Welcome To The 80s

[Samantha McManus]

"Some places just kind of... sing? Like people think the same thoughts about them and in them over and over and it starts to resonate."

[Miriam Bell]

"Maybe..." Miriam mutters in response to Sam but doesn't seem convinced. "But if we know where to look it might be best to draw them out and just lay in wait, pinch their ride while their backs are turned."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"We could fake something paranormal and see if they show up. Granted, we don't know how they get their information. If it's just monitoring the tabloids, we could be waiting a long time," Tosh suggested uncertainly.

[Miriam Bell]

"Then we make it blatantly obvious, place some anonymous calls to the press ourselves. Batboy on menacing mugging spree in Maldon. If that's what they do, can they really afford to ignore even a blatant hoax?"

[Will Stanton]

"We would have to make sure we get the right people's attention," Will mused. "We'd hate to bring down the army. Or animal control."

[Miriam Bell]

"If only we had someone who could quench the wrong kind of thoughts in the witnesses..." Miriam smirks.

[Samantha McManus]

"Maybe it's not inside. It'd be weird to have a mystic portal inside a church, right?"

[Will Stanton]

"A bit strange, at least," Will admitted. "Though the fact that Miriam's headache got worse in here is probably not coincidental."

"...You don't think the sewer answer is the right one, do you?" he added after a pause, clearly not overly enthused about heading down there.

[Samantha McManus]

"No, just... when we were dealing with Viv's mum, a lot of these sorts of things were shaped like doors, but not something you could bumble through in your day to day."

[Will Stanton]

"Something they would know about, but we wouldn't think twice about?"

[Samantha McManus]

"Aye. Maybe let's do a walk around the building?"

[Will Stanton]

"Makes sense to me," Will agreed, stepping back outside of the church.

"I've never been down here -- in our time that is -- so I can't exactly tell if anything is out of the ordinary," he said, whistling a little to himself as he began to walk the perimeter.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Yeah, neither have I. I'm not a complete atheist but I don't even remember the last time I set foot on church grounds," Tosh responded. His head turned side to side as he looked for anything door-like that wasn't usable as such. An odd bit of masonry or a decorative section of fencing could be something.

[Miriam Bell]

The rest of the building is unremarkable and obviously a newer construction than the tower itself. But after looping around they notice that on the side of the tower that's facing away from the street is a narrow wooden door. It's clearly not meant to be used and almost looks more like it's boarded up from the inside than an actual entrance. No handle either and while rattling on it reveals some give, it doesn't actually open. Which is when Miriam steps up, a pensive look on her face that appeared around the time Will started whistling.

"It's this." she mumbles, sounding distant and disconnected as she places both hands flat against the door. There's a thumping from the other side that suddenly seems to pitch-shift up before dropping into the *thoom* of an EDM bass drop.

Miriam briefly shakes her head in confusion, then suddenly spins around and presses her back against the door, hands splayed out against the wood next to her in time with another beat. Followed quickly by electronic percussions kicking in out of nowhere. She opens her mouth and starts to sign along to the beat, heavily putting emphasis on the syllables along with the thumping bass.

♪♫"Ever since I was, ever since I was,
just a teenaged young lady.
Never had someone I connected with, maybe
If I still had my sister from yet another mister."♪♫

She looks confused for a moment as if she's as surprised by this as everyone else, then she pushes herself off the door, turning smoothly to take measured, sensuous dance steps towards the rest of the group as the music shifts into a repeating pattern of brief pauses emphasizing her interrupting herself until the last line is all emphasized on individual bass drops.

♪♫"But that car has crashed into the---as I fall and tumble down the---can’t escape from desolated---lost within the isolated---Fall-in-to-the-spa-ces in-be-tween!"♪♫

She lets herself tip back as if expecting a crowd to catch her but instead she falls against the door behind her and it gives away as the whole world tilts instead, tower toppling towards them and a widening door swallows the whole group up into a stone-brick-lined hallway, inexplicably lit with diffused lighting pulsing in turn with the more melodic beat that kicks in.

♪♫"Found the walls in my mind, tore them down just to find
Yet another land of hiding places.
Can’t escape self-deprecation, drown my pity in a well that
Fills with sex and ostentation.
Reaching out I find, others offering their kind
Ness."♪♫

The lighting in the odd tunnel dims, the bass fades away and an electronic piano starts playing to accompany Miriams shift into a soft, emotional part. She grabs her own upper arms and slides her hands up to her shoulder, clutching herself.

♪♫"Maybe I could learn to be
Open, honest
give my heart to those who trust me.
Just accept that all this must mean..."♪♫

The bass and EDM kicks back in as the tunnel stretches and expands out into an impossible distance.

♪♫"Being on my own.
Is just a choice to drown.
Casting myself down.
Wear my thorny crown.
And run this ship aground, as I
Fall
in
to
the
spa
ces
in
be
tween!"♪♫

The beat slows, drawn out and end with one final bass drop on the last syllable from Miriam's lips as she splays her arms wide, head thrown back and drawing shaky breaths.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Tosh stared at Miriam in disbelief. The absolute last thing he expected was for her to break into song. Though, to be fair, this was quite obviously not a normal thing.

"Uhh... Did that really just happen?"

[Samantha McManus]

"Are... are you okay?" Sam asks as she approaches with some concern.

[Will Stanton]

"She's a little flat..." Will said, frowning himself as he knelt down on Miriam's other side.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam shies away from the two of them, taking a stumbling step backwards. "Yes! Bloody hell, I Just... I just tried to bring out a doorway, not fucking---I don't know, spill my guts all over the place!" she snaps a bit too defensively.

[Samantha McManus]

"If this is how they make these things work, this seems like an even worse organization to be in."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"--an you guys he---me? I'm lo----signa----some ki---- ence--" their ear pieces briefly crackle, then fall silent. After a couple seconds they suddenly come through perfectly clean though Ashlie seems to be talking to herself. And her voice is drifting into a musical lilt.

♪♫"What is it with signals, inside of these calls.
There can’t be interference when there’s quantum lock adherence.
There’s something in the data stream, self-propagating quantum dream."♪♫

♪♫"Why can I not explain it, when particles are full of soul,
And music from beyond the rift
Should not be able to transmit, through channels I alone control."♪♫

♪♫"Cause layer by layer I define reality
reject the absurdity of mercuriality.
But though I run nuclear fission and quantum emission in only my mind.
Calculated, educated, no myst’ry unelucidated.
I can't seem to find the answers to questions that nobody asked."♪♫

♪♫"Each strange permutation
Deserves explanation.
There’s logic within it
If I can just pin it.
But in quantum trenches
Can’t see trees for the branches."♪♫

♪♫"What makes up a concept, a human inception,
when one cannot find a coherent collection
Of a quantum of solace, a plank-length of patience,
pure physics alone exhibiting sapience."♪♫

♪♫"So layer by layer I define reality,
accepting no limits to my ingenuity.
Layer by layer the world defined,
to fit my particular,
microscopic’ly modular,
Educated
Calculated
miiind!"♪♫

[Will Stanton]

"Ashlie, shut down the comms," Will said, interrupting, as he went into Take Charge Mode. "We've got some sort of memetic problem going on here; go dark before this spreads any further."

He frowned, looking around. "A trap of some kind? Doesn't feel like one; unless it's an alarm system by someone with a sense of humor."

For now, Will was avoiding touching the door itself, but he crouched down and examined the grass around the door.

"Not used very much," he mused. "Which doesn't tell us anything other than this isn't a normal way to exit the church-slash-museum."

He caught himself whistling again, frowned, and bit his lower lip.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Already tried that. It's coming through the comms as much as the drones and the portal itself. As much as I can track it it spreads slowly but through any available vector."

Which means for the time being she can absolutely not go back to the Point for better equipment or risk spreading it to the satellite network.

"Let me worry about containing it over here. It must have a source, there's some kind of carrier signal in it which means there's an emitter. Or... something. It doesn't seem to be inherently dangerous at least, both my electronic and biological functions are fine."

[Miriam Bell]

Everything surrounding the door is as mundane as it gets. The doorway itself, now that it's open, is anything but. A passage stretches out much further than the tower would have room to accommodate, the grey-brown bricks of the walls extending far enough to disappear into a misty haze. Miriam is still standing just inside the entrance, leaning against a wall and trying to compose herself.

"Bloody hell... Is this the kind of shit that happens when you're not jus punching giant crab-jellyfish?"

[Samantha McManus]

"Punching does tend to end musical numbers rather abruptly," she offers. "Shall we?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Punch me if I start singing again? Yes please." she mutters as she gestures for Sam to step past her. The passage looks harmless but she'll be damned if she's taking point.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"This is a new level of weird, and I've ridden a submarine into the space between universes," Tosh commented as he started into something larger on the inside. It was a Doctor Who fantasy come to life and he would be loving it if it wasn't apparently a musical episode. He didn't want to air his emotional baggage any more than Miriam had. How could he admit that the voices in his head were becoming more of a burden than a boon. He needed to be able to juggle classes, research, and heroics without missing a step.

"Dude. You're humming."

He abruptly stopped humming, hoping that he wasn't next.

[Samantha McManus]

"This feels bloody weird," Sam mutters as she starts down the Ghost Road.

[Will Stanton]

"The road goes ever on and on, ey?" Will said, taking stride a half-step behind Sam. "Honestly, all...this...is stranger than the singing. In it's own way, of course..."

"Some kind of...other-dimensional space? A dimensional fold; a spatial rift?"

[Miriam Bell]

"I felt it, behind the door. A path that wasn't there bef-- previously. I just brought it out and then, well, unfortunately we all remember what happened then." Miriam says as she follows, catching hersef slipping into a song and strangling it before it can go anywhere.

Meanwhile the tunnel goes on but walking through it feels odd, like being on one of those airport conveyors each steps feels like it covers more distance than it should and yet does not really separate the group in any way.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"I thought Doctor Who prepared me for stuff like this. But actually experiencing space-warping nonsense is something else entirely."

With each step, the usual background feeling of needing to be someone else grew stronger and, with it, his other selves grew more talkative.

"You're fine, Bro. There's no reason you need to feel that way."

"Right, because that's going to help him feel any different."

"Dude, stop riding me already."

"Would you two stop bickering. It's unbecoming of heroes."

"Stop it," he muttered to himself.

[Will Stanton]

"It may not be a warp in space. There's something magic in the air. It's a strange and disorienting place; be on your guard and stay aware.

And if anyone has a way of knowing just what direction we are going, or has a way of showing if our traveling is slowing..."

Will stayed in the lead, looking for any sort of rhyme or reason in the mists.

[Miriam Bell]

"Will, I swear to god, you're going to send us straight into a psychedelic nightmare." Miriam says as she clamps her hand over Will's mouth.

Around them, fortunately, the tunnel is growing more mundane if anything. Rough brickwork is being replaced with smooth, brutalist concrete and before they know it they're walking on cheap carpet and above them fluorescent lights provide painfully mundane lighting. Stenciled onto the wall next to them above a file-holder of all things are the letters and numbers E17-MX3813.

[Will Stanton]

Will shot Miriam a Look as she clamped his mouth closed, grabbing the file and seeing what was inside.

[Narrator]

Miriam tentatively lets go of Will's mouth, eyeing their surroundings suspiciously.

The folder contains multiple pages of what appear to be locations, mostly around the south-east of the UK but not exclusively. The most recent one lists "Maldon, Essex, United Kingdom" along with what looks like longitude and latitude. Further back the amount of details lessens as the dates next to the listing reach further back into the past. It cuts off in the early 20th century and the first entry simply says "Archive #E17-MX3813"

[Will Stanton]

"If this is a log, then it looks like they expect this door to change, but slowly," Will said, carefully studying the sheet. "So it should be fine for as long as we're...wherever we are.

...Everyone remember where we parked."

[Samantha McManus]

"Fair enough," she says, taking a quick photo of the wall stencil with her phone then stashing it away.

"Shall we?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Let's just hope they don't shoot intruders on sight," he said a little nervously as he stepped forward with a nod. Unlike Will, Tosh could only take a bullet and walk away some of the time. But it wasn't as if he was going to turn back now.

[Miriam Bell]

"No worries, Miss Bell, it's just a fact-finding mission. Should have mentioned that apparently involves musical numbers involving bullets." Miriam mutters.

[Narrator]

As the group advances they pass countless corridors branching off and even more doors with those stenciled codes next to them. Some of them fit perfectly fine into the surroundings, bland metal doors, sometimes with a narrow window of the kind of security glass that has wires inside of it. The view through them never reveals anything but dark, indistinct corridors that are hard to discern from just being reflections of the one they're in. Other doors are wildly out of place. Plastic or wooden apartment doors, once a sliding glass door painted over with that cheap, streaky 'out-of-business' white. A solid prison cell door. An actual bank vault. A heavy oaken one that looks several hundred years old. Someone with an eye for objects such as Will can probably make out the more nuanced differences in handles and locks that denote them from being all over the globe. Hell occasionally there's one made from bound together reeds and sticks, multiple times the flimsy, rusted sheet metal of a slum.

They all have folders, some with more entries than others, all in the same general style. None of the numbering seems to fully make sense, looking as if they'd once followed a pattern but have since been shuffled around, and they certainly don't help navigating the maze. Sam, however, can get a rough sense of direction of where there's people and after a while they reach a large security door with what appears to be magnetic locks and an old, clunky number pad.

[Samantha McManus]

"Pretty sure this is where we're going to need to go. You feeling brave, Tosh?"