Welcome to the Fray
Characters: Jeremy and Aaron Setting: Around blocks A & B , morning
Jeremy had woken before his door opened, which was weird, and he hoped that the facility didn’t make a habit of it. He tested the locks, trying to pick it to no avail. Settling on not being able to get out of the room he got dressed, answered the post on his journal and then tried the door again. This time it worked, which was a relief, and he grabbed the fedora before starting off towards the cafeteria. There’d been a suggestion of food, which was definitely appealing. He was in another suit, though he’d gone without the tie today, something more relaxed, hands tucked in his pockets as he walked, relieved the weather looked better.
Aaron hadn’t gotten far when he left Asher - mostly because he’d realised that apparently on his doorstep was a small farm. Or, at least, some kind of area that was clearly growing things. That... was different. He’d ended up walking up and down the rows, looking at what was there.
He caught sight of someone else around in his peripheral vision and looked up. He stopped, not very far from the guy, but he said nothing. Not yet anyhow.
“Not quite Kansas huh?” Jeremy asked when he was spotted, smiling a little. There was no avoiding the man, who was most definitely bigger than him and a hell of a lot more intimidating.
“Do you see any tornadoes, or little yappy dogs?” Aaron shot back, deadpan. “Me either. But no witches either. So, maybe it could be worse. What do you know about this place?” he asked. Maybe this guy wouldn’t be a newcomer like the last. He was very definitely on an information gather experience today. He wanted to know what he was facing, as quickly as possible.
“I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a man in a green suit behind a curtain. Or at least a yellow brick road.” Jeremy smirked a little, shrugging his shoulders before letting out a deep breath. “Not much. Haven’t been here long, just a day and a half. Seems a bit odd.”
“Odd how?” Aaron asked, picking his way through the rows of vegetables and out onto the path proper.
One eyebrow on Jeremy’s expression raised as he gestured towards the farm. “That’s a farm. Isn’t that odd enough?” He nodded in the other direction. “Day I got here, there were people in stocks and yesterday someone died. And there’s an odd collection of people in here if the journals are any indicator. It’s all very surreal.”
“Well, if we were in Kansas, I wouldn’t think a farm would be that unusual. But, okay - people were put in stocks. Someone died. A tragedy and some management issues - I’m not sure I think that adds up to surreal,” Aaron said, his tone more doubtful than challenging. “Course, I just arrived - so, you know this place better than I do...” He left that hanging, hoping the other guy would take the bait and add in more.
“Only slightly,” Jeremy corrected. “I still think stocks are odd, considering it’s a bit medieval, but sure, rule that out...Well it’s not prison. There’s a whole community of us, from what appears to be varying locations around the world.” He smiled a little more, raising his chin. “There’s a pool.”
“Only slightly is better than not at all. People from all around the world, huh? So, this place isn’t run by the US government then?” he asked, considering that as a possibility. Had they been sold out to some international... something? Some organisation. He didn’t like the thought of that.
“If I’m reading correctly most of us are from here, so who knows. I haven’t met that many of them yet, though the journals are informative.” Jeremy watched the other man then shrugged. “No idea, beyond the welcome message. An alternative to prison.”
“Anyone in particular stand out?” Aaron asked him, filing each piece of information away for later consideration.
Jeremy tilted his head back and forth. The easy answer was Kasper, but he wasn’t giving that up yet. He had an idea that Kasper was something else. Part of him felt a little protective of her and her tracks. She hadn’t seem interested in hurting him either. “The woman who asked me why there wasn’t a welcome wagon waiting to greet her when she arrived?” he offered instead. “Otherwise, I’ve just been watching.”
Aaron barked a laugh at that. “She knew she was in prison, yeah?” he asked, sarcastically. In his experience, any kind of a ‘welcome wagon’ you got inside wasn’t the kind that you would actually want.
Jeremy shrugged, as innocent as he could look with a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You would think. I did point out that the lack of bars on the windows was all I noticed, but I also arrived with someone else. There wasn’t a need for welcome wagon I guess.”
“I woke up in my room. Thankfully alone. You have a roommate?” Aaron asked, couching the question specifically to find out more about how things worked here without seeming directly like he was just asking questions for questions sake.
“No, thankfully that is not something from prison that they maintained. I was tossed into the elevator with a young woman. Violet. She’s a nurse and my neighbor, but my room’s all mine. Apparently that’s the trend.” Jeremy was happy to answer and definitely quick to clear up that Violet and he were merely neighbors.
“The elevator?” Aaron asked, feigning ignorance. He had, of course, studied the maps, but he maintained there was no substitute for experience, even if that was simply hearing about other people’s experiences.
Something quirked across Jeremy’s features, wondering just what game it was the guy was playing before he nodded in the direction he’d been headed. “Elevator. Leads to the other block via the basement.” He took a step that way, curious if his companion would follow.
Aaron did just that. “So, what’s in the other block?” he asked. “I saw some kind of map, but with everything else... I didn’t pay it much attention. So - the way to get from one to another is underground? No other way of getting there?” he questioned as they walked.
“Map’s useful, but it is easier to see it,” Jeremy said actually starting to walk towards the empty room with the elevator. “Kind of like here, but a cafeteria and kitchen, just a courtyard instead of a farm. A library and a pool.” He remembered most of it from his tour with Eric, but he figured a lot of it needed to be seen to be understood. “I haven’t seen another way yet. So far just this.” He punched the button on the elevator once they were there, waiting for it.
“A pool?” Aaron sounded surprised - and definitely in a good way. If there was a pool he could reinstate his full exercise regime once more. It would make for a nice change. He’d missed swimming, that was certain. It had been his way to start off the day.
“A pool. A nice one too, not one of those crappy hotel ones that’s about four feet deep the whole way around.” Jeremy liked that bit of surprise, seemed to fit him even the rest of him seemed rather gruff. The elevator binged and he waved, letting Aaron get on first.
“I’ll have to check it out,” Aaron allowed as he stepped inside the elevator and turned to face the door. Convention was ingrained, it seemed. No matter who you were, people tended to instinctively act the same way in an elevator. “Seems like they have all the bells and whistles here. You think they think that if they put us in some kind of lap of luxury we’ll all just fall in line?” he asked.
“You should. I’ll point you in the right direction.” Jeremy followed after, pushing the button for the basement then shrugged. “Maybe. Though apparently the stocks are there for those who don’t.”
Aaron was still having a hard time thinking about stocks. It seemed... barbaric. As much as sometimes he had thought that the justice system didn’t work for people, the idea of locking them up for public humiliation... It didn’t sit right with the guy. He found the idea unsettling and uneasy. “What do you think of that - of them putting people in the stocks?” he asked, keeping his tone conversational.
“I think I’d like to not end up in them,” Jeremy said nodding a little, glancing back towards the other man. “And that it was both used and done away with for a reason. I’m not sure who was right.” He shrugged one shoulder then raised an eyebrow, curious of how Aaron viewed them.
Aaron considered that for a moment as the elevator doors opened. He left room for Jeremy to step out first this time. “Used and done away with?” he asked. That was different - his information so far had said there were stocks, but now it seemed they were gone. He wanted to know more about that. “Was that because of the girl who died?” he asked, though he hadn’t read anything in the announcement that suggested that the administration had removed what they had put in place, only that punishments had, for now, been suspended.
Jeremy left and started across the basement. “Oh I have no idea if they are still there. I meant in the past.” He frowned a little. “Though that was alarming. She fell apparently.” Which had ruled out an exit route for sure, but Jeremy wasn’t giving up hope just yet.
Okay, that made sense. Looking at matters from an historical view. “How big a disincentive to you think they are? Now you know they’re there? You said you wouldn’t want to end up in them - you gonna change the way to behave to avoid that?” he asked, intrigued.
“No I wouldn’t want to wind up there. Though I hadn’t really planned on doing much that would land me there in the first place.” Not at this point at least. Maybe later, but there was no need to jump into that with a stranger. It wasn’t like he’d gotten into it with anyone else prior to prison.
That wasn’t what he had asked, and Aaron figured they both knew it. Still, he let it go. “Doubt that anyone really plans to end up in something like stocks. It’s not the kind of thing you wake up one morning and go ‘hey! I know what I’m gonna do today!’ - right?” he suggested, deadpan.
That got a laugh out of Jeremy and he nodded. “I don’t know. I do have some odd cravings...” he added, pushing the button to the new elevator. “From what I read, they did something though. Earned the privilege if you will.”
“Hey - if that’s what floats your boat, man - I really don’t wanna know about it,” Aaron said, taking a good look around the basement level. It felt odd. Clinical, yet not in the same stark way that he previous prison had been. “Yeah - I heard something about that. Apparently the people who got put in them did ‘something’ - but nobody seems to know what.”
He smiled at the joke, glad that this guy was the type to run with it. Maybe there was a sense of humor under that hardened exterior. Senses of humor were always easier to work with. “Which becomes the real question...did they or didn’t they?” Jeremy asked in his best murder mystery type voice, then shrugged with it.
“What’s your take on that?” Aaron asked, keeping his opinions to himself. He was beginning to form them, but he was generally holding back from sharing right now. Time would come, but not yet.
“Couldn’t tell you. Never met either one of them, wasn’t here when it happened. Seems silly to punish people for no reason, but what do I know? I’m not in charge here.” Jeremy liked the idea of presenting all options while still seeming to give an opinion.
Aaron caught the lack of opinion there. Still, that was fairly understandable given the other man’s lack of first hand knowledge. And, of course, there would be no knowing whether the dead girl had done anything or not. Aaron wasn’t holding on for the idea that maybe the administration would be telling them anything any time soon. It didn’t work like that and anyone who expected it to was simply naive or stupid.
“I would ask someone who’d been here longer,” Jeremy said heading into the elevator when it arrived again. “I was skimming the journals, so I didn’t get everything, but I didn’t see anyone yelling about innocence.” Which might have been the main issue, what was missing. “Though I got here after they’d been locked up, so I can’t say much on it beyond that.”
“I might do that. Course, it’s all over now, anyhow, right?” Aaron suggested. He wasn’t going to get anything else out of this guy, that seemed clear. Time to move the conversation along. “So, where were you before here?” he asked.
“Valid point. Might only be worth the bother if it comes up again.” Jeremy pushed another button on the new elevator. “New York State Club Fed, you?”
“Michigan State,” Aaron told him. “So - you’re a New York boy then?” he asked.
Jeremy nodded. “Born and raised.” He smiled at the thought of his city, loving it above most things. It was why he never left. “Michigan for then?”
“Detroit native. Never did get to New York. Never did really get much of anywhere, but that was always fine by me,” he said, taking a middle line on that. It was fact though. When he was growing up, well, it wasn’t like vacation was anything that was ever gonna happen with his farce of a ‘family’ and then being in the system. And once he was working, it was pretty much the job.
“I have to admit, I never really left the city. Even vacations didn’t drift too far from the city itself.” Jeremy shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes you’re more comfortable with what you know and that’s enough.”
“And now we’re both fuck knows where,” Aaron summarised. “Starting a whole new life in some kind of experimental who the hell knows what. Strange the curveballs that life throws you, right?”
Jeremy listened to the list, then nodded along. “Pretty much. Again, I was just pleased there weren’t as many bars. For the moment you can almost forget you’re still locked in a box.” Which he still was, and Aaron was right, they were fuck knows where. It was going to make getting home even harder, but there were other personas waiting for him if he could get back.
Aaron considered that, thinking about it. The relaxed air of this place did feel different. To be able to walk around in clothes that felt like his own, without the uniform, without guards glaring from every corner, waiting for him to put a foot out of line. It all felt so entirely different. Of course, for him, it also felt different because he wasn’t having to dodge both guards and cons. “Do you wake up to a message on the computers every day?” he asked, not going into any of that.
The elevator doors opened into the cafeteria and Jeremy waved towards it as if introducing the room silently. “No. Not my first morning, but there was one waiting when I arrived and then this morning as well. I guess it’s only when they want to talk to us about things.”
Aaron stopped as he stepped out of the elevator. “A bar. There’s... Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to give a load of unsupervised cons alcohol?” he asked. “Anyone asked what the blood alcohol was of the girl who took a swan dive off the roof?”
“There is a bar,” Jeremy agreed, tucking his hands in his pockets, looking at it, and looking casual even in the suit and hat. The questions though, they way they were worded caught his attention though it didn’t show. Not many people would say ‘blood alcohol’ over ‘how drunk’, but maybe it just meant there was more to this man than met the eye. “As far as I know, no one’s asked. But at the same time she did climb part of the wall. I saw someone scrubbing off the blood leftover. “If she’s anything like the people I met when they’d been drinking she would have fallen long before she reached the roof.”
Aaron said nothing. Instead he walked out of the cafeteria and into the courtyard, standing and looking up towards the roofline, judging the distance. He looked back towards Jeremy. “Maybe she fell before she got to the top,” he called, as he headed back. A bad fall didn’t have to be that high. Still, she would have had to have been one hell of a climber, even sober. The walls were pretty well rendered.
Jeremy stayed where he was, watching Aaron. “I wasn’t here. though that’s possible. It wasn’t quite the way the chatter was going, but that’s chatter. No promises anyone saw anything.” He shrugged as Aaron came back his way. “No way to go no matter where she fell from.”
“There’s never a good way to go. Even old and wrinkly and in your bed sucks,” Aaron muttered. “Or so I would imagine.” He’d never seen it, but he thought about it from time to time. Growing old, living out all of your life. He found it almost impossible to imagine being old and frail. To have survived that much life, only to end up not being able to fully live it.
“I was going to ask if you were speaking from experience and maybe this was your second or third go-around with life,” Jeremy said, giving Aaron the faintest of smirks. Jeremy himself hadn’t thought much about his death in years. Once it wasn’t looming, he opted to ignore it, pretend he was beyond it.
“Oh, sure... Just call me the dali whatserfuck,” Aaron said, barking a laugh.
That made Jeremy laugh as well, nodding a little as he smiled. “You do look the part. I thought there was something familiar about you.” He couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “You want to see that pool still?”
Aaron ran a hand over his head, the bristles of his hair shorn close to his scalp. “It’s the hair, right? And hell yeah - I wanna see this pool,” he agreed, looking around. He noted the glass sided building across the grass. Looked like a gym. Okay - so he was gonna be spending a whole lot of time over here. That was for sure.
“Definitely the hair. Or maybe I just knew you in a past life.” Jeremy grinned just slightly and started towards where he’d found the pool before. “If the place wasn’t an experiment I wonder if it wouldn’t be more like some sort of upscale retirement community.” Not what Jeremy was used to, but he had to admit the facility was in decent shape.
“Maybe that’s what it was before they took it over,” Aaron suggested, following on behind Jeremy, still looking about him to fix where everything was. The layout here was much the same as where his room was. Save for no farm. It was neat, compact, architecturally uninspiring. Yeah, it felt like a facility to him.
“Why does that feel a little creepy. And I feel too young for a retirement community.” Not that he was as young as he remembered. Honestly he’d been pretty settled where he was, with the direction things were taking. Too bad he trusted the wrong person. “Here,” he said pushing open the door the the pool, holding it for Aaron.
“Just rename this place ‘Sunny Shores’ and have done with it,” Aaron deadpanned as he walked inside. “Yup, that’s definitely a pool,” he agreed. It was more than that - it was fabulous. He wanted to just strip off and dive right in. Later he promised, wondering if he even had any swim shorts in the clothes they’d provided for him.
“We’d need shuffleboard though yes? Can’t have a retirement community without shuffleboard.” And he’d hustled that game out in the Hamptons when he was much younger. Though they’d been expecting him to hustle them, because that hadn’t been the end game. “Like I said...It could be worse.”
“Maybe I’ll put in a request for a shuffleboard - not that I have the first fucking clue what that even is,” Aaron admitted, turning back to Jeremy.
“It’s a game. Think...oversized air hockey meets horseshoes. Or maybe more like curling, though I’ve watched that on television once every four years when it’s on and it still doesn’t make sense.” Jeremy laughed a little and nodded. “Should we wind up with the appropriate materials and place to play, I’ll show you. I learned from my grandmother at her retirement community.”
“So - you clearly have more experience of retirement communities than I do. Which isn’t hard, since all of my grandparents died or fucked off before I was born,” Aaron said, his tone very much one of ‘this is a fact that doesn’t bother me much’. “So, if we ever get a shuffleboard, you can rule on high over it. You could set up a league, or something - isn’t that what old people do?”
Jeremy caught the tone, what was said and made a note to keep similar thoughts to himself, or well at least off the finer details. It wasn’t entirely true anyway, and while he wouldn’t admit to it, he had a better understanding of what Aaron was saying. “A league...that’d be something. Though I do take offense to be calling old.” The smirk on his features though said he didn’t quite mind.
“Man - if you’re old, then I’m fucking ancient,” Aaron said, figuring the other man was a good four or five years younger than him. “So no danger there. I didn’t mean it personally. Just that that was the kind of thing that went on.”
“I doubt that,” Jeremy said shaking his head before nodding. “Though yes, it is. And really we’re here, in Sunny Shores, might as well enjoy it yes? Or try to blend in.”
“How many people are here?” Aaron asked. “What - forty, max? Or are there other blocks? If it’s just forty, I’d say that blending in migh be a challenge.”
“So far just this block and ours, though doesn’t seem to be a way to get to our second floor.” Jeremy tilted his head, trying to remember what number he’d seen the doors go up to. “About that yes. So probably a challenge, given there’s women as well. Little bit different make up then gen pop.”
“Well yeah - that does make quite the difference.” And made Aaron wonder even more what their purpose here was. If they truly believed that every person was guilty of that for which they had been convicted, then what the hell were they playing at, risking putting him in here. And whoever else they had. The guy he had met first thing had gotten one thing right - this was a potential recipe for disaster. “Thanks for the tour.”
“At the very least it livens up the scenery.” There was a pause while he thought before he added, “though I think it does give more of a sense of balance.” Which he was starting to gather, just from walking around. The welcome message chatted about community, responsibility, and the like. Maybe that was what this was. Or an elaborate con, which oddly enough part of Jeremy was almost impressed by, as much as he detested the idea of being a victim in a rouse. “Of course. Any time.”
Aaron laughed a little at that, though it was short-lived. “Maybe they think that there won’t be the problems you get with large groups of one sex or another. Course, if they’re thinking that then they haven’t factored in all the other problems you get that led to the idea of segregation in the first place,” he mused. Aaron shook his head. “We’ll see, I guess. Well, I guess I’ll see you around. Name’s Aaron, by the way,” he said, belatedly introducing himself, since they’d never actually gotten round to that.
“It is an entirely different set of concerns,” Jeremy agreed with a nod, though he smiled through it. Reservations about where he was or not, there didn’t seem a point in broadcasting them too loudly. “I’m sure you will. And Jeremy, probably should have said that from the jump.” He tucked his hands in his pockets then ventured back a few steps, before giving Aaron another smile and starting back towards the kitchen and the rumor of breakfast.