once more with feeling [act 3]

[stagemanagers]

You awake in an unfamiliar bed.

It’s comfortable enough, sure, but it’s certainly not yours. The room, too, is unfamiliar, especially in such heavy darkness. There seems to have been a great effort put into making it a livable space, with fuzzy rugs laid over linoleum, beds arranged as best to fit (and one bunk bed per dorm, rip whoever has the bottom bunk), and a single desk. You've also got individually labelled trunks; if you look inside yours, you'll find a yearbook with mostly blank pages, as well as a few with some interesting information. But even with all these changes it’s clear this room started it’s life as a classroom, every window hidden behind heavy dark green curtains.

To add to the strangeness of it all, your clothes have been swapped for some kind of uniform. It, though fitting your body perfectly, might feel a bit odd to some of you, as the body you have isn’t quite the same as it was before you mysteriously fell unconscious. The other important thing to note is the people in the other beds around you, all wearing the same color-coded uniform.

The hallway outside the dorms is narrow but well-lit, with fresh white walls and some scattered posters advertising some kind of midweek club meeting. The hallway goes on until, for the more contemporary of you, the pieces start to fall together as to your location: a school. Once you leave your rooms you’re free to wander as you wish but pinned up on a corkboard just outside the cafeteria there’s framed information that you might find helpful. If you explore further into the other rooms, in fact, you'll see there's an identical copy outside all of them.

In the lobby there are linoleum floors and fluorescent lighting, and a pair of glass doors that appear to lead outside. You can see out of both of them that the sun is shining brightly and there’s definitely more to see in the distance but the glass is unbreakable; you can't get out that way right now. A rolling metal sheet blocks off the hallway to the west. For the moment, both doors leading outside are locked.

It looks like you’re stuck. But hey - at least you aren’t alone.

Comments

Rules

[whatyouwant]

[Elle hadn't actually noticed the rules until then. She stops and squints at them.]

Um, that for sure says we get out if we kill someone and..."avoid detection"? What, like get away with it?

[themuseabandonsyou]

I guess so? [ Okay, so he hasn't forgotten how to read, that's reassuring, but also this woman seems to be having the same problem with what's going on here that he does. ] But that's - that doesn't make sense. Why would they think any of us would kill anybody?

[ Never mind the question of if they 'avoided detection', how would the school know they did it to kick them out? ]

[whatyouwant]

Maybe it's some kind of prank?

[She shrugs, and fixes him with a smile and sticks out her hand.]

I'm Elle, by the way. Elle Woods!

[themuseabandonsyou]

[ Orpheus takes one last sidelong glance at the sign before shrugging as well and giving Elle his full attention. It's... probably fine? No one's going to kill anyone here, so why worry about it? He shakes her hand and smiles, still looking pretty concerned but trying to shake it off. ]

I'm Orpheus. It's nice to meet you!

[whatyouwant]

Nice to meet you too!

[If there's one thing Elle is good at it's compartmentalizing! now is the time for meeting people, worry time is later.]

Where are you from?

[themuseabandonsyou]

Oh, um. The town I live in is small enough that it doesn't really have a name. We just call it the railway stop.

[ And it might kind of exist in a weird liminal space, but Orpheus has never questioned it all that hard. People come and go and never stay for long, with a few exceptions. ]

What about you, though? Where are you from?

[whatyouwant]

That sounds so nice! I love small towns. [She genuinely seems like she's telling the truth.]

I'm from Malibu, so like the opposite of a small town.

[themuseabandonsyou]

I like it there! People are always passing through, and I work at the only bar in town, so I get to meet all sorts.

I've never been to Malibu, though. [ Or heard of it, but geography's not his strong suit anyway. ] What's it like, aside from being big?

[whatyouwant]

It's beautiful! Right by the ocean, the weather's almost always perfect, lots of people and shops to go to. I love it so much.

[Elle looks more than a little wistful.]

When we get out of here you should for sure visit.

[themuseabandonsyou]

What, really? [ Orpheus looks really surprised by that. ] Even - in the past few years? The weather, I mean. The seasons aren't all wrong?

[ As far as Orpheus knew, the problems with the weather had been happening everywhere, for almost as long as he could remember. Where is Malibu? ]

[whatyouwant]

[Elle is a little confused. Why would the weather be the same in Malibu as where he lives? Surly he can't be in the same area if he'd never heard of the city before.]

You mean like global warming? I mean summers have been getting a little hotter, and they say we might be seeing more wildfires in the next few years, but the seasons are still mostly the same.

Is it that bad where you are?

[themuseabandonsyou]

Sort of?

[ He's never heard what's going on called 'global warming' before, but that's one way to put it, sure. ]

My entire life, winter's been getting longer and colder, and summer's been getting shorter and hotter, and spring and fall barely happen at all anymore. I thought it was the same everywhere. But it's not like that in Malibu?

[whatyouwant]

[Elle shakes her head.]

We're pretty far south, so the summer's long and the winters are pretty mild. What country do you come from?

[themuseabandonsyou]

I'm from the United States, down in the southwest?

[ He sot of assumed Elle was from the States too, by the accent, but if she's from far south enough that the seasons are still okay then maybe she's not? ]

Where's Malibu, exactly?

[whatyouwant]

That's super weird. Malibu is in southern California, just north of LA.

[She takes another look at his outfit and squints slightly.]

Super weird question: what year is it?

[themuseabandonsyou]

Really? Southern California's okay?

[ That's strange. He feels like he would've heard about it if somewhere so close by weren't being ravaged by the weather like everywhere else. Elle asks him another question before he can dwell on it, though. ]

It's 678.2. I think it's Skirophorion? But keeping track of the months has been kind of hard recently. There's been a lot happening. Why?

[whatyouwant]

[Okay, that...explains it?]

Okay, weird. So I'm from the year 2007 and as far as I know America wasn't even called America until, like, some Italian dude found it in the 1400's.

[themuseabandonsyou]

What? Are you - you're from the future?

[ A really long way in the future? That's somehow even more confusing than everything else happening, and Orpheus just stares at her, trying to make sense of things and completely missing that she didn't include the Olympiad in the year as he does so. ]

I mean, I think the United States have only been the United States for about 200 years? But I didn't, um, pay much attention in school.

[whatyouwant]

Wha-

[Okay, she didn't pay that much attention in history either, but she did pay enough attention to know something is wrong here.]

Okay, something weird is happening with...time?

[themuseabandonsyou]

Oh.

[ Well, at least he's not the only one confused by all of this! ]

But how? I don't think even the gods can do much to the flow of time.

[whatyouwant]

Gods? As in multiple?

[Maybe he's one of those polytheist she heard about in her sophomore religions class?]

[themuseabandonsyou]

Yes? There's a lot of them? Do you not... know about them?

[ Orpheus is vaguely aware that there are people and places in the world that don't worship the Olympians and their retinue, but the idea of someone avoiding them entirely is truly foreign to him, especially if they're from California. But something really weird is going on here, so he goes on to clarify. ]

There's the Olympians, and then the cthonic deities and the gods of the sea, and a few others that don't fit into any of those categories.

[whatyouwant]

I know about the Greek gods like Zeus and all that, but they aren't, like real.

[themuseabandonsyou]

What? Yes they are. My mom is one? And Mister Hermes looked after me when she left.

[whatyouwant]

...Okay, either you're messing with me, or something seriously freaky is going on here.