[MINGLE] Harvest Feast 🍂

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: 6I Inn
WHEN: 10 November, all day
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE POST
NOTE: Details can be found here.

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In the wee hours of November 10th, before even the earliest risers have roused themselves for another day, items begin to appear in the front room of the Inn. Decorations first — Boughs of autumn leaves in their reds and golds, wreaths of dried flowers and silken ribbon, flickering candles among the goards and berries and acorns. The food arrives next, the decadent aroma slipping up the Inn stairs to tempt those lingering in bed — Every imaginable harvest time delicacy, from roast turkey and ham to smoked salmon and oysters; fresh, soft bread warm from the oven to plum pudding and ice cream. And did we mention pie?

Once again, it's time for a feast. The bar is stocked, the coffee is brewed and the tables are groaning with food. Indulge, there's more than enough for everyone — That is, if you don't lose your appetite worrying about what it will all cost.

Comments

[thenewways]

"I can't pin it down, unless it's a psychological experiment. My theory was..." Nerys is fortunately sober enough to be able to explain complex thoughts at the moment, though it takes her a second to gather the ideas together. "My theory was that maybe they're beings that are so alien that we won't truly comprehend. As if their motives don't really correspond to the concepts and needs we have as sentient beings. So trying to guess may be somewhat fruitless. It's not as if they're necessarily gods, but I know the Federation have certainly run into other beings where there's this kind of gap."

She purses her lips into a thoughtful pout, then shakes her head. "Though unless they're trying to learn how we think, through a battery of tests...and I do mean battery...that explanation's not entirely sensical either, I suppose."

[markwatney]

"Not sensical to us, at least," I point out, since she's made a very good point about the possibility that the reasoning of this place may simply be beyond our grasp. "You might be right, that all of our trying to quantify what's happening here, and to us, is impossible. Then again, I doubt anybody's going to come out and tell us as much, so we could be in for a lot of spinning our wheels." Not that there's really anything else. I might have no idea whether the goal is to keep us alive, but I'm pretty sure at this point it isn't to kill us, and when people stop hoping, they tend to not live that long.

"There's always the option that there's sadism involved, but that's just never felt entirely right to me. I'm all for Occam's Razor, but this is a lot of trouble just to be a low-level dick."

[thenewways]

"I'm not saying not to try to find an answer, mind you," says Nerys, "just that none of us may get very far because it's all beyond us." It's a human thing, she knows, to keep trying at all costs, and it's not entirely something she and her people disagree with. It's just a little bit...complex to navigate, working with that drive instead of quashing it or watching it burn out with no gain to be had.

"I think it could just be something that's incredibly easy for them to put together, to be honest. The effort's too great for any standard corporeal sentient, and therefore they must be some other kind of being, for whom this is easy."

[markwatney]

"That's definitely possible, but I don't know," I say with a slight shake of my head. "Veronica, she used to say it was like an ant farm, but the longer I'm here, the more I think that's not quite right. If we were truly all dumped in here and mostly left to our own devices, sure. But there's a level of involvement that speaks to some degree of thoughtfulness and complexity. Almost an intimacy. People getting gifts and things that would require knowing them very well."

I pause and then lift my free hand with a sigh. "Or it could just be the computer running all of this has a database on us all, and that shit is randomized in the algorithm. But I still get stuck on why."

[thenewways]

"The thoughtfulness and complexity doesn't sound like most algorithms I've known," says Nerys, though she does know about the occasional holoprogram developing something like sentience, now that she thinks about it. "For this many individual people, from this many places and times? Unless it's AI the likes we've never seen, that just doesn't seem plausible..."

After a second, and a long sip of now-cooling coffee, she adds, "And let's be honest, if it's AI, then it's like any other sentient, not an algorithm. Everything here's beyond our experiences, so even AI built by our kind of sentients might as well be as alien," damn that word, "as any other option."

[markwatney]

"Yeah," I agree with a slow nod, staring down into the dark liquid of my coffee. I take a sip, sorry to find that it's cooling more rapidly than I'd like, and then smile against the rim.

"Well, there's at least one thing I know for sure," I add, wiping a bit of moisture from the corner of my mouth. "We're not going to figure it out today."

[thenewways]

"We're not," Nerys agrees, with a wry smirk. "Maybe it's time to get a drink, if anything else, before gathering up what we can. Or at the very least--"

She reaches for the carafe and tops up his mug, then her own. "A little more caffeine to keep us going for the rest of the evening."