redshift: tdm #1.

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Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

a. virtual reality.

You’ve been in too long and you know it. You’ve been in too long and you know it. You’ve been in too long--

The day is bright, the air is clear, and Anchor is in the middle of a festival.

"Isn’t this wonderful?" A passerby beams at you, and you have to admit, it is. You're not tired or in pain. Your clothes are clean and you feel refreshed, maybe for the first time in a long time.

In the plaza at the bottom of the city, spilling over into the park it surrounds, are people celebrating the new arrivals. Fireworks crackle to life above the park’s trees, sending little thunderclaps of sound echoing upward along with the cheerful music being played by a band on the plaza.

On the upper levels, in the entertainment district, the shops and restaurants are all operating in full swing, offering free samples, free drinks, and free merchandise. There are coupons galore being handed out, everything from a discounted 45-minute session at one of Anchor's three spas to a solo hour in the VR environmental simulation chamber.

The agricultural centers have contests for the biggest and best quality plants, baked goods, wines, and animals. On every level there are exhibitions of that district's specialties.

"Isn’t this wonderful?" A passerby beams at you, and you stop a moment to watch them pass. You could swear you've seen them somewhere before.

Trying to talk to the people around you only seems to get limited, cheerful responses. If you watch, they don't go far, walking back and forth to the same points along the breezeway or turning into businesses and out of sight before they walk by you again with a friendly greeting and some bit of rote dialog. The songs start to repeat. The food and drinks all taste the same. The fireworks never stop.

By the time you've noticed all of this, you've noticed something else, too. There are others like you here. People, god let them be real. They stick out once you look for them, because like you, they’re the only ones not constantly smiling.

b. lockdown.

You've finally escaped VR hell, and maybe you’re exploring the agricultural levels of the colony. Maybe you're preparing to explore the surface, or you're trying to program different songs into the music bots in one of the empty restaurants, or you're poking around one of the nonfunctional spas. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, it’s interrupted.

The lights blink out, then turn on again, the bright red emergency bulbs washing everything with eerie light as the bulkhead doors come slamming down all across the colony. Something or someone has triggered the lockdown procedure. Wherever you were exploring, you're now sealed in. For an unknown length of time. With whoever or whatever else is in there with you. Welcome to Anchor.

c. the red shift.

You've had it, or you just want to know what's out there. Either way, you're geared up (or not) and ready to get the hell out of Anchor. Unfortunately, the planet is far less hospitable than the abandoned colony behind you. In Anchor there are systems in place to keep out the dust, the toxins, and the radiation. Out here there's nothing but rough terrain and red-orange sand.

A drive in any direction will reveal nothing but mounds of red dirt and crumbling hills - and the occasional broken down vehicles and cracked helmets.

On the way back, you get your first taste of what the Anchored call the red shift.

Named for the colors that envelope individuals caught in the phenomenon, it surges up around you like a rising tide.

The world becomes distorted, warped, impossible to navigate. Hallucinations overpower you, both visual and auditory. Disorientation follows. We hope you went out in protective gear after all, because we'd hate to see you cooked alive by radiation so soon after arrival.

Even those wearing full protective gear aren't safe, however. The red shifts carry pieces of other universes, places and objects familiar or strange. Monsters you thought you'd never see again, or never wanted to see in the first place. If you're lucky, these bits of other places will disappear before they can hurt you (one way or another). If you're not, they might just stick around.

d. home away from home.

You've had a long, miserable day. Time to unwind at one of the few functioning entertainment facilities — the creatively named "Rusty Chain" bar. Its (unfriendly) robot bartender can only make you a tequila sunrise, and might get testy if you climb behind the bar, but it's worth getting a few synthesized Maraschino cherries thrown at you to try some of the other synthetic booze back there. There's a lot of it. Maybe you want to play bartender yourself for a while. Why not?

Someone else's favorite mediocre songs from another universe play from the broken music bots on repeat. There's a pool table with holographic balls that flash different colors after being hit by a laser-tipped cue, and a bizarre, violent interpretation of foosball that's closer to foos-battle. Each player controls their team via old-style arcade controls, attacking and defending each other. The goal is to get a holographic bomb into the other players base.

There are also darts. Which are just regular darts. Sometimes you don’t mess with tradition.

Navigation.

Comments

👻 arrival.

[substances]

[A month and a half is, by no means, the longest that Klaus has gone without seeing Ben. Hell, Klaus has had ongoing benders way longer than that, spans of time where he never even came up for air, spans of time he doesn't even remember or keep track of. But this is definitely the longest he's ever gone sober without Ben. In fact, he usually can't get rid of Ben after he's even vaguely considered being sober. Ben hangs around him like an overgrown Jiminy Cricket, with that calm judgmental face and his arms crossed and his brows furrowed just a little.

So when he sees Ben wandering around a breezeway, his hand trailing along the cement wall next to him, with anything but a judgmental look on his face but one that's kind of blank and emotionless, like he's in shock, Klaus thinks he's imagining things.

Immediately, he breaks into a quick jog fueled by a lurch of relief in his chest and gut that he would never admit to without a shot of tequila or a full joint. Tacky beaded sandals he'd gotten from one of the shops in Hadriel slapping away on his feet, and catches up with his brother. By the time he reaches him, he's panting a little, his forehead is damp with sweat, and he doesn't even bother reaching out to grab at his shoulder because he's so used to Ben being intangible. It doesn't occur to him that Ben's fingertips aren't slipping right through the concrete.]

Oh my god Ben! Ben! Hey man, wait up, where the hell have you been?

[benhargreeves]

[ He hears the slap of sandals as Klaus catches up to him, but it isn't until he speaks that Ben pays any attention. As soon as he hears his brother's voice, Ben turns, sees Klaus there, looking winded. He seems lucid and steady on his feet, but Ben doesn't actually know, can't actually feel how he is, or is not. Which is not a sense he'd really realized he had, until just this second, when it is no longer there.

Ben doesn't bother answering Klaus; he assumes, understandably, that Klaus had showed up here at precisely the same time that he did, directly from their botched attempt at time travel. Where he's been is not the important thing, right now. What's important is confirming that this is real.

Without preamble, Ben reaches out and grabs Klaus's wrist. His hand does not go through. He can feel warmth from Klaus's skin, the faint movement from his pulse. He sees that his fingers are indenting Klaus's flesh slightly; a few seconds late he realizes maybe he's holding on too tight and relaxes his grip. But there it is. The important information, conveyed in a single gesture.

This isn't like when he'd hit Klaus, when he'd managed to pull Diego out of harm's way. He'd been reaching across a great distance, then, in moments of panic and absolute need. And even in those moments, it hadn't felt like being alive.

There's more context he needs to give, and does so, without bothering with extraneous details. ]

At the decontamination, there were people talking to me. They could see me.

[substances]

[Now that he's up closer and can see Ben's face more clearly, it's really easy to tell that there's something seriously wrong. Or at least off, because Klaus is used to that inscrutable Ben-face, the one with the slightly furrowed brows and contemplative mouth. Up close, he can see the blankness, the way Ben is just a little dead behind the eyes (haha) and his mouth is a little slack. Klaus' eyebrows draw together a little in the center, and he bites his lower lip as Ben looks at him for a second and then reaches out and grabs his wrist.

Klaus has felt contact with Ben before - Ben punched him in the face, Ben helped get Diego out of the rubble, Ben stepped into the real world and saved all their asses through Klaus somehow in that theatre. But this is completely different. Those times, Ben had felt like a solid, cold presence, like something foreign and non-human. It wasn't as bad as it would've been if the ghost touching him was anyone but Ben, but it still wasn't...comfortable or comforting or like, human.

But this is. Ben's fingers are warm and solid and Klaus isn't expending any energy to keep them that way. Ben's fingers are squeezing his wrist, and he's squeezing too hard, it hurts and Klaus can feel the small bones in his wrist shifting under the grip and oh fuck. He laughs, he can't help it, he just starts laughing softly even as Ben's fingers relax. Klaus just takes the opportunity to turn his hand and pull Ben's over closer to him, holding it in one hand and prodding at the center of his palm with the other, fingers gently poking at Ben's distinctly warm, solid, slightly soft, undeniably alive flesh.

When Ben speaks, his voice hushed and without the calm confidence he usually speaks with, Klaus' head jerks up and he makes eye contact.]

Seriously? Ben...Ben I think...

[Shifting, he slides his fingers down to Ben's wrist and presses his thumb against the spot where blood would pulse under the skin if Ben were alive. And it pulses. There's blood pumping, his heart is working, he's-]

Ben, you're alive.

[benhargreeves]

[ For a while there, in the first year or so after he died, Ben had imagined what he would do if he was somehow brought back. It didn't seem impossible, yet. He could still talk to Klaus, and the impossible happened in their lives every day. They might come across a supervillain's lab with a resurrection machine, or Reginald would pull some new trick from his sleeve. He'd taken a while to realize that his father wasn't all-powerful, couldn't reverse death. He'd taken longer still, to accept that Reginald hadn't even tried.

All that was a long time ago; now, standing here, with Klaus feeling his pulse and looking at him in round-eyed wonder, Ben still can't accept it. Part of his brain recognizes what's happening to him - that he's shocked, disbelieving, a kind of reverse of the denial people experienced at the sudden loss of a loved one. But it doesn't feel real. Not remotely. ]

How...?

[ He puts his free hand up on Klaus's shoulder, partly to confirm (again) that he really is solid, and partly because his knees have gone unsteady without his permission. His mouth is so dry, which is not normal - not that he can really remember what normal felt like just yet.

Ben is too far gone to notice or worry about the rasp coming into his voice, the tense emotion even as he tries to reason his way through this, figure it out. Once he understands it, he thinks, he'll be okay. ]

Is it, um, a simulated reality? Or some kind of illusion?

[ Because it can't be that this is happening. He can't let himself think even for a second that he is actually alive, if that's just going to get taken away again. ]

[substances]

[Klaus barely remembers those early days - when he'd first seen Ben after he died, it was while he was sobering up from a weeks-long bender following his death. Desperate to not see Ben the way the other ghosts had looked, so angry and hurt and injured and screaming and shouting, he'd just tried to block the world out as much as possible. Losing Five and Ben had been too much, he hadn't been able to hold it together, had just kept throwing himself deeper and deeper into oblivion until there were no pills or pot or powders or needles left to lose himself in.

And then he'd tried to get clean, when Ben hadn't shown up looking like a horrorshow. That hadn't lasted long.

So now, he's feeling more than a little numb, more than a little overwhelmed, and the feeling of it is so unexpected, unprecedented (the Hargreeves kids don't usually get nice things, people just don't come back from the dead, and yet here he is with two lost siblings that both returned) that he can't quite tell if it's a good feeling or a bad one. He just knows his heart is pounding and he keeps forgetting to breathe as he feels that pulse under his thumb and then Ben's hand coming to his shoulder, hanging onto him for balance while he talks in a raspy emotional voice.]

I don't think so. There...there was a weird simulated reality thing earlier...I was there, but it wasn't like this, I'm out of it, so...

[He only realizes when he hears how choppy and broken up his voice is that he has tears running down his face, and then he's lifting both hands, wrapping them firmly around Ben and pulling him in close, pressing his face into Ben's shoulder.]

Ben...Ben Ben Ben, I missed you, man.

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben has been by his brother's side this last decade and more, and knows better than anyone else what Klaus has been through, how close his sadness is beneath the pretense of carefree, manic happiness. So it's nothing new, to see Klaus suddenly crying. That is, unfortunately, all too familiar. Sometimes, Klaus would cry about things that Ben could see and hear; sometimes, he would cry over ghosts or memories that Ben could only imagine.

But it's been a while since Klaus cried about him, and much, much longer still since anyone had hugged Ben. It takes his breath away. The warmth and pressure of it, Klaus's gangly arms wrapping around him and pulling him in tight. Ben's breathing becomes ragged right away, but it's a few moments before he lifts his arms and grabs big handfuls of the back of Klaus's jacket, hugging back.

(Since, after all, this must be something temporary, something he won't be allowed to keep, he needs to do this while he can. How many times has he wished he could hug his brother, in the years since he died?)

Ben lets his eyes slide shut, exhaling, shaky and sharp. He had never been able to cry the way Klaus does - so easily, so freely - but he is shaking slightly and the irregularity of his breathing betrays him as the numbness slides away, leaving such a chaotic tangle of emotions that he can't hope to separate them all out. Ben swallows, still holding Klaus tightly to his chest. ]

You- you saw me a few hours ago.

[ The arrival procedures couldn't have taken any longer than that, and Ben didn't think he'd been wandering all that long. The reasons behind him choosing to say that are complex, emotional. He thinks Klaus means he missed having him alive like this, and Ben wants to quash that hope, lower those expectations, because he knows down in his bones that this won't last. That would be too good to be true, and since when has that ever been what happens for them? So he wants to deflate this balloon of happiness before Klaus gets too invested in having a whole and alive Ben that he can hold. ]

[substances]

[Ben has seen him at his worst, has seen all the worst things that have happened to him, and that he's done, since he left home. So there's very little that Klaus is ashamed of Ben seeing anymore, and the least of those things is a few tears when he gets his dead brother back. Even if it's only for a little while, the ability to hug Ben again is worth crying over, a bit.

It's just that Ben's death has never really been something Klaus could process, not with Ben's ghost hanging around whenever he was even the least bit sober. He'd never had a chance to grieve or feel the loss of him, and so now he's thrilled, ecstatic, but it still isn't really sinking in, exactly what it means. What sort of hopeless things Ben might be thinking about how long this will last, what will happen if it stops being true. Right now, Klaus is just enjoying hugging his brother, squeezing his body, feeling the way he shakes a little, the way he can feel his hitching breath.

Even as Ben says he saw him just a few hours ago, Klaus is rubbing Ben's back, touching him to affirm that he's solid. But he makes a noise of protest in his throat, shakes his head a bit.]

No...I didn't...you weren't...unless you...I didn't see you when I was in Hadriel...oh my god, were you there and I just didn't see you?

[He pulls back then, just a little, to look down at Ben, eyes rimmed red and a little glassy, cheeks still wet. His expression is full of distress at the idea of having just...missed Ben somehow, of being unable to see him when he was there.]

[benhargreeves]

When you were in what?

[ Just because he had heard those others talking about the other worlds they were brought to before this one doesn't mean Ben imagines that could have happened to his brother. Not when Klaus looks, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as he had the last time Ben had seen him. Besides, surely he would know, would feel it, sense it somehow. Ben had been able to tell right away, when Klaus returned from Vietnam, that time had passed, that he'd changed in some fundamental way that Ben hadn't been there to witness.

(That had scared him so much - Klaus was his one real connection to the living world, to his family, and he'd been gone. Ben couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so untethered.) ]

Is that someplace here? Like a club or...?

[ It's only natural that Ben assumes whatever place Klaus is talking about was a bar or restaurant or some other location where Klaus had been spending time. Maybe he had shown up earlier in the day...

But that thought lodges free a possibility - one that has Ben's heart racing before he fully examines it, turns it over in his mind. If Klaus hadn't arrived at the exact same moment as him, there is no saying how long he's been here... ]

[substances]

Hadriel.

[Klaus repeats it, brows furrowed, his heart pounding. There isn't much about home that Klaus missed while he was in Hadriel, because home isn't really somewhere he's felt all that connected to, even with the recent attempts at something like reconciliation he and his siblings have been doing. But the one thing that he had consistently and pretty seriously missed had been Ben. It never really registered, at home, how much comfort it had given him to know that Ben was around, visible or not, watching his back and gearing up for the next nagging session.]

I was gone again, Ben. For like. A couple months this time.

[When Ben asks if it was someplace here, a club or something, Klaus is shaking his head already, his hands squeezing at Ben's sides.]

No, man, it was another world. This jungle city with gods and a robot war and...and people. Like us. From other places.

[People he'd made friends with. People who he abruptly realizes he misses a lot.]

Fuck. I wonder if any of them ended up in this shithole too. God.

[He leans in again, and hugs Ben tight, squeezing around his shoulders.]

But I missed you, the whole time I was there.

[benhargreeves]

[ Unlike (it's always seemed) the rest of their siblings, Ben has a pretty impeccable bullshit radar when it comes to Klaus. Some of that is from being dead, sure, but it had been true even when he was alive. Ben is insistent on that. He knows Klaus, and he knows the way Klaus lies. It's not so much one single tell as a combination of small signs. And right now, bizarre as it is, Klaus doesn't seem like he's lying.

For one thing, he wouldn't make up gods and a robot war. For another, as soon as he's halfway through his explanation, Ben realizes two important facts: that there's no possible gain that Klaus could get from this lie, and that what he's saying sounds like what the others in the decontamination had been talking about. Like what the information at the orientation had said about people arriving here. ]

How is that...

[ Ben sucks in a little gasp of surprise as Klaus pulls him into another tight hug. He'd forgotten how good that felt - to be held. To have a body. His knees are back to feeling weak again and he actually shifts some of his weight against Klaus, because otherwise he's pretty sure he'll fall over. ]

I think I need to...

[ It's all too much to process at once - being alive somehow, being in another world or dimension or planet or whatever, discovering another gap of months that Klaus was away from him. All this on top of what had just happened (from his perspective); Vanya having powers and trying to destroy the world and Klaus channeling him and the fucking apocalypse and trying to time travel. Ben's head is spinning with it, because he's part of it now, a participant not just an observer. ]