[ The door opens easily, and beyond what looks to be a smaller, spare bedroom that is instead serving as half-home office and half-storage. There's a simple desk and PC against one wall, and the rest of the room is littered with junk. Piles of old boxes and the odd bit of furniture stacked up and shoved aside. It's nothing special.
Alec eases his way past Henry and into the room proper. He lifts a hand to cast — possibly unnecessary since they're inside his head, but this is the way it works in the real world, so this is the way it works here. When the spellwork vanishes, the room itself changes.
The illusion, the damn good and damn expensive illusion, melts away to reveal a room full of softly glowing banks of monitors and humming PCs that probably blow whatever technology Henry has seen around Reverie clean out the water. The tell-tale glow of Alec's magic runs along the walls, feeding itself into the machines. ]
[When Alec passes by him and lifts the illusion, any disappointment born from such a mundane sight immediately dissipates. Instead, Henry is presented with the glow of the man's magic, entwined with the suffusing light of so, so many monitors. Technology that is well beyond anything Henry's seen—even in a US government lab, at his point in time—that it is astoundingly baffling.
But in a satisfying way. So there were secrets hidden away in this room.
Drawn in, Henry steps closer to the entirety of the set-up. He can’t hope to make heads or tails of it. This is the man who accidentally switched teams from Tsuchigumo to Unicorn by tapping the wrong thing on his smartphone, after all.
His verbiage is painfully grandpa-esque:]
These are all of your computers? Connected to the internet?
Oh, absolutely. From hospital records, to banking, to dating. Everything's online now. Even if they think they've tucked it away in some little online corner no one knows about, I know how to find it.
[Now he just looks surprised. It's still nigh unbelievable.]
You'd think they'd know better. Still, unearthing everyone's dirty little secrets? [By trawling through what he's heard referred to as a "web", at that. How funny.] You'll make me obsolete.
[But more seriously:] Now I'm really interested in seeing you work, someday.
That's right. You have all the control here. I'll just give us a nudge in the right direction.
[Henry actually has all the control here, and that's why this requires so much trust. But he's letting Alec take the lead, letting him form the memories as he likes, so it's just splitting hairs, really.]
Just close your eyes, imagine the river, and open them again.
[ So it's a joint effort. That's fine by him. His whole life is going to become a joint effort with Henry, isn't it? They can start here, with this.
And it's an easy request. Alec knows the Riverwalk well, and it's a simple thing to pull up an image of the place in his mind's eye. Henry can do the rest, and soon enough, they'll find themselves on the bank of the Chicago River. ]
[From one place to another, just as before. But this time, when the scene changes, it is quite unlike anything Henry's ever seen.
Even in the 50s, Chicago had impossibly tall buildings, the sort that jutted up into the blue expanse of the sky. That hasn't changed, though the thing is, Henry would not know it. He has never been to a city as large as this one, and the modern touches that were never present in his time add an ironically fantastical feel. At least for a man who had spent all of his life in a small town, or a government lab, or a dark, unpleasant alternate dimension.
The orange-yellow of the trees are so starkly contrasted against the neutrals of the pavement, the buildings, the cornflower of the sky, that his eyes are drawn to that first. But then the river glistens beyond, and of course Henry just... walks towards that direction, to get a better look.
It's all simultaneously striking, overwhelming, and it makes him feel small. A bit like being thrust into the Upside Down for the first time, but frankly without all the harrowing pain and alarm that caused. This, at least, is pleasant, even if that has not had time to settle in.]
[ As has become his habit, Alec watches Henry. Watches him take in their new surroundings, from the tallest building to the blue of the winding river. There's nothing like this in small-town Indiana, past or present, and certainly nothing like it in that hellscape that is the Upside Down. It must be a lot to process.
He follows along as Henry wanders toward the river. ]
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striketwice) wrote2022-10-02 07:47 pm
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[ The door opens easily, and beyond what looks to be a smaller, spare bedroom that is instead serving as half-home office and half-storage. There's a simple desk and PC against one wall, and the rest of the room is littered with junk. Piles of old boxes and the odd bit of furniture stacked up and shoved aside. It's nothing special.
Alec eases his way past Henry and into the room proper. He lifts a hand to cast — possibly unnecessary since they're inside his head, but this is the way it works in the real world, so this is the way it works here. When the spellwork vanishes, the room itself changes.
The illusion, the damn good and damn expensive illusion, melts away to reveal a room full of softly glowing banks of monitors and humming PCs that probably blow whatever technology Henry has seen around Reverie clean out the water. The tell-tale glow of Alec's magic runs along the walls, feeding itself into the machines. ]
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But in a satisfying way. So there were secrets hidden away in this room.
Drawn in, Henry steps closer to the entirety of the set-up. He can’t hope to make heads or tails of it. This is the man who accidentally switched teams from Tsuchigumo to Unicorn by tapping the wrong thing on his smartphone, after all.
His verbiage is painfully grandpa-esque:]
These are all of your computers? Connected to the internet?
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Yes, Henry. These are my computers, connected to the internet. This is where I work.
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Can you really get most of your work done from one spot?
[Though, given the array of computers here... Probably.]
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More or less. Sometimes I have to go shake people down the old fashioned way, but you'd be surprised how much information people put on the internet.
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...Information actually worthy of blackmail?
[Henry sounds dubious. Can you blame him? The idea sounds ridiculous for someone from the pre-internet era. Who would be stupid enough to do that?]
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You'd think they'd know better. Still, unearthing everyone's dirty little secrets? [By trawling through what he's heard referred to as a "web", at that. How funny.] You'll make me obsolete.
[But more seriously:] Now I'm really interested in seeing you work, someday.
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[ Having a boyfriend who can get into people's heads is like an info broker's dream. ]
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Going to send me hopping into a few of the more stubborn individuals’ minds?
[Oh, he would love that.]
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[ It will always be Henry's choice, of course. That's the one thing Alec will never falter on. Henry always has a choice. ]
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Yes. Of course. I’ve spent most of my life without possession of my powers; I’m not going to deny a reason to make up for lost time.
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If that's what you want, then far be it from me to stop you.
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Like I said. We’ll have fun.
[They will probably be very terrifying together.]
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Can't wait.
[ He truly cannot, though getting out of the prison will be no easy task. It'll be well worth it.
He waves a hand, and the illusion settles back over the room, plunging it into mundanity once again. ]
You wanna take a walk? If I remember, I'm supposed to be showing you the city.
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Sure. But would I be missing anything else unique in your apartment?
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Good point. Then let's take a walk around the block. Or wherever else you want to show me.
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because Henry will be making the bed]You wanna see the river?
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he will fight you over wrinked sheets, sir]I do. [Why not?]
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come at him]I assume I can just like... take us there, right? It being my brain and all.
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[Henry actually has all the control here, and that's why this requires so much trust. But he's letting Alec take the lead, letting him form the memories as he likes, so it's just splitting hairs, really.]
Just close your eyes, imagine the river, and open them again.
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And it's an easy request. Alec knows the Riverwalk well, and it's a simple thing to pull up an image of the place in his mind's eye. Henry can do the rest, and soon enough, they'll find themselves on the bank of the Chicago River. ]
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Even in the 50s, Chicago had impossibly tall buildings, the sort that jutted up into the blue expanse of the sky. That hasn't changed, though the thing is, Henry would not know it. He has never been to a city as large as this one, and the modern touches that were never present in his time add an ironically fantastical feel. At least for a man who had spent all of his life in a small town, or a government lab, or a dark, unpleasant alternate dimension.
The orange-yellow of the trees are so starkly contrasted against the neutrals of the pavement, the buildings, the cornflower of the sky, that his eyes are drawn to that first. But then the river glistens beyond, and of course Henry just... walks towards that direction, to get a better look.
It's all simultaneously striking, overwhelming, and it makes him feel small. A bit like being thrust into the Upside Down for the first time, but frankly without all the harrowing pain and alarm that caused. This, at least, is pleasant, even if that has not had time to settle in.]
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He follows along as Henry wanders toward the river. ]
Penny for your thoughts?
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