Despite the standard day and night cycle, some of you may notice this place still doesn’t feel quite right, a bit outside of time. That shouldn’t stop you from having fun! And should you need to go back to the Grove — or if you’re someone looking to get into Neo Eden in the first place — you need only to gaze into a mirror placed in each of your bedrooms or apartments and wish to go home… which may lead you to fall catastrophically through it to the other side. Try not to hit your chin on the ground.
Life goes on regardless. In this city, there’s a lot to do. You could go shopping at the strip mall near Mania Square, where Heimr and Ydalir have set up a temporary shop to continue to provide for everyone’s needs. They’ll still take shells, but there’s nothing much they can do if you run out of Credits — both will gently suggest you find work in Neo Eden. You guys own businesses back at the Grove, it can’t be that bad, can it?
The good news is, Mr. Bone-Jangles and his entourage of skeletons who you swear weren’t originally here 12 hours ago are happy to help you get a job, where the interview process involves simply “showing up and asking your holographic boss if you can be employed”. Starting your own business is more difficult — you’ll need a loan from the bank! — but not impossible. Any hologram humans that come in to buy things will ignore you, get what they want, and leave. The only time you can interact with your fellow neon-coloured humans is when they’re making a purchase, at which point their items will digitize and they’ll leave. All very odd, but at least the customers aren’t rude to you… or your skeletal coworkers who have joined you for back-breaking labour.
After work, perhaps you want to head to the amusement park — Thrill Point is an utterly massive one to the far northeast of the city past the river that cuts through the digital roadways. With drop towers, roller coasters, rides for little babies who hate heights and fun, and tons of food stalls to stop at, you could feasibly spend all night here and almost forget that you have to be at your next shift in the morning! If you seek a different thrill, Arcadia is a nightclub southwest of Mania Square, where the music plays all night, the liquor flows freely, and anyone under 21 who enters gets marked with an X on the back of their hand by a harmless laser beam. Just outside Arcadia is a small photo booth named “The Swap”, and if you enter with a partner, both of you hitting the “TAKE PHOTO” button will bodyswap you for 12 hours. It will also print out a funny photo of you as a keepsake. Enjoy being someone else for a while!
Head to the Rent-a-Ride, where you can rent any vehicle on wheels — electric scooters, cars, motorcycles, hoverbikes — as long as you can pay the expensive fee. Speeding will get you a ticket from your local robopolice; breaking standard civilian laws will get you arrested and thrown into the unmanned city jail. And try not to tailgate or crash your ride — not only will you be on the hook for vehicle damages, but you’ll be shafted with a ludicrous hospital fee. Seriously, people live like this?
But, if a calm walk through nature is more your style, City Park and its
digital trees to the north may suit your needs. The fish in the river here can be fished up by hopeful anglers, though all are wiggly, inedible robots. Hm.
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sticksandbonesmods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sticksandbones2025-04-01 12:12 pm
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He scoffs, barely acknowledging Ain's presence as he continues to take apart this robocop's head. There are sirens blaring somewhere in the distance.] It is, moron. You better hurry up since they'll be expecting you there.
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[He flops down next to Add in a pile of scrap.]
—here I am!
[He's not letting you get arrested (probably).]
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[Dynamo is fretting as it tries to re-sort all the shit Ain just knocked over, but neither it nor Add is actually trying to remove Ain... yeah.]
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[Says Ain, who is currently dressed to match the environment... someone immediately blew his credits on clothes, surprise.]
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It's been a few days, don't be so dramatic. If you wanted to see me you know where I live.
[and Add also knows where he lives, and works(?), but he doesn't want to go there because he might run into one of Ain's boyfriends... so. he's not avoiding Ain exactly, but it probably does feel that way. not that he will ever acknowledge this willingly.
he is fine and normal about all of these things.]
... this place is more interesting, I guess. Even if it's just a dollhouse, the components of it are more useful.
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Are we going to have this conversation while I'm scruffed?
[If so... Ain is just going to wiggle out of his jacket, bye you can have that he supposes. Unless Add has him by the back of the shirt, then he supposes he'll just sit there.]
Haha, I'm glad you're having fun. Have you gone to see a "movie" yet? [the sirens blaring in the distance are surely not a sign of danger nope, this conversation isn't on a timer at all]
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He allows Ain to wiggle out of the jacket with a sigh, stuffing it under his arm like this is a normal thing to do. Also ignoring the sirens rapidly approaching their location,] What the hell is a movie?
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It's like watching a play or a musical, but instead of on a stage, it's all recorded through some kind of device, and then they play it on a humungous flat screen. The orchestra plays their music in the background of it so you can't see them, and there's no set changing or anything like that because it's all smoothly put together. Mr. Jellyfish has something similar in his office, except the screen is smaller.
It's fun~. And they give you food when you go to the theatre, like popcorn and nachos and stuff.
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... I wouldn't mind taking a look at one of these devices. Where is it?
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There's one in the shopping district to the west, between a boba tea place and a clothing store. Do you want me to lead you there?
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Hmm. [eyes flicking back to his half-dismembered robocop... yeah, he can finish this later. Still ignoring those goddamn sirens,] Fine. It's going to get noisy here soon, so try not to lag behind.
[hopping onto his dynamos so he can hoverskate in that direction, keep up loser he knows you can fucking fly now]
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The theatre at least is a standard theatre if "standard" means "the marquee is moving pictures and the employees are skeletons", but that's fine. Ain will tug the edge of Add's coat so he doesn't blow past it, landing with a gentle float onto the sidewalk outside.
Somehow, the inside of the building manages to be equally neon as the rest of the city.]
Do you want to see a horror movie, or romance, or comedy, or action, or...? Haha, since I assume you don't have a job, I'll pay for your ticket and food, too.
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... but he does want to see an ACTUAL movie so,]
Pfft, don't tell me... you've actually been working for credits? What kind of sucker are you? [why work for anything when you can just hack your credit card to have infinite money?? he's already on the run might as well break even more laws lmao] Genre doesn't matter to me, so just pick whatever. I'll pay for it.
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Anyway, the classic response to this would be romance, but Add will get bored so......]
Okay, horror it is. "Skinwalker's Lair" sounds fun. [It's a movie about SKINWALKERS that's Noah's worst nightmare] And let's get the weird popcorn with whatever "extra zönk" is.
[If he dies its his own fault. That or zönk is a harmless way of saying "it's just real spicy and salty" somehow.]
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Two tickets to Skinwalker's Lair and a large popcorn with extra zönk. I'll also get a... Sprite 3? [what happened to sprite 2? don't worry about it.
and Ain can also get a drink if he wants, but Add pays for this with his ill-gotten gains as the skeleton crew dribbles a threatening amount of horseradish into the popcorn. It's too late to back out now they're getting the horsecorn and they're gonna share it because that's way more practical than carrying two separate popcorn bags, this is just efficiency.]
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He thinks he does not.
Obviously, the best place to see a movie is the far seats at the back. Ain will guide Add over there before placing the popcorn bucket between them, taking one bite of that while they wait and— ough—]
Zönk is spicy.
[And he likes spicy food! But this is bad spicy. Evil spicy.
At least the advertisements won't last longer than five minutes while they suffer.]
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You're the one who wanted it. [taking a single popped corn and analyzing it with Dynamo, hmmm] Did they actually... genetically modify the corn to be pink on the inside? Who would want this?
[popping it in his mouth. IMMEDIATELY making a face like wow he regrets this, but spitting it out would make him look WEAK so he powers through it. his single pop of horsecorn. the movie hasn't even started yet and he's ready to tear up, this is way too much zönk...
anyway yeah it's a capitalist scifi hellscape so the majority of the ads are in-movie product placements and subliminal messaging. They're gonna walk out of this theatre later with an urge to buy NE-ON®, Smart Polish™ Neo Eden's #1 Bluetooth Nail Polish and invest in STXcoin.]
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Bad.
The movie is structured like a normal horror film, except everyone is wearing the worst outfits Ain thinks he's ever seen — strange glasses that the main character keeps saying "let me look up what that is with my Oogle Glass" and hitting a button on them and sure enough, they're now searching whatever the... internet? is with them. What the hell is internet.
While the boring parts drone on (sometimes broken it up by someone discovering *gasp* a book on Skinwalkers oooh, but the book is a hologram because why would you want a real book when you could merely project a picture of a book onto the table and flip through pages that your hand phases through), Ain looks over at Add.]
Can I try your soda?
[Someone did not get the "that's gay" memo.]
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[It's definitely a good thing that they're alone in this theatre since Add is not going to shut up, ever.
He pauses, glancing over at Ain with tear-filled eyes as he powers through another bite of horsecorn (he already tried some so now he HAS to have as much as Ain or Ain will ???? beat him at zönk, I guess)]
What? No, drink your own.
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At least tell me what it tastes like.
[He'll be nice and Not lean over to try taking a sip, mostly because it would risk getting this neon popcorn everywhere and that would be a disappointing waste of... zönk. Honestly they put so much on that Ain wonders if there's even such a thing as wasting zönk in the first place, but anyway.
He briefly gets distracted by kicking at the light strips at the bottom of the aisle they're on before the movie actually kicks into gear. By this point they're a solid half-hour in, and the actual horror part of it is beginning. There's the obvious setup of "who the fuck goes camping in the haunted-ass horror woods" that Ain does not register for obvious reasons (surprise, they go camping in the haunted-ass horror woods), a lone deer that the cast says must be "rabid or something" stalks the camp before heading off into the forest, then one of the main cast disappears very briefly to check out a mysterious sound in the distance. Maybe it was the deer, they say. Maybe the deer died.
When they come back, they're... fine? Seemingly so, anyway, but the mannerisms and the slurred speech and the too-sharp teeth are a dead giveaway that something's off.]
Ooh... is that the skinwalker?