strangetrip | [GP/EP] Check-In Day

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[GP/EP] Check-In Day

Why Caroline had needed her to help with Check-In Day she hadn't bothered to say. Just, "you said you'd help," and when Regina protested she wasn't good with people, "aren't you a Queen or a Mayor or something?" complete with shooing gestures. While Regina found Caroline more exasperating the terrifying, she did have a point.

So Regina suited up--literally, gathered her files and folders, coffee mug, pens and pocketed the wooden carving of Henry/Roland Robin had made for her, then headed for the cafe. If, polished and politic and patently Busy, she didn't offer newcomers the brightest or warmest smile when they arrived, it was nevertheless confident and quite possibly reassuring.

Caroline did friendly. Regina...did knowledgeable and polite. Dot and Ignis had been asked to provide finger food on catering trays. The still-grieving Miss Pryde had been tasked with samovars of tea and coffee and ice chest of soda and beer. Caroline's welcome baskets sat on the table beside Regina's for easy access. And though she didn't when she was alone in the office, Regina spent the magic to fix her eyesight so she didn't put glasses between her and new arrivals.

Madame Mayor was in.

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A picture from the past came slowly stealing
As I brushed your arm and walked so close to you
Then suddenly I got that old time feeling
I can't help it if I'm still in love with you.

Drinking Ganymede Gin almost immediately after coming down off the juice and a long 15G burn was probably the last thing the crew needed to do, but dammit, they needed to honor Miller. Crazy son of a bitch, but you had to admire what he did. Holden and Naomi had left first, because that wasn't at all suspicious, and Amos had vanished somewhere else, saying he had to go fix something. Like his girl needed fixing. She purred like a kitty through all that they'd put her through. She was the best girl he'd ever been with.

Singing to himself as he walked through the corridors wasn't an unusual sight. He was conducting with the bottle of gin, barely looked at where he was going, he knew the ship so well by now. He certainly didn't notice when things changed.

It was only the when he crashed to his hands and knees, narrowly avoiding smashing his bottle of gin that he realized that something was wrong. The urge to throw up was almost overwhelming, but he held onto it, barely. Amazing how surviving throwing up in your own space suit meant how desperately you tried not to throw up at other times. But it felt like someone was standing on every one of his muscles, and why the hell was it so bright out there? A part of his brain itched with the knowledge that he was on Earth, experiencing Earth gravity, but it was ignore in favor of the struggle to get back onto his feet. Sure, he looked drunk, but for once, it weren't him. "Whoa. What in the...?" He hauled himself up, squinting at the suddenly bright light. "Uh... Hoss? Naomi? Amos?" Even Prax would have been useful now, even if he was a little obsessed.

This was bad. This was real bad.

If there was one thing Jack had learned to recognize both in his years as a policeman and from his time in the War, it was when a man was drunk. Further, he didn't recognize the fellow, and it was check-in day... so most likely, he was a new arrival either getting a good start on the traditional response to arrival at the in, or already in that state upon arrival.

Either way, Jack moved to offer a hand to help the man the rest of the way up, or steady him as needed. "None of the above, I'm afraid."

Alex scambled back as best he could, threatening to dump his ass on the ground again. "Who the fuck are you?" he demanded, scrabbling for the sidearm that was at his side. Of course it didn't work, but it was an automatic reaction - and that was a thought he didn't like. The shock was also a great way of sobering him up. "And where am I?" He could ask why the hell this guy was on his ship, but it was pretty obvious right now that Alex was not where he should have been.

"Jack Robinson." He wasn't quite used to dropping the 'Detective Inspector' from that, yet, but he was getting there. It had helped more than Jack expected, to think of the Inn as a sort of retirement.

Fortunately, he hadn't stopped thinking like a policeman yet, and he filed away a number of things. The man sounded American, for one, and might well have been a soldier of some kind himself; Jack recognized that scrabbling for a sidearm move. But he was clearly more scared and shocked than aggressive, so Jack kept his tone calm and body language easy. "This place is called the Madonna Inn, which is located in California. On Earth, should it matter." As, he'd heard, it sometimes did. "And I'm sorry, both to say it and be obvious, you're not where you were before." Or possibly when, as Jack knew from personal experience, but it was best to adjust to only one shock at a time.

Alex took deep breaths, to try and calm the panic he knew was rising. For all he'd improved, and become a stronger person over the last few months, deep down, there was the shy, quiet, reserved Alex who could panic easily when pushed. "Alex Kamal, of the Rocinante," he said after a moment, because it seemed like half the damn system had heard of the Rocinante. Holden's doing, but if it gave him a modicum of protection right now, he'd take it. Only a fool would annoy Holden given all that had happened.

"Earth?" How the hell could he be on Earth without anyone noticing? It was a goddamn long way from where they had stopped following Eros to Earth, it would have taken days to get there, even at a high burn. But being on Earth... that explained at lot about how he was feeling, like something was sitting on his chest, and making it hard to breath. "No, no, no. That can't be right." Things like that didn't just happen.

Hmm. That implied that he'd heard of Earth but perhaps wasn't from there? Further implying that the Rocinante was a ship of some kind? "I'm afraid it is. Wherever you were, you're here now. I for example come from Melbourne in the year 1929." A bit of a gamble, but not much of one, Jack judged; 1929 was the past or a total unknown to most others here, only excepting Phryne and Miss Williams. "None of us know why or how, but we're all in the same situation."

Okay. Someone who hadn't heard of the Roci. That was good, less trying to defend the Captain's actions. "1929?" That was... ancient history to Alex. So far back that he couldn't comprehend it. By his teachings, Earth history was a far away blur, something that was only a pre-colonisation of Mars far away concept. It certainly wasn't taught in any Martian school, not to any great degree.

He was having a stroke. He must be. All that time spent at 15G, pushing the Roci as far as he could to try and keep up with Eros, and one of those little blood vessels had obviously popped. It had taken a while, but it had caught up with him, and he was hallucinating before dying. It was the only thing that made sense. Though he'd have through dying would have felt less real. "Nice try," he said with a wry smile. "But some things just ain't possible."

"You'd be surprised how short that list actually is," Jack replied dryly. "I've found that the best response to this sort of thing is simply accepting what's in front of you. I assure you, disbelieving won't change it, and you will still be stuck here afterward."

That gained a frown from Alex. It was one thing saying that to him, quite another getting him to believe it. He'd seen some pretty incredible shit over the last year or so, so while in some ways, nothing could surprise him, but this? This was a whole 'nother level. Someone telling him to accept it was guaranteed to make him not. After all, a healthy dose of scepticism helped keep him alive.

"So, how well do you believe it?" he asked, mostly to stop the panic that was building inside him from breaking forth.

"Exceptionally well these days, but I've had several months to practice." Jack the experienced policeman could see the panic rising, but was at a loss as to what to do about it. This particular situation was stressful enough to make anyone panic.

Alex shook his head, trying to absorb everything that had happened. "How the hell does anyone get plucked from ship out in the black to bring then somewhere, what, half a billion kilometers away? In the blink of an eye? That just don't make any sense." He was pushing down the panic as best he could, because it was ridiculous. There was no point in getting upset over something so impossible.

Jack shrugged slightly. "Believe me, no one knows how. I was originally taken off a ship in 1929 during a crossing from Australia to England."

Alex frowned, just unable to cope with the concept of people being brought from all over time to one place. But then, a year ago he'd had said that there was no extrasolar life at all, and look what had happened with Eros. "I'm from the 23rd century..." he said, shaking his head. "The idea of 1929 is just... so far out of anything I could've imagined."

He held his hand up. "I think I need to be a little more sober to deal with this." Or drunker. He wasn't sure which yet.

"The 23rd century is likewise to me." It was beyond even science fiction. What would that world even look like? Parts of the 21st century were still something like marvels, and after another 200 years?

It was likely to be unrecognizable. "Do you have coffee in the 23rd century? If not, it's supposed to be quite sobering."

Alex smiled briefly. "Real coffee is hard to get hold of, but yes, we do have it. My ship has a great coffee machine." The Rocinante was one of the best sources of coffee in the system. God knows what would happen if they ran out of coffee. Holden would probably start a war to find coffee.

River was waiting outside the main building, she was laying flay on her back on the grass looking up at the clouds trying to decide if that one looked like a horse, or if it looked like not a horse.

She was waiting in case anyone came out of the cafe and got lost looking for their rooms or needed help.

It was too loud inside on arrival day, too much confusion, it gave her a headache. So today she looked at the clouds.

"Not a horse," she decided.

No matter how he looked at it, Alex was stuck here, and it would seem that there was nothing he could do about it. He ached, he was tired, and the after effect of the alcohol was wearing off, so there wasn't even that to help see him through.

Curiosity got the better of him though. He'd had it explained pretty thoroughly that while they didn't know where they were, it was on Earth, and to a Martian? There was something that he'd never seen. Cautiously he made his way outside, beginning to get used to the feel of how it was different (though he knew it would never feel right), and squinting against the light as he walked out of the main building. He'd spent his whole life either living under a dome, or on board ships or stations, so open sky, and horizon going on forever was something he'd never seen. He wasn't sure how it would be, and he knew damn well that he would struggle with it, but it didn't stop him.

Staring down at the ground as he walked up, he raised his head too quickly, and the information overload of what he saw become too much, and he gasped at the sensation, quickly dropping his head again, and breathing in deeply to calm himself. Maybe too much at first, but he was determined.

"It will be easier if you sit." Came a voice from off to one side. Matter of fact. "Orthostatic hypotension is common."

After space travel, and he was drunk.

He was a lot less drunk than he had been. It was amazingly how walking in 1g, and having several shocks thrown at you sobered you up. Later? He was making no promises. That gin would go down well later, as he tried to obliterate what he learned in order to get home. It might work.

"Orthostawhatsit?" he asked, though sitting down seemed like a really good idea, and he did just that, feeling a little less sick as he did so. It would take a while to get used to having nothing overhead.

"All the blood is in your legs," River sat up and gave the man sitting not far from her a considering look.

"It will make you dizzy."

"Already there, sweetheart," he said, closing his eyes for a minutes just to try and get control of his body again. Mars Navy sometimes played about with 1G, ready for a fight with Earth, and the Marine Corps routinely trained in it, but he was just a pilot. He could take higher gravity than this, but only for short periods of time, and only while juiced to the gills. Being here, straight after chasing Eros that pushed the crew of the Roci to almost 20G, meant that every part of him ached.

"It's more that everything feels really heavy right about now." An understatement. "And the sky... well, that's a sight, admittedly."

"An ocean of sky." River agreed laying back down to look at the clouds again, was it a horse? No, a boat. She smiled.

"You are thinking too hard." It was going to give her a headache. "Sky is for enjoying, not thinking."

Okay. Metaphysical crap was not what he needed to be thinking about when he was still trying to absorb all that had happened. The thought of combining oceans and sky was just making his head hurt.

"Yeah, I do that," he admitted. One of the side effects of having isolated himself for far too long was it left him too much time to think. "Just... never seen the sky like this before." Ever. Of course it was shown in pictures, but living under domes affected the whole horizon thing.

"It can be disconcerting," she agreed and and hand reached out to pat awkwardly at whatever part of him was within reach.

"But you will adjust."

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[GP/EP] Check-In Day

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