Well, damn

Here’s an update on my situation. I am still in the hospital.

I’d never read any of the blogs involving it, but being a Runner you do tend to pick up a little about other Fears. When Fracture mentioned the Cold Boy, my brain quickly ran through all the information I had on it, engaged nope factor nine, and then jumped ship, cheerfully flipping me the bird as it sailed away.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. I really shouldn’t joke about sanity loss, when it’s a real hazard in this occupation.

On Mr. Incognito’s advice I levered, or perhaps crowbarred my way out of bed, slinging the laptop bag over my shoulder. Travel was a difficult and slow affair, using the wall as a crutch. My destination was the lobby.

Well, you know Loops. Hallways curved in ways they shouldn’t. Doors opened onto rooms they shouldn’t have, or didn’t open at all. Walking a meter took as long as travelling a hundred. Somehow I managed to get on the ceiling at some point, trying not to smash the fluorescent lights with my cast. After a while I just gave up and wandered randomly.

By this point I could see my breath. Stop shivering, I told my muscles. You used to jump in and out of snowdrifts in a T shirt and shorts! This should be nothing! But alas, they didn’t listen.

(It’s true. I used to bury myself in the snow and pretend I was a polar bear, then leap out on people, Hobbes “It’s that moment of dawning realization I live for” style. I also would grab their ankles and pull. They’d usually scream, and I’d run away laughing, often chased or being pelted by snowballs.

Ah, memories~)

At this point I realized the room I was in was the Lobby. Murphy’s Law. I opened the exit doors to reveal… the Lobby.

Well, I thought with preternatural calm. Nat was right. I am fucked.

Having nothing else to do, I decided to do something about the itch that was rapidly taking up an increasing amount of mental run time. I kept moving, occasionally attacking the plaster with anything sharp I could find. Scissors, scalpels, a fire axe, teeth, where I could reach. I even ran it under water in the hope of softening it up. I got a little carried away. It felt sooo goooood to get the casts off, but I was covered in cuts and scratches as a result of my… enthusiasm. Fortunately, this was a hospital. Antiseptic and dressings were not difficult to find, if sometimes a little tricky to self apply. There were taps to wash the blood off.

Walking was easier after that, as was thinking. My muscles felt weak, but that was to be expected, and there was only the slightest twinge of pain when I put my weight on the bad leg. Six weeks is long enough to heal, right? It’s been six weeks, I think. How long’s it been out there?

Next item on the list, getting and staying warm. I reappropriated hospital blankets, especially the electric ones. Pillows as well. Anything that looked portable and flammable. I even found, joy of joys, a little space heater. Into my makeshift inventory it went. I stopped in a hallway, and went to town on a couple of vending machines, pocketing as much as I could. Then I kept going until I found a room with a lot of power points. This turned out to be the waiting room. Potted plants in the corners, cushioned chairs, low wood coffee table complete with thumbed through magazines, a long window that would have let the sun warm the room if the place hadn’t stuck on ‘night’ three ‘days’ ago. Nice. I trashed it.

Once the table was in splinters, I ripped the magazines to shreds, then ripped up a section of carpet to reveal the hard floor beneath. Then I got the dirt from the potted plants and ringed the exposed spot with it. I piled up the wood into a pyramid there, then stuffed the strips of paper into the middle of it. Then I lit them with the lighter I’d found. It was in a stash hidden under one bed’s pillows, along with a carton of cigarettes and a small bottle of Jack Daniels, the kind you get in hotel fridges. Sadly, I couldn’t drink it, as it would have only made the situation worse. Instead, it became accelerant.

Did I mention I used to be a Girl Guide? If only there were marshmallows.

Once I was reasonably sure the fire could keep going without my supervision, I set about plugging the electric blankets and space heater into the outlets and turned them on. I wedged chairs under the door handles. It occurs to me I should have done that first. Oh well. I chopped up the pot plants and a few of the extant chairs and pulled the stock of papers from behind the receptionist’s desk. That was about enough to last me through the ‘night’, I estimated.

So now we come to me writing this. I’m in a sort of pile of pillows and blankets of both kinds surrounded by a sort of chair fort and it is very, very toasty. It’s almost like camping. Almost. Spyre’s sent me a picture and wow I look badass. :D Also, in lieu of marshmallows, my experiment to see if toasted Mars bars are an acceptable substitute is going very well, albeit stickily. If I don’t think about it, I can forget why I’m here and ignore the voices. Those haven’t gone away. Still, I haven’t been this happy for a while.

Aaaaand, as soon as I type that the lights go out. Great. Wonderful. The firelight’s good enough to see by, though. Flicking the light switch up and down does nothing. The little space heater’s stopped whirring. The electric blankets are still warm, although I’m sure that’s residual heat. I’m moving them to the center of the pile to retain as much of it as possible. Possibly, one of the fuses has blown.

Unlikely.

Just had a look outside the window. Don’t want to again. Not that there’s anything there, in fact, that’s the problem. There’s nothing there. Not even ‘night’. There’s no stars, no streetlamps, just… black. Like a huge sucking rectangular void. I’m going to stop looking at it now.

Oddly enough, despite the lack of power and otherwise seeming complete disconnection from the outside world, I am still receiving wifi. Thinking about it, this seems to be a common trait of all Loops, and doesn’t appear to be voluntary on the part of the proxies or entity creating them. (I mean the point is to let the victim go mad with isolation. Cutting off wifi completely would completely separate them from the outside world. But proxies must employ perception filters instead, which implies they can’t do this.)

The only explanation I can think of for this is that the Internet is in itself a manmade dimension that overlays our current one like a sheet. In a Loop the walls between dimensions are so thin and the Internet is so fundamentally ‘close’ to our own that it can be accessed even without the cables or towers usually required by any device able to do so. This theory also implies it might be possible to physically enter a ‘cyberspace’ of sorts, but the sheer incompatibility of human physiology and network code most likely would have disastrous side effects. In effect, no John, you are the eldritch abominations.

This theory really stretches my sense of reality a little but on the other hand I am being stalked by a tree Shoggoth and am in a hospital that does not obey Euclidean laws. Reality was out to lunch six hours ago and is now halfway through the main course of dinner.

Now I am going to try and get some sleep. I know a lot of  you will probably be shouting at me in the comments not to, but this looks to be the only chance I’ll get in the foreseeable future, and I think I’ll need every advantage I can get. Since my laptop’s only running off battery power, I’ll post only if it’s important and go through the comments quickly every ‘day’ or so. I think that’s everything.

Good’night’.