Inaugural post- welcome aboard!

[pfsb_cam]

First, there was NOTHING.

Then, it EXPLODED.

And then, there was a PARTY.


... essentially, the Big Bang has just come to pass, and there is already a place with a dance floor and music and a number of roving robotic waiters, and complicated mazes of pipes and bars overhead for flying and arboreal daemons to perch on, and an area with a swimming pool lit by multicolored pulsating lights for those with aquatic daemons, and... well, you get the idea. Welcome to the beginning of everything. Everyone and his/her/its daemon is welcome so long as they behave themselves. Enjoy!

Comments

[toblameforit]

There is a twist in the air and a boy of maybe twenty-one appears beside the dance floor in a burst of red-gold light, looking around him curiously.

A brief but crucial second later, a massive brown-and-white eagle appears in the air above him in much the same manner.

Tony checks his watch, absently bracing himself for the weight as the three-foot-tall eagle folds her ten-foot-span wings and settles onto his shoulder.

"This is... nnnot what I expected when I set that spell," he says. His daemon cranes her head to look at the readout.

"Really?" she asks, running her beak affectionately through his hair. "Because it makes perfect sense to me. You show up at the beginning of the universe, of course there'll be a party waiting for you. If Sherry and Mikey had come, there'd probably be a library."

"I don't think it works that way, Pax," says Tony. "Good experiment, though. Maybe I should go back and try again." He looks around and starts to smile. "But maybe I shouldn't go back right away..."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"This is really not where I expected to be when I got up this morning," offers the young woman in the blue and gold jumpsuit. There's a mouse perhaps three inches long on her shoulder, buff above, pale below; it casts a glance at the eagle and takes a firmer grip. "You came here on purpose, huh?"

[toblameforit]

"Yup," he says, cheerfully. The eagle on his shoulder casts the mouse a glance and straightens her posture with lofty air, as though to say she can't be bothered with such a tiny beakful.

"So where'd you expect to be?" he asks, one hand going automatically up to scratch Harpax's neck feathers.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"The main production floor of the RobCo Protectron facility west of Arlington," says Ellen. "I fell asleep in the office last night- it's been a long week trying to get the control mechanisms for the new laser design implemented and I haven't been able to go home."

[toblameforit]

"Ooh, lasers," Tony says brightly. "What kind?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"1064 nanometer IR wavelength with a 532 nanometer second harmonic generation focus and an 8.18 picometers per meter beam divergence," Ellen says automatically. "Visibly green. Pre-War prototypical design, but it's worked pretty well in the rifles the Scribes've been turning out."

"We don't usually work the technical side of the line, but since we were the ones to get the factory back online in the first place, it's been our responsibility," adds the mouse. "This is why somebody hasn't been sleeping."

"I slept last night."

"Desks don't count."

[element_wizard]

"What did you expect when you tried the spell?" asks the curious standing by person.

[toblameforit]

"Well, I was supposed to come out in the first place in the universe that could support human life. I guess I technically did, I just didn't think it would be the first place in the universe, y'know?"

[element_wizard]

"Well, if you're going to support life, might as well do it from the start, right?" he says with a laugh.

On his shoulder a tiny green mouse shifts into a falcon sized phoenix and spreads her wings, showing off her feathers to the eagle.

[toblameforit]

"...Are you from, like, an alternate universe?" Tony asks. "Very alternate?"

[element_wizard]

"Different planet," Alec offers helpfully.

[vance_prime]

Not everyone here is a party person. Or has any real concept of a "party."

A young woman of mixed African and Asian descent is standing in the middle of the space looking around warily, her hand ready by the gun on her hip. She's back-to-back with her daemon, a bengal tiger, who looks no less alarmed and alert than she does.

[pfsb_cam]

"It's all right," says the golden jackal with the Yorkshire accent. "Nobody here's going to do anything hostile. Mum's been keeping an eye on the place a while now."

'Mum' is, it seems, about five foot five, reddish-brown-haired, and armed with nothing more serious than a wooden spoon. Somebody's got to keep an eye out for people who're going off the rails around here, after all.

[vance_prime]

"Where are we."

It's not a question.

[pfsb_cam]

"Not so much where as when, luv," says the jackal. "Today's the first day. Very first one ever. Space is expanding, matter's coalescing out of energy, and the background radiation of the universe's still bright enough to see. You get odd little bubbles of dimensions that aren't quite born yet or won't ever really be, this close to the beginning, and this one's been picked out for a place to watch it all happen."

He comes to his feet and nods towards 'Mum'.

"That's me human, Annie Wells. Myself, my name's Kije."

[vance_prime]

She hasn't relaxed quite yet. "So this is a borderworld." Again, it's not really a question. "It's awfully hospitable."

[boston_bruiser]

"Don't get twitchy, Annie Oakley."

That'd be the heavily armed man sitting at a table by the Window - well, "sitting" inasmuch as "leaning back with your feet kicked up on the tabletop and a 24-pound machine gun in your lap" can be considered "sitting".

The helmet's chinstraps are unbuckled, and his daemon is curled up next to him - she gives the tiger a brief glance, then lays her head back down. Honey badger don't give a shit.

[vance_prime]

Alyx is unmoved. "Who are you and what is this place."

[boston_bruiser]

"No bullshitting, huh? I respect that." He swings his feet off the tabletop, puts the machine gun in their place.

"Name's Voodoo. You're at the beginning of the universe."

[vance_prime]

"The what."

Skeptical Alyx is skeptical.

[boston_bruiser]

It’s quiet out back. Especially by the lake. Occasionally a leaf falls onto the water’s surface or a duck swims by, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary.

Suddenly, a Nomex-clad head rises out of the water, then a pair of dive goggles, a rebreathing rig - no, two rebreathing rigs, the honey badger next to him has one, too - and, finally, an M4.

Voodoo blinks. This is not Virginia Beach.

[calmhrtprevails]

No. No, it is not.

The water in Virginia Beach isn't generally quite as occupied.

[boston_bruiser]

"Brian. Hippo."

"Where?"

"There."

"O_O."

Of course he can vocalize emoticons. He's a SEAL, isn't he?

[calmhrtprevails]

Oh, and there's a large green head next to the hippo, too.

At least the green hooziewhatsis has human-looking eyes under its brow ridges.

[boston_bruiser]

Click goes the carbine as Voodoo rocks the safety to full-auto. Based on the sum total of his cultural intake, anything with human eyes and green skin is either a) Frankenstein's monster, or b) a zombie. People who take chances are people who die.