makingitworse | The Last Voyages: Inbox

makingitworse

Hi, this is Bob. Leave a message if you want to.

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makingitworse

"Yeah? What did you find out?" He curls his arms on top of his knees, watching her with clear interest. Magic, after all, is not a thing he's ever really thought much about seriously. Superheroes just aren't the same thing. (He doesn't know about Doctor Strange's types.)

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musicdied

"That it's so different from world to world that calling it the same thing almost seems silly." She smiles a little bit ruefully. "Also that on a lot of worlds, it's something you're either born with, or you aren't. Or maybe on all of them, and it's just a very common trait on some."

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makingitworse

"Tell me about the most weird or interesting one?" he suggests hopefully. The he catches himself, feeling silly, asking Yelena for a story like a child. "Sorry, I mean, you don't have to."

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musicdied

"You don't need to do that, you know," she says, straightening to circle the chair and drop down into it, leaning forward a little with her elbows resting on her knees.

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makingitworse

He hesitates for a second. "Do-- what." She means apologize. He knows that's what she means. He's annoyed people by apologizing too much before, but he can't quite make himself stop, either. Not most days anyway.

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musicdied

"Apologize for asking for something," Yelena replies. "You aren't imposing."

She pauses, and gives him a brief, crooked smile. "And if you ever are imposing, I am very, very good at saying no to people when they ask me for shit I don't want to do."

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makingitworse

Well. She did keep telling him not to help. So she's probably right. (And then he helped anyway and died. He's pretty sure. So she was probably right then, too.)

"Sorry," he says (again), and winces. "It's just a habit. I'll try to stop."

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musicdied

Someone really did a number on you, she thinks, though she doesn't say it aloud.

Instead: "Maybe you should have something like - what are they called, in sitcoms?" She snaps her fingers. "A swear jar. But for apologies instead." It's not entirely serious. It's not entirely joking, either.

"Anyway - the weirdest magic I've read about is probably actually the magic from that first port. Not the creepiest, but the weirdest."

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makingitworse

"I'd have to have something to put in it, I hear there's no money here," Bob says with half a smile. It's a funny idea, maybe, if it were somehow important that he actually stop apologizing. Though in tv shows, normally the swear jars didn't actually make people stop, it was just for laughs.

He tilts his head with interest at the magic thing, though. "What was so weird about it?"

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musicdied

"It was - split, sort of, into two parts. There's what they call Charter Magic, which works using a magical language - symbols or words that do specific things, very ivory tower wizard stuff. The people there needed to be...baptized, sort of, into the Charter to use it." She lifts a hand to drag her thumb over her forehead. "With a mark on their forehead. I'm still not sure if the placement was just custom, or if it was actually magically significant."

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makingitworse

Bob frowns. "That sounds familiar. Like I read it in a book somewhere." He can't remember what book or when, but it definitely sounds familiar. Something to do with a white talking cat? "What was the other part?"

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musicdied

"The world's natural magic, which pretty much works like radiation in those horrible old B sci-fi movies," Yelena says. "People could use it, but it eats away at them, and there were walking corpses and weird monsters roaming around outside the cities."

She taps her thigh, and gives him a little smile. "I was walking around with an ugly scar from one for months, before I died and everything reset."

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makingitworse

"I know I've read a book like that," Bob decides. "Maybe when I was in Europe, or maybe still in America, I don't know. But I definitely did." He rubs a hand over one eye, thinking. "There's a hobbit here, you said, like from the books... maybe book worlds really exist somehow."

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musicdied

"Oh, they definitely do," Yelena says. "Also worlds that only exist in movies back home. There was a warden here for a little while who was from the universe where Star Wars actually happens. It makes me wonder sometimes, are there realities out there where everyone thinks some of the shit that's happened in our world is just a story someone made up?"

Not their lives, maybe. But the big events, the world-shaking ones?

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makingitworse

Bob can't imagine his life would be interesting enough for anyone to write a book or make a movie about. But maybe someone like Yelena, or Captain America...

"If people whose stories exist in our universe are real... maybe," he says thoughtfully. "The alien invasion would probably make a pretty good story. There must be a whole lot of universes out there, if everything lined up enough to put real universes into fiction from our world."

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musicdied

Yelena considers that for a moment, then shrugs, though there's a gleam of humour in her expression still. "Or the writers wound up somewhere like this, and just cribbed from the things people told them about their lives, because it is not like anyone at home would know any better."

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makingitworse

Does that mean there are authors here now, from other universes? Or-- "Are there more places like this?" Bob wonders. "More... random cruise ships where people from other universes can meet and go through stuff and then go home?"

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musicdied

"A whole fleet of them," she replies. "Some of them I don't think let people go home, but the Barge isn't unique. It isn't even the only rogue ship."

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makingitworse

"Why are there so many magic ships?" Bob asks with a frown. Because while it's kind of neat, in one sense, that means a lot of people are getting swiped from a lot of planets, maybe against their will.

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musicdied

"Because the aliens who made them figured out how to use people to fuel their magic ships," Yelena replies with a little shrug, though there's something hard around her eyes that belies her apparent apathy. "And do other magic shit."

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makingitworse

Hmm. So they're all powered by the same thing. She'd told him about it his first day. He notices her expression, but it seems safest not to bring attention to it. "It seems like a really complicated way to fuel a ship," Bob says. "And not very... I don't know, consistent. If it's from the whole changing thing. What if nobody changes enough for too long?"

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musicdied

"The Barge starts dying," she says, quickly enough that it's probably not just speculation. "But that takes years. And there is the whole flood and breach thing to force people along, so even if some of us are a bad bet, there are enough people who aren't to keep things going."

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makingitworse

Bob nods slowly. That makes sense. He'd hate to be the cause of the ship... dying? As if it's a living thing. Maybe it is. "Well. If we're both bad bets, at least we can be bad bets together," he offers, only about half-joking, as is usual for him. He knows she already doesn't think she's getting out of here, and honestly neither does he, so.

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musicdied

She gives him another slightly crooked smile. "We can have our own little club," she says. "For very questionable inmate choices. Maybe there will be somewhere to get t-shirts printed, the next time we stop."

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makingitworse

"There should be a port next, right? Since this was a flood, and you said I missed a breach last month," Bob says. "Maybe there will be somewhere to print shirts." Or at least see somewhere new and different.