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Daycycle 103 [ August 14 - August 20 ]

daycycle 103

[Aug 14 - Aug 20]

Early Morning [0800 - 0900] — All Troubleshooters Report for Duty
Samantha "Root" Groves and Cisco Ramon, have been selected for today’s mission. Details are below:

"Confirm circuit breakers are functioning properly by creating short circuits to test them."

Please debrief the computer on the status of your mission by the end of the Daycycle here.

Morning & Afternoon [0900 - 1600] — Service Firm Positions
All Troubleshooters not assigned a mission should report to their Service Firm for their daily duties, unless specifically assigned a different shift.

Evening [1600 - 2200] — Citizen Improvement
All Alpha citizens are encouraged to better themselves through Alpha’s wide variety of educational, entertainment and cultural opportunities offered each evening. Attending these sanctioned events are not mandatory, but is highly encouraged by The Computer. Citizens choosing not to take advantage of these opportunities, have a growing number of other options available to them in how to spend their hard earned credits and free time.

Tonight’s event will be at 1900 in the Commissary and will be hosted by the Amateaur Dramatics Group. You're invited to come see the one woman show that Mind Control called too "boring" to put on early morning television.

Specials Event - All Specials with knowledge of Specials HQ have been invited to a surprise party to celebrate wanted fugitive, Dick Grayson's, seventeenth birthday.

Alpha Curfew Restrictions
All Alpha citizens should be in their quarters within the Wagon Wheel by 2200, unless they’ve been given permission from a GREEN or higher clearance level citizen. Sleeping Aid gas is dispelled each night in the Wagon Wheel at 2200 to assist citizens in getting a productive sleeping period.

Confession Booths
There are hundreds of confession booths available around Alpha Complex if a citizen would like to communicate directly with the computer. Please use these confession booths to report mission statuses, report treason or terrorist acts, unregistered mutants, confess your trespasses against Alpha Complex, request propaganda or speak with Your Friend, The Computer, at any time.

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Stiles had lingered in the room after the cafeteria had stopped serving evening meals, having seen the group of people who had come in to put up the makeshift stage, the tables pulled aside, while those still there had been asked to assist in rearranging the chairs into rows. He'd been hoping to slip away afterwards, nothing being sold as 'too boring' sparked any interest for him at all, but he hadn't had much luck when one of the drama club members had stood by the doors ambushing people to fill the seats.

Which meant he's stuck. Waiting around the seats furthest from the stage, while other crew members finished setting up. There are other people there, some who were asked to stay, while a few are genuinely interested in the show, theater geeks exist everywhere, all finding seats around the room before the lights are dimmed. With his seat though, he could get away with spacing out, and nobody would care.

There's a curtained off area serving as backstage, and from where he's sitting, he notices something about the props laid out for the show... is that a muppet? He really should have left when he'd had the chance.

Edited 2016-08-18 04:06 (UTC)

Stiles isn't the only one who doesn't like puppets, muppets, wooden dummies. They're all a little creepy as far as Buffy is concerned. She's really, really not interested in theatre or anything billed as boring, but she is interested in what passes for citizen improvement here. Since she has no interest in the show or theatre in general, she does some wandering and picks a wall to lean against far from the stage. The muppet catches her attention right about the time it does Stiles and she sees that look he's giving it.

"I don't get it. Who finds those things cute? Anything made of wood or stuffed shouldn't talk. Did we learn nothing from Chucky?"

"I hadn't even been thinking about Chucky," Stiles says, face twisting into an expression of distaste. The last time he'd found a spooky doll, he'd ended up chased by a coyote. "Which just means there are too many examples to choose from."

"You got rounded up to watch this play too?"

See! Puppets, muppets, spooky dolls and dummies can not, under any circumstances be trusted! "It never ends well," she says with a head shake that conveys her confidence in this statement.

She shrugs a bit at that. "I figured I'd see what the whole 'citizen improvement' thing was about." Yes, she uses air quotes. "I'm not a big fan of mass improvement or theater, but I heard the dance party was cancelled and what else is a girl gonna do?"

"Speaking from personal experience?" Stiles asks, inquisitive. He'd believe it, if she'd said it was real. It wouldn't be the strangest thing, to have evil dolls and mannequins actually existing somewhere besides horror media.

"Unless you don't want to talk about it," he adds, like an afterthought.

The couple of seats he'd been keeping an eye on nearest the door are still available, so there's no real rush to get seated. Tilting his head, he settles back against the wall beside Buffy. "Puppet shows are like torturing yourself though"

"If the glitches can be trusted," Buffy responds. "I mean, if they're memories and not glitches, I guess." And no one can tell them for sure whether they're real or not. She simply believes they are.

"Nah, I don't mind. There was a wooden puppet thing and a book that turned into a robot." She smiles at him. "It was only traumatic in that I never want to meet a dummy or robot again."

She smirks at that. "I'm pretty sure it's torture that has been employed by secret spy agencies for centuries. In fact, I'm pretty sure they invented puppet shows."

"If they're not, that's a lot of glitches," Stiles says, it's pretty clear he shares her opinion of them being real memories.

"So you've basically dealt with the real life version of a Transformer before." Which probably sounds cooler than it actually was, seriously, it sounds like Buffy's life is-- was a checklist of weird and wacky. And while she says it's mostly trauma-free, it's not like that's the sort of thing you want to share around. "On the bright side, I think the worst thing we have to worry about now is Skynet."

He bounces on his feet, stifling a laugh behind his hand. "I'm imagining an interrogation carried out entirely by finger puppets, and it's ridiculous."

"And that was freshman year," she grumbles. She's really grateful to have found someone that's like-minded on that. She doesn't acknowledge it as she's pretty sure that's treason, but then she's also not at all sure what isn't treason in this place.

She can't help but laugh at Stiles question and reference. "That's so much more badass than what I actually dealt with. Think... Jetson's Robot meets The Geek Squad crossed with The Exorcist. He wanted to take over the world." She grins, stifling a laugh when she says "Come with me if you want to live." Yeah, she gets the reference. "At least we'll know we know who to call."

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

"Ghostbusters." Yeah, she's going to go ahead and snicker at that.

"Use wooden dummies and your victims will offer to write answers out in their own blood."

Stiles coughs into his hand: to him, freshman year doesn't feel all that far off, though shit hadn't hit the fan till halfway through tenth grade so he's certainly hasn't had to live with things going on as long. "Lifestyle changes, man." He sympathizes. He can't imagine having to live with it all the way through high school, and afterwards, however long that was until they'd found their way here.

"Goop all over," he wrinkles his nose. The Exorcist always makes him think of pea soup vomit. That's never a good combo, no matter what else is involved. "Ugh."

He gives her a wide smile when she gets the references, one with more sincerity than politeness required, and it only brightens when she mentions the Ghostbusters, though it dies quickly enough with the mention of dummies.

"Oh god, I would. Well that, or cry. I can be a messy crier," he says slowly, grimacing. "Maybe that's what this play will be about, the written confessions of people trying to get away from the puppets."

To Buffy, Freshman year seems forever ago, but she's also twenty five and feels like she's lived several lifetimes. "Here, definitely." It's such a part of her life now, she's not sure how she'd cope with actual normal. Some days she still wants normal, but she's not sure she could handle normal.

She laughs at that. "That particular time was relatively goop free, but goop is a theme." Unfortunately.

It's good to find someone who gets references. In this place, it's not necessarily a given. She didn't mean to kill the mood.

"I'm not sure whether that would be horrifying or amusing. I guess it'd depend on the confessions?"

"Working as a cog in the machine," he says. "Hard to say which is more of an adjustment." How exactly can he say maybe running for your life from things that want to eat your liver every once in a while could be preferable without it being taken as a slight against the Computer? He knows he's not as careful as he should be, when it comes to talking about things, but it's hard.

He just nods in commiseration, there's not much he can add to that.

And they're willing to acknowledge them too. She hadn't so much killed the mood, as introduced an idea that is beyond horrifying. Stiles can imagine it all too easily. "I was thinking along the lines of getting stuck in the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland forever," he admits. "And you're just trapped forever as the springs wear down, and the sound starts warping." At which point, he would say anything to get off - so the confessions would likely just be all over the place.

The lights dim, and the rest of the drama club start ushering people into the seats. "We're about to find out."

A yellow suited lady takes the stage, a cloth covered bundle in her other hand, from which she pulls out several poles and cardboard to create a stage - the words Punch and Judy* printed across the top.

((ooc: *video link))

"I think I'm pro pre-adjustment," she responds, not entirely sure what's treason and slighting the computer either. It's very hard and Buffy hasn't gotten the hang of it yet.

Buffy makes a face at his idea. "That is truly horrifying. I never understood that ride." She shudders a little. Buffy would probably start destroying Disneyland if that were the case.

Her brow furrows and she gives the stage her attention for a moment. Her look turns to one of horror when she realizes what the lady is setting up. "Things are so much worse than we realized. I know these guys."

The puppets she means. She shakes her head a little. "This isn't good. Punch is a giant bully."

Stiles nods slowly. "There certainly is more of it to work from." He still doesn't know enough about the City, only what he's been told, in the short conversations with others, and the propaganda videos, and what he's seen for himself. He doesn't like it.

Actually, that would be a sound strategy wouldn't it? Using a theme park as cover for any alphabet soup organization that needed a place to quietly make people disappear. Make up some bullshit excuse to give someone free tickets - and they'll deliver themselves. He shakes that thought out of his head. "Kids somehow like it, I would've wanted to splash people."

"With a name like Punch, it's kind of advertised," he worries at his lip, looking over at her. "How bad does it get?"

Buffy isn't a fan either; she hasn't been here much longer than Stiles, but she's seen enough to know that things are good here for them, possibly for anyone.

It really is. It's high level evil is what it is, like Big Bad stuff. Suddenly, she's grateful that she never actually had to go kill Disneyland. She smiles at Stiles' confession. "I wanted to go swimming, but the robotics creeped me out." At least she thinks she did. She is getting a few glitches that feature Disneyland now that it's been mentioned and pondered on.

She nods in agreement then looks over at him. "If I'm glitching reliably, he kills people."

They're in trouble if this puppet act is a metaphor for life here.

There would go the stuff of dreams, but if Stiles had to be honest, something else would have taken it's place soon enough. Though at the idea of swimming through the ride has him grinning. "You might have even been able to get through the whole thing before someone noticed."

He has to double take at that. "Murder's considered boring?" Stiles hisses, he looks back at the stage, and somehow, he can't quite look away from the trainwreck of the show.

On stage, the woman continues to narrate, the Punch puppet making it's merry way through the others. Some of them had been made to resemble well-known figures or wildlife around the City. With the Computer's editing of the play, certain puppets meet a much more grisly fate than they would have.

"Right? Particularly if I were stealthy, though I don't think I'm the best swimmer ever. Like dog paddler, but it's been a while, obviously, since I swam."

She tilts her head toward him in a sort of shrug. "I think that depends on who's doing it." If it's the computer, it's probably not considered murder. She imagines they'd rebrand it as rebooting or fixing a problem.

Yeah. They're in lots and lots of trouble. Buffy worries at her bottom lip. "Maybe we should be taking notes." Particularly about those that are being killed.

"Not drowning's the point." He wouldn't say it's like riding a bike, but you can't exactly unlearn it without outstanding circumstances.

He pauses. "I actually understand that kind of logic," he says, an undercurrent of unease running in his voice. The kind of logic where certain people can always be above the consequences of their actions, while being hypocritical enough to turn those same guidelines against others.

"The woman might share the script, if we manage to sit through the entire thing." It's not like it's illegal information or anything. He could pass it off as light reading, maybe. If no one looked at which pages were going to be dog-eared.

She frowns a bit, a little facial shrug. "Tell that to Michael Phelps," she says with a grin.

His comment has her side-eyeing him a little. "Don't make me start calling you Hitler," she jokes. "I think it's dangerous logic. " Of course, she lives in the same sort of world that Stiles does. It does depend on who is doing the killing and circumstances whether it's murder.

"I like how you think. We could be fans. Big fans. Maybe we want her to autograph it. We're going to study it and make certain we're being ideal citizens."

Stiles rolls his eyes good naturedly. "He's just an overachiever."

"If I had to choose a guy, I'll rather be Javert. He at least is just an idiot about following the letter of the law," he mutters back at her, wrinkling his nose. "Without jumping off the rooftops." Hitler is definitely not a name he wants connected to him in any way. "Anyway," he says with a shake of his head, "black and white's never worked out all that well for me." And yeah, just because he can agree that something is wrong on a certain level, it doesn't mean it wasn't necessary.

"It's research, we just want to fit in as best we can," Stiles says innocently. "Cultural development. I'll even sign up for the newsletter." Even if that means attending more performances in the future.

"Can't stand those guys," she jokes.

She grins, the slightest laugh bubbling out of her. She's quiet a moment, serious, before she responds. "I tried to make it work for me a couple of times, but it didn't. Not very well, anyway." She functions better and is happier with herself when she doesn't look at the world in black and white. Though, she does still have some firm boundaries for herself: no killing anything human. There are rules in place for that.

"I think you should do the talking." She's a horrible liar and he says that so convincingly.

And how many of those guys turn out to be assholes? Maybe high school isn't the best example - but he's only ever met two types: the ones who can effortlessly make you feel bad, or the ones who rub it in your face.

Leaning back into his chair, he nods slowly. "Even when they're throwing the rule book at you -" which had been something they'd tried, "right and wrong's complicated."

It helps, that it isn't exactly a lie lie. They are interested in the play, just not for the reasons the woman would think. She can make the assumptions for herself. "I can do that," he agrees, nodding.

She'd guess a vast majority. High school is where those guys get made. Maybe, if the world is lucky, they learn, but she knows enough to know that's not always the case.

She looks at him, quiet for a moment before nodding. "I think that's sort of the point of right though. If it's easy, it's probably not right. Or maybe I just make everything too complicated."

True enough. No--she's never even been good at the half lies.She's still not sure how her mom spent two years just not seeing the slaying thing. She'd been awful at partial lies, full lies, all lies. "I'll back you up," she promises. She's not going to leave him hanging there.

"Angst and self-recrimination definitely wouldn't be so popular," he jokes. If you never had to worry about making a wrong decision, because X is always wrong and Y is always right. You wouldn't even have to think too hard about what you do.

"Thanks," he says, giving her a slight smile. "Looking excited about it is going to be hard."

He pauses, realizing something: "By the way, I'm Stiles."

"And really, what would we be without that?" she jokes in return. Sometimes Buffy thinks that kind of simplicity would be nice. She remembers vividly the night she'd asked Giles to lie to her. He'd told her that the bad guys were always obvious by their black hats. The good guys wore white and they always won. She'd known then that it wasn't true, but it had been nice to pretend for just a little while.

That makes her laugh softly because, yes, it is.

Oh. Right. He actually gets her to blush a little at that. "I'm Buffy. It's nice to meet you, Stiles oh-partner-in-crime."

He pretends to think hard about the question. "Not happier, that's for sure." More self-assured, maybe? Or just following along with what's right in order to fit in and never be wrong? If that was even a functional system, it sounds too good to be true. Just look at what's happening here for prime example number one.

"Nice to meet you properly," he adds dryly.

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Daycycle 103 [ August 14 - August 20 ]

daycycle 103

[Aug 14 - Aug 20]

Open | Evening: Commissary

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