Thanks, Sadie [Mingle]

[ourearth]

Date: 24th of February
Characters: OPEN!

---

After the earthquake on the 19th of January, the ground had been quiet. Or that was at least what everyone assumed; those who went to the meeting and listened to Walter speak might know that that was not exactly the case. Starting on the 9th of February, the earth had started to be shaken by the tiniest of tremors again, too small to be noticed by the everyday citizen, but not too small to escape seismic readers. Not that the public was told about this; why cause a panic? Things were strange enough these days in Mossgate Council.

Then, around 5am on the 24th, there is the most gentle shaking of the earth, only just strong enough to shake the leaves of some room plants, but noticeable. No damage is caused this time. At least not by the earthquake.

Because shortly after, a wave rolls towards the coastline of Mossgate. And not just any wave. It's a small tsunami wave, measuring about 1 metre at the top when it hits the shore and pressing up into the mouth of the river to reach a maximum height of 1.3m before it ebbs away.

The damage this time is substantial. Cars have been flushed into others, storefronts are shattered, the ground floors or many houses flooded and gardens torn apart. Some of the boats from the harbour sit somewhere inside the town now, and a ferry has crashed into the harbour office. By virtue of the very early hour and massive luck, there are barely any casualties - no more than one would expect from a major storm or flooding.

But Mossgate and Tarwich are in shock, and the descending media certainly don't help.

And every single Numbered in the echo boundary has received a plot echo, granted about a few minutes before the wave hit the shore.

Comments

[dragoonrouge]

I

Sadie was asleep, as is usual at five o'clock in the morning on a Sunday. Sadie rockets upwards in her bed, scaring the cats as suddenly the emptiness and pounding of an Echo rush over her, pulling her from sleep only to have her gasping for breath as soon as the emptiness dissipates and is instead replaced by a stabbing sensation on the sides of her head. The pain intensifies as a squeezing pressure inside her head joins it sending Sadie doubling over, hands clamped on the sides of her head as tears start rolling down her cheeks.

This gives Sadie the perfect position to feel as her ears start to move and shrink, until they disappear, accompanied by a whimper from Sadie, and all noise stops. There is no sound, not even the sound of fuzzing or the pump of a heartbeat that normally signal her ears being blocked, just nothing at all. Sadie continues to whimper, not that she can hear it, as the pain starts shifting up her skull and intensifying as something starts protruding outwards on either side of her skull near the top. Finally, the unnatural feeling of growth ceases and, accompanied by a painful popping sensation, Sadie's hearing returns. Too much so. In stark contrast to the nothing she was hearing just a moment before, now Sadie seems to be hearing everything. Multiple thudding, roaring snores, rumbling and growling outsides, her own racing heartbeat louder than ever before and at least a dozen other noises all waring for loud supremacy.

Sadie dives under her duvet, wrapping it around her head and ignoring the feeling of two very foreign attachments as she reaches for her phone and sends out a text.

ECHO DURING SLEEP. NO OBVIOUS CAUSE. DID YOU GET ONE TOO?!

II

Much, much later in the day, Sadie is down by the docks, looking downright miserable with a woollen hat pulled tight against her head, though to anyone looking too closely something about the shape is a little off. She points at one of the sailing boats that had been parked on land well up from the water,

"That one's my brother's. We think we might need to completely replace it." Sadie, normally fairly clear when she speaks, is whispering so quietly that she's almost inaudible for no apparent reason.

1

[lovedramamoron]

Same here.

I - i haven't even decided his echo but this first tag is the same no matter what

[spaghettimonster]

yes

its too early for ths

I

[warped_replica]

Already in the process of opening the drawer next to his bed to retrieve his phone, he hears the custom alert set for a text from Sadie. Device taken up in an unsteady hand to read, he holds it in two to tap back a reply.

Yes.

Are you okay?

1

[fairfeste]

[Feste's Echo was not as obvious as Sadie's, but the force of it still woke them up. Still very blurry eyed and concerned, they roll over to grab their phone as the text comes in.]

yeah idk what's going on

I. Somewhat later...

[iamnotgod]

"Yes."

Notable in that Walter's using voice, not text.

"I'm now effectively blind whenever I'm in an area with wifi. But we have other problems - I take it you've checked the news?"

Or just outside.

1

[catted]

What kind of echo?

[Yes, she's momming. But how could she not? She can't even properly pinpoint yet what her own echo is, so there's no reason to worry about that at the moment.]

I

[vernal_miss]

[After short time is taken to connect with her family members, Nel returns to bed to at least have another lie as she opens her sketchbook to access the Network. Spotting the message from Sadie, she writes back a reply.]

I had one too. And Mum had to leave to go to help some people.

[lovedramamoron]

A.
5 AM in the morning, and Jimmy was wide awake. Between the earthquake and the echo, he had very little chance of falling asleep any time soon.

Reaching out for his journal, he stops and closes his eyes in a futile attempt to block out the stream of observations that he couldn't seem to stop. A wrinkle in the blanket, a tilted picture frame, a shadow cast on the wall, where the lamp's shade was just the slightest bit out of place.

He saw it all and he couldn't turn it off.

Flipping his journal open, he quickly jots down a note to the other numbered.

Changed my mind. There's something worse than memory echoes.

B.
Jimmy looks around the waterfront in shock. The memory of the avalanche had been bad, and the earthquake had been strange. But this... he'd never seen damage like this before. Not outside of a movie.

And those observations still wouldn't shut off. Even as he looked around, there was a part of his mind calculating forces and physics, looking to find anything that was the slightest bit out of place.

A.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Of course there is. Try turning gray all over. What happened for you?

Sam's neat handwriting doesn't look like it just got woken up from a sound sleep. (Since, you know, he was awake when the echo hit.) He's already worked out from Sadie's comments that everyone else had an echo-thing, too, so he just assumes that's what this is.

A

[catted]

What kind of echo did you get?

[And why are there so many kids involved in all of this, really. It's just troubling.]

a

[spaghettimonster]

worse like everyone waking with an echo at one

whether its memories or whatevers worse
i say physical changes are worse
but some memory s are bad too

so whats happened to you

[warped_replica]

Echo
Early as it is when the effect hits him, Benjiro is sound asleep in his bed after a late night of work with books and notebooks scattered around him. The resounding heartbeat shocks his conscious mind awake with a jolt of his body sending one thin book off the bed to the floor, and as the world spins with the hollow feeling delaying the sense of dread that accompanies these changes, he only remotely registers how disconcerting it is to conclude that sleep does not keep them safe from Echoes.

A sensation he recognizes starts as the hollowness dwindles with heat filling the emptiness at his core and it rapidly bleeds outwards to his skin. The intensity is not so pronounced as before, yet it lingers as his muscles begin to twitch and draw tighter. His breath is staggered between spasms of his trunk muscles, but he nearly completely buries his face into his pillow with teeth clenched to bear it with nothing more than hissing of his breath between the sharp edges. Sweat collects slowly on his skin, dampening his pillow as the heat and sporadic cramps linger on for several minutes. Anticipating something more, a shifting or cracking - something, he is instead left with unfulfilled fears as the cramps dwindle and the heat ebbs.

Eyes barely opening in the dark, he moves one limb at a time to regain a sense of his body. It feels the same, if tainted by a mild soreness. Only once he has attended all four limbs does he press up to his elbows to look down at his hands and skin. Nothing seems out of the ordinary…

Moving slowly, he looks to his nightstand and reaches for the drawer to retrieve his phone.

OTA
By the afternoon, Benjiro can be found in Mossgate near the waterfront. Motorcycle left behind at the Moore home to keep it out of the way, he is wearing his work gloves and pitching into the cleanup effort at both homes and businesses. Mindful not to lift anything that should be too heavy for someone his size alone, he joins with others in pushing cars apart, assessing damages and moving damaged goods outside to dry in the wind, cleaning up hazards such as glass, and carrying supplies to those that need it delivered.

[lovedramamoron]

It might have been a bad plan to go out to the waterfront when he still hadn't gotten a decent handle on whatever this weird echo had done to him. He kept getting distracted by something else he just had to notice, and half the time he had to turn to see it, since it didn't seem to matter whether the thing was in his peripheral vision or not.

This lead to him getting in the way of other people more often then not. Which had lead to the unpleasant discovery that it wasn't just objects. After the third time trying to apologize for standing in the wrong spot had lead to his paying attention to the state of people's shoes and the patina of their wedding rings, Jimmy was about ready to give up.

ota

[catted]

Mary Ann isn't in on the cleanup effort - mostly because her abilities are needed elsewhere. All the medical staff around the council area is busy attending to the injured, the traumatized, and those who had their meds or other medical equipment flushed away or ruined by the water.

But she's still human, and humans need breaks so at one point she catches an half-hour break and wanders to the waterfront to get a first-hand idea of the damage. She looks around idly for familiar faces, which is when she spots Ben.

"Heya. How's it going?"

private network

[spaghettimonster]

did it wake you up too

[iamnotgod]

[Narrative + Action for Russell]

At 5 AM, Walter is still online, deadlines met for the next month in terms of commissions, and chasing down lines of thought that still haunt him.

All thinking is stopped cold when an Echo settles in, followed swiftly by nigh-mind-numbing terror.

It's an autonomic response. Overcome it! Breathe!

In this new memory, all sensation is softened, all human senses except for sight gone; all there are are points and lines, no sense of true up or down, left or right, gravity or atmosphere.

The lines themselves are fascinating to watch - flickering in and out; some points have only one line connected, others have dozens, others still are tailed by uncountable... Then he (it?) discovers it can create its own, earning piles of, well, something, for the effort. The exploration continues.

And it seems this memory has no end - which is why it takes Walter a moment to reorient himself to the new fact that he has landed himself on the floor in his panic. That panic does not ease when moving about shows no equal shift before his eyes. Correlation with his other memories reinforces the notion that these are websites, this is what Webmind can normally see.

This knowledge is not helpful in the least.

"HELP!"

[Later; Network - Voice]

On a scale from one to ten, how troublesome would you rate this latest Echo for you?

More importantly, is everyone all right?

[Voice]

[lovedramamoron]

I'm going to put this one at a solid five.

Network

[catted]

[She would actually answer the question if the question itself wasn't troublesome.

She frowns.]

What happened to you?

[spaghettimonster]

Russell's half-asleep, having been abruptly woken by some mix of dream-memory, his phone buzzing, and - most of all - by the echo.

He spends at least a minute or two sleepily tapping out messages to people before he realizes, they've all woken up from an echo, haven't they? And that dream is memorable in that way the foreign memories are, various aspects standing out from anything he has any experience. Commiserating about a brother with a coworker? A coworker who's a sentry, a self who's a sentry? The other memories were in a cave, why did he remember snow and trees?

His thoughts are interrupted by a sudden shout from the other bedroom, waking him up a little more and reminding him - echoes are happening. If it's not something mundane like a burglar, then something strange may have happened to Walter.

Russell clutches his mobile and makes for the hall, heading directly to Walter's door and hesitating outside.

"Oy, uh, did you want me to come in...?"

Network - Voice

[vernal_miss]

[Nel is keeping herself occupied at home doing chores that she can manage. Her Mum will be tired when she gets home, and everyone else likely will be too after going out to help with all the problems she saw on the telly. Similarly, she has been watching the Network, so when she hears her friend, she takes a break to talk with Walter.]

Uhhh....zero? I don’t know what it did yet.

I’m okay. You alright? Your home didn’t get washed up, did it?

Network; Voice

[twirighted]

I'm fine. I got a memory, I think? I'm pretty sure. ...It was incredibly bizarre.

[ This is. A thing. ]

[channingchanningchanning]

1. NETWORK!!!!!!!!!!! BARKBARKBARKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!

[I'm sure everyone missed his lovely voice? Yes, surely they did. It'd been very quiet since he was put on a ferry and shipped out of the Boundary. But now, just at about the time that the tsunami hits the shore, it's suddenly back. An old man's voice SCREAMING ON THE NETWORK.]

WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT IS HAPPENING?


2. The STREEEEEEEETS

There is a naked man running around the echo boundary. Literally.

As in, it is a tall, honestly very pleasant on the eye in a muscular but lean enough way, blond white man with long-ish hair, and he's stark naked.

He's also running, stopping at corners and looking around wildly as he tries to figure out where he is and where he should be going, and then running again. In all the chaos, nobody pays too much attention - naked men running around town are one thing, a tsunami having shattered parts of it are a whole level above that. What might normally be cause for outrage doesn't even elicit a shrug of anyone's shoulders right now. Poor dude probably got confused by being woken up rudely. Maybe his clothes got flushed away. Who knows. BUT LOOK AT MY HOUSE/GARDEN/CAR!!!!

Point being, the naked guy is mostly ignored, as nobody knows him.

But the attentive Numbered might recognise him despite never having seen him before - the voice just sounds familiar. And it is hard to ignore as he's shouting at the top of his lungs while running.

"What is going on? WHAT?!"

2

[dragoonrouge]

Sadie would admit that she disconnected from the Network the second Chad's voice returned. The dog's shouting was head splitting even before she had ended up with enhanced hearing and she wasnt prepared to deal with even more of a migraine after her shitty morning.

Or at least she had thought that she'd disconnected from the Network. She checks her phone with a frown, she definitely did so why could she hear Chad shouting? Chad's voice gets louder and Sadie turns around to face the direction it's coming from only to be greeted with the sight of Chad's voice coming from the body of a man who is stark-bollocks naked. Sadie gapes in horrified amazement as her face starts turning an embarrassed red.

"Oh god I was right."

OTA

[scarsolderthanyou]

I (closed p much, just his echo manifesting)

Sam has issues with sleep sometimes. Early mornings he's either dead to the world, or he's been up off and on all night. This was one of the up off and on all night mornings, so he's puttering around the kitchen waiting for some coffee to finish percolating when the earthquake-slash-echo hits.

And he has to sit down. And cover his ears. Because suddenly everything is very loud.

Oh great. His hearing just did what his sense of smell did. At least with hearing he mostly knows what he's hearing... it's just all more. Now he's going to have to start wearing earplugs in addition to foundation. Ugh.


II.

Sam's first intention, with the network all awake and chattering, is to visit his family, many of whom are in fact also on the network and thus also awake and chattering. That plan gets stymied when the wave washes out one of the roads he needs to get there, and he's stuck in his car. Surrounded by water. Irritable and with water seeping through onto his shoes, as he tries to keep the important bits-- hands and face-- dry, to keep the stupid face color on them, and to ignore the little creaks and groans and pops of the car settling and slowly leaking water into the cab.

Somebody wanna come try and rescue him at this early hour, or is he gonna have to rescue himself?

Eventually, if he's stuck for too long, he sends out a network text, Going to need a little help. Stuck in my car.


III.

With his car towed (or pushed, or tugboated, or whatever they're doing with such things) somewhere to get clean and dry again, Sam gives up on the family visit for now and instead prowls around looking for people in trouble. The sense of smell and hearing-- the latter mitigated by earplugs he'd dug up from his last time spent sleeping over at the family's house, which he adjusts and takes in and out constantly to test his new sense or when things just get too loud.

II

[catted]

Where are you?

Mary Ann would be awake even if she wasn't Numbered - they rang her out of bed, because this is an emergency and people need to looked after at rates that the A&E cannot handle alone. She's on her way to Tarwich, where she's been asked to come to deal with those who lived close enough to the riverside to get hit, when her father's network text reaches her.

Open to family for action; Open on Network to all

[vernal_miss]

Echo
Sleeping peacefully when the earthquake shudders deep under the surface, Nel is stirred awake as her breath slips and takes the feeling of her insides with it. She stays still to weather the dizziness that has previously sent her tumbling, holding tighter to her plush toy to anchor with her eyes shutting tighter. Then resounding thrum in the void heralds a new change.

The warmth in her chest, radiant at the core, undergoes a distinct shift as a chill wells out of the center and encompasses it in a flood. Nel inhales deeply in a gasp as though about to submerge and the chill runs through her veins. She curls in her bed, tucking under her blanket of warm hair and layered sheets as she shivers with the cooling streams extending through her whole body.

It slows, then simply drains away...evaporating as the radiance returns at her calling.

Bit by bit, she peeks from her warm nest to see nothing novel in her hair or at her hands. Instead, she hears footsteps outside her room. Sitting up with both arms locking around her stuffed toy, she slides off the bed and walks to stand in the doorway of her shared bedroom with a cat following at her heels.


Evening
As the longer than usual Sunday draws to a close with the outside world once more dark and dinner freshly settling into stomachs at the Tilly household, Nel dips her hand into the warm bath to check the temperature. Swirling her hand in the bubbles at the surface, she smiles softly in anticipation. All she needs to do is clean up, dress, brush her teeth, and climb into bed.

Clothes left aside, she steps into the bathtub and slides down under the water entirely in a smooth motion long practiced. However, that chill from the morning returns to her chest, breaking the pleasant spell of the bath before it can fully encompass her senses. Pushing to sit up through the surface, her hands swipe the water from her eyes and trail further up to sweep her hair back...only, she feels water instead of her locks. Eyes opening, she looks at the curtain of blue shimmering water draping out around her shoulders into the bath.

Anyone in the household will hear the shriek that splits from her as she scrambles to clamber out of the tub and to the floor of the bathroom.

Evening

[catted]

Mary Ann and Janice share one look, and then Mary Ann rushes upstairs. "I'll get it." Because that was most definitely Nel's voice, and someone needs to keep an eye on everything that is going on downstairs, and if it was Nel's voice -

Well, there's always a chance that it isn't quite usual fare for what might cause children to scream.

And it isn't. Mary Ann stops in the doorway, eyes wide. "What the-"