Work Text:
A room with nothing in it. Well, not nothing. There's a lightswitch on the wall, a bed, a dresser.
Leave the bed. A blanket, a pillow, sheets. The lower sheet's tucked-in corners come undone when checking underneath the mattress. Said mattress is a foam rectangle on a flat metal surface. Put it back down to figure out later.
Open the dresser drawers sequentially. Six copies of the same loose gray shirt in the top drawer, six copies of the same pants in the bottom drawer. Close the drawers.
Lightswitch set into the wall. A small rectangle of plastic surrounding a smaller almost-rectangle of plastic with one end angled slightly forward. Turns a fluorescent ceiling-panel on and off when pushed with a satisfying click. Click. Click. Click. Click-click-click. But not everything has been investigated yet, so attention needs to be turned elsewhere.
The walls are made of concrete. Floor's also concrete. Ceiling uncertain but probably a different material. Metal door with a metal door handle.
Nothing else for it but to try the door.
Corridor lined with identical doors in both directions. None of the other ones are open. Nameplates on each door.
Ah.
Math Velazquez, then, paces the length of the corridor one way, then the other, reading the names. Math seems to be the only one awake.
One end of the corridor is closed. The other opens into a common room. Math perceives a kitchen on one side, a dining table with chairs in the center, a couch on the other side. A television is affixed directly to the wall, showing all the same names as the doors.
There's bookcases on the walls, several populated with books. Math selects one. It describes a game called blaseball. Math puts it down and picks out another one. It is also about blaseball. A third is about blaseball. In an increasing panic, Math looks at another, and another, and another -
An unexpected sound. Someone else is there.
"Where is this? Who are you? Do you know what's going on?" the interloper says.
Math gestures at the haphazard pile of random samplings next to the bookshelves, then shrugs: I don't know.
They don't know where they are or how they got here. There are fourteen of them. The television says they're part of Internet League Blaseball. That isn't enough clues to work with.
They explore the place they apparently live in now: all the rooms are exactly the same. There's a supply closet with brooms and mops and brushes. There's three bathrooms. They can move around the furniture, but that doesn't do anything. The kitchen appliances slide out too, which gives them similarly little information. The closed end of the corridor has seams down the sides, which don't move even when a stick is wedged into them and pulled.
The ceiling is too high for any of them to touch by themselves, but one of them climbs up on someone else's shoulders and manages to feel at it. Something painted.
They decide to explore themselves, instead. Moving in different ways. Experimenting with the tools. How many of them jump or tumble well? What do they feel like doing when they pick up the ILB-letterhead stationery and matching pens? What can they do with the contents of the well-stocked pantry and fridges and freezers? How many random numbers can they memorize? Do they wince at the thought of ripping pages out of the books?
It still doesn't tell them anything about how they got there, but at least they know some of what they can do.
It is two days later when the blind end of the corridor opens up to reveal a ballpark. The field is immaculate false grass colored the Platonic ideal of green; the markings on the field are stencil-crisp on the red-brown clay no matter how many times anyone kicks at them. There are enormous banks of white lights looming above, which are always on. Beyond them, the sky is a perfect unbroken black.
A line of duffel bags waits in the dugout, each with someone's name on them. They put on the equipment inside, which fits them too perfectly. They have fun playing catch and running around trying to tag each other and mock-fighting with the bats, until they realize that they are probably supposed to be using them for whatever this Blaseball thing is.
They study the DVDs of past Blaseball games to learn how to play. It's easier than trying to decipher the rulebook.
One day some of them decide to try going out into the darkness beyond the field. Dickerson Greatness and Theodore Holloway come back two days later, holding tightly onto each other's hands, and report that there was absolutely nothing out there. Light and sound were rapidly swallowed. The sense of touch disappeared after a while, too. They had to turn back when they no longer knew if they were making any progress because eventually they couldn't tell if they still had arms, or legs, or a heartbeat, or anything at all.
Over time they figure out chore rotations. Not all of them can cook. Some people are better at cleaning than others. Jordan Hildebert is an incurable contrarian, and the group has to figure out how to stop them from repeatedly switching sides and never letting the group come to a conclusion on which direction to hang the toilet paper.
They spend half the day practicing - Andrew Solis comes up with special drills and exercises, to work on just one skill at a time so that everyone can improve on their own specific weaknesses. In the evenings they do other things. Yeong-Ho Benitez teaches them how to draw still life pictures. Alexandria Rosales starts a sparring group. They work out a comfortable routine.
One morning they wake up to find the TV showing them a schedule: they will be playing Blaseball games against other teams for the next 99 days.
They play their games against other teams under that ink-black sky. They can socialize with the other team for fifteen minutes before and fifteen minutes after each game. They rotate who's in the infield to give everyone extra time to talk to opposing players who are on base. Only a few minutes more, but with as little time as they have, they have to squeeze the absolute most out of it.
Everyone else is equally clueless as to how they got here.
"I think there are actual people restocking the pantry," Dickerson says one morning over breakfast. "I dusted for fingerprints."
"Wait," says Marco Escobar, "how?"
"Cornstarch and a brush made out of my own hair."
Marco scowls. "I wasn't talking about that. I meant, how did you already know how to dust for fingerprints?"
"How do any of us know what fingerprints are?" cuts in Alexandria. "That knowledge had to come from somewhere."
They decide to call it Elsewhere.
After a further suggestion from Reese Clark, they all begin keeping dream journals. Math's are, true to name, advanced mathematics that nobody else understands. Marco's come out looking like some sort of scripture. Alexandria stops keeping theirs after a few weeks, and burns all the pages to a crisp underneath the broiler while everyone else is asleep.
All that most of them can capture are snatches of feeling and imagery. Water falling from a soft gray ceiling far, far away. Growling metal cages flinging themselves forwards on rubber wheels. Branching wooden towers with hundreds of uneven bits of red and yellow paper fluttering on sticks above.
The words for them escape like fleeing ghosts.
They know who gets set on fire in the Season 1 elections. They'd played against her several times before.
("Good game," Jaylen Hotdogfingers had said to them all with a respectful nod, after hard-fought extra innings with the Seattle Garages.)
All that life and movement and easy confidence: gone.
Howell Franklin stops transcribing the election and stares at the television in disbelief. Someone else has to take over.
Miki Santana wakes up to season 2 to find that the bottles of colored water they left on their dresser - a rainbow of food coloring calibrated to produce each note of the scale when blowing across the top - have all evaporated. They bring this up at that night's meeting, the Spies' now weekly institution of fact-sharing and consensus-finding.
The new evidence stops them all short. "So time passes between seasons, then," says Denzel Scott.
"A lot of time," says Miki. "I don't know exactly how fast water evaporates, but it’s not that fast."
"So how do we measure that?" asks Alexandria. "Do we fill more bottles and time how long it takes for them to evaporate?"
Math aligns a paper vertically along the side of a glass of water and draws a mark at the water level, then takes it down and writes Put date of measurement here next to it.
But before they finish this experiment, something more important comes up. Jaylen was only the first incineration. Umpires are going rogue and incinerating players throughout the league. Nobody cares about their findings about how long it takes between seasons because people are burning to death randomly on the field. Which, to be fair, is a good reason to not care about their findings.
That's why they never get around to telling anyone else.
It's two-thirds of the way through Season 2 when Dickerson Greatness is incinerated.
They scoop up what they can of the ash and blackened dirt in a jar that was previously washed clean of pickles. No point labeling it. Everyone knows who it was anyway.
Someone called Collins Melon is playing for them now, apparently. They tell Collins that they'll figure out introductions later. (Later turns out to be several weeks.)
They return to their dormitory afterwards to find that Dickerson's room has been wiped absolutely clean. No trace of them is there: the sheets have been straightened. The drawers are empty of the copies Yeong-Ho mirror-traced of the fingerprints they were recording. Their handmade detective equipment is gone. As if nobody had ever lived there at all.
They all start writing up copies of their various methods and findings so that they can stash them in each other's rooms. Better to do something with that grief.
The next season, two more of the Garages die in front of them. The Spies take to keeping a casserole in the freezer to run out to the field. But the next incineration they see is one of theirs: Miki Santana.
They put Miki's ash in a jar and leave it next to Dickerson's on one of the bookshelves.
Fitzgerald Blackburn, Miki's replacement, tries to make themselves as unobtrusive as possible. It takes a long time for the others to coax them away from sitting out on the field all night, staring at where the ash used to be.
After the game where an ear-splitting screech of feedback sends Yeong-Ho off to the Philly Pies, they crowd around their old teammate. "You know what we're looking for," says Jordan, around the back of a group hug. "Let us know what you observe."
This is how the Spies begin to acquire the reputation of being the team whose members will always be Spies. They regularly receive small folded papers from distant players in distant places, and they always know more than anyone else does.
Yeong-Ho's replacement, Morrow Wilson, refuses to open up for the longest time. They spend all their time in their room (scoured clean of any evidence of Yeong-Ho by that same unseen force), only ever talking with Marco, and it takes months for them to say anything to the other Spies.
At the end of the season 4 election, the team has a different Math Velazquez and Collins Melon. The two receive a detailed catch-up packet created and maintained by the previous Collins, who had figured out that the team didn't handle newcomers well and wanted to help with that.
This version of Math studies the details of the previous Math's statistical investigations and decides to continue them. New Collins refuses to do any such thing.
Marco occasionally mutters to themselves now. But after a while, the team finds that whatever this "Summoning Circle" has put into Marco has "lost its magic" and is essentially harmless. Instead, Marco's headmate instructs them on making dice and tokens out of baking-soda clay, drawing hexagons on a sheet of paper, and telling stories about people fighting through mysterious branching corridors with no doors on the sides, wielding things called swords and shields.
The Spies invent other board games to use those dice; pulp the paper to make it into thicker sheets that hold food-coloring watercolors and egg-based tempera paint better; teach each other martial arts; sing. Everyone investigates and everyone learns.
Morrow turns out to be able to ask a lot of the right questions, which is just as important as coming up with ways to answer them. They also kiss Marco, with much blushing and giggling on both sides.
Math spends a lot of time teaching Fitzgerald about Math's statistics work. The team cannot afford to have any single points of failure, and so it is entirely reasonable for Math to take an apprentice. Though they are often closer together physically than is strictly necessary.
Between games, Alexandria and Donia Bailey spend a lot of time in each other's rooms. It's not like they're going to live that long anyway; they may as well make the most of it while they can.
The teams and divisions are completely shuffled in the next election. Many of the teams they used to play regularly are trapped in the other subleague, and they rarely encounter each other anymore. They have to start networking from almost nothing again.
The Spies work out what the Bloodbath is most likely to do: the ILB is pitting the worst teams against each other so that only one of them will get to climb out of their division. The Spies will do no such thing. They talk to the other teams in Wild Low - and then, together, to the cameras - about solidarity, about refusing to make them be mean to each other.
The Bloodbath never happens due to contractor issues. It's probably not anything they did, but they'll take it as a victory anyway.
Newcomers swap in. Valentine Games teaches them how to hold flames for a few minutes by hollowing out orange peels and filling them with oil, and starts holding regular poetry nights. Comfort Septemberish keeps repeating strange phrases and doesn't quite follow the complex discussions about the scientific method, but they too do their own research into Elsewhere: studying packaging and labels and stationery, hoping to find clues to the nature of the outside world in their ingredient lists and jar shapes.
It doesn't make up for losing Andrew Solis or Collins Melon. But Andrew entertains them between games with the Millenials' inside jokes, and Collins seems much happier with a team that doesn't know them as a replacement or an alternate.
Randall Marijuana dies right in front of them. Despite all their research, there's nothing they can do to stop it. Despite all their writing, there's nothing they can say.
The Spies give the Jazz Hands their casserole and leave them alone.
That election, Howell Franklin and Donia Bailey disappear.
Howell is replaced by Joe Voorhees, who communicates that they were on the Moist Talkers and then the Shoe Thieves. Okay. They know who the Thieves and Talkers are. They can send and receive information. Not often, given that it's cross-league, but it won't be impossible.
Mike Townsend - someone they've seen pitching a few times - has "retreated to the shadows", which does something involving Jaylen Hotdogfingers. The Shadows also take -
Someone they don't recognize at all is sitting where Donia was. "Where am I?" Evelton McBlase II asks.
This is when the other blessing is announced: Alexandria is being switched to pitching, and... this newcomer is getting switched to batting.
"Y'all can deal with this bag. I'm out," Alexandria says, stalking away to their room and slamming the door. Probably to brood about how it should've been Donia.
Nobody else moves an inch, not even to speculate about the Jaylen thing.
"Does anyone here have any idea what the Shadows are?" Marco eventually asks, to general shrugs and I-don't-knows.
The season ends.
By the time they wake up for the next season, they have bigger problems.
After hearing about how Jaylen Hotdogfingers is hitting people with pitches, they spend so long arguing about whether it was ethical to do necromancy, and what the consequences could be, that Alexandria has to order everyone to go write their arguments down. They end up holding a structured debate instead of a meeting that week, and multiple exhausting hours later eventually settle on the fact that it already happened and nothing can be done.
The consequences become clear a few weeks later: Jaylen is a murderer.
"We need to do something," Morrow Wilson says at the emergency meeting immediately following the second game of what the league is calling Ruby Tuesday. (None of them know what a Tuesday is.)
Alexandria looks up from doodling. "Election options often repeat. Lottery Pick might be in this election too, meaning that this could happen again. And even if it doesn't, it's liable to steal some other team's favorite."
Jordan taps their chin thoughtfully. "...So you're saying that we can protect everyone from slot 14 by putting someone nobody minds getting stolen there instead."
They all look at the clone in their midst.
The next day, the Spies frogmarch a defeated-looking Evelton II in front of one of the biggest cameras and declare that if someone needs to go into slot 14, it should be someone nobody cares about. Like this player right here.
Karato Bean and Theodore Holloway immediately get along with each other, and have games of dare or dare, which Son Scotch occasionally joins in on. At least until Karato brings up going into the darkness, at which point Theodore stops short and haltingly describes how there's nothing out there.
They're less reckless after that, to the relief of the rest of the team. Instead they come up with, and practice, increasingly difficult gymnastics, balancing on each other in ways that seem to defy gravity.
Another feedback swap: Joe Voorhees leaves, and Malik Romayne joins them.
The team won't let Malik do all the cooking - they can't afford to have anyone be irreplaceable. But xe is good at it, and loves doing it, so they usually let Malik cook dinner.
"Good," Malik says, opening the cupboard a few weeks later, "they finally found the apple cider vinegar I wanted."
Overlapping voices: "They?" "Who - what -" "How are you communicating with -"
"I'm not communicating, it's just..." Malik trails off, looking at the stunned faces on the couch.
"If you can ask for things and then they show up in the pantry," Alexandria says, voice breaking, "that's someone sending things to us based on what we want."
Reese is already scrambling for paper and pen. "We need to test this."
Malik ends up leaving a note on the spice rack, wedged between the cayenne and the cinnamon. I need some star anise for a recipe, if you can find any.
Over time they figure out the limits. Anything that can be eaten is fine. Kitchen tools and dishes sometimes show up and sometimes don't. Anything that has nothing to do with food is not. Everyone breaks down in laughter when Reese says they should claim that they need empty blaseball covers to mold popovers with, and then they decide to leave that note there anyway to see if whoever's answering the requests has common sense. (It doesn't work.)
They mix kitchen scraps with pockets filled with infield dirt, and regrow mint and basil and green onions in coffee cans and cut-down milk jugs. Every team they play gets a potted plant and instructions on how to grow more.
Leaving leftovers on the counter or in the fridge with a note saying "I made too much, so you can have some of this if you want" doesn't work... except when it's tamales.
"So there's someone out there," Morrow says. "And they like tamales."
"Is this proof that Elsewhere exists?" Denzel asks.
Not proof, Math writes. But better evidence than I ever hoped to have.
The replacement elbows - and corresponding pitching boost - excite Math and Denzel, and the group lets themselves hope that this could be the year they could actually be good.
After the feedback game where NaN joins them, they spend the night talking animatedly about the research they've been doing. NaN listens, wide-eyed.
NaN feedbacks away in the very next game.
Sosa Hayes is not as good a player as Valentine Games, or as metaphysically unique as NaN, but they get along amazingly well with Son and Denzel, and have lots of ideas for card games. It could be a lot worse.
A few weeks later, most of the team is reverbed out of position. Their performance is never the same again.
This turns out to be a good thing.
They are teleported in to watch the first fight against the Peanut, just outside the field. They are surrounded by darkness, but every other team is right there with them. There are cross-team reunions and stubbed toes. For their part, the Spies stare intently, trying to commit everything to memory.
The Peanut's team stomps the Shoe Thieves into the dirt, and then the Peanut taunts the rest of the league with a booming voice that shakes their bones. The Spies awaken at home, furiously write down and match up their memories, and wonder about what this might mean.
They write to Howell on the Thieves, early the next season, and the missive they get back is in shaky handwriting. I didn't see or hear anyone outside the field. Just the black sky.
Marco says, "I think we were... wherever the Fans go."
"In the darkness?" Theodore looks quizzical. "How?"
Marco shrugs. "Maybe it's not dark to them."
When they find out that the Fire Eater they got the last election means that Reese will not die of incineration - and neither, for that matter, will Andrew - they tangle up on the sofa in an exhausted collective joy. (And wake up the next morning in their beds, which always happens no matter where they fall asleep.)
But this is also the season of the Siphons. Again and again, Spies stumble back inside after games to lie down and contemplate how their player cards are losing stars.
"I'm sorry," Son says, flat on their back on the couch.
"Don't be," Sosa says from the armrest. "It's practically a compliment. Means you're really tasty."
"Smoothie call!" says Malik, who has come in holding two glasses of something or other. Son downs both and lies back down.
Once more the darkness descends. The Spies have not even started taking notes when Wyatt Quitter barely swats at the ball and the impact of it throws the Crabs to the ground. Just like that, the peanut wins. And then -
The speakers in the stadium pick something up out of radio interference ...made a deal. One more game...
The teams around them shout with joy when they see their dead teammates rise again. Malik slips away to cry on the Sunbeams' shoulders. But nobody on the field - not a single Crab, Hall Star, or Pod - has ever been a Spy.
Many of the Spies focus on transcribing plays and numbers. It's better than being scared, and if the worst happens, they will need to be able to do their own analysis as soon as possible.
When the Peanut gets eaten by the Squid, though, they put down their pens and scream with the rest of them.
Evelton II stowing away to Ascend with the Crabs, that election, is met with general laughter and "of course Evelton II would do that."
The Hall Stars are Released. "Maybe they're Elsewhere now," Son says, and all of them go quiet.
Season 11 is a relatively gentle kind of nonsensical, at least by blaseball standards. The new team - the Tokyo Lift - are inexperienced, and so get flattened by the other teams of the ILB. (The Spies apologize after trouncing them particularly badly, and are met with shrugs and "it happens".)
They cheer on the Sunbeams all the way to the championship.
"How long do you think the Grand Siesta will be?" asks Morrow.
They've taken the water intake tubing out from behind the fridge that has the ice machine. Math is poking precise holes in it to create a drip-watering hose: the plant-watering wicks and reservoirs work well enough for the time between seasons, but this will be a lot longer, so they're going to try connecting them directly to the water main.
"Definitely at least four seasons." Denzel is helping transplant everything to the largest containers they have, layering soil and vegetable peels and fish guts to try and keep the plants fertilized for as long as possible. "Possibly ten."
"How big the plants grow will help us figure that out," Alexandria says. "Not perfectly, but measuring them should get us within a season or two of the right answer."
"We'll find out," Fitzgerald says. "We always do."