[OPEN] mod plot | return to harbour part i: the celebration

[unplug]

CHARACTERS ▶ All
LOCATION ▶ Throughout Zion
SUMMARY ▶ Centuries after Neo struck his deal with the Architect, humankind celebrates the tenuous semblance of peace that they continue to enjoy. Welcome to the inaugural event for Systemwide.
WARNINGS ▶ PG-13 or R for sexual content, please mark subject headers accordingly.
NOTES ▶ Plotting post is here. All characters except for Emma Swan and Zee Captain should feel free to tag in!

Part II (and the missions) will come as a complete surprise. For the first day of celebration, both of the temporary captains and crew should go into the celebration as if they have absolutely no idea any tactical operations are coming.

▶ Return to Harbour Part I

A full week of celebrations. Though the peace that Neo struck with the Architect had not lasted in its initial form, Zion is more prosperous and humankind as a whole in greater in numbers and strength than it has been since the first fields were sown. On each auspicious day, work schedules are cut in half, starting late and ending early. Spirits run high. There is no sun to tell the time of day, but when the gongs sound out two hours following the second meal, nearly every man, woman and child stows nearly every piece of working equipment in the whole city. The Zion Defense Grid starts the first watch.

And so it begins.

Music and Dance ◀

The cavernous belly of Zion resonates with music, a press of pounding of drums, electronic bass and bodies, channelled from speakers and acoustics that are likely older and more oft-repaired than any single life in the room. It’s a level of sheer, blasting volume that plays xylophone with your bones and seems to heat the very air with kinetic energy, overwrites the ordinary rhythm of the human heartbeat into something fiercer; the kind of music that reaches through skin and into blood and threatens to shear apart the very molecule of one’s being. Hundreds of years ago, they called this rave. Now, it is a tradition of exuberance.

Amid the pounding cadence and still more toward the smaller hours of morning, people are pulled up to sing. The population of Zion is not so very large that those with talent or inclination go unnoticed, and even the unplugged might find themselves cheerfully nominated by a neighbor or a partner in barter, a slender microphone hooked to their ear.

But one does not have to be a songbird to get along. Though there may well be a learning curve for many, especially the newly unplugged, they will likely find something familiar about the taste of liquor and a proper welcome in being knocked by a woman’s flying hair, an invitation to grind or, you know, to enjoy a piggyback ride.

The Feasts ◀

Planting, harvests, and imports from Kosala increase for the two months prior to the party, and it shows in each of the seven feasts. Even the protein slurry, typically the subject of so many jokes and stoically pragmatic attitudes toward amino acids, is spiced and colored and turned into the base for soup, rich and thick with golden kernels of corn and juicy chunks of the rest of Agriculture’s get. Potatoes, chickpeas, carrots, tomatoes, and leafy greens are dressed in dozens of styles that hearken from cultures that had been thought dead around the world generations ago. Unleavened breads number in dozens of styles: roti, tortillas, and flatbreads, in shapes and colors as diverse as the sorts of rice.

And there is so much candy. All are invited to help themselves. What is left over at the end of the week must be only what will keep. Ceremonies are diverse and scattered: some say grace before supping, others toast in inebriated disarray, while others are as likely to look toward a young woman from Antioch for a speech about freedom, industry, and unity of nations.

Sharing the Chronicles ◀

The absolute and objective facts of Neo’s deeds may be lost to the annals of history, but that hardly means no one is willing to talk about them. From the spiritual leaders of Zion to the most military-minded Councilors, everyone has versions or recollections of Morpheus who believed, Neo who was the One, and Trinity who freed and saved him. For those who are interested, many orators are available to tell the stories, piecemeal. You will learn all the great names-- and many of their great deeds with varying accuracy… and embellishments. The powers you hear of may seem improbable, but the attacks upon Zion, are an all too realistic reminder of how precious this tenuous peace is. Patchy holographic displays show iconic images in three-dimensional rotation: the Nebachudnezzer, her crew; the first Council in the chain that we still see today.

Other ◀

Throughout these seven days, Zion is not the same engine of commerce that it usually is, but it as much a hub of human activity as ever. Reduced dock traffic only means that traders and, indeed, tourists from Antioch and other cities had arrived earlier, with goods to barter and advertise with. While the clothing remains simple in material and often practical in design, there are richer and brighter pieces out, and jewelry too. Henna artists whose style draw from an eclectic mixture of innovation and cultures, their names perhaps lost, are out to paint men and women.

It is quieter in the mornings. Children play, carefully overseen in the fallow fields; a small team of men and women clean up what mess wasn’t undone in the great cavern the night before. Network traffic dwindles nearly to nothing. Kitchens throughout Zion, of course, are on a slow but steady uptick of preparations, right up until the music begins to play.

OOC Reminder: On March 2nd (tomorrow), a second log will be posted to initiate the military/mission portion of this plot!