meadowlarklogs | ARRIVAL LOG 011

ARRIVAL LOG 011

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: November 5
WHAT: The eleventh arrival
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Coercion, loss of autonomy. Further notes at end of log.

> ARRIVAL LOG #011

Awareness comes to you in blurred snatches, cloudy fragments of sound and light, color, sensation. Hazy and difficult to grasp on to, but slowly aligning into focus. A series of regular, rhythmic beeps. A medicinal, astringent smell. The sensation of movement, a low hum and accompanying vibration under you. Your eyes are heavy, hard to keep open, but in the glimpses between slow, dark blinks you see four people in black body armor seated opposite you, as well as a man in dark gray scrubs.

You realize there are others next to you. All of you in white scrubs, hair recently cut but at various stages of growth, restrained by straps across your chests, arms, feet, holding you to the bench under you. To your left, an armored interior door, two more people visible, the movement of streets passing through a windshield. You try to open your mouth to speak, but it's as if your tongue is coated in tar, and you manage nothing more than an empty parting of lips.

The vehicle stops. The guard opposite you stands and comes to unbuckle you from the bench, helping you to your feet. Your limbs feel wooden and heavy, slow to move. One guard opens the back of the vehicle, and false, colored light, illuminating the streets in the distance will first alert your senses of being somewhere else, combined with air that's only cooled with the setting of the sun. The nurse moves to stand at the back, checking each passenger over one by one just before they're helped out of the vehicle, quick and methodical. He doesn't climb out after you, moving to sit as the last passenger is unloaded. The guards keep their heads down. Their actions are quick, firm, but not entirely unkind.

"Stay here," one of the guards barks, right before looking to the guard to their left. "You've got the honors of passing on the message from the boss?" he asks. The woman nods, and then steps just in front of him. "Now listen up, everyone! This is way warmer than I'd ever go for, but he's got a soft spot for you." She offers a twisted smile, as if she isn't keen to play messenger. "Hello, everyone. You're likely wondering how you got here." She pauses to roll her eyes at the joke – because it is a joke, albeit a bad one (in her opinion). "That's not something I can share right now. There are too many hands invested in this pie. But I need you all to stick to the festival, and not go looking for trouble. Don't hurt anyone. Don't look for a police officer. Have fun out there until it's time to process you. I don't actually know how that goes, but the ones like you? They've got it down to a science." She pauses here, looking puzzled. She's read this message in advance, but there are still aspects of it that stand out. Oh, they were warned about the others. To avoid them at all costs, because they'd be looking. "And sorry for the scrubs – I know they aren't great for a party, but they make you stand out. Have a good time. Just don't get arrested out there. I can only pull out my Beijing contacts so many times." This message is read entirely off her neural implant – not that the people dressed in scrubs in front of her would realize that.

After she's done, the last of the guards turn to climb back into the vehicle and close the doors. The engine powers up again, and then the bus is gone.

You're left alone in an alley, with no idea of where you are or why you've been brought here.

Around the corner of the alley, there are many food stalls selling foods in mason jars, as well as a stage off in the distance with people in colorful outfits moving in unison. It seems that you've arrived at some kind of festival, and believe it or not, this is low-key compared to some of the last.

◉ Though entirely capable of independent action and thought, new characters will find themselves completely, unquestioningly compliant to any verbal statement which could be taken as a command or request – and that includes the lengthy message passed on from the mysterious patron.

> HARVEST FESTIVAL

The message from El comes the same as usual: insistent, not waiting for any active attempt to open it. Scrolling within your vision as if being written while you're reading it.

Well, everyone, it's time for another round of saving your newly arrived displaced kidnapees. This time they're not blending in at all. It's white scrubs all the way. Probably doesn't really go with a harvest festival – is that some corn-in-the-cob in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? Anyway, have fun out there.

The New Amsterdam Annual Harvest Festival begins with a parade bright and early in the morning. Rather than being dressed up with large holographic displays with AR functions that interact with everyone's neural implants, this parade is au naturale. The floats themselves are handmade with careful craftsmanship and designs, especially given the lack of wood available in this world. Everything is bright and colorful. Between each float, there are large dancing troupes dressed in lavish costumes full of colors. Some of the dances featured are unique to this world and its future, while others pay homage to harvest festivals of the past, hailing from regions of Japan, Korea, China, India, Nigeria and the Philippines. The garb itself is unique to these regions – relics of a previous world, celebrating the harvest and promise of what may come in the future.

Unlike many New Amsterdam events, there is very little room for technology and heavy advertisements. While numerous subsidiaries provide donations for the harvest festival, they do so with the understanding that their involvement will be obscured. The harvest festival is meant to act as a way of celebrating the natural way of the world, and of stepping away from technology for a time. That said, there is little emphasis on any artificial intelligence or mentions of the Xelkoven War – it seems as if this celebration is meant as more of a pure revelry of what the Earth used to provide, rather than what humans managed to avoid.

Once the parade is done, there is a large festival in progress. Every worker at the harvest festival is there because they believe in this celebration, and thus they volunteered to be involved. Anyone who wants to be there because they chose to volunteer can. As for the native volunteers – a large number of them will be sporting numerous tattoos of unique symbols that have been seen around the city (most notably the Insomniac's Ball and the shrines to the Displaced). They'll look at any of the Displaced that they recognize with admiration, but won't be quick to engage with them.

The harvest festival is just a one-day event, but it's jam packed full of things to do!

> HARVESTS

While the hydroponic farms around New Amsterdam are always working to keep the citizens fed, they celebrate their harvests once a year at the harvest festival. Many of these farms come together and sell their vegetables in mason jars and even create various sauces for citizens to purchase. Want some delicious spaghetti sauce that's ready to go? What about taco sauce or something to make quick tikka masala? These food stalls have everything ready to go – and they're all too eager to share what they've made. The stalls all offer discounts to anyone who buys their jars in bulk, hoping that they can happily impart their delicious and natural foods to the citizens of New Amsterdam. While hydroponic farms on a whole are "less natural" in how they grow food, these jars of food are less processed. What's in there is, for the most part, pickled or cooked down into a sauce, making it so that New Amsterdam citizens can enjoy a flavorful meal.

> CHARITY

In a continuation of the mindset during Halloween, the harvest festival doubles as a site for charitable activity around the city. Gaby will ask Morningstar's people to set up a booth to collect any clothing donations, and it'll be obvious that while this booth is not noticeably linked to Morningstar, it's set up every year in hopes of gathering these clothing donations for people in need. The Morningstar booth isn't the only of its kind, and many of the food stalls with mason jars will also have a box for people to donate goods should they want to help people in need. Unlike every other New Amsterdam festival, there are no food trucks. Instead, there is an all-day buffet that constantly rotates out food so that people who are hungry can have a full meal as the day goes on. Everything is free. However, this buffet includes no alcohol – as if to counterbalance the drunken revelry during the Halloween celebrations, there is none on the premises here.

> FERTILITY

In the past, harvest festivals have almost always been linked to fertility. While fertility is less of a concern in 2511 – thanks to the rigid population control – there is a sense of hope that Earth itself, as well as the terraforming colonies, will eventually give way to a future where these mandates aren't as necessary. For now, the harvest festival celebrates the idea of fertility, as well as allowing the Earth to replenish itself. Fertility is an aspect in that, after all. One section of the festival's stalls is dedicated to this ideal, and has a unique tradition brought over from Japan. Each of the stalls feature large phallic structures on the top, and like the parade floats, these are newly made every year from scratch. In addition, the food stalls also partake in an all-natural popsicle contest (after all, it wouldn't be a New Amsterdam festival without some kind of food contest). These popsicles come in all different flavors – from strawberry to pickle brine – and are all slender and phallic in their presentation.

> DANCING

Throughout the day, music will always be playing while some form of dancing goes on on the main stage. Most of the day, this dancing is thanks to the dance troupes that come in and perform, even though they've already done it at length on the parade routes. Many of the volunteers will be put in charge of keeping these dancers fed and hydrated so that they can keep at it – though they're always happy for the opportunity that the festival offers them. When these staged shows aren't happening, they have interludes where festival-goers can come on stage and learn more simplified versions of the different dances from the Earth's cultural history. Once it's dusk, there is a two-hour long dance contest where these troupes compete with one another, putting on a unique show that they've prepared for the event.

> WRESTLING

The other event that goes on all day is an event borrowed from Korea: ssireum. Multiple people enter this wrestling contest, and thanks to the amateur-nature of it, there is little concern about who wrestles with one another (outside of age, of course). The sport itself involves two opponents holding on to each other's red and blue band called a satba. Throughout the contest, they try to put the other person down, making it so that their upper body touches the mat. There are rules set up to ensure that no one brings any real harm to their opponent, and since it's wrestling, there is no room for any dirty tricks like punching, kicking, biting or anything similar. When it's over, the person who's wracked up the most wins throughout the day is given a sash that declares them "The Most Powerful."

> SAFEHOUSE

Located under an abandoned hover-bike garage, access to the safehouse is a hatch in the floor beside a rusted set of metal shelves that used to hold tools and supplies. The immediate area is similarly abandoned: full of rundown and dilapidated warehouses and forgotten businesses, where numerous people squat in hopes of having some stability because they can't afford a place themselves. A dark haired woman called Gaby is ready to greet the new arrivals and get them settled in, brusque and no-nonsense – she'll be open for in depth questions later, but will advise everyone to ask the people who brought them in for the beginning bits of information.

◉ The safehouse is a large space with multiple rooms for storage, with the largest of the rooms filled with rows of basic cots set up to sleep a large amount of people. Basic, but outfitted with everything necessary for daily life. A few doors lead to back rooms for storage, medical care and a large communal bathroom, and past the long rows of cots there is a communal kitchen, fully stocked, and an eating area. Privacy is at a minimum.

◉ New characters will be asked to pick their beds, and provided with a change of (second-hand, mismatched and somewhat threadbare) clothes and basic toiletries.

◉ There is a mini-bar set up in the kitchen. The quality of the alcohol inside is akin to what someone might get from the well, but it's well-stocked.

◉ Gaby will make it clear to all new arrivals that if they have any requests or queries, they should contact her or El.

◉ The drugs making new characters compliant will remain in their systems for a few hours after their arrival at the safehouse before finally beginning to fade. They will be gone entirely after a night's rest. In the meantime, they may want to be careful of what others say to them.

◉ New characters will be given rudimentary access to the network on arrival in the safehouse, but will not have their ID set up yet. They will be able to make posts and replies, but their messages will be anonymous and they do not have inboxes yet.

◉ New characters will not be allowed to leave the safehouse until NOVEMBER 09 (JUNE 17). These 4 days are for them to adjust, learn about the world they've arrived in from their fellows, and for El to speak with them and work on setting up their IDs.

> FINAL OOC NOTES

Welcome to Meadowlark, newbies! You're now free to post to the network and logs comms. To reiterate, your characters will have no IDs or inboxes, nor be allowed out of the safehouse until NOVEMBER 09 (JUNE 17). At that point it's expected they'll have gotten a good idea of their new situation from their fellow characters, and will have discussed their background and job potentials with El in order for their false IDs to be set up.

As a note: all new characters arrive after the parade ends.

If you have any questions or ideas about how you'd like to get your character involved in the world, please head over to the plot engagement post and drop us a comment! For questions specific to this log, there is a thread below.

Please check out our June calendar rundown for a look at things happening this month, as well as some additional notes from the mods.

As a note to the entirety of our playerbase, we are at 58 players, which is 2 players away from our game cap! This is very exciting for us as moderators, especially as we quickly head toward our one year anniversary! There is a very good chance that this will be our last "full" arrival log for a while, though we have plans (and ideas!) in mind for future months.

As a reminder, AC for new characters accepted in June will be 10 comments across 2-4 threads, while current characters will need to provide the full AC of 20 comments across 2-4 threads. AC will be posted on July 1 at 12 AM UTC and close on July 8 at 12 AM UTC. If you do not reply to AC, you will be considered idled and dropped from the game. We will not post a warning list.

> NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A bunch of us got dropped off somewhere over there.

[She gestures down in the general direction of the alleyway they were deserted in.]

They told us to have fun and not cause trouble until it was time for us to be processed.

[Her expression is wary, but any confrontational anger she might have normally had is stamped out by whatever they gave her while she was still asleep. Instead, tears form behind her eyes, and she blinks as they threaten to spill over. She quickly wipes them away in case anyone is looking at her, uncomfortable with her emotional display.

Being angry would have been so much easier and she's not sure what's wrong with her.]

I don't know what's going on.

No, you normally don't. I'm sorry. [Clarke wishes it could be easier on them. Kara last month, Alex before, and now this girl—younger than any of the others, put in a position that's impossible to understand. It's worse because they don't have answers.

The important part is helping in the meantime. Giving her some context, helping her feel comfortable. Clarke isn't the emotional heart of operations back in her world. That's more Bellamy's style, but she does her best here. She always will.]

Is there anywhere you like to go for privacy? Somewhere that you'd feel more comfortable? I promise it's not to ... take you anywhere unsafe. I just want you to be able to choose where I explain all of this to you. That's all.

[Hope isn't particularly worried that anyone is going to hurt her, per say. She's still what she is and she knows how to protect herself. She may not know that she doesn't have access to her magic, but she's no pushover.

There's just something wrong and off and it needs to stop.]

Just...anywhere where people won't be able to just stare at me.

[She knows her clothes are making her stand out and it's feeding into her paranoia.]

Fair enough. [Not wanting to be stared at sounds like a top priority.] They have clothing donations here. I'm gonna go see if I can get you something. It'll make the walk back easier. We'll get you changed.

[The fact that she isn't worried about her safety helps. Clarke is confident that they can manage the rest.]

Okay.

[She's agreeing before she can even think about it, though it's less uncomfortable this time if only because she actually agrees with that course of action. This festival should feel almost comforting in its resemblance to the town she was born in, and yet there's so many striking differences that it only leaves her wanting to get away from the crowd even more.]

Can you tell me your name?

[It would make her feel a little better about following her. There was power in names, after all.]

I'm Clarke Griffin. I've been here since the very first group of us. It's a long story. [Long in that it's several months long, and short in that a lot of it involves a whole lot of question marks.]

I'm also one of the few medics we have, so if you have anything that feels off, let me know. And I might be able to explain some of it, too.

[She throws that in, right before she looks at the donations table.]

I'll be right back, okay?

How long has this been happening?

[Hope swallows past a lump in her throat, finding it parched and dry, but gives her a nod. She has at least one question in regards to that, but it can wait until they're somewhere less crowded.]

I'll just wait here.

[Instead of responding to Hope's question, Clarke utilizes the universal "one minute" motion, and walks off to get her some clothes. Not knowing what she might prefer, she grabs a pair of jeans, a V-neck T-shirt, along with a belt and some slide on shoes. Not great, but more room for error, especially with the belt.

She comes back with them folded in a neat pile, offering them to Hope.]

We've been arriving since late June, so that almost puts us at five whole months. There is a time discrepancy there, so some of us can say we've been here longer. I lived two weeks of my birthday month twice. [A small smile.] But that's not the same for anyone else. [She indicates the "citizens." The people moving around, only occasionally glancing at Hope's clothing, wondering what the hell is going on there.]

Thanks.

[She gingerly takes the pile of clothes, looking around briefly for a place to change and not finding anything in the immediate vicinity. Hopefully, Clarke has that next on their agenda.]

So, it's November, then?

[At least the calendar system sounds the same, which begs the question...where are they?]

Before I woke up here it was...February.

What year was it? Because I think the different month is going to throw you a lot less than that. It's 2511 here. Almost 2512, I guess. [Hard to think in those exact numbers, and hard to process things in that light, too.

Getting Hope to a place to change is on the agenda, and she strides on ahead, thinking of a nearby juice shop with a restroom she can use while Clarke gets them both something to drink.]

Because ... it was 2150 for me. Which is still ahead of a lot of our group that shows up. Uh, for the ones from Earth, anyway.

[Give her just a second. Her brain is rebooting as the words that come out of her mouth are tainted by disbelief, as if she's having a hard time accepting that.

Can you blame her?]

Right. We're in the future. Of course.

[And she's in the future from the future, which just about makes her head flip over and do somersaults. Her mouth opens and closes one more time before she finally says:]

2028. It was 2028 for me.

About three years after someone very important was born in my world. [Becca. They all know about her now, know about her significance to their people. Clarke hadn't paid her as much attention as some people—like Raven—but she knows about her now. She can't help it.]

Either way, four or five hundred years ago, depending on which one of us someone's asking. So, it's the future, and we're also all from different worlds and tugged here for whatever reason.

Multi-dimensional time travel? Sounds like an intense sci-fi novel.

[She tries to cover her earlier emotional distress by making blase comments now, but it's not entirely working. But she has enough to think about without having an existential crisis right this second.]

Is everyone in the city from somewhere else?

I'm pretty sure that novels like that describe the lives of most of the people like us. [Case in point: everything Clarke's been through. She's not genre savvy back home, but being here has forced her to reckon with some basic facts.]

Of which there aren't many. At most, we're around fifty in number, maybe at around ten or more? There are around forty million people here, and they're all natives. We're living one of those novels right now, I think.

Yeah, maybe. Mine would be a little less sci-fi and a little more supernatural fantasy.

[Just don't say Twilight.

Those numbers sort of hang in the air as she digests them.]

I guess it's lucky I ran into you, then.

Not luck. I try to show up when I can to help. Even if I don't make it out to the party. We have an eye in the sky, so to speak, who keeps an eye on when people like ... us show up.

[Later, El's savvy approach when it comes to this would make a lot more sense. Later.]

I worry that some of you might be sick or hurt, but we've been lucky on that front for a while.

I guess the outfit does make me pretty easy to find if you know what you're looking for, huh.

[She thinks back to when they first got dropped off.]

It was just weird. It would have made more sense for most of us to want to stick together, but then they told us to go have fun and we all just...left. I didn't want to have fun but I went anyway.

[It reminded her of compulsion except she can't be compelled.]

Do you remember any of the tubes that they took out of you? The IVs, I mean. From what I've seen, they have a particularly strong concoction of drugs that can control us. I've tried tracing it, but I haven't had any luck. That's why you felt compelled. It's ... unique, and don't worry, it does leave your system rather quickly.

[For what it's worth.]

[Hope just shakes her head.]

No, we were already strapped to the bench inside that...van or whatever that dropped us off.

[She nods in understanding though; of course there were drugs involved for her to feel like that when she woke up. She wouldn't be surprised if they had to overdo it too, with her metabolism.]

The puncture wounds must have...healed over before I could notice them.

That's a large dosage of whatever it was, [she replies, thoughtful in her tone.

Wait, the healing factor is confusing there.]

Do you heal quickly?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ARRIVAL LOG 011

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