Dune & Tesla !pvrFr6TXNw 2010/01/11 (Mon) 03:55 No. 33671 Tesla: Finally. Took way too long, again, but things piled up and I wanted to make sure I got this right. Been waiting to post this since the beginning of the story, really, so I hope it works.
Votes were combined to an extent due to the tie.
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Erm... right. Doesn't look like she's getting anywhere, but you'll give her a second to think. No point in trying to interrupt her if she hasn't made sense of her thoughts, either, right?
“Um...” She's... getting somewhere, right?
“Er...” Nope.
“Eh... Ah...” You're not sure what's going on, but she might be thinking in a loop. She doesn't seem to be getting any nearer to a conclusion, so it ma actually be best to interrupt. Let's see... you still don't know her name, right? Best start there.
“Well-”
“OH YEAH!” Her sudden realization and the volume she uses to declare it almost make you wince in surprise, but she quickly seems to revert. “That's right. I-er-um... I forgot.”
You start again. “Well, what's your name?”
She stands tall to the height that she can muster, and tries speaking formally. “Flandre. Flandre Scarlet.” The change is so sudden you're forced to suppress a laugh. The girl seems confused, but you continue before she can question what you're doing. Also, you'd rather her not get angry again.
“Well, Flandre-” Wait. What were you going to ask her? If you ask her if she needs something she might lapse again, so... “There was a loud noise very near here. Do you know anything about it?” Best be to the point about this.
“Er... A loud noise? Well, there was something in my way and I got rid of it, but besides that...” You're getting nowhere. You know that for a fact now. Turning to the man who accompanied you, you- wait. He's not there.
Oh, yes he is. He was just hidden pretty well. He peeks out, gesturing you to continue. What's he after, anyway?
“Well, let's forget about that. What brought you around here?” Frankly, difficult to think of what else to say to someone you (seemingly) have never seen before.
“I was bored, so I took a walk. I know I'm not supposed to, but I was bored... bored...”
“Wait. If you're not supposed to and you know it, why do it anyway?”
Her demeanor doesn't change, but you can tell her intent does an about face. “Are you going to tell me to go back down?” Her eyes, her tone of voice- you just feel the atmosphere changed completely. And you don't like the feeling she suddenly gives you.
“No. No, I won't.” It isn't your job to enforce this girl's behavior. You think it isn't, anyway. Why would someone like you ever get a job like that? You'd let things like this slip all the time.
“Okay. Good.” She seems to calm down, but you can still feel a strange intent from her. A little like... a willingness to harm, but more like some holds are just not there. Doing your best to ignore it, you press on.
“So you aren't doing anything in particular.”
“Nope.”
...That's it? Nothing to build on? Your thoughts are cut short by a poke to your shoulder. Turning, you face the person who led you here. You briefly swivel back to look at Flandre, who regards him as if she expects him to be boring.
“Well, we'd best get moving. Still got some business to take care of before the day ends.”
“But he seems fun...” Flandre looks a little disappointed, but you can't tell much from looking at her again.
“Well, he'll go and visit you.” The man turns to you, clearly expecting an assent. “Right?”
You shrug. “Sure.” Not much else you can do in this situation, anyway.
“I'll explain things to you in a second. Besides that-” Flandre interrupts him by suddenly widening her eyes and darting off down the hall you just traversed in the opposite direction. A few seconds later a woman, with silver hair and in a western maid outfit, appears directly in front of you. You recoil in surprise and bump into a wall, but that Roland just points in the direction that the little girl took and the woman disappears again. What the fuck?
“I'll explain as we go along then. Follow me.” You do as he says, but you're still wary of him. “Put simply, the woman you saw has an ability to halt time and move freely within a stopped frame. It's simple as that, for the purposes at hand.” You feel you should really react more to what he's saying, but it seems credible for some reason, and something else is on your mind.
“So... you needed my help with something?”
“That's right. Just a few doors down, actually.” You decide to keep quiet until then. Talking more probably won't help at all. A few halls more and he stops in front of a door, which has a sort of metal plaque with some writing emblazoned into it; he opens the door too quick for you to read it. He looks around once, then leads you inside.
You take a look around as you walk into the room, seeing various things strewn about and an impressive amount of desks; some of them have tools built into them. You notice a rifle placed on a set of hooks on the wall, above a desk with various small parts on it and a few tools. Several larger machines, which you'd guess to be for making specific things out of metal, wood, and other materials, are also placed up against the wall in no particular order but . Glass cases hold various things which seem to be collector's items of some sort- knives, helmets, photographs- but nothing in them really seems to catch your eye. Of course, you don't know why you're there, either.
“It's really not all that much, but it's comfortable enough to live and work in. Take a look around, I have to get a lock open for us to keep going.”
You do, and you take a closer look in the place. A German-style helmet with white sun emblems within blue circles, a long grey trenchcoat, neatly folded; most of this seems to be war memorabilia, and moving on to the photos you see some pictures of people in uniform. Looking over them briefly, you take a look to see what's taking the man so long to finish what he's doing. He's standing over on one edge of the room, next to a locked door, seemingly tinkering with the mechanism. If he's got this room to himself, though, why would he lock a door that only goes further in? Odd, but maybe it's stranger that he looks so much like one of the guys on the pictures.
Huh? You look over the first two you see, comparing the still, black-and-white faces in the pictures to the real, fully moving one off to the side. They look almost identical. Turning to analyze the pictures again, you can't discern much but try to figure out what's going on at least.
The first has an old-fashioned building in the background, with some men in uniforms and others wearing black suits and top hats. In the foreground are four men in military garb, with helmets tipped with metal spikes. The third one, counting from left to right, is the one that looks like Roland most. In black ink, the photo has Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Chemie, 1911 written across the front. 1911? That should be impossible, right?
The other is of six men, wearing a completely different uniform, in the middle of a field and with what looks like a city behind them. Two of them are holding up a South Korean flag (the one on the right is the only one you seem to recognize, looking like this Roland), and one other is holding up a sign with 대한민국 소유권 written on it. This one only has a year on it: 1950.
He interrupts your thoughts, however. “Ah, here it is. Let's go.” You hear him start to walk in and stop; turning to look at him reveals he's looking at you inquisitively. “Hey, you coming?”
“Just one thing.” You walk over, holding the two pictures. “What are these, why are you in them, and what's with the years written on them?”
“Huh?” He looks genuinely confused. “Let me see those.” He takes one in each hand and looks at them intently, but only for a second. “You're kidding, right? These look nothing like me! Do you honestly think I'd keep my hair like that? Come on!” He laughs and then puts the pictures on a nearby counter. “Now, are you coming or are you going to claim I was in Vietnam next?”
If that actually is him in the pictures, there's no way it'd be easy to get that out of him. You'll just go along with him for now.
He leads you into a larger toom with a huge device in the middle of it. The machine is unrecognizable, and has several panels of controls and gauges. The machine is a brass color, and spans a good portion of the room. It's amazing, but you have no idea what it is. He saves you the trouble of asking. “This is a machine to cause planar displacement and overlay. It's used to, in essence, move between different versions of reality.”
You don't know whether to believe him, so you ask him a little thing to test him. “Where could you get a thing like this?”
“Brussels,” he says, “1927.” An instant response, but a doubtful one. Does he mean that's when it was made? Designed? He builds on it immediately, though, leaving you no room to interrupt. “An... associate and I built this to start moving between different planes, rather than just looking through them. Usually only things like light and radio waves make it, but this was our first device that could send massive particles through them- and through that, solid, liquid, gaseous objects, including but not limited to air, papers, trinkets and people.”
“Planes?”
“I never told you, huh? Well, then I guess now I will. Listen up!” He's gesturing a lot, as if preparing to give you a long speech.
“Well, let's start by summing up your experience. Your experience, which is compiled through memory and reason, is all just drawn from your sensory perception, right? From this you construct your model of reality. The whole nature of this isn't completely clear- there is the argument that you recognize an existing one and others which say it's completely made by you, among others- but the whole point is that you just take your concept of what your life and existence are and consist of, physically at least, from what you percieve. Anything spiritual and rational is just the latter- rational. External influences can help, but if you ask me aren't really as conclusive.
“I digress. The point is that your experience creates your model of reality and that with this model you provide your explanation of the phenomena which surround you. Changing the model can be easy or difficult, depending on who you are, what you've experienced and been taught, but new factors have to be thrown in if something contradicting your model appears; this is just so that it can continue to effectively explain the universe that you're in.
“But what if I told you that even if your model to explain your universe is right it still isn't enough to encompass all of physical reality? Around the time we built this machine quantum physics were being laid out, individuals like Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and such were bringing this concept out bringing the way people saw things into even further question than Einstein's theories of relativity and the laws of thermodynamics had done just years earlier. We'd been playing with spacetime for some time before that- but that isn't something related to what I'm trying to explain.
“What I've come to call 'planes' are different versions of the same reality. It's strange for me to be able to move through them so effectively, honestly, when I can't say we understand them completely or even significantly. There are a few possibilities. For instance, take the amount of dimensions of the environment you live in. There are a few ways to look at that, but the space itself seems to have three and other factors can be counted in as different dimensions which can result in a model with a few. However, think of the possibilities which arise when spacetime, on a quantum level, may have more than ten dimensions in its spatial-temporal properties alone! Is it possible that these or ones beyond these even may manage to manifest a different reality within the same universe, maybe even in the same location?
“Yes,” he says, looking significantly calmer, arms crossed and nodding sagely; “yes, it is. Is that the only explanation? No,” he says, shaking his head, “no, it isn't. There are a few more ways to look at it.”
...He really likes the sound of his voice, eh?
“For instance, take into account the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. All this model does is state that there is not one universe but a myriad of them; a multiverse, if you will. These 'planes' I'm talking about could just as easily be similar cases and different manifestations of reality in different universes, after all, according to this if an event doesn't happen in one universe then it's extremely likely or even dead certain it will in another. Am I just moving between different universes? I could.
“But say the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, though there is only one universe. This can be the case. If it's finite, it's possible, considering its size, for similar events in one location to take place almost in parallel in another place. If it's infinite, then it may as well become a certainty. If you give an event, no matter how unlikely, the possibility to manifest itself an infinity of times then there is no doubt it will occur. This means I could just be moving between locations in the same universe and set of dimensions. It doesn't look like it from what I've seen, but is it possible this is happening instead? Well, sure it is.”
What the hell? You're not sure you're even following what he's saying anymore.
“Or none of this could be real and it's possible it's all just my delusion. It's really unlikely if you ask me, but there isn't much you can know for sure. All this theory can be really vexing, though, and it's possible that even some things seeming unthinkable can be the case. If it's possible for events to resolve because a conscious entity sees it, then is it possible for an event to manifest because one considered the possibility of its existence? Not only that, it's applicable even to this one here! I'm from this named 'plane' (mind you, Gensokyo is not a plane of its own), so is it possible I've simply been conjured by a thinking entity? It is, but the same is true for you.
“But how far can this go? Perhaps others are seeing what you are. Far distant eyes may look out through yours, far distant ears may hear with yours. Your subconscious could be inhabited by a swarm of minds which simply consider the possibility of your existence, or perhaps a projection of such; maybe even ones that discuss among themselves!. Or maybe it's just one mind. Maybe it's my case. How the hell can we consciously know?! The minds of others may see with my perspective and feel with my hands the same as they may with yours. If it's possible, does that make it a certainty? No, it doesn't. But some interpretations of the structure of reality say it could be so.”
...People perceiving things through your head? What the fuck?
“So what of these different 'planes'? Do they mean something? Not if you don't interact with them. Visualizing it may be enough for that to happen, or maybe they're seeking you out! Heh-heh-heh! So what gives? Can these be completely different ones in themselves, and can ones bearing similarity to ours be found easily? Well, it depends on the method, but together with what I'm trying to get back I found one that makes it so.”
He moves over to his machine, pulling a few levers and moving a few switches. Parts on it start moving, brass-colored gears, crystal cylinders, other devices you can't recognize- begin to move, whirring, humming, quickening. The machine eventually begins to refract light in the shape of a portal of sorts, on a platform in its center and the center of the room.
“Let me show you what I mean. Even Gensokyo has its own slew of possibilities and planes. For instance, I've been keeping track of a few, so let me show them to you.”
Like a lens, the portal of pure light begins to show familiar shapes (though there are quite a few you don't think you could name) from different angles as if you were watching a film.
“Don't walk in there, I haven't set it up to move massive material. All these are different possible manifestations circling around a series of events which, from what I've found, mostly remain constant in a few of their aspects but not even in this case remain so. A little variation here and there, some with qualities which seem rare at least in other cases- for instance, the plane we're in now, the one you and I are native to, is the only one I've seen with a situation like ours, or even a version of you or me. In different ones, you or I could've taken on different occupations, gone through different experiences... we might even be constructed differently, maybe even of the opposite gender. It can be pleasant to visualize these things, I hear, but after seeing so many I'm not so sure...
“Take, for instance, this one. A nondescript outsider falls into Gensokyo without explicable reason and starts moving from place to place while in it. Or this one, where the soul of a dead man made its way through and began to possess individuals on this side of the border. Or this one, where a person wound up in the middle of the nearby forest only to juggle survival and the emotions of those around him- including three of the opposite persuasion which showed some interest in him. Even in the mansion we inhabit now, there are variants, planes and manifest possibilities.” As he mentions each example, he hits a different button which moves gauges, numbers, pins, wheels, buttons and levers all at once but to a different pattern each time.
“There are ones such as this one, where someone came in garbed as a vampire hunter, though he was nothing of the sort, and set out to not only find out about the mansion but to help fix what was wrong in it. Or this one, where a young man was pulled from his location thousands of kilometers away to find himself here and surrounded by mechanisms which he couldn't understand but sought to explore. Or this one, where there's some guy whose most notable quality is if you ask me the negligence he bears toward his gun. He never, as far as I've seen, cleaned or even bothered to oil it; a 7.65mm C96 like tht can probably take it but I've caught myself half-hoping it'll jam on him for showing such a lack of respect to his things. There are ones for different areas, even ones for completely different settings! I've found a few... two, in particular, which seem to have versions of individuals within a modern setting resembling the outside seemingly converging around one individual and his school, and another of a world oddly resemblant to the outside but completely airborne. Even one which seems to have events in parallel to those in the outside while having versions of individuals that should be here now put there decades earlier in a different setting!” He laughs. “It truly is quite a strange phenomenon. Exploring it, however, has led to my predicament. This machine's original design is obsolete, but improvements over time have kept it up to date. I, with the help of what I'm looking for, can now move across planes with little difficulty, particularly with improvements made to this machine; however, a couple of years ago it seems it was caught in a rift. I did eventually manage to find she was well, but neither where it was in the folds exactly nor how to keep a machine like this one stable enough to retrieve it before it collapsed or destroyed itself.
“This,” he says, smiling and pointing at you, “is where you come in. Your abilities, should you choose to help me, would help keep this machine stable long enough to locate it and pull it back.” He brings his arm back down. “I think you see, generally, what I'm trying to do and how I intend to do so.” He smiles, turns and shrugs. “But what's the point of making speeches to you anyway? You're just going to forget them.”
You feel you're a bit too confused now to be worrying about that.
“Anyway, here's the thing. I need your help with this, I'll be blunt about that. Question is whether you're willing to provide it or not. We won't get started until later, but for... certain reasons I recommend you choose whether you'll help me or not sooner rather than later. I don't mean to put pressure on you, but it's best we solve this now.”
What to do?
[ ] Alright, you'll help.
[ ] No, you refuse.
[ ] If you're going to help, you need to know a few things first. Assent, but only if he answers to some questions.
-[ ] Ask him about himself.
-[ ] Ask what he's looking for.
-[ ] How do other people here play into this?
-[ ] Ask about the pictures.
[ ] Wait, you didn't understand. Could he explain one of the things he said more thoroughly? (specify just what you want clarified)
You can choose more than one so long as they don't contradict; write-ins, as usual, are just fine.
