15317/Ex Umbra: La Puerta Del Cielo

Ex Umbra: La Puerta Del Cielo
Date of Scene:	06 July 2023
Location:	Suite 05: Jemma's Suite - Triskelion
Synopsis:	Jemma descends.
Cast of Characters:	Jemma Simmons, Jane Foster
Tinyplot:	Praxidike

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Jemma Simmons has posed:
Early evening at the Trisk and Jemma, for once, is not in the R&D labs.

No, Jemma is actually in her quarters, for once. And not working. That in and of itself is a miracle. She is alone, for the moment, but not working. Instead, she is sitting in the living room, with what sounds like an audio book or a radio play or something intoning in the background. Which...is certainly the case. The dulcet tones of what sounds to be Peter Davidson and Georgia Tennant betray an audio drama is playing. Appropriate, considering Jemma's fandoms. Of course she would be listening to The Doctor and the Doctor's Daughter. The fact that the female lead is the daughter of the Doctor both figuratively and literally always amused the scientist.

However, besides Jemma, from the R&D department, is her tablet, open to the personal notes that she has on the shards she has collected from Connecticut. The shards of uru that have identified themselves as Afroth, at least to Jemma. Already updated are the notes that both Daisy and Blackagar have their own collection of sentient shards. And yet, Jemma is not studying, though it is apparent that she was up to rather recently.

No. She needed a break. Jemma knew this. Beating her head against a figurative brick wall wasn't going to help anyone.

Jane Foster has posed:
Jenny, or Lady Vivian, adds a rarefied air to the evening's proceedings while the stultifying summer ushered in after the fireworks and drone displays marking Independence Day. Peter Davidson weaving lyrical descriptions around his literal daughter eases the barbaric humidity that cloaks every glassy pane of the Triskelion in a thickened layer of condensation, taxing the HVAC systems to their near max to preserve the wet bulb temperature somewhere in the median of human survival.

Ancient sets dripping from the window or rattling on the rooftop don't apply to SHIELD's finest, though the systems can still encounter certain difficulties. No amount of technology can eradicate physics; the dewpoint remains high, humid temperatures wring water from the air to gather on television screens and watch faces, monitors and oven doors. The slow, steady plink forms a quiet, dreamy splash to interrupt the audio dramas. To slowly drive someone insane, waterboarding by lazy sound.

Her tablet is overly warm, the glass squeaking under the grooves of her fingertips. Still, at least it's not monstrously hot in her apartment, just this side of slippery and sticky in a way seaside Scotland never is. Or never used to be.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
One of the benefits or drawbacks of the Trisk, depending on one's point of view, is that the living quarters do not have any real windows. A drawback, certainly, should one wish to see actual sky. It is rather difficult to have natural lighting in what is essentially a glorified bunker, after all. But, conversely, even with the HVAC system taxed to its limits, there is something to be said about being able to choose what image can be seen as 'outside'. The mind can be tricked...and a scene with a slight breeze in the panels used as mock windows is enough to make the temperature bearable. Plus, no worry about heat stroke or sunburnt skin. There is a benefit!

The tablet is overly warm, indeed. It was one of the reasons Jemma decided to take a break and just sit and listen. To do anymore would raise the temperature to a less than favorable degree, simply by the exertion and body heat generated. And the audio drama itself helps in the isolation. Voices filling the void so that the scientist does not feel alone. Another trick of the mind, surely. Still, it is a suitable distraction. A mystery to solve, with an artist whose work seems to mark the end of worlds. A problem to solve.

Yes, even in relation, Jemma works to seeks answers.

Still, even as she listens, Jemma's mind wanders. To matters of the heart. The fact that she still has not found a way to find her friend anew. Not even the comfort of timelords and ladies is enough to break Jemma fully away from that. Hence the documentation of shards. And the monitoring of a certain physical form on the dark side of the Moon.

The body still lives without deterioration. That means that Jemma's friend is still alive, in her dual state. On that same tablet are theoretical methods of rejoining states of being together via quantum entanglement, harmonics, and a whole lot of power. But without knowing where Jane's essence is, the theory will remain just that....theories and conjecture, unproven.

Jane Foster has posed:
Words stitch a melody where usually the strains of a piano or a musician crooning into the high-tech array in a studio might otherwise fill a chamber. "Be strong now. You need to ho-ld on." The briefest fluctuation escaping a sound engineer's precise boundaries for acceptable production mars an otherwise perfectly acceptable production. The dripping plink falls into the regular monotony, distending a vowel until it breaks into an audible crack at the threshold of human hearing.

The novella resumes at its stately clip, building on the narrative of two actors well and truly familiar with one another. Plink! Another drop seeps off the air conditioning pipes and lands somewhere below, settling into a puddle. "Do you hear me?"

Windows projected inward certainly have their advantages to change whenever someone wants a new view of something other than the river, Yonkers, or a flat expanse of car park and landing pad. Fans spin. Something creaks, the building settling into the heat, sagging under the immense weight of an oversaturated atmosphere thick with smoke particulate and noxious emissions, all serving to build a pressure cooker on ten million people trapped in a mega-city. Jemma is but one.

"We've got things to do, you and me. Hey."

Another sputter emitted from the vents stirs as creeping cooler air settles in, vaguely awash in the memories of places elsewhere and times elsewhen. Pine needles and wet stone and the crisp, stately advent of starless nights.

"Hej! You could go anywhere. Everywhere. You hear me? Jennnnnmmmmmmmmeee?"

The artificial panes flicker under their fogged surfaces.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
Despite of the heat, Jemma is still alert. Or, maybe it is because of the heat. It is certainly because of the heat that Jemma decided to listen to a distraction rather than work. So, with all of that inquisitive mind left with a focus of the modern day radio play...the fact that a single word skips? Oh, of course it is noticed. Confusion clouds the expression, only visible for Jemma herself and whatever ghosts that reside with her. It is a minor shift...and seems to recover, allowing Jemma to relax. But, for only a little bit.

For it shifts again. Asking if she hears. That...can't be Peter Davidson. And it cannot be a fault of the recording. It was just released less than a month ago. Cannot possibly be a bad recording.

Then it happens again. "Jenme?" Jemma's voice speaks out into the humid night. "That cannot be right." Nevermind the fact that Jemma is essentially talking to herself, at least in her mind. It isn't like the recording knows what is happening. Jemma does shift and regards the streaming device in use for the audio drama. No, everything seems in order here. No hiccups in reception or anything. One thing the Trisk is not is a wireless dead zone.

"What is going on here?"

Jane Foster has posed:
Peter Davidson's stately timbre has a certain ring to it, and this deep into the radio play, familiar to any listener. The audience might be taken aback if he suddenly broke out into a falsetto at the upper reaches of Freddie Mercury's range or suddenly started speaking like a kid from the back-end of the Bronx. Recasting midstream simply isn't done until it is.

If it's a recording put on rewind, the same track repeats. If a broadcast, the interplay between Georgiana and Peter continues right apace, blurred and cracked in lilting strains to fit the narrative spooled out in the night.

The smoked glass on her tablet beads with tiny drops of water. More appear on the flat surfaces, picture frames and meticulous devices gathered by a world-class scientist with SHIELD's bank accounts and resources at her proverbial fingertips.

"If we wait..."

The streaming device shows her back against the glossy finish, warped beneath that foggy layer, but the background shifts where the player itself is a static image gamely playing along. Figures frozen for the PR photograph peer out of the digital frame, glossed over, the familiar faces registered as a blur. Beyond the fantastic coat and the blonde ponytail, shapes slide among the clouds. Tiny figures under blasted moons pivot: one crouching before another turns their head, a third holding a bundle in their arms staring up at Jemma. Creeping permutations of text bleed under the watery finish on the screen, crawling into squared off shapes and diagonal lines, distaff slashes and angular forks.

That dull shimmer distorting her own reflection leaves minute differences to be found in her own likeness, one familiar for thirty years. The blur of the condensation makes it so. Eyes dark as pitch, somber and knowing. The gravity of the curious stare. The mouth moving in time to her own, misted over.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
There is humidity....then there is something else. And, with the oddness of the audio drama, coupled by the slow drip of condensation....this is something else.

Did...did the cover art of the audio drama actually move? And...Jemma could have swore that it was calling out to her. Wait. What is going on? A finger reached out, sliding on the tablet's surface. Yes...that is definitely water. But...it shouldn't be that humid. Not in the Trisk.

Unless...

Suddenly a thought came to Jemma. Is this similar to the fog that transported a certain scientist into the middle of Scotland? Where Jemma procured a strange green rock...and procured a unique set of abilities along with it? It...is similar. But here? In the middle of her quarters?

Where does this want her to go now?

Jane Foster has posed:
Jemma's finger slides across the damp surface of the glass. Cool beads waver on the overheated screen, simultaneously chilly and hot. It might register as a shock to the senses, not enough to promote a burn, but enough to register.

The passage of that digit forges a frictionless smear past the Doctor's daughter smiling up from the still image. Cloudy figures crowd together under the condensation, picked out in the background as somewhat indistinct. The kneeling person jolted upright and putting a protective arm ahead of the standing youth while the alien moon hangs unchanged in the sky.

Her likeness reflected in the glass stares back with the same perplexed intensity. Thoughts scribe the same lines on her brow. Dark eyes glance aside at the weakly glowing forked lines.

Her finger drops through the glass, past a solid membrane, into a shock of cold. Where one knuckle goes, the others can follow.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
The fingertip hesitates. The opposing sensations of hot and cold is noted. That scientific mind of Jemma spinning on just what is causing that. Some sort of temperature inversion? A thin layer of air, between the screen and droplets, acting as an insulator to keep the two extremes separate and unique?

The theories abound. But...then there is the fact that there are those moving images on the tablet screen. That...shouldn't be moving. Another wrinkle. Why this? Why now?

There might have been hope for Jemma to discern the moving images in her tablet screen. But...then her fingertip passes through the tablet screen...into cold. That has to be impossible. But...yet it happened. And, there is only one thing that can be done to understand why.

The journey must continue.

With that, Jemma pushes her hand forward, slowly. One knuckle in, then another. One finger, then another. Reaching in to her tablet...and beyond.

Jane Foster has posed:
Answers do not immediate present themselves in the foggy apartment buried inside the Triskelion. Jemma has the leisure of theorizing as long as she likes, poring over incongruent appearances in a digital image or the effects of condensation on an overheating tablet.

The immutable fact remains that her hand travels through the tempered Gorilla glass. Diffused potassium ions that normally form a tough, compressive barrier against manhandling lend a peculiar sensation as her skin slides through them, papery stiffness giving way in jolts instead of a perfectly smooth descent. But she can nigh well shove her whole arm up to the elbow into the tablet if she so wishes, experiencing the parting of some kind of unseen membrane.

On the other side is cold, not quite the jolt of entering a walk-in freezer but more akin of stepping into an air-conditioned room or an early spring morning. Moisture on the skin only enhances the experience, but it's not a flash freeze.

Around the margins of the tablet, the blurred writing remains in force, scratched out in the weak sunlit glow that manages not to collapse totally inward.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
The hand disappears into the tablet, up to the wrist. It is there that Jemma pauses. The fingers unseen flex, feeling the somewhat brisk temperature within. But...there is no desire to shove the arm in. The scientist knows, in her structured mindset, that she cannot possibly pass through the rectangle sitting next to her. It is a simple matter of surface area. Quite elementary....at least to Jemma. As much as she would want to, she cannot possibly attempt to step through her tablet.

So, instead, she attempts to pull her hand out. In the process, those brown eyes flicker upward, to see if there are any other surfaces that have the condensation that the tablet has. Surfaces large enough to be a possible doorway.

The curiousity is piqued. And...questions must be answered. Even if it means that Jemma needs to take a leap of faith. Or a step, in this case.

Jane Foster has posed:
Out goes her hand, leaving minute ripples across the damp surface of the tablet. The cloudy screen still maintains her reflection and the superimposed images of various Whovian characters for the audio drama, though the figures in the background remain scattered from when she dared to breach the gate.

A woman behind an easel that wasn't there before looks lost in her work, briefly shifting from behind the canvas to squint up. Her own reflection still has a raised hand, fingers almost touching the device's surface.

Every last glossy surface in the apartment bears beads of moisture and the stain of a fog left as if she just took a shower there in the middle of the living area. She's not exactly lacking for choice. Appliances. Faux windows. Glass panes. Bathroom tiles.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
It is to the pseudo windows that Jemma turns to next. With the tablet held almost absent-mindedly in her left hand, the scientist does what scientists usually do. She forms a hypothesis and a test method within her mind, steps up to the floor-length monitor, and raises her hand to touch the screen.

The scene on the monitor? A pleasant, sunny day. Certainly more inviting than the sweltering day it really is outside. A thin bead of condensation draws a line down the glass surface. And....it is there that Jemma reaches. To touch...and, quite possibly, to push through.

Jane Foster has posed:
In her left hand or is her left hand in the tablet? If she touches the screen, it absorbs her fingers, her palm, every lick of skin. The barrier that slides across her body is chilly, slick in the way of diving into a pool or the sea. A tangible coolness that remains, even when she draws back. Condensation that flows freely down the panes carries on, gathering upon the floor, leaving a shiny patina.

For a moment, Jemma runs in straight to the window. Her hand meets the screen and the mildest yielding as she might expect. It takes more coordination to hit the pane, to squeeze past, at an angle that somehow overlaps the tablet and the screen together. Only then can she gain enough force to adequately push past.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
There is that sensation...the same as with the tablet previously. Yes...it does seem that Jemma can push through. The question is...should she? She remembers all too well the last incident with mysterious fog. An incident that placed her half a world away. What will happen with this? Where will Jemma go? Should she move forward? Step through the portal, without anyone else the wiser?

A debate, to be sure. And normally one that would be resolved with logic. Normally...Jemma would pause. She would at least tell someone. Fitz, perhaps, or even Daisy. Yet...if this happened to Daisy, Jemma knows what would happen. Daisy would step through, then worry about the consequences.

So....what should Jemma do?

With a deep breath and a moment to steel herself, Jemma takes the plunge. She works out the angles, realizes the resistance caused by her holding the tablet. And, she adjusts. The tablet shifts to overlap the frame. The appropriate entry vector is determined.

Jemma....pushes through.

Jane Foster has posed:
What would Jemma do? Maxims stitched on an embroidery frame might also display an ICER or a devious engineered contraption that leads to a great head shot. Questions she raises in such a mindset historically lead down very interesting paths. The matter remains hers to decide. Time does not rush on to urge her to a conclusion.

On the contrary, time barely approaches at all.

That much becomes apparent from wavering projections of light frozen in their depictions of sunny skies or verdant fields or pleasantly illuminated labs, whatever she preprogrammed them to do. Light bled of its colour leaves behind a primarily monochrome palette, her flesh bleached ivory and clothes rendered in near greys, a cascade that gradually fades in. But the transition takes only moments, a sensation of passing through a thin temperature barrier into the colder space. There shall she find herself standing on a flat, partially winding trail carved down a terrace staggered by jutting pillars. Many stand incomplete, snapped off or crumbling, a collection strung with wires not unlike power lines around a city. Dangling strips sway back and forth, making an eerie melody through the penumbral gloom signalling the advent of dusk or the long hours before dawn. Other noises emerge along that slope, a more steady organic rattle.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
"Well, this is certainly peculiar."

A rather matter-of-fact observation from the British national. Of course, leave it to Jemma to treat what is obviously a portal and time dilation to a yet unknown location the same as she would regard a minor inconvenience. At least she didn't use a Wizard of Oz reference.

Yet, it is painfully obvious that she is not in Kansas. Or New York. Certainly not in the Trisk. A glance downward is given to the object in her left hand...the table that started this journey of discovery. It made the transition...which is surprising. If it still works, Jemma will chalk that up to astonishing...possibly more so if it actually can pinpoint where she is at. If there is any sort of cellular reception. Judging from the environment, Jemma is not holding her breath for a cell signal.

Still, there is a trail before her. And a look behind shows little of anything. Most likely the only way to go is forward. And, well, it isn't yellow, nor bricked. But it is a way forward.

When in Oz... It is probably time to go see the wizard. Or whatever it is that the eponymous mist wanted Jemma to do.

Jane Foster has posed:
Peculiar is a place suspended in night, although it certainly carries aspects of once thriving. Elaborate decoration survives despite significant weathering, though distinguishing any colours used to brighten the figures processing around the columns is difficult. Stylized palms or grape vines can be distinguished among others, their toppled leaves lying upon the barren ground. Not a puff of grass or a bush grows anywhere nearby, though the abundance of rubble gives an impression of somewhere civilized. Possibly still populated, however diminished.

Jemma is not in Kansas, or anything on the scale of New York.

Upslope, if she chooses to look back, is a polished stone wall almost without feature except for the long expanse enclosing something. A faint glow originates in that direction that suffuses the outdoors with enough light to see by, those it's only comparable to a crescent moon at best. No windows, crenellations or decorations touch the round expanse that's large enough to encompass at least a good-sized hill or park.

Downslope from her is what must be a town, or the remnants of one. The structures grow increasingly cruder further down the terrace, moving from small plastered apartments in a desert style to crumbled mud huts closest to shore. There are the tallest standing pillars, erected in pairs, fourteen of them total spaced out along the sweeping bend described by the shore. Peeking through gaps between flat rooftops or weathered, moth-eaten awnings strung across alleys, she might catch sight of the dominant feature in the landscape.

Winding its broad path, a river of molten gold radiates the only source of warmth anywhere nearby.