Conversation Space: The Ultimate

[powersthatbe]

You feel as if you've stepped through a door.

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Comments

[professorwolf]

"We are getting better at navigating the spaces you've given us," Lyall says, rather gently, since it's obvious they aren't taking this as well as he'd hoped. "Mortals learn quickly and have a strong drive to discover new things. If you want us to stay out of certain places, it might be best if you find a way to lock them down more securely, rather than punish us for the very thing we are hard-wired to do: learn, and explore. We simply aren't going to stop going places you don't think we belong, I'm afraid, and doling out punishments for minor infractions like opening the wrong door is only going to make people fight against you, rather than understand your idiom is a good one for the universe. Personalities and actions matter more than ideas, to most people."

[pendingjudgement]

"Exploitation of the roles allotted to you has deeper ramifications than you know. Such actions cost us Fortuna and Hoshiko, and spurred the Antisticides to act as they did." Or so Penuel believes, anyway.

[professorwolf]

"How did we cost you Fortuna and Hoshiko?" Lyall asks, earnest. "If we knew the specifics, we could try to avoid doing it again. I'm pretty sure it wasn't by one of us walking into the wrong part of liminal space, given we've only just worked that out in the past year."

[pendingjudgement]

"I speak of taking actions outside of your allotted roles and still you cannot see the difficulty?"

[professorwolf]

"You can't put a wide variety of people in a small space, let us learn, and then expect us not to use what we learn," Lyall tries to explain. "You can't expect someone to do as you want them to all the time, especially not this many of us, many of us very action-oriented people, and especially when we don't actually know what you want." He shakes his head. "Because no, since I don't what cost you Fortuna and Hoshiko, I don't know what roles we went outside to cause it. I can't see the difficulty if I cannot see what you see, Penuel."

[pendingjudgement]

They would have ended this conversation long ago, were it with anyone but one of their Chosen. As it is, Penuel is very close to dismissing Lyall - but he is attempting to act within their shared idiom.

"The rules of engagement are all that stand between us and utter chaos. They must be followed. It is the only sure path away from ruin and toward redemption."

[professorwolf]

Honestly, he's a little surprised they've let him argue with them this long, but he continues to press, because he doesn't know if he'll get another chance-- and while he wants to continue to fight for their idiom, because he believes in what it stands for, but if the one backing those rules is inflexible and even dangerous to other Travelers... he's not sure he can.

"Then tell us what the rules of engagement are," he urges. "We can't follow rules if we don't know them, and it would be cruel of you to punish us for breaking rules we don't know. Tell us why things hurt you or anger you, and then we'll understand. Please, we want to understand."

[pendingjudgement]

"You are one of my Chosen. You should understand this already."

[professorwolf]

"Just because you chose me doesn't mean I can read your mind, Penuel, and I have not experienced the things you have experienced, so I don't have the reference points to know how you made your conclusions," Lyall tries to explain one more time. "I'm a scientist. I need data to form conclusions. Right now, I have very little data, about you, about what makes you so angry, about what happened to your fellow Arcana. Without that, I can't know what you expect me to know."

[pendingjudgement]

"Your fellow Travelers have certainly done enough digging where they ought not go to tell you what happened to my siblings. Go and gather your data, Randolph Lyall, and then you will know."

And with that, Lyall will find himself rather unceremoniously dumped back into Liminal proper.