1.0 : video

[because_its_cool]

[A face comes into view, an older gentleman, wearing a white lab coat over a flannel shirt. He's studying the screen with one part curiosity, one part confusion, and one part terror.]

[He clears his throat.]

Ah, hello. My name is Doctor Walter Bishop. I just arrived here, and I'm not quite sure where I am. I know I'm in Saeng Seong, but I ... I seem to have gotten turned around. I was heading toward the apartments, but now I'm in a market of some sort.

[It's hard to place his accent, though there are hints of Bostonian and possibly London.]

I would very much like to find my way home now, if I could find someone who will stop trying to sell me things long enough to point me in the right direction.

[His tone is full of annoyance, but it drops away to leave him vulnerable again. His eyes dart from the screen nervously, then back.]

Yes, I would very much like to go somewhere quiet now.

Comments

[because_its_cool]

[Walter shakes her hand, relaxing a wee bit from the contact. He's a tactile person.]

M-Manifested dog spirit?

[Yes, that certainly got his attention. If he weren't a wreck, he'd have given it more thought. There would be time later to sort this all out.]

Yes, please. I need to get out of here.

[phoenixashe]

Explanations once we get you someplace calm with a hot drink in your hands. C'mon. [She takes his hand and leads him the hell out of there, as quickly as he seems able to comfortably manage. They come out into a snowy, gentle hill leading toward some high-rise apartment buildings. The dog bounces ahead of them, barking and taking time out to play in the snow.]

The existence of extra-neural consciousness can be proven, but the problem is that that proof is experiential. It's not something you could codify for others in scientific terms. Yet.

[because_its_cool]

[Walter is walking fine, if not a wee bit slow. He's dressed for a Boston winter and the cold doesn't bother him.]

Have you ever heard of fringe science? I spend my time researching the experimental and the hypothetical. People think I'm crazy more often than not. The world is incredible! All you need is an open mind, see what is, then reverse engineer the truth.

Sometimes you need a crowbar to open your mind, but that's easily solved.

[He's calmer while walking, head down and watching her feet as he follows, talking.]

[phoenixashe]

I have! In fact I ran into some people who were involved in it. I always wish I could have worked with them, but unfortunately back home divisive politics are the order of the day.

[She chuckles gently and shakes her head.] You're an inch from Awakening if not less. I have a feeling this conversation is going to get really interesting.

I prefer the warm fuzzy approach to a crowbar, but since I'm often completely unsubtle there's sometimes not much difference, I'm afraid. I'm in that tower over there.

[because_its_cool]

They aren't given much credence in my world, but many of the important scientific discoveries were made by looking beyond the known. Depending on the politicians in office, you might have a job looking into things like that. I spent quite a few years when I was younger working on projects for the government.

[Walter looks up for a moment.]

Awakening?

[Lead on, he'll follow.]

[phoenixashe]

The problem is that on my version of Earth, both science and government have been corrupted to such an extent that they're actively working to suppress creativity and imagination....

...whiiich would be part of why I am not all that terribly upset to be dragged away from it all. [She scruffles Dog's head and half-turns to keep talking to him as she walks. Having no one to go home to but Gaia Herself probably helps.]

Awakening is basically the epiphany point--it's when you finally realize the full extent of your potential and start to truly access it. [Dog brings her a fallen branch and they play tug-o-war with it briefly.]

[because_its_cool]

Bastards! OH--no, no... I didn't mean you, miss.

[Walter's nervously apologizing to a woman he nearly toppled while not looking where he's going.] I'll... yes, of course. I... goodbye.

[He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and hunches his shoulders.]

Religion and science and government should never be near one another. Only leads to trouble and the fall of civilizations! [He lowers his voice.] I didn't mind working for the government at one time, but I was young and hadn't yet been exposed to a more pure form of mind altering substances.

[ahem!]

I still did contract work for them after that, but only for the research funding. They never got the truly good stuff.

[He's quiet for a moment, thinking. When he speaks again, he is grave.]

Oh, I hit the epiphany point a long time ago.

[phoenixashe]

[She notices how distracted he is and smiles a bit, walking back to slip her arm through his for both reassurance and to...well, keep him out of trouble.]

I agree most of the time. Everyone knows what happens when religion and government hop into bed with each other. But I try never to deal in absolutes. That sort of thinking is part of the whole problem.

[At the mention of mind altering substances, she snickers.] Oh yes, well, I did tell you my job. Although with one notable exception most serious entheogens in shamanic work are of the "oh, hey, I'm vomiting" variety.

[A look of regret as she pats his arm with a purple mitten.] They're trapped in a web of bureaucracy and rules. They each contribute to trapping themselves and others, but they don't know or understand how to stop.

[She smiles and peers at him.] Oh...almost, I can see that. But I don't think you fully understand yet just how much power you have to take advantage of the things you're discovering.

[because_its_cool]

[He raises his eyebrows, then gives her a small smile.]

Some of them are worth the vomiting. There wasn't anything for it, though. I did isolate and purify many of the active agents in different entheogens, making them a bit less nauseating. All my notes and samples are ...

[He stops before he says 'in my lab' or 'at home'. He frowns at himself and his shoulders tense further.]

[Walter doesn't comment further on the epiphany, his own, or her suppositions. His frown deepens and he closes up, leaving an uncomfortable silence between them.]

[phoenixashe]

[She grins briefly.] Got to be careful when you supercharge those sacred herbs. Last time I did that with Yaje down in the Amazon, he left me in a remote corner of the Yukon, in the spirit world, in somebody else's clothes.

[Her smile fades as she sees his mood shift. She pats his arm.] Hey. Hey. Science guy. Look. We just met, but let me give you some advice. You can't give in to despair here. You have to live under the assumption that all of this is temporary."

[because_its_cool]

"Everything is temporary. It's a double edged blade." He doesn't loosen his shoulders or turn to look at her. He's too tall to be a turtle. Otherwise, he'd resemble one.

He keeps walking, having no idea where they're going or where she's taking him. He's lost in his own thoughts, trying to tell himself everything would be fine.

"Peter's likely annoyed, looking for me right now."

[phoenixashe]

"I know. But I do believe it can work in our favor sometimes." She notices his turtlishness and smiles a little sadly, leading him on. "It's not much farther now."

She crunches along, occasionally throwing a stick for Dog. "Given that there's no reason you couldn't be returned to that point in spacetime, there's no reason he'd have to wait very long."

[because_its_cool]

"Time flows differently here? Mm. What else do you know about this place? If time is out of synch with Earth, there is the possibility of other changes as well. People from different universes, differing spots in time... this is very curious, and possibly--no, definitely dangerous. Physics aren't supposed to be manipulated in such ways. The energy involved to travel and take people from different universes would be tremendous." He's poked his head up now, just a bit; he's off on a tangent again.

"Although they may have other ways. Olivia could traverse them without opening a wormhole." He pauses. "My future stepdaughter, though my son hasn't quite accepted it yet." His moods are like a rubber band, stretching almost to the point of snapping, then malleable and loose. He switches back and forth abruptly, like hitting a speedbump you didn't see was there.

A few people drift by, from their dwellings to work or pleasure. Walter notices them and lowers his head, pulled taut again.

[phoenixashe]

"It's the Narnia factor. Not only does time flow differently from world to world, but in order to get a person back to their world reliably it would be simplest to target the point in spacetime from which they were removed. Think about it. Date and time are essentially just additional coordinates when we're talking about multidimensional travel." She could speak science geek fairly well on certain subjects.

Her brows knit. "That's a good point. If these people have access to the energy and technology to summon us, why aren't they capable of fixing their own problem?" It sort of wore the bloom off of this place.

"In my case, well...I have a lot of reasons to be openminded about being snatched, but chief among them is the fact that my world is horrible, and dying, and I really turned out to need the break."

Dog comes back, shakes himself off at a polite distance and then goes trotting next to Walter, close enough to lean on.

"I can pass into different worlds, theoretically. I move into the different astral and cthonic layers of my own world all the time. Your stepdaughter? Congratulations. He'll come around, they always do. She sounds like she's already Awakened."

[because_its_cool]

"It makes sense. There are travelers from my world, those who can, for lack of a better term, bend time. They step through it. It looks to be teleportation, but it's simply the ability to manipulate physics on a quantum level." He nods. "There are other theories as well, though I had yet to prove them. I was very close, years ago, but I abandoned the project. It worked, though it had some nasty side effects."

He shakes his head. "Likely, it's something specific they need from sentient beings. Creativity, hope, energy... souls?" Walter is on the fence about the existence of souls. "My colleague once argued they existed, that they were merely specific sorts of energy that could be stored in something he deemed 'soul magnets'. He said he'd return to prove me wrong." He smiles. "I haven't heard from him yet."

Walter shrinks again--he's rather good at it--when she says Olivia seemed to be already 'awakened'. "Maybe she has."

[phoenixashe]

"Yeah, I'm dating a guy like that. He tends to pop around weirdly in a fight. Neat trick, but kind of unnerving. I never tried reaching for that sphere of ability, mostly for fear of smearing myself all over the landscape. "What if I screw up" is a legitimate fear when you're pushing the reality-envelope."

She nods as he theorizes about the nature of this place. "At least it isn't powered by kid-screams," she mutters, then speaks up. "Well, thing is, saying that a soul is a specific sort of energy is like saying that a person is a specific sort of meat. Energy makes up a soul, but its arrangement is uniquely complicated, person to person. Like the energy driving all living things, it is also self-propagating: a soul generates energy, radiates it, connects to others with it."

She helps him up onto the front stoop of the apartment building and stomps snow off her boots. Dog sits down next to him for a moment, panting. "You can technically trap a soul or other spirit entity in a vessel of some kind. For some of the nasty ones it's the only way to get rid of the damn things. But usually that's a horrific experience for the being involved. The only time it isn't is when they volunteer. My tradition makes different devices which are inhabited voluntarily by spirits and powered by their nature and energies. I actually have two with me."

Dog trots in through the door ahead of them. Ashe touches Walter on the back gently. "It's anything but a bad thing, Doc, think about it. If you have two Awakened people working to get you out of here, and both of us have experience in world-crossing...." she lets him finish the sentence in his head. Hope. It's an important thing.