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'Sugar' - Cherisse Rianni
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In the pod and not going home...
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Multiple Settings The Goodfellow Inn [IC]
- Thread starter Thread starter Sir Les Paul
- Start date Start date
'Sugar' - Cherisse Rianni
Sir Les Paul
The Duke of Chords
L.A.I.P.E.I
The more Lai wandered, the less sense the Inn seemed to make. Her internal software came with countless options to assess architecture and create a theoretical blueprint of any building she was in based on her observations and assumptions regarding standard building techniques. In the tavern area she entered, one of the first places she would get to visit, her normally-reliable programs were confounded often, causing errors and recalculations that many times were halted to preserve precious temporary memory. There were countless possible explanations. That magic her annoying engineer told her about. New construction methods from these alien species. New materials that potentially threw off her visual sensors. Or, perhaps, math just didn't math here the same way. Perhaps a combination of all of them, though the Inn itself did appear more rustic than modern.
Speaking of the engineer, he didn't interrupt as much as Lai explored. He was confident that the more she saw, the more likely she was to return for answers. That, or she would find someone else she deemed safe to talk to. He calculated that as a lesser likelihood, but nonetheless waited to see.
Depending on how long Lai wanted to waste, the Inn would have led her virtually anywhere but outside. When one wanders aimlessly in a world of infinite possibilities, there is simply too much to see to release them into the void that was outside of the Inn. There existed the possibility to truly be lost.
Lai could have assessed the tavern in full before deciding to turn back. There must have been thousands of different species there, tens of thousands if one considered the food items. Did the arbitrary labels of fruit, vegetable, and grain even apply here? There seemed to be meats, too, but were they really? When taken entirely out of context, culinary and biological definitions (which often overlapped) stopped being clear or reasonable. Not that Lai needed to eat, but energy of some kind was a basic requirement for all life and most life gained their energy from food. Food was often just former life supporting current life, and given how diverse the life here was, that only made food multiplicatively more complex.
As advanced as she was, there was simply no hope in computing all of this data. The tavern alone held too much information to make true sense of, especially given she could only operate within the framework of knowledge she already possessed. Granted, she was far from even the most sophisticated AI in the Inn, but that didn't matter. No AI that existed could process this dataset. Unsupervised learning simply wasn't possible with her current framework of knowledge. At least, not at any realistic rate. Truth was, there was simply too much to know. Too much to learn in a justifiable amount of time.
Still, that didn't mean she couldn't explore. The Inn had multiple levels and was seemingly endless. In fact, the very Inn itself would direct her down hallways or through rooms that either weren't there when she turned around or that, upon tracing the digital map her programming automatically made, were impossible and should have had overlap. She had not the experience of a child at a circus, but it was comparable to the mad house that moved or the hallways of mirrors that reflected impossible angles. She had no sense of direction because the building itself was intentionally destroying it. Dissolved was her ability to track her own movements and replaced with the reality that forward was merely a direction she could choose to step in, not a path that led her to or away from anything.
In truth, that was the fate of everyone in the Inn.
Would she walk into a garden surrounded by the walls of the Inn? A place where life grew from the ground? Under a sun, perhaps, or maybe mushrooms in a shaded area? Were these simple flowers from a bygone world or intelligent, living species that grew in a single, sedentary spot? Were their blooms from trees or bushes of bright, vibrant colors that off-put aromas? Were their petals and parts different than anything grown on her Earth? Because that's what it was. Her version of a Earth. A home. A planet. Maybe it wasn't even Earth? It was just a blue ball of rock and molten metals swirling in space. A place many called home without knowing what that really meant.
Or, perhaps did she walk into a sunroom? Not the Golden Chapel, per se. They would be too convenient. There were many sun rooms, though. Places where different arrangements of stars could be seen in different rooms off-putting different types of light. Small or large, simple or intricate. Some might have no one, some might be full, some might have had a garden like described above, some might have been entirely desolate. Or, perhaps, she was to see two of these sun rooms back to back, showing her the impossible view of a spatial sky back to back that couldn't possibly merge together. Another impossibility.
Did she walk through hallways that had glass roofs for her to see some impossible aquatic sea life? Perhaps they were creatures from her home. Something she could identify in her remeaning database. Or, was it yet again alien? Not that she could tell; the ocean in her homeworld had hardly been explored. Still, that didn't rule out the possibilities that she could have seen mermaids swimming through an ocean or seahorses the size of actual horses flowing through the water. Crabs the size of mountains, or fish that swarmed in clouds of a thousand with their silvery scales. It was all possible, no matter how impossible.
Perhaps she would walk into one of the static rooms used to grow crops for the kitchen. Perhaps she would walk into one of the rooms that various creatures used to sew clothing or stitch back together items for inhabitants of the Inn. Massive rooms with both simple looms and futuristic pods that could make any article of clothing one desired. Where intricate clothing was made on what looked like children's dolls while across the room massive mannequins for the giant races she saw had clothing pulled up to them with the assistance of pullies and cranes. Or, perhaps, she would walk across two star-crossed lovers of awkward species doing the deed in a way she couldn't even comprehend.
The possibilities were endless.
Lai could explore as long as she wanted and return when she deemed necessary. Once that mind of hers had shifted in ambition, whether it was to finally talk to the engineer or at least converse with someone, she would defy all odds, maps, and logic and find her way back to the tavern. The lost engineer from her homeworld still at the seat she left him in waiting alongside a whole room of possible prospects to investigate. It was likely, given her adventure through the Inn, she had found she could somehow understand anyone despite their different languages. Another one of those unexplained mysteries.
November Witch
The more Lai wandered, the less sense the Inn seemed to make. Her internal software came with countless options to assess architecture and create a theoretical blueprint of any building she was in based on her observations and assumptions regarding standard building techniques. In the tavern area she entered, one of the first places she would get to visit, her normally-reliable programs were confounded often, causing errors and recalculations that many times were halted to preserve precious temporary memory. There were countless possible explanations. That magic her annoying engineer told her about. New construction methods from these alien species. New materials that potentially threw off her visual sensors. Or, perhaps, math just didn't math here the same way. Perhaps a combination of all of them, though the Inn itself did appear more rustic than modern.
Speaking of the engineer, he didn't interrupt as much as Lai explored. He was confident that the more she saw, the more likely she was to return for answers. That, or she would find someone else she deemed safe to talk to. He calculated that as a lesser likelihood, but nonetheless waited to see.
Depending on how long Lai wanted to waste, the Inn would have led her virtually anywhere but outside. When one wanders aimlessly in a world of infinite possibilities, there is simply too much to see to release them into the void that was outside of the Inn. There existed the possibility to truly be lost.
Lai could have assessed the tavern in full before deciding to turn back. There must have been thousands of different species there, tens of thousands if one considered the food items. Did the arbitrary labels of fruit, vegetable, and grain even apply here? There seemed to be meats, too, but were they really? When taken entirely out of context, culinary and biological definitions (which often overlapped) stopped being clear or reasonable. Not that Lai needed to eat, but energy of some kind was a basic requirement for all life and most life gained their energy from food. Food was often just former life supporting current life, and given how diverse the life here was, that only made food multiplicatively more complex.
As advanced as she was, there was simply no hope in computing all of this data. The tavern alone held too much information to make true sense of, especially given she could only operate within the framework of knowledge she already possessed. Granted, she was far from even the most sophisticated AI in the Inn, but that didn't matter. No AI that existed could process this dataset. Unsupervised learning simply wasn't possible with her current framework of knowledge. At least, not at any realistic rate. Truth was, there was simply too much to know. Too much to learn in a justifiable amount of time.
Still, that didn't mean she couldn't explore. The Inn had multiple levels and was seemingly endless. In fact, the very Inn itself would direct her down hallways or through rooms that either weren't there when she turned around or that, upon tracing the digital map her programming automatically made, were impossible and should have had overlap. She had not the experience of a child at a circus, but it was comparable to the mad house that moved or the hallways of mirrors that reflected impossible angles. She had no sense of direction because the building itself was intentionally destroying it. Dissolved was her ability to track her own movements and replaced with the reality that forward was merely a direction she could choose to step in, not a path that led her to or away from anything.
In truth, that was the fate of everyone in the Inn.
Would she walk into a garden surrounded by the walls of the Inn? A place where life grew from the ground? Under a sun, perhaps, or maybe mushrooms in a shaded area? Were these simple flowers from a bygone world or intelligent, living species that grew in a single, sedentary spot? Were their blooms from trees or bushes of bright, vibrant colors that off-put aromas? Were their petals and parts different than anything grown on her Earth? Because that's what it was. Her version of a Earth. A home. A planet. Maybe it wasn't even Earth? It was just a blue ball of rock and molten metals swirling in space. A place many called home without knowing what that really meant.
Or, perhaps did she walk into a sunroom? Not the Golden Chapel, per se. They would be too convenient. There were many sun rooms, though. Places where different arrangements of stars could be seen in different rooms off-putting different types of light. Small or large, simple or intricate. Some might have no one, some might be full, some might have had a garden like described above, some might have been entirely desolate. Or, perhaps, she was to see two of these sun rooms back to back, showing her the impossible view of a spatial sky back to back that couldn't possibly merge together. Another impossibility.
Did she walk through hallways that had glass roofs for her to see some impossible aquatic sea life? Perhaps they were creatures from her home. Something she could identify in her remeaning database. Or, was it yet again alien? Not that she could tell; the ocean in her homeworld had hardly been explored. Still, that didn't rule out the possibilities that she could have seen mermaids swimming through an ocean or seahorses the size of actual horses flowing through the water. Crabs the size of mountains, or fish that swarmed in clouds of a thousand with their silvery scales. It was all possible, no matter how impossible.
Perhaps she would walk into one of the static rooms used to grow crops for the kitchen. Perhaps she would walk into one of the rooms that various creatures used to sew clothing or stitch back together items for inhabitants of the Inn. Massive rooms with both simple looms and futuristic pods that could make any article of clothing one desired. Where intricate clothing was made on what looked like children's dolls while across the room massive mannequins for the giant races she saw had clothing pulled up to them with the assistance of pullies and cranes. Or, perhaps, she would walk across two star-crossed lovers of awkward species doing the deed in a way she couldn't even comprehend.
The possibilities were endless.
Lai could explore as long as she wanted and return when she deemed necessary. Once that mind of hers had shifted in ambition, whether it was to finally talk to the engineer or at least converse with someone, she would defy all odds, maps, and logic and find her way back to the tavern. The lost engineer from her homeworld still at the seat she left him in waiting alongside a whole room of possible prospects to investigate. It was likely, given her adventure through the Inn, she had found she could somehow understand anyone despite their different languages. Another one of those unexplained mysteries.
November Witch
SCP-0029
MERAKI
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Nora accepted the pen, and it felt oddly alive in her hand—warm and a little too textured. It most definitely was not what she was used to, and writing with it felt like dragging a stick through wet ash or maybe silt. It was satisfying in that gritty, visceral way, and, of course, it worked no matter how unnatural the surface. She wondered momentarily if she could pocket the thing before the assistant turned his back. Although she imagined it would find its way back to him no matter where she stashed it. Somehow, she had this thought that everything in this place seemed to know where it belonged. Nevertheless, Nora scribbled down her answers—quick, clean, and a little annoyed at how easy it was to comply. Then, when she returned the paper to the pink man, the form disappeared into some folding contraption, smooth and black, like a living briefcase. It swallowed her words without so much of a thank-you.
“Hmph,” Nora felt a dissatisfied exhale escape her nostrils as her brows arched.
“Mmm, well, I see no reason you aren't compatible; your mind and body are well within the parameters Widald outlined.”
Nora blinked. Compatible. The word felt sterile and wrong in her ears, for it was like a machine parsing blood samples. Still, she didn’t respond; she just watched Pinkie, the assistant she decided to name, gesture toward the row of pods. "You'll just walk down the way until another assistant directs you to a pod," she heard him say, "then you enter, go into stasis, and wait for the experiment to begin."
The walls of the Chapel gleamed around them, refracted starlight catching the edges of the vines like they were wrapped in silver thread. Upon further inspection, it was almost as if the vines had pulsed faintly. . . maybe from the humidity or perhaps just breathing. Watching this, Nora felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise, and this urge to jump on her toes, as if readying herself for a fight, had traveled up and down her spine. Nora went from observing what lay before her to looking at the man who had reminded her of dragon fruit.
“Simple as that,” he said. “We keep your body safe while you nab us data.”
Her mouth twisted into a dry smile. Simple as that, he said as if it wasn’t a cosmic science experiment wrapped in a church or a greenhouse.
“Right,” she muttered. “Easy peasy.” She gave a tight nod, turned, and walked slowly toward the verdant pod rows. Her boots made soft, reluctant sounds against the floor—not quite like walking on glass, not like moss—just something in between. Nora couldn’t deny that the room had felt like it had folded in on some unseen axis. For now, she was questioning the depth of the chapel itself. The humidity was heavy, and her curls were beginning to cling to her forehead and jaw the further she traveled. Even when she rubbed at the sweat above her brow and took in that oversaturated scent of what might have been chlorophyll, Nora continued to push on. Then there was the barely there buzz of energy, reminiscent of what felt like the charge before a storm. Even as Nora weaved through the strange cesspool of individuals––to which she did her best to avoid––that was when emotions she would try to keep away felt a little too clear. Being here reminded her what anxiety felt like as if the place itself mocked her very existence all the way down to the blueprint of her universe. From the doppelganger she would rather not think about, for that altercation felt both familiar and unknown to her in ways she was used to in more than one nature, to now. . . this was uncharted territory in every literal sense.
Upon closer inspection, some pods shimmered green along their outer shell, which wasn’t quite like the produce from her homeworld. Still, the closer she got, the more biological, almost fetal, they seemed. In fact, when Nora passed one already occupied pod, she tried not to linger. However, her gaze snagged on the form inside—indistinct, vaguely human, curled like a child or maybe a prisoner. Through the faint shimmer of the shell, catching her reflection in a warped gleam, her amber eyes looked darker in what she presumed to be akin to glass. Older. A little. . . less hers, but then again, when had anything she’d inhabited ever truly belonged to her?
That was when she exhaled sharply, rolling her shoulders, trying to shake off a tension that didn’t belong to her body, yet clung to it anyway. Then her fingers flexed, but not from fear exactly, just. . . anticipation. Like the edge of something sharp and new. She could do this, but stasis—real stasis—was a new beast. Nora knew she could handle a chemical coma. She’d been put under before, through enough trials and enhancements long enough to forget her voice. However, there was always something unnerving about willingly slipping into the darkness of the void, unsure what—or who—you might be when you woke up. No matter how familiar the sensation was, she was not getting used to it.
Still, her curiosity outran her fear. Always had, and her eyes lit with something equal parts wonder and danger. “I’m just gathering data,” she muttered, mostly to herself, “definitely not poking things better left alone.” The laugh that followed was cracked and quiet, sounding like it had escaped by accident. Even as the next assistant––orange-skinned and wearing the unfamiliar––had opened a pod with a hiss of release. Mist spilled into the air like breath from some deep-buried creature, expecting her to settle in like protein for its salad.
Right, Nora nodded once as she gripped the edge of the pod, her smile tight and teeth-bared. “Let’s see what kind of data I’m worth,” she said, her voice daring and low, fingers tightening on the edge of the pod. The membrane pulsed once as if it agreed.
Then she stepped in.
“So, hold on, what is this supposed to be like? Will I be going through a soul-deep psychological reflection or what-have-you?” Rather than answer her question, the pod closed when she sat down as if to say she would soon find out.
“Hmph,” Nora felt a dissatisfied exhale escape her nostrils as her brows arched.
“Mmm, well, I see no reason you aren't compatible; your mind and body are well within the parameters Widald outlined.”
Nora blinked. Compatible. The word felt sterile and wrong in her ears, for it was like a machine parsing blood samples. Still, she didn’t respond; she just watched Pinkie, the assistant she decided to name, gesture toward the row of pods. "You'll just walk down the way until another assistant directs you to a pod," she heard him say, "then you enter, go into stasis, and wait for the experiment to begin."
The walls of the Chapel gleamed around them, refracted starlight catching the edges of the vines like they were wrapped in silver thread. Upon further inspection, it was almost as if the vines had pulsed faintly. . . maybe from the humidity or perhaps just breathing. Watching this, Nora felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise, and this urge to jump on her toes, as if readying herself for a fight, had traveled up and down her spine. Nora went from observing what lay before her to looking at the man who had reminded her of dragon fruit.
“Simple as that,” he said. “We keep your body safe while you nab us data.”
Her mouth twisted into a dry smile. Simple as that, he said as if it wasn’t a cosmic science experiment wrapped in a church or a greenhouse.
“Right,” she muttered. “Easy peasy.” She gave a tight nod, turned, and walked slowly toward the verdant pod rows. Her boots made soft, reluctant sounds against the floor—not quite like walking on glass, not like moss—just something in between. Nora couldn’t deny that the room had felt like it had folded in on some unseen axis. For now, she was questioning the depth of the chapel itself. The humidity was heavy, and her curls were beginning to cling to her forehead and jaw the further she traveled. Even when she rubbed at the sweat above her brow and took in that oversaturated scent of what might have been chlorophyll, Nora continued to push on. Then there was the barely there buzz of energy, reminiscent of what felt like the charge before a storm. Even as Nora weaved through the strange cesspool of individuals––to which she did her best to avoid––that was when emotions she would try to keep away felt a little too clear. Being here reminded her what anxiety felt like as if the place itself mocked her very existence all the way down to the blueprint of her universe. From the doppelganger she would rather not think about, for that altercation felt both familiar and unknown to her in ways she was used to in more than one nature, to now. . . this was uncharted territory in every literal sense.
Upon closer inspection, some pods shimmered green along their outer shell, which wasn’t quite like the produce from her homeworld. Still, the closer she got, the more biological, almost fetal, they seemed. In fact, when Nora passed one already occupied pod, she tried not to linger. However, her gaze snagged on the form inside—indistinct, vaguely human, curled like a child or maybe a prisoner. Through the faint shimmer of the shell, catching her reflection in a warped gleam, her amber eyes looked darker in what she presumed to be akin to glass. Older. A little. . . less hers, but then again, when had anything she’d inhabited ever truly belonged to her?
That was when she exhaled sharply, rolling her shoulders, trying to shake off a tension that didn’t belong to her body, yet clung to it anyway. Then her fingers flexed, but not from fear exactly, just. . . anticipation. Like the edge of something sharp and new. She could do this, but stasis—real stasis—was a new beast. Nora knew she could handle a chemical coma. She’d been put under before, through enough trials and enhancements long enough to forget her voice. However, there was always something unnerving about willingly slipping into the darkness of the void, unsure what—or who—you might be when you woke up. No matter how familiar the sensation was, she was not getting used to it.
Still, her curiosity outran her fear. Always had, and her eyes lit with something equal parts wonder and danger. “I’m just gathering data,” she muttered, mostly to herself, “definitely not poking things better left alone.” The laugh that followed was cracked and quiet, sounding like it had escaped by accident. Even as the next assistant––orange-skinned and wearing the unfamiliar––had opened a pod with a hiss of release. Mist spilled into the air like breath from some deep-buried creature, expecting her to settle in like protein for its salad.
Right, Nora nodded once as she gripped the edge of the pod, her smile tight and teeth-bared. “Let’s see what kind of data I’m worth,” she said, her voice daring and low, fingers tightening on the edge of the pod. The membrane pulsed once as if it agreed.
Then she stepped in.
“So, hold on, what is this supposed to be like? Will I be going through a soul-deep psychological reflection or what-have-you?” Rather than answer her question, the pod closed when she sat down as if to say she would soon find out.
November Witch
Over great bodies of water, a November Witch roars
- Group
L.A.I.P.E.I
Location: ???
Mentions:
Sir Les Paul
Laipei did end up walking for some time. Close to an hour, in fact. The first few minutes, she put most of her computing power into navigating and pathfinding as she went along. But it soon became clear things weren’t making sense. So, she returned them to their normal values, becoming background processes once more. At first, she was mostly walking to get away from whoever it was, pretending to be an engineer. What kind of sick joke was this, attempting to fool her like that? All with a smug attitude… Was this all just for someone’s amusement? Would it matter who she tried to speak to? What species she stopped and tried to communicate with? Or would it all be some sort of entertainment for someone?
She’d calmed down after about half an hour of walking. She’d peek her head into rooms, and open doors to glance at the areas around her. She was looking for 2 things. Any area that looked like it had some sort of teleporter, so she could get back, or perhaps someone who also seemed confused, or was wandering around aimlessly. She didn’t exactly trust anyone who looked like they knew what they were doing. At least, not yet. Not after her experience with that engineer. It all felt off.
While she had started to cool off for a bit, after about an hour, she just started to get frustrated again. When all the parameters one was given, and baselines programmed into her no longer applied,what was she to do? Her laws of the universe didn’t apply here, and it made attempting to explain anything frustrating. All those background processes only coming up in errors now. An annoyance. Not knowing who or what she could trust. She just wanted to find a way out, and leave at this point. It was too much, an overstimulation of her systems.
Perhaps she’d keep walking for another few hours. Maybe she’d find a nice corner to power down in until someone wanted something from her. The android wasn’t sure what she’d do. For the moment though, she’d just keep walking.
~{Frustrating Exploration}~
Status: Frustrated & ParanoidLocation: ???
Mentions:
Sir Les Paul
Laipei did end up walking for some time. Close to an hour, in fact. The first few minutes, she put most of her computing power into navigating and pathfinding as she went along. But it soon became clear things weren’t making sense. So, she returned them to their normal values, becoming background processes once more. At first, she was mostly walking to get away from whoever it was, pretending to be an engineer. What kind of sick joke was this, attempting to fool her like that? All with a smug attitude… Was this all just for someone’s amusement? Would it matter who she tried to speak to? What species she stopped and tried to communicate with? Or would it all be some sort of entertainment for someone?
She’d calmed down after about half an hour of walking. She’d peek her head into rooms, and open doors to glance at the areas around her. She was looking for 2 things. Any area that looked like it had some sort of teleporter, so she could get back, or perhaps someone who also seemed confused, or was wandering around aimlessly. She didn’t exactly trust anyone who looked like they knew what they were doing. At least, not yet. Not after her experience with that engineer. It all felt off.
While she had started to cool off for a bit, after about an hour, she just started to get frustrated again. When all the parameters one was given, and baselines programmed into her no longer applied,what was she to do? Her laws of the universe didn’t apply here, and it made attempting to explain anything frustrating. All those background processes only coming up in errors now. An annoyance. Not knowing who or what she could trust. She just wanted to find a way out, and leave at this point. It was too much, an overstimulation of her systems.
Perhaps she’d keep walking for another few hours. Maybe she’d find a nice corner to power down in until someone wanted something from her. The android wasn’t sure what she’d do. For the moment though, she’d just keep walking.
Sir Les Paul
The Duke of Chords
L.A.I.P.E.I
Be it hours or days, the Inn would only continue to overstimulate and thus overwhelm Lai. Whether it was magic—even in its highly suppressed form—or technology well outside of her understanding, there were simply so many new variables that it was all-but hopeless to make sense of it all. The idea of magic was one thing, but the actuality of it was another. There were infinite worlds and thus infinite forms of magic that all operated and executed with different systems and understandings. In some worlds, one may have to consume a metal to gain a certain ability. In others, all magic was merely controlling fire in different ways. Still in others, there were four elements to control and one being that controlled them all. Some realms had learned wizards, some realms had sorcerers of mana-laden bloodlines, some realms required rituals and sacrifices, while others required prayers to a God or Gods. Some realms even had a combination of all of the above. And, of course, some realms had none at all.
The point was, magic was a blanket term for a huge array of cause-effect relationships and ways to interact with the world that didn't follow science or common sense. In that regard, technology at times was little different. The literal laws of reality, such as the speed of light or exact ratio of mass to gravity, were wildly different in some worlds. So much so that the science of one universe could easily be interpreted as magic in another. Clark's third law stated that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The Inn proved that not only true, but even lateral or somewhat primitive technology from a sufficiently different world was still virtually indistinguishable.
The truth of the matter is that people lived their lives only ever seeing the world through the lens they were given. Few people considered just how deeply their environment affected that lens. Of course wealth and privilege were fasters, so were genetics and culture. Being born with a perfect body but in a slave caste to a world that made all those in it subservient made for a wasted life. What was rarely thought about were the default factors of their world. Not just culture, family, or genetics, but the existence of magic in any form, the laws of that reality, everything down to how atoms were made. What would be a world where a proton was the particle with less mass? What would be life that originated without water? What would be intelligence to a shared hive mind? What were love and loneliness to a species of one?
These questions and these realizations were the things thrust on all those that made their way to the Inn, so long as they were intelligent enough to conceive them and dared to take the time to consider them.
The Inn did at least provide. If Lai wanted a teleporter, she would get one. She would run into an immediate problem. A teleportation device capable of returning her home simply did not exist within the Inn. For the same reason that there were interdimensional beings, lesser and greater Planeswalkers, and that ultimate god-like powers were still bound to their own planes of reality. It was not an easy feat to cross that barrier intentionally.
What Lai found first was a more familiar room that appeared to be some hybrid of laboratory and factory. The highlight of the room being a metallic platform with eight rings all rotating on different axes and feeding jolts of purple electricity to the center. It was not precisely what she was accustomed to, but the energy that radiated from the central point all eight of those rings fed into was the same as what was emit from the teleportation devices of her home world. Should she have asked, she would have told exactly that.
Should she have asked if she could use it or if it could take her home, she would be educated on the impracticality of that. Without knowing the coordinates of her home world via a planar axis scope, it was entirely impossible. Even if it wasn't, the teleportation device in front of her was only calibrated to two planes of reality, acting as a door between them; likely why it was emitting constant radiation as opposed to quick bursts. Even if it connected her home plane and her home universe—an infinitesimally small chance—she still didn't know what any of those were. That alone neglected timelines, those this device could only teleport to the timeline most congruent to its origin.
This engineer would also casually confirm the existence of alternate timelines and time travel as if they were accepted facts. The Inn only grew stranger.
"This is my favorite part," returned that lovely voice in her communications network.
"This is the closest to human, or mortal, you'll ever be," it added, "when faced with existential crisis, you'd rather just shut down in a corner."
November Witch
Be it hours or days, the Inn would only continue to overstimulate and thus overwhelm Lai. Whether it was magic—even in its highly suppressed form—or technology well outside of her understanding, there were simply so many new variables that it was all-but hopeless to make sense of it all. The idea of magic was one thing, but the actuality of it was another. There were infinite worlds and thus infinite forms of magic that all operated and executed with different systems and understandings. In some worlds, one may have to consume a metal to gain a certain ability. In others, all magic was merely controlling fire in different ways. Still in others, there were four elements to control and one being that controlled them all. Some realms had learned wizards, some realms had sorcerers of mana-laden bloodlines, some realms required rituals and sacrifices, while others required prayers to a God or Gods. Some realms even had a combination of all of the above. And, of course, some realms had none at all.
The point was, magic was a blanket term for a huge array of cause-effect relationships and ways to interact with the world that didn't follow science or common sense. In that regard, technology at times was little different. The literal laws of reality, such as the speed of light or exact ratio of mass to gravity, were wildly different in some worlds. So much so that the science of one universe could easily be interpreted as magic in another. Clark's third law stated that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The Inn proved that not only true, but even lateral or somewhat primitive technology from a sufficiently different world was still virtually indistinguishable.
The truth of the matter is that people lived their lives only ever seeing the world through the lens they were given. Few people considered just how deeply their environment affected that lens. Of course wealth and privilege were fasters, so were genetics and culture. Being born with a perfect body but in a slave caste to a world that made all those in it subservient made for a wasted life. What was rarely thought about were the default factors of their world. Not just culture, family, or genetics, but the existence of magic in any form, the laws of that reality, everything down to how atoms were made. What would be a world where a proton was the particle with less mass? What would be life that originated without water? What would be intelligence to a shared hive mind? What were love and loneliness to a species of one?
These questions and these realizations were the things thrust on all those that made their way to the Inn, so long as they were intelligent enough to conceive them and dared to take the time to consider them.
The Inn did at least provide. If Lai wanted a teleporter, she would get one. She would run into an immediate problem. A teleportation device capable of returning her home simply did not exist within the Inn. For the same reason that there were interdimensional beings, lesser and greater Planeswalkers, and that ultimate god-like powers were still bound to their own planes of reality. It was not an easy feat to cross that barrier intentionally.
What Lai found first was a more familiar room that appeared to be some hybrid of laboratory and factory. The highlight of the room being a metallic platform with eight rings all rotating on different axes and feeding jolts of purple electricity to the center. It was not precisely what she was accustomed to, but the energy that radiated from the central point all eight of those rings fed into was the same as what was emit from the teleportation devices of her home world. Should she have asked, she would have told exactly that.
Should she have asked if she could use it or if it could take her home, she would be educated on the impracticality of that. Without knowing the coordinates of her home world via a planar axis scope, it was entirely impossible. Even if it wasn't, the teleportation device in front of her was only calibrated to two planes of reality, acting as a door between them; likely why it was emitting constant radiation as opposed to quick bursts. Even if it connected her home plane and her home universe—an infinitesimally small chance—she still didn't know what any of those were. That alone neglected timelines, those this device could only teleport to the timeline most congruent to its origin.
This engineer would also casually confirm the existence of alternate timelines and time travel as if they were accepted facts. The Inn only grew stranger.
"This is my favorite part," returned that lovely voice in her communications network.
"This is the closest to human, or mortal, you'll ever be," it added, "when faced with existential crisis, you'd rather just shut down in a corner."
"If I were a psychiatrist, I'd call that depression."
November Witch
Specialist
Elder Member
VIT: 100%
LOC: "Goodfellow Inn", Golden Chapel > Courtyard
INT:
Sir Les Paul
(Some kinda Brute thing?) [OPEN]MNT: N/A
Cora didn't have to wait long.
A towering biped came over, initially looking to her like a hybrid between a Brute and perhaps an Earth Tiger. Since her arrival here, she had not once seen a true, genuine Human or species of Covenant within this grand nexus- though she was sure they were here. If only she had carried a Smart AI to locate other UNSC signals.. damn it. The creature released something akin to a scoff, speaking up a beat later in a gruff, baritone voice not too dissimilar from a Brute- if not more cleaned up and civilized at that. "Another Spartan? You're the third I've seen alone." Cora kept silent, being handed a pen and piece of paper as she was wordlessly led past the lectern of the grand chapel's stage and soon after into an arena looking much like a large conference room; beyond the grand table and rows of chairs, revealing a row of identical pods she guessed she'd be getting into one of. By the time she moved over to the table and placed the from onto it, the text had just finished morphing; causing the Spartan to crane her head as she caught the trailing after-effects of the shimmering ink on the paper.
The form presented itself strangely like a candidate information document she'd find in a dossier file. Name, age, physical appearance description, skill profile, generation.. simple enough. She didn't really have a choice to refuse disclosing such information if it meant getting back home. Augmentation sequence? That, she wasn't privy to. As far as she was aware, everyone from Beta got the same augmentations as Alpha did. Penning in the rest of the fields, she'd clicked the pen closed just as another question was uttered by the behemoth standing next to her. "Have you fought the Flood?" Cora paused, the halted movement minute as she finished placing the pen next to the paper as she stood back up to look at the creature. "...No, I haven't. There were rumors floating around about something worse than the Covenant during the war, but that was it. Why? What are they, and what exactly is this relevant?" Cora asked, narrowing her eyes as she stared into the creature's own from behind her visor. If Widald was thinking about dropping her into a combat sim against those things for his own amusement...
She was at least going to get an answer from that creature before she climbed into that pod. Once she got one, if she got one, she'd turn on a pivot, stride toward the unfurling plant-like seed pod, clamber inside and lay back, arms at her sides as the world was enveloped in darkness..
