"Yeah I can try a few different things. You gonna stay here and orient newcomers? I kinda want to go looking now."

"Sure, works for me, be careful though. Maybe leave a list of stores you're planning to visit or take someone with you."

"I'm sure I'll be fine. I'll stay within one klick hubward, if anyone asks."

"Alright sounds good."

Off he goes, carrying his backpack.

The last of the newcomers, Joe, seems to have taken it on himself to inventory the kitchen and start packing away some of the extra food. Still sipping his beer morosely.

Zahn goes to help him. "Anything in particular that you would find helpful?"

"More beer. Phone that works." He shrugs. He sounds completely flat and emotionless. "I can cook for everyone, if I don't have to do other chores. Used to work in a Denny's."

"There's plenty of liqueur stores in the Mall. I wonder if there are working phones down there. It would be weird to stock useless stuff there but I suppose we've seen weirder." Zahn frowns a little. "Having someone handle the cooking could be useful if we're going to be here a while. The servos will sweep and dust and such as long as we give them time to do it, so I'm not sure how much we'll need to do in the way of chores."

He shrugs. "I dunno. Cooking's alright, I want to get paid somehow to do it though. At least my psycho ex probably isn't gonna show up here."

"Yeah, pretty unlikely that any given person is going to get stuck here with us. As for paying people, I'm not really sure what we'll work out for that. Most of the stuff we might spend money on is free for the taking in the mall."

"If we're really stuck, what happens when we run out of stuff for the taking?"

"That, is a very good question. Food, at least, this place is continually growing more. I'd hope that other things will last for a while if we're careful with them, clothes though are what I'd expect to run out of first. At that point, maybe we can get the place to grow cotton for us and learn to make that into clothes. Or maybe there's factories somewhere on the planet we can put to work."

"Yeah, I hear nobody's explored much outside that tall wall yet. One of you probably should."

"We've only been here for an couple hours longer than you. There hasn't been time yet. It's definitely in my mental checklist though."

Sip. "This place is messed up, why the hell go through all the fuss? Aliens? What do they want?"

"I've been asking myself the same question. It feels like this place was built by someone benevolent, but then why did they abduct us without leaving us a way home. Maybe their reasons will become clear as we explore more of the facility."

"...Geez." He slams down a plate a bit hard. "I'm gonna go find the movie theater and watch something."

"Alright have fun."

He goes downstairs, leaving Zahn alone in the lounge.

He finds the theater and scans DVDs for a nice action flick.

There's a wide selection, there's classics like Independence Day and Die Hard along with more recent stuff like Avenger: Age of Ultron.

Avengers sounds good.

...Is there a remote? He'll slightly-drunkenly poke buttons until he gets the movie to play.

When he first turns on the TV it's set to CNN. Nothing particularly interesting seems to be in the news.

News. Boring. Eh, where's the DVD button... HDMI port or something... Aha, there we go. He settles in to watch the Avengers movie.

Back in the lounge Zahn is putting plates in the dishwasher and clearing away some of the buffet.

More people show up in batches over the next hour or so. Their reactions vary, but several of them are too... Impaired... To have a particularly strong one. The mindlink is generally somewhere between interesting and scary.

One guy insists it's all lies and is busy trying to convince others of the same. (One couple starts having an argument after a link, gracefully taking it to a bedroom instead of arguing in the hall.)

One guy volunteers to take the med test.