alicornutopia | truly madly deeply

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truly madly deeply

Somehow Mama never manages to be nearby when Elspeth finds this place. Mama would exploit it; Elspeth is happy enough to come in and get some of that gold fizzy stuff. (And bring more of it home for everyone else.) Mama has given Elspeth fairly minor exploitation-type errands, but Elspeth has pointed out that major ones might make whatever causes the door to prefer Elspeth in the first place stop favoring her so much. (Bar certainly doesn't know; it's all guesswork - but Elspeth can't rule it out, which gives Mama pause. She does show Mama everything that happens while she's there, anyway.)

So when she finds it in the cafeteria instead of finding the cafeteria, she and Jake go in, and Jake orders himself nine inches square of deep-dish lasagna and Elspeth has a bubbly and asks Bar to recommend her a book. They sit in a booth and watch the stars explode.

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There is a faint fizzling, and then a man appears in the middle of the room. He was apparently sitting crosslegged, which is unfortunate, as he appeared in mid-air and at something of an angle relative to the ground.

He says, "I am surprised, mildly dismayed, and rather confused by this unexpected event!" on his way to planting his face into the ground, which is really rather strange for someone as discombobulated as he appears to be. And also perhaps a tad long.

"This sort of thing happens in Milliways sometimes," says Elspeth. "Are you okay?"

"Perfectly unharmed, though my nose is sore," he says. Despite being firmly planted facefirst into Milliways' polished wooden floor, his words remain remarkably easy to understand.

He manages to dediscombobulate himself adequately, after a few seconds of groaning and picking himself up off the floor. He is tall, around six feet, with reddish brown hair and a matching suit and tie. Somehow said suit has managed to stay completely unruffled and unsoiled despite its trip into Milliways' floor.

He brushes himself up, and then looks around. He appears to be in a bar, of all places; not what he had expected from the world outside his Truth. Sitting at the bar is a young man (by his standards), looking around twenty-five and feeling around thirty-five, and a woman -

- a rather peculiar woman who is teenage in appearance, twenty in age, and several hundred thousand in years-experienced.

Well. He really shouldn't be all that surprised, given that he wasn't even expecting humans outside his Truth, but minds are funny things sometimes.

"Millyways, you say?" he asks. "Pardon me, but where and what exactly is Millyways? What laws does it operate under?"

Edited 2015-06-06 05:14 (UTC)

"Milliways is not relative to any other locations except, occasionally, doors as a class; it is a bar, attached facilities and backyard; its physical laws are complicated and I'd prefer not to verbally describe them but I can summarize them by magic; its legal laws amount to 'don't use violence or be publicly indecent while in the main bar area' and 'be nice to the bar'."

Edited 2015-06-06 05:20 (UTC)

The man blinks. "Doors as a class?" He ponders. "Hm. Scrying is more akin to looking through a window, but I suppose there is some resemblance in conceptual affinity..."

Trailing he off, he blinks. "Oh, pardon me, I haven't introduced myself. I am Aisilian Rok'suchi, Mage of the Third Order." He bows, halfway.

That was particularly strange. It is very clear that Mage of the Third Order refers to a particular class of truth-manipulators, who have translated their minds to work on some fundamental element and by doing so have gained intuitive control over that element - but there was certainly not enough time for Aisilian to have said all of that.

Continuing without noticing, he asks - "Is the bar sapient? - No, I see that she is. Can she communicate with us? Hello, Bar, I apologize for talking around you."

"You talk like Elsie does when she's in a hurry," observes the young man.

Hello. It's quite all right. Can I offer you a drink? says a napkin that appears on the bar.

That gives the man pause.

"Do I, now," he asks rhetorically. Turning to the young woman, he asks: "You mentioned magic, earlier. I suppose I should have checked earlier - by magic, do you mean alethics, the study and manipulation of Truth, or do you mean something else entirely? It sounds like you have - power over communication, or comprehension, or something similar?"

"That was clever," he says to the bar. "A drink... Hm. What are my parameters, here? Oh, here's an interesting question. Can you find my Truth?"

"I am confident we don't have the same underlying system of magic, although mine in particular is based around reporting the truth," Elspeth says. "And allied operations. Including something similar to what you seem to do intermittently with information density."

Drinks are any potable liquid, with potability being determined on a per-patron basis. I can recommend something if you have no preference. But I cannot render your Truth as a potable liquid, alas.

"Oh, that is interesting. Something like akin to a material god - a spirit with intuitive control of a single spell or element, but manifested. I think I would be quite interested in that data-dump.

"Yes, that was result of my attempt at dealing with the obvious problem with attempting to communicate across Truths. My spell was... actually, it was more like a limited messaging device than a scry, more like a mail-flap than a window. Which as a side note is definitely within the paradigm of 'door'. At any rate, it was designed to communicate with beings outside my reality. To deal with the obvious problem with communications with beings that may not even share the same concept of words, I cast a spell of perfect comprehension. What you're hearing is probably the result of trying to fit my meaning into too little space.

"And, speaking of which - Elsie, was it?"

That gets him to snort in a rather undignified way, before covering it up with a rather more aristocratic chuckle. "No, I would imagine not. Rather - can you find drinks from my Truth?"

Edited 2015-06-06 07:49 (UTC)

"Elspeth."

The man coughs.

"Princess Elspeth Cullen," she clarifies. "And in my world I'm called a witch. What exactly do you want me to data-dump at you?" asks Elspeth. "I could start with why I don't think the doorness of your spell put you here."

Of course I can, napkins Bar serenely.

"Princess Elspeth Cullen," he says. "Princess of what, may I ask? From your respectable attempt at not introducing yourself as such, I assume you don't stand on ceremony."

He could look up her kingdom or empire himself, but that seems rather rude and privacy-invading and he's nearly managed to get himself out of the habit of doing that.

"That seems very interesting. That and the definition of witch would be an excellent first contact."

He turns to the man. "And you?"

"And again, interesting. I would not have expected that normally, but it seems this bar is full of surprises." He shakes his head. "Of all the things I expected to see when I looked Outside, a multiversal bar was quite possibly at the bottom of the list.

"I will take... mm. You know what, I'm in another world, even if my method was a bit unplanned. Let's try... whatever Elspeth is having."

"This is Jake and he's my wolf," Elspeth says. "And I'm the princess of the Golden Empire, and there is no ceremony necessary. A witch," and here she does an information-density thing: [per-person powers [dependent on personality][run in families [she is like both her parents backwards [her mother shields][her father reads]]]usually controllable magical abilities [loosely classified thus] distinguished from other powers [vampires [like her parents]] [werewolves [like Jake]] though witchcraft can appear in any species [and may appear [or intensify] after turning where it did not exist in the human before]]

Here you are, says Bar, the napkin accompanied by a glass of golden fizzy liquid. Although it is not designed for you, it is not impossible that you will like it.

"'My wolf,' my word that was interesting. I've been wondering how it would handle something like that, but I couldn't come up with any good examples. Literal wolf, metaphorical not-quite-a-wolf and not-quite-yours, pet name akin to darling, and meta-pun on 'pet' - er, that may have come off insulting, I apologize. But hm, excellent, if my comprehension spell can handle something like that I shouldn't have problems with arbitrary humanoid cultures... ... Well, assuming that that wasn't simply because you said it, anyway. That's something of an obvious confounder."

He 'listens' closely to the stream of data. "Hm, interesting. Not perfect comprehension, but potentially-perfect communication, using Truth-affinity to bypass intermediate barriers... And powers of this sort naturally arise in humans and human-derived species? Interesting. You're definitely not gods; I'm not entirely sure why I thought that that would transfer somewhere with a different spiritual metaphysics. I wonder if you have souls at all? - A soul is a thing that connects your mind and your brain, it's a natural backup in case of brain damage, resurrection becomes much harder if it's lost and people become vulnerable to things like being shot in the head."

He graciously accepts the drink, raising it in a mock-toast before taking a sip. He looks thoughtful. "Mm... Interesting. Something like blood in flavor, very iron-y, but..." He takes another sip, "Yyyes. There's something in there that's giving me a synesthetic sense of ... refinement? I'm interpreting it as akin to a fine Marsala, but the actual taste isn't much alike. And the carbonation would cover up the lack of a congealing tendency, which probably matters if you're more used to drinking blood than I am... A most youkai-like of youkai drinks.

"Not my favorite drink, but if I just wanted something optimized for my tastebuds I could do that, I'm here to explore new worlds. Thank you, that is an interesting experience."

Edited 2015-06-07 06:24 (UTC)

"I suspect we don't have souls the way you're thinking of," says Elspeth. "I can resurrect a limited set of dead people [vampires with living human receptacles who can be made to look similar] to the satisfaction of vampire mate bonds [thus and so [like the wolf imprinting business except for the following distinctions...]] under certain conditions via sheer memory transfer [known via power-copying witch more than personal experience except in already-unsalvagable receptacle cases]."

You are entirely welcome, says Bar.

Aisilian nods, thinking. "Interesting. What if you target a blank slate, someone who's biologically alive but has no life experiences or mind? Could you resurrect a human that way?"

He blinks. "For that matter, how does your world normally do resurrection? It sounds like your method is specialized."

Somehow, it doesn't occur to him that other worlds might not do it at all.

(He takes another sip of the golden bubbly. It doesn't entirely agree with him, but it's new and not awful either, so he's fairly happy with it.)

"I don't know, I've never encountered a biologically alive but completely mindless human. It might work, it might not wind up being an adequate target for the mnemic blast. We don't have any other ways to do resurrection."

That-

- is true.

As true as everything else she has said. (And now that he thinks of it, there really haven't been the usual spelled-out tells of casual, unconscious deception that the spell usually picks up.)

Something in his eyes goes ... not cold, exactly. Hard. Still warm, caring, but hard and determined nonetheless.

"Well," he says, his voice perfectly calm. "That just won't do, will it."

"I can fix that," he adds, with absolute confidence. "... Mm. Not personally, not across Truths. A persistent effect, a reusable artifact...? Mnemic blast - blank-slate cloning and past-scrying minds, requires -" He cuts himself off. "Yes. Rather, I will fix it, once I find a way."

... His face softens a little, goes a little sheepish. "Er. Once I find a way to your world, at any rate."

Edited 2015-06-07 07:08 (UTC)

"I'm not allowed to let you in unless I can state, to Jake, that you're harmless," Elspeth remarks. "The Golden Empire is generally pro-immortality but I don't scale even if you provide blank slate bodies and they work, because I have a fixed archive of memories, it only works if I have an archive of vampire memory to use, and the vampire who could accumulate more backups is dead and was a very bad person. Whatever else you have in mind might be great, but I don't think you are quite harmless."

Aisilian grimaces. "No. I am many things, but harmless is definitely not one of them. That is an unfortunately sensible rule, but I do not think it was designed to deal with reasonably benevolent mages attempting to save another world. The obvious solution is to ask your relevant parent if it applies in this case.

"Blank slate bodies is just a method that I know your Truth will permit. Blank slate bodies and the ability to conjure arbitrary target minds out of the past are both things I can do in my native world, but reproducing them elsewhere will be difficult."

His eyes are far away when he says this; his words are quick and certain, but it is nonetheless certain that he is not focusing entirely on this conversation.

Edited 2015-06-07 07:23 (UTC)

"Mama would probably make an exception if she could be sure that you would be resurrecting dead people in some orderly fashion as opposed to doing anything else, but while she happens to know that I can only say true things and have them come out sounding accurate, she doesn't know that about you. If you can think of something we could implement ourselves you can tell me about it, or if you think of it after one of us leaves you can leave me a note with Bar next time you're here."

He shakes his head. "Almost everything I did would have to be in the form of 'things I could tell you how to do.' I'm not harmless, but only because I could hypothetically sacrifice my home, my star, and possibly my life in order to do something to your home universe. If I'm not willing to do that, there's not a lot I can actually do other than 'scry,' and while scrying will get us pretty far you'll have to implement them. And things will almost certainly go wrong while you're implementing them."

He tilts his head consideringly. "I could... no, you can't trust that.

"... Can you say to Jake that I am not any more dangerous to you or your home when I am in it than I am here? I realize that is not the most reassuring of truths, but at any rate you would lose nothing by letting me try to help."

Edited 2015-06-08 12:25 (UTC)

"I don't think you're accounting for Milliways security in asserting that," remarks Elspeth. "And... describe scrying?"

Edited 2015-06-08 20:00 (UTC)

Aislian waves his hands. "It would't be matter of Milliways security. There are worlds within my sheaf, and there are worldsheaves besides my own, and then there are entirely separate Truths, and I can controllable transit between any of these."

"Scrying is fundamentally acquiring answers to arbitrary questions. I am starting to suspect that the easiest way for me to help you is to simply give you plans for, say, a blank-slate cloner, so that you can at least start working through your backlog, while I work on mostly-technological solutions to finding new minds."

Edited 2015-06-09 03:14 (UTC)

"I won't turn down the cloning machine," says Elspeth, "but if you want Mama's goodwill you're going to want to be very careful using that scrying on any minds that can't give you permission to look at them."

Aisilian relaxes a little at that. "I'm not in the habit of violating people's privacy like that. There are questions I could ask that might do it indirectly, but nothing I'm willing to do involves people's thoughts or memories actually being seen by me."

He turns to the Bar, and idly returns to his drink. "Bar - can you make an appropriate memory drive based on something I have in my mind, or am I going to have to store the blueprints myself? I'd like to copy plans for a blank-slate cloner that will work in her world to disc, but I didn't happen to have any mysteriously cross-world-compatible drives on me when I randomly fell across Truths." He makes a wry smile.

Edited 2015-06-09 03:48 (UTC)

I cannot read your mind, napkins Bar primly. But I can sell you or Elspeth similar plans from a world which unlike your own contains them in published form, and something to read them with.

Aisilian looks at Elspeth. "That sounds like it'd... work? Mm. No, not quite, because you'd need the infrastructure to make the infrastructure to make them in the first place.

Alright. It's been awhile since I've had to pay for something - how do you handle payment, anyway? - but I'm sure I can find some way to buy an appropriate drive, and then I'll create a step-by-step plan."

I can take almost all forms of cash and many forms of credit. You may also choose to run up a tab.

Aisilian tilts his head. "I can't imagine you'd be very temporally limited... Can you draw from my credit account in the Second Age in El'aistrim?"

Sorry, not really.

Aisilian 'tch'es. "Let's open up a tab, then, and I'll get some cash. Will you accept El'aistrim Second Age obols?"

Certainly. At quite favorable exchange rates, even, for most purposes.

Aisilian chuckles. "I'll just bet. Well then. One - relevant memory device, and one footstool, please."

Bar produces a small blue cylinder and a nicely upholstered little stool.

Aisilian winces. "I feel a little guilty about sacrificing that stool now. I don't suppose you have anything you were ready to throw out anyway?"

He pockets the cylinder.

It's not really an applicable concept for me, says Bar. I can take it back and offer you a less nice footstool if you like.

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