Two for One [Open Audio Network] [Closed Action]

[vernal_miss]

Date: October 21st
Characters: Network Number {235 13 892 33} ; Action for Mary Ann, Ornella, and later Feste

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[Action - Joint with Ornella and Mary Ann]
{Nel} In a family of seven, finding those quiet moments to speak to only one other in the household tend to be rare. As the second youngest in the family, Ornella is not quite old enough to suffer a shift towards a nocturnal schedule like her older siblings, and this provides an opportunity. Slipping from her shared room, she heads out into the hallway and downstairs with one hand clutching to a stuffed toy. For a few days now, a number has been quite intrusive in her thoughts, and regardless of her thinking of it every hour awake, cannot recall the reason it feels so important. When it had popped back into her head before she even opened her eyes this morning, she had lost any chance of returning to sleep for a few more minutes with irritation rousing her all the more quickly.

Reaching the living space, she’s relieved to find a mother present. Bare feet carrying her quickly over the last of the distance, she comes up beside the chair to insert herself into Mary Ann’s space without hesitation, sliding one hand under her arm in semblance of a hug to lean in and bury her face in against her shoulder for a breath. Grasping at the calm granted by the contact, she lifts her head to prop her chin on that shoulder and plead for assistance, “Mum? I remembered someone’s number, but I don’t know whose it is.”

{Mary Ann} "A number?" That sounds familiar. Very familiar indeed. Because there's this number that's been on her mind since yesterday, and she feels like she's known it for a long time but she can't put her finger on where from or what it is even for. It doesn't seem to be a phone number... Perhaps she came across it again while Nel was there? That might be something to narrow the source down with. Assuming it's the same number, even. "What is the number?"


[Network]
“That’s funny… It’s not even ringing,” comes the voice of a young girl. There’s no image to be paired to the audio, but she is certainly not alone.

The voice of a middle-aged woman responds, sounding puzzled. "There isn't even a ceased number intercept message." That's what she had expected, quite honestly. After all the number did not sound like a phone number at all. But it was worth a try... is what she thought.

((OOC note: Mary and Nel will respond unevenly in various threads))

Comments

[vernal_miss]

Curiously watching her mother retrieve the newspaper, Nel wonders at what her mother is checking. Perhaps a news article she remembers that has relevance..?

Focus returns to the conversation as the new voice provides location parameters for those affected. It reaches as far as Moss Manor village from Mossgate at the very least, given that is where she lives with her mother, but knowing it is only happening here locally is all the more odd. She stares at the phone a couple ticks, then asks for more information, “...what kind of bizarre things?” As she asks, she slyly glances to her mother with a sense of caution. If it includes anything dangerous, this collective call might be over too soon to get all the answers she can.

[iamnotgod]

"Memories of things we've never seen before, knowledge of people that don't exist here as far as we know... physical changes, sometimes outright manifestation of objects for no explicable reason."

Including that 'lightsaber', which Marja might be thinking of.

[vernal_miss]

It would seem he had chosen an accurate way to describe the things he lists off as they all fall into the realm of the fantastic. At least none of them sound outright dangerous if a little vague.

“Have all those things happened to you? Um...mister? Sorry, is that right?” She asks with obvious hesitation in her voice. Someone that sounds like a man might not like that title.

[iamnotgod]

"I haven't had anything literally drop on me - it has happened to a friend and someone else I know, though - but I've received memories and a few discreet changes. Enhancements, really. I had a real time getting a handle on them, though.

"And I don't mind being called mister, though I'm not that old," he adds, small smile evident in his voice this time.

[vernal_miss]

Wincing at the idea of an object plunking onto her head out of nowhere sounds startling if not painful, “I hope it wasn’t anything heavy...” she starts with a comment spoken softly before moving to the other things reported, “Enhance-...Oh! You got better at something?”

“Sorry. I don’t know what else to call you. You can call me Nel though!”

[iamnotgod]

"It was a book, though it wasn't exactly small," he elaborates.

"Yes, Nel, that's what happened - and you can call me Walter."

He's not exactly good at coming up with nicknames on short notice.

[vernal_miss]

A wrinkle of her nose accompanies her sympathetic remark, “Ouchies...” Books tend to be heavy, and while that characteristic is perfect for pressing flowers, it is not so good for noggins.

“Hi, Walter!” Nel says in a cheerful greeting, happy to learn his name.

“Can things fall on you any time?”

[iamnotgod]

"Yyyyes?" Walter says, though he doesn't want to make poor Nel paranoid! Or get her mother mad at him at that possibility.

"It seems to be pretty uncommon even for us, though, so as long as you're not experiencing a sudden sense of hollowness accompanied by the sound of a heartbeat - and are just aware of your surroundings in general - you should be okay."

[vernal_miss]

Contrary to the concern, Nel takes that possibility in stride when granted a better understanding of the possibility, “Oh, alright. If I feel funny like that then I’ll know.” It might still scare her at the time, but at least after an initial jolt she can reason it for herself.

Then she asks, “How come something appearing makes you feel that way?” For all she can think, Nel has no recollection of feeling that way previously.

[iamnotgod]

"Where these - Echoes, I suppose - come from is still unexplained, as well," Walter answers, and he sounds more than a little frustrated at the idea.

"And it's the feeling that happens first. Everyone's inciting stimuli - people, sensations, doing something new for the first time - seem to be different."

[catted]

Mary Ann, meanwhile, has written down her own number on the newspaper, and suddenly there is a kind of echo effect in the back of Walter and Nel's conversation.

Two feeds that send the same are open at the same time, it's like two microphone-speaker sets standing too close to each other.

She blinks at the effect, looking forth and back between newspaper and phone.

[Audio]

[iamnotgod]

"Though," he admits, carrying on with the explanation, "some things seem to incite Echoes in multiple people - the Northern Lights was one of those.

"And, speaking of echoes... do you hear one right now?" he asks, in what almost feels like a non-sequitur.

[vernal_miss]

"Huh... I guess that makes it harder to figure out if everyone has different things happening," she reasons. Nel at least is not so perturbed as Walter by the lack of a known source. Magic can be mysterious, and she's willing to wait to understand more.

When the sound is replayed from a second spot so near, she turns to look towards her mother in surprise, then searches for the source. Noticing the written number on the newspaper, Nel narrows her eyes at it in confusion, then looks to the phone, then back at the paper. In an effort to change things, she moves the phone further away from the paper as Walter speaks, and marvels at the near surround sound effect even as it continues to pick up from the other.

"We hear it... Mum, is that one yours?" she asks, pointing to the sequence on the paper.

[catted]

"Why are they called echoes?

And yes, I believe that's my number.

I just wrote mine on a piece of paper," she explains for Walter's sake, "so there's two open speakers and microphones, so to speak, on our end.

[iamnotgod]

Walter's somewhat glad they can't see the wry expression he's making right now.

"Alternate word for flashbacks, mostly. But it's... more like they're an echo from someone else's life. In some cases, it's very obvious the memories don't feel like they're our own."

This is not someone who wants to believe in reincarnation, here.

"And that would do it, yes."

[catted]

"...How do you know that it is from someone else's life? Couldn't they just be from stories we've heard before?" Like a very vivid, awake version of dreaming that you're a part of the last film you watched?

[iamnotgod]

"You'd have an awful time tracking down which stories they might be from."

That, and that particular memory of the livestream... it wasn't about anyone Walter had known.

He'd checked.

[catted]

"Or it might be impossible. Even with regular dreams it can be hard enough to pinpoint what film or story or experience your brain got that one from." It seems a lot more reasonable to her than to think that they get a specific other person's experiences. Especially since those can't be a real person's experiences. Not with what people are echoing.

[vernal_miss]

"My dreams don't stay regular between nights. Even dreams that should go together are always off," Nel chimes in with a thought. "Shouldn't memories have lots of the same things, and dreams not?"

Nel is attempting to describe consistency. Certain aspects should stay the same in memories, such as the location and the population of other people, but in dreams, settings jump and others involved in the action come and go without reason. Her dreams can be very involved, to the point that she has to think about who she is when she wakes up sometimes, but there's always something off.

[iamnotgod]

"That depends on the life one lives, really - someone who moves frequently, perhaps, might not have the same things from memory to memory, unless they're clustered fairly close together."

[vernal_miss]

“Yeah, that could make it more confusing if they travel alone,” she admits before she asks about a different quality, “Do Echoes fade like dreams after you wake up? Like you remember less of it each day?”

[catted]

"...That would mean that things that aren't memories would fade too, wouldn't it?"

[iamnotgod]

"The physical changes don't fade, no - memories act like normal memories, though."

Unless there's something particularly traumatic about them or you're the sort of being who can't forget anything coughcough.

[vernal_miss]

"So things that appear also stick around," Nel ventures. To her, it sounds like they get a copy of something that belongs to someone else and keep it in the same way the other person might. At least with memories she can write them down or draw immediately after to keep them fresh and detailed. That also means however any items that show up have to be kept hidden if they're odd enough to not belong with her other things.

"And you said doing something new makes the Echoes happen, right? So if I had never gone skydiving before, that might make me have one?" Extreme example, but also straight forward as something distinctly novel.

[iamnotgod]

"Yyyeess, though I wouldn't try that in particular without permission if I were you," Walter hazards.