barring emergencies

[the_very_best]

Bella's not sure where she has wandered. She thought she was about to walk into a shop, but this appears to be an unattended bar. With none of the windows associated with the shop she thought she was entering. It could be an elaborate psychic assault of some kind, but it doesn't feel very... assault-y... and she was in the middle of a town and doesn't think any humans want to sic their 'mon on her. It's strange. She approaches the bar, looking around warily, hand hovering near her belt.

with Max (Benedict)

with Earth and Lightning (kappa)

with Ann and Sabrina (kuuskytkolme)

Comments

[unblinkered]

Max remembers the "buying any nonmagical object" thing, and decides to investigate that.

"So... buying things that aren't drinks, anything nonmagical. What are... the limits on how much you know about an order? If an alien walked in and asked for a znorfblarg, please, would you just know what that was? Would they have to describe it to you, would you have trouble fabricating something unusual?"

In the first case, it'd imply some magic inferential or oracular power whose limits could bear further testing. In the second case, the cultural vocabulary of the bar's creators could be triangulated by investigating the bar's menu. He has a good feeling about this avenue.

"And you- what's a Po-catch?"

[the_very_best]

If znorfblargs were a real thing or a reasonably extrapolable compound concept of some kind, I could produce one, although the individual ordering it would have to be specific about any idiosyncratic preferences they might have for customizable aspects of the item.

"It's this," the girl says, pointing at her watch, which on closer inspection is some kind of smart watch. "It does lots of things, including my bank account."

[unblinkered]

If they were a...

"So, hold on. Real thing? There's an infinite number of universes, supposedly- so somewhere out there has to be something called a znorfblarg. It's definitely a real thing, I just don't have any idea what it is because I'm not from a universe with znorfblargs. If I asked you for a znorfblarg, I assume you wouldn't know what I meant and be unable to produce one. But... if someone came in from a universe you've never met anyone from before, and they ordered a znorfblarg... the only difference would be that they would know what a znorfblarg was. Do you... read minds, or is the system more complicated?"

[the_very_best]

I do not read minds, but the translation mechanism in place that is, for example allowing you and she to both read the same napkins and speak to each other also works for me, and it does not simultaneously inform me of all the homophones in the multiverse every time you utter a word.

[unblinkered]

"Wait- she's not speaking English? These- if I took these napkins home, would the translation fail and I'd look at the napkins and they'd be covered in gibberish, or are they enchanted napkins?"

He looks at the girl, trying to find writing somewhere on her clothing that he could confirm as an alien language.

[the_very_best]

She is not wearing any text.

If you take the napkins home, you will find they are in your language. If she takes them home they will be in hers. If you write something she will be able to read it here but not at home, and vice versa.

"I'm speaking Islandish," supplies the girl. "I probably have a pretty generic Sinnoh accent?"

[unblinkered]

So, enchanted napkins confirmed...? Or...

"So, hold on. Does the text on the napkins change when I bring them home, or does the translation effect just persist on the napkin itself? If I took a napkin, left the bar, came back with the same napkin, and gave it to her, and she took it home to her world, would she find it written incomprehensibly in my language?"

He... realizes he can't imagine how knowing one way or the other would be useful, but he finds himself asking anyway. He invents himself a reason- if it's a persistent enchantment, he may be able to bring it home and get someone to study or reverse-engineer the magic. Yes. Good. Practical thinking. He awards himself a gold star in his head.

[the_very_best]

If you take a napkin home and then bring it back with you, speakers of other languages will be able to read it here but not if they bring it home with them. It will stay written in a specific language once it begins to be so.

"How does this place handle ambiguous sorts of translations?" wonders the girl.

Very effectively, I find, considering the magnitude of the problem.

[unblinkered]

Damn. Okay. No enchanted napkins, then- enchanted bar, separate enchantment for making the translation permanent when you leave. That could have been the loophole in the "nonmagical items only" requirement.

...No, wait.

"So, you can only order nonmagical things, but... you said you could sell her Pokéballs, right? Those things are as good as magic in my world, but presumably in hers they're ordinary technology. Is 'nonmagical' relative to the magic saturation level of the customer's universe, or something?"

[the_very_best]

No. Pokéballs are not magic. Furthermore, in your universe they would not be able to accomplish anything without Pokémon to contain.

"If you're about to ask if you can borrow a 'mon," says the girl, putting her Linoone back in his Pokéball, "the answer is no."

[unblinkered]

"I wasn't gonna ask that! Those are, like, your pets, right? Of course I'm not going to ask to..."

Now, hold on a minute.

"So- hold on, the door- how hard is it to catch a pokemon? In my kid's game, he could get something in like, a minute... if you went to catch a pokemon, and I held the door to the bar, would it stay open to your- I mean, bar, would it stay open to her world?"

[the_very_best]

"...Uh, if you don't care at all about what you get? It'd take longer than a minute to get to a good place to definitely catch something, but it wouldn't take that long. What takes a long time is training them. My life is not actually a video game and you probably shouldn't extrapolate too much from the video game about Pokémon training. I'm also not sure if you could even handle a 'mon if I gave you one."

If you are holding the door, the door will lead to your world, not hers, says a napkin.

[unblinkered]

"Well. That's... that's two reasons that wouldn't work, then."

Oh! Max remembers how he got on all this. Nonmagicalness, enchantments, translation, homophones... knowing about znorfblargs.

"So... back to the item-ordering thing... the translation mechanism is what translates my English into whatever you hear it as? That's... leaving aside how a fully general perfect language learning enchantment could be... psychologically invasive, what happens if I ask for a real thing whose name I know, but which I don't know anything about the details of? Say I visit some science lab, and ask someone to name an esoteric piece of equipment for me, and then come here... without knowing what it is, would I be able to order it by name?"

[the_very_best]

Yes, says the bar.

"Oh, you know what I want, I want an authentic Pokédex," says the girl. "How much are those?"

¥9,000,000,000. My apologies.

"Ah, damn."

[unblinkered]

"What? That doesn't make any- how would you know what to conjure? Do you just have... a list of every possible object? Do you read my- do you read the scientist's mind from wherever he is? How on earth..."

The sum of money for the Pokédex sounds exorbitant. In fact...

"And while I'm at it, how does pricing work? If someone lives in a universe where, say, batteries are extremely uncommon and expensive, and someone else comes from a place where you can get them for a couple bucks at the convenience store, do you quote them two separate prices? What's with that?"

[the_very_best]

I don't need a list, napkins the bar, and I do not read minds. I just speak English. And those two people would be extremely unlikely to operate from the same currency.

[unblinkered]

"You don't need a list and you don't read minds- 'speaking English' isn't enough to know how to build a- a- a whatever complicated thing, just from its name! And- and the other thing, currency has nothing to do with it! If someone comes in and asks for batteries, and you base the price on how much they cost in their world, and they can't afford it... and then someone else from another world shows up, do they... do you see what I'm getting at? If I came from a world where they handed Pokedexes out like candy, wouldn't that price you gave be unfair?"

[the_very_best]

If you'd like to buy a Pokédex for her or give her some of your money to see if she has better luck with that I will hardly stop you, the bar says. I do not have to build things. I just cause them to appear.

[unblinkered]

So okay, it is just blatantly unfair, and- what?!

"Cause them to appear?! Wha- that's not how- what are you talking about?! What does that mean? Where does the information that tells you to make the one thing as opposed to the other even- there's- there's no free lunch!"

this bar is either stupid or lying or the fundamental mechanics of information theory are broken ohhh no no no no

[the_very_best]

They aren't manufactured. The coffee you are drinking did not previously exist in a bean state. I do not technically serve free lunch, but I do serve free drinks.

[unblinkered]

"I- of course it wasn't beans, but it had to be- you had to know what a coffee was! You would have to know what a znorfblarg was! What, do you just... already know what everything is? Are you omniscient? How?!"

[the_very_best]

I am hardly omniscient. For example, I do not read minds, napkins the bar patiently. Would you consider someone fluent in your dialect of English if they didn't know what coffee was?

The girl giggles.

[unblinkered]

"Yes! Yes I would! If they spoke perfect English but had never seen or heard of a cup of coffee before, that would totally count! Language doesn't... it doesn't encode information about things all by itself, it's a library of triggers for other people's concepts! If some scientist told me to go here and order a... a, a diatomic parallel cyclotron, or something, and neither of us knew what that was prior to my arrival, there's no way you should be able to appearify one just by being told its name!"

Max, in unsurprising contrast to the bar's patience, is losing his cool, if he ever had it. How can this thing- how can she really not understand why this is strange?

[the_very_best]

But I'm fluent in the hypothetical scientist's dialect of English, too, says the bar.

"She's being very forthcoming about what she can do under what conditions, why does it matter so much how that lines up with your previous concepts?" wonders the girl.

[unblinkered]

He stares at the napkin. That's. Basically sort of mind-reading.

"Right. Previous concepts. So..."- he puts his hands to his head- "You know, effectively, the definition of, and enough technical knowledge to synthesize rather than make a nonfunctional replica of, any medium-sized object anyone who speaks any language or dialect has a word for?"

That is... there are frightening implications, here.