Against the Universe - After ONE 18

FOUR | Activity

Some time ago...

On the Plane, things always stayed pretty much the same. 

The sun was always shining at noon. The sky always remained cyan blue. It never rained. It never stormed. And the night never came.

When you live within such reality, it's easy to take the lack of change for granted.

It's easy to accept it, easier than to hope for something else.

Moldy was lying on the grass, taking in everything happening in her body. She could feel the mold forcefully pushing through, the small mushrooms penetrating her, getting into any part they could. Living off of her. Taking claim of her. Convicting her to rot. It had gotten so much worse than when she first arrived here; the headaches never stopped.

Pain was constant, just like the Plane. And Moldy took it for granted.

Until she realized that she and the mold itself were not constant.

The mushrooms progressed. They never stayed in the same place. They kept growing, kept living. The disease would eat her from the inside until it finished her. It had a direction, a goal. It wasn't stagnant. And maybe that's why it would win over her. Because it was alive, kicking and punching, while she opted for doing nothing.

She had let it take control. She had surrendered her whole self to it, without a will of opposition. 

She felt angry at herself for that.

But maybe she needed to learn something from the mold.

After all... it didn't have full control over her, did it? Even if it overpowered her body, it could never harm her soul. Even if it hurt her, it couldn't dictate her reaction - for that was only for her to decide.

She was conscious, she was alive, she was an independent being. And she could fight. 

Charlotte stood up from the ground.

She should fight.

She made her way to the upper part of the planet, where the rest of the contestants sat in one big group, all lying idly. They were pretty hopeless, it emanated clearly from their postures and expressions. Charlotte perfectly understood why. 

Most of them had grown used to this reality during the seven months when Airy was gone. After he came back, the sense of security completely crumbled down; now, when he was no longer a threat, they could calm down once more. And they were considering calling it 'home' for good, because what were the chances anything would change?

Charlotte stood at the center of the gathering and raised her voice:

"Can everybody listen to me for a moment?"

The contestants turned to her with bored expressions. She continued, having the attention on her.

"We're all hurt, we all want to move on. But this is not our home, even though we've already accepted it."

She took a deep breath. She rarely motivated anyone. More often, she pointed fingers.

"There's much more to life than the Plane. It ain't what we are. It surely made a big impact on us, but it's not our whole essence, am I right?"

They didn't look so sure about it. Whippy Creamy muttered something along the lines of 'whatever'. Charlotte felt a bit frustrated. 

"Listen, all I'm saying is we can't just sit here and waste time. We can't just forget Earth. Keep your hopes up."

"Why? Isn't hoping pointless? It's got us nowhere so far," pointed out Scenty- No, her name is Amelia, Charlotte thought. We have names. 

She knew Amelia was low on spirits that day and every day before. Charlotte returned a glare, firm about her answer.

"No. We WILL get out. Liam WILL work out the solution. The only thing we need to focus on now is getting ready."

The objects were devouring her with their eyes, suddenly wanting to know more. Did she finally engage them?

"We can't be lying down all day aimlessly. I'm deciding we try to prepare ourselves for the world. For multiple circumstances. We're gonna learn anything we can, think of everything we can, become experts at things we can do. We're gonna do something."

Charlotte glanced around and looked at everybody separately.

"I know it may not look worth it. But, I mean... we have a lot of time. That sucker excuse of a host ain't stoppin' us anymore, folks."

People chuckled lightly at the goofy wording of the last part. Charlotte smiled, after all she didn't want the speech to be all grim. All she wanted was to motivate them to take control of their life again.

She was rotting, but they didn't have to.

"Explore your interests. Explore your ideas. Think of this as an opportunity."

...

That was the spirit they had since then. Her words that day became the fuel they were driving on.

Following her suggestion, they tried many hobbies. Starting with obvious ones, like swimming in the pool, doing yoga and exercising physically, then discovering more. They found out each person was best at something else. 

Bryce got interested in Charlotte's climbing techniques and after she taught him some, he used the Plug frequently, getting higher and higher, marking each time he got a new record. Last time, when he was climbing the smokestack, he got out of breath, so he wanted to eliminate the flaw.

Amelia, aside from teaching everyone yoga, spent a lot of time swimming in the pool, getting across it faster and faster. She also practiced diving, although that was mostly because she wanted to be quicker next time someone would be drowning. 

Subway Seat, to everyone's surprise, became good at freestyle dancing. He claimed a lot of young humans were performing wild dances in the subway and he had always been interested in them, so he eagerly tried it himself - spinning on his edges and jumping on his hands. 

Whippy Creamy and Atom found out they could beatbox and rap together. It engaged them to the point where they could speak and automatically rhyme.

Tray turned out to have a beautiful voice and sang to others from time to time, be it calm songs to sleep or energetic for a karaoke party.

Since Liam had managed to spawn them sticky notes, they could also draw for relief.

But most importantly, they gathered each 'evening' under the trees and bushes (imitating the nightly atmosphere at least slightly) to tell stories either made up or from their actual lives. Mainly batch one led the storytelling, as other batches didn't feel like their life was that interesting. They kept the memories alive by sharing them: these sessions were actually healing for them. When they were out of stories, they would simply talk about Earth's history.

All of this, they believed, led to them being prepared as best as they could be. They were using the time they had to the fullest. They believed in the escape.

ONE would end. It had to.

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A/N

The contestants too face a hard challenge keeping their sanity and I wanted to explain how they do it. We'll come back to Liam in the next chapter!