Multiverse Museum

[oleaeuropaea]

The Entryway

At first glance, the entrance to Vash's exhibit seems downright idyllic. Appearing as little more than a wide open, grassy hill with a tree atop it, there isn't immediately anything that might catch your eye. The walls are painted to look like a cloudy blue sky, making it look almost like a stereotypical desktop background. Still, if you dare follow the path, accompanied by twin babbling brooks and flanked by long plant beds made with geraniums, you'll eventually notice that there's a recessed door within the tree itself.

Will you travel further?

The Hallway

Entering the door leads you into a jarringly dark hallway. It's only once the door behind you is closed and you're left in darkness that the room lights up with an eerie blue glow. The left side of the hall is made entirely of glass, looking almost like an aquarium. The first panel of glass features elaborate anatomical diagrams of what is referred to as a plant. Both feminine and alien in appearance, these creatures apparently serve as generators for gravity, energy, and clean water.

These panels continue down the entire wall, though it's broken occasionally by strips of walls adorned with plaques. They appear to be the titles of the displays, and are as follows:

• Healthy
  
• Sick
  
• Critical
  
• Dead
  
• Independent

Heading further in shows these apparent stages of decay in full detail, with the light growing redder, duller, and dimmer until the final panel is reached. This panel is just as red, but unlike the others, which featured sketches and artistic renderings of anatomy, this features full photographs. And what's on display, you might ask?

A child.

CW: Descriptions of medical horror against a "living" child

There are photos of multiple tubes, each holding a different organs and body parts. The first shows a girl flayed open, her organs all on clear display. Her eyes are wide open, staring into the camera with nothing but resigned dullness. These aren't dead eyes, though. Rather, they're simply dead inside.

The rest of the photos show various organs and limbs that have been preserved in similar capsules. A tongue here. An eye here. An arm curled into a fist. It's hard to see, but they all appear functioning, despite having been removed from the girl herself.

You can't linger on the last display for long. Alarms begin to blare — all part of the show, of course. Occasionally, a robotic system voice announces that the "ship" is now in freefall. Sounds like it might be time to move on.

The Slide

The hall, now illuminated by red emergency lights, leads you to what looks to be a slide. Fire flickers along a screen here and there, while overhead, the announcement changes to a woman's voice, which alternates between uttering official commands, and sounding like she's offering reassurance to children.

As you slide down, the noises and alerts give way to flashing screens that show brief snippets of a planet fast approaching. With how steep the slide is, you might be forgiven for thinking that you're plummeting toward it.

The "Sandbox"

Eventually, you will be spat out into what feels almost like a children's sandbox! It's been made to resemble a desert in this room, and they've turned up the heat as high as it will go to emulate it. Luckily, there are plenty of climbable structures to be found here — downscaled replicas of the crashed ships that litter the planet — that you can take shelter in. Climbing in them to grab some shade might even allow you to find engraved plaques, listing out countless thousands of names of people that didn't survive. You might even find a few cryogenic pods with names on them too. Thankfully, there's no bodies in those! Just the written records of those who never made it to No Man's Land.

That name, by the way, hangs on a billboard over the only actual lifesized structure here. It looks like a saloon, and stands against a wall painted to look like the horizon. Looks like this might be the exit — fancy a drink before you go?


The Saloon
It's much cooler in here, and significantly darker than the blaring lights of the sandbox outside. Visually, it's no different than your standard Old Western saloon. What's most interesting is the bounty posters that hang on the walls. Most of them have pretty average bounties, but there's one that features prominently. The face looks different on each of them, but one thing's for sure... Turning over this man would net you a lot of cash.

Well! That's probably nothing to worry about!

Since you've just been out in the baking "sun," you might as well grab something to drink. There's no staff to attend saloon, which means you can just go right ahead and sneak behind the bar. The old taps there are perfectly functional, and when you pull down, they'll even spit out fresh water.

Fresh... dirty water? On second thought, maybe don't drink that. You can probably get some from elsewhere in the museum though — the exit is right over there.

See you again soon!