chalk

[alicornucopia]

In Paraasilan, Esmaar, a pair of roommates are about to break a rule that, compared to the one about running in the corridors or even the one about unlicensed teleportation, is there for a good reason.

In unison, they complete their shared spell.

~~~

with Adarin (Aestrix)

with Ekador (kappa)

with Brilliance (kappa)

with the admin (kappa)

with Teah (kappa)

with Katran (lambda)

with Hall (kappa)

with Joy (kappa)

with Kalinda (Christy Hotwater)

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"But the contents of what they want would fall under the scope of the relevance of the prayer."

[aeskhyne]

"Yeah. And so would, say, asking them what it was."

[alicornucopia]

"The detail work that gives you trouble - like brain stuff - you still can do, but have to do it stepwise. Does altering your own parameters seem like that, where given enough prayers directed at it you could figure out what to tweak to make it come together, or like something else?"

[aeskhyne]

"It seems like... mm."

Half a tick of silence - the list updates with another chunk of prayers.

"I can't see a lot of the things about me that I'd want to see if there was two of me and I was trying to work on the other one. It's not like working on somebody's brain where all the pieces are right in front of me. I've got this mortal body and I can see all its pieces just fine, but I can't see what connects me to it. I can kind of tell that there's something but I don't get any details. When Keo asked me to try giving myself an empathic signature - I could tell why I don't have one, and I could guess at how I might try to paste one back into my body, but I wasn't confident enough to try it because I don't understand anything about how this mind and that brain link up. I was afraid it might do something like - turn me into just a dream he's having, trap me in that body with no way to hear any prayers, and there wouldn't be anybody around who could undo it."

[alicornucopia]

"If you can get Keo something to grab onto she's - good at brain stuff," says Kaylo. "Well, mind stuff, technically. But I'm not sure how she'd interact with you because you're weird. Probably similarly risky to try sending your body back, even if we made plans to resummon you."

[aeskhyne]

"It seems like I came here with no problem, but maybe the mystery coma messed something up, who knows."

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah. There are potions and spells that can wake people, up, too, but likewise, maybe not safe to try."

[aeskhyne]

"Any bright ideas about how to figure out what is safe to try?"

[alicornucopia]

"...I usually avoid them like the plague because they're buggy, but there exist spells to tell the future, and this is actually the kind of thing that they're good at, specific planned action that might do one of two broad classes of things probably based on stable factors as opposed to small perturbations."

[aeskhyne]

"Spells to tell the future, huh? How's that work? What kind of buggy are they?"

[alicornucopia]

"They're kind of terrible in practice most of the time. The ones that work by anything other than random chance are extrapolatory, not prognosticatory. They don't look at the future, they look at - moving parts in the present. Basically what I'd do would be I'd look up one of these spells, and then tell somebody who'd do it on my say-so to go give you a potion at a certain time, and then cast the spell to see what happens at that time, and then if I got a clean result it'd tell me whether to stop them or not. It'd work best if you agreed in advance to do something specific and informative in response to whatever happened. I could give the person with the potion a list of questions to ask your body-self in case he still doesn't remember being you on waking, if that's how it shakes out."

[aeskhyne]

Half a tick - the list updates yet again -

"Explain that more?" he says. (In the barely-perceptible pause between sentences, Kaylo is offered a choice-wrapped-in-truth: whether or not to have the reservoir's attention drawn to him to cause his CC to increase slowly over time.) "What's the point of the list of questions? What kind of 'specific and informative' are you looking for?"

[alicornucopia]

"Like if we agree in advance that unwhat the hell?"

[aeskhyne]

"Huh?"

[alicornucopia]

"You did a thing. I wasn't praying for it, where did the thing come from? ...Also how long does it sit here if I don't juke one way or the other?"

[aeskhyne]

"Sits there as long as you haven't picked something. I'm talking to you, I told you about choices in the list but I didn't go into detail and I figured you might want to know what they're like and that might be something you'd want, so it came under 'talking to you'."

[alicornucopia]

"If I pick 'no' can you re-try or does it stop being relevant then or what? I do not plan to pick no, I'm just - examining it while it's still here."

[aeskhyne]

"Now that we're talking about it I bet I could keep offering it to you all day if for some reason you felt like doing that. Might be a little less relevant to spring it on you out of nowhere again."

[alicornucopia]

"There's degrees of relevance? How does that factor in?"

[aeskhyne]

"There's degrees of relevance, and things are either relevant enough or they aren't, but if they're on the edge sometimes that goes back and forth a little."

[alicornucopia]

"Say more about the going back and forth?"

[aeskhyne]

"Like, if something's really on the edge like that then whether or not I can do it can change from moment to moment, depending on how I'm thinking about it at the time. It usually settles out pretty fast one way or another, but it happens. Mostly when I'm in the middle of doing something and it reminds me of something else through a weird tenuous chain of associations."

[alicornucopia]

"Can I get an example of a tenuous chain of associations?"

[aeskhyne]

"Like - hypothetical example: somebody wants their headache fixed, they're wearing a blue shirt, that reminds me of water, reminds me of the beach, reminds me of that girl who wanted a pretty shell, I go look her up and she needs something but isn't praying for it - I might be able to help her still holding onto the headache prayer, but I probably wouldn't, because it's just too far gone. And I bet it'd flicker like that."

[alicornucopia]

"Can you tell where in a chain like that is the weak link that's making it unstable or untenable?"