[closed to S72 hosts] mental link

[polyphonos]

[Hosts have returned to Station 72. It's the most populous this place has been for some time, but the dull ache of missing links - the numerous comatose individuals now carefully tucked back into their respective pods on the Nesting Deck - looms like a shadow here. It's quiet and still and strangely barren. The distance which stretches between the Hosts here and those who chose to remain on Hyrypia is a physical presence as well. It's as a curtain between two rooms, two slowily turning mirrors on different rotations, infrequently capturing eachother's reflections. In the gap, in the waiting stillness, Cathaway's mind is a steady, rythmic drip of cool water into the mirrored surface of some greater, unmoving body of water:]

( Should you need to reach out to anyone left behind on Hyrypia, we will happily assist. Find us if you need us. ) [There's no image projected along with the words, just the certainty that if someone came looking then they would inevitbly find her.] ( If you have questions or require anything else from us, feel free to ask after that as well. We're here to help. )

[There's a bizarre texture to the shape of the thought: it wavers and shifts, malleable and untethered as if for a split second she is uncertain. Then that two turns, solidifies. Curtly:]

( Welcome back. )

Comments

[polyphonos]

[The room where they find themselves is hardly a grand chamber. It's bare and faintly hexagonal, its strange mottled walls identical to its floor. But there's a faint sensation of something invisible here - an odd density to the air, an imperceptible presence lingering in that space like a ghost.

Cathaway stands at the exact center of the room. Her head is faintly cocked, the gray curtain of her pin straight hair falling forward across her thin shoulder. It's as if she's listening to something, her attention divided into a thousand little splinters as her fingers idly turn a small silvery diamond shaped charm between them.

It's only when Shepard speaks that she diverts some part of herself back to the present. Her face clears and the rigid line of his spine relaxes by degrees, though her hands still work at idly turning that piece of metal. Maybe some part of her is still attuned somewhere else as well, separated entirely from this conversation:]

Of course. What would you like to know?

[earthborn]

[Cathaway remains... as creepy as ever. Times like this, she reminds Shepard of no one so much as EDI. Well, maybe a colder, less engaged EDI-- but there's that same inattention, as if there were a whole lot of shit happening on a whole lot of places, and only one of them was Shepard or anything she thought of as important.

It's not less annoying coming from an organic. But the familiarity inspires patience.]

You know the station pretty well.

[This is, Shepard feels, sufficient understatement to constitute a compliment, in a roundabout way.]

Do you know anywhere in this place big enough to constitute a zero-G practice room? Maybe a spare cargo hold or someplace we can keep pressurized but drop the gravity, or something-- it doesn't have to be...[She gestures at the minimalism inherent in their surroundings. Shepard's been here for long enough that she'd have to be an idiot not to sense the something that follows Cathaway around like a trailing cloak. Whatever controls this place, it's not physically tangible, that's for damned sure.] ...fancy.

Unless that's easier, somehow.

[polyphonos]

['You know the Station pretty well.' There's a flicker of humor there in the older woman's face, some wry appreciation for what it's meant to be regardless of its accuracy. Yes, some people might say that. In the grand scheme of things, it's very nearly true.

The easiness of her expression lingers for some moments after. It's true that her attention is divided, but at least the fraction that stands here in this strange empty room has a personable attitude.]

We're sure we could find something like that. Would you like us to take you there?

[earthborn]

Only if I'm gonna be able to find it myself, later.

[Your weird psychotropic station is a horrible warren of confusion and death, she means. Our station. Whatever.]

Kinda hoping to hold a few instructional get-togethers. Kinda defeats the point, otherwise.

[polyphonos]

[She laughs. It's a bright, sparkling sound - strange given the narrow space and how distant fragments of her remain.]

It's fine. We're sure once you've been there, you'll remember the way. It isn't really that hard.

[With a decisive step, Cathaway moves from the center of the hexagonal room. It's clear she has every intention of leaving it in the exact same direction that Shepard had arrived from. She touches the woman's elbow lightly as she passes (and there is nothing unusual or chilling about the touch; it just is) and then leads the way from the bridge.]

Is this for your personal use, or do you have something else in mind for the space?

[earthborn]

I wanna use it for training. A lot of the people we have here aren't spacers. They don't how to move in Zero-G and they don't know how to manage basic safety precautions, for themselves or others.

[She offers Cathaway a shrug-- not that she can see, up ahead as she is. But then, Shepard has no doubt she'll get the gist.]

Seems to me, we're doing a lot of space travel. Last I checked, the margin of error was still pretty slim out there, so it just makes sense.