[Game Thread] Prologue: The Revelation

[Aosaw]

"Tom Cruise would be proud to hear you say that," said Derek, rolling his eyes. "Look, this is all just theory. There are a million explanations for why we might have similar dreams. Maybe there's something in the news that's subconsciously worked its way into our sleep. Maybe we've all been studying a bit too hard for midterms. Maybe one of you really does have a..." he glanced at Colin, who gave a reassuring nod and a flash of sign language, "...hyena's head. The point is, we don't know for sure; so let's put a hold on changing our religions before we find out a bit more of what it's all for."

As an after-thought, he added, "Gus, how many times do I have to tell you not to smoke in front of my brother? Put that thing away before you give him asthma."

Emphysema, Colin signed.

"That's what I said."

[BadBasset]

"Oh, hey, sorry little guy," said Gus, grinding his cigarette into the dirt with the heel of one of his ragged brown loafers.

"But, look, Derek," his eyes again took on a glassy sheen as he plunged back into the unfathomable ocean of his 'deep ideas', "what you said doesn't make sense to me. Because I don't watch the f----- news. Err, sorry..." he mumbled, checking his tendency to combine profundity with profanity before continuing, "...and sure I get stressed sometimes, but I'm not taking no exams except for the 'check-the-box if you like flowers more than puppies' things that Dr. B throws at me sometimes," he nodded politely to Akilah, "and besides, everyone gets stressed but they don't go having the same dreams. Doesn't make sense."

"But - check this out - I read this book about....you know, like... aliens. Right? They take people up and test 'em, right?" Gus looked knowingly around at the others, attempting to establish some sort of consensus for his sinister hypothesis. "Right," he continued, "and they wipe their memory and give 'em false memories, right? So how about if they've been taking us and using the same, like... memory program on everyone? That'd explain why..." his eyes caught Derek's disapproving stare and Gus trailed off awkwardly.

"Well... it makes more sense than what you said," he muttered, chagrined that his common sense was failing to register with these ivory tower intellectuals.

Well, damn it, let's see if anyone else can do any better.

[Fragmaster01]

Cajun helps himself to a beer, before gagging a little and attempting to not spit it back out in an obvious manner. People actually drink this stuff? Jeez...

An aside glance is given to Gus. "The only thing that makes perfect sense... is that you need a bit more sleep. No offense. The man was rambling, and although his offer of booze was quite generous, he seemed to have had a bit too much to drink already. Aliens...

[Ginnungagap]

"You guys, really, really are confusing. I think you're all overthinking it." Lucas finally noted, having been simply listening to what had been said so far. They all seemed rather odd in their ideas of this 'phenomena'. Between the 'cosmic radio waves' and the alien 'memory programs', the stress one was understandable, to a degree. At least in some cases. Although, this seemed to be a rather odd thing anyway.
"Well, it's not as if anything you people suggest is going to make sense, is it? Why don't we just make up the most ridiculous things that could ever be." he said, finding all suggestions so far so incredibly fantastic that even he wouldn't have used them in a story. And he was one of the ones having the dreams.
Clearly, there was something going on, however, there was nothing reasonable going on. No, nothing of even a vaguely reasonable style existed here. And he was one of the guys that would make this kind of stuff up in the first place. That just went to show how amazing it was. And just how pointless this discussion was becoming.
Merely in a few moments, he laid his claim to one of the sandwiches, and took a bite gingerly into it. He was less so excited now, but more, considering, thinking over what all these people were like, from what he could tell. He may have been acquainted with Derek and Colin, but the others were unknowns, and he found it his job to get to know people.

((You know, at the end of his third sentence, I wanted to have him mention D&D. Just to mess with the concept of reality. The tabletop game inside the tabletop game.))

[Fragmaster01]

"If you insist. We're all secretly clones, created by a shadowy organization that wants to make us do unwholesome deeds, or whatever Hollywood villains do nowadays. The dreams are secretly planted by the Good Guys, trying to make us question our reality, such that the plot can get started in earnest. There will be special effects out our asses, and eventually the main characters(that's us) will triumph while epic music plays in the background. At least until the sequel rolls around."

Cajun merrily attacks a sandwich. "That about what you were looking for?"

[kaiser6012]

Deep in conversation with each other, you all seem to miss the changes in the forest around you. The air has grown heavy and sleepy, birds and insects have stopped their drone and even the wind itself feels slightly muted against the leaves. The lack of sound almost made the clearing feel like it was waiting for something awesome to happen.

Suddenly, the sound of a thousand cicadas chirping in unison rings out. From the circle of stones, a... thing appeared, rising up from out of the ground. A rectangle of sky blue light, shimmering as if in a heat haze, hanging between the stones without cause nor seeming effect. The noise dims to a dull whine as the rectangle reaches about eight feet high, but still the light remains.

The light stirs memories, from deep within - gates of light such as these appeared in your dreams, when Minax warped time and space to fuse the dream world and Earth. These gates were unpredictable and had as much chance of throwing you into the prehistoric past as putting you into a completely different world, though, making them unreliable at best and a danger in and of themselves at worst. Worse still, when one exited a gate, walking through the other end again only turned you around the way you came - the gates were one way only.

[BadBasset]

The can of beer slipped from Gus' hand to disgorge a pool of foam at his feet, blue-tinged in the strange light that now washed the clearing. "Oh... hey. oh hey..." he stumbled back a step, the echoes of the trilling chirp that accompanied the strange portal's appearance fading into a surge of dream-memories that drove all thought of cheap pop-cultural metaphysics from his mind. "Hey..." His head swung left and right; taking in the others and confirming, by their similar fixation on the unearthly thing that had sprung up in the circle of stones, that they saw the same thing he did. "Oh... hey."

[Jondera]

Akilah had been sitting quietly, following the discussion intently while taking notes on a pad of paper she had produced from her backpack. The appearance of the portal, however, stops her pencil cold. She studies the portal intently, then glances at the others. "Perhaps a counter-argument, that the events of the dream were real, in at least some sense, and we dreamed them because we were connected to them, might be worth presenting at this point." She frowns slightly. "Or we're all hallucinating, which is unlikely, or somebody else has been having these dreams, found out about the meeting, and decided to play an expensive special effects prank on us... which also seems rather unlikely, under the circumstances."

[Fragmaster01]

Cajun take a look at the portal, then the beer, then Gus, then back to the portal. When they said beer was bad for you, no one talked about this.

[Ginnungagap]

"Or only one of us is hallucinating, and everyone else here is fake." Lucas intejected, trying to disassociate from the portal. It was weird. It was alien. But it was familiar. It was radical, but all the same, simple, and subtle. Horrid and sublime.
But, if nothing else, he was perhaps very little awestruck by it. In fact, he, entranced by the thing, actually, began to approach it, slowly. If it was real, as Akilah had suggested, then, maybe, maybe, he could...
He could escape being Lucas. Escape being so normal, so little, so useless. To ctually matter in the world, or at least, a world. That, perhaps, was its ultimate allure, and what an ultimate lure it was, to him at least. He didn't want the riches, he wanted the fame. To be known, and to actually do something. Something important. That, that drew him in.

[Aosaw]

Derek was the only one who seemed genuinely perturbed by the portal. "What...the hell...is that?"

That, signed Colin as he stepped in front of his brother, is Adventure.

Without another gesture, he hopped over the cooler full of sandwiches, balanced on a rock for a brief second, and then jumped into the portal.

"Colin!!" Derek took a half-step forward, reaching for his brother; but he didn't know what the blue light represented, he had no idea what it meant or where it came from or what it did. So he stood there, dumb and ignorant and wishing he'd stayed at home.

[Jondera]

Akilah caught Colin's sign but was unprepared for the boy's action, and was still gaining her feet - the notepad sliding to the ground as she stood - when he dashed through the portal. Allah preserve him she thought, her mind racing over the situation. Looking at the others, just as shocked by this as she, she said "If the dreams were true, then that's a portal to somewhere. I don't know about you, but I'm not letting that boy face whatever's on the other side by himself." Scooping up her backpack and grabbing the cooler with the remaining sandwiches and refreshments, she follow through the portal at a somewhat more sedate pace.

[kaiser6012]

As the bulk of the group stared in awe/disbelief/curiosity at the gate, Colin leapt through the light, intent on reaching whatever was behind it. Akilah hadn't even started to walk when Colin vaulted through, her pace easily outmatched by the excited teen.
Quite unexpectedly, though, Colin's leap sent him right through the light, landing a little unbalanced on the earth beyond. Following him out, however, was a bundle of cloth, tied together with yellowed twine, which fell just as unceremoniously on the earth as Colin had with a heavy *THUMP*.

With little fanfare, the gate slowly slid back into the ground, leaving no trace of it's presence, save for the bundle on the ground and Colin standing slightly off to the side of the circle. The sounds of the forest began to come back, soon reaching the pleasant background levels it had been at before all this started.

[BadBasset]

As Colin leapt into the portal Gus recovered his senses, such as they were, and, bellowing an ear-splitting "Hey -- Don't!!" plunged forward across the circle of stones to grasp Akilah's shoulder with panic-born violence in an attempt to restrain her from following Colin into the void.

As the portal collapsed, revealing Colin getting to his feet behind it, the big man shoved past Akilah and reached the boy in a single heavy stride. "Hey" he hollered (having reverted to his former method of communicating with the deaf) "you alright Little Guy?" He reached out to help Colin to his feet but, remembering how Derek's brother had reacted when he'd tried to muss his hair, restrained himself. "Goddamn it!" he murmured, becoming calm as he realized Colin wasn't hurt, "the way you're going, you don't have to worry about no asthma, kid."

Then, recalling that in his panic he'd been rude to Akilah, he turned to her in shame-faced apology: "Sorry Aki. I thought the little guy was, like... gone." Then he spotted the mysterious bundle laying in the centre of the stone circle where, in his concern for Colin's safety, he'd failed to notice it immediately. "What the f--- is that?"

[Fragmaster01]

Idiot... looks like the portal leads here. Cajun gave a quick head-shake to banish the thought. Sheesh, thinking that kinda crap... did someone slip me something when I wasn't looking? Curiosity eventually overwhelming his confusion, Cajun reaches down and grabs the parcel, untying it to see what sort of new horror lay inside. UPS this was not, but regardless of how the mail got around, it probably needed to be read.