SSSD - Poke around the living quarters

The anxiety-inducing thing about the living quarters is that they’re pretty tight. It’ll be easy to get busted here. If that happens, she’ll need a story. Alison has a few ideas for that.

The structure, overall, isn’t so different from Outpost 69. The rooms are singles with no amenities to speak of, not even what you would see in a college dorm like a mini fridge. The women here aren’t especially neat, but since luggage and worldly possessions are so limited by the location, nothing can be too messy… although a couple of rooms are extremely messy.

Alison picks up a chair from the floor that’s been knocked over. She puts it where it belongs by the desk and picks up the notebook from the rug. It looks like a journal. She’s not about to read someone’s journal, but she’s curious to know who it belongs to. Someone named Tabby.

Alison is heartened to find a small collection of dog-eared romance novels in one room, and a nice vibe sitting out in the open with a bottle of lube. Maybe the Americans aren’t so weird after all. One of them has, of all things, some Legos in her room. The rooms aren’t labeled in any way, so she can’t be sure of who lives in each one, and she isn’t doing a full police search… just checking out whatever stands out obviously.

Her benign tidying and snooping bring her to an object that she doesn’t recognize. Frowning, she sinks to a crouch in a room and picks it up. It’s bright blue, and it’s a padlock connected to a hard wire. It’s like a bike lock, but too small for a bike.

“Weird,” she mutters, putting it back exactly where she found it. One of the drawers is open in the bedside table. She uses the tip of her pinky to pull it open, and removes the box inside. It’s heavy and rattles slightly. “Oh. Jeez,” she says, sliding the cover off to reveal the contents. Gleaming brass bullets jiggle in their little plastic holder.

She quickly puts that back and moves on.

Another room has a crack in the window that’s letting in icy air. A towel is wadded up on the floor; maybe the woman who slept in here used it to stop the draft. Alison picks up the towel and does that, pausing to examine her hand. She rubs her fingers together and sniffs. The temperature in this place is even lower than that in Outpost 69, which is always chilly enough to warrant thick sweaters.

Still, from a cleanliness and hygiene perspective, this place really is on par with a college dorm. Maybe a little worse. Alison is ready to believe that Americans aren’t as tidy as Norwegians, but this is rough. On the other hand, Alison knows a little about reality. Symptoms of depression go hand in hand with very stressful situations, and depression makes it a lot harder to care about things like showering and cleaning up.

She finds a tray and papers in another room, but no stash. Weirdly, the only room that doesn’t really have any personal belongings in it is the one that she shared with Signe.

Alison bends to pick up another object. It’s an iPhone that was lying facedown on the floor, half under the bed. It’s dead. It wouldn’t be useful down here, of course, but one could download stuff to it. Ebooks, audiobooks, music, games. But this is one of the neater rooms that she’s seen, and this is no way to treat a phone. These women are a mess.

That becomes much more literal in the next room, where she finds an open package of cream puffs covered in mold on the bedside table. Alison wrinkles her nose and reaches out to grab it, pausing at the sight of the orange prescription pill bottle on the table. She picks it up. Felopidine, prescribed to Sheridan, M.

Alison sets the pill bottle down softly. She looks at the moldy food and the bed, which is made. A bra and some fuzzy socks lie on the floor. The locker stands open, revealing the same sorts of clothes that everyone wears on this godforsaken continent.

Troubled, she goes back into the corridor that runs the length of the sleeping quarters. Alison hurries back to the long hallway, almost running into Signe.

Signe doesn’t look happy.

“The weather will be clear for a brief period,” she says. It’s not a question, but the question is implied. Alison can’t read Signe, but she can guess. She’s uncomfortable with Americans in general, uncomfortable with strangeness, uncomfortable with what happened last night, and uncomfortable about feeling responsible for an American college student. Lots of discomfort.

“Did they use the phone?”

Signe shakes her head.

Alison frowns, feeling as though she’s been put on the spot. But Signe wants her to say something.

“Let’s get out of here,”

Or

“We can’t leave these women,”