The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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15strangers2020-01-27 10:38 am
strangerpeople) wrote in 15strangers2020-01-27 10:38 am
W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟
There was no sugarcoating it anymore. This was a critical time. Saving all of the vines is paramount, but what does one do when the blight hits? It keeps encroaching on the grapes, day by day. Entire clusters, entire bunches, dead and rotting, while allowing the blight to spread, and the leading botanists and viticulturists cannot identify the origin or the cause. They can't even successfully isolate the culprit in their labs; it seems to disappear like air no matter the precautions taken.
It is a catastrophe that seems to be beyond science, and it will result in the complete collapse of the entire country's wine industry. Already, embargoes on this year's crop have forced other grape-growers to close shop for the year after they'd sold their previous stock; it is all too possible that no grapes might ever be grown here again if a cure cannot be found. The tourists have stopped coming. The towns have grown silent.
You, meanwhile, are devastated. With the way your business is going, it will be on the brink of bankruptcy within the year. You will soon have no choice but to close shop and let every grapevine die, let the land go fallow. There must be a cure for this, there must be. Yet everything that can go wrong is.
Then, as you watch the news, it happens. Breaking news. The blight has been found in another country.
It is a pandemic-and it is only getting worse.
-
Well. This is...what else can can anyone say? You all know the deal. You all know what situation you're in. All that is left is to figure out what you can do about it. If there's anything that can be done.
You still feel that compulsion to distrust. To know you cannot win. To know that only the hosts have your best interests in mind. It would be easy to just do all that. But would it be the right thing to do? You can't be completely sure. Indeed, nothing is certain here, except for that damned ticking sound. If only you could stop it.
But you can't stop it. It is inevitable.
There are 15 strangers in this place.]
Door
[Kurama will see about getting those things out of the closet. Quietly, as he thinks and fights the distrust. Jonathan is the only other one this has happened to so far.]
It's still there, at the back of my mind. What the TV did to me. It's hardly irresistible but it's still in me.
no subject
[As perhaps stupid as those questions might seem, the worried tone of Jonathan's voice is something impossible to fake. He's genuinely baffled, and genuinely concerned.]
I mean, I know there's no easy answers here, but still... anyway, I've still got a few sets to go.
no subject
Two main possibilities come to mind. One is that the TV and the radio operate at different strengths, which I am not about to ask anyone to test.
The other is that something in our reactions to it was different in a way that allowed it a foothold in me but not you.
[Kurama pulls the TV and radio out, looking at them with a tight expression.]
Would you mind letting me know once you're done, then? Even without a motive, it would ease my mind to know nothing's happened.
no subject
[We can assume he did, of course.]
Different strengths makes sense, but maybe different frequencies, too? If it's a science thing and not a magic thing.
no subject
[Kurama makes a face at the offending electronics as he considers the theory.]
That's also a possibility, though another one that would be risky to test.