wipesfaith | 03 [action/written] backdated to MONDAY 1/27

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03 [action/written] backdated to MONDAY 1/27

[When Jean wakes up on Monday, it is with the heavy sense that something is missing. (Isn't it strange, how lacking can weigh more than having?) The skipped days - going to bed on Friday night and waking up to Monday morning - aren't what hits him first; these, he won't notice until he open his journal to send a message that won't be read by its intended recipient for a while.

The bed on the other side of the room is empty.

He's the only one in their apartment. This doesn't fall too far outside the normal rhythm of the day, but it drags him back to a few months ago when things were knocked off balance and disappearing was Marco's favorite hobby. So he sends that message, raises an eyebrow at the date, and gets ready for the day while he waits for a response.

It doesn't come.]

[Action]

[In the morning, he scours the village, walking the length of every road and checking inside every public building. He tries not to think about the last time he'd walked through still streets unable to remember with any certainty when he'd last seen his friend.]

Marco? [Cupping a hand around his mouth.] Marco!

[At some point, he dimly realizes that school started a while ago, but that doesn't mean shit to him right now. Two options have long since sunk into his brain: Marco has either been kidnapped for experimentation, or he has gone home to hit a dead end. Still, through wanting to prolong the inevitable, through wanting to feel effective in some way, he doesn't drop his search. He takes it out of the village, winding through the woods on horseback.

When he finally returns, with nothing to show for his efforts but exhaustion, a tightened knot of anxiety in his stomach, and questions, evening has settled in. He opens his journal - still no response - and starts asking.]

[Written]

Does anybody know of any missing persons cases that happened over the weekend?

Is there anyone who can remember anything that happened between Friday night and this morning?

[Then, because he doesn't know how to lock messages to specific individuals, he adds:]

Commander Smith, Captain Levi. I need to speak with you. If you're in your quarters, I can come up shortly.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There are some things all worlds share, probably.

Must be nice, getting to escape whenever you want. Although, I guess you can do that here too. [This stuff is just new to him, and he doesn't see a reason to indulge all that often.]

We weren't living in walls, but there were still borders. Between countries, between regions. Some areas were easy to travel in, others required paperwork.

[Or bribes or fake IDs or knowing how to sneak past borders.]

Let me guess, the ones that required the most paperwork were where everyone wanted to be the most.

[His glass of milk has been drained by now, but he returns to the cookies. Just one more, sugar this time.]

[A nod. Got it in one.]

I have maps on my laptop if you want to see what things look like in my world.

[Takes a bite, shrugging]

Yeah, sure.

Edited 2014-02-09 04:58 (UTC)

[Give her a moment as she pulls her laptop close and does a bit of folder diving. It doesn't take her long to pull up a map of the world. Enjoy.]

[He immediately takes note of the neatly ("neatly," he thinks, based on what she'd told him about war in her world) partitioned parcels of land, labeled with unfamiliar names, and the swaths of ocean surrounding it all. Catching the tiny numbers that line the top edge of the map, he peers more closely. 30, 60, 90, 120 - kilometers? But that wouldn't make the world much bigger that Wall Maria... That can't be right. He points to one of the larger areas - Russia.]

How many kilometers across is this?

[That's... a good question. Ginia takes her laptop back for a moment and does a bit of file searching and fact hunting. After a few minutes, Ginia types out an answer on her phone.]

8,000, give or take a few. North-south is 4,500, total area is 17,098,242 kilometers square.

Edited 2014-02-09 06:16 (UTC)

[His eyes widen as he tries to wrap his brain around that number - much higher than the expected 150 kilometers across that he knew had to be wrong.]

That's huge...! [And still only a fraction of the world.]

[There's a bit more searching as Ginia checks a few more numbers.]

The circumference of Earth is 40,075 km.

[He reaches across the table to wherever he left his journal, tearing out a page.] So that's...

[Hold on, he's scratching out equations here. Math isn't something he does for fun, but he's trying to get an idea of how much land they're talking here. Eventually, his pen comes to a stop and he raises his eyebrows at the number he ended up with.]

That's almost 128 million square kilometers of land and ocean. [Wrong, but he's working from the assumption that the world is basically flat rather than spherical.] Damn...

[Ginia watches him math things out - she's never had a good head for math, so it's impressive. When he finishes, she checks the data on her laptop and... hmmm. She'll turn her laptop around so he can read the numbers for himself.

510,072,000 km2 total
148,940,000 km2 land
361,132,000 km2 water]

[His eyebrows furrow at the wide discrepancy.] That's weird...I thought...

[Checking over the sprawling equations he'd written out - everything is long-hand when you don't even know what a calculator is - but everything seems to add up. A frustrated sigh, but he shrugs it off.]

Must have messed up somewhere. Still, that's an even crazier amount of land. It's hard to imagine.

[Ginia looks over his math, carefully working her way though his equations. It takes going over his math a few times before she sees what the problem is.]

The world is round, not flat.

Huh? [This is news to him.] You mean like a ball?

[Ginia nods.]

Just like a ball that's slowly rotating around the sun. While one side of the world is day, the other side is night.

Oh... [More new information... It makes him feel like he really doesn't know much at all, but that's how he feels at school here more often than not too.]

I wonder if the world is that big back home too...if there's another side where it's night while we're having day. [Heh.] I never used to think about stuff like this.

[Since Ginia has the laptop again, she opens up wordpad and types out her next words. ]

I don't think most people think outside of the world immediately around them, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I grew up in a large city, traveled occasionally to neighboring cities for vacations or shows, so I've lived in an area much larger from where you're from, but my life was still focused on this tiny area. The dance studio, the theaters, my family's bar, that was my world and the people in it.

I guess... [But then there are people like Armin, who has always been curious about the world beyond the walls. While he, not too long ago, had barely thought more than a meter beyond himself.]

Can I see the map again?

[Ginia minimizes wordpad and opens up the map again, handing the laptop back to Jean so he can study the map as much as he wants.]

[He pores over the map in silence for a while, stumbling over unfamiliar pronunciations of countries, cities, and oceans in his head. The map doesn't give any indication of geographical features like mountains or deserts, so he wonders where those are. After a few minutes, he points at a spot - the United States.]

This is where you're from, right?

[Ginia nods and takes the laptop back to pull up a map of the US. It's much more detailed than the previous map, showing elevation, lakes and rivers, and major roadways.

She points at Davenport, Massachusetts, a (imaginary) city southwest of Boston.]

I was born in Davenport.

[He looks to where she points, studying the area around it. So many towns crammed into one place... His eyes drop to the key, and he should really stop being surprised at this point but his eyebrows jump up a bit anyway.]

There are really cities with more than a million people living there? [But it makes sense, with greater access to resources.] The place I'm from was one of the biggest cities in the walls, but we had nowhere near that many people.

Several million in some cases. New York City has around 8.5 million living there. Yet some states, like Wyoming, have only 600,000 living in the entire state.

[Only 600,000 she says, which is probably still more than the population within the walls.]

Woah... [Still studying the map, trailing from city to city, trying to imagine that many people.]

Is it a good place to live, Davenport? Or the United States on the whole?