Conversation Space: The Ultimax

[powersthatbe]

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

Comments

[rosewater_path]

"Sorry, Slick," ROSE says, with a shake of her head and an expression of sympathy. "That's not a question about the Grid. That's a question about my big brother. I don't answer those. But I will say - most of us have a favorite 'place' to visit."

She really does do fingerquotes around the word place.

[capital_asset]

Well, that's certainly going to make this more difficult, since a number of Raidou's questions at least touch on the subject of her brother.

He manages not to raise an eyebrow at the fingerquotes, but it's a near thing. "That last part raises a few more questions, about the nature of the places we're visiting or about the nature of our 'visits,'" he says, then wryly adds, "although those aren't really Grid-specific." There's an unvoiced question in there, about her willingness to entertain questions on wider subjects.

[rosewater_path]

"Not as many questions as you think," she says. "And anyway, we don't always share the answers with each other. The worlds the others like are usually pretty boring to me - I don't keep track, with a few ex exceptions."

[breakaleginhalf]

"Like your best friend slash big brother," Gil comments. Sorry he's butting in a little, Raidou. "What about your newly revived sister? Older, younger?"

[rosewater_path]

"We're not all siblings, you know. It's more of a complex constellation than that. And age for us is a variable, but at the moment she's definitely older."

[capital_asset]

That gets Raidou's attention (not that he wasn't paying attention to begin with, but still). "'At the moment'?"

[rosewater_path]

"If you're an immortal being who can travel through time and only wear bodies as a hobby, age as you understand it isn't really a thing. It's a state of mind, at most."

[capital_asset]

"Point taken." He thinks for a moment. "Does that happen often, shifting ages?" And, he guesses, possibly other aspects as well.

[rosewater_path]

" 'Often' is as tricky as 'age', Buttercup."

[breakaleginhalf]

Moments like this are why he keeps comparing you to the Fair Folk, ROSE.

"So-- you've all existed for set durations of time, and relative to each other there's an order of most to least time spent around. But like- actual age and aging, experiencing linear time how living things do, is a different concept entirely."

[rosewater_path]

"Ooh."

The way she says it sounds like it hurts.

"If you define 'exist' very, very carefully, or very, very sloppily, that's true. Anywhere in the middle and it's just about as wrong as it can be."

She bites her lip, taps her foot, looks impatient.

"Language isn't good for this. Try - okay. There are stars, and there are constellations. But the stars had that shape way, way before anyone called the shape anything - but not as long as the stars themselves existed. Does a bear shit in a nebula if nobody's around to name it?"

She snickered at her own joke, then looked solemn.

"I'm eternal. I'm infinite, in fact. But my constellation, my - what's your word for it? Haecceity? Yeah. That's had an existence that could probably be counted, if you fold, spindled, and mutilated some math along the way. And measured like that, yeah, I'm younger. But it's more like - the idea of me is younger, right? I feel young at heart, I've got a head-start, and age ain't nothing but a number."

Her shoulders shift this way and that.

"Get it?"

[capital_asset]

Raidou takes some time to mull that over. "So your essence has existed for an uncountable amount of time, but the shape of that essence... or current shape of that essence?" She had implied that her 'older' sister wasn't always such, and he can't help but wonder if that applies to more than age... "You're currently the younger sister because that's the haecceity you have now? Is that somewhere close to correct?" Or correct-ish, anyway, given the differences in their existences and the resulting strain those sorts of differences tend to place on things like vocabulary.

Speaking of which, if they're in a world with the proper reading material at any time when he's himself, he is definitely going to do some reading about haecceity.

[rosewater_path]

"Bingo," she says, inordinately pleased. "I like you, Slick. You're a sharp one." She gives Gil a thumbs-up.

"You two make a good team."

[breakaleginhalf]

His ears prick up a little at the compliment. Hell yeah they're good at this.

"So, uh. Rewinding this conversation a little, briefly-" And he even makes an idle rewind motion with both hands, twirling them both in reverse around each other. "-what are your favourite place to visit, then? If the Grid is basically just the equivalent of, like. Your favourite comfy slippers."

[rosewater_path]

"The magic schools," she says. "Definitely. The whole place was so very me."

[breakaleginhalf]

Ah, yes. The magic school the two of them weren't there for, because that particular walkabout was World War Newport.

"Yeah, that checks out," he says dryly. "You've only done those two rounds so far, right? Magic school and the GRID just now. Didn't get to choose any before you guys picked out teams for this round?"

[rosewater_path]

"I didn't pick anyone up early," she says, clicking her tongue and putting a wary look in her eyes. "And we're only starting the third bracket of Phase Three now. And we're now getting very close to things I'm not allowed to talk about, as opposed to things I just don't want to. Got any more questions about the Grid?"

[capital_asset]

"I always did wonder if the Grid was meant to be your claiming Jaunt, or if whatever Jaunt was supposed to be in its place was. Belljar was relatively late in Phase 1, wasn't it? If I remember correctly, the first real claiming Jaunt was Fool's, and I think that was four Jaunts after."

His instinct is to press more for hints about what she's not supposed to talk about, but he's not quite sure how to do that in a way that won't get them kicked out. And they had come here to talk about the Grid. "Do you know, or are you allowed to talk about, who the Cryptos were originally? Most of them remember SAGE repurposing them - I'd ask why he did that, but I suspect that's off-limits again."

[rosewater_path]

"I was supposed to take you somewhere else. I just made sure it was somewhere with the right kind of distractions to let me vanish instead. As for the Cryptos - I know, and I'm allowed. But they wouldn't want me sharing their secret, Slick, would they?"

[capital_asset]

That had in fact been one of the questions Raidou had very much wanted an answer to; in fact, it had been one of the main ones. Until they'd been sent to the ZODIAC system, he'd been worried about the Cryptos actually being altered Travelers. And both of the IOUHEIs, he knows, had had doubts about the reasons behind their own creation (or repurposing, in IOUHEI 1.0's case), and those doubts had also stuck with him. "I can think of a few who had... uncertainties in that direction," he says slowly, "but those uncertainties were on a more personal level, and in any case 'two' is not 'all.'" He shakes his head. "And they're not here to hear this, anyway.

"Was the Automata virus meant to wipe them out as well as infecting Hermit, or were the Cryptos just... I think the phrase is 'collateral damage'?" He can't quite stop the slight curling of his lip as he utters the phrase in question. He suspects the question itself might be better directed to Lovers and/or Devil, but frankly he's not sure he's up to dealing with either one of them at present.

[rosewater_path]

"You'd have to ask PSYCHE and the other guy about that to be sure," she says, shaking her head, a look of dismay crossing her face. "Based on what I saw... I can guess. The answer is sort of both - they were collateral damage, but if the virus had wiped them out, and not SAGE, he wouldn't have had any reason to stick around on the Grid any more, and they'd call that a win, too."

[capital_asset]

That raises a number of questions; unfortunately, the majority of those questions relate more or less directly to Hermit-slash-SAGE, and they've already established that questions about him are off-limits. "And since they weren't wiped out, he wouldn't have come back willingly." He frowns. "Was that part of what the virus was for?" he asks, and he can't help but look more than a little disturbed at the thought. As unhappy as he is about the Cryptos having been repurposed, he doesn't particularly like the idea of anyone - even an Arcanum - being subjected to something similar.

[rosewater_path]

"I didn't design it, and I wasn't in the room. But would I bet money on it? I absolutely would."

[breakaleginhalf]

"So... you guys are allowed to hurt each other, as long as it's not an official round of play?" Does that count as a game question or a sibling question.

[rosewater_path]

"No," she says, simply. "But when he walked out on us, he broke the rules - which made him fair game."