Razor

Razor
It happened some time after dinner.  Well, dinner for the majority of the nine-to-five crowd, anyway.  College students like Grace tended to exist outside the bounds of what most considered a "normal" schedule, so maybe she'd eaten and maybe she hadn't.  Maybe she was too absorbed in processing the pages upon pages of history and information that a certain new acquaintance had given her about this group called the Virtual Adepts.  Either way, she was there in her small, spartan apartment (as she was many nights,) sitting at her computer when a call came through on her phone.

The caller id on the screen said number unknown.

Grace
Grace picked up the phone and hissed at the caller ID. Telemarketers! Always calling right about now, when they know people are going to be home. A sick tradition for a sick world.

Worse than interrupting a meal, however, was interrupting her current research. Bastards.

She turned the phone on mute and tossed it back on the bed beside her.

Razor
Grace ignored the call, leaving the phone on silent.  It continued to light up for a few moments before finally going to voicemail.  Whoever it was on the other end, they didn't leave a message.

Immediately following the missed call, another one came through, silently this time.  Maybe Grace noticed the lit screen and the unknown number id.  Maybe not.  After that, the calls stopped.

It was about five minutes later when the document that Grace was reading suddenly minimized on its own.  Maybe she'd think she hit a button by accident, or maybe there'd be that sudden groaning dread that came when one's computer began to show the first signs of having picked up a virus.  Maybe she'd even wonder if the person who'd sent her these files hadn't been quite so trustworthy as they'd made themselves out to be.
But then a blank document opened up, and words began to type themselves out on the screen.

You're going to make me do this the hard way, huh?

And then a moment later:

If you want answers, I can help. Got some intel for you too.  Log onto AnonNet.  Channel #2046.  You've got 10 minutes.

Grace
The words ghosting themselves onto her text editor made her heart beat faster than when she'd whipped herself into frustration at the phone's interruption. Her eyes flitted to the shiny black Android -- Well shit.
Someone was messing with her again. From what she could tell from her studies, the Virtual Adepts were like that. Their manifesto read like the Hacker's Manifesto, probably on purpose. A reality hacker's manifesto would.

Or, potentially, this could be someone else. A trap, perhaps. Wouldn't hurt to be cautious around someone who could take control of her computer like that, no matter who they were.

She propped herself up into a typing position, and clicked on the icon for AnonNet, entered the channel digits and a nick... 'Una_01' this time.

Razor
When Grace logged into the anonymous channel, the only other user present was named Razor.  Not numbers.  Not clever misspellings.  Clean and Simple.

Razor:  No Chimeric this time?  I liked that one.

Before she had a chance to respond, the person added:

Razor:  We're secure in here for now.  So you can talk freely.  I hear you've been looking for some answers.  Find anything useful?

Razor
[Edit: "No numbers.  No clever misspellings." (seriously how did I do that?)]

Grace
[Maybe not mispellings, but definitely grammar mistakes, right? lol]

Grace
Una_01: It was a test to see if you have been listening in. You have.

Una_01: Who are you?

She bit her lip at the line she'd just posted -- she wasn't going to answer his questions, not right at the moment. But she probably shouldn't play around too much.

Razor
Razor: Trust me kid, if I was a spy, you'd already be screwed. I swiped your chat log from a monitoring program. Don't worry - deleted it. But you gotta be more careful. The MiB look for shit like that.

Razor: I'm a friend. That's all I can tell you. Trust me, you're better off not knowing.

Grace
Again her heartbeat thudded in her ears. 'Swiped your chat log from a monitoring program.' Gadfly had been right, it had set of Homeland Security alarms. An idle panic left her wondering if those logs had been analyzed before this 'Razor' had gotten to them.

Una_01: Okay. I hear you. AnonNet is safe then? I figured not. I suppose that's question number 1.

Grace
[set off*]

Razor
Razor: No. I set up extra security. Stick to private communication and secure channels. Otherwise, be REALLY subtle. Basically, find people you can trust and code like the devil. You'll sink or swim, just like everyone.

Razor: Best piece of advice I can give: trust your gut. Always. I've been in this game a long time.

Razor: I take it you're interested in the Vdepts?

Grace
Una_01: I was reading the Manifesto when you called. I suppose that does kind of betray some interest, that.

Called, then hacked her computer and demanded. Nice... Well, kind of mean, actually, but that's not the point.

Una_01: My gut is confused. Maybe that's the tacos I had for lunch though.

Razor
Razor: It'll feel that way at first. So much shit to process. But it's worth it. There's some great shit out there. Things your fucking DREAMS have dreams about. That's the Hypersphere. Reality 2.0. Unlimited information, unlimited capability.

Razor: Where you're sitting right now? That's consensual reality. It goes by certain rules because those are the rules the people believe in. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can change the rules. Knowledge is power, and all that cheesy shit.

Razor: I'm rambling. Ask me a question.

Grace
A question? Hell, she could ask them all, given time.

Una_01: Hypersphere? Reality 2.0? That's a question, right? 

Una_01: Also, why are you doing all this to/for me?

Razor
Razor: Because we need everyone we can get, and I don't want you getting swiped up by the other team. As for the rest...

Razor: Ok, so, let's talk about "reality." Meatspace. The physical world. Consensual reality. Where you are now. That's the Tellurian. It's like a solid layer on top of Hyperspace. A place where the rules are harder to break - where reality is mutually agreed upon by dominant belief. You can bend the rules in the Tellurian, but you have to be careful. It bends back. Hyperspace is what exists past that layer.

Razor: Hyperspace is virtual reality, but I never liked that term. It's not virtually real. It IS real. Just not in the same way meatspace is. It's reality based on pure thought. Like I said before - unlimited information. Code, if you want to think of it that way. And we can order it however we want. Make our own reality. That's our goal. To make that reality accessible to everyone, even Sleepers. That's what Reality 2.0 is. It's a place where everyone makes their own rules.

Razor
[Pretend I formatted that]

Grace
Okay, her gut was getting a bit more used to this guy. The way he spoke. Jargon-laden, but damn.

Una_01: I think I have felt this 'Tellurian bending back' thing. It wasn't pleasant.

Una_01: Reality 2.0 does sound like something my dreams have dreams about. But this is just you telling me it's out there. How do I know you're not fucking with me?

Unlimited information, he was dangling that in front of her, like he knew exactly where her weakness was. So, a challenge -- do go on, sir.

Razor
Razor: Yeah, the bending back? That's Paradox. It's a bitch and a half. The more subtle you are, the safer you are, but sometimes reality just has it in for you. You don't have to worry about that on the Digi-Web. That's where a lot of us like to meet and hang out in the Hypersphere. You should ask that Gadfly guy to show you how to plug in.

Razor: You know I'm not fucking with you because you already know it's true. If you've felt Paradox, then you've tried to hack the code. So try it again. You can't do much right now, but try something small. Open yourself up. Feel the space around you. Are there other people in the building? How far away are they?

Grace
Hack the code again, Razor said, and her mouth twitched into a smile. The first time, well... the second time, that had been a rush.

Una_01: Okay. Let's just say I'm completely awful right off the bat. I'll be a bit.

She left the message hanging while she went to work. It was a tall order, asking her to just code in some changes to her little app that would show people. But maybe that's not exactly what he meant, re-reading the words. Open herself up he said. Feel the space. That didn't sound like 'write it into your app'.

She'd felt that way before, a few weeks ago, when she and the universe occupied the same spot, and she knew where she was.

Her eyebrows knit. Maybe if she could get a... code readout or something. Do some quick and dirty parsing. A hack, in the other other meaning of the term.

She opened up another text editor and began to furiously type, the parser taking form to separate raw Data into discernible pieces. It was only a few lines by the time she finished, and her hand paused over the run button. What if she embarrassed herself again.

Grace
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (7) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[1 Corr 1 Life 1 -- Quick n' Dirty life scan]

Grace
Curiosity won out, not to mention Razor on the other end, watching her and probably doing a bit of weighing and measuring too. Hitting run left her screen a blur of symbols, but this is what she was after.

Patterns, look for them, open up to them. Feel the data -- it's right there in front of her like a font. The parser would flag certain pieces as potentially fractal in nature -- life. Spreading blood veins, nerves, roots, and hell the very Tree of Life itself, all recursive patterns in the end. They'd stick out like sore thumbs.

Eyes open, she stared, and opened herself.

In her mind's eye, the girl upstairs took form, shaving in her bath. This, followed by a couple walking down the hall laughing. Then, the entire ecosystem of the building in her immediate surroundings. She became aware of the damn bugs in the walls and even the cells inside her that were not her -- surprisingly many. The fleeting thought that most of her was not Grace but rather single-celled jolted the overwhelming perceptions of all that stuff out of her mind. And again, she found herself staring at the screen.

Razor
Razor: Fucking amazing, isn't it? And that's just the beginning.

Grace
Una_01: Yes. Wow. Listen, I'm sorry for the coldness before. You're not so bad. I just didn't know if I could trust you.

Still don't, she reminded herself. All the warnings she'd gotten lately had really struck home with Gadfly's paranoia about their chats. And he'd been right.

Razor
Razor: Still don't.

(He, or she, echoed Grace's internal sentiments.)

Razor: But no apologies necessary. It's hard to know. It's always hard. But that's what I meant about your gut. It won't always be right, but it'll point you in the general direction more often than not. And hey... wish I could stay but I've gotta take off soon. Listen, about that intel?

Razor: I've been digging into the Techs in your area. Don't know how much you know about them, but I know more than most. See, most of our kind think they're like a hive-mind. They want us to think that, but it's not that simple. They're more like a hydra. All these different heads connected to the same body. Anyway, you guys ever wondered why they're so quiet out there? Denver's Technocrat installation isn't military. It's science-based. They've got a massive lab. Took me forever to slip their security but I saw inside of it for a few minutes. That shit is STATE OF THE ART. I heard them talking human organ growth and nano-tech.

Razor: Something else, too. There was a symbol I saw. H+. It's used in Transhumanism. Not something I'd expect to see in a Tech lab. Might be worth looking into. Not by yourself, though. Tell the others.

Grace
Her eyes narrowed on the screen as she read her own thoughts in Razor's message. She looked around the room as if looking for the interloper that she knew she'd never find.
The rest of the message saddened her a bit. Taking off soon -- no more questions then. Oh if only she could get someone to sit still and answer her.

Una_01: H+ yes, I've heard of that before. Human plus. Always in terms of the future though. I'll certainly tell the others.

Una_01: Before you go, is there a way I can contact you? Or is this it? And, how do I join?

Razor
Razor: It's too dangerous for you to contact me. I'm kind of... high on their hit list. But listen, I'll try to check in on you now and then. When it's safe. See how things are going.

Razor: As for joining up? All you gotta do is prove yourself. You'll know it when it happens. Anyway, take care Una. Never stop asking questions.

There was a moment's pause allowed for Grace to say her own farewell and log out.  If she didn't, she'd find herself booted out.  Either way, the channel wouldn't be there if she looked for it again.  It would seem that once more she was on her own. But at least, hopefully, with a clearer idea of the path she was walking down.

Grace
Una_01: I won't. Stop asking questions, that is. Ever.

Una_01: Goodbye, Razor.

She did see herself out at that point, and began running a scan on her computer, looking for files changed or added in the past... what was it, few hours?

Undoing Razor's work, if they left a trail (hah, unlikely) but if it was there, time to go on a nuking spree.
Hacked into her computer in 5 minutes! Showoff...

But she did smile. Something to tell Gadfly about. She met someone '1337'.

The Wormhole in Her Bedroom.

Gadfly83
(Shouldersurf, -1 diff)
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 3) ( fail )

Gadfly83
(Trying again, +1 diff)
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 4) ( fail )

Gadfly83
((Alright, screw that.  Just going blind))

Grace
Around Grace, apartment sounds, the thudding of someone's music through the bare white walls, and the unmistakable sound of feet on the ceiling -- these didn't even register. Hell, the white walls barely registered. Why does she live in a cell? Because even if there were something interesting to look at, she wouldn't.

She had many things up on her screen that night, again in bed, huddled over her laptop in ways that no human body should be able to bend comfortably. One of the more prominent features was the primer given to her days ago, and a chat log.

She had put pieces together, and had been looking for a certain Gadfly all weekend. He was probably like her, though, with many names. Hah, more like her than most.

She hung out, logged in under the name she used the other night. An old name. And waited. And read.

Gadfly83
Curiosity and excitement was its own bait it seemed.  Whatever else 'gadfly83' had been doing all week, at this very moment he was attempting to check in on the latest object of his curiosity, and having very poor luck at it.  Somewhere in the Denver area, the face behind the online handle had to take a break and let his frustration pass over him.  Then he goes back to doing things old school.

The message screen pops up moments later.

Gadfly83 says:  Hey.  How's it going?

Grace
She saw Gadfly come online, and was about to send her own message when one popped up. Fast...

Chimeric1 says: You know, don't you?

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  Come again?

This was not good.  Across the city someone was sweating in an instant.  Where did that response come from?  What did it mean?

Grace
Chimeric1 says: That file you sent me, it wasn't just for some inspiration, was it?

Come on... pick up on it... don't make me say it.

Across the city, someone else was nervewracked too. What if he didn't know? What if he'd picked up on all that stuff he'd said online, and truly did not know, and...

Breathe. Come on.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  Oh!  That!  You read it right?  Good stuff?  Bahtini, man.  They did stuff right.  But yeah, it was for inspiration.  On that thing you were working on.

Phew.  He wasn't in trouble.  That's a relief.

Grace
Chimeric1 says: Inspiration for my stories? Ahh. Okay. I was just thinking maybe it was something more.

Well, shit.

Serafine said there were people like her around, people who could do something with her other than get high and cut themselves. But none in Denver. Just look for them in the internet she'd said, though even Sera didn't know what that meant.

She'd hoped that she'd found one of them.

Chimeric1 says: Where did you find it, if I can ask?

Maybe he found it in a place where she could go looking...

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says: Dunno.  Found it years ago, have a ton of the stuff now.  Don't remember.  Well, I probably do remember, I just can't be bothered to search for the instance.  Funny how the human mind works.

Gadfly83 says: Not for your stories though.  For that thing you were working on the other night.  How did that go, by the way?  Did you get to a visual rendering or was it just spacial calculation?

Grace
The chat window stayed blank for the longest time, as Grace read the text on the other end, and her eyes got wide. Did you get to a visual rendering? Oh fuck, he did know.

The indicator on Gadfly's end then went back and forth between "Chimeric1 is typing a message" and not, before:

Chimeric1 says: So you do know. How did you know that? I never told you that.

Chimeric1 says: It was a help. I didn't have a real solid idea of the data format before.

Ahh, a chat interface. Everyone's favorite emotion eraser. On the other side of the screen, someone's going through a wash of them. Fear (how did he know?) excitement (they do exist!) wanting (can I get more of those primers?)

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  Good.  I'm glad.  I was just checking up on you again but I guess I have to to some tweaking to my own stuff.  Its all a work in progress, y'know?

Gadfly83 says:  I still don't get it though.  What is it that I know?  This is really hard to wrap my head around just by text line.  Can you give me a couple minutes?

Grace
Chimeric1 says: How do you know what I was working on?
Wow, he needed to be told directly... The unasked question, how did you know I was Awake? Did he have to have that one stated as well?

Gadfly83
[Adjusting Shouldersurf - Int+Comp]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 4 )

Gadfly83
[Shouldersurf, -3 Diff, +1 Willpower]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 3) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Gadfly83
[Roll 2]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Notice the Shouldersurfing?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Gadfly83
His 'couple minutes' turn out to be just short of thirty and in that time the message screen doesn't stir.  Whatever Gadfly83 was doing had him indefinitely AFK.

There was something happening on Grace's end, however.  There was...someone in her apartment.  Or at least there was some sort of energy, something erratic and distracting.  Something she's likely felt in dreams.  That thing hovering just behind her, just over her shoulder.

Moments later and her online pen pal is back.

Gadfly83 says:  There, that's better.  You're a little freaked out though.  Is everything okay?

Grace
Grace turned to look behind her, halfway expecting there to be a real person standing there. She'd felt something like this before with the others -- Justin and his vitality, Hawksley and his sundrenching... This time, however, it wasn't a presence she'd felt before. But it was familiar.

Was he here?

The messenger chimed at her, and she swung her head back around. 'You're a little freaked out though.' No shit.

Chimeric1 says: I can feel you. Where are you?

Gadfly83
Gadfly83: Oh!  What a question!  Remember Turing?  He was interested in telephones as well, y'know?  He theorized a place between two communicating ends, a special room where only the two people were, separated from the rest of the world.  You'll be amazed when you see what spun off THAT crazy idea!

Grace
Chimeric1 says: That's interesting, but not an answer to the question.

She turned again, and looked behind her shoulder, at the place where someone should be but isn't. Here and not here? She remembered the feeling of being everywhere and nowhere, that damn primer and its concepts swum around in her head. It's called holographic -- wholly written -- data, because it's everywhere. And we are it.

Chimeric1 says: You're here aren't you?

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says: Oh, because it's such a hard question to answer!  I'm in my lab, and I'm in Turing's room, and I'm...Oh!  I know what we'll do!  Your program.  The one you were working on.  Give it a try.  Map your apartment.  You think you know where I am?  Find me!

Grace
[Doing a quick look over the code to make sure there's nothing blatantly stupid in it. Int+Comp -1 diff]
Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )

Grace
[Booting up the visualization program -1 diff via the code checking]
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( fail )

Grace
He was playing with her. Taunting maybe. She'd had lessons like this before, though. Think you know where I am?

Another program joined the others on her laptop then, hers. If it worked. That was a big if.

She brought up the code and perused it, somewhat self-conscious about this now that she was fairly certain she was being watched. The code wasn't up to her usual standards. She made adjustments, fine tuning the constants, checking for the random missed logic error.

So far, so good.

And this time, instead of just running the interface, instead of doing a unit test on the pieces, she built it all together. She threw her will into it. Find him. You've got the data, it's all around you.

Black. The screen went black. And a chill shuffled over her skin like ice under the surface. What in the hell.

Grace
[Baby's First Paradox]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Soaking, 3 Sta]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6) ( success x 1 )

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  Was that it?  Wow.  You really are new at this.  Why don't you get up.  You have some soda in the fridge?  Coffee?  Caffeine usually helps me.  For a little while at least.  Make yourself a sandwich.  Get centered.  Try again.

Grace
She bent back onto the bed, stared up at the ceiling for a bit. Why? Her laptop chimed at her again, but she resisted looking at it for a while. When she returned, she went with snark to cover the embarrassment.

Chimeric1 says: Thanks so much for the vote of confidence. It was my first try.

First runs usually don't go well, she reminded herself. Usually, you're surprised if you code for 2 days and it works on the first try. But that feeling of ice... It almost hurt.

In the end, she did go with his suggestion and padded her barefoot way over to the fridge to grab an Amp before settling down again into the comfort of bed and home and caffeine. Get centered. Try again.

Gadfly83
Its quiet for a while.  Well, its inactive for a while.  Whatever external noises Grace has in her apartment are beyond his control.  The next message, oddly, only comes the next time Grace looks at the screen.

Gadfly83 says:  How do you work in this place?  That music...even I find it distracting.

Grace
She responded quickly this time, nerves or caffeine accelerating everything. She shuffled off the black and green Amp can to the side table of her bed, and got right back into it.

Chimeric1 says: I just tune it out. Or I put on headphones and drown it out.

Chimeric1 says: I guess it needs a bit more work. The program, I mean. What was that?

Gadfly83
Gadfly83:  Constant work,  This is your life now.  Whether you want to or not the new horizon's gonna push you for the rest of your life.  At least, that's been my experience so far.  Its easier when you take your time.  Plan ahead.  What are you looking for?

Grace
Chimeric1 says: You.

That was the point, yes? To find the mysterious something just behind her shoulder. The something that felt like distraction itself, taking up a place in her room, watching her do everything.

And it felt familiar?

She bottled up that particular creepy sensation for the time being. Instead, she opened up the code again, looking for where it all went bizarre.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83:  Break it down.  I'm really fighting the urge to just TELL you what to do here.  But that wouldn't be very beneficial for either of us.  I'll leave you to it.  Take your time.  Whenever you're ready.

Grace
[Debugging -- Int+Comp -1 diff]
Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 5, 5, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

Grace
[Again! Try again! -3 diff from taking time, looking over the code, spending WP]
Dice: 1 d10 TN1 (5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Grace
There was something there. A piece of code that would never be reached, and thus was going to mess her up if certain parameters triggered it.

Should write a test for that one. Make sure it doesn't happen again. Yes.

But for now, the adjustments continued, and she focused on that feeling, that distraction, the being that hovered beyond her reach. That thing, where is it?

And hit the 'Run' command.

Her room materialized on the screen in shades of grey (colors, not yet...) and there was that leap of joy inside. It worked. It worked! Never mind that a camera could probably accomplish the same thing, she'd done it from scratch. This program wasn't looking at what a camera could see. And she looked inside that viewport for the invisible.

Gadfly83
And there it is...all coming together as it should...or, as it shouldn't.  Because this kind of thing isn't possible, right?  Well, according to the absolutely perfect, precise spacial representation of Grace's apartment that she just brought up, it actually is.  Its just difficult to get to.

Was that a precise spacial representation?  Make that almost precise.  There must be some flaw in the baseline data somewhere, or an error in the calculations, because there also seems to be a gaping wide wormhole hovering just over her right shoulder and funneling off to...god knows where.  It pierces straight through her walls but leaves them whole and solid.

Gadfly83 says:  Goood job!  You've proved yourself.  I figured you were a l-user, but turns out you're a full fledged n00b.  Welcome to the club!

Grace
She swiveled the viewport axis to the wormhole in her apartment. Holy. Fuck.

Chimeric1 says: Me? A l-user? Yeah, no. That's you, though?

After sending off that last message, she waved behind her at that piercing hole in reality just behind her, shaky hands betraying the emotion that text won't show.

Chimeric1 says: That's how you knew, you were watching me.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  Yeah.  It starts with 'whereami'.  That's what most of us end up calling that thing you just ran.  That is, that's usually the first thing we run.  Handy little tool for things like this.  Anyway, eventually you tweak it enough and you get to things like my handy dandy ShoulderSurf (tm).

Gadfly83 says:  Oh, and do you see why I couldn't quite answer you?  There's no way I can fit in that little space, right?  Just like there's no way I can fit through a phone line.  That's Turing's room.  There's a window in my place, and window in your place, and we're meeting in between.  Cool huh?

Grace
Whereami. Well, of course it would be named so. She read his responses, and they did make some sense. But she was still in her apartment in her pjs, barefoot and drinking a can of green stuff to make the embarrassment of failure go away. And someone was watching all of this. She felt intensely vulnerable. Like, this was fantastic, eye-opening stuff, but underneath it all was an undercurrent of 'how dare you'.

Chimeric1 says: ShoulderSurf? I've heard that before, but not by you.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  Not possible.  My security is impeccable.

Grace
Chimeric1 says: That day of the booksigning, there was a guy at my work. Said he was with campus security, but that was a lie. I think more like a 3 letter acronym agent, you know? Wore sunglasses in a server room.

Chimeric1 says: He was looking for someone shouldersurfing. Said privacy was a big concern for 'campus security' you know.

Privacy, like she kind of... maybe... wanted. But a second later, she came back with:

Chimeric1 says: He gave me the screaming heebies.

It was a way to try to put Gadfly at ease -- no, I'm not going to tattle.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  ...shit.

Grace
Chimeric1 says: Yeah. Shit.

She was new to this, but there was some things she could put together.

Chimeric1 says: Maybe, you know, he was just talking about the normal kind of shoulder surfing?

Probably not. No, Mr. Goodson had felt like slime and nausea and weirdness, and she just hadn't known any better at the time to understand what that meant.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  Not likely.  Its not all enlightenment and Amp out here.  Can never be too careful.  The Batini were careful.  Subtle Ones.  Look where that got them.

Gadfly83 says:  We need a more secure way to communicate.  Any ideas, n00b?

Grace
Chimeric1 says: I could come up with something, but I'm n00b yes? Whatever encryption I could come up with would be thought of before.

She thought for a second before responding.

Chimeric1 says: Face-to-face?

Gadfly didn't do that too well, she remembered. The stuttering, the incoherence, the obsessive nature. He did better in text. But the NSA was watching everything, right? Fuck that noise.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  That's your idea of secure?  And don't get bent out of shape, I'm a n00b too.  Its all about applying what you know.  The elite are in a field of their own.

Gadfly83 says:  I'll figure something out and get back in touch with you.  In the meantime, How about some more reading material?  Anything I can help with?

Grace
Chimeric1 says: Yeah. Anything, I loved the primer. More primers? Coding or history, I don't care.

Chimeric1 says: I'm not bent. Delphi says to know thyself. I am n00b.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  The Batini primer covered a lot of what you need to know about them.  All the useful stuff.  The rest is miscellany at best.  At least at this level.  But, lets jump from ancient history to a little more recent.

Once again the alert for the file transaction comes up, only this time its two files.  The first having the title 'Difference Engineers'.  The second is called 'Virtual Adept Manifesto'.

Gadfly83 says:  Delphi?  Like the oracle in Greece?  That's interesting.  I wonder how they did that?  I should look into it.

Grace
Again, they're scanned, like anything that comes through a download with her. Distrustful? No. It's almost instinct. The names of them both are more familiar than "Subtle Ones" to her. Conversations at the Chantry have pointed her at the Virtual Adepts, but she had no idea of how to contact them.

Chimeric1 says: Difference Engineers? Like, Babbage and Lovelace?

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  Yeah, only by the time Babbage was proposing his, the D.E. were integrating vacuum tubes.  Several steps ahead, we are.  Heck, look at what you just did.  Its a good read, until you get to the scary bit.  You thought you were seeing the world differently now, just wait until you find out who's been pulling the strings.

Gadfly83 says:  Man, getting kinda loose with the convo now.  Homeland security must be all lights right now.  I'm gonna sign off.  Figure out a safer way for us to talk.  And now you'll know when I'm around!  We've made good progress tonight, don't you think?

Grace
Homeland security must be all lights right now, he said, and spooked her. He didn't seem incredibly upset by this, just like it was a thing to be handled.

She'd have to see about maybe... spending the night somewhere else, perhaps.

Chimeric1 says: Okay. It went okay. I mean, I fucked up, you saw that.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  And you learned from it.  If I can make a recommendation, try and streamline the program for specific purposes like these.  Instead of rendering the entire environment, just look for the anomaly, then you'll know someone's peeking in.

Gadfly83 says:  Catchya later Chimeric.  Keep up the good work.

Grace
I'll know when you're peeking in, she thought. At least that was a comfort. Note to self: don't code in your underwear. Geez. How many times has he...

Chimeric1 says: Yeah, thanks.

Chimeric1 says: I'll see you around. Probably. Oh, and by the way, next time... Could you ask first?

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  Ask?  But how else am I supposed to know if you're near your computer?  Oh well.  We'll figure it out.

Subtl3_1s_Pr1m3r.pdf

Grace
Grace sat in her usual pose on the bed, legs crossed underneath her in ways that couldn't possibly be comfortable, but manage to be. A laptop was set up in her lap, but she wouldn't notice the heat being generated by it until it burned. She was in the zone. Dead to the world, dead to hunger, or sleep, or other petty concerns.

The apartment itself was small, much like a dorm room really. She chose the cheapest thing they had to avoid having to room with someone. Her first roommate in college turned her off to that prospect forever, with the other girl's insistence on playing children's music, leaving the room, and having screaming fits when her stuff (volume control) was touched.

Some people can handle communing with others, some can't.

The room was spartan, with tile floors, white bare walls, and no expense went in to its maintenance. However the tech present was all about as top of the line as you can get. Priorities, right? On her screen was the non-stereotypical white with black lettering, symbols arrayed in varying colors. This was no fiction-writing session, this was code.

Shitty code, but whatever. It's a learning process.

Gadfly83
[Shouldersurf (Corr 2 + Mind 2), diff 5 -1 for specialty focus (because I can't remember any other modifiers) extended roll]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Gadfly83
[Roll #2]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 9) ( success x 2 )

Gadfly83
Don't you just hate when you're right in that zone and some doofus comes and ruins your flow.  So hard to attain and so easy to break out of.  Perhaps that's why the first message that pops up on her messenger is an apology.

Gadfly83 says: I'm so so so so sorry to bother you like this.  I'm also so sorry i haven't been in touch.  Had to help a friend with some...sensitive stuff.

There's a barely noticeable pause.  The bottom of the screen indicates that the user on the other end was typing something.  And then...

Gadfly83 says:  Umm...do you remember me, by the way?  We met at your reading the other way.  I'm the uh...the weird guy.  Its okay, I'm weird.  I know.  I get it.

Grace
The IM came as a bit of an unexpected surprise, as was the messenger. The flow, once broken, unleashed the body's wants again, and she had to stretch and move the laptop because it was quite unbearably hot.

Chimeric1 says: Oh, hey, I do remember you! Don't worry about keeping in touch, I did the same thing. I did say I would contact you, but, it was a weird day. To be honest, I'd forgotten until now. I feel bad.

Chimeric1 says: And I know what it's like being strange, I'm not exactly normal myself. No worries there.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  That's modesty.  Compared to the rest of folks out there you're pretty nor--

Gadfly83 says: Um...this might sound weird but what are you doing right now?

Grace
A thrill of fear went through her, her hands pausing at the keys. Well, that's awfully direct. What to say? The truth, and pass it off as a joke? She remembered how she'd felt at first -- crazy. Afraid others would find her so.

Chimeric1 says: I'm writing something. And no spoilers!

Technically true...

Gadfly83
Hesitation in the digital age is quite a thing.  The little icon on the bottom of his messenger screen scribbles away as he types a message, then the pencil flips as the message is erased.  Then he scribbles.  Then he erases.  Then...

Gadfly83 says:  I gotta tell you, the story that you read really struck a chord with me.  And a few of my friends too.  Turing is like a hero to us.  He's our...I guess he'd be our Paul Revere.  His legacy is even greater than people know.

Grace
Chimeric1 says: He's like a hero to me too. Should be everyone's. It's why I wrote what I did, when I did. I managed to get it finished just in time for the anniversary, so people wouldn't look at that Turing Machine Google doodle and think that's the end of the story. I hear they're getting around to pardoning him now. It's only been what, 60 years?

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says: Yeah, plus they won the war in the end.  At least that's what the vet-vets say.

Gadfly83 says: Oh, uh.  Sorry about that.  Getting ahead of myself.  Anyway, if you think about it Turing's stored program machine was the precursor to everything from the defrost setting on microwaves to the Windows operating system.  Difference was there were only a few folks there that could really help him.  I hear there's a surviving version of his machine out there somewhere.  As in one not in a museum.  And he let the schematics slip after everything was settle with the Germans.

Gadfly83 says:  See, Turing knew that this technology was the next step in expanding human capacity.  And just like we banded together in cities to achieve amazing feats of engineering, the technology was best suited for community development.  The information had to be free, see?

Grace
Gadfly could communicate when not face-to-face, it was as she thought. With an interface, his words weren't a stuttering mess of obsessive fan. Good. This was better than expected.

Chimeric1 says: Wow, that's pretty interesting. Like he was trying to start the open source movement early. I wouldn't put it past the guy.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83:  Exactly.  That's really why he was targeted.  The powers at be wanted to hold on to all that knowledge, just like they hold on to the means of production, feeding the working class just enough to keep them ignorant and docile.  At least that's one of the stories going around.

Gadfly83:  Turing lives on in our hearts and our demand to set the information free and achieve the next step together.  But you get that.  I knew you would.

Gadfly83:  So...what is it you said you were working on?

Grace
Again with the question she couldn't answer. Okay, time to get tough-author. Is that a thing?

Chimeric1 says: I told you, no spoilers.

Gadfly83
There's that hesitation again, that writing and erasing and writing again.

Gadfly83 says:  ...Ok.  Fair enough.  Do you mind if I send you something?  Just a little reading material.  Maybe it'll help inspire you.

Grace
Chimeric1 says: Sure, sure. Although I can't take story suggestions. Publishers frown on that. Lawsuits. I've been thinking of going it alone, or just going free. It's not like I plan on making a living doing this. Then I wouldn't have to bother with publishers.

Chimeric1 says: But, you know, you are a good sport. I'll give you a... theme. You kind of picked up on it already though. What happens when you give people the means of production? I mean, we see this already with the digital -- people don't need recording studios or record deals, (or me a publisher really) they just go out and do. Well, what if it was like that with everything? Free energy, replicators... And the powers that be try to stop it.
You know they would.

Again, technically true. It is a work in progress along with all of the other works in progress. She's just not working on it now.

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says:  I've heard this story.  Would love to hear your version though.  Do you believe in Clairvoyance?

Gadfly83 is trying to send you a file: Subtl3_1s_Pr1m3r.pdf  Warning!  Accepting files from strangers poses a threat to your security.  Would you still like to accept?

Gadfly83 says:  There's the file.  Its a short read.  A summary of a summary, really.

Grace
Chimeric1 says: Well, everyone's heard Star Trek. But I personally don't think it would work out like that. Utopia's not a place, it's a mindset. You have to get everyone to drop the bullshit, and that's the hard part.

It's a PDF, but of course it gets scanned for viral load almost by habit before she opens it...

Gadfly83
Gadfly83 says: Shangri-la was hidden in the mountains for a reason.  Oh!  And the whole idea of paradise in the afterlife...  I'll have to look into this more.

The file is clean and for the most part it seems to be pure text with a few diagrams of strange, complicated geometric shapes.  It seems to be information on a medieval Islamic sect called 'Ahl-I-Batin'.  The intro says the name translates roughly to 'The Subtle Ones'

Gadfly83 says:  I'll leave you to your work.  Might check in on you some time though.  Good talking to you.

Grace
Chimeric1 says: It was fun, I needed a break. Thanks.

The Subtle Ones? The geometries reminded her of multidimensional projections, bizarre topography... But medieval Arabs did this?

And thus, she began the primer.

Computational Biology

Sid Rhodes
Fireside Books and Coffee occupies a little corner just off Hampden and Santa Fe.  It's not too big, not too small, and full to bursting with books of all kinds and all ages.  To the right through the door are the seats, the large overstuffed chairs, an old looking sofa, and newer arrivals piled and on display along the windows.  To the left are the old things, the used books, all sort of mixed together and never quite organized.  Further that way is a small sort of hallway, sort of room, with a low ceiling and shelves so close together there's only room for one person at a time to walk through, and then around a bend and back out again.  And straight ahead from the door is the coffee bar, always watched over by one of the young Asian shopkeepers, serving cookies and brownies that are pretty good and coffee that is always, always too hot to drink for thirty minutes.  Sometimes on Saturday nights a group of young twenty-somethings pulls some tables together and breaks out a board game.  Risk, usually, or something similar.

This isn't a Saturday night, though.  The place is quiet, and it smells like old books, and it smells like coffee.
There aren't many people inside at this hour.  The barista's sitting at a little table outside the coffee bar.  There's a young man sitting in one of the comfier chairs, a laptop open on the table in front of him by the huge fireplace, ear buds in.  His expression is intense.

There's another person, a tallish redhaired woman, her glasses black-rimmed and cheap, hipster on accident.  She's over by the used books, running the fingertip of her right index finger along the spines, reading the titles.

She didn't give Grace any clues to identify her by.  Didn't tell her to wear something so that she would know her.  Maybe she thinks she'll know Grace when she sees her.

Which usually isn't too far off from the truth.

[awareness!  because always!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[awareness too!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
Grace parked her car in the little lot outside the coffee/book store... Seemed to be a recurring event nowadays, go meet someone new, at this coffeebookstore. Maybe it was the caffeine. Or 'their kind' (our kind?) just really liked books. The sensation of another this time did not surprise. This is what Grace was here for.

She fumbled her way out of the beat-up Toyota with her laptop bag slung over her shoulder. Her attire today consisted of jeans and a complicated-looking graphic tee with many colors on black, mostly straight lines. As she walked in the door, she scanned the room, and located the most probable Sid.

He looked like one of her type -- working a laptop like it was the only thing in the world. But... great hair? Isn't that what Hawksley had said? Didn't seem too great...

There was another, flame-haired person in the room, and suddenly Grace stopped walking toward the oblivious man with the laptop, and pulled out her phone.

"Hey, I'm here," reads the text that she sent Sid.

Sid Rhodes
Sid feels her before she enters the building.  She can feel the pull of resonance, shifting and mercurial, seeping through a crack in the door to tug at her awareness.  It makes her stand a little straighter, pull her shoulders back.  She comes to attention.  Just because Hawkley and Sera mentioned her, that didn't mean she was safe.  It just meant she was maybe more okay than most.

The man with the laptop has okay hair.  Better than mediocre hair.  Too much product, though.  It's not quite a helmet, but a casual gaze passes clear to his scalp.  Hawksley's hair is godly perfection if that's his idea of great.

The woman, though.  Her hair is long and flowy, it spills over her shoulders in soft waves of dark red.  Maybe that's what he meant?

Grace pulls out her phone and fires off a text.  Shortly after she hits send she'll hear a brief sort of upwards lilting sound that, if she's into a particular kind of game, may have just reminded her of firing a gun and opening an orange-rimmed hole to another part of a room.  It issues from the direction of the redhaired woman.

Sid is already turning toward her when Grace enters the shop.  She's already opening her mouth to speak when Grace hits send.

"Grace-" she starts and it sounds like the name is a question, but she cuts herself off when her phone sounds from within her pocket.  Sid frowns and shifts her weight, starting to twist like she's going to check her phone when she puts the pieces together and stops.

She offers Grace a crooked not-quite-smile.  "I'm Sid."

Grace
"Oh! Ahh, Hawksley didn't give me many details to go by," she said, quickly. "I thought... the name... I thought you were a guy."

She looked around the room for a bit, taking in the cozy atmosphere, though she looked as far from cozy as possible. Days of not sleeping well rimmed her eyes with red, and she had an air of anxiousness -- darting movements, and a smile that didn't exactly reach her eyes.

"Hawksley didn't tell me much at all actually. So, hi?"

Sid Rhodes
Sid's brows quirk briefly and her head sort of tilts a little, but the moment of confusion passes quickly.  The fit of her shirt, a cream and grey baseball jersey-type shirt with sleeves that end at her elbows, and her jeans do nothing to conceal her sex.  But, depending on the method of communication...  Hawksley didn't tell me much she says, and Sid says, "Ah," like that explains everything.  "He," she starts, then hesitates, because she was about to say said you had amazing eyes, but she doesn't know if that's something she should say.  She doesn't let the hesitation draw out into an awkward pause, but finishes, "Said you liked science."

She notices the furtiveness - like calls to like, though Sid's paranoia isn't quite as high as it used to be - and the sleepless, redrimmed eyes, and her brow tenses with a frown.

"Hi," she says quickly, as though it's an obstacle that must be cleared before she can say, "Are you, ah.  Do you want some coffee?"  She gestures toward the coffee bar, and Grace can see that there's a tattoo on the inside of her left wrist.  If she twisted her arm in toward herself she could see the long, fat straight scar along her forearm.

Grace
"Oh yeah, that would be fantastic. I swear though, I've been living on caffeine lately," she said, with a smirk. If she noticed the scar, she didn't let on. Instead, the coffee drew her attention, and she sidled over to peruse the menu.

"Gimme a... double shot espresso? Yeah..." she said to the barrista, paying in cash. But she stayed at the bar, her eyes still scanning over the menu as she waited. It didn't take long, but the coffee would unfortunately have to wait until it wasn't scalding. She gratefully took the cup and inhaled -- the smell of coffee was always better than the taste. Strange that.

Almost-pure caffeine in hand, she turned back to return to Sid's company, and perhaps find a place to sit where they could talk.

Sid Rhodes
The corners of Sid's mouth lift upward into that almost-just-barely-there smile, because she knows that feeling.  She had a night like that not all that long ago, but she remembers it more from another life.  The slightest smile in all the world fades soon enough, but by then Grace is moving toward the coffee bar and Sid is casting one last glance at the pile of books she had been looking at.  While Grace places her order, Sid gets thoughtful for a moment, but then turns away.  She hadn't seen anything interesting in the couple of minutes she had been scanning those books, and she didn't think she'd find anything interesting, either.  Maybe in the back, but maybe later.

The coffee does smell delicious, far better than its bitter aftertaste, which hits all too soon sometimes, but at least they'll get to enjoy that smell for a while.  Grace returns and Sid looks out over the little shop, toward the comfy chairs, which were in fact the main reason she chose this place.  Not the books, not the coffee, but the comfy chairs in a quiet but public place.

She looks at Grace and tilts her head that way.  To a pair of chairs set perpendicular to each other, perfect for sitting and curling up maybe while chatting about whatever.  Bookstores are good for conversation.  Far better than clubs, at least, or bars, or the other places Sid has wound up trying to talk to people.  It's better for her, anyway.  She is just too quiet for those other places.

She leads the way after that nod, moving around a table to get to her destination.  It's not close enough to the Sleeper for them to worry about being overheard should the conversation drift to Awakened conversation.
"Uh," she says once she's removed her messenger bag and set it on the floor in front of her chair.  "Hawksley and Sera, they both said you were new?"

Look at her, trying to start the conversation.  If Hawksley could see it he would probably try to tell her see, you're not shy.

Grace
Grace walked back to Sid, apparently happy at the choice of a place to land. She handled the coffee carefully to keep it from spilling, but didn't exactly do a great job of that. The pain of a sloshed bit of espresso hit her face, but she had the wherewithal to keep from flinching or flinging the cup. She sat on the free squishy chair, and set the hot coffee on a small table off to the side...

"Yeah, yeah... It's been a week. They both took that a little oddly," she said, as if asking the question 'why?' "And yeah, I do indeed have a bit of a science bent to me, I guess you could say."

She unloaded her own laptop bag, then, and kicked off her sandals. In habit, she then curled up her legs and sat in what must be an uncomfortable cross-legged position.

Sid Rhodes
"Really?" she asks, sitting so that she's leaning her arm into the armrest, her body tilted with it, her legs angled to the side.  It lowers the level of her head without requiring her to bend her body or curl her spine to make herself smaller.  Some habits, they die hard.  Occasionally, her gaze flicks to the windows, looking outside, the woman ever aware of her surroundings.

"What do you mean by 'odd?'"  She doesn't know Hawksley that well.  Sera is a slightly different story.  She can almost imagine the odd way that they would respond to a newly Awakened, just going off their reaction to one particular other mage in the city.

Grace
"Oh, Sera kept on saying 'Fucking Wednesday' at Hawksley and making little eyebrow raises... But I guess we're not all that common," she shrugged. Maybe it was just something special about Wednesdays. Odinsday. Third day? Her mind went off on branching connections before she realized she was talking to someone and should be social.

"I still don't know much, I'm afraid. It's why I'm here. I just want to know..." everything. "More. Hawksley said he would loan me some books, but I haven't heard from him again."

History books... probably not anything in there on how to program the universe, but who knows, right? She could always hope.

Sid Rhodes
"Ah," she says, pieces of a puzzle she hadn't known was in her head clicking together suddenly.  Sera met someone who Awakened on Wednesday.  Funny, she hadn't reacted when Sid said she was meeting Grace, but then, the conversation shifted quickly.

Her expression becomes thoughtful.  She tilts her head as she regards the woman with the too-hot coffee and the, yes, amazing eyes.  "There's a house," she says.  "There's a library there, I think for us."  Us, she means Awakened.  Them, her and Grace and the others like Sera and Hawksley.  "I...I think I have to see if it's okay."  She pauses, uncertain.  Sid's always steered clear of Chantries if she could help it.  Their kind, with their ability to warp reality with their mere presence, gathering in one place.  It never seemed like a good idea to her.  "But, if it is, maybe you could go there.  See if there's anything useful."

Grace
"A library? Full of... uh. More interesting books than these?" she gestured around her. "I hope they have some on computers," she suggested, before turning and grabbing the coffee on the table, her body bending in strange ways to accomplish the feat. She took a trial sip, followed by another, her 'amazing' eyes shut in pleasure.

Strong black coffee. Enough, and she'd be practically humming. The thought brought a smile to her lips, in memory.

"I don't think any of the others I've met were particularly fond of computers, really," again, with the unspoken question of 'why'?

Sid Rhodes
Sid shrugs, because she doesn't know for certain.  "All I know is there's a library, and a, uh, a friend said he wanted to study there.  Jim, I can give you his number.  Shoshannah lives there.  Justin, too, sometimes."  Here is probably the reason Grace was directed to Sid.  The quiet woman knows everyone.  She is the spoke in a very strange hub of contacts.  "One of them could let you know, though.  What you're in for.  Before you get all the way out there."

Then again, maybe Hawksley just thought that two girls with some interest in science would get along.
"I can get you in touch with all of them if you want."  Which isn't quite the same as giving her numbers.  Jim is one thing, he probably already has her number from Sera.  The others, though.  The others Sid is protective of, but she also knows the importance (now, after all these years) of connection.

"Are you more into computers or science?" she asks, the question put forth like she's putting forth some intellectual problem that they can pore over together.

Grace
"Justin, yes... He's the one who found me, but I haven't had the chance to talk to him much at all. He had to leave," she trailed off, sipped some more strong coffee.

"Mmmm, well, that is an interesting question, you know. I work with simulations. Computer simulations, mostly for genetic algorithms. It's a fascinating field, really. Lots of ties to the sciences other than computer science. We've got biological simulations, economics, physics, engineering and materials science... If we can model it, we can simulate it, basically," once on the subject, her verbiage became dense and her eyes excited. This was her thing. Sometimes she had trouble noticing if it wasn't everyone else's thing as well.
"It's definitely hard not to learn something about all those things if you're building computational models of them, you know? And I've always loved that part. So, computers first, science second, maybe?"
She smiled at Sid, this time the smile reaching those tired eyes. "Are you into science then?"

Sid Rhodes
The fact that Justin was the one who found her gets filed away, because then Grace is on about computers and computations and simulations and it's obvious that it's her passion.  That this is her thing, that it's a driving force.  Even as Sid's smile starts to grow a little, that shadow starts to form between her brows, and she is thoughtful.  Thinking.

Grace says you know? and even though Sid knows it's probably rhetorical, she nods because she does.
"I guess," she says, her gaze turning distant.  "I've always been sort of into biology.  Biochemistry's a bit like that," she says and she looks up, motioning toward Grace.  "But biological.  It's sort of the, uh, the building blocks.  Of all the life sciences.  If you know the chemical basis of things, then, then you know pretty much everything.  Or you can," she adds quickly.

[Sid is kind of a liar, and by kind of I mean she downplays things a lot.: manip+subt]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Perception + Subterfuge -- detecting the lie]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )

Sid Rhodes
[Sid's basically just downplaying her enthusiasm.  She is way into science, biology and biochem in particular.  Grace will probably notice she gets more animated from "the building blocks" to "pretty much everything" until she catches herself and tries to rein it in.]

Grace
Grace does not handle the hiding of enthusiasm very well at all, herself. Instead, she latches on to the biological swing of conversation. It attracts her attention.

"You know, they've got a working, behaviorally complete model of bacteria now? Ohh, I remember a project I did once... intro to genetic algorithms. We modeled predators and prey, giving them attributes like speed and acceleration and energy-to-reproduce... Turns out the most effective predictor of behavior is how the plants grow. too much clumpiness, and you get all the predators hanging out in the grass, waiting for the prey to get hungry!" She grinned. "Such complicated emergent behavior, out of just a few variables. We didn't teach them to think about it... But, it does make you think."

She sipped again at her coffee, eyes off elsewhere. "Yeah, biology... the fractal of life, eh? I'm not so good at the chemistry bit, but I get that too. DNA is like the biological data, whereas I'd just write something like 'int muscle strength 13' or something."

Again, this is overtly something quite near and dear to Grace... The animated body language nearly screams this. It's not just the doubleshot.

Sid Rhodes
Sid's brows lift with interest at mention of a model of bacteria, but something in her gaze shifts, too.  Her brown eyes darken a little for just a second and then it's gone.  Not hidden, just...gone.  Because they're talking about biological science.  They're talking about science.  She and Jim talk about it sometimes, but those times are rare.

She grins a little at mention the predators hiding in clumps of grass.  "I know, just a little tweaking of one variable and whole systems are thrown off.  Or changed or mutated."

Grace sips her coffee and Sid shifts a little in her seat, sitting up a little more, making herself more comfortable.  "I don't know much about computers.  I mean, I can, I think I can still put one together, but."  She shrugs.  "It's been a while since I used anything other than a library computer."

Grace
"Mmmm yes, chaotic systems are like that. Difficult to model, you know, but not impossible. Otherwise we wouldn't have weather forecasts. One seemingly insignificant variable, and it all goes changing..." she stopped there, and pondered for a bit, sipping her coffee. One seemingly insignificant event, like getting lost, and then winding up on an electric vision quest? Yeah, something like that...

"But I guess the good thing about computer simulations is, you don't have to wait for the chickens to actually hatch, yeah? You just run the sim enough times, and you've got 10,000 years of juicy data."

"Computers aren't everyone's thing, I know," she said that last sentence in a rather sad way. "But I guess that's why people like me are around," she smiled.

The coffee got downed, it was getting cold. The bitter taste just made her smile more, though, in the kind of way a hot-pepper lover might enjoy a fresh jalapeno. She tilted her head back, looking at the ceiling.
"I've been kind of burning the candle at both ends lately. I'm spending too much time for a summer writing code until 3. Been writing some... things."

Sid Rhodes
"Weather forecasts aren't always right, though," Sid observes, but without the angry tirade so many people, particularly in this area, tend to say it with.  "Especially here, I've noticed.  They'll predict snow, but it either won't get out of the mountains.  Or it skips over and hits the plains."  She grins a little.  "Simulations are good for perfect data, but nature, it's not perfect."

She understands that, though, working too hard.  Not coding, though, but, well in her case studying.  But she frowns.  "Be careful, and try to rest.  What we do, what we can do it.  It takes a lot of energy sometimes.  It can be really dangerous."  Both to the Willworker, she knows, and to the ones they effect, which she has seen far too much of recently.

She glances out the window, notices the fading light of twilight.  And sighs.

"I should get going, but I'd like to talk more sometime.  If that's okay."

Grace
"If nature were perfect, then that would suck pretty hard," Grace said, to the ceiling, smiling. Her face did twitch back to thoughtful at the warning to rest. Rest how? Sleeping was difficult without the ability to just switch the brain off.

"I would too. Really would. I love talking about this stuff, anytime. And... if you can find about about that library, too... It would mean a lot to me."

Sid Rhodes
"Definitely," she says, and that smile grows a little more, genuinely pleased to have another person to talk about this stuff with.  "I'll see if someone can get in touch with you soon.  It was really nice meeting you."
Then she gathers up her things so that she can head out.  As she goes, she's pulling out her phone, checking for messages, and also sending out a few new ones.

Obtaining Information at the Information Cafe

kai
[may I creepily watch you from the shadows?]

Serafine
(you may!)

Serafine
Most of the tables in Mutiny are a mismatched hodgepodge of second-hand pieces.  Old formica tables from 1980s Wendy's franchises, covered with chipped versions of 19th century newspaper articles, waterstained oak and coffee-stained cherry.  A big pine piece in the middle where a small group of old friends is playing a rather competitive game of Ticket to Ride and a scattering of chairs.  There's an old leather couch where the café proper folds back into the bookstore, surrounded by bookshelves and bins of vinyl records, not far from the barista's counter as well, and that couch has been claimed by a rather singular young woman.

She said that Grace would not miss her, that that no one ever does.

And, oh.  This is true.

Tonight, Serafíne is wearing low-slung denim cut-offs over torn fishnets, with a black leather halter-style bra covered in silver studs beneath a wrinkled, long-sleeved plaid shirt several sizes too large.  Cotton in deference to the fucking summer weather, which is endlessly and ridiculously hot, though not so swampy as it was back in Raleigh.  She has long blond hair, except where she has shorn it away in a distinctive sidecut, and when she wandered into the place tonight she seemed close to 5'9" or 5'10", though this is a height augmented by ridiculously high heels she walks in as naturally as anyone ever could.  Boots with two inch platforms and another three-inches of further, silver-wrapped heels, covered in silver buckles and black leather straps.

A flotilla of necklaces wrap around her neck, and a spike splits her left ear.  Her nails are painted three separate, neon colors, intercut with sparkling black, though the enamel is starting to peel.  She's found an old box of Maximum Rock 'n Roll 'zines from the late 1980s and is flipping through one with the desultory attitude of a sorority sister paging through Cosmo while some poor bastard kneels at her feet, shaving callouses off her heels.

She wasn't lying when she said it was hard to miss her, Sera.

She's impossible to ignore.

Grace Evans
Grace locked up her bike, and proceeded to don a bright purple hooded sweatshirt taken out of her bag. It looked extremely out of place in 80 degree weather, but oh well. She paired blue jeans and a white tee with this blaring monstrosity of a jacket, which looked unworn but rumpled at the same time.

But instead of seeming bothered or embarrassed by this odd getup, she just ignored other people like the eyes upon her weren't her concern. Or perhaps, she was just oblivious. One of the two.

She stepped into the Mutiny Information Cafe, and scanned the room for a bit, before landing on the extremely hard to miss. She quirked a brow, but kept right on going, making a beeline for the couch.

Serafine
Perception + Awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafine
The purple wasn't necessary, was it?  Sera felt Grace's presence two blocks away, that sense of something shifting in the air.  Like the plates of the earth near a faultline, like the movement of a crowd, turning to follow two particularly compelling sights.

Glances up as soon as the front door opens though, brows lifting above her close-set eyes (which are: blue, and rimmed with dark shadow and a dangerous amount of carbon-black mascara and are also quick) as she fixes Grace with a steady, somehow crawling glance look that begins at the other woman's toes and climbs steadily up her small frame.

This glint of bemusement in her gaze over the hooded purple sweatshirt that opens into slip-sided grin, this silent suggestion of open-mouthed laughter never given voice.

"Have a seat," with a gesture at the other half of the couch.  "And take off that fucking sweatshirt, you must be roasting, Christ. "

The MRR is left open on her lap.  It's all newsprint, all black and white and worn and the picture in the center is from a mosh pit at a Dead Ant Farm show at a swap meet / flea market in fucking Salt Lake City, Utah in 1987.

"What's your name?"

Grace Evans
She stripped the evil purple thing off with a little nervous smile, and shoved it back into her bag, not bothering with folding. "I don't wear purple much, all I had," she explained, and sat down on the couch. If the other's appearance bothered her, she didn't let on. In fact, she seemed entirely unconcerned with appearances.
"So, yeah... I'm Grace," she said. "And I'm not sure what you're supposed to be helping me with, but ahh.. Justin said..." she trailed off, apparently having thought better of what she was about to say.

She looked around the room, her eyes tracing the walls and floor.

kai
[aw, I kinda wanna play too. would you both be amenable to me joining?]

Grace Evans
[Sure, I'm fine with it :) ]

Serafine
(you would be more than welcome!)

Grace Evans
[Perception + Awareness -- Can sense Sera?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Hawksley
[I'm doin' just fine, Denver. How YOU doin'?]

Serafine
No way for Grace to know what Serafíne's baseline is, but there's something starched about her, something hollowed out.  She's just a bit thinner than she usually is - and she is far too often harrow-and-bone - and she's just a bit sharper than she usually is, and she's just a bit hungrier than she usually is, and that hunger is a dark pool in her eyes.  There are other patrons in here on a Sunday evening, and most have coffee drinks or espresso to hand.  Whatever Sera is drinking (see: the cup by her booted feet) is not coffee and is nutritive (allegedly) in some fashion, but only just.

She hasn't touched it since Grace walked in.

"Find a way to say it," returns Sera, uncrossing her legs and closing the 'zine at last, with a shift of her fishnet-clad thighs.  Her voice is rather quieter now, and she follows the drift of Grace's attention around the café, before her eyes return fixedly to Grace.  "Without saying it, right?  Hide it in plain sight.

"That's what we fucking do."

And Grace can sense Serafíne, now that she's close.  Now that she's opening her own senses and that sensation of hunger sharpens and darkens, becomes all gut and instinct, the rich vein of need, the first physical urge of it, flesh and blood and bone and the flash of teeth behind a curving mouth.

"Or, if you can't manage that, you can whisper it in my ear if you want."

The faintest suggestion of challenge to her dark, reflective eyes.

Grace Evans
The 'feeling' of Seraphine at once frightens and enthralls, and when she gets it, her eyes light up, even as her body tightens up. Is that what he meant?

"We?" she asked. There were hidden words in there, hidden meaning in that one question. 'What am I, what are you, how could I possibly have anything in common with you', and so on.

She looks a bit exasperated, the challenge not having gone unnoticed. Her expression says it all. She's not here to play games. "What is this about? Why are we here, then if we can't talk?"

Hawksley
[perception + awareness]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Serafine
"Oh my fuck." The couch has two big leather cushions and even though the café is non-smoking, they still smell like tobacco and beneath the tobacco scent, somewhere deeper, the herbal musk of marijuana.  Maybe it's just the place and the patrons here, though.  It's not Sera today: she's sober and she does not particular like that, it leaves her marooned somehow in her body, leaves her with sharpened urges and -
- she leans closer, her weight depressing the center cushion, her left shoulder slumping as if under an elegant weight toward Grace.  And now she picks up the October 1987 MRR issue and drops it back into the milk crate at the foot of the couch with all the others and she's biting her lower lip with sharp white teeth, an expression that would look bashful on anyone else looks, well, merely knowing (though perhaps also: gleaming on Serafíne.

Weight resting on her left elbow, leaning toward Grace, into her, really, she finds the other young woman's gaze and holds it, this sudden-bright spark in her own.

"Something, somewhere, somewhen, made itself clear to you, and everything changed.  Right?  I don't know fucking what, but something did.  Opened you up and peeled you back; made you see the frame beneath the frame, the skin beneath the skin.

"Grace, did you just open your eyes?"

Hawksley
Up the street, or down the street, there is an ice cream shop with a garage-style door down the front.  It's open right now, and the line is out the door, but Hawksley isn't at Sweet Action.  He's walking down to the bookshop eating his Stranahan's Whiskey Brickle on a waffle cone when he sees the bookshop.  And decides: bookshop.  Because books.

When he comes in the door, it feels like a goddamn ray of sunshine has entered the building.  Sera feels it.  Sera probably felt him walking by before he even crossed the street to Mutiny's corner.  Something flying, flying, soaring in ever-rising spirals from the earth, wings extended just to feel the wind streaking past them.  Something bright and warm.  It's not like being near Justin or Sid, whose hands are as warm as creation itself.  Hawksley's physical warmth is just that: physical.  He's an active, energetic young man who burns a bit on the hot side.  But by god, his soul: that is the feeling of lying on the beach for an hour, letting the sun soak through you to your very bones.

Grace feels it, too.  When he walks in, tipping his sunglasses up over his brow.  Because he feels something gut-wrenching, something that entrances, and he knows the taste and feel and sense of that soul and he knows its name.  There is another.  Something else, very very different, very very new-feeling, that makes the ground under his feet slide away from him for a moment.  He does not know its name.  He fixes his eyes on it, eyes that are as clear and bright as the day outside, eyes that look at Grace as though she's a mouse he just saw skittering along the desert floor and is going to follow, follow, follow with his eyes.

Yes: he knows Serafine's baseline, and he notices how strange she looks, worse than when he dropped her off at her place a few days ago, but she is also a grown-ass woman, an Awakened mage, and equal to his own rank.  He licks his ice cream, his eyes going over her instead of Grace for a moment, then starts to walk over.

Oh, and this: he's wearing shorts, because it's hot outside, and sandals that are well-worn, and a t-shirt from Buffalo Exchange and he looks somewhere between a hipster and a total bro, especially with those fucking Ray-Bans.

Serafine
(BRB!)

Grace Evans
Grace blinked, the memories of the week returning -- back to when she saw.

Seraphine's advance made her want to back up, put up walls... personal space was a big thing for her. But with those words, it didn't seem to matter anymore.

"It was Wednesday," she responded, her voice down to a creaky whisper. She seemed to take a second of thought, before her face broke out in a grin, "You know... you know what that feels like, don't you? Oh... We..." She stopped in her overly-excited tracks at the feeling of a new presence, the ray of sunlight that just walked in.

Her head twisted to Hawksley's direction, with a confused look on her face.

Serafi­ne
Sera felt him across the street and it made her shoulders lift and it made the muscles flanking her spine tension and her shoulderblades cut back, like some physical fucking memory of flying.  Made her lift her chin and halfclose her eyes, the way some people do, walking from the crisp blast of some chilly, artificial, air conditioned space into the sudden baking heat of a sunwarmed street.  All this long before the front door opened and Hawksley walked in.

"Oh mother of - ."  She is still biting her lower lip, Sera, the sudden brilliance of her wide-crawling smile just curls all around it but see: a bit of flesh caught finely between her incisors.  Her eyeteeth.  "Wednesday.  Fucking Christ."

That first grin, the whisper, the overexcitement has Sera inhaling like the world was new and this was the first breath she had the privilege of taking.  Then Grace breaks off and Sera finally follows her line-of-sight to Hawksley and her eyes snag on his fucking ice-cream-cone for a half-second before they find his gaze.
"He's cool," Sera assures grace, her attention now fixed and a bit too rapt on Hawksley as he approaches.  The twist of her mouth turning wry when he comes into conversational distance.

"Wednesday," Sera to Hawksley, with a lift of her chin toward Grace.  "Fucking Wednesday.  This is Grace.  Grace, his eyes are open, too.  You ever listen to Bright Eyes?   We're all wide awake.  It's fucking morning."

Hawksley
At first he guesses that Grace is just some friend of Sera's, because Sera has all the friends, even ones she doesn't know.  She looks like someone Sera might know, but Sera is super-close-friends with an Anglican priest, so Sera 'might know' just about anyone.  This is what Hawksley thinks.  He approaches as easily and calmly as he would ever, licking his ice cream cone, as the excitement fades from Grace's features, filling Sera's, and he grins.

And sits down on the couch next to Sera.  He'd flop, but he's got ice cream and there's nothing sadder in the world than one's ice cream falling off its cone.  He flings one long arm behind Sera across the back, though there's a good six inches between his hip and hers.  His legs are stretched out, crossed at the ankle, as Sera assures Grace that he's cool.  He's heard that language before, and his eyes alight again on Grace, even more keen.

"'Sup," he says to Grace, with an upward nod.  As Sera is saying a day of the week repeatedly like it's a magical mantra.  He twists his head around to look at her.  Then Grace again.  And then Sera one!  More! Time!  And laughs.  "What the hell, Sera.  You're talking like she's --"

Fucking Wednesday.

Hawksley's smile drops.  He looks at Grace, momentarily still, then beams.  Son of the sun, child of the sky.  "Oh shit, that's awesome.  Welcome to the party," he says, leaning toward her with his arm outstretched to slap palms, to shake, whatever.  "I've got some great stuff for you to read.  You like history?  I love history.  Once you get past all the parts written by the victors, at least.  I've got some stuff written by losers, way illuminating."

His arm retreating back again, he looks at Sera and nevermind that he's also welcoming a new mage in with wide open arms, he is also a friend, and: "Sera, you kinda look like hell.  You okay?"

Grace Evans
She broke into a smile again at Hawksley, when Sera explained that he was also included in the 'we'. This must just be what it feels like, to feel the marks left on the world by one of them. Even though he plopped down next to her on the couch suddenly, she didn't mind, not now.

She looked at his outstretched arm, and kind of gave a half-hearted attempt at a handshake. It's awkward. But she does it anyway, because it seems expected. "I love reading. And history. Sure, I... thanks."
Her expression doesn't change from its wide-eyed wonder anymore. Books, reading, yes... If they explain more about what just happened to her, yes. YES.

Serafi­ne
Hawksley unfolds that long arm along the spine of the couch and Sera tips her head back until the back of her skull makes contact with the crook of his elbow.  Her eyes half-close and she just inhales the sweet, smokey scent of his ice cream like some great cat, as much with her mouth as with her nose.  The long sleeves of the plaid shirt she's wearing unbuttoned over her studded leather bra cover her forearms so the only visible sign of the Work she performed the other night is that healing laceration on her left palm.
"I'm fasting," she explains with Hawksley, with a drift of her dark eyes that snags equally on his mouth and on the fucking ice cream cone he's consuming right fucking next to her.  "Fuck.  I haven't had a cigarette, a drink, or fucking anything - "  this shake of her blonde head, then, that has it lolling along the back cushions of the couch.

"For a week.  I've been on a juice fast for god knows how long.  Maybe not quite as long as Grace's been awake, right, but fucking forever anyway, and you're here, and you're eating ice cream and it smells like fucking whiskey and you - "

Then, a drop of her dark eyes back toward Grace as she announces, enthusiastically, that she loves books. Just loves books.   Sera laughs aloud, open mouthed, this flash of teeth behind it.

"Books, huh?  How the fuck do you feel about sex, drugs and rock and roll? Hint: just say yes to all of the above."  This time, her laugh is subsumed beneath her skin, bright and raw and humming.  "And we'll get along fine.  But now that we're all friends, why don't you tell us what happened Wednesday?"

Hawksley
First: Sera makes physical contact, and Hawksley's arm folds around her shoulders and his thumb strokes her upper bicep, loose and easy in its intimacy.  Second: she inhales the scent of his ice cream, prompting him to tip it toward her, want some,

(Third), right before she says she's fasting, and he pulls it back, peering at her.  He looks a little surprised, but only for a beat or two.  "Oh," he says, acceptingly.  Then he looks at his ice cream, then at her, and looks crestfallen.  "I'm sorry."

She explains a little more: juice fast.  No smoking, no drinking, not even any sex, but he's there and he's got ice cream and it smells like whiskey and bam, right there, are three of the things she's denying herself.  Hawksley doesn't understand, and because he's Hawksley he wants very badly to understand, but asking right now would be rather rude to Grace, so he doesn't.  He leans over and kisses Sera's temple, quick and light, then sweeps himself up, excusing himself without a word from the couch.

When he comes back, he doesn't have ice cream anymore.  He flops back down on the couch by Sera, replaces his arm where it was before, and looks at Grace yet again, waiting to hear her story.

Grace Evans
And if she doesn't want to say yes to all of the above? Grace would respond, but the bigger question was just asked. What happened Wednesday...

"Well, Wednesday. It was just a weird day all around. But, I guess you mean the big... thing. I had my first book signing that day, and it was out a ways -- some little town outside of Denver. I got there, and couldn't find my way back afterwards. I tried getting on Google Maps, it led me to... "

she stopped, trying to think of how to put it. "Well, it was a power station out in the middle of nowhere. My phone insisted I had 'reached my destination.' So I went inside to try to find directions back to Denver, and..." She sighed, leaned back on the couch.

"You're going to think I'm insane," she said, and then looked between Serafine and Hawksley... then again, maybe not.

Serafi­ne
As she always does, Sera yearns into physical contact the way a sunflower opens and turns its head, tracking the warmth of the sun in the fucking sky.  Looser and more physical, more thoughtless tonight, she turns her head as he folds his arm around her shoulder, her mouth closed, just watching the movement of his thumb over her upper arm.  She wants to bend down and kiss his knuckles, but arrests the gesture and is tilting her bright head backwards when he apologizes.  She's starting to say something back, Sera, but Hawksley's already rising, crossing the café to throw away the ice cream.

Sera watches him the whole time, crossing the café, meets pale eyes after he turns then around and holds them as he cuts back through the mismatched tables and chairs, past the intense group of board-gamers at the big central able, until he takes a seat on the leather couch once more.

Gives him this spare smile, this sideswept glance up.  Says, "You didn't have to do that," quietly beneath her breath, "but thank you."  The last is more mouthed than spoken aloud, and the spare smile she gave him quickens to something both sharper and deeper around the words.

Then, her attention cuts back to Grace as Grace resumes - or begins, really - her story.

You're going to think I'm insane, Grace asserts, mid-way through.  Sera's attention is steady again now, and she just shakes her head.

"Not likely," with a lift of her sharp chin, a certain hooding of her eyes.  "What happened then?"

Hawksley
Sera's thank you is met with a small shrug: he knows he didn't have to do that.  He seldom does things he's told he has to do.  She hasn't seen that in action, or how disruptive and frustrating and even dangerous it can be, but the thread of it is in every part of his personality.  He does what he likes.  Today he liked, in a strange and pleased little way, tipping his ice cream into the trash, knowing the purpose and intention behind it, returning to her side without it.  An odd little pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.  He turns his attention back to Grace.

I had my first book signing --

"You're a writer?" Hawksley says, and he sounds delighted, then he shushes himself, he's being rude, he's interrupting, stoppit Hawksley.  He shushes.

You're going to think I'm insane.

To that, he just grins.  She has no idea.  Not yet.  She has no idea the things she will see.  Soon.  He even chuckles.  He squeezes Sera sharp and sudden to his side, gleefully.  "She has no idea," he says, even though Grace is right there, because he's just so thrilled.  He wonders if she can see sound waves or infrared yet.  Oh, he hopes she can.  And he also hopes she can't so he can be there the first time it happens.

Grace Evans
She looked to Hawksley and nodded, yes she's a writer. Seemed insignificant now, though.

"Well, I'd been hearing this humming sound all day," she said, her voice dropping, lest someone else overhear, and really think her mad. "I think before I woke up, even, like I was dreaming of it. But when I got inside the power station, that humming got louder. Bigger. Like, 'ommmmm'. I thought it was the electricity, and maybe it was. But it was calling out to me, I knew that much. I looked up, and the ceiling was made of glass, and the antenna on top of the building like... shifted and bent down to touch me. So I reached out and touched it back.

"I can't even describe how that felt, and you know, that's probably the hardest part. Any time I try it just sounds like its not enough, or it's too complicated. I know I had a vision. I saw monks humming that sound, I saw someone saying 'I know that I know where I am.' And so did I. It was like the antenna picked me up and flew me around for a while, and I could see where I was, and I knew... I was everywhere. I was one with everything.

"I know it sounds like it was a dream, but it was so much more. This place, this world, this feels like a dream in comparison, you know? I read once that our universe, this place... it's all a simulation, like we're made of data. All the sudden, that became true to me. Like, I can't even deny it. This isn't real. What I saw, that was real."

"And now... you still so sure I'm sane?" she looked up at them, having just rent out what she'd wanted to say to someone so terribly for days... The words came out like a flood. And now, she waited.

Serafi­ne
Sera's attention slips from Grace as Hawksley squeezes her close, his delight palpable, his excitement so fucking physical that she could fucking eat it up and she turns into him now, not the arm he has wrapped around her, her sharp, narrow shoulders twisting together in a mobile gesture that pulls them framing and close, dropping her head to rest her brow, her right temple, really, and the soft-fringe of her buzz-cut hair on his shoulder.  Eyes closed as she breathes him in.

She has no idea, he exclaims, and this pulls Sera upright again.  Though for the moment she's watching Hawksley rather than Grace, the keen and leading edge of his excitement shining through his avian features.  Sera's own eyes are shining suddenly, and she exhales all-at-once, a warm rush of breath that is followed by the warmth of her mouth in a brief and chaste and thoughtful kiss just at the place beneath his shoulder, where the pectoral muscle curves towards its attachment to the clavicle.

Then her head curves back toward Grace.  She's mid-way through the cycle of her story by the time Sera's eyes are on her face again.  Something about electricity going ommm and the antenna and there's something bright and brighter in her features, and - in that spare moment, quiet and listening - something infinitely sad, which has her looking down and up and away, past the other patrons toward the storefront, the reflection of the interior in the glass superimposed over the long shadowed dusk outside.

"Lakashim."  Back to Grace, "the eternal moment, that's what we call it.  Where you slip out of yourself and you're everything.  You're everywhere and nowhere all at once, and all of those words are meaningless anyway, because the transcendence is sudden and skewering and whole and entire.

"I think you're more sane than you ever were.  Except," a little twist of her shoulders then, a lifting glance upward at the ceiling or maybe beyond the fucking ceiling, toward the sky or whatever might be above it.  " - this world is that world.  It's not separate from you saw.  It's just a little constricted.

"Too many of us are still sleeping, right?  Obeying the fucking rules that say that I can't hear your heartbeat from across the room or that time moves in one direction.  Or what the fuck ever, man."

Hawksley
As delighted as he is, as happy to meet Grace and hear her story, he grows more serious as it goes on.  As she says things like that's probably the hardest part.  Trying to find words for it: well, she is a writer.  Trying to find a way to put that experience into language.  He understands that deeply, not just the indescribability of it, but the longing for the words.  But at the time, you never do.  And when someone gives you words for spheres and energies and rotes, they all seem so... pale.

His hand moves on Sera's arm again, and then he remembers she's fasting, and he's read enough and knows enough and has met enough mages of enough paradigms to know what all fasting entails.  His hand becomes still again: comforting, or close, or simply companionable, but the energy of that restraint and what lies under it loops back through him and into her again, she has to sense it, she has to feel it, and in the back of his mind he wonders, or even perhaps knows:

that's the point.

we're made of data

His head tips to the side.  Those aren't the words he'd choose, but he gets it.  He flicks an eyebrow up at her when she asks him if he's sure she's sane.  Sera answers her, and gives an answer distinct to her tradition, to her own world within a world.  Heartbeats resounding through rooms, time being a ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff where 'cause' and 'effect' really become loose guidelines at most.

Hawksley, eyes remaining fixed on Grace, gives a small shrug to her: "When I Awoke, every element in creation spoke to me in its own voice and in its own language, and I knew them all and answered them."  More than that, too.  He doesn't share the rest, though.

"This world is not a dream, and... personally, I don't believe our universe is a simulation and we're all data.  But that is, like everything else we're discussing here, just another way of trying to wrap words -- and understanding -- around what is inherently indescribable.  Everything in the universe is energy, right?  Maybe some matter in there as well, but even then you can make the argument that when you break it all down, everything is energy."  He's leaning forward now, either bringing Sera with him or letting her slip from his arm, because this is his fucking jam.  "There's different kinds of energy and different interactions of energies and so on and so forth, and our tiny, miniscule, pathetic stretch of history where Humans Have Existed has been taken up in large part by all of us trying to figure out what to call it all.  How to survive it.  And how it use it."

Intent, intense, his eyes fix on her, and he looks momentarily like a falcon more than a man, like a raptor descending on prey, and his eyes flash like a thunderbird's.  "Those like us, the ones who are Awake, do the same thing.  We find ways of separating the whole of reality into discrete, discernible parts because otherwise our heads explode.  The thing about waking up is that sometimes, your head does explode.  And you let it.  You chase it.  Because those moments like the one you felt, where everything is one or nothing is anything and there's no boundaries between any of it, no difference -- we all know that feeling.  But we use different words.  We look at it differently.  We do what human beings have been doing since human beings existed and try to make sense of what we know to be true,

"Only," Hawksley says, half-quirking a smile, "we try to do it with fewer limitations than the rest of the world.  We try not to let ourselves forget that all our words and codes and paradigms of reality are just scaffolding so we don't actually go insane.  Permanently."

As though one can go temporarily insane.  Well:

one can.

He breathes in, settling back, either replacing his arm around Sera or again bringing her with him where he goes, depending on how placid she is about either case.  "You are so far beyond 'sane', Grace.  And Sera's right: this world is that world.  It's just that we're seeing it, right now, in the most widely agreed-upon form it can take.  A form where gravity is a law and not an option, and a form where we all walk around pretending like we're separate entities from each other."

Grace Evans
She watched the two others, Sera basking in the man. It made her feel like a third wheel, even as she was spilling her guts.

But when the other woman spoke again, Grace locked the word 'Lakashim' in the back of her mind, to research later. It had a name, she thought, with some small amount of glee. More sane that she ever was? She listened to them both, and it tore at her. More more more, please.

Hawksley explained the difficulty of translating that feeling into something more tangible. Words. And the grateful understanding passed by her face.

Everything is energy, yes, but below that... deeper. Energy as a representation of something else, that's where her mind was at the moment.

"In computer science, we have these... layers of abstraction. At the very basic, there's just ones and zeros, but it's not like a person can really understand what they mean, right? So, you go up one level, that's machine code. You translate the ones and zeros into instructions. One layer up from that is a low-level compiler. You translate more readable instructions into basic instructions, then back down to bits. Eventually, you get so far abstracted out that you can program using pictures, drawing lines on a screen to connect objects to each other, and then that gets translated down," she said, hoping that her words made some sense. The pair didn't seem like they were of the computer persuasion, so she tried to anti-jargon her way through.

"At what level is it 'real'? We have jokes about that one. Real programmers flip the bits in memory with cosmic rays! I guess what I'm trying to say is more that this world feels abstracted. Human readable. And I just understood the bit level. Or at least, I saw the abstraction."

She fidgeted a bit. "Gravity would be optional if you could find the right bit to flip, am I right?"

Serafi­ne
Perception + Awareness-as-empathy to pick up on third-wheel feeling.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafi­ne
Oh yes.  That

is

the point.  Sera's eyes close as Hawksley's hand goes still on her arm.  She's breathing, slow and steady and she can feel the point of contact, the warmth of his fingers, can imagine his pulse, the blood beneath his skin moving with every breathing beat of his heart.  She takes another breath, this one deeper, then opens her eyes again as if she were surfacing from some great depth, as if she were coming-to-consciousness after a knock-out, waking to the world.

She cuts those dark eyes back to Hawksley as he begins to speak again, leaning back into the cushions to give Grace more of a direct line-of-sight toward the Hermetic.  And remains there, as he leans forward, intend and impassioned now because this is his jam, slipping his arm from around Sera's shoulders because honestly, she wants to watch him speak and wants to watch him from a separate perspective, wants both his profile and the cut of his shoulders, the sunglasses on his head and his fucking tailored t-shirt and the hum of activity in the café beyond him, framing him  intent over the drifting background of other, quite ordinary lives, in the middle of other, quite ordinary work and play.

He settles back; her eyes follow, and there's something fixed and fascinated and curious, too.  Her head dips forward thoughtlessly as he settles his arm around her shoulders and her attention slips back to Grace, finding her eyes, dropping down to her mouth.  Sera reaches out, then. Her left hand held palm up, a two-inch laceration in the middle, healing but still ugly, open but not bleeding, the edges crusted over with new scabbing broken.  The cut follows but does not quite mimic the life line, though one imagines Grace is not particularly into palmistry.

Neither is Sera.

Still, see.  She offers that hand, a point of connection.  If Grace sees the gesture and accepts it, curves her own hand into Sera's, Sera squeezes and just - stays connected.  Even Grace's attempt to anti-jargon computer programming language flies entirely over Sera's head.

"I have no fucking idea what you just said," wry, " - sometimes I can't even work my fucking iPhone? but sure.  You get powerful enough and it's all optional.  Except for the - what the fuck, inertia, right?  Things that are want to stay the way they are, the way people expect them to be, so you startle them out of their collective dream and sometimes reality'll give you a beating.

"Listen, we should get together again, you should meet a few more people.  Sid and maybe that lady who talks like a broken robot, what the fuck was her name?" that, to Hawksley, before her attention sweeps back to Grace.  "I bet you guys would get along.

"I've got your number and you've got mine, so stay in touch, right?  But be careful.  We're not the only ones Awake out here.  If someone or something feels wrong, just walk away.  Let me know, got it?"

Then she glances at Hawksley again.

"I need to go to the place in the country.  You wanna give me a ride?"

Hawksley
Emotions play out across Grace's features, flickering like lights, and Hawksley only catches some of them.  Such as: gratitude and understanding.  He follows her when she talks about programming, but only just.  And then she says something about flipping a bit and making gravity optional.  The biggest, brightest smile just cracks across Hawksley's features like a fucking sunrise or a bolt of lightning.

Sera shows Grace her cut palm.  Hawksley's eyes flick to it and yes, there's a shadow, but not an overt one.  He remembers cleaning the last of her blood off his knife, a job he surely could have given to Collins, but chose to do himself because there was magic in that, and power, not just in the blood but in the cleaning of it, the ritual.

If he needed it, or thought he might need it, he might have kept the blood.  But he has her name.  He doesn't need blood, but he knows of magi who do, magi who might mean her ill, so: that cloth was burnt.  As long as he's staying at the Four Seasons, at least.  Not quite as secure as his own place.

Sometimes reality'll give you a beating Sera is saying, and Hawksley winces, like she's talking about something distasteful.  It is.  It's a sad, cold fact of the universe: the status quo.  He glances at Sera and nods when she mentions Sid and 'that lady who talks like a broken robot', to which he fills in: "Patience," because he never forgets a name, then turns his attention back to Grace even as Sera is.  "You would," he agrees, as far as them getting along.  "Not everyone views the universe through the same lens, even among people like us.  It's sometimes easier to work with people whose ways of seeing the universe are a little closer together."
Sera gives her warnings about the things that go bump, and Hawksley adds to it: "And me.  Hell, even if you just want to drop by and read for a while, that's cool."

He wants to talk a bit more, it's perhaps a bit visible in his eyes, but Sera speaks and drags his eyes away from Grace.  She needs a ride to a place in the country, and his eyes spark.  He nods, a little slowly, but he knows what she means and he looks a bit excited, that predatory gleam that he never intends re-entering his eyes.  "Sure."

So they are sweeping up from the couch, and he's leaning over and giving Grace his number verbally, watching as she taps it into his phone, Hawksley Rothschild.  He shakes her hand.  He tells her it was a pleasure meeting her, and he means it, because he really can't say it and not mean it.  He's risen then, though, reaching down to take Sera's hand.  To take her out to the country.