text. un: 10-54.

[construing]

Adding another wagon to the info train—

Turns out that weird loop being reported elsewhere? It's in the mines, too. My buddy, Shikamaru, and I just tried it. Twice. Went in, picked a tunnel, exited at the entrance. Pick a different tunnel, same thing. Very House of Leaves.

We also learned a little about the embera, which I don't recommend getting close to. [ attached: a photo of an embera in the tunnels. ]

The little fire nope ropes—which the miners kindly informed us are not native to the region—like to eat ash. Apparently, they gather where there's a lot of ash, which seems odd considering we didn't come across any in the mines. Or that their trails headed back into town where there is a very conspicuous lack of ash or any evidence of a fire, actually.

[ she's not saying the whole town burned down at a very specific point in the past. except she is, and it definitely did. ]

Anyway, I'm guessing something's warping reality here that starts with 'o' and ends in '-rb' with the mines sitting at the border of its influence. That might be how the embera are coming through.

I took a bunch more pictures and recorded some video in the mines if anyone wants to study them. More weird things. Walking past lit torches and looking back to see their lights had gone out. Following the trails embera left in the soil, only to realize when we doubled back they had started to fade.

Comments

CLOSED TO SHIKAMARU.

[construing]

[ that pressing task complete, gwen lies down with a sigh. she would love to take out the earpiece, call it a night. instead, she leaves it on. the little sacrifices she makes each day.

the roof of the church probably isn’t meant to be a place for anyone to hang out, much less a dusty, dirty pair fresh from their excursion in the mines. but even with directly walking up the walls currently a no-no, climbing the old building was easy. in return, they get a nice view of scorpion’s bend, and especially of the desert surrounding them.

gwen is forever a city girl, but even she can’t deny the desert is beautiful. heinous to be out in for even five minutes (just ask her dried out web shooters). still beautiful.

they headed out early; now, the sky is orange and purple at the encroaching twilight. as the first star appears over the horizon, gwen turns her head. ]

I have a question.

[mendo]

[ he's just glad that they're out of the tunnels.

the desert isn't unfamiliar terrain to him, but it's no konoha. still, he can't really complain about the view here. it's pretty alright. nothing astonishing, but he wouldn't call it bland or unremarkable either. lying next to her on the rooftop, shikamaru stares up at the wide expanse of sky, his head rested back against an arm.

his cowboy hat has momentarily been set aside, which may have been a regrettable choice with the light breeze in the air and no hair tie at his disposal. ]

What is it? [ he glances over at her as he brushes his hair out of his face. ]

[construing]

[ rip the pineapple

considering the information they uncovered, gwen has nothing but questions. from the tunnels (is there a particular depth at which point they start looping? or is it the distance from town?) to the glimmering veins of ore running through the walls (what exactly are they digging out? what else might they have uncovered?) to the embera themselves.

these latter ones prompt the most concerning ones. the roof at her back feels real. the wood the pads of her fingers cling to feels like wood. but even before the dimensional travel watch, before cindy-65, before spider-woman, her father was taking her around new york and teaching her to hone her instincts. she learned how to spot a tail at eight, how to correctly gather evidence by the time she was eleven, how to profile suspects by fourteen.

she was never interested in becoming a cop—too restrictive, too stifling. but those lessons riding around with her dad, studying her reflection in the blue beacon light he'd let her hold on her lap, were later reinforced with years spent swinging through the city. they're reminding her that even if her senses are telling her one thing, senses can be fooled.

any of which she can mention to shikamaru. two heads better than one, and all that jazz. but she's dirty and tired and the thought that the entire town is actually ash is depressing as fuck.

so what comes out of her mouth is— ] Is that, like, the only shirt you own?

Text | Un: yeehaw

[spacedisaster]

The longer we live here, the more this feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone. [ He doesn't know House of Leaves, so you get very old-fashioned references as always, Gwen. ] At last you didn't find a spider clown in the mines, it could have been worse.

Do you think something awful happened to the town and however got their hands on the orb might have tried to fix it, triggering all this?

Snakes…why'd it have to be snakes? Why it couldn't have been gremlins or rats, or something less disgusting...

[ That last bit is turned into the text without Peter really meaning to send that thought. Alas, the disadvantage of having tech that connects to your mind. ]

[construing]

[ she'll get those references of yours up to date, quill, if it kills her. ]

Yeah. I do. And if the embera are locking onto something we're not being allowed to see, evidence suggests a really bad fire.

[spacedisaster]

[ He would love to learn more about modern tv shows, movies and slag in general. So far he's learned what YEET means, and he's thrilled. ]

It is not a crazy theory given the weird stuff we see around. Someone, or more than one person, must be the one controlling the rest, if we find them we will find the orb, so maybe it's a matter to check who is acting less weird than the rest.

[construing]

Maybe. Or we're looking at the remake of the Stepford Wives, and the mastermind is hyper committed.

[ hell, glenn close did just about everything except glitch. oh. ]

The townspeople glitch, right? When pressed? So, who seems to be glitching the least?

[spacedisaster]

Oh boy, perhaps. Doctor McCoy says the citizens are organic, though, but they could still be clones or something.

[ And she looked fantastic all the time too. ]

Some do, yes. Father Alois changes the subject and acts all weird if you ask him certain questions, so he's probably also Robofied. Raleigh mentioned the innkeeper repeating stories. I think someone said the Sheriff does that too? I'm not fully sure about the last one. It could be either the Mayor or the lady in charge of the whorehouse doing all this, we don't know much about them. Same with the alien Deputy.

[construing]

[ she sits on this text for .6 seconds before going 'fuck it' and choosing chaos. ]

By the way, it was actually a snake clown in the mines.

[spacedisaster]

[ Gwen, WHY.

There's a long pause and if her imagination is good enough, she will realize Peter is mentally screaming. ]

I'd say 'burn them with fire' but these snakes might enjoy that.

[construing]

[ no reply, too busy picturing just that and laughing.

congrats, quill, you got her to laugh. ]

[spacedisaster]

[ NICE. At least someone's having fun! That person is not Peter, he is this critter, spiritually: ]

text; un: doctor.disco

[attackbrows]

An airtight bubble with nowhere to go but from the beginning. We're either stuck within a simulation or trapped within a pocket dimension of a reoccurring memory.

Show me more of those photos you've taken. This is going to require as many juicy deets as possible to crack this shell.

[construing]

[ the photographs upload in a short burst: embera trails in the dirt, the torches, veins of ore illuminated by a phone’s flash. close investigation reveals each photo pair snapped the same subject; but the after differs in a key way. like time passes quicker before the camera—or rewinds. the only exception are the embera themselves, which gwen snapped from a safe distance and did her best not to harass. spider-sense hasn’t been real consistent lately so it warning her loudly to the snakes’ presence…she took it seriously.

the video she shares next is clearer: camera tilted toward an embera trail, only recently made by the clear, serpentine grooves left in the dirt. it runs about thirty seconds, before pausing (“I’m doubling back,” gwen says, shikamaru’s reply unclear in the recording), and retracing her steps. the same trail except the longer she follows it the more faded it appears. the video ends abruptly at the minute and change mark. ]

[construing]

Simulation might explain things like the food tasting so weird. So much attention given to the big picture that the little details slip through the cracks.

But I keep getting a vibe. Like this isn’t just a simulation. Someone’s imposing a moment, and these are the effects we’re seeing. [ a memory of the last good moment before something happened.

maybe she’s biased. maybe it’s her own projection. god knows she’s had a lot of days to reflect on the nature of memory and how it can take over a person’s entire being. “traumatic memory is a heartless bitch”, a new ted talk by gwen stacy. ]

[attackbrows]

[There is an unsettling sensation the Doctor feels in the pit of his stomach. The same one might feel if they left the apartment, second-guessing whether they left the stove off. Small traces of the embera—while mostly harmless—bear something foreboding, something the Doctor can’t quite put his finger on yet.

But whatever weird feeling Gwen was having, he too was marinating at this odd mystery.]

Not a bad vibe to have.

[He stops mid-scroll, zeroing on the one photo pair. If one were to glance at this, they probably would not think twice about it. But something is there.]

Do you know the difference between simulation and memory? [Don’t worry, he’ll answer that.] Simulations are a perfect retelling of reality while a memory is a perfect notion of one’s reality.

This may as well be the orb’s doing. But at the root of it is someone’s desire, their regret, driving this. The question now is: Who?

[construing]

Someone staring down something they can't accept.

[ the question was likely rhetorical, and gwen's answer is less deliberate than a stray thought made public. when she reads it, however, she stands by it. denial is powerful. even without an orb, it has the power to superimpose its own reality. and it can be so, so difficult to break through.

phone in hand, she scrolls through the photos she took. she stops at one of an embera. the snake looks like fire made flesh; the tunnel hounds warned them a bite is enough to burn its victim alive from the inside. gathering where there is ash. feeding on ash. ]

I can't imagine something to this extent arising out of nowhere. And I really hate it, but it can't be coincidence that the embera are making their way into town. [ a long sigh, not captured. ]If the orb has been resisting, whoever made the deal probably will too.

text; un: stargirl

[bossily]

so what you're hinting at is you think the entire town is burnt to nothing and everyone here but us is what

dead?

not real?

given the strange things I observe the children cycle through doing all day at the schoolhouse, I'd say we're stuck in some sort of loop brought on by one of the people here

[construing]

No, I really don't. That would entail giving up on everyone, and I refuse to do that.
I do think something happened to kick off this mess, and something is also drawing the snakes into town. Until more info comes up, it looks like those two somethings might be related.

[bossily]

If you won't say it, I will. Something related to the mines likely caused some kind of fire. An explosion, maybe? A fire that could have destroyed the town and everyone in it. That would be drawing in that specific sort of snakes. And any survivor of an incident like that would definitely be someone the orb would attach itself to. Especially if it meant letting that someone pretend they were still in the moments before any sort of fire that took everything away from them.

[construing]

I didn't spot any evidence of explosions down in the mines, but like I said, I'm not a forensic expert. [ someone ask for the pictures. ]
But yeah. That's currently the leading hypothesis.

[ it in no way changes gwen's stance. until she's given firm evidence to the contrary, she will continue to act like all the townspeople are real and living. but her father taught her to consider every possibility and right now… right now, she suspects they're all standing on a field of ash. ]

text | un: andy

[oiorpata]

A big enough explosion at the mines could have done a whole lot of damage to a town like this.

[construing]

It could, yeah. [ and wow does she hate that. ] I didn't notice any evidence of explosions while I was there. Then again, I'm not a forensic explosives expert, I just took a lot of pictures.

[ also, wish upon an orb is covering up a lot of things. but if anyone is a forensics expert, holler for the pictures. ]

[oiorpata]

I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if the orb can hide evidence of that, especially given what it seems to be doing to the rest of the town and people in it.

Hopefully someone can get more from the pictures. [ forensic expert andy is not either. ]

[construing]

Unfortunately, that's another possibility. Pain in the ass to put together a working theory when we can't rely on most of the details we can see.