by Will Stanton » Fri Jan 15, 2021 6:35 pm
Over the ensuing days, turning into weeks, Will's self-imposed quarantine continued, as he struggled to try to find a new normal with the voices inside his head -- and tried to figure out just what was happening to him.
As the days went on, the shapes and forms inside the room began getting more...complex. Or organized. Or something along those lines. At the point Tosh had stopped in for his chat, the room has been decked out more or less generically -- some tables, some chairs, the like. But as time passed, it started getting more unified; the shapes and accompanying forms working together to create more sophisticated arrangements.
On Monday morning, steam had leaked out the windows and doors, as the room has been transformed into a tropical jungle; dense foilage and rustling in the trees from unknown, growling animals.
By the afternoon, however, steam was still coming out -- but it was from the '50s diner hopping inside, a poodle skirted Will dancing to the jukebox. No sign of the jungle remained, just hamburgers, shakes and fries.
This sort of thing continued throughout the week. At any point, passers by might hear the thumping, driving bassline of a nightclub in full action. Or the sounds of a string quartet, constantly tuning and re-tuning. For a few hours, the Points' servers would have recorded a number of machines trying and failing to connect to the network, as a new server room hummed. Moans and screams echoed from a particular version of the room no one chose to enter. The bleeps and bloops of classic arcade games could be heard at another point, followed by a zen-like silence.
These, and dozens of other configurations, seemed to come and go, replacing and swapping with one another. A clipboard hanging on the wall outside the door showed the efforts of people to keep track of these things, but no clear pattern had seemed to form.
And the rooms weren't perfect, either. There was always at least a few things out of place -- the jukebox playing songs from the wrong era; the string quartet joined by a tuba; a concrete path in the jungle.
And there was always, at most, one person-shaped Will -- never more, with most of him spent as less interactive bric-a-brac. This was similar to what Tosh had encountered in his trip into the room earlier.
And, at SOME place in every form, there was still the large lump of clay, sitting there in a corner.
((open))