What time is it
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Date: 06/17/2018 Time: 14:00 EST |
Alma's office in the Hall of Science
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Cast: | |
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Jim has his phone out as he wanders into Alma's office. He doesn't greet her immediately because he's staring at his phone intently, squinting, mouth open slightly. Alma is reading a printout of a journal article. She's tilted back in her chair, and her feet are propped up on her magazine rack. When Jim walks in, she looks up and says, "Hey Jim." Jim doesn't say anything at first. He just holds out his phone screen to her. There is a photo of a woman, in a mask, carrying the carcass of a dead crow.[1]
"Oh! That's Kaeli Swift. I know her work. We haven't met in person. I have a crush on her," Alma explains. Jim shuts the door carefully before taking a seat. "Yes ma'am. I was reading her account on account of her talking about corvids. But then I see this and it surprised me. I did see her pinned tweet about those uh , New Caledonian Crows you worked on. I just wasn't prepared for this ma'am." <<DICE>> Alma rolls perception + empathy, difficulty 6 Alma stops tilting her chair and sits up. "You should check out her blog where she talks about her thanatology research. She's studying how crows deal with death. Funerals and the like. Read about her friendship with GO." Alma adds. "She has a post about GO dying." She looks really somber, and continues. "How does your family handle the death of a loved one?" Jim pokes at his phone a bit more, nodding to Alma as she suggests he read about Swift's work. Face fairly expressionless for a moment, before he lets out a chuckle. "Well, my family would handle it in the traditional Catholic way. But it's a good thing she didn't see any Corax gathering around a dead raven. I reckon she'd get mighty confused." "Most likely," Alma agrees. "People don't raelly know about Corax do they? I never would have thought of it. Even after beging gobsmacked here... do you know about humans waking up?" She finger quotes waking. "There's lots of fiction about werewolves and vampires. Not so much about wereravens." a pause. "Do Corax honor the memory of people who've died, like on Dia de Muertos?" Jim shakes his head, and chuckles again. "I was gobsmacked because I was minding my own business on Twitter when suddenly there's a woman holding a dead body that looks kind of like me. You understand right? I was just surprised." He closes up his phone, raising his hip to shove it into his pocket. Then leaning forward a bit, elbow on the edge of her desk. "Dia de Muertos, some folks in our Parish honor that day. But the way the Corax learn from the dead, and honor them, is to climb up onto the chest of the fallen, lean in close to ask permission, and then dip the beak into one of the eyes, to see what the dead last saw." Alma listens to Jim and laughs about the creepy picture. She ponders a little how it might feel if a person was making jokes about human corpses... probably ok if it was Kaeli making the joke? When Jim talks about eating eyes she says, "Holy shit, Jim, that's fucking cool!" <<OOC>> Alma says, "that is a very common reaction to people telling Alma stuff. Wednesday elicited a 'holy fucking shit'" Jim chuckles again, smiling a little bigger. "Not the reaction I'd expect. Most find it disgusting. But I reckon for a dead corvid I'd have to stand besides, not on top of as I normally would have to for a human. Thankfully Iv'e never had call to do it yet. But with how things are in Detroit, I might have to." Alma looks a smidgen embarassed but it doesn't last too long. "I... It's a field biologist thing. There's a lot of muck and gore sometimes." She cocks her head, "Except most wouldn't beleive you, I guess. It sounds like quackery, but I know it isn't because I've seen what's possible." She looks at Jim, "I hope you don't have call to do it." She looks sad. "I've heard that there is a soul eater? on the other side. Something that's been around a while. I didn't get a clear story from Maya. She was pretty upset when the topic came up. But someone showed me a book later. I hope it hasn't eaten my family." Jim sits up. "It's an important duty, giving the dead one last chance to pass knowledge. If I drink from the left eye, I get the negative aspects of what the person saw. If I drink from the right, I get the positive. It's important not to drink from the same side every time." He shifts a bit when she mentions the soul eater. "You mean under Zug Island? The great bane that's sleeping under there? I... I suggested to Miss Maya that she talk to you about things. You were asking about the Garou, and Miss Maya knows how they are." She nods when he talks about duty and balance, "I respect that. It's
important to have that balance". When he asks if she means a bane she
says, "I don't know if it's the same thing. I have to see if I can read
from that book again. There's this really rich guy witha library. He's a
type of mage, have you heard about traditions? Anyway, he's very bookish,
you might say. From what little I read, this had to do with entropy.... I
don't even know if they sleep in our world. maybe there are just horrible
things everywhere" She looks uncomfortable, but not as terrorfied as she
looked when Maya first told her about this thing. "Maya must have had some bad stuff happen to her, I'm kind of careful what I talk about around her. I wanted to know more about the shrou.... what people call the Gauntlet?" She looks at Jim to see if he recognizes the term. "It's what you go through before going to the other side. Some people can go to it. I only... my teacher can go through it. I've only been looking. Maya knows a lot about this, and I went to ask her, and then she told me about this and freaked out--horror story. I felt like it was some huge existential threat. later on, finding that someone wrote a book about it. Made me feel like it was something I could do something about. I don't know if that makes sense to you. I don't know if it's a bane. I'll let you know. It's not natural or right, whatever it is. Garou..." She tries out the word. "Werewolves?" She asks. "They, that all... people, just seem natural. Wolves are natural. Ravens. humans--/ecosystems/. wahtever this other thing is disrupting our ecosystem? it's wrong." Jim shakes his head. "No ma'am, I can't say I know about magic traditions. I know Corax traditions, and I've been honored to see some Garou traditions, but that's all." Sitting back, he nods as he listens. "Miss Maya is very gentle. If some bad things happened to her I would not be surprised. A bane is a spirit of the Wyrm, the force that ends things. Entropy might be a good scientific word for what the Wyrm represents. Banes bring hate, death, destruction, sickness... It's what we stnad against. The Wyrm getting out o fcontrol and destroying the entire world." He hums. "Yes, the Garou are the werewolves." He pauses to think Miss Sandra would roll her eyes at him even saying THAT, but he decides it's safe. "The Wyrm is an existential threat that they, and we, each fight in our own way." "That reminds me of some doctrine that people in my tradition talk about, with entropy being out of balance. There's a Sanskrit word for it, I think. With mages, there are all these groups... like schools of thought?" Alma looks annoyed, "Some of them seem stuck in a pre-enlightenment frame of mind, ugh." Alma rolls her eyes. She doesn't look as disgusted as she does when talking about bad scientists, but she looks pretty annoyed. "There's so much to read and some of it seems so pointless. I like /my/ teacher." She looks really saddened now, and changes the subject. "So, are you okay? Kaeli doesn't go around murdering crows, right? But she handles dead bodies. I admit I get really unhappy at the idea of lab experiments on animals, you know? where people have to kill their subjects. I couldn't do it." Jim takes in all the mage talk, trying to keep up and form a context, but its' not easy. With the topic change, he laughs. "I realize she's not killing them. I wasn't really bothered by that, so much as I was startled by it, ma'am. But kinfolk twitter is more fun." He then pulls his phone back out and brings up @Ravenmaster1. "You know why we're there, right?" Alma looks curious, "No? Is there something to the story of the Tower of London?" Jim smiles. "Well, if you go for a tour there, from the Yeoman Warder Ravenmaster, you'll be told the Kings and Queens of England, all the awy down the line, believe that should there no longer be any ravens at the Tower, the monarchy will fall." He grins. "Well, the truth is we're not going anywhere. There's a secret buried under the tower,a nd we're waiting for our chance to find out what it is." Alma oooohs. "I hope you figure it out! I wish I could help. That sounds exciting." She laughs. "I'd have to learn some more tricks. I can look through time, you know? but not for very long. I bet that secret was buried a looong time ago... and they probably made it hard to look at." She starts to ponder how that might work. Jim chuckles. "Legend has it, there was a King of England that was spouting prophecy after he died. And they buried him as he was about to tell the big one." Jim sits back, sighing, shaking his head. "So we let them keep ravens there, clipping their wings, all that. But wait, see through time? How?" "It's really hard to explain. Maybe it's easier to show you. Like, I could hook you in to the, like a nervous system, sort of? and you can see what I mean?" Jim squints. "Hook me into the nervous system? Of what?" He's intensely curious, starting to situp again, but he has no idea what she's talking about. "It's not a nervous system really. It's a... like you know how root systems are all connected up in symbiosis with mycorhiza and you end up with super organisms?" Jim tilts his hsead, really trying to understand what she's saying. "Ma'am, Im' not understandsing what this has anything to do with seeing through time." "Oh, well I am explaining how I can show it to you. That's a lot easier to explain. sorta." Alma is doing her best. "Yeah, I can try and show you how time has flowed here. I'll touch your hand while I work, and talk you through it. This can get really confusing, though. Is that okay? If you want to try it, I'll start, and if you get uncomfortable you just pull your hand away." Jim laughs. "I'm curious now. Too late to stop." He puts his hand out, palm down, flat on the middle of her desk, on top of some papers or whatever she has going there. Looking to her. "Ma'am, show me your magic please." "Okay, I gotta figure this out." She says this to herself as much as to
Jim. She gets up and walks over to her window planter, and takes a pinch
of sand. She also waters her plants, for good measure. Returning to her seat she takes a couple of the pebbles she has on display at her desk. She "hmmms" and opens a drawer and finds a marble. Looking around some more she kicks her chair over to where her bag is, and pulls out a cord she found on the quad the other day. Someone must have broke the cord on their hoodie and dropped it. "This all helps," She says. She looks up at Jim to see if he is paying attention. Jim is indeed paying attention. H e's not sure what she's doing. but hes' watching. Hand still in place. "That's a marble, and a, cord?" he asks, really unsure of this. "Yeah, I think from someone's jacket? I found it on the quad." She's holding the pinch of sand in one palm, and the other items are set aside on her desk. "Ok, I'm about to start. Keep holding your hand flight like that, that's good. I'm going to set my hand down right next to yours. You can break contact whenever you want and that will stop the sensations. Understand?" She looks to see if Jim understands this. Jim nods to her, seeing how she's taking it very seriously. "Yes ma'am. Please go ahead." Left hand placed next to Jim's, Alma starts. She first scatters
some sand around a clear spot on her desk. "Really listen," she says.
"It's amazing the things you can hear. The tiny stacato sounds of sand."
That done, she holds the rocks and marble higher up and drops them on the
desk with the sand. The marble bounces and rolls off the desk, the rocks
scatter but don't fall off. "and everything falling together and... they
have a history. Rocks come to us in just the shape they do. They washed
up on shore. The glass was formed and polished. Imagine how that was."
She looks from Jim to the marble. "Imagine the journey of that in ideas.
Someone had the idea to make a marble. A human played with it." She
grins. "They lost it. and a bird played with it!" She takes the frayed cord. "They say things go in cycles, but nature...
it's a complex system." She drops the cord over the sand and rocks. It
doesn't form any loop at first, so she does it again until it makes a
loop. Rest assured it is not a perfect circle. "We can hear this, and feel the vibrations and sound that existence shares with us... a system of life. we are all part of it. and this system remembers." <<DICE>> Alma rolls arete, difficulty 4 <<DICE>> Alma rolls arete, difficulty 5 Everyone has the way they perceive the world. The way it is to be
in the world. Jim doesn't exactly get Alma's qualia of this room--that
would take a lot more skill on her part. But he does pick up sensations
that aren't happening now. They are happening when. and remember
when? There's a soundscape. a murmuration of existence. It establishes
the space around them. The conversation they had? There's a replay of it,
but with echoes. And the echoes are different, sometimes. a possible
conversation they could have had. There are motions of bodies around the room, mostly Alma walking. Pouring
the water. The light in the room changes... it was a partly cloudy day.
These clouds maybe here or when. Laughter can be heard, comeing from
outside the window. But it's laughter in a jumbled up echo of noise, like
all the different ways someone laughs played all at the same time. And
sometimes maybe someone doesn't laugh, "hey!" they might say. Motion is smooth... but sometimes the vision of it is piecemeal. like things fall apart in to confetti and then come back together and the picture is reassembled, or back in focus. Different things pop out when focus comes back, say, a glint of of light reflecting off the lamp arm. Jim closes his eyes as she is able to communicate this to him. He's not sure how it works, but it sure is real. He just takes it in. As the effect starts to fade, he slowly pulls his hand back. Taking a deep breath. "I'm not sure how to describe that. Thank you miss Alma." Alma explains to Jim that's she's never sure how to describe it either. "It's really interesting, that people can do this. ...And it doesn't work the same way for everyone. There are so many ways to think and be. It's... like studying cognition, or ecosystems. or, what information is." | |
