sixthiterationlogs | [PLOT MINGLE] The Specimen Room

WHO: Jude Sullivan
WHERE: The fields (behind the Town Hall)
WHEN: August 18, Afternoon
OPEN TO: ALL, Mingle style post for the Specimen Room plot
WARNINGS: See the Plot Post for details of the Specimen Room and its contents

Jude's glad to have the meeting out of doors, with or without the illness to prompt it. The cave-in hadn't scared him out of the canyon's cracks and crevices, but the room he'd found with Margaery might, and he needs every helping factor he can get to keep himself steady through the meeting. Public speaking is less a great fear than a thing he's never cared to do, but public speaking on a subject like this might prove too much, and if he pitches over again in front of someone, he's going to throw himself in the fountain and never come back out.

He'd gotten some help to carry the board out of the inn, tacking up fresh sheets of paper to the back of it. While others gathered those villagers well enough to come out to the fields, he'd done his best to recreate his and Margaery's view of the room through the glass, the layout of the coolers, the shape of the machinery at its center. Next to that, he'd tried to draw a rough overview of the room--what shape it might have from above, the placement of the door, the curve of the tunnel that Margaery had led him down.

As far as he'd noticed, there was no way around the rest of the cave to get at the door, but he hadn't been very inclined to look. When he pulls back from the board, charcoal staining his fingers, his brow where he'd wiped back his hair, he turns to find a crowd gathering behind him.

When it comes to the actual explanations, he struggles a bit to project his voice, but the words are there when he looks for them. He sticks to using the drawings to present the information, pointing to each element in turn. "There're electrical lights, florescent ones, in the room and the coolers, so I guess they're working too. And the glass was--uh, well, it was thick enough that knocking into it didn't break anything." He drops his gaze to his feet, hiding behind his hair at the memory.

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Someone refusing to say is its own answer even if it lacks specifics, although I'm not sure the push back will be as severe as Kira imagines it. I know that in a lot of these cases, the people who used to have powers get downright pissed about the fact they can't use them anymore.

"It's not my favorite explanation, it's just the one that makes the most sense," I reply with a shrug. "And I'm still trying to figure out why. Yes, chaos exists in the universe, but all of this has far too many symptoms of planning to have happened randomly. We all tend to get caught up in the details -- How we got here, how the weather is managed, shit like that -- but I still think we need to be thinking big picture here if we ever want real answers."

"That's why I hate it, it does make the most sense."

From a logical standpoint, anyway. Kira doesn't think he'll ever wrap his emotions around it, and when it's his own screaming at him instead of everyone else's, he struggles not to listen. "Chaos is what we call it when we can't see the patterns. Magic is what we call the patterns when we don't understand them yet." In a sense, he practiced magic for a goddamn living, but there's a reason he compares it to going deaf. It's never felt like something extra, or extraordinary.

"I don't even know which part of that we're at, with this place. You say symptoms, but how do you diagnose something when the symptoms are all made up and might not even be happening? What's Munchausen's of the universe for us, and what do we do about it?"

"But you're contradicting yourself," I point out. "There's either a pattern or there isn't. It's possible we don't have the capability to conceive of it yet, but even if everything is made up, I think looking for how things are connected is the best place to start. That's how I came up with the simulation theory in the first place; it's how we figure out anything. Not to mention that the alternative is doing nothing, and setting aside that it's against my own nature, I'm not convinced we'd be allowed to be inert. If precedent is anything to go by, I think something would happen to push us into motion."

Which is kind of the entire point of this still-nebulous theory I've suggested: They're pointing us in a direction, and I have a feeling if we don't take the bait, we'll get a push.

"I'm not contradicting anything," he starts--and he leaves it at that. They don't need to argue points of view, or modes of debate. They need to figure out--how to think about this at all. "Nevermind, I'm sure I'll explain it in detail some day when I'm really high."

Whether or not it's a thing that can make sense to people who don't see the future in the flights of birds, that's a problem for later. "What I'm trying to say--they're not us. We don't know how much like us they even are. Maybe the connection is the pushing, maybe we need to stop oohing and aahing over these pods and rooms, making some notes on a chalkboard, and moving on with our lives. Maybe we need to start seeing how well we can take them apart, even just for tools they aren't handing us in boxes, if not for more answers."

When was the last time they even went near the room full of screens? Had they tried to dig out the space behind the waterfall? "Maybe they keep giving us these pushes because we're not doing enough with the first ones."

What Kira's saying isn't anything new, really -- There's been some version of it humming beneath the daily duties of a lot of us since the beginning, even if we don't usually say it so plainly: We should be doing more. Pushed to it or otherwise.

"Well," I say, and sigh as I lift a hand to scratch idly at the back of my neck. "You're probably right about that. Maybe we finally have enough people here for that. For a long time it was hard to balance the hard push for answers with just staying alive." Most people choose living.

"I'm not going to lie; I'm worried about winter. Really fucking worried. But there comes a point where I can't do any more about that if they won't let me."

"People aren't just surviving, they're settling. And those people always have been--if that's what they want to do, fine." No one, in all the time they've been here, in all the meetings they've had, has tossed their weight in to really lead. To really force any route over another. People usually just get out and do the thing they think is important, if it's important enough to them at the time.

He doesn't know what it means, that they keep losing people like that, sometimes very pointedly. "I'm not even saying it isn't to do with survival. We need storage for those crops, we need to start something across the gap so we can expand research or whatever.

"Whatever that room is, it has seeds, and coolers, working electricity. Maybe even a way into a facility with things like temperature control. When I say tools, I don't just mean for getting out of here."

"They might be settling now, but winter will probably be a wake-up call," I say with a sigh. Which I suppose means that Kira's point is more critical than ever.

"Nothing about that room is really surprising to me, if I stop to consider it. But now that we've found it -- That they've let us find it -- We need to find a way inside. I have my doubts that we'd get through that door to whatever is beyond that room, but we can't be so complacent that we just let something like that sit there like a museum piece."

Winter will be a lot of things, and Kira will have to decide between--whatever he could possibly contribute to breaking and entering, and setting up some kind of rotating vigil at the freezing waters of the fountain. If Mark hadn't found him that night, he'd probably not be here to have this conversation, and today he's counting that as a good thing.

Survival and a way forward. They definitely have enough people now for both. "Assuming the glass doesn't just stop where it disappears behind the stone, what's our best bet of getting through it? The kid says it's thick."

"It's hard to say; the first step is going to have to be getting out there to take a look at it, make notes." Thank God for Veronica and her judicious paper hoarding.

"It's too late in the day now, but we could get up at daybreak and head out." I won't even really need to leave someone in charge of field tending; we're far enough along in the season that apart from weekly watering and fertilizing, it's mostly become a waiting game.

"Anything I should gather from my hoarding closet," he asks, like it's perfectly normal to accompany Mark on some kind of miniature expedition. What else is he really going to do? Keep waiting on new arrivals to wander near the brick house; walk his dog in wider circles to avoid the people his ability makes less bearable?

He wants to act. Losing an opportunity to sleep in doesn't seem a steep price for it. "Aside from the writing utensils."

"Not unless you have something you think might be particularly useful based on what we've been told," I say. "Well, useful and light. No sense in carrying a bunch of heavy supplies out there for no reason. We can always go back — Chances are that we will, if you're serious about all of this."

[PLOT MINGLE] The Specimen Room

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