Session 1

TBD. As you're keeping watch in de middle section, when you're near the door with your initials on it, in the corner fo your eye notice a flicker, coming from the door. When you turn to face it, there is nothing of it but everytime you are near it you get the same feeling, like it wants you to open it and explore the wonders inside it, just like everybody else. In the mean time, you also notice that big table in the middle of the room is full of food and beverages, some of them are your favorites, packed in front of one the chairs like they are put there for you exclusively. You notice the same thing in others chairs as well, presumably favorites of the crew.

"Theo, since you haven't opened your door yet, do you want to see if you can influence the contents? Wish really really hard for an armory and a hammock"

After saying this, Hariette will close her door and open it with something in mind, to see if she can influence the contents. Failing that, she'll start tidying it to see if she can find anything useful. It wouldn't be impossible to find some nutritional bars stashed away in some corner.

Walking back out of her room she says,

"Given we don't have any kind of rations, we're going to need to try the food sooner or later. There's protocol for tasting food on alien planets, I think we should follow that.", and she picks up a bottle of rootbeer from the seat and pops it open by hitting it against the table. She rubs a bit on her hand, and given no immeditate reaction, her lip, and tastes a small bit on her tongue, before finally taking a swig

Hariette. Your senses go wild as this is one of the greates rootbeers you've ever tasted. It's taste is so balanced that for a second you forgot that you're in this weird place, think about a time you've drunk a similar beer some time in the past. Your mood increases, but then you realize that the taste is not only similar, it is exactly the same as that the time you've drunk this, nothing is different. It's like you've returned to that moment.

"Mmm, it's always difficult to tell objectively, but I think this rootbeer is making me hallucinate slightly. It's way more nostalgic tasting than seems strictly natural..."

Cassiopeia shakes her head, trying to get a sense of what is what. "What is going on? This is bullshit. Look, there is no way this is happening."

She cranes her head up and screams at the ceiling, "I'm not playing your stupid game! Let me out of this!" She claws at her temples trying to take off the VR set that might be there. Of course, there is nothing there, so she grabs her favourite meal, a winter vegetable quiche and flings it into "her room".

Theo considers Hariette's suggestion about wishing for an armory of some kind stocked with weapons and ultimately decides the idea is worth a shot. Since the rooms the others have entered into seem to be related to past memories, he thinks of that time back on Thrombosis IV when his squad had just taken out the last insurgent cell and captured their weapons stockpile. Which, as it turned out, included a healthy supply of Thrombosian whiskey. Good times. With that image in mind, he opens the door...

A spark of an idea flashes before her as she sees her old wrist computer. Why not use it to figure out what was going on here? Were they in a hologram? None of it made much sense yet it was here and she was in it. It was a very powerful device and she knew this because she made it.

Leda sits on her old bed and grabs her trusty computer. She will hope to boot it up and run a calculation through it specifically the Handringsma Holographic Identity Theorem equation.

"Hey, Cass..." Hariette says sitting down at the table. "There's no sense freaking out... yet." She picks up a steak knife. "As long as we don't know what's going on, there's nothing we can do, so just... play along, ok?" As she says this, she holds up the very sharp knife, looking at herself in its deadly reflection, and then, wrapping it in a cloth napkin, slides it carefully in her sleave, and winks.

"Why would we play along?" Hiro says, closing the door to 'his' room without even entering it. Joining the others, he noticeably doesn't touch the food.

"Someone is fucking with us. In our heads." He touches his temple for effect. "Probably all connected to the same VR net or something, right? No way this shit is real. But how do we get out? How do we wake ourselves up?"

"Right now we don't know anything. Maybe we learn something if we play along. If we find out what they want, maybe we can get some leverage. But I don't think throwing the food around helps us. Not yet, anyways."

Hariette's grin fades as she becomes serious again

"Look, what has happened already? We were shown the dying soldier. A threat. Then the frozen aliens. Another threat - they have the technology to stop us, no matter what we do. But this latest thing, it's an olive branch. The overall message is, 'we can end you in a moment but we're choosing not to'. So, maybe it makes sense to play nice for a bit? We're not dead yet, but we could be, very easily. We need more information"

Hariette, you're a frickin' genius! 'Course you already knew that," Dayton adds with a chuckle as he surveys the armory. "I don't expect they'd be of much use if it came down to using 'em though. 'The Lord giveth and taketh away' and all that. But whatever it is seems to be reading our thoughts and replicating the things we're thinking of - consciously or subconsciously I guess."

Dayton leaves the room behind to join the others, eyeing the food. "I'm gonna have to double down on the IQ test theory. Like Hariette said, they've given us a number of prompts - threats, possible threats, carrots - and I imagine they're out there somewhere gauging our responses to see what we're all about. Are we reactive and violent, curious, easily lulled by shiny things. Hmm..." his sentence trails off as the mental gears turn.

CC frowns. She hates being called out on things, most especially when she might be in the wrong. "You could be right, TBD. But, should we be good little mice in the maze and hope we get a nice treat-treat for din-din? Or should we show them trust is earned, and cooperation will only follow then?" She smiles innocently at the heavily armed man.

"We could go full Gandhi and see what happens..." Dayton muses aloud. "Just take a seat and not participate. Demonstrate that we understand what's going on," he gives a subtle shrug to indicate that's a maybe, rather than a certainty, "by changing the rules of engagement."

After a bit of a pause he adds, "But I'm not a xenoscoiologist, just the hired muscle, so take that for what it might or might not be worth."

She had made her wrist computer for a science project in the young and gifted program competition. It won first prize and it became one of her most prized possessions. It was them that she knew she would be an engineer, and never wavered from that course. It had been used to run her Handringsma Holographic Identity Theorem equation. Someone would make a hologram and give her the coordinates and amplitude indices and her computer would identify the holographic object. It could even tell if it was fake and not a hologram at all.

The best part though was that it could allow a wavefront to be recorded and later re-constructed with the exact same amplitudes and frequencies. It might be able to help figure out what was causing the phenomena on the ship and if time was oscillating at different rates.

"I'm a xenobiologist, not a psychologist. But. Ok, you're wandering along and you fall into a Snarkak den", Hariette says, in a tone that suggests this isn't an entirely hypothetical scenario for her. "Your odds of survival are down to whether you've found a happy Snarkak, or an angry Snarkak. And, supposing you've had the incredible luck to find a happy Snarkak, your job is to keep the Snarkak as happy as possible until you can get away. I feel like we might be dealing with a Snarkak here. Except instead of being 10ft tall and mostly teeth, it can read your mind and freeze you in time."

Hariette shrugs, taking another swig of her rootbeer.

"But maybe all that means is I need to spend more time with people and less time with Snarkaks"

Listening to the conversation but not participating in it, Hiro checks each of the initialed doors, one after the other, to see what he finds within...

Hiro. You check the doors one by one, seeing your crew's personal rooms. You get a sense you hadn't before, a sense of understanding as you witness your crew's deepest, most personal belongings. You see how Leda's busy and fragmented mind corresponds to her physical existence as well. You see Cass' room, you understand her sophisticated life-style. You understand what a firm soldier TBD was, how hard is it to penetrate his feelings. You get a similar feeling from Hariette, how accustomed she is to loneliness, how she built her outer self with such confidence.

You now have an aspect: I understand my crew better than everyone.