Kalen gives Grace directions to a property not far outside of Denver. It isn't a house, rather it looks like it was, in a more prosperous time, connected to some kind of farming operation judging by the faded painting of a cow on the side of one of the two rectangular buildings on the lot. The only thing that looks like it's seen much maintenance on the property itself is the main gate through the fence, which is open for Grace when she arrives.
Kalen is waiting under an overhang to avoid the rain, smoking a cigarette and staring lazily at the curling smoke. Or the rain, it's difficult to be sure. There is a moment, where despite the fact that he definitely was expecting her, he looks at Grace like he can't place her. That only lasts a second, and it is perhaps possible he just was having trouble recognizing her through all of the rain.
"Hello, kit," he says as he pushes open the door just beside him and holds it open by leaning back on it. "Welcome to my home away from home." He waves her into a long room. At the far end are a few homemade targets. "So, I promised you shooting lessons. Also, other information. It's your call on which you'd like first. I know this," he waves at the targets, "Doesn't look like much, but in practice you'll almost never need to shoot someone from outside this distance unless you want to take up monster slaying as a full time hobby. I'm rather under the impression you would just like to be able to shoot things that are trying to eat you, but you can correct me if I'm wrong."
Grace
She drives there alone. In their first conversation she said she wouldn't, but by now, there is a bit of trust here. He's a member of the community, as much as that means anything.
Her car is an old, red Toyota, but it looks like it's been maintained well, like she picked out this car because it would last a long time. Not pretty, but functional, like nearly everything else about her.
She pulls up, and gets out, runs to the overhang to keep her stuff from getting wet, and never in any of this is there much more than few momentary glances at the smoking man who stands there. When she does meet his eyes, though, she smiles. And she, of course, is dressed as usual. Jeans, t-shirt, sneakers, jacket, laptop bag.
"Yeah, I'm not going to go looking for these things. It's just... I keep thinking about what would have happened had I been alone at that theater, you know? I'm still pretty sure running away is a good tactic. Most of the time."
All the while Grace keeps her distance. Kalen's one of those types who likes his personal space, and so is she, so the calculation of how far away to be gets compounded in her thoughts.
"If you don't mind, I'd like to start with the other information," she says, and if pressed she probably wouldn't be able to answer why. Just, it's her thing. Guns aren't. And there's this pressure to know, to find out, to seek answers.
"Also, thanks for this. I appreciate it."
Kalen
Kalen nods. "Knowing what you want is good. Don't let any of the rest of my House fool you, there is nothing wrong with not being prepared to go out ready to fight anything and everything." He smiles a little. "Odds are, you'll outlive me, kit, and there are advantages to a long life well lived."
He leads her to an interior room, where there is an old couch in brown and cream paisley corduroy and two matching armchairs grouped around an antique wooden chest serving as a table. "Would you like anything? Coffee, tea, I think there is some food here that isn't survival sheik. Of course, if you like dehydrated food, way more options. Also, freeze-dried ice cream isn't terrible. But-" He holds up two fingers in a cautionary gesture. "It may be a bit addictive."
"Regardless, have a seat. Make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa, etcetera."
Grace
"So your House fights monsters? House of what?" Grace doesn't know his Tradition, doesn't know that it has Houses, or how many (because honestly, those books in the library screamed 'dull' to her).
She wanders over to an armchair when led into the room, already really considering it her 'casa' before he says anything of the kind. It's the kind of saying she always forgets to say to others, because shouldn't everyone just automatically feel that comfortable when invited over? Like, 'sure, I'm going to invite you to my house, but YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO SIT DOWN'. Many social niceties fail to make sense...
Her ears prick up at the mention of coffee, oh yes. "You know, offering me coffee and information is going to spoil me so bad."
Grace takes a seat (thankfully after it's been offered, though she was going to anyway) and her mind wanders a bit. English, Spanish and Latin in one sentence, all similarly sourced from the same root tongue, but so different. But the next thing she says, after her eyes peruse the corners of the room has nothing to do with that.
"I have actually had freeze-dried ice cream before. Space food. How do you have space food?"
Kalen
"I got space food because it will keep in my cabinets here basically forever. You never know when you'll need lots of food with no warning. Hurricanes. Snowstorms. I usually add things like zombie hordes and horror movie cliches, but that is just so much less of a joke now." He moves slowly into another room, one would assume after coffee and space ice cream, but it is close enough and his voice carries well enough Grace can still hear him. And his cane, though not nearly so much his footsteps.
"My House of the Order of Hermes. Have you...has someone told you about the Traditions yet? I know you're new at this; and, unlike most of the Order, my introduction to all of this was...rather informal."
Grace
"I know some things about the Traditions," she says, a little loud-sounding because her voice does not exactly carry well, and she's compensating. "I don't know a whole lot. Can't say I know much about yours." -- A 'tell me more' if ever Kalen's heard one, basically.
"My introduction was walking through campus, and this guy noticed me, said he hadn't seen me around, asked me if I was 'with anyone'. I thought he was hitting on me," she says, a little note of laughter in there. "I didn't even know there were others. I didn't know what had happened to me."
"I've been trying to learn all I can though. I've got some study under my belt, thank the library, but it's scattered."
Kalen
Just after she stops speaking, and before Kalen starts speaking, there is the sound of a coffee grinder. "I wouldn't have started with mine, we get complicated, but if you wish. I suppose it is likely that I think that because I know more of the Order than I do of even the Traditions of those I have studied with outside the Order." He comes into the room again, carrying a French press full of brewing coffee, and sets it on the table. "That, coincidentally, is not a common thing for us. It just happens that unlike those who are brought into tutelage before they Awaken, I had no knowledge of what was happening to me."
He straightens and moves slowly back toward the kitchen, or whatever he uses as a kitchen. "Immediately after I Awakened I ran into Kharisma, and from there she and Jack educated me for a time. I was introduced the Order after some time, and so you will find I am...not exactly typical of the Order, though I am fairly well in line with a number of the younger members of my House." He returns with a box this time, unpacking coffee mugs and cream and sugar, but also hand labelled vials (vanilla, hazelnut) and jars (cinnamon, nutmeg, chocolate, toffee). There is also a larger, unmarked container and a cardboard box.
"So, the Order of Hermes is a collection of Houses. We share certain codes and overall goals, but beyond that we are dissimilar as other Traditions are from each other. I am of House Flambeau, which is, at its core," he smiles a little, "perhaps more aptly called House Adrenaline Junkie. We are, to many, the face of the Order. And we are, perhaps, some of the visible members to those outside of the Order."
He settles into a chair carefully, propping his feet up on the edge of the coffee table. "You'll have to let the coffee sit a minute, but you can have at the brownies." He waves at the cardboard box. "They are the least involved brownies Kharisma makes, which means they don't contain anything magical. Or illegal. They're still wonderful, I assure you. You can dip them in the whipped cream if you like. Or, I suppose in the coffee. Really, there are a number of things on the table, and you are free to do what you like with them."
"So, I fight monsters. Which falls, into the broader category of conflict and violence and fireballs and lightning that is the essence of my House. A bit less now than before on the action hero bit, but I do hope that that is temporary."
"Have you found a Tradition?"
Grace
The one thing that she really picked up on in all of that was that Kalen was like her -- didn't know what had happened to him, wandered into a person, had to be told. And he's right, most she's talked to were led to this state somehow.
The other thing that she picked up on was the coffee, and the jars, and wow he has a lot of stuff. She's already picking it out, the vanilla nutmeg cafe au lait with sugar dancing in her mind when he's talking about the Order. For Grace's part, she listens intently as she can. This could be important. Brownies and coffee are a distraction though... mmmm. Free food is the best kind, and Grace gives him a smile and a "thanks" when he says she can have anything on the table.
"Temporary? Do you mean your injury?" she asks, completely oblivious to the fact that hey, maybe it's not polite to ask about someone's limp. She takes a brownie out of the box and dips in in the whipped cream.
"I don't think I fit in House Adrenaline Junkie, honestly. Monsters come around, and I run away," she says, and noms brownie. And, if this is the least of Kharisma's talents in the cooking arena, the magic brownies must be otherworldly. Grace blinks, looks at the thing like it's gold or something miraculous, and with her mouth full, says, "mm mfgood."
"I... well, I kind of have. There's apparently some sort of test. But I want to join the Virtual Adepts. I've been contacted, and they said 'You'll know when it happens,' and such, all spooky-like." She lacks manners, obviously, but she does try to remember not to talk with her mouth full, when she remembers, which is not always. 'Grace' is not a good name for her. By way of getting more comfortable, she takes off her shoes, and curls her feet up into the chair.
Kalen
"Well, it has healed so far as it will without any further intervention." Kalen sighs and pours himself a cup of coffee, scoops up a huge spoonful of whipped cream and drops that into it. "I...landed under a building awhile ago, and if you break bones badly enough it turns out that they don't set particularly well if you don't have the luxury of staying still while they heal. It is hardly as though it is beyond repair, it is just beyond me to repair."
Grace adopting his term for his House gets an amused huff into his coffee. "You should avoid calling it that in front of the rest of the Order, kit. Most of them have a far greater love of ceremony than I do. And no, you certainly do not belong in my House. There are others you might like better, Houses who dedicate themselves to knowledge and Alchemy and crafting devices. Much of the Order, despite the dramatic public face, is devoted to knowledge over violence. Those of us with a more scholarly inclination though tend not to be out in the world making as much of a fuss."
He watches Grace curl up in her chair and smiles a little. "Virtual Adepts, is it? That we have no real equivalent for. To a degree, yes, but very few of the Order are so...technologically progressive, particularly as concerns their magic. There are a handful, but they are very few."
Grace
She listens to the bare-bones story of how he broke his leg and had to stay on the move while it healed, and Grace's eyes widen by degrees. "That must have been so painful. Unfortunately, I don't really know who could help you with that, although you could ask around."
She takes another bite of brownie -- it makes the visions of Kalen running around with an untreated broken leg subside at least. And he just goes on about the Order of Hermes. It sounds... a little ridiculous. They would care so much what she called a House? "Hey, I like your name for it. Very descriptive. My kind of people go and neologize all over the place, you know? It's safer. You say 'Flambeau' and everybody, even the enemy knows what you're talking about. You say 'me and my team of Adrenaline Junkies' and they don't."
She talks like she's a veteran to this, and in a way she is. She's been on the illegal side of computing for a decade by now, and this is a rule you learn early. Don't make it easy for them to find you, don't use keywords... It's the reason for all the silly '1337' speech -- a bit of covert text.
"But you have 'technologically progressive' houses?" she asks, wondering what someone like her would do in a group of Alchemists and stuffy name police. Probably piss everybody off, eventually.
She uncurls herself from her strange seating position, and begins prepping a cup, after he finishes with his. In goes the coffee, sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, cream, and she stirs...
Kalen
"In some senses, yes. Some members of House Verditus embrace technology." He laughs softly. "But some of them are still working with clockwork and springs. Not that they don't do amazing things, far from it, but they are nothing like the Virtual Adepts. It isn't that we wouldn't take you, but you've found something you're suited to, run with that. If, by some chance, you don't pass their tests, we can reexamine. But, I've seen some of what you're capable of already, and if they don't want you they're idiots. Speaking of which...." He puts his phone on the table and slides it toward Grace.
"Sometime. You have brownies and coffee and there is no hurry." He leans back again. "We have...a house of judges and one of spies and one of scholars and teachers and...hosts and hosts of things. We might...might take the idea of being an island to ourselves a bit farther than we must. And, on the whole, we view anyone outside our island with less regard than they deserve. You should be careful around us. Especially until you have more powerful friends." He sounds, almost apologetic about that. "We can be easy to slight and slow to forgive."
Grace
She watches the phone slide on the table, immediately identifying and calculating how long this is going to take (the more advanced the phone, the better, unless it's a Windows phone, in which case she'll glare at it like it's a personal affront). But with coffee in one hand, and brownie in the other, she'd need a third to get a good look.
"You know, if you're trying to recruit me, you're doing a horrible job," she says, but there is mirth in her when she says it. It doesn't seem like Kalen really likes the company of his Order.
"But you know, there is at least one group of hackers out there with a similar slogan. 'We never forgive. We never forget. Expect us.'" Anonymous -- the kind of childish prat she used to be. She's not going to say that part to Kalen. "Although people like us probably differ about what constitutes a slight."
She could, actually, say the same thing to him that he's saying to her. The difference is, she's completely on the side of the Adepts, at least in what they claim to uphold. Their kind of slights are DRM and patents and using the system to kill someone for trying to release journal articles which should have been free in the first place. In which case, yes, forgiveness is treason, and there is no sense in forgetting. It all depends on what it is that you're mad at.
"So you heard about Ginger?"
She takes a drink of coffee, and it hits the spot. The spot being caffeine receptors all over her brain, and the 'ahhh' is almost legible on her forehead. And she curls up in the chair again looking contented, even though the contortions necessary to get those feet up can't be comfortable.
Kalen
Kalen has, not a Windows phone, but an iPhone. He leaves it there on the table, not seeming at all concerned about when Grace picks it up or what she is going to do with it.
"What would be the point of dragging you to somewhere you'd be unhappy?" Kalen rolls his eyes and grins, an easy, playful grin that is nothing like his usual practically-micro expressions. Despite seeming odd because she has never really seen him do that, it looks like a perfectly natural expression.
"Indeed. I would imagine we can all be difficult. We are, in the end, as divided as we are united by our dreams, Kit." He sounds, perhaps, just faintly sad about that. The grin is gone, but it's more than that. His pale green eyes are suddenly more remote, as though they could look past Grace, perhaps through Grace, and find something lost.
And then, that expression melts into a small smile. "Yes. Ginger. I saw your note about her."
Grace
She does note Kalen's new playfulness, and thinks perhaps she's rubbing off on him. "So you can smile. That's good. But do try not to break your face," she teases, her own smile just as playful in response.
The brownie gets finished off, and the coffee sipped, as he gets distant and stares through her. She just responds to that by looking off at a corner of the room, her eyes sliding off of his like she is so wont to do.
But when he says how he learned of Ginger, she smiles again.
"Ginger was Gadfly's idea. Gadfly is a friend of mine. We have been fixing up Ginger for a while now, actually. I have encryption on Ginger's end, and today you'll get your own encryption, so it's end-to-end. That's just a fancy way of saying that we can't be easily snooped on. Gadfly has his own stuff on it to keep us from being found out."
She uncurls herself again, and takes another long draw from the coffee mug, before leaving it on the table. She takes her laptop out of it's bag and starts setting it up.
"It's pretty simple. You call the number, say "Hello, Ginger" and then you can send or view text or voice messages. It's got a voice menu when you call. Everyone who has access can see the messages. It's basically an information sharing application. And we can use it a whole lot safer than texting."
Her fingers seem to fly as she sets up the program on her laptop. And then she grabs his phone, and connects a cable to it, and then to the laptop. "Stupid Apple, and it's proprietary bullshit. I had to go out and buy a special, super expensive Apple data cable for these things," she says, and there is definitely a bit of frustration there. "Oh, yeah, and they hate you putting apps on these things by yourself. I'm not putting my software on their servers, so... I have to compile it here, and convince your phone I'm an authorized developer," she says, and looks over the top of the screen at him, the phosphor glow reflecting in her eyes. "Good thing I'm really good at this."
Here in her element, in front of a computer, she is focused and confident, almost as if the confidence is coming from the thing instead of from her.
Kalen
Kalen reaches up touch several places on his face lightly, fingers ghosting over bone. "Seems...relatively intact, despite the smiling. I wouldn't worry, Kit, people are surprisingly resistant to breaking, my current situation notwithstanding. Sprained, is another story."
He listens to the explanation, seeming to actually understand nothing but the parts she makes easy enough. She did this with a friend. It's safer so far as communications go. There are instructions. Sometimes computer parts are expensive. Grace is an entirely different person right now. He'd be helpless to explain much about what the program is, or about encryption, but basic things are easy enough to tease out.
For a moment, Kalen just sips at his coffee and watches her work. The hand not holding his coffee rubs absently, probably unconsciously around his right knee. And then, a slight crease between his eyebrows as they twitch inward, though it's hard to guess if that expression is brought on by whatever he's thinking or pain.
"Do you need supplies? Parts or workspace or tools or...I must confess I am not terribly aware of what you would need."
Grace
"No, no, I have everything I need," she says without looking at him. Instead she just stares at the screen for a long stretch, until.. "Ahhh.. Okay." She's not talking to Kalen now, just to the problem, and her typing continues again.
Eventually, she stretches and looks over at Kalen. "I think it's ready, you want to try it out?"
The cable gets undone, and she hands the phone back to him. "The number's already in there. I fixed it up for you. Ohh... crap," she rubs her eyes. "One more thing, before you call it. I hope you don't mind. It'll look like you're calling a phone sex line. 1-800-FAT-GRLS. Sorry about that part."
In Kalen's list of contacts, there is now a "Ginger" and the name goes with the number 1-800-328-4757.
Calling Ginger and saying the password will open up a voice menu: "Hello, and welcome. To listen to messages, dial 1. To view text messages, dial 2. To leave a voice message, dial 3. To leave a text message, dial 4. And remember, love is just a dial away"
Kalen
"You mentioned the cables, and I thought I should perhaps offer. I do recall on occasion that not everyone can simply buy all of the things they need to work. If...at some other time you find you need something, do let me know." Kalen's frown becomes a little more pronounced, but it's easily apparent now that that has to do with thought more than pain.
"Or, perhaps in a more optimal use of resources...can you forge some electronic things for me? I can handle the actual, physical paperwork; even get the thing done probably, but...it might be better if you could find a way to integrate it with Ginger, and for that it would likely be better if I spoke with you in the beginning instead of coming to you with some half formed things you would need to reshape."
He pulls his focus back to Grace in the sense of things she is saying now, or just a moment ago, instead of things she might do. "No. No questions." There is a playful smile that just barely hits his eyes. "For all you know, it won't even look anomalous on my phone records." The smile broadens a bit, almost into a grin. "Unless you've already hacked into all of my things. Which...would not be entirely a surprise."
Grace
He doesn't seem too interested in trying Ginger out, which is sad. Why ask for the latest toy, and yet not leap at the chance to try it? But there is another question he does ask, and when he talks of forging electronic things, she just gets more and more confused. Kalen can definitely see that mind at work, trying to piece together what he's saying, but every sentence further just gets her deeper into a confused mess. She has no idea.
When he cracks jokes at her and grins, it's almost enough to forgive him the confusion, and not jumping on his newly Gingered phone and trying it out. "Kalen, seriously, you don't look the type. And, unless I hear something like, 'Please hack into all my things' or 'I bet you can't even hack into all my things' I'm not going to," she says, but with a grin that matches his own. "However, if that is an invitation..."
"And, ah... I was just... Doing a bit of complaining about that cable, that's all," she says. "I'm going to be using it again, it's not like it's a waste of money." As if Grace would waste money. "I will say, even Apple can't come up with a way to make a cable that expensive. That sort of thing's for audiophiles."
"And as for the 'forging' thing, I don't follow you at all. I'm sorry, you have something... half formed, and you want me to integrate Ginger into it? What are we talking about here?"
Kalen
"I...." Kalen looks at her for a few seconds. "Never mind. Just see if you can figure out a way to tie an emergency bank account to Ginger. I'll see if I can't figure out a way to get money into it. I was just hoping to be able to hide it, where it is coming from, but that I can't quite do. All my tricks are very...physical."
He shrugs a little, resettling. And then reaches out to pick up his phone and try out Ginger. He goes through the instructions easily enough checks for messages, then sets the phone down. "That's brilliant."
Grace
Grace's expression just turns a bit dark when he does explain himself. Money. He wants to use Ginger to hide money. "I'm sorry, then. I don't think there's a way to hide a bank account in Ginger. If you want to hide money, I suggest buying gold and burying it."
She picks up her coffee again, tucks her feet into the chair again, as if settling in. "Money is kind of an abstract concept. It's not real, it only exists where the banks think it exists. So you kind of have to let the bank in on the source and the destination. Otherwise, it doesn't exist. You'd have to have some way of creating a believable front for the source, which Ginger isn't quite... And the only virtual currency I know of that's not backed by a bank is the bitcoin, and that comes with it volatility. It is, however, an option. It's a cryptocurrency, and untraceable. Just, it's rather like the stock market, the value of a bitcoin has a tendency to go wild."
"You might want to talk to Gadfly, actually. He has..." she muses, then stops herself. Well, Gadfly has his ways, but they're his ways to divulge. "Just, he might know more about that sort of thing than I do. I just use my credit card, to be honest. I've never had to give much thought to how I'd hide monetary transactions. I've never had to."
Her eyes scan the room, thinking... Well, now there is a reason to, right? It would be nice to have an out, in case this whole 'real life' thing goes splat. Coffee gets gulped down as she ponders.
Kalen
Kalen sighs at that darkening expression. "Look, if you don't like it, forget it. I just thought that it helpful for some of us to have access to some kind of emergency fund. God knows I enjoy having one, and many things are best hidden. Also, when you put like six or eight signatories on a normal account it gets weird."
He sighs again. "I could just stash bags of money in the chantry, but then you'd have to be there to get access, which...it seems less than optimal to have to access any physical location in a crisis situation to get something you need. Maybe I've been running too long. Whatever. Perhaps it is not helpful after all."
Grace isn't scanning the walls of his house, which is purchased under a name that is not the name Grace knows him by; instead, she is scanning the walks of a warehouse purchased by an entirely false identity. She's the only person he's invited here, and the only person to be invited to his house doesn't know this place exists. There are bags here, in the trunk of his car, cashes stashed here and there in case of emergency. The truth is, even when he's still Kalen hasn't stopped running. He just isn't moving, which is different.
Grace
"It's not that I don't like it. And I don't want to forget it. The idea is fantastic. I just wish it were easier. For something that doesn't really exist, people give a whole lot of shits about money. Let you in on a not-so-secret, it's no big deal to get someone's credit card information -- that's the easy part. If you use it, that's where people get caught. It's like, go ahead and hurt people all you want, kill people even, but the second you hurt someone's financial interests, then they call in the big guns," she says, her voice toward the end becoming downright... revolutionary in fervor. "Trust me, I don't think it's a bad idea. We might just have to get a bit more creative than Ginger."
The dark expression was less toward Kalen and more toward the situation itself. Pah. Money.
"Personally, I want to live long enough to see the idea of money become a rancid old concept, like footbinding. Hell, I write stories about that. You are preaching to the choir."
She is thinking, and those eyes stare holes through the warehouse walls. Coffee gets sipped, absentmindedly, as if the act of drinking is on autopilot while the brain churns.
"I'll run some ideas past Gadfly, I'll see what we can come up with. But I doubt it'll be attached to Ginger. If we find some practical way..."
Kalen
"See what you can do. I can throw some money at it, and if that money can be in investments...let's just say I can make sure we end up with the ones bringing in good returns. If we can't do it with Ginger we can't do it with Ginger, but it would be...generally advantageous if you had access to an emergency fund. In general, not just you."
He sighs, sets his empty coffee mug down, and then regards her quietly. When he's not being remote and refusing to betray emotions, his eyes seem less like ice and more like pale green amber. "Did you have questions? I mean, you must."
Grace
She stops ruminating over the 'hiding money' ideas, and starts ruminating over the fact that she's in a guy's survival warehouse, talking about hiding large sums of money from the government and shooting guns. Just... never really imagined herself as being the type. Wow.
"Ah, questions, yes. I did want to ask, why does everyone look at me like I've grown horns when I tell them when I Awakened?"
She looks down and her coffee cup is empty, and she doesn't remember draining it. Huh. The mug is defective, surely (it lacks coffee -- such a defect). She shrugs and slides it on the table.
Kalen
"I would imagine because we all remember being so new at this. Many of us are...very tied to our specific paradigms, and are likely caught between trying to offer advice and trying to somehow avoid telling you things that will be at odds with what you will learn, as though different ideas are some manner of contagion."
He glances at her empty mug. "More coffee?" He asks, then bounces right back to what they were talking about. "Speaking as someone who was trained by two people from differing Traditions before I ultimately joined the Order, that, by the way, is mostly ridiculous. I'm not sure who still pushes that logic anymore."
Kalen laughs softly. "Alternately, they may just not know quite what to do. There is a certain connection to be found in shared experience, and many of us become used to people who may see it in vastly different ways but who have seen it when it's been outside of mundane perception." He shrugs. "Alternately, they may not be sure whether to apologize or congratulate you. We take our Awakenings, and those implications, in very different ways."
Grace
"You were trained in different Traditions?" she asks, and actually looks at him this time, curious. "I imagine that could be a little confusing, or a little beneficial, or both... Oh yes, more coffee is great." She doesn't wait for him to serve her, she just picks up the French press and serves herself. Then, she doctors up her drink while he talks.
"I don't mind hearing different perspectives, just it seems people can be so closed about them. Sera -- have you met Sera? Anyway, she's the one who sat me down and explained... certain things to me, right after it happened, you know? So I was a little... ah..." Well, upset isn't the right word, scared isn't either. Searching for answers, yes. "Well, she was a big help. Anyway, she gave me words for things I'd experienced, and told me how she viewed the world. It's different. But there are some things that I guess... Well, truth is truth, right?"
"It's been kind of mixed, for me. I mean, the implications. I'm more afraid now. More worried about my future, you know? But I wouldn't trade this for anything," she says, conviction in her words, and she meets his eyes again, before they slide away -- self-conscious of staring.
Kalen
"I wasn't specifically trained about two different traditions, but the first of us I encountered were one of the Euthanatoi and a member of the Cultists of Escasy. They did, eventually, introduce me to...." Kalen's voice trails off for a second and then he pours himself more coffee. "To the Order. But...there was maybe a year and a half between when I met them and when I was introduced to the Order."
"Would you like to know about my Awakening? No one ever wants to ask, a significant number of us undergo very traumatic events. But, as such things go, I got off light on the trauma and met my two oldest friends so, for me, it was hardly even a terrible night."
Grace
Grace beams. This is getting interesting. She's only heard a couple people so far describing that ineffable experience. One was, unfortunately, quite traumatic. But even still, the ways that it happens to others as opposed to herself -- this intrigues.
"I'd love to know. I'd love to tell you about mine if you like," she says. An Awakening story trade, then. "It wasn't traumatic either."
It'll be interesting to see how Kalen takes it. Most haven't understood. Already, she's thinking of how she'd put it to him, to make terminology clear and... Well, it's very difficult, isn't it? That might be the point. Awakening isn't easy, and it's not easy to describe either.
She leans back in her chair again, taking the coffee mug with her, curls up again in apparent comfort, waiting and prepared to listen.
Kalen
"So, as very basic background, I spent a considerable amount of time as child doing things that generally people would consider ill-advised: climbing onto rooftops and sleeping in buses and exploring tunnels. Some people get a little scandalized, but the truth is that I was never bored and I thought I had a fine childhood. My opinion, in this case, should be the one that matters." He seems more amused than anything else by whatever concerns people might have about how he grew up.
"So, one fall day I'm going down the street, minding my own business except mayyyyyyybe for the part where I was on alert for a good target to pickpocket and I notice that I'm being followed. I figure it's someone I've pissed off at first, and so I start angling for a good place to hide. Ten blocks form one, all the leaves around me get swept up off the street by the wind and just go fucking crazy." He sets his coffee mug down, so that he can gesture with both hands in a wild swirling motion and grins, eyes absolutely glowing. Kalen may not get excited about much but he loves magic.
"I turned to look behind me and there was this thing. It's flesh was like re-solidified melted wax and it had a mouthful of jagged fangs and it was definitely not any of the people I was expecting might be after me. It came at me, and it was fast, faster than anything I'd seen before, faster than human. But I was still dodging it, I knew where it would be before it moved and it couldn't touch me. And then I tripped it. Into the path of a speeding truck." Kalen smiles. "And it was horrible at the time, all the wet snapping sounds, and then the fact that it got up on the other side of the street, and that it was real. I ran. I couldn't think of anything else to do. I passed the place I was going to hide. I passed any place I even knew to hide. I was too terrified to stop running."
"And then I ran at full speed into the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and we both hit the ground. And, that, as it turns out, is how I met my first other Mage. Her name is Kharisma, and she is actually here in Denver, when her band isn't on tour. And," he waves at the table. "She makes excellent brownies."
Grace
Kalen gets animated, and Grace grins even more -- she's never seen him like this before. It's like watching someone geek out. She listens, and he doesn't exactly explain the hows and the whats of his Awakening, but maybe that's just the part he wants to keep hidden, for now.
"So you saw a monster, and realized it was real, and that opened your eyes?" she asks. "It's much more exciting than mine, that's for sure." Well, okay, it sounds more exciting in a story to say that you fought off a monster, than it is to say, "I got lost."
"I was on my way home back from this little town in the mountains, where I had a book signing. It's where I first met Gadfly... kind of struck me as an overwhelmingly eager fan at that point," she smiles at the memory, looks down in her coffee. "Google Maps didn't want to show me where I was, or how to get back to Denver, but I worked at it some, and it glitched out on me. I remembered there was a bridge on my way, and it sent me to a bridge. Not the right bridge, mind you... Or maybe it was the bridge I needed to find, really? If that makes sense?"
"It was a little foot bridge over to a power station, and there Google just keep telling me I'd 'reached my destination' and wouldn't do anything else. I had no idea where I was, no clue. So I figured I might be able to stop in the office at the power station and get directions. What happened next is where things really started going crazy. Like, it was a dream, but more than that."
She looks up at him kind of warily, like now that he's told her his somewhat normal story, she's going to have to tell hers. And it's not.
"I got inside, and there was this humming noise, electricity, I thought. But I'd been hearing the humming kinda faintly ever since I got out of bed. It got louder and louder, until I looked up, and I saw the place had a glass ceiling with an antenna. The humming was just incredible, and the antenna sort of shifted and bent down through the ceiling to touch me. I reached out and touched it back."
She stops, looks in her coffee again, like it's going to give her the answers on what to say next. Surprisingly, it does not.
"I went flying with that antenna. It showed me the electric grid, how it's all connected like a web out to everywhere. Just my mind was filled with all these concepts that I knew down to my bones, you know? Like, how the universe works, what its made of, how I could use it... I saw people in different times and places coming to different but similar conclusions. Someone explained what the humming noise was, the universal 'om', creation, stasis, and destruction in one breath. For a little while, I was everything, and I knew exactly where I was. I wasn't lost anymore," she says, sips coffee. "Seems like a whole lot to go through to get directions back to Denver, but there you go."
"And then there was this guy yelling at me, saying it was dangerous in here, and what was I on drugs or something, and the dream was over. I must have just stood there, in a power station staring up at the ceiling for... wow, I don't even know how long."
She doesn't tell him how the universe works in her opinion. That's a harder stone to swallow than even the story she just told to most, it seems. Everyone she's told don't understand it, or they think she's wrong. But that's okay. She knows it, right down to the bone. Instead of this, she gulps more coffee, looking over her cup for his reaction.
Kalen
Kalen looks at Grace, head tilting to one side, and then realizes that she just completely missed the magical part. "I understood patterns of things that had not yet come to be and in so doing escaped a monster. It didn't have to be a monster, I suppose. It could have been something else. But it was meant to be a monster so that I could be here. If it had been blackjack I would probably have joined the Euthanatos." He smiles. "Very different."
He trails his fingers through the air, swirling and twisting, but can't seem to figure out how to describe whatever he isn't saying. How do you explain to someone that you can see the future in swirling leaves and drifting smoke and wind-tossed clouds? So that they understand what a glorious transcendent thing it is - destiny like a thousand tangled shimmering cords unfolding like some magnificent, primal flower....
So instead he drops his hands and picks up his coffee. "It's difficult to properly voice. I'm sure you...understand."
Grace
"It was meant to be a monster, so you could be where you are. That's kind of a cool way to look at it," she says, and he watches his fingers twisting in the air like he's high, and Grace is completely oblivious as to why. But it's not like she has a right to judge. She can come across as strange too. "So... patterns of things? You see the future?"
"Yeah.. I do understand," she says, and drains more coffee (it's really really good). "You think that it's too strange, that the other person won't understand, or will tell you you're wrong. There's also the problem of thoroughly explaining it. If it were easy to understand, it would be easy to say."
She looks off at nothing in particular, not at him, not at her coffee, but somewhere in the air, past the warehouse wall. "Like, I don't think space exists. All of this three dimensional 'reality' is illusory. It's something brains made up to make sense of what they can experience with limited senses. And I can prove it with math, but you know, you see me across the room, not with you and with everything else in the universe all at once, so... It's hard to believe."
Kalen
"Perhaps not so hard as you would think. It isn't that I don't think you would believe me. It's...just that I don't know how to describe it. I can see the future, yes. Or the past. Various strands of probability cascading all over everything. And, of course, I can do the fireball trick. I would be a terrible Flambeau otherwise." He smiles. "But explaining those things so that you could see them the way I do is just...staggering."
He takes a sip of coffee. "That probably raised more questions than it answered but...so few of us talk about these things. I think because they are so personal. Even if not in the sense of private, though to a few of us I know they are, but because we just cannot quite share them. Even when we try."
"Well. Most of us."
Grace
"The fireball trick? I'm guessing that has something to do with the name, Flambeau," she says, draining her cup again. "My own way of seeing it is, oh... fairly simple, or exceedingly complex, depending. The universe is made up of data, code. And that's it, nutshell wrapped. When I try to say that the world isn't real, though, people tend to get upset." She plops the cup back down on the table.
"It's like, you need to understand what 'virtual' means. It's just the idea that what exists isn't fundamentally physical, but rather a representation of some deeper structure. Data, code, words, you know," she says, eyes going a bit wild. When Grace starts breaking out the big words, the sciencey terms, it's like the dropping of a filter. This is who she is, and all that previous act was just her being polite.
"Tell me about your strands of probability? It sounds... familiar."
Grace is... intense. She wants there to be some kind of connection here, something she can share with Kalen, a way to prove herself perhaps. It's obvious that she views this as important, but why?
Kalen
"So...let me try to rephrase absent a number of terms I am used to and see what happens. For fun." And judging by the sudden animation, he's serious about that. Kalen loves to learn things and connect things and figure things out. "There is the world we perceive here." He gestures with his half-full coffee mug with a complete lack of concern. It seems justified enough, because coffee does not do flying everywhere.
"And then, on another, we could say deeper, level...there is an underlying structure that serves as a generally unobserved frame for the world that we interact with most commonly?"
Grace
"Yes, yes!"
Grace looks around, finds a napkin for the brownies, unfolds it, and places it on top of the coffee cup. "Like this, but you know, write a bunch of tiny ones and zeros on it, and it would be better..."
"Well you know, even better..." she takes the napkin up again, and starts folding it, and folding it, and folding it, until it's nearly spherical. "So, yeah... Coffee cup," she says, gesturing to the folded up napkin. "Representation of coffee cup," she says, gesturing to the physical cup itself.
"So then, if I unfold the napkin, and I read the code on it, I could know everything there is to know about this cup, even the things it's hiding from normal perceptions."
Kalen
"You have to substitute things for the ones and zeroes in my explanation, namely Enochian, but the description is almost entirely identical otherwise." Kalen smiles, because ones and zeroes and code...he'd be hopeless at interpreting that. He approaches that kind of understanding through primal languages of creation and ritual and observation of seemingly random phenomena for patterns, but fundamental underlying structures for the universe - completely familiar concept.
"So. I don't know how your codes work, so I don't know if this part will be comparable, precisely. It may be. Because you can observe the world, you can see parts of the observable patterns and from those patterns know something of this." He taps the folded napkin in Grace's hand lightly. "I can see how those things trace out in patterns of seemingly random things, wind blown leaves and falling rain and bits of things caught on water can tell me about probable outcomes and past events. Because those things let you peel back some of this and get glimpses of things otherwise unknowable."
Grace
Grace gives Kalen a big returning smile when they do come to some conclusion that yes, there are similarities here. The structures similar, the means for understanding them different.
"Enochian? I remember coming across some books in the library about Enochian. Didn't look to me like anything special, but then..." she shrugs. Esoteric languages just aren't her thing, really. If she wants to translate something, she goes and asks a computer to do it for her. And, well, maybe that is the difference.
"I can't just look at things and see their patterns. Though that would be nice, wouldn't it... I need a computer to do my translations for me, I don't know. It sounds a bit far-fetched, but you know, so does what I do, so it's not like I can talk," she says, shrugs. "I suppose though, the mind would be a good conduit for such things, its structure mimics that of the universe. It folds and unfolds itself all the time to make sense of the underlying data, so modifying that process slightly... might get you access to the code directly," she says, and now that folded napkin is getting twisted in her hand, while she stares a hole through the side of the warehouse again.
"Still, it's nice to be able to just open up your laptop and see it on the screen, too."
A few moments later, she gets a mischievous look, and tosses the napkin up into the air, to unfold itself and flutter on its way down. If Kalen can see the patterns in random things...
Kalen
"Oh. It's just the language of Creation. Nothing special, or anything." But, his tone is clearly teasing, and he's still smiling.
"I sometimes see things even when I don't plan to. It isn't always exactly the most pleasant thing. That bit of distance, there are things it buys you for all there are things it denies you. I still wouldn't trade, mind. But realize there are moments where the immediacy is hell."
"How does the computer translate? Not, how. But...what format does it give you your answers in? Is it in the ones and zeroes or does it further adapt those into some other representation?"
He laughs at the tossed napkin. "That...that was clever. But there is not, quite, enough wind here for that. But I do vote that we attach that to a kite at some point. It may or may not tell us the future, but it will amuse me at least."
Grace
The napkin flutters to the ground, and Kalen says it's not enough, and Grace responds with a pretend-pout. "Aww."
"And ah... I could just show you the code," she says, "I have some programs that take the raw data and make models of it, but the code itself is interesting on its own too."
She flexes the laptop a bit and gives it a bit of typing, like she's not really going to wait for his answer. "I suppose that is another benefit, then. I can show other people what I see."
Kalen
"Sure. I'm not sure it will mean much to me when I look at it, but I would still love to see it. And the models." Kalen doesn't expect that the code or the models will show him the same things he sees in patterns. Were he to guess he'd say he'd have a better chance trying to scry off a screensaver. but he can still want to see what Grace sees at least in part. He moves a little closer to Grace, not too much closer, because there is still that space thing that they both have, though curiosity has largely overcome any reservations he has about proximity.
Grace
Noel @ 7:52AM
[Prime 1 -- Watch the Weaving Code -- spending WP]
Roll: 1 d10 TN4 (3) ( success x 1 ) [WP] VALID
niko @ 7:53AM
Witnessed!
Grace, once connected to her computer, seems to disconnect from the rest of the world, so the incursion of Kalen into her 'space' doesn't seem to bother. She's quickly slipping into hack mode again, that single-minded focus that blurs everything out but the problem at hand. And that problem? Only viewing the code of the universe. Nothing special or anything.
The screen on her laptop goes black, and her expression foul. With a grunt, she whacks the poor machine across the monitor with the flat of her hand, and lo -- it works. Kalen might feel the uprising, the shifting sense of her washing over him as she 'physically debugged' the program. The code then streaming across her screen is something in no language Kalen has ever seen. The Matrix would have you believe it would be all green, strange symbols that fall off the screen, but it's not like that. It's too fast, for one. It's not green. It does fall off of the screen, like a block of text scrolling forever in some infinite logfile, but the eyes can't trace any individual chunk. Still, there appears to be subtle patterns to this, parts where the letters crowd, separate, crowd again.
"Now this... is pretty useless, actually. This is raw data, and it's... well, my computer can't even keep up with it all, it's way too much. I can filter out certain pieces though, and I can interpret, and that's where it gets interesting," she says, and types a few commands to a computer that looks like its having a bad time. The code changes then, as the filtering she applied does simplify the morass.
"So, this is filtering based on changes. Basically, wherever it looks like someone's been hacking. And, here's me," she points at a structure on the screen and halts it -- text, but again there's a pattern to it. There are some recognizable, English words, but it's mostly math or programming syntax. "This is the signature of what I did to get the code to come up in the first place."
She types a little more, and the text is gone, replaced with a graphic representation -- a tangled network of shifting lines, somewhat regular, but already falling apart. "And this is what it looks like, real-time. I don't think it's going to last long. Maybe my computer's mad at me for hitting it," she says, and strokes her monitor.
Kalen
Kalen watches intently, even though the things he is seeing are rather at a contextual loss. He understands what Grace is doing, and that he would even see symbols as well for this effect, the symbols aren't close enough that he can understand what Grace can see in their patterns. He smiles when she filters it with some keystrokes and then his eyes widen when she shows him all of the shifting lines.
"Okay, that's still different," he says quietly. "But...it is incredible." He looks away from the lines on the monitor to Grace. "Shoshannah showed me Callisto. So I could meet her. If you...you might try asking her, if you want to meet Callisto. She's...really big." There is so much wonder in his voice when he talks about Callisto, even more than in his eyes for all the bits of code and tangled lines on Grace's laptop.
Grace
Grace smiles when he says it's incredible, and hopes that it's not too incredible. Gadfly said that kind of thing could get one in trouble. She shut the laptop after that -- the thing was winding down anyway. Soon it wouldn't look incredible at all, and would likely just error out on her, and that wouldn't look good.
"Well, it's... not much. Some of what I've seen Gadfly do is just amazing. Like, the wormhole thing," she says, and her eyes light up. "But you know, I'm just learning..."
"Callisto? Who's Callisto?" says Grace, the confusion setting in on her face.
Kalen
"Callisto is the spiritual guardian of the node at the chantry. She's this magnificent bear spirit. You might not take to it quite like I did, you seem a little less ready to embrace everything that sounds a little crazy to most people. But, regardless, I think you should consider it. It would probably be good for you to see there is so much more than monsters out there."
"My training means I'd be great for teaching you about them, know thy enemy and so forth. And if you want to know about them so that you can kill them, I will certainly teach you. Still, you shouldn't ignore what isn't terrifying and wrong. You'll forget why we're here. It is a beautiful world. Sometimes it gets scary, but that doesn't mean you should lock yourself in an underground bunker or something. Don't lose sight of that."
Grace
"Spiritual guardian, eh?" Grace says, single brow raised. Sometimes, the things the others tell her do not make much sense. That does not mean that she thinks them untrue, per se...
In Grace's worldview, the universe is scientific, based on natural laws -- but only because it was coded that way. So if someone decided to edit in a transparent bear or whatever Callisto is, it would be possible. Anything would be, save for maybe changing math itself. And then, a pocket universe that obeyed different math might be possible, but then would you survive it...
And Grace is off in la-la land, staring at the wall again before she stops herself. It's a good thing too, because Kalen is talking about how important it is not to hide, to expose oneself to the beautiful world. And she smirks. The guy with the survival warehouse full of space food and shooting targets (and she suspects actually has an underground bunker somewhere) is telling her not to lock herself away.
"I'll try not to."
Kalen
Kalen, much to his great disappointment, does not have an underground bunker. Yet. Even if he did, he couldn't just retreat into it forever. There are monsters to slay and maidens to save, or something.
"Good." He smiles. "Speaking of slaying monsters, did you want to learn to shoot? You don't have to. Even if you want to one day, it doesn't have to be today. I have a considerable amount of time free, and it will take some practice before you're really ready. It isn't something you'll be able to rush."
Grace
"It's just one of those things I guess. I probably should learn how to protect myself. I don't know the 'fireball trick'," she says, making air quotes around that last bit. "Probably shouldn't put this off. Don't know when the next crazy thing is going to pop out of the woodwork."
Grace looks up at the ceiling, giving her neck a stretch. "By the way, what's a node? You said the Chantry had one?" Yes, nobody has yet sat her down and explained nodes. What she knows is so scattershot, full of holes.
It's a way to postpone the gun thing, find another question to ask... She can probably keep this up for a while.
Kalen
Kalen is nodding and smiling a little in response to the first part of Grace's answer but he pauses mid-reach for a brownie when she asks what a Node is.
"You-" He sighs. "You know there really should be a checklist or something. You'll hear different answers depending on who you ask about what a Node is exactly, but at the very basic level they are places of power. Many of us consider them sacred, some adopt a more scientific analysis, but all of us find them precious. I'm going to guess that no one has explained Quintessence to you either...?"
Grace
She looks him in the eye again, and squints a little at his explanation of Nodes. And then Quintessence.
"Quintessence? Fifth essence? Like the Fifth Element? I thought that was Milla Jovovich. Muuul Teee Paaaas," she says, opening her eyes wide, and looking quite crazed by the end. If Kalen has not seen the movie, he'll probably think her a bit daft, but whatever. She laughs.
"Oh I should probably not joke about something people consider sacred, huh?" she shrugs, as if to say she does know better, but this whole experience has been way too fun to take entirely seriously. For her, nothing is truly sacred. That would involve separating oneself from the sacred thing. It doesn't compute. Everything is one. And all of it is just serious enough to make light of.
"But I guess that does answer your question. No, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."
Kalen
There is a second, before he can summon a hazy memory of drinking strawberry drinks over crushed ice and watching the Fifth Element somewhere around three am. Considering the company, and drinks, he hadn't really been terribly focused on the movie. You know what, maybe those drinks were raspberry.
"You can joke with me. Not everyone, perhaps. But I'm not going to be angry." He smiles. "So...fuck. I wish I knew more science. The closest I really ever got was alchemy and that is both entirely like science and entirely not like a science at once. Quintessence is like...concentrated magical energy. You can use it for a number of things, as I'm sure you'll discover. You can get it from some other places and in some other ways, but Nodes are like springs of Quintessence. If-"
His eyes light up, suddenly. "If you do something like what you just did at the hot spring at the Chantry, I think you might be able to see what I'm talking about. That, what you just did, you filtered it for changes. But if you filtered it for say...." He frowns. He can taste blackberry and see tangles of vines weaving in complicated patterns around a spring and somewhere he knows there is an answer and it isn't a drink. It's like that. Like water. Complex patterns. Currents. "Currents? Surges of energy? Could you do that?"
Grace
She frowns, thinks. It's not that she disbelieves Kalen, it's just that she's never seen them, these currents. In her mind's eye, it looks like electricity, perhaps. Something glowing and flowing. But the words and concepts he uses to describe it don't translate well. Magical energy? She doesn't really think of what she does in those terms.
"Hmm... It would help if I had more data on what to look for. Maybe I just go to the Chantry and see what I can see? I've never tried looking at the code over there. Well, I have, but that was a more specialized life scanner I was working on..."
"It's definitely possible. I'll have to try it. But ahh, what can you use this 'quintessence' for exactly, provided I find some?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the end, they never did get to the original mission at hand. Grace never managed to fire a gun, but instead kept asking and asking until the coffee was gone, and it was time to go home.
Kalen explained about quintessence, its uses, its forms, tass, and the resonance that it possesses. And she just latched on to each topic and kept him going.
She didn't know that she'd be soon be regretting that decision just yet.
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