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Bathic !!1oQZB1czRDh ID:GbgcgSXN Sun 11 Aug 2024 06:43:52 No.6078525 View View Report

Quoted By:

>GIL!!!!
>53, 104, 61 vs. DC 74 — Mitigated Success
>Spendy

There's too many damn options, which actually makes it easier to pick. Gil! You're going where Gil is. Whether he's shut up in a room like you were, whether he's in the belly of the hallway monster, whether he's in Management's bony clutches, whether he's on the moon— it simply doesn't matter. You're going there and you're getting him back. It's what a heroine does.

>[+2 ID: 9/14]

"We're all lucky you have such a commitment to justice." Teddy's hands are in his pockets.

Huh? Damnit! So he can read your mind! He's like a worse version of Gil and a worse version of Richard, all mixed together. (Poor Gil, stuck with him forever.) Also, what's that supposed to mean? He's not being sarcastic, is he?

"No."

Really?

"Nope."

Um, okay. Then yes! He and Gil are lucky! Or the world is? You don't know what 'we' he's talking about. And you're lucky you have a retainer who's worthwhile to rescue, though you are crossing your fingers he's in a convenient rescuable location. Though wherever he is, you'll find him! You're using the most advanced trick you have: shutting your eyes and wandering around until you wind up where you're supposed to go.

One side-effect of shutting your eyes: the strings are back. Virginia's eyeballs do a good job of tuning them out, but they thrive in the darkness, and this whole upper region is thick with them. Far more than you expected for a manse. It's like wading through cobwebs. Below your feet, the rooms are bright sparks. Far above your head, the 'moon''s more like a sun. Once or twice, you think you catch a glimpse of something odd in the thicket, something moving faster than the strings' gentle shifting, but you never see it clearly, and you never stop to search. You have Gil on your mind, and if you get distracted he'll be lost forever. (...Maybe not forever, but longer than you'd like!)

Oh well. The normal order of operations is: you walk for a while, you think about your destination, you stop when it feels right, and if you did it right you'll be there. You were happy with this state of affairs! You didn't need to change it. Now it's worse: you walk, you think, and the strings shuffle around you. Not like you brush them aside, mind. They move before you get there, forming a path, and the path is where you walk. Where you choose to walk? Is it a choice? Or are the strings parting where you were always going to walk? Richard questions, not that Richard'd give a straight answer. He'd probably say he turned off your eyeball for good reason, Charlotte Fawkins, because otherwise you ask stupid questions like that. You can hear it in his voice and everything.

The Richard in your imagination doesn't help much, but you appreciate him trying.

>[-1 ID: 8/14]

(1/2)

Bathic !!1oQZB1czRDh

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Bathic !!1oQZB1czRDh ID:uVU0xw7y Fri 16 Feb 2024 11:11:03 No.5927496 View View Report

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And look! Look now! Look how beautiful it is! You remember it now, can't believe how you didn't remember- the cyan strings, feather-light, heaven's tapestry! They pulse and flutter in time with the world. Only there's not very much world here, wherever you are, and the strings are loose and far between. That's okay. You more than make up for it. You remember it, the bright tangle at your heart, but it's not much of a tangle anymore: you have been compacted, efficientized. You are a white-blue fist-sized solid mass, and you blaze like the sun.

The Manager does not blaze. The Manager, in fact, required careful searching: your dizzied eye passed right over it multiple times. The glow of the Manager's string is dim, and it snakes along the ground for a long, long ways— you can't see where it leads, it's that far. It reminds you of a tail, or a leash, or of one of those electric cables. Cords? Gil would know the word. Anyways, of one of those. It snakes right on up to you.

You have a terrible idea. Richard would hate it. Therefore you do it without hesitation: you reach out, grab the cable-string, and tug it. Really tug it, you mean. With your nails gripped in.

The Manager makes a growly sound. The skua flaps and lands a few feet back. Encouraged, you tug harder, but there's too much slack in the string. What else? Well, gosh, Richard gave you these nice fangs, and you've barely even used them. You take the Manager's cable-string and align it carefully—

Then remember something. "Um, leave Pat alone! Okay? Or else!"

—then re-align it carefully, and squint, and bite down. Your razor fang slices the cable-string in two. Its dim glow dies. The Manager, the black-black-black shape, vanishes. It vanishes! Just like that!

The cable-string doesn't, though: it continues to lie limply in your hand. Intrigued, you stand, stretch, and pace along its length, taking care to duck under any other strings you encounter. After some time, you discover the culprit: a fork in the string. It snakes off in two directions, and the second direction is— well, it appears to be doubling back on itself. The second Manager has noticed interference. That's okay too: you bite the second string in half, and it dies and vanishes entirely.

(It is strongly possible that things don't work like this. They just don't. Richard would throw a hissy fit. It is strongly possible that you will never be able to do this again. But a lot of things can happen when you don't realize anything's wrong.)

So they're gone, then. They're gone. The Managers are gone, and suitably warned at that. Thus you can— thus you can— you're feeling a bit weak at the knees. Your blue sun is guttering. Positive thinking! It's all going to... be...

—

"Claudia! Claudia?"

You are Charlotte Fawkins still. You could be Claudia if you wanted to be, but you don't feel like it. You're not completely sure what happened. Everything's all blue.

"Did you— Claudia? Are you... um, could you look at me? Please?"

(3/4?)

Bathic !!1oQZB1czRDh

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Bathic !!1oQZB1czRDh ID:tYcBUOmA Mon 07 Aug 2023 08:47:37 No.5730270 View View Report

Quoted By:

Eloise nods too, once. "Thanks. Now, I don't know how brushed-up either of you are on modern skiens— I think Charlotte and I've talked about this a little bit before— but the core principle of it is that reality is composed of invisible fundamental elements called 'strings.' They're thought to be string-shaped, and they're thought to vibrate, is why they're called that. What strings do is contain information— raw information— on how the world should and does work. Any property of any thing you could imagine is defined in these strings, and they're created, destroyed, and altered every second of every day. It's how the world moves. It's how it all happens. It's pretty incredible."

"Okay," you say tetchily. "And the world ending—?"

She holds up her pen. "That's the basics of it. What less people know is that the strings might be invisible, or even in a sense conceptual, but that hasn't prevented modern skiens from being able to analyze their structure. And we've determined, pretty strikingly— they've determined that the positioning of the strings isn't random. Hopelessly tangled, yes. Always shifting, yes. But if you take the infinity of them and zoom way, way out, a pattern becomes very obvious. The strings emanate from, or are attached to, one location. A location—" She stomps the ground. "—thought to be very, very, very deep under the seafloor, a place unfortunately inaccessible to modern skientists, who on the whole live a mile in the sky. Hence the inconclusivity, hence the theories."

"Like the God one," you say.

"Yes. Like the god one, among others. It could just be the biggest crystal you could possibly comprehend, given that the material is known for affecting strings. That's similarly unprovable, as crystal is a son-of-a-bitch to come by up top." Eloise appears faintly amused. "And there's other stuff, too, but I won't get into it. They're not important. There's a third proven skientific finding, which is the one skientists try not to tell people about. The strings are all either coming or going from a certain place, right? They're not just waving around freely. They're taut."

"Like an i-instrument," Gil supplies. (Damnit! Why is he so into this!)

"Exactly. Like the strings of an instrument. This is all speaking on relative terms, of course, so there's still enough slack for them to move and tangle and do string things— but please believe me, any amount of tension has major repercussions. There's two other things. One, there's no record of any string tension before the Flood. And we do have a handful of surviving documents on the matter. Two, it's getting worse. It's been getting worse since measurements began. The 'why' is unknown, but there's plenty of theories out there for that, too. They also don't matter."

Gil looks like he's trying to plot this all out in his head. "How physical are these? Can they break?"

(2/4?)

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