and unfinished paintings. A few cabinets and bookcases are placed around the room. The room at large seems to hold a large number of completed paintings. Hanging on the wall or stacked against each other or in piles, the Three Mothers hangs over a fireplace tucked into the corner. There is an old beat up round table which an ornate glass bong sits in the center placed alongside a large black hookah. A deck of playing cards and a few candles are placed in the center.
Sometime while Eve was washing the blood off Des’ face, she finally woke up. No panic, no screaming, no tears. “Well… That happened,” was all she said. No amount of coaxing would get more words from her. For the second time in a week, Des retreated into her own mind to process exactly what had happened to her. This time, however, was not quite so bad. Just a little bit of distance. A little bit of time. Space.
Sitting in Eve’s bathtub, listening to her hum softly while she scrubbed the filth out of her hair, that’s when Des cracked a smile and looked up to her new friend. “I think I time travelled.”
Dressed now in one of Eve’s flowing bohemian style dresses - this one a pale yellow with tattered layers of black gauzy fabric overlaying the skirt - Des sits again in the Oracle Lounge across from the woman it’s named for. The phone call was already placed, and now they’re just waiting for Richard to arrive. Her ride/chaperone from here.
“Tell me again about 2024. I don’t remember any of that.”
“I’ve never done it before zinging through the river, just watching it.” There’s a sly grin as she continues to wash Des’ hair with a smile, she had already washed herself and was allowing her thick raven mane of hair to dry. “You popped my cherry Dorothy!”
“They wouldn’t let me pee.” Eve sounds perturbed at this, “I had to go in a catheter! They said I was in a coma. I arrived in April! They said the 8th, then I guess I was so tired I went for a long nap.” She recounts the events, waking up with the blood and filth proved that they traveled somewhere but she had a nagging thought in the back of her head that the encounter with Kravid was a dream. Her brow furrows as she thinks, “You had been there for a while, a year. And much older, but still stylish.” Eve is quick to add, she likes the grey hair.
“I.. I had a memory come forth. From when I was a guest..? At the Institute,” that is said softly and she sighs, she sometimes forgot that she didn’t remember much from that time. Her memories altered at the hands of Simon Broome and Ezekiel. There was a shudder, “I knew- know her Dorothy. I painted something and she was there.” Her eyes go unfocused as she massages Des’ scalp. The shampoo smells of mint.
“It was The Hounds, the hungry pups and her throat was gone. She had been misbehaving even back then,” she cracks a laugh, it’s not really? Funny but the tone of it is more like well what do ya know. And Eve is happy to know something about her past in the Institute. “They wiped my mind of all of. I was there for a bit, Simon tried to help me.” She thinks sadly of the old man, they didn’t part on the best of terms, the guy was like a grandfather to the mad seer.
“She wouldn’t untie me, she knew about what I did in the Ark, all those years ago,” Eve looks annoyed at the Director’s assessment of her, it wasn’t that she was unstable it was that Kravid thought Eve wasn’t justified in her crusade to get her paintings. The older woman is visibly shaken by the events a hasty call to Gillian and a message left with the woman from her landline was about all that kept Eve from losing it completely. “She was going to plug my brain into this thing, the Structure? She was very serious about it.”
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Three heavy knocks upon the door of the Oracle room sound out. Just outside stands one Richard Ray, dressed in a nice black suit, arms folding across his chest as he waits for the knocking to be answered. He’s wearing a pair of shades, despite his power still being absent as far as anyone knows, and he does not look pleased at the moment.
Probably less because of Des’s absence, and more because of the company she’s with.
“Plug your brain into—”
The knock at the door sends Des scrambling to her feet and making her barefoot way trippingly over the pillows scattered across the floor until she falls against the door before pulling it open.
“Richard!” Blue eyes are wide as saucers and excited as a child on Christmas morning. “Come in! I have to tell you all about it!” That he’s unhappy either doesn’t register or goes entirely ignored. She grabs his folded arms so she can take his wrists and pull him inside the room. Her dark hair is still wet and clinging to her neck, but there’s no sign of the previous grime she was covered in. Thankfully for everyone.
“It was amazing! I always knew I could do it!” Slamming the door behind Ray, Des flings her arms around him in a big hug, squealing excitedly. This? Is not normal.
There is a twitch of Eve’s fingers as the knock is heard and Des goes to open and greet Richard, her light gray eyes squint. “Traveler.. Is that you? My..” she draws herself up and slinks over to a nearby cabinet to reach down for a discarded joint before pulling it to her lips. “You look.. Fresh.” The compliment is there, Eve knows how Ray feels. She killed his friend. She was sorry but sometimes, things just happened she guessed. Or.. sometimes you lose your sense of reality. That was besides the point, Doc was dead and Eve was here. Ray might have wanted that a different way. But it has been years and they haven’t exactly not seen each other. But being alone together? That hasn’t been allowed to happen. Having Des might be the smallest number of an audience the two have had.
The painting of the Three Mother/Three Witches greets him from over the fireplace, a number of other paintings hang around calling for attention when the flickers of the flames illuminated the canvases. Smoke swirls up from her mouth as she looks at the two, “I didn’t eat anyone, blow anything up and I didn’t stab the needle. But I did have fun!!!” Eve and Odessa must still be coming down.
“Gilly should be around sometime, it’s a reunion C-Ra-Ri-.. You have so many names Traveler!” There’s a hoot of laughter, “I got my head cut off! I died.. again!!” It’s hilarious to Eve, the notion that she cheats death? It’s unreal, it’s kinda of confusing and also a little thrilling. “But the darkness part of dying sure sucks. You can’t remember anything of when you’re dead. It’s like in Fantasia. All black, demon eyes. Not even the demon eyes. BUT WE SAW DEMON EYES. SHE, SHE.” Eve looks at Odessa for help, explain.
That was not the response that Richard was expecting when the door opened.
A startled exclamation later, he stumbles a bit as he's pulled into the room - and then rocks back on his heels as Des leaps at him with a hug and squeals her excitement. And then to one side, there's Eve, rambling herself about nothing that makes any sense. He draws in a slow breath, then exhales it before bringing both hands up to Desdemona's arms and attempting to extricate himself from them.
"What the hell," he asks, sounding less thrilled than either of them, "Are you two on?"
Cause it's gotta be drugs.
“Nothing!” Des insists. “Probably. It’s gotta be out of our systems by now.” She shakes her head quickly, allowing herself to be pulled away to a more conversational distance, but she keeps a grasp on Richard’s arms. “That’s not important, though. What is is that—”
Des looks over her shoulder at Eve and then nods her head quickly. Turning her attention back to Richard, she attempts to explain. “I sent us through time!” Which is not a documented aspect of her power anywhere. Even she’s said herself that she doesn’t have that capability. “We saw Takezo Kensei.” Better known in this day and age as Adam Monroe, of course. “And he was with this woman with eyes that burned like fire. I— I think I knew her?”
Her excited smile becomes a little shaky at that admission. Because she doesn’t know how she could possibly have known a woman from the age of samurai. But then again, she does know Adam… “He cut Eve’s head clean off. But the lady put her back together again.” So it’s okay! Everything’s fine! “And then we were in Alaska! I saw Moab, Richard!”
“Yea that bitch Erica Kravid can hold a grudge. I mean she wasn’t even at the Ark was she?” Eve throws up a hand and she waves it making the smoke go wild. Nodding her head along to Odessa’s story. “It’s true, all of it!” Odessa and Eve must be feeding off each other’s excitement. For one, they weren’t dead and for two, “Des has leveled up! She even got a new do!” Pointing to the grey strands in Des’s hair and the age up.. That is also there. But it isn’t a lot! The oracle bites her lip as she ashes the joint in a ashtray nearby. Her head tilts and wet mane falls to swing to the side. The radio in the corner plays the soft turned down sounds of an R&B classic that Eve’s been rocking since high school, It’s For You, Shanice. The seer bops her shoulders to the beat.
“I don’t know why Adam would kill me, he brought me back from the dead back in 2011!” She cracks with laughter at the fact, that’s not something Richard would have heard.. What the fuck? The dark haired older woman sits down on the comfortable large pillows and puts hot coals from the fire onto the hookah sitting in the middle. “Come come, there’s tea brewing. Not weed tea, I did ask her if we could surprise you with special cookies. The jury was out.” Eve frowns, she guesses they have had enough drug fun for a second. A second.
“Dorothy was in a coma for a year in 2024! It was the summer, June, could you imagine. I was in Moab and then I was chained to a bed. What do ya know? It was like some Back to the Future, Twelve Monkeys type shit, primal.” she makes a motion like ‘you get what I’m saying?’ Taking another drag of her joint before poking the coals on the hookah she then takes a long pull from the smoking device, the bubbles rumbling in the background. She blows the smoke out and it wafts out around them and she smiles that sly grin of hers, “Did you hear anything they said Dorothy?!”
Richard's first angry conclusion is that the two of them have been holed up stoned as fuck for the past few days, since the things that Desdemona is saying all sound like drug-fueled hallucinations, and he looks even less pleased as he frowns down at her, about to say something…
…and then Eve speaks, and his jaw clicks shut as he twists his head in her direction, eyes widening behind his shades. "Did you say Kravid?" He looks back to Des, freeing a hand to lift up and touch that grey hair before looking to Eve once more as she keeps talking. "Okay. Okay!"
That last nearly shouted, one hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose, "Everything. From the beginning. Every detail. Slowly. In rough temporal order as experienced from your viewpoint." He has to be specific about that with this pair.
At the name Kravid, Des just shakes her head. She has no idea about that. But she moves to sit next to Eve and waves for Richard to join them. “Okay, so. My memories are all locked up, right? Well, Eve saw a vision of me. The one in front of the Looking Glass? And I had this great idea.”
No, it was a really, really terrible idea. And once she comes down from whatever high she’s on from being stupid excited about whatever it was her ability did, she’ll realize that. Probably.
“So, we each got a dose of Refrain.” Yes. That’s right. Just one. One each. That’s all. “And we decided to see what we could see. And the next thing we know, we’re in Japan in like the 17th century.” Like you do. “We’re in this huge pile of bodies, and we have to climb our way out - that part was really terrible, but it’s how we know it actually happened. I’ll get back to that! - and there he was! Adam with the sword! On a horse!”
The horse was not a metaphor.
“So he comes riding by, right? And he just— ” Des makes a swinging motion with her arm, which Ray needs to duck in order to avoid getting clocked in the side of the head by her closed fist. “— slice! And Eve’s head came right off.” She looks apologetically to her friend. “Sorry, Eve. But that was a really cool move. It wouldn’t have been if you stayed dead, though.”
“THE HORSE,” she waits a second as she takes a long pull from the hookah before shoving it in Odessa’s hand and blowing out a couple rings of smoke. “WAS NOT A METAPHOR THIS TIME. BOOM!” And then the sad subject of, “Right, I couldn’t really well. I was dead for a few minutes? I’m not sure Des could tell you better. Anyway! I come to there’s Des and Adam, boom the lady.” And that’s when Eve gets a semi serious expression on her face. “I have dreamt her, she is.. She is something. I think she’s the one. The one that wants to be let out, let me out. Let me innn.” Eve snaps out of it and waves her hand in the air, “Anywho, she sent us somewhere cuz we end up in Alaska in the cold. And then BAM I’m chained to a bed in 2024. Brucey.. He’s a bit of a pansy,” she says in a stage whisper and shifty eyes.
“I didn’t know what had hit me but I will say this. I was clean when I was with the Institute. With Kravid. I was not clean when I woke up. We are.. The Unclean Ones.” Because they be up to no good in the name of explorations and such! All for the science. Obviously. “At some point my brain went BYE BYE and I had a dream of the future. Kravid was that dream, maybe? I’m pretty sure, the whispers have been no help since we got back.” Got back.
“She found me in a coma, I guess I was wandering around 2024 for a while before they picked me up and put me in a room with a much older Des, oh oh Des.” Eve wipes her brow, “I can’t remember but, she said she found you in a DHS holding facility.” She lets that hang, “Careful of the goons dear, they like to snuff out the fun.” Pro tip.
She wiggles her bare toes and tilts her head, “She remembered me, I remembered her. After a bit, Refrain helped!” It’s a wonderful drug! “I think she took one of my paintings as a warning and that’s how she’s stayed hidden for so long. She’s afraid of the Hounds.” But the Hounds hadn’t caught her yet in 2024 and she was so bold as to be operating.. Well that’s funny. She’s not sure if she was in Alaska or not. “She said.. She picked me up wandering delirious and thirsty in the Sea-Tac.. Safe Zone?”
"Caref— " Richard ducks the swing of Des's arm, reaching up to take hold of it and firmly guide her over to sit before she breaks something. "Careful," he stresses, looking between the two again.
There's so much he wants to say right now, but he's saving it up.
"Alright," he says in a tight voice, "And what else, then?"
Des settles in and takes the hookah while Eve talks. She watches Richard’s face as she smokes, realizing he’s not enjoying their story as much as they’re enjoying telling it. That’s troubling. So’s the tidbit about being found in a DHS holding facility, by the way. That gets a raise of brows and a frown from Des.
Passing the apparatus back, she picks up the thread again. “We were in the cold and the snow in Alaska, right? And trying just to get close enough to the building to try and get inside because we were gonna die.” Which would also have sucked, but since they didn’t, it just makes it another interesting part of the story. “Since we aren’t frostbit, I’m going to say that part was just a vision too, Eve.” Though who knows? They shared that bit anyway. “After that, I woke up here. I figured we wound up at Natazhat because it’s where my temporal signature was strongest.”
That part is at least a decently sound theory. “When we woke up back here, we were covered in that filth from the corpse pile, which is how we know we travelled through time. There’s no other way! And it’s been two days! But we’re only just coming down, so that means it’s only been an hour for us!”
Des hasn’t looked in a mirror yet. She hasn’t seen the white hair or the crows feet, though Eve’s mentioned. She’s seen a wisp of the lighter strands from the corner of her eye, but purposefully ignored the implications of it. “I did it, Richard. I expanded my ability!”
At what cost?
Grabbing it back from Des’ Eve puffs on it while Odessa speaks, nodding her head. “She really did.” There’s a pause as Eve thinks, “Kravid was going to upload me to something called the Structure. Like link my brain I think,” That probably would have ended horribly for the Institute but Eve is happy she didn’t find out.
“Before we ended up in Alaska.. That woman.. The one with the eyes of golden flame. She said something, something that I’ve only heard once before. “Unite.” She whispers the word with reverence. It means a lot to her, it’s the first thing she heard in a dream of the future. “Then maybe we did unite Des.” And mixing in Refrain just.. Made it all the more fun.
“There was a moment.. Where I thought I was stuck there.” She is happy to be back in 2018 now, among friends new ones and estranged ones. “She said unite with such purpose. It was a word of power and in a different language I..” she frowns.
“Des, when do we do it again?” She has her reasons as to why she wants to do it again. Why she wants to traverse the river. She’s looking for someone, she’s looking for a lost otter.
“Okay.”
Richard draws in a slow breath, then exhales it, both hands coming together with a brief clap of palm to palm. “So let’s get this clear. You decided to inject yourselves with Refrain, and after doing so you unwillingly travelled back in time to ancient Japan, where you were faced with both Adam — Kensei — and a golden-eyed woman that you believe you’ve had visions of before, Eve. Adam cut Eve’s head off, and it was restored by the woman, who then sent you away.”
He takes another breath, “Then, you found yourselves at Natazhat in Alaska, in the ruins of Moab, so at least we know you were contained within the primary time-strand. Shortly after that, Eve awoke in the future in the year twenty-twenty-four, in the care of the Commonwealth Institute after being recovered near the Sea-Tac Exclusion Zone. Some guy named Bruce was there, and Erica Kravid who wanted to connect you to something called the Structure.”
There’s less enthusiasm than they’re showing from the man as he looks between the two, expression mild at first, as if to see if he’s missed something from their stories.
Then he asks in a much sharper voice, “And you decided to do this outside; of laboratory conditions, with no medic on standby in case of complications, no telepath or dreamwalker to monitor your visions, no security in case someone walked in and decided to shoot you, in a drug den run by a psychotic precognitive? Desdemona, I expect this sort of thing from Eve but I thought you were supposed to be smart — you’ve endangered yourself, you’ve endangered your position, and you’ve endangered me by doing this!”
He ain’t happy.
Des nods along as he repeats the details as they’ve explained them. So far, so good. Except he’s not nearly as excited about this as they are. Does he not understand what a breakthrough this is? Doesn’t he see what it means for her and her ability?
Slowly, Des leans over to Eve when Richard finishes speaking, her eyes on him warily. “I should’ve called Kaylee instead,” she whispers.
Folding her hands in her lap, Des straightens up again. “Look.”
There’s no change in his expression. Right. That wasn’t a complete argument, then.
“Let’s focus on the positives here, right?” She’s starting to come down from that high - whether it was drug induced or otherwise - the longer she looks at that severe expression of his. “Eve and I are both alive and basically unharmed. We’ve now seen the woman who’s been whispering to us both.” She’s ticking off on her fingers as she goes. “And my ability has expanded. I’d say that we’ve done pretty well, all things considered.”
He’s still not agreeing, is he?
“All right, all right, all right. I’m sorry.” Des hangs her head and looks down at her hands, folded in her lap again and gently rubbing fabric from her skirt between her thumb and forefinger. “I’ve been so concerned with figuring out who I am that I didn’t stop to think about who else might wind up collateral damage. But this whole thing was my idea, not Eve’s. Don’t be mad at her.”
During this whole exchange, Eve is blissfully unaware of what's happening. She’s smoking her joint in one hand and the hookah in the other. At times her eyes flick between the two and she stifles a yawn and then while Richard isn't looking she making a lazy jerking off motion with a goofy roll of her eyes til they are crossed and she's making faces at the temporal manipulator from behind Richard’s back.
As Richard talks about positions and labs and environments and stuff she makes like a chicken and clucks. Cluckcluckcluck. She clucks in a circle flapping her elbow wings and then trips on the fabric of her dress to tumble into the pile of pillows nearby.
There's a loud cough and a moment later Eve’s pale arm sticks up and out, waving. “I’m okay!” There’s the sound of something being smoked and then Eve punches her face through the pillows to stare up at Des and Richard.
“Oh! We need to see that videotape,” The seer struggles to pull her non joint holding hand out from the pile of pillows but finally succeeding she taps the side of her head. “I think I can find the Proto-Dorothy!” She wrinkles her nose, “Sorry, The OG Looking Glass.”
Wink wink.
“I’m mad at you for being reckless. I’m mad at her for being a murderer,” is Richard’s flat statement there, “Like I said, I expect this sort of behavior from her — she’s crazy as a bag of cats that’s been set on fire. You, on the other hand, I expected better of.”
He slants a sharp look at Eve at her request, and points one finger at her. “We’ll talk about that later. Maybe. When you’re not high as fuck. And do not tell anyone else about Looking Glass, for the love of God.”
Back to Des, “We’ll talk about this when you sober the fuck up.”
Des keeps her head down, biting her lip as tears well up and fall when she blinks them away, dampening the fabric of her borrowed dress. Numbly, she nods her head twice to show she understands why he’s mad, and that they’ll talk about it later.
“He’s right, Eve.” She doesn’t expect that his instruction will have much impact on the seer, so Des decides to add emphasis. “You can’t tell anyone else about the Looking Glass. The fewer people that know about it, the safer all of us are.”
“Well good luck with that Richard I'm always high!” Eve hoots and claps her hands as she pointedly takes another puff of her joint and surveys the two with her light gray eyes. Head tilted, “She’s alive. And still fabulous. Let's be happy.” The dark haired woman smiles and nods her head laying back into the plush piles of pillows. Her brow creases and she lifts a hand, “It's not like we want to start a panic.”
The irony.
“Yes yes, no one must know of what the science fairies have done once again.” Eve knows she's about as crazy as a box of melted crayons but the SCIENCE FAIRIES just irk her nerve. They poke and prod and make you feel crazy. Maybe Eve doesn't like herself? Maybe this is all a dream? Where are the llamas? “Where are the llamas?” Eve finds herself whispering as these existential questions begin to bloom in her head. “Oh what? Yes.”
There's a spark of an idea and Eve launches forward. “Oh! I meant to give this to you at your Grand Opening,” so uh a real long time ago.
The kook digs in a cabinet for a moment before she turns back and is hurling a neon yellow sphere at Richard. It's a ball of string.
“I suspect you’ll be needing that! Must map the consequences, bumps in the road, heads flying, you know.” Another puff before she looks to Des, “Don’t cry Dorothy. We will get it right.” Because there is more Refrain. So there is more fun.
“I’m very happy that she’s alive,” says Richard quietly, looking back at Eve, “I’m less happy about the fact that I needed to be worried that she wasn’t… and that it was a justified worry. You might’ve made some breakthroughs, sure, but they weren’t worth doing it this recklessly when there wasn’t any need to do it this recklessly.”
Then she’s throwing something at him, and he jerks back a bit — catching it all the same, looking at it, then at her. A heavy sigh spills past his lips and he offers a hand to Des, “C’mon. Let’s go home, Des.”
Yellow happens to be Des’ favorite color, so maybe that string can be used to map out her other selves? … Just a thought.
“Thanks for the dress, Eve. I’ll get it back to you later.” Holding up a hand, she waits for Richard to help her to her feet, walking over to where she left her shoes near the door. She’s wiped them down, but there’s still some gunk stuck to the soles. She’s likely going to throw them out entirely.
Des flashes a shaky smile and a little wave of her hand over her shoulder back to the oracle. Bye, friend. “Yeah, I know. I’ll go to my room and think about what I’ve done.”
The loon watches this again from her perch and she gives Richard a look, “Good! Now I’ll see you soon! I'll have some cookies and presents around.” In this whole time she doesn't utter a word about the pot calling the kettle black. But she gon prank him. Oh yes she is. As the seeds of this plan begin to bloom in her head she cracks a laugh as they retreat and she does the eye to eye motion to Des. “Don't lock her in her room Richard! Dorothy can just Pop out anyway!”
Another burst of laughter as the door swings shut. The old fashioned clock embedded in the door spinning backwards as always. Seeing the two out.
Eve can be heard screaming Pop Pop Pop Pop over and over and over again. By the time Eimi arrived home later that night to find her, she hadn't stopped saying..
{pop}