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Welcome to Ante Diluvium. Set in the near future on Earth, human society has reached the height of scientific advancement... and begun the descent beyond the peak.
We accept original human characters. We do not have a word count. Our rules are: Be kind. Have fun.
Please register with your character's name (first and last; last name optional for Pleeb characters).
This site is based on the MaddAdam books by Margaret Atwood. While you do not need to be familiar with the books to play, they are still a great read for anyone interested.
Streets are icy veins of a beast who snuffs her prayer
Her bones and the truth show through
Adelaide pulled her scarf tight around her chin, keeping her hair out of sight. It was her most distinctive feature and that tended to be a disadvantage during scouting. Only a few days earlier someone had offered to buy her scalp. Almost as nice as Mo'Hair, they said. They'd give her a transplant for cheap in exchange.
She was sorely tempted to threaten to cut his own scalp, but instead she walked away in silence. A few hours later, she had purchased three scarves, although somehow it had escaped the vendor's notice that the transaction had only covered one.
The subjects of today's espionage were part of the TexMex gang. Adelaide had spent the morning watching some street fighters, but now she was more interested in someone else. Adelaide hadn't quite figured out what exactly the dark haired woman did for the gang, but she was certainly valuable. Transport, probably, but what was her cargo? Technical stuff maybe, cards of information leaked from inside the Compounds. Old news sometimes by the time it reached here but it could still be valuable.
No, that wasn't it. The woman reminded Adelaide of her own mother. There was something twitchy, paranoid, almost mechanical. Maybe she wasn't carrying at all, maybe it was all in her head.
This woman was an easy mark though. She was a risk for the whole gang, but apparently one they were willing to keep.
Adelaide crossed the street and picked up a quick pace. Fixing her eyes away from her target, she sipped her icy tea from Happicuppa. Within second she slammed straight into the mark, splattering the liquid everywhere.
"Oh, oh my goodness," she frowned, blinking quickly. "I'm so sorry. I let my thoughts get the better of me and just... are you all right? I'm terribly sorry."
Her hands twisted against the folds of her skirt, anxious, worried. "I'm widly clumsy. I'm afraid this happens more often than I'd like to admit. I'm Eloise, by the way."
A name was sacred and Adelaide kept her own to herself. She wasn't entirely sure there was anyone living who actually knew it. Instead she had a host of aliases and nearly half of them had identification papers to match. Eloise didn't though. She was just a custodial worker after hours at SecretBurger, no one special. Her false identities were never anyone special. That was the point. It wasn't her who needed to stand out. It was the mark.
Tash had been walking fast, head down. She picked at a scab on her arm idly, the nervousness setting in. She was coming off a high and packing drugs for the Tex Mexes. If that wasn't uncomfortable enough, she was drifting into a deep steeped paranoia. She felt like bugs were all over her body, crawling...crawling...and....OOF!
The tiny waif of a woman went flying a few feet backwards as someone barreled right into her. She was wet and hurt and cold. What the fuck/!
"Hey, watch it!" Tash barked the words like a skinny, abused junk yard dog and she felt bad after the woman bumbled an explanation at her....
"It's okay," she added, feeling bad, "It happens."
Eloise here was a Grade A klutz then. Tash could easily be blown over in a windstorm, but she didn't barrel into others. Jeeze.
"No problem, no problem," she said, shaking the drink off of herself. She wished she could drink the Happicuppa instead of wearing it. She couldn't afford that shit. Tash wrung out her shirt and laughed. "Actually the closest to a Happicuppa as I've ever been."
Streets are icy veins of a beast who snuffs her prayer
Her bones and the truth show through
Too sharp, but the the first responses often were. Adelaide entertained a brief moment of doubt. She had miscalculated her mark. It happened, though not often. The softness spread into the woman's voice. Better, much better.
Spilled coffee wasn't the best trick, but at the very least it was direct. Adelaide felt she needed something straightforward with this one. This type needed to be grounded. The gods of the sky liked to pluck the minds of mortals into their own realm for play. She knew that was nonsense. Everything her mother ever told her was nonsense. All the same, it's entirely possible for nonsense to be the most perfect sense of all. Adelaide didn't discriminate.
It was the eyes that gave it away. A little glazed, a little unfocused. They were seeing somewhere else. A mind stuck in the sky. Maybe she could see the gods, or at least her own versions. So it wasn't information she was carrying. Couldn't dip into a memory stick to get high, or at least not yet. This woman was simpler. Well, that would make things easier for Adelaide. A junkie was a simple target.
She let her lips slide into a conspiratorial smile, "You wanna know a trick? Sometimes at Happicuppa, the workers make the drink, but it sits on the counter while it waits for someone to pick it up. No one paying attention at all to a silly little coffee. You should try it sometime. Just gotta wait for the right moment, and someone else has bought you a nice drink."
It was true, although not a technique Adelaide used often. It was risky, since Corps officers were pretty frequent Happicuppa customers. Still, it seems something the sky girl might appreciate.
"'Course the other trick is not to run into some pour person and dump the prize. Ugh, sorry. Maybe we should find you a towel or something to mop up." Adelaide scanned the area. Shops, a few cleared out buildings, and a dumpster. Yes, the dumpster seemed the right style. She nodded towards it, "I think we could find some clean paper cloths in there."
This was the harder part. She'd made the meet, but now it had to stick. A little conversation to get her foot firmly inside the door.
Tash softened a little more, still unhappy to be wet. But that did seem like a good plan. Maybe she'd surprise Yenka with a Happicuppa tomorrow...
But for now...wet..yech.
She doubted they'd find much that could be deemed clean in the dumpster, but she just nodded at Eloise.
"Alright, yeah," she said, following her towards the dumpsters. "You spilled it means you get to dive though..."
Tash was many things but dumpster diving pro she was not. Besides, she was muling right now and that was uncomfortable enough. There was no way she was going to climb right in. Eloise on the other hand could go right ahead. Girl looked nicer than this part of town usually did. She could use some dirtying up to fit in.
Placing her hands on her skinny hips, she indicated that she wasn't taking no for an answer. The sooner she could get dryer, the better she would feel. Tash was already so skinny she could be blown away in a windstorm, but being wet chilled her right to the bone.
Streets are icy veins of a beast who snuffs her prayer
Her bones and the truth show through
Dumpster diving. It hadn't been her plan for this exchange, but if it worked, she'd definitely have to add it to her list of trust-gaining exercises. Should've known really. That twitcher certainly wasn't going to manage it. Adelaide had spent a fair amount of time in her youth digging through trash. Her mother didn't always get them what they needed and sometimes Adelaide's lies weren't enough. Only sometimes, of course. Avoiding dumpsters was a good motivation to improve her skill, and yet here she was, back where she started.
The druggie better be worth the mark. Eh, they usually were. Head full of junk meant there wasn't room to object to her schemes.
Adelaide nodded agreeably and hauled herself into the dumpster. Pulling her scarf over her nose and mouth to mask the smell, she pawed through the refuse. There, wasted towels, the paper stuff the quick food joints used to clean up spills. Most of them were clean from dabbing up some water, now evaporated away again. Of course, still trash. She crumpled them between her fingers, cringing as her arm swiped something sticky. She didn't bother looking for the source. Didn't want to know, probably.
"Oy, catch!" Peeking over the side of the bin, Adelaide threw the wadded paper bunches at her new friend. "I hope that's enough or you're going to have to use somethin' else and I'm not sure there's anything in here you'll want to touch."
She heaved herself out of the bin and tumbled to a crouch on the ground. The gods had made knees to catch a good fall. Adelaide's mother's gods had a lot of odd ways to entertain themselves with human creation. The tips were useful though.
Adelaide was wary about her choice of mark still, but she decided to stay her course. To show her goodwill, she straightened up and held out her hand with the real treasure from the dumpster: a half loaf of bread.
"It's a bit stale around the edges, but the center's still soft. You could put it in a bit of water or broth and it'll make a good meal." Adelaide knew. A stale loaf had kept her alive many times. This one wasn't for her though. This woman needed it more. She needed more than half a loaf, but Adelaide figured any start was better than none.
Tash dabbed at her shirt with the mostly clean towels and smirked at the girl in the dumpster. She knew how gross they were, and felt no sympathy from it. Tash lived in a world where you took your entertainment where you could and to her, this was pretty damn amusing.
She softened a bit when the other woman produced a loaf of mostly-edible bread. "Thanks," she said, a little wary of such a gift. But after all, the other woman had doused her with coffee.
Maybe she wasn't so bad. Tash should cut her a break. (Not that many folks cut Tash a break...) She was feeling more generous with her emotions after the offering of bread. Her stomach twisted uncomfortably at the prospect of food. "Listen, thanks for the cloth too. You didn't have to help."
She fumbled with a piece of stringy, dirty black hair; unsure of why she was even still here. "I'm Tash, by the way."
The spindly whore didn't offer a hand in greeting. She wasn't good at touching or being touched unless it was Olyenka or a client who was paying for the right. But she was giving her name, something important since it designated her from the shit around her. Not whore or cunt, Tash. A living, breathing person regardless of how much she didn't matter to the world around her.
She smiled at the other woman, "Want to go steal a Happicuppa? Would go good with the bread. I'll share it."
Streets are icy veins of a beast who snuffs her prayer
Her bones and the truth show through
The bread had been a good idea. Adelaide allowed herself an internal moment of relief. If she dove through that dumpster for nothing... someone would've been getting hurt. She would do the smiting herself.
"Tash. That's a nice name." Sincerity was key. The strongest punch in Adelaide's bag of tricks was the ability to make anything she said sound absolutely sincere. Honesty was an art and the truth was only an optional component. Tash. Probably got called Trash by other children. The name was a little too easy. It took a lot to make something cruel out of Adelaide. She appreciated her mother for that fact.
Other children. Tash looked like she probably still got called horrible names, although they were probably more blunt than Trash. Because of course that was totally a subtle nickname. Kids weren't subtle, but adults were brutal. Everyone always thought kids grew out of their phase of being cruel to all their peers, but Adelaide knew they just got craftier. People were horrible creatures.
Not all of them were horrible though. Tash seemed decent. Well, she seemed in desperate need of some basic supplies. Something to cover those bones, maybe. Soap, probably. That wasn't the hard part, of course. It was getting clean water to rinse in. The water-free cleaners from the Compounds hadn't been well distributed out here.
What Tash really seemed to need though was kindness. A little piece of bread and she'd already opened up. Adelaide could work with that.
"Yeah. Yeah, let's go get you some HappiCuppa. I promise it's much better to drink than to wear." Adelaide inspected herself for any obscene remnants of the dumpster, then pulled the scarf up over her head, "You keep the bread though. It's a gift. I can always dive through another dumpster, but I think you deserve to keep this prize."
tagged: Tash?. wearing: this. notes: Awww, they're sort of sweet together
Tash was pleasantly surprised that her new friend was being so giving. If Tash had more functioning brain cells, she might have been suspicious but as it was, she was okay with being happy momentarily. She deserved it, right?
She'd never been to one, but she knew were to find the Happicuppa. There was one on practically every street corner. The other chick wasn't exactly forthcoming with her name, but Tash didn't have a reason to care. She'd likely never see the klutz again.
Bread tucked under one arm, she opened the door of the Happicuppa for the other woman and hoped like hell that her own scrubby appearance didn't set off warning bells for the employees. Didn't Corps officers hang out at places like this??
Hmm, maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
Tash looked around nervously, fiddled with a straw display, and made her way down to the end where drinks were served up. Her stomach growled at the smells and sounds. Food, real food...well, mostly real. Better than a SecretBurger...
A drink came up, something iced and tall and frothy with whipped cream on top. Her belly twisted uncomfortably, and Tash made small steps towards the counter. No one had fetched it yet.
She shot the other woman a look of confirmation, waiting to make her move just a second too long.
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