Realistic or Modern 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐉𝐀𝐍𝐔𝐒 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 [ 𝐈𝐂 ]

[elytra]

​

𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙨𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙚​

time of day. Late morning
general location. The Belladonna
weather. Grey, lightly snowing, cold
setup. The first two days of the venture were much like any other voyage in the sense that while there was anticipation hanging in the air, there was not much to do about it; all that was to be tested and observed was through the Gate rather than before it. Preparations were dealt with differently by everyone. Some chose to discuss what might be coming, while others chose to ignore talk of the gate entirely. No matter what anyone did, though, it didn't stop the inevitability that would come to pass on the third day: they would be going through, whether they liked it or not.

Going through the gate itself was electric, reminiscent of getting a small shock from static, a thrumming present in the air around the Belladonna as it sailed through. Temperatures dropped rapidly. The crew plunged into a bone-chilling cold, outward breaths becoming visible in an instant. There was a certain dread there too, though not one anyone could truly explain.

It has been a week since launch and 4 days since entering the Gate. Things have been quiet; other than some samples being collected of the snow and sea water, there hasn't been much to do. The comms have been quiet as well, communication with the ship on the homeland side of the gate nonexistent, though that had been expected and discussed prior to launch. This morning, land was spotted for the first time. It looks to be a snowy mountainous area, but details will be hazy until the ship gets closer.

𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙨𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙚​

time of day. N/A
general location. N/A
weather. N/A
setup. N/A
what happened. N/A

 

[BELIAL.]

𝐃𝐫. 𝐉𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞 ,, 𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙜 ❜ ─ 𝘵𝘩𝘦 physicist ─ ❛
tags: Ha_lfLife ; location: med office (shoebox sized)
interactions: n/a ; notes: short post era

She was thankful that the boat hadn’t made her sick yet. The first day on it had been great, though she’d been less inclined to really get to know anybody yet-- they all seemed rather intimidating, save for the other doctor on board, Bernard-Wright, who she’d quickly recognized from overlapping science circles on the East Coast. She knew Beckett too, though it was clear that that interaction hadn’t been one to leave any good memories behind. Not wanting to pry further now that they were all contained on a metal box in the middle of the ocean, she had been tempted once or twice to try and smooth things over.

Otherwise, most of the time was spent doing preliminary research. Relying on Dr. Robert for most of the weather acuities and data, Jean had tried to settle into formulating her own research rather than piggy-backing off of the other scientist on board; like she was used to. The reason she’d been picked, so she believed, was that she could provide support while also tunnelling her own data and observations. Someone needed to believe the unbelievable, and out of everyone on board, Jean figured herself the most capable of that job. At least.

Still, now that a week had gone by-- she’d yet to fully cement her sea legs. Something her dad had always warned her about, on their fair and few trips out to the lake a few hours north. He’d talk all the time about the sea, the animals, and what sorts of respect you had to have for nature. He was funny like that, a guy stuck right between one day returning to nature (or so little Jean believed), but also firmly cemented on their ranch (nature, in a sense, but lacking in much ferality). Never lacking in wisdom to give, however, no matter the circumstances.

Jean thought about him often; usually in times of stress like this. For, at the present, she was clutching her finger as if it was going to fall off. Foolish, absent-minded Jean hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings, and she was chastising herself the whole way as she ducked between hallways of the ship. Her finger, wrapped tightly in her own hand, was bleeding. Profusely, really-- she’d always been an easier bleeder-- and she hadn’t paid much attention to where she was whisking her hand away to snatch a falling paper-weight. The paper had slipped, deeper than she would have liked, and Jean had been in a tizzy immediately.

She knew that there was a doctor, the medical type, on board-- but she had never actually met him yet. Seeing the man here and there, often ducking away from the group, she was convinced he was probably a ghost that lurked. If ghosts were real, that is.

Searching, scouring really, for the med office had been a stroke of luck that she’d found it so fast. After a few wide looks into open doors and doorframes, she’d found it-- an unimpressive little hovel, organised and surprisingly clean. Not that Jean had noticed, really.

She set to it, using her elbow to rip drawers open and to try and push around boxes and folders without smearing her blood all over it. Cursing under her breath, and mumbling to herself, the woman began her quest for a bandaid-- or some sort of tissue, for crying out loud!

 

[Geun Sae]

His frantic scribbles on the thin newspaper before him did little to quell his competitive anxiety. Bernard's eyes and mind seemed to be caught in a repetitive pattern. He'd scribble down a few letters on the scattered grid before him, then he'd look up from the crossword and try to guess the emotion of the woman sitting across the table from him who was filling the same tiny grey boxes. It frustrated him a little, that she seemed so much more relaxed than him. He'd stare for a moment, then remind himself to get back to the task at hand - trying to circle back to the word that lay untouched besides a single 'c' at the top. Number fourteen, down, ten letters. The clue? "Director of Opening Night, and Woman Under The Influence."

Bernard was beside himself. He'd already lost a hearty twenty dollars in these daily crossword competitions. What started as a means to distract himself from his boredom and the perpetual hum of the ship's engines had only been a source of stress. He couldn't seem to understand why he enjoyed doing this to himself. As if the expedition wasn't already ominous and perplexing enough, he'd make it his responsibility to find yet another way to escape his anxiety. Though, it was better than staring at the black and green sonar graphics on the tiny computer in the ship's steering. And as bored as he was, it beat having to hoist up barometers and anemometers against the chill of ocean wind all by himself.

With a frantic urgency he filled in the spaces on two more words. "Four-letter word for bravery." G-U-T-S. "Five letter word for corn flour"M-A-I-Z-E". The clues filled in a few gaps, leaving a half filled in word with what Bernard could only hope were no mistakes. This was the real deal, all or nothing. Bernard was ready to win back the money he'd lost so consistently over the last week. "Eight-letter french word for third." T-R-O-S-I-E-M-E.

He couldn't believe it, sitting before him was the completed New York Times crossword, in all of its glory. He feverishly shouted out, "Finished!" and tossed the newspaper in front of him, letting it fall on the table, ignorant of the misspelling of "Cassavetes" that adorned the spaces of number fourteen down.

KingofAesir

 

[KingofAesir]

Cynthia "Cy" Ayers ─ engineer ─
tags: Geun Sae ; location: Dining Room
interactions: Dr. Bernard-Wright ; notes: stole Arch's code

There was a time before she went to school, before she left Louisiana behind and moved halfway across the country to get away, when Cy might have found the idea of a job like this completely insane. When she might have been distraught at the idea of leaving her family and everyone she knew behind, potentially permanently. When she might never have signed up in the first place. Of course, this wasn’t that time, but sometimes when she was alone she felt like it could be. Like that morning when she was shuffling, eyelids half open, through the engine room and watching dials and pressure gauges fluctuate. Muir hadn’t been there. Not that she minded in any way; she could very well do her check-ups on her own. But it was his absence that triggered the unpleasant jaunt down memory lane. With nothing but the low hum of mechanical doo-dads and the occasional swish of the pressure valve to occupy her mind, it wandered itself away from her.

Memories of her mother, smiling that perfectly pristine smile and humming to herself about the house. Her father at the kitchen table with a cigar pressed between his teeth. Cy had always hated the smell of cigar smoke when she was young, but now it seemed to mix and get lost in the haze of the pleasant memories she had left of her parents. What was the song her mother had liked to hum? She had tried to dreg up the tune from the recesses of her memory, but nothing had come. Then, suddenly, she was wishing she could call her up and ask. That was the thing about the loneliness, the quiet that so often enveloped her on this ship. It made her miss things that she had given up a long time ago.

Perhaps that was why Cy had been staring at the black and off-white page in front of her for so long. Lost in her own head about earlier that morning, her grip tightened around the coffee mug in her right hand. It was lukewarm now, Cy had been in the mess for a little while before her companion had graced her with his presence. She glanced up at him now as her thoughts drifted away from earlier that morning. Dr. Robert Bernard-Wright was a man she found pleasant enough. She didn’t know if he was someone she could see herself spending time with outside of a job like this, but he was good company in the now anyway. Their habitual competitions had become a strange sort to comfort to Cy, at least to satisfy her competitive streak holed up on this ship. She grinned, a lopsided thing, to herself as she watched him scribble so furiously at the paper in front of him. She though if he pressed any harder the pencil might snap in two. Cy shook her head and returned her attention to her own crossword, weaving her pencil in and out of the fingers on her left hand.

Five-letters for nurse. S-I-P O-N. Six-letters for a group of crows. M-U-R-D-E-R. Cy suppressed a sigh, so as to not reveal her unease to the man across the table from her. She was left with a four-letter word and only the letter T to help her out. Number 12 across, the T given by the filled in G-U-T-S crossing it. Four-letter word for trilbies. Cy took to spinning her pencil again, racking her brain for any sort of semblance of an idea of what the hell trilbies were. She didn’t even think-

“Finished!” Cy was startled by Bernard suddenly proclaiming his completion of the crossword. She blanched for a moment, taken aback by the prospect of being beat. But it was wiped away just as quickly as she was hit with an epiphany, scribbled down the letters F-E-E in the empty boxes of 12 across and snatched up Bernard’s paper. Blue eyes scanned the page with a frown that soon turned into a lilted little grin.

“You spelled Cassavetes wrong. I think the man who played Victor Franko himself would be disappointed.” Cy clicked her tongue as she slid the paper back across to Dr. Bernard. She tipped back the rest of her now cold coffee and slid her own paper across to her companion.

“Now, I don’t know how the hell anyone is supposed to just know what trilbies are if they didn’t have an obsession with dictionaries as a child.” She chuckled, “Damn British.” Cy ran her hand through the wispy, short strands of her hair and leaned back into her seat.

“I believe that means I remain victorious, Doc.”

 

[Ha_lfLife]

𝐃𝐫. Armaan Atri ─ 𝘵𝘩𝘦 (overly qualified) medic ─
tags: BELIAL. ; location: shithole

"You know, if you have to look that hard for it, we probably don't have it..."

Armaan Atri announced himself, sighing out the words like an inconvenienced parent too tired to chastise a child. His voice was not loud or demanding, but held a sureness that carried well through the confines of the minute space of his office, possibly enough to even startle the trespasser. Maybe that was even his intention, to give the lady a scare, an amused attempt at payback for her intrusion.

He'd been watching her for the better part of ten seconds, brow raised as he watched her rummage like a hungry raccoon through the supplies he'd painstakingly organized that same morning. The eyes that followed her in her pillaging were dark and sharp, like obsidian, though they glinted with a sort of wry amusement. Though the look was serious, almost falcon-like, there was a confidence to it, too. His stance when they came to face one another was not one of hostility or annoyance. Instead, he was leaning casually against the metal doorframe, one hand in the pocket of his slacks, while the other held a ceramic-coated tin coffee mug.

The Doctor was dressed for the cold, the frigid air traveling down from the decks above to the ship's core. The starched white collar of a buttoned shirt peeped out from the edge of a charcoal quarter-zip sweater, topped by a black down vest, unzipped and loose. Accompanied by a pair of unwrinkled khaki slacks, the man looked properly out of place. Especially compared to the neutrals and canvas twills of the military types on board, the polished and groomed Armaan might as well have stumbled across the Belladonna's footbridge by mistake, lost on the way to Brooks Brothers on Madison Ave. Having spent the morning sanitizing the few reusable supplies the medical bay offered, not confident enough that they were truly clean, the sleeves of his sweater were pushed up on his forearms. A leather watch, well taken care of though its color was fading, sat on his right wrist, while a simple silver ring decorated his left hand. They were dexterous hands, barely calloused from a career centered on careful cuts and finesse than rougher trades.

They weren't shaking today, a realization infused with enough relief that Armaan's entire mood took a turn for the better. The worst of it was over. That had come two nights ago, probably, when new crew members were likely bonding over nightcaps at the dining table, learning each other's stories and oddities. Meanwhile, Armaan locked himself in here, where he could succumb to the unmanageable pain of withdrawal. The pangs of pure need plagued him like starvation, torturing him like he deserved. The stuff that had gotten him into this goddamn mess, stuck on this goddamn boat, was so sorely missed. When forced to leave his hovel in the throes of sickness, his face was set in an unmistakable scowl. It was partially due to the withdrawals, partially because of the upsetting change of circumstances that had so suddenly landed him here, away from his home, from Sonja, from his girls.

But he was on the other side of it now, finally well enough to act human again. And this is what happens, he thought to himself dryly. You leave for two minutes and someone comes in and fucks with your stuff. Everything inevitably descends into chaos. Just like Lorenz says.

In the harsh fluorescent lighting, he was able to get a good look at the stranger. Yeah, he remembered her vaguely. After all, the place had two women - one of them blonde, the other brunette. With such simplistic parameters, he really didn't have an excuse not to remember which one she was. Young. Janet, Joan ... something like that. Her youthful, animated eyes and the round apples of her cheeks lended her a very amicable look, one that disarmed Armaan from his former bitter attitude even more easily than anticipated, despite the fact that she'd helped herself to rifling through his supplies.

"Though it looks like you've searched through everywhere. Thanks for that." Despite an upbringing spent between two continents, neither of them North America, his dialect was surprisingly natural to New York; whether he owed it more to the movies he watched as a kid or his marriage to Sonja (a Bengali by way of her parents, a New Englander by way of her own), he couldn't venture a guess. The humor in his voice was evident, dry though unbothered. He reminded himself that he'd probably made a bad impression in the past days, and to get himself back to decent standing among the rest of the crew, he'd have to put an effort into biting back the bitterness at least a little. Damage control, he placated himself, stopping the hemorrhaging.

He pushed himself up from the doorframe with his shoulder, taking a grimacing taste of the coffee. Fucking terrible. Worse than Presbyterian's. Coffee was a generous term for the stuff, barely more than a mixture of hot water and powder that maybe was once distantly derived from coffee beans. He let out a sigh, setting the cup down on a metal side table, its legs bolted to the floor as items on a ship were wont to be, and took a step towards her.

"Okay, so ... what's the damage here?" The Doctor held out his hand expectantly, nodding to her hand. What laid underneath? A dislocated joint? A subungual hematoma? When permitted, he took her hands, his own so stereotypically cold, and unwrapped her hand from the other to assess the damage.

Armaan spit out a hot breath, almost a laugh, at how disappointingly minor the injury turned out to be. To think he spent years of his life, decades even, working to be the best in his field - to dig out bullets from spleens and livers, repair shredded arteries, put back together bodies that were mangled almost almost beyond the point of repair; to spend such time honing self-control, never letting his ability to plan and execute under duress give way to senseless panic. And for what? To become a glorified school nurse? No, that was too kind of a comparison. School nurses at least got twisted ankles, the occasional scraped knee.

Though at first the crossing through the Gate brought apprehension, and the strangest buzzing in the ears, like there was static in the air that made the hairs on his nape stand for several minutes, the feeling fled quickly. After the initial passage brought nothing but dark seas washing over into uneventful days, the uncertainty gave way to boredom.

"Congratulations. You're the ship's first patient," He roused a lighthearted sarcasm at the assessment of the wound, turning from her to open a metal cabinet by the door, one that hadn't yet been subjected to her wake. He took out an aluminum bottle of antiseptic spray, some gauze, and a roll of half-inch tape. Taking her hand back in his, he administered the spray without warning, finding that giving patients reason to anticipate the sting of alcohol to be a worthless cruelty. By the time the complaint came, the worst would already be through. He then wrapped the gauze over the bleeding finger, careful not to touch any of the blood with his hands as he did so, and applied firm pressure. Three pairs of gloves. Three pairs. That was all that was stocked in this shithole. And while the rise of AIDS in the States caused any reasonable medical professional to take extra precaution at the sight of blood, he couldn't justify using one of the three when there was the chance of having a more serious event later on and having to go without.

In his line of work he was barely acquainted with the simple side of things - the changing of bandages, the administering of medicines, the patching of boo-boos; no, that kind of work was given to those far below his pay grade. But it didn't change the fact that he had two daughters of his own, both of whom had had many an instance of crying up at him, sitting on the kitchen counter, begging kisses for their scrapes and bruises. He finished off the first aid with the tape, and commented, "Well, we don't have any Stars and Strips, but it'll do ... Joan, is it?"

 

[elytra]

Wallace Beckett ─ the survivor─
tags: idalie ; location: on deck

Beckett has never loved the ocean.

He'd read plenty of poems and books of captains at sea, claiming it to be their mistress and singing about how they longed to be out on the waves again. Such a desire to be in a place so hostile seemed ridiculous at best and dangerous at worst. No, his engagement to the sea was strictly business. Nothing more, nothing less. He always had found himself far more content with solid ground under his feet rather than the swaying of a seaborne vessel.

His father had been more partial to the water to him. There was a lot of talk about how the ocean had given them safe passage to a better life, a life it continued to fund by giving them work to do and fish to sell. In a way, Beckett understood that. There were some things that were worthy of respect. There were debts that deserved paying. Yet, there was a difference between respect and reverent, senseless devotion. His appreciation for it didn't have to elicit blind loyalty.

It felt like his point was proven by what happened. Even before they'd seen the gate, things had been choppy. There'd been some sense of a storm coming by the greyness of the sky and the roughness of the waves. They hadn't been getting any fish, either; usually the area had a higher yield, yet the nets came up empty. That in itself shouldn't have welled up a sense of dread, if he were to be honest. Sometimes storms happened, sometimes there were no fish. God only knew that things had been tough in the industry over the years. Even so, he still had felt something was off that day. After sailing for so long, he knew better than to disregard any senses of wrongness.

Except he hadn't. Except he'd had them keep going despite everything. The nets were empty and empty nets meant empty wallets. It was something he couldn't risk. The crew needed money, it was why they were all there, so going back to dock empty-handed was the worst possible outcome he could've imagined at the time.

Then his bad luck had kicked in and suddenly, they were being pulled through the water by a current that hadn't been there before. He hadn't seen the gate at the time, seeing as they were right up against it, but had felt the jolt of static that had come with it and felt the temperatures drop. Any confusion about the new weather conditions had been short lived, though. Soon, the boat had been flipped far more forcefully than a wave in the area should have been able to do. The entire crew was tossed into the water, darker than it had any right to be, and that had been the last time he'd seen them before he had found himself being pulled up by a rescue vessel. The bits in between were a blur.

He'd told the people interviewing him that. Had told them he didn't know what happened and hadn't seen the gate open, yet they'd still been set on having him on this trip. He'd been hoping his lack of knowledge would get him out of the obligation, but that hadn't been the case. He should've gone for crazy. Should've given them his thoughts on sea monsters and seen what they thought of him then.

Far too late for that now, though. That was made especially clear by the biting cold that was threatening to seep into him with the falling snow, only stopped by the presence of the expedition-issued coat he'd been wise enough to put on before braving the deck. He was avoiding the bridge on account of the military guys that had set up shop there, and he had no desire to stay inside. Instead, he leaned over the railing of the boat, looking down to the murky water below.

He didn't know what he was looking for. It was unlikely his crew was still alive. Impossible even, if he were going to be honest with himself. Yet he still scanned the waters, a traitorous part of his brain telling him miracles had happened before. He was by no means a religious man, but he'd put stock in God if he could at least see that he wasn't the only one left.