video;

[storyseeker]

Hey everyone. One of the new kids in town here—I'm Elena Fisher. It's nice to meet you. Well, smartphone-meet you.

[The video shows a blonde woman in a borrowed Henley shirt who apparently scaled some structure before deciding to introduce herself. It's not as high up as her husband's first network post, but apparently "arrive, go higher" is just something members of their household do.]

I get that there's a lot going on here—Nate's been catching me up, and I've been trying to get myself up to date. So I'll try not to ask any dumb questions.

[She read the guide, she saw Chris's post. So far her basic response is: yikes.]

Hopefully this doesn't immediately contradict myself, but has anyone been able to figure out if there's some kind of pattern as to who comes through the Door, and when they come from? It's a pretty small sample set, but so far half the people I've talked to know someone else here from their home—which strikes me as pretty unlikely, considering how few people are here and how many different places the Door could be drawing from. What's more, those people aren't even from the same point in time, so whatever power brought them here didn't scoop everyone up at once. Pretty inefficient.

I don't know. Even if there is an identifiable pattern, I can't say what it would mean, what the goal would be. But suddenly I've got a lot of time on my hands, so...it's something I wouldn't mind figuring out.

Comments

voice.

[torrefied]

According to Sorrow, the Door draws on chaos and disorder. So far, that's the only real pattern that's known.

[And you might recognize this dude's ID tag as the guide's author.]

voice.

[storyseeker]

[She does, she does.]

That does fit. Things were fairly calm before I woke up here, but they haven't always been. [Maybe they built up a surplus.] But that doesn't narrow it down, unless people here come from worlds that are way more peaceful than mine.

[notimpervious]

[Being that Brennan is Sad over Zack disappearing, she's looking for distractions. Because like any healthy adult, she prefers to ignore her emotions when they arise. c:

Elena seems... really comfortable when she mentions Nate, so Brennan will ask. It is better than being Sad.]

I have very little to contribute -- I arrived here a month ago. However, I am curious how you know Nate.

[storyseeker]

Well, I first got to know him when I was hosting a travel/history/archeology show and he conned my producers into funding a salvage expedition. But these days I know him because he's my husband.

[Apparently it was a very good con.]

video;

[occupiesvitalregions]

Newbies show up about once a month. Usually with new monsters, too. I usually show up to bail 'em outta there. [But mostly to show off his sword skills and hopefully impress someone.]

As far as when... I only knew one person here from home, but he's long gone now. But he was, uh, way way younger from the last time I'd seen him. It was pretty weird. I know a lot of people know people from there homes here, but I dunno if there are any other big discrepancies like that.

[It was actually about 300 years in difference, but saying that's going to require a longer explanation.]

Re: video;

[storyseeker]

[That's pretty generous of him, and Elena gives him an appreciative look. Nate was there to help her out, but if he hadn't, she wasn't primed to do well without a weapon at hand.]

A woman I met said that her twin brother is here, but that there's a decade between them. But with Nate and me, it's only a few days. There's no consistency.

[Video]

[lifetothefullest]

I don't know the answer for sure, but I think you're right in that there must be some sort of pattern, at least. It also seems like it'd be something important to figure out.

[But people here have weird priorities so who even knows if many of them care at all. He did catch her mentioning a name of someone else here, also, and combined with everything else she said--]

I'm guessing you and Nate are from the same world?

[Video]

[storyseeker]

[She's glad that someone agrees, if only because it means her question wasn't stupid.]

Maybe if more people share their circumstances, we'll be able to understand it. And yeah, we are—same house, even. He's my husband.

video.

[dedikated]

Wild guess that the Door also looks for beings that can be affected by th' gods' abilities.

( Shrug, no point in repeating Mello's conversation. But it's likely. No one here has escaped their abilities, as far as Kate knows. )

Prob'ly tries to stick to those worlds.

video.

[storyseeker]

You think there are worlds where people would be immune to them?

video;

[claritatis]

An assumption that we were not all 'scooped up at once' would be placing limitations upon a power that we don't understand.

[But he's writing something down off-screen, giving a moment of silence before he looks to her with a small smile.]

My name is Ignis Scientia. I arrived in the last group to enter Hadriel and have had the same goal in mind ever since - to figure it out.

video;

[storyseeker]

[Huh. Does that mean that it could have reached into different points in time, at the same time, and brought them here to arrive...at separate times?

Time travel gives her a headache.]

Have you made any progress? Little breakthroughs?

[einselective]

There are means by which one universe can approach another in higher dimensionality and retain a prolonged connection. In this case, while it's been confirmed that the Door does select individuals to abduct one at a time, in extremely short bursts of activity, it's not unthinkable to imagine that some aspect - of either the Door itself or the person's presence here - increases the likelihood of making a connection to the same universe.

[Marian's voice doesn't exactly say this is a dumb question per se, but sounds as though she thinks this is all patently obvious by now.]

Clearly I should assemble a layman's guide to the state of discoveries at present, to forestall these lines of questioning in the future.

[storyseeker]

[She doesn't have to say it for Elena to get the gist, but she's also not thin-skinned.]

Sure. I'd be glad to have one, and I'm sure other people would too.

[Though there will always be more questions. Human nature.]

Your speculation makes sense to me, but it's still speculation. It's easy to make assumptions that turn out to be wrong.

Video; Private just in case

[knifecollecting]

[Jo starts the video with clearing her throat.]

Someone from home has been here twice, but this time he's from earlier.

Most of the people here know how to fight, if that helps. Or have other skills that are useful in a war.

[At least, that's her opinion.]

Video; Private

[storyseeker]

Earlier...in time? So they don't remember being here before?

[That seems impossible—how could anyone forget it?—but it makes no sense to remember something from your future.]

[Text]

[aroundthecoroner]

Do you want us to make a list of who came from where/when?

[He's super not volunteering for that, though. Sorry.]

Maybe there just aren't as many universes as we thought.

[Text]

[storyseeker]

Consider it an informal poll at this point. Not very scientifically rigorous, I know, but I'm just looking to get the lay of the land.

Up to the other day, I thought there was only one.

Video

[utulien_aure]

Everyone who has arrived here from my world is kin; three of my cousins arrived before me, and two more have arrived since.

[Alright, Elrond is technically his niece's grandson, but no need for the semantics.]

I came at the moment of my death. Some of the others did as well.

Re: Video

[storyseeker]

[Oh...wow. That is not what she expected to hear.]

I'm sorry to hear that.

[What else can she even say?]

text

[ghostlocked]

me n kyna know each other. showed up at the same time and everything.
this is like the fourth time weve been carted off to some alt plane of existence tho. plus we deal w. bs like pocket dimensions from hell so ig the count might be higher.
anyway this shit aint new for us is what im sayin. idk if that means anything.
tbh idk what good sussin out a pattern would do. not like it makes any diff since were already all here.

text

[storyseeker]

It's never a bad thing to have more information. Just because its use doesn't seem obvious now doesn't mean we wouldn't discover it in time.

.video

[noctyourking]

I'd also add the factor that the door can even pull from worlds where one has already passed, at least in my case it had.

.video

[storyseeker]

So I've learned. I'm...sorry to hear that. [God, she feels stupid offering condolences for one's own death.]

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER action;

[nonscriptum]

[Nate tries to suppress the minor heart attack he experiences when he sees Elena's transmission. It isn't that he thinks she's incapable of scaling something successfully, it isn't that she doesn't have the ability - she does - but the last time Nate climbed a building with her, she slipped.

He caught her hand.

She let go.

The memory of that sensation is burned into his skull, watching her fall, craning over the edge of a building as her figure grew smaller until it hit the ground with a sickening thud and all the life rushed back into him in time for his vision to grow blurry. The same pinch of anxiety and fear squeezes his throat and he tries not to act like an overprotective dickhead when he follows the visual cues in the video to pinpoint her location as quickly as possible.]

Room for one more up here?

[he quips as he vaults over a parapet, grateful that she's not loitering near the ledge more than she needs to.]

action; poor Nate, he does not deserve this heart attack

[storyseeker]

[The smile Elena gives him is genuine, unstressed by even secondhand trauma. She knows him well, but not so well that she can detect repressed fear in a single glance. Putting her phone away in a pocket, she gives him a wave and raises an eyebrow as he approaches.]

Fancy meeting you you. Out for a walk?

[She knows perfectly well that he purposely tracked her down, but it also wouldn't surprise her to seriously run into Nate on a morning parkour around the city.]