theafflicted | 3.0 - week three

WEEK THREE

Last night might have been exhausting for any number of reasons - maybe it was the emotional

toll of dealing with those ghosts, or maybe you stayed up too late after watching Jim Shrok. Who knows, but Saturday is over, even if some of you haven’t quite left it behind and half spirits that are still hanging on, tethered to you and weighing you down…

But that’s not going to stop a new week from starting. There’s no breaks in an eight week course.

There’s very little fanfare to the start of your third week of the course, though it does seem like the fog has lifted even more. It’s a bit more of a trek down the abandoned streets of Estelline, but surely a mile is walkable? Or you could grab a bike or try to hotwire one of those cars in the mall parking lot… Whatever you plan to do this week is up to you. All you know is you've got some new locations to explore.

As always, Florence and Lorelei are available.

SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

TASK LIST

( OOC Note: Luci, Mutsu, and Mae will each receive a small roomba! Congrats on the successful egg drop. It's a tiny little friend that cleans extra well, though this also means its trash compartment is a little smaller so it'll need to be cleaned more often. )

FULL NAV

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Ah, Malicious Compliance (version: small). Phantom is here for the exact same reasons as Miach, but scientific curiosity fortunately doesn't count as socializing. Even if he raises an eyebrow a little at her yoinking the dinos.]

True. Did they carry that here? I have no shortage of containers.

[He riffles through his pile of goods for the nearest adequate ones.]

[ Miach gives him a quizzical look. ]

I don't think they require filtered water - we can just get tab water from the restrooms.

[ Which now makes her question how many of the people here have never seen water tabs before coming here - who knows, really, with all these worlds? ]

I hadn't noticed those yet. Convenient enough.

[Alright, up he gets! With a gift store glass to put water in.]

I may as well test these before going through the trouble of carrying them back.

[ Let's go make some dinosaurs! Miach walks besides him with the usual spring in her steps. ]

What are you going to do with them, depending on outcome?

[ Like, they're probably entirely useless, but... even though Miach's a technical genius, sometimes it's fun to see a little creature pop up in water, she's down for possible applications of this nonsense. ]

I thought I might use them to test the properties of that Void Xingqiu discovered. They're light enough not to sink immediately if there's any solidity to the ground at all, and fragile enough that they could react to whatever the substance is. And of course, the delayed release mechanism itself could be interesting for something.

[Of course he has an excuse lined up before he stared at them for that long. But also Phantom, technical genius, kind of just wants to see little dinosaurs appear. Whatever dinosaurs are.]

[ Miach hums approvingly. ]

Ah, so you actually had an idea!

[ No shame in admitting that she doubted him. ]

A lot of this could probably be achieved through a variety of other means, but a lot of the methods I come up with involve wasting foodstuff in the process.

[ That's most of their available stuff to mix and make concoctions from after all. ]

Why not dinosaurs? Being our predecessors of living on planet Earth, one could say, somewhat imprecisely, that they tested the waters for us before even.

Of course I did.

[The teenagers here are all so rude. Phantom gives a little "hmph," but he looks moderately amused.]

Ah, so you're familiar with 'dinosaurs' from your own world. Did they have a more meaningful impact there? From the limited information in the exhibits, I gather they were unsuited for the environment and died out. [...] Rather like I plan to use these.

[Alright, which way to the nearest tap. He wasn't paying attention to most things that weren't bones or toys.]

[ Miach can lead them to the restrooms, it's fine. ]

Meaningful to us humans? Likely not. But it's a very limited perspective to call their existence meaningless - they populated the Earth for far far far longer than humanity has. The environmental change that killed them came after a reign of over a 150 million years. Mankind barely even measures 6 million.

[ In front of the bathrooms she briefly pauses, considers, and then just enters the men's room because they only need the water tab anyway, Phantom's a guy, and she loves breaking rules. ]

We might be far far worse adapted to life than the dinosaurs ever were. In fact, I consider it likely. So as useless as the dinosaurs are in the presence, it is humbling to remember the enormity of their existence.

[Rulebreaking!! Phantom has maybe a moment's qualm about her in the men's room, but no one else is here, so he can't be all that fussed about it. Filling the glass for dino experiments takes precedence.]

Then it would seem it would be another 144 million years before you could make a meaningful comparison between their legacy and that of humans.

[But what a fascinatingly old world to begin with. Phantom makes a hum of consideration at that.]

You make an interesting point. The human ability to adapt lies in the speed with which we change and reshape the surroundings to our purpose. But the resilience of surviving for millions of years has a certain weight.

[ It's the men's room's very first science conference, clearly. ]

Exactly, exactly! Humanity has transformed the surface of the earth more rapidly than any other species - but whether or not this is a sustainable model remains to be seen. I imagine we'll face total extinction much much sooner though.

I consider it likely. My own world nearly managed to achieve as much within some three thousand years. But I imagine even without magic, the humans of yours would find a way to move on to other worlds, or rebuild. You shouldn't take that will to survive lightly.

[Phantom holds the water glass out to Miach, raising an eyebrow and waiting for her to provide the dinosaur element. Important science conference progress is being made!]

[ Carefully, carefully... a dinosaur pill is dropped into the water so softly it hardly ripples. Now they wait and watch in a totally adequate amount of wonder for something this silly! ]

It's a rather desperate thing, that will. Without it, mankind in my world would have already driven itself to total elimination fifty years ago... but the way I see it, they're prolonging the inevitable rather than working constructively to learn from their mistakes.

Very likely. If the situation is already so dire, then the natural reflex is to address the crisis at hand rather than the bigger problem. What mistakes are those?

[Unfortunately for Phantom's dignity, science (and dinosaurs) are simply kind of cool! It's fascinating to watch the little pill slowly unfurl. This really has no redeeming value but it is Neat.]

Greed and lust for violence, of course. Massacres committed in the name of lofty ideals, while being a grab for power all-the-same.

And surely, they would argue to have learned. After all, greed and violence have been eradicated - death is frowned upon. To compensate for killing millions by attempting to deny death and disease entirely... I can see why it was thought to be a good idea, but this kind of thinking in extremes is never going to lead to progress.

[ Unlike the dinosaur, the dinosaur is progressing. Dinosaurs are superior, even these. ]

3.0 - week three

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