video | un: degurechaff

[verrostet]

[ A young girl sits at a table in an otherwise nondescript room, her hands folded in front of her in a picture of perfect professionalism. Her white button-down shirt is similarly perfect, not a wrinkle in sight, and tailored to her thin frame. Her gaze into her omni is expressionless — some might call it cold — and her high, childish voice is tempered with the assured enunciation of an adult. ]

Good evening. My name is Tanya von Degurechaff. I'm new here, so I have a couple questions for anyone willing to answer.

First, what kind of job do you currently have? If you don't have one, then I'm also interested in hearing what you did before you arrived here.

Second, are there any jobs or businesses you'd like to see here? I recognize that this is a broad question, but since we come from a broad range of backgrounds, any feedback is welcome.

[ A pause, a stray thought seeming to flicker through her head before she continues. ]

As for myself, I have experience with personnel management, various air-based operations, tactical field research, and administrative work. More broadly, I'm an aerial mage. The business I'd like to see is a coffee shop.

Comments

[expertonshutters]

[He nods, jotting that down. He’s doing all this so he can get a clear picture of the kinds of people who turn up here, try to sort out a pattern, or if nothing else, eliminate things that are not patterns. While death was a strong theory, it only took talking to a small handful of people to toss it out, provided their memories are to be believed.]

Alright, last question.

[He pauses, giving his notebook a lop-sided smile.]

I have a strong suspicion I already know the answer, given what we’ve already discussed, but who knows, maybe I’ll be surprised. [That was the whole nature of asking all these questions, after all. There were so many ways a world could be different.]

Have you ever heard of Kamen Rider?

[verrostet]

[ Kamen Rider... Kamen Rider? That classic tokusatsu show? Puzzlement settles over her face, followed by a slight furrowing of her brow. She doesn't know about it in detail, those shows never having appealed to her, but any modern Japanese citizen will have heard of it. Is he a fan, perhaps? ]

Ah... Kamen? I do recall seeing a town of that name west of the Rhine.

[ She prefers not to lie -- honesty is essential to good business -- but in the legal world, gray is essentially the same as white. There is indeed a town named Kamen west of the Rhine river, and that's a fact. It was her job to study maps like her life depended on it, which it did. ]

[expertonshutters]

[Ah, it’s as he thought. Well, it didn’t hurt to ask, at least. He writes that down. A town by the name of Kamen was actually pretty interesting.]

It’s a bit of an urban myth where I’m from. Someone who fights evil from the shadows.

[He puts his notebook away for now.]

I’ve been using these questions to gather general information and to try and get to know what kind of people wash up here. I was using it to see if I can find or eliminate any patterns, but I haven’t really had a lot of luck.

[verrostet]

[ Urban myth? Not a TV show?? Her brow continues to furrow, but she stows that quirk of wording away for later consideration. ]

Oh, I see. It would be interesting if there were a correlation...

[ She rubs her chin thoughtfully. ]

It may be worth noting that the details we find commonplace may be clues in themselves. For instance, I haven't been here for very long, but the Sleepers I've witnessed washing in are predominantly humans like ourselves and teens to young adults. If even a tiny number of Sleepers are non-human, it begs the question: why aren't there more of them? Is there some quality of humans in their prime that makes them more likely to come to these shores? Or is there merely some limiting factor that tends to cull non-humans and humans of especially low or high age before they reach the shore?