[Backdated to 9/9] @silent | open

[callada]

IMPORTANT: I need someone with medical training to meet me at the shoreline near the river. I've found what looks to be my own dead body.

Please hurry.

[Attached is a photo, lit dimly by his lantern, of what does indeed look like his recognizeable corpse floating in the water, hooked through the cheek and attached to a discarded fishing pole lying some feet away on the pebbles.

This is of course in reference to this exploration thread.]

Comments

@Grandmaster

[paletteswap]

What? How?

[callada]

Don't know. Was fishing. Caught... this.

[paletteswap]

That's horrifying.

Is it solid? Could it be a hallucination like when we were in the forest before?

[callada]

Solid enough to pull the hook out of the mouth and haul it up on shore.

[NONE OF WHICH HE ENJOYED DOING...]

What gets me is I swear its eyes follow me when I move.

[paletteswap]

Are you certain it's dead?

@parker — text.

[webshoots]

I know basic first aid, but I don't know how useful that'll be.

[ CLONES IS THE ANSWER CLONES. ]

[callada]

Same. You want to at least verify I'm not hallucinating this?

[webshoots]

Sure. Give me 20 minutes.

In the meantime, I hate that I have to ask this but: does it look like it (you?) drowned or do you think there could have been another cause of death?

[callada]

Drowned seems likely. Can't see obvious signs of injury on the upper body but it's hard to move it out of the water myself to really check.

[webshoots]

[ it takes him about as long as specified to reach the river; and a few minutes more on top of that to find rosinante, although fortunately his height and his — everything makes him pretty easy to spot, given everything.

fortunately — is this a fortunately? — it's not the weirdest situation peter's ever found himself in; there'd been the thought of clones, which had occurred to him before, when resurrections had first been mentioned; when he'd had a conversation about how all of that worked with doc ingram and succeeded in not really getting any workable answers.

there are other options: that the body wasn't rosinante at all, that it was just someone or something with a similar ability to the chameleon (and screw that guy, seriously) which (who?) just happened to meet its own unfortunate demise and not get resurrected. third option is hallucination, which—

—if he's honest, is the least appealing of all three due to the implications of how much they can trust of their own senses and experiences. and then there's—. ]

—Hey, [ is his greeting, punctuated by a quirk of a smile that's more polite than it is anything else, because god, he hates all of this so much—. his attention shifts from rosinante to the river and the body and back to rosinante again, before— ] I mean, are you sure you don't have a long lost, less attractive twin brother out there? Twice-removed cousin? Because the resemblance is uncanny. [ just, you know, a bit clammy and water bloated. ]

voice, @hello

[lunchbreaks]

Hi-- yes, hello, I am not entirely sure that is possible. Can I come see?

I don't have medical training, but I am worried if there are multiple of our bodies.

[callada]

Sure, the more eyes on this, the better. I'd like to understand why it's here.

[And why it seems like it's watching him...???]

[lunchbreaks]

Yes, where are you by the river? I'm coming straightaway.

[ He'll bring gardening gloves and a trash bag. ]

[callada]

On the lakeshore west of the river.

[It's a relief that someone can come by so quickly, though. He'll be sitting on the beach with a cigarette in his mouth and his fishing pole at his side. It's obvious from the drag marks in the pebbles that he's tried to pull the body up out of the water, but had a difficult time of it. Turns out even though he's strong, it's hard to move a waterlogged dead weight equal to his own nearly ten foot height.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, he waves toward the stranger just to make himself more visible in the dark as the light glances off his arm and hand. He looks a little pale, but maybe they all do now. He's been here without sunlight for months.]

I'm Rosinante. Don't think we've met, though I've seen you around.

[And the body, well, guess that's Rosinante too. Formerly. Cool.]

[lunchbreaks]

Yes, and I've seen you as well. You're-- rather hard to miss, to be quite fair. Hello, I'm Aziraphale.

[ He extends a hand to shake. ]

A pleasure, Rosinante. Someone did alert me to me some other things I was supposed to talk to you about, but it can wait until we're done here.

Oh, dear. Alright, will you help me lift the other one out of the water?

[ Aziraphale is surprisingly strong for his comparatively small stature and the fact that he looks like he hasn't hit a gym since gyms were invented. ]

@wayne

[pearlstrings]

Does it have a pulse?

[callada]

No. But the eyes move.

[pearlstrings]

Interesting.

Do the pupils respond to light or movement?

[callada]

Yes. It's not random, it's watching me specifically.

[pearlstrings]

[On a scale of 1-please don't, how weird is it to ask a stranger if you can come see their dead body...]


You and only you?

I assume assistance is on it's way, if it hasn't reached you already.

@subzero

[saibot]

A clone perhaps?

[callada]

Sure seems like it but how and why the hell did I get cloned, and why was the body dumped in the lake?

[saibot]

I imagine it was dumped due to being a failure.

[This is both him just making an assumption and throwing shade.]

[callada]

Guess that's what death is in a nutshell.

[saibot]

Failure? For you? I do not doubt that to be true.