@john.jaqobis

[stabilis]

Hey, good news: I've got a quiz.

[ everyone loves online quizzes, right!! ]

Bad news: it's incredibly invasive and you probably won't want to answer it, but do me a favor and keep reading anyway.

We need to talk about our dreams. So far, we've got:

The dreams on October 5th. Already weird, but significantly weirder after our subconscious deep-dive. As far as I know there are 2 that have been shared between a few people, possibly a 3rd. If any of this sounds familiar, feel free to share with the class:

a) a group looking for a bridge and crossing it
b) being held in a facility full of sick people and getting stabby with a lab coat
c) being herded like cattle while strangers check your vitals

And then we've got the dreams pre-New Tokyo, which is where the insensitive quiz comes in. I want to correlate as much data as we can, but we can't do that without any data. I know most of us don't want to talk about what went down while we were under, and there isn't much I can do to change that. I'd offer to collect the information privately, or entrust it to someone people like more, but I don't think that'll work, either. We have no idea what we're looking for, so only putting a few eyes or perspectives on it is just going to put us at a disadvantage.

The best I can do is keep it anonymous. You can use THIS SURVEY to share whatever you're willing to share. Omit what you have to, but the more details we can get, the better our odds of finding patterns or keys. The survey won't collect your IDs and tracking's completely off. The catch is that the rest of the Displaced and a few friends at Morningstar will be able to see your answers — even without names attached, I know that's asking a lot. Give yourself a second to think before you hit submit.

For now, all I really want to figure out is whether the environments we encountered belonged to us and whether you'd class them as completely abstract dreams or slightly screwy memories. If we can place dibs on most of them, that's a start. If you want to share anything else, you'll get extra credit.

Last but not least: intellectual discussion and mystery solving is strongly encouraged, but dream shaming is strongly discouraged. Don't be a dick.

( OOC NOTES: This post is 100% for open discussion and threadjacking! Here's a link to the OCTOBER DREAMS descriptions and sign-ups for reference. Regarding SURVEYS, the top-level functions as an external "google form". Just C&P the form and reply to the top-level IC. All survey replies are completely anonymous, and all characters can view these answers.

All discussion must take place on the network post itself with character IDs attached. You cannot reply to the survey responses with free-for-all anonymous discussion. The mechanic is being used to make info sharing easier with sensitive details/private characters, not completely skirt around the network's "no anonymous" rule. Please use it in the spirit intended! )

Comments

[revlon]

[ EXCUSE ]

I did. But I didn't feel entirely like myself, either, if that makes sense.

[ It was her but it wasn't, either. Like a passenger. It's hard to recall the details of a dream so far gone, but some things remain stark in her memory. ]

And they might mean something. At the time, I'd wondered if I was remembering something about wherever we were held before arriving here. There were others in the room with me, I do know that.

[blyat]

yeah, makes sense
i wasnt alone either

[Not that he really knows how he felt, the memory too distant and murky to be certain. Like a curtain's pulled itself over his mind in the wake of their last ordeal within that manifested dream-world.]

kinda did seem like it was a time from before. my head was shaved, there was something in my arm. checking vitals?
i remember trying to look around, think i saw some writing on the wall

[revlon]

Mine was shaved, too, same as the others. But I couldn't tell you anything about the room we were in. It was just blank. And it changed at some point as well.

[ And so did I, she thinks. But that sounds mad, even to her. ]

What sort of writing?

[blyat]

[It changed? He wants to ask about that, but his attention's pulled further into recollection by that question.]

just a word, "project"
and a yellow symbol
its vague now. dunno. maybe i could draw it if i tried
but feels like the more i try to remember, the harder it gets

[revlon]

The nature of dreams.

[ Which is why what transpired on the train is so disconcerting. She remembers it like another life. ]

Could you try and draw it? We could cross-reference it with whatever is available online. It could be nothing, but after New Tokyo, I'm not so sure.

[blyat]

i can try
hold on

[Some time passes between this message and his next: he's used the implant to scrawl an image, like a virtual Paint tool, of what appears to be a vague shape. Its actual features are unclear, because Cain can't remember how it looked. What sticks out most prominently is the yellow at its center and the dark V cut down from it.]

could be better
wish id drawn it when i first woke up

[revlon]

It's all right, you didn't know. None of us did. We still bloody don't.

[ But she feels like this is an honest to God clue. ]

Perhaps @john.jaqobis can run a search for us. If anything remotely related comes up, it could jog your memory. And there may be others who had the same dream and remember different aspects of it, you never know.

[blyat]

sure, im game
cant hurt anything, right? maybe something will come out of it

[revlon]

We've been here a little over two months and have come no closer to understanding where we came from or how we ended up there to begin with. I'll take fuzzy dreams from three weeks ago over staying in the dark.

[blyat]

good point
has it seriously only been that long? fuck, feels like a lifetime
so many others cycling in and out since then too

[revlon]

We were the fifth transport and the most recent one was the tenth. It feels like ages because nothing has slowed down for us and our group practically hit the ground running with that nightmare of a ball.

Not to mention the bizarre skip in the calendar when we slipped in and out of the dreams.

pretend johnny is more prompt than me oops

[stabilis]

On it.

And speaking of having the same dream: ditto on the scalpel. Do you remember feeling

[ how to put it?? ]

Off? You know, outside of the obvious.

you are right on time

[revlon]

I'd said I didn't feel much like myself. Do you mean that or off in a different way?

[stabilis]

Sort of that. But do you mean yourself as in Peggy, or yourself as in whoever you were in the dream?

[revlon]

Both.

[ A beat. ]

I know that sounds mad. I can't explain it. They weren't my choices, my actions. And for a moment, it wasn't even my body. Does that make sense?

[stabilis]

Search results are a big fat nothing, by the way.

More specifically: no "projects" come up with a logo that even sort of matches up. I tried searching for the image key words on their own and got consistent hits on a few things, so let me know if any of these feel familiar:

- a LOT of really ugly plaid
- further fashion disasters
- this species of bird
- a toenail disease?? I'm no graphic designer, but that seems like a bad choice for a logo

[blyat]

hey, id wear those shoes
maybe its got somethin to do with the toenail disease

[lol.... end him]

[stabilis]

would toenail visuals help you nail it down? because the network's got em

[blyat]

nah, thanks
ill leave that to you

looks like somebody else has got the answer down below
that shaving cream art is familiar to me too

[strove]

Only that animal?

[Just covering her bases first.]

[stabilis]

[ a second to double check, ]

y.... es?

unless boxers with a cute elephant pattern count

@daisy.johnson

[evite]

[ daisy uploads a picture. it's a bathroom counter covered in shaving cream, where a careful hand has sketched out the image of said bird after a bad dream. ]

ding ding ding

[stabilis]

[ ok but ]

is that shaving cream?

[revlon]

Thank you, John.

[ Bypassing the mention of toenail disease, thanks. ]

Of all those results, the bird seems the most likely candidate for a logo. And it seems Ms Johnson has corroborated that theory below. And I believe I do recognise it — not from any dreams, but from my world.

[ She's travelled so often for her line of work, it's hard to narrow down when she might have seen a bit of flora or fauna in passing. With time and specifics, maybe. ]

[blyat]

you recognize it from your world? what is it?