--INITIATING SESSION 1—
PART 1: FLASHBACKS
All flashbacks are formative. This means that they took place before the present moment. As such, some parts of your character sheet might not yet be true. In fact, these flashbacks might include the moments when certain parts of your character sheet became real. This part of the session will consist of two short scenes.
i. ORIENTATION.
At some point, you were not here on the ship. Not on L'Enfant. Time and space are slippy things in this place. It's possible you all arrived at totally different moments. But, in some senses, you also all came aboard at the exact same instant. We are going to briefly play in that instant, to see how it felt and what happened in it.
How did the ship look to you?
Maybe it looked like this:
or:
or even:
So here is my question for you all: what was it like? What caught your attention and how did it feel? And where did you come from?
Starbear (Robot, She/Her)
Pockets (Cephalopod. It/s)
I came from the other side of the Foreboding Door,
Sometimes it leads to Outside the Ship, sometimes it leads from Inside the Ship to Elsewhere,
The door was shut tight, and didn't have any handles or hinges, but I was able to squeeze my body through a small keyhole,
Starbear (Robot, She/Her)
Starbear was expecting the ship to be a place of metal and plastic, like her body, but instead it seemed full of biomatter to her when she arrived.
Emily (Human, She/Her)
- I have difficulty remembering anything before: I came from not just one other place but many other places. Those other places are all here as well, each moment containing many. At first the ship was solid and logical, but recently not so much and I am beginning to doubt that it is a ship.
Ferin (Robot, They/Them)
- The ship to me feels old, ancient and yet at the same time feels present, feels future
- It is all of these things at once
- Gray and cement-like, blue lights and holos
- I feel like there's something here
- ...
- Something which requires me to be here whilst also being elsewhere
Starbear (Robot, She/Her)
This was exciting because she had come from a place where it was very hard to keep biomatter alive and had had to learn to grow it inside her body. She immediately dreamed of giving up her job as a gestator.
Mad Curator
I've been out, on a trip to mountains, with some friends...We came there as a part of a gallery-organised trip, to see some public sculpture by some guy whose name I don't remember... something like black letters flying in the sky...eh, whatever.
[sips champagne]
So I climbed that bloody mountain, and then must have slipped...I was a bit, you know...
[sips]
And then I was here. Maybe I’m dead. Who cares.
Lucille (Human, ix/ixs)
- The ship to me feels like it's cluttered and full of junk with wires and machines everywhere. There is also a lot of noise and it feels slightly claustrophobic. I came to L'Enfant from another ship that was floating broken in space
It sounds to us as if this has been a strange place for you all, one way or another. How easy is it to feel at home here?
[some have said that true journey is return,
but as a ship's AI, how can we ever return?]
Ferin (Robot, They/Them)
- Home is anywhere with connections,
- and all homes become connected
- I am never without home
Pockets (Cephalopod. It/s)
When my body pooled through the keyhole and re-amalgamated inside the ship, I was alone,
The first person I remember encountering after that was Ferin,
Emily (Human, She/Her)
It's like having a stone in my shoe – something not quite right, teasing me. But that's not the whole story because I've made some new friends too.
Starbear (Robot, She/Her)
When Starbear arrived she took a small shoot of fern and placed it in one of her wombs. She did this mainly out of habit. She is learning about it now as she feeds it and that familiar task keeps her centred but she is still overwhelmed by how much biolife there is here.
Lucille (Human, ix/ixs)
- I do not feel like I belong here, I feel ambivalent towards the ship. I feel more at home when I am out scouting or drafting unconscious through the ship’s information systems
Mad Curator
[Explores the furniture – assuming these objects are furniture of some kind; tries to sit comfortably, murmurs]
Home...yeah, well. It's quite all right.
at some point, you each realised that you were not alone.
how did your introductions and early exchanges go?
Pockets (Cephalopod. It/s)
I'd never seen people made of inorganic material before,
Starbear and Ferin were here before me,
I asked them a lot of questions about their bodies,
I worried, afterwards, that I'd been rude or intrusive,
Emily (Human, She/Her)
- I was weary at first, but as I focused on my own rhythms I began to notice patterns which became other sentient forms. The making introductions phase was almost skipped as suddenly we were connected by the simple domestic routines of survival.
Lucille (Human, ix/ixs)
- I think for most people I fade into the background. When I speak to others sometimes I feel like I'm hearing only static. However, when I interact with people I am polite and I do not want to cause anyone offense
Starbear (Robot, She/Her)
Starbear was very excited to be asked questions by Pockets. She immediately showed her all her different inside compartments and explained how each organism required a different environment to gestate in, and that she had as many as she could. She thought Pockets might be most interested in the watery compartments "They're like the inside of an egg" Starbear said. But she knew that Bios didn't always like to see their only makings so she didn't show the store of cephalopod eggs kept neatly in her armpit.
Ferin (Robot, They/Them)
- I have no tiredness, no fatigue to ever carry
- I do not know how I came to be here,
- only that I was there and now I am here simultaneously
- Life, whatever life may be, was all around me in all its array
- I remember only darkness, interrupted by my own glow,
- then Pockets and Starbear
- Homey kin who I wanted to learn more about
Pockets (Cephalopod. It/s)
When I got closer to Starbear, I confide in her that, for my species, gestation goes hand in hand with death,
I think what she does is beautiful,
Some of your existences might be more solitary than others. But the familiar and the unfamiliar have many shapes and smells. And so does the ship.
Lucille (Human, ix/ixs)
I find Starbear hard to be around because her body is very noisy and I find it hard to focus on conversations with her
Starbear (Robot, She/Her)
Starbear is very pleased to have met Pockets. She sees now that the fact that the ship is full of biolife does not mean that her work is not of use. She is still excited about not-working, not tirelessly and thanklessly as she has done, but she immediately offers Pockets any gestation services.
Ferin (Robot, They/Them)
- I find Lucille
- ...
- comforting?
- to be around
- ix appears aglow to me,
- like me,
- full of life and connections and communication
Emily (Human, She/Her)
- Lucille caught my attention as I sensed a kinship in ixs longing.
Pockets (Cephalopod. It/s)
I have many questions for Ferin who also, as I understand it, helps things to grow,
Plant matter, fungi. I want to help these things grow,
I also think this is beautiful,
For every new crew member I meet, I select a gift from one of my pockets,
Starbear (Robot, She/Her)
Starbear has only just realised that there are others here. She finds it very difficult to tell which biomatter is a person and which a plant. However, when Lucille moves away slightly in discomfort she sees ix, and the Curator, Emily and now Ferin someone like but unlike. She decides to focus on her fern for a while and quietly look around to make sure she's recognised all the people.
Our next moment may bear traces of continuity or connection.
This scene ends, for now, with a motto:
“The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one's own place, One's own people, One's own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise – Into growth and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change.”