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Owner	Pose
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Sokoban     For the uninitiated: -    "SOKOBAN" (noun; IE, "a sokoban"): A classic format of puzzle, where entities (often crates, boxes, or blocks, but often boulders, pillars, furniture, or characters) are arranged on a grid of floors and walls with varying behaviors, and must be placed in their correct location. -    "SOKOBAN" (verb; IE, "to sokoban for a few hours"): An activity, wherein one enters a somewhat unfamiliar location made of several rooms, and must proceed through them in sequence, moving items into their correct locations despite the fact that they might, for example, be sorted into categories of unique function and destination; luggage must be pulled, furniture must be pushed, appliances must be plugged, and so on. -    "SOKOBAN" (adjective; IE, "This shit is so fucking SOKOBAN it's IMPOSSIBLE to SOLVE."): Having the properties of Sokoban gameplay. A series of rooms may be especially Sokoban if they contain themed tiles that affect the movement of entities over them, especially if those behaviors are expressive of the characterization of people associated with those rooms.     So, all that said, please clarify your command. > Arthur: You sokobaned it badly     Those who follow Arthur's invitation to where the ship is docked at Afterus are subjected to what can only be described as fifty rooms -- *each*, apparently -- of item-pushing puzzle bullshit. Not only do you have to get items into their correct locations, but the bonus puzzles to acquire one unit of Grist (some strange Gushers-like hexagonal resource distributed throughout) take even more puzzle nonsense for the completionists, where the first solution means you block yourself out of getting to it. Of course, it's all themed after the four Blooms who will be the primary occupants:     The First Bloom rooms deal with some type of weird mechanic where blocks and terrain interactions can be delayed and paused; while a switch is held down, for example, electricity flowing to an appliance that has been pushed into its designated plug-space pauses, or a couch on its way across a patch of thin ice is halted mid-slide.     The Second Bloom rooms deal with repetition. It's a Sokoban, so obviously while Arthur can't solve it himself due to the laws of solving a self-made Sokoban, he can reset it as long as you leave the room first. But certain entities on top of certain tiles are retained in their position across resets, necessary to actually solve the puzzles.     The Third Bloom rooms deal with "entangled" tiles that somehow cause two tiles to contain the same entity simultaneously. Which is both incredibly convenient for long-distance things, and incredibly inconvenient for evading certain corner situations or dealing with the fact that two items can't occupy the same location.     The Fourth Bloom rooms deal with "forced" motion; both using and avoiding using certain tiles where objects and people that move on the tile "force" their movement, self-embodying their individual properties in an irresistable way and shunting adjacencies or outright destroying obstructions where collisions occur.     And, of course, the last ten rooms of each gauntlet, where the nightmareish combination of all four turn one's brain into a fucked up little pretzel through retry after retry. > Arthur: Skip the weird puzzle shit     That's what you've been doing for the last, bare minimum, four hours. Likely as anything the attendees had their own little unique mechanics and level-crossovers. Arthur looks completely exhausted with his own, uh, whatever he was doing, sitting on a porch-chair that's out on the deck of the ship, back turned to the sunset and obnoxiously glugging down promotional MtnDew:tm: Wretched Winterberry over near some massive machinery that must be the Alchemiter. The pedestal, robotic arm, carving apparatus, and punchcard system make it clear that getting one's Grist into any form of reward will be even more puzzle bullshit, god only knows if that'll be worth it. > _
Angela	Netzach isn't going to volunteer for extra manual labor! But Roland will. For grist. He doesn't know what grist is or most of the other words Arthur said, but he is definitely interested in obtaining some and seeing what happens when he puts the grist in the alchemiter to make 'artifacts', the one word he does know. And so he arrives on his own. He takes a breath to steady himself, steps into the ship and-- BGM INTERRUPT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udpo9xbkpxo Something Is wrong. Roland would probably have had an easier time if he didn't go for the puzzles but he actually has something of a knack for this sort of thing after he screws up the first few tries. He is nothing if not someone who is very capable at adapting to strange rules of survival and that includes block pushing puzzles even if it is stranger than he is really accustomed to. He still struggles with the bonus puzzles as you might expect. "He didn't mention that we had to go through this stuff to even make it to him..." Roland mutters, annoyed...but determined. He's defeated Blood Fiends before, he's fought in wars you know, and he's not going to be stopped by BLOCK PUZZLES. The 'Second Bloom' style is where he first starts getting annoyed mostly because of having to constantly leave the room and go back in. He is finally now wondering how Arthur made a Sokoban World and he thinks about what kind of nonsense an existence he must lead if this is an accidental situation. He grips his hard won grist tightly despite not even knowing what it's for. It could be literal trash and it was still hard won trash, dammit. It takes a while for Roland to figure out two tiles containing the same thing means for pushing things in the appropriate space. While he complains lost, he spends the most time here staring up at the ceiling and trying to figure out what the hell he's supposed to do. But the fourth zone is where Roland goes back to having an easier time and by the time of the last five stages he's breezing through, fully locked in as he combines his hard won knowledge into a clean and tight combination of maneuvers. Roland, sweaty and exhausted, hobbles onto the deck and notices the ridiculous chair that Netzach picked out, the one that looks like it wants to eat you if you lift up the cushion, and he says, "What the hell." as he drags himself over and fwumps down on top of it. "When you said... we had to push stuff into the right places, I wasn't expecting stage gimmicks. Maybe you could've led with the stage gimmicks. Wings, what the hell..." But despite his complaining, he actually looks pretty satisfied all told? He doesn't ask about the alchemiter yet because he doesn't know that the alchemiter is the alchemiter and he's really really exhausted. He did not take many breaks.
Petra Soroka	"Dog. If I knew what a fucking Sokoban was, I might've left you to push your own items. Really doesn't strike trust in you teleporting us all eight hundred and twenty two light years away, if this is how you treat furniture." . . .     One might assume that Petra would be really good at this, due to her genre adjacency as someone focused on the nuance of navigating physical space. But Petra's 2D navigation is Hollow Knight, not Sokoban-- the slow grinding demands of momentum and orthagonal movement are the bane of her very existence. If she sees an ice puzzle, she'll flip her shit.     Her powerset is entirely inapplicable here. Cheating puzzles with Qetra doesn't work, because Qetra throws a tantrum two rooms in about how this makes her think too hard and then a new target tile appears for Petra to push Qetra onto, where she stays until Petra's completed the whole gauntlet. Her own personal movement is almost arbitrary when everything's confined to a stupid little grid, and the Silver helps most out of anything, but only to do at a distance what she could do up close. That makes this a test of raw Petra Intellect, which is found lacking, and is substituted with raw Petra Determination.     Her one saving grace is that she sure does know those Blooms. Gameified gimmicks of girls she knows are some of her most powerful intellectual crutches even in her normal day to day life, so once she catches onto the theme, she usually hyperfocuses on the gimmick until the puzzle straight up breaks.     In the Lilian-rooms, abusing the pause button lets her overcome the tyranny of inertia by just spamming it constantly. Hold it down, give each individual furniture item a shove in a direction, unpause and let them fly, then pause and shove again to riccochet around a corner. Hiding from Arthur and staying on one of the locked tiles in the Sakura-rooms lets Petra abuse the reset mechanic to insist Arthur reset rapidly, micromanaging each step of the wandering entities in the room until the patrol cycles are customized exactly to her convenience. There's not any way to cheat the Nika-rooms, but they're straightforwards and fair enough, and at this point, Petra's been Stockholm Syndromed into it.     For the Ash-rooms, Petra ignores the puzzle and manipulates the furniture into saying YOU is WIN, and then leaves. . . .     After completionist-running through the entire bullshit thing, Petra is so tuckered out that she'll take some of Arthur's horrible Mountain Dew, whether he offers it or not. Her shirt-- reading DON'T PET ME I'M SAPIENT-- clings to her torso from sweat, and she flops down on the deck and stretches her whole body.     "Who even decided what goes where? Was it you? Because your dumb ass put, like, five different couches facing right into a corner wall, you know. Who's even going to use that?"
Lilian Rook	"Arthur this is ass. This sucks so bad."     Lilian is so tired of this shit before even hitting the end that she is reduced to first names with this boy; something she has done a few times before and wouldn't be able to name if you asked her when. If it were twice the length she might be reduced to sounding pleading about it too. Fortunately, being group puzzles, there's literally no productive reason for Lilian to make her subjective experience of this any longer than the four hours, so she just sounds whiny and pissed off instead.     And she really has no right to be, since once she got annoyed and personally invested enough two thirds through, her precognition kicked in and started letting her speed-solve by gutfeel, and the first quarter was practically built for her anyways! She's just so sulky about how many attempts the second zone took and how frustratingly unrelatable the third one was.     'He didn't mention that we had to go through this stuff to even make it to him...'     "He's such a piece of shit." Lilian groans. "I told you. I warned you about his videogame puzzle bullshit."     Having assumed that puzzles should be easy because she is very smart (forgetting that she usually cheats at them and thus doesn't have a lot of practice), Lilian had shown up in high-if-cautious spirits about the whole thing, even wearing her 'SQUISHIES' shirt in a disturbingly convivial departure from her usual to commemorate the thrifting trip. Now thoroughly upset by puzzles, she kicks a folding chair a ways across the deck, grabs another one to drag into its spot, and flops down.     'Dog. If I knew what a fucking Sokoban was, I might've left you to push your own items.'     "You could have just looked it up!" says Lilian, who did, and found it didn't help. "More importantly, why is this ship so fucking big!" she shouts a second after. "This thing has to transport like ten people, fourteen tops! For, what, a few days? Why does it have a deck! We're going into space!"
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Grumble about spatial arrangement     "Look," He waves the Dew at Roland a bit, grumpily. "I gotta FIRM UP this SHIP. If it's not DURABLE then it's gonna FALL APART when I push it to FTL on an STL trail. Guy's gotta GRIT IT!" He does stop to think after a quick chug. "Sorry though. It's SPACE STUFF, it just turns to SOKOBANS. Lucky you didn't have to JUMP ON STUFF. Always SOUNDS EASIER, NEVER IS." > Arthur: Who even decided what goes where?     "HEY, Miss HEART ASPECT, I don't go tellin' YOU how to EMBODY SELFHOOD." He rambles. "It's SPACE! Trust me, it'll get REARRANGED GOOD-STYLE in a bit, ya boy just gotta get the ANCHORS UP and then we're ready to MOVE STUFF. And don't hate the PENTACOUCH, got FOUR BLOOMS PLUS ROOM dawg." > Arthur: Arthur this is ass. This sucks so bad.     "Hey, the VOYAGOID's the one wore this path STL-STYLE, I'd MUCH RATHER we just GATE there!" He shrugs in an agreeing, helpless posture. "Anyway, TRUST ME, you're gonna WANT THE ROOM." Another swig of MTN DEW (tm) before he says, "Ya boy gotta get ROOM for the NAILS. Or EQUIVALENT, if my THEORY is good, anyway." > Arthur: Don't stop working though!     He eventually stands up to get back into his own business. He's got... some things he's been alchemizing, which means having his big machine's pedestal flashing odd lights to generate strange machinery. Some sort of fancy emitter with a multitude of plates, as well as stacks of unusual circular translucent plates, and a variety of funny measurement devices. He looks just as tired, but still planning on working through it...     What's he doing here?
Angela	''He's such a piece of shit. I told you. I warned you about his videogame puzzle bullshit.'' It's true. Roland wasn't warned about stairs but he was warned about videogame bullshit. "I wouldn't normally complain about the effort to go faster than light but on top of everything else the feng shui is dire." He does actually wonder about the deck now that it's brought up. It feels like a hazard. How do space decks protect FTL movement? And why is the guy who can do FLT movement THIS guy? ''DON'T PET ME I'M SAPIENT--'' "Hey Petra, where do you get these shirts?" Roland has to ask. He can't deny they're a style and a certain consistent themeing around Petra's choice of shirts but who is making them? Is he going to run into someone else wearing this shirt someday? All these puzzles has put him into an inquisitive mood. ''I gottta FIRM UP this SHIP.'' "If it was that important why were there ..." He sighs. "'Bonus levels'?" He looks over as Arthur moves over to the alchemiter and starts alchemizing. He watches him do it with a look of bewilderment as he wonders the last statement in Arthur's pose but with like ten more exclamation points. "Is that the thing I put the grist into? How does that work? It looks like I need a college degree to use it."
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Guide ALCHEMIZATION     "Hand me TWO THINGS, I'll get you a PUNCHCARD." Arthur explains. The minute he's handed any item (hopefully a more disposable one), it... becomes a card in his hands? Then he reads a code off it, sets it into a slot on the machine, punches in the code, putting holes through it. "ONE MORE." And another item. He gathers the code and then double-punches the same card with the new code, before placing it in *yet another* slot. That causes a big carving engine to fake-carve some type of elaborate holographic crystaline dowel into a shape (transparently and intangibly), which then, a big robotic arm with a laser reads, and then...     Well, we'll get to that part when Arthur has items in-hand. But wow, this is a fuck ton of steps with nonsensical complexity, isn't it? Jesus. "Did you know this used to be like FIVE DIFFERENT MACHINES? I had to solve this while a METEOR was going to KILL ME."
Lilian Rook	'Lucky you didn't have to JUMP ON STUFF. Always SOUNDS EASIER, NEVER IS.'     "I think Petra in particular would adore nothing more than jumping on things." Lilian grumbles. "How did you ever get anyone to help you with anything back in the day? You know, back when the only thing they knew how to do things, period, was killing them?"     'HEY, Miss HEART ASPECT'     Lilian suddenly remembers Petra going as 'Thief of Heart' in Arthur's worldview.     'And don't hate the PENTACOUCH, got FOUR BLOOMS PLUS ROOM dawg.'     She suddenly narrows her eyes at her.     'Hey, the VOYAGOID's the one wore this path STL-STYLE'     "That sounds like a slur." she remarks, instantly distracted. "You want to go playing with legally distinct rivets now? If this sucks badly enough I'm going to post up twenty five pages of awful poetry in random rooms that you have to collect before I catch up to you and kill you. Mark my words."     'but on top of everything else the feng shui is dire.'     "Oh god. Tamamo is going to hate it." Lilian sighs, now suddenly dejected enough to hold up a hand from her side and just sort of assume someone is going to put something she can tolerate drinking in it.     'Did you know this used to be like FIVE DIFFERENT MACHINES?'     "It looks like fifteen different machines!"
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: That sounds like a slur.     "THE SINGLE-USE SPECIAL." He declares. > Arthur: It looks like fifteen different machines!     "Does a ROBOT ARM on ANOTHER MACHINE count as ONE MACHINE...?" > Arthur: Tamamo is going to hate it.     "DAMN DAWG, ya boy makes a KITSCHY-ASS SPACE CRUISE for ya BONUS HONEYMOON and you look my GIFT HORSE dead on in its WEIRD HORSE TEETH." He shakes his head while saying, out loud, "SHAKING MY DAMN HEAD." Then, he grins widely. "I'm sure she'll get it in a GOOD STATE. She's always COVERIN' my MISTAKES." Grin, wink, teethgleam, double-fingerguns.
Angela	''Hand me TWO THINGS, I'll get you a PUNCHARD'' "I didn't exactly come here with inventory." Roland says. He largely has his collection of weapons on him because he shoves that in his coat that Audrey helped stitch up so he could summon his weapons from it. "I've only got my fighting gear and an Angelapad and I doubt she's gonna want me using THAT--" He summons up a long hammer with a doubleheaded silver head into one hand and-- --better not use the Atelier Logic weapon with Petra right here, he thinks, as he instead draws out a Rangar Workshop gauntlet and knife--the former black with silver trimming--similar coloring for the knife too, which is jagged on one end. He offers both and the grist to Arthur. He'd use something like Durandal but he's more attached to Durandal. It's like the sword he always uses by default. Better to trade away something he doesn't NEED to use in case JUNK results. ''Tamamo is going to hate it.'' "Oh we'll have to do what we can then." Roland is about as loyal to Tamamo specifically as Angela is. "I'd hate for her to be miserable the whole while." ''I had to solve this while a METEOR was going to KILL ME.'' "Well that sounds like a lot of motivation." Roland admits. "Is a meteor trying to kill you why you're all 'Space' and all that? Is the meteor still after you?"
Petra Soroka	"You could have just looked it up!"     "He just, like, says things!" Petra could not even register the syllables that Arthur was making when he was talking into the radio. There's no way she would've been able to piece together the word well enough to google it. "If I looked up every bit of nonsense he says, then I'd be doing that all day." "Lucky you didn't have to JUMP ON STUFF. Always SOUNDS EASIER, NEVER IS."     "Dude, I fucking love jumping on stuff," Petra confirms at the exact same time Lilian does. "I built my fucking evil lair to force everyone to jump on stuff. Sorry about your, like, asthma or whatever, but it's normal to jump around." "HEY, Miss HEART ASPECT, I don't go tellin' YOU how to EMBODY SELFHOOD."     Alright. Fucking, good point. Petra *can't* communicate with space well enough to intuitively understand FTL travel across solar galaxies. That doesn't mean she has to like the pentacouch. "Whatever. Feel free to join the club." "And don't hate the PENTACOUCH, got FOUR BLOOMS PLUS ROOM dawg."     Well now hold on. Maybe Arthur has a point with some of his interior design choices. Petra takes this revelation as inspiration to roll over and sit up finally, which leads to her catching Lilian's glare and stiffening up. The retort 'one couch would be enough' dies before she says it out loud. "Hey Petra, where do you get these shirts?"     "Oh, this one?" Petra looks down at herself, pinching the shirt graphic away from her chest. "This one's a joke." That means, she ordered it custom. "Usually I just find them out in the wild." "Hey, the VOYAGOID's the one wore--"     "Could you fucking not?"     Petra's on her feet, now. The spike of aggression in her tone doesn't cross to the point of threatening physical harm, but her glare of disapproval and tensely set jaw is only a couple steps away, tempered by the environment. "Let's fucking not sit in a circle and gossip about how that annoying bitch kid was so stupid for not bootstrapping themselves to our *standards* with knowledge and powers they couldn't possibly have had. Fucking be nice."
Tamamo	Tamamo, arriving fashionably late, addresses a few things without having been there to hear them..     'Oh god. Tamamo is going to hate it.'     "Oh, this is somehow worse than expected." And her expectations, based on the furniture choices, weren't high. "How could one even manage to make such a design on purpose? A windstorm tearing through a house might at least place the couches in different rooms."     'I'm sure she'll get it in a GOOD STATE. She's always COVERIN' my MISTAKES.'     "I suppose I shall simply need to make adjustments to those places we shall, in fact, be using. Ms. Soroka will not mind moving things about at direction, I am sure."     'Ya boy gotta get ROOM for the NAILS. Or EQUIVALENT, if my THEORY is good, anyway.'     'You want to go playing with legally distinct rivets now?'     "What could all of this space be for, after all? Not merely for the necessity of crossing space requiring space, I am sure. This should only make things more difficult, unless... there is a plan to bring back more than is brought forth."     But she is in time to hear...     'This one's a joke.'     "Which portion of it is a joke? Do you... wish to be pet?"
Lilian Rook	'THE SINGLE-USE SPECIAL.'     "Out of curiosity, have you ever tried using zero?" says the girl who still occasionally drops 'Extra' when she's really weird-style angry.     'Does a ROBOT ARM on ANOTHER MACHINE count as ONE MACHINE...?'     "Not if the purpose of the machine is just to support the robot arm, yes if it's doing something else. The robot arm on the ISS is another machine. They have another name for it." she says. "I don't recall, but it has one." Canada knowledge check failed.     'DAMN DAWG, ya boy makes a KITSCHY-ASS SPACE CRUISE for ya BONUS HONEYMOON and you look my GIFT HORSE dead on in its WEIRD HORSE TEETH.'     "Excuse me?! Bonus honeymoon?!" Lilian is so incensed by this that she jumps out of her chair, which turns out to be a low bar anyways, because she doesn't really do anything other than that. "At best, this is a science expedition on your inexplicable hunch! If we had more honeymoon times, we'd go somewhere nice! Like--"     'Oh, this is somehow worse than expected.'     "Tamamooo~" Wifelock acquired. Aggro reset. Lilian goes hurrying over immediately.     'Ms. Soroka will not mind moving things about at direction, I am sure.'     "Of course she won't! She loves being helpful!" The second she gets to take Tamamo's side, Lilian circles around her back to stare at Petra from the opposite arm. "Though, if you ask me, she's been slacking lately. She only notices when I'm calling for refreshments two thirds of the time lately. Do you think she's sick?"     'Which portion of it is a joke? Do you... wish to be pet?'     "I think it's more like a reference? To that cat woman who somehow thinks Petra is a dog woman whose ears got shot off in a war." says Lilian, barely holding in 'the part where she's sapient'. It feels like a muffled explosion. Like you can feel the thrum in your feet and the air pressure on your skin.     'Could you fucking not?'     Staring blankly, Lilian flashes back to Trudy accusing Petra of 'canoodling' with every single entity capable of making Petra freel special, even while overtly hating Lilian herself. She opens her mouth slightly, then reflects on the fact she was going to correct Arthur with Dictum's name before deciding it sounded embarassingly wishy-washy. The gesture turns into a restrained frown. "Please don't make me ban the topic." she says to nobody in particular, instead. "It'll be practically impossible, given where we're going."
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Help Roland alchemize GAUNTLET && KNIFE     Arthur punches a few buttons, moving those cards around for Roland, before finally there's a flash of light on the pad...... +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |                             ROLAND alchemized                              | |             RANGER WORKSHOP GAUNTLET && RANGER WORKSHOP KNIFE              | |                        5 Build grist, 1 Steel grist                        | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |                                 KNIFEPALM                                  | | A Ranger Workshop branded knife block that seems to physically resemble a  | |    human hand. Approved by every Finger of the City, order yours today!    | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ > Arthur: Try again, the other way. GAUNTLET || KNIFE     "Hang on, let me try that one again, this one kinda stinks." He mutters, swapping cards around and, this time, covering one with the other, rather than double-punching. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |                             ROLAND alchemized                              | |             RANGER WORKSHOP GAUNTLET || RANGER WORKSHOP KNIFE              | |                80 Build grist, 40 Steel grist, 3 Gold grist                | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |                        GRASP-POWERED FOREIGN OBJECT                        | | The gauntlet attached to the hilt of this blade causes it to hum a little  | | when clenched. When the blade is embedded into something, the force of the | |    grip converts to force of embedding, making a sufficiently firm gasp    | |  impossible to remove, or making a strongly flexed hand cause it to come   | |                                away clean.                                 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+     "Better. Huh? Huuuh? I'm SICK WITH IT." Arthur says, proudly.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Could you fucking not? > Arthur: Have you ever tried using zero?     Arthur winds up closing his eyes for a brief mental reset, then just sort of passes by it all quickly with, "YEAH, SURE STUFF." And not much more time dedicated to it. > Arthur: There is a plan to bring back more than is brought forth.     "EXACTLY." He points at Tamamo as she arrives. "Around EARTHSIDE, there's these, I guess NAILS or PYLONS or something, we know they're a LINK TO ALL THE SHIT THAT WENT DOWN." He bounces a closed hand up and down in the air. "I need the ROOM and the BIG SHIP in case we can BRING SOMETHING BACK, in case we can FIGURE SOMETHING OUT 'bout 'em. Speaking of FIGURING SOMETHING OUT..." 'Emitter' is such a fancy name for one of the things he's alchemized: +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |                          ARTHUR LOWELL alchemized                          | |                               LAMP || FUNNEL                               | |                        4 Build grist, 1 Bone grist                         | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |                                 SPOTLIGHT                                  | | A fairly normal spotlight-style light emitter, like anyone who's been on a | |                 stage or in a photoshoot is very used to.                  | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ > Arthur: Get help from Lilian     "Hey, mind if I TEST SOMETHING that I PICKED UP?" He asks her. "I got a THEORY about how to DISPROVE somethin' about the PARTICLES that we heard about. *AND* get some SICK AS FUCK FTL working." Whether or not Lilian agrees to it, he rolls the spotlight so that it's angled bow-wards from Lilian and points it at her. Several of the translucent plates are mounted on rolling stands, enabling rotation while they're propped up vertically.     What he does next is odd...
Petra Soroka	"Please don't make me ban the topic."     Petra presses her lips together, aggro meter uncertainly wobbling on the precipice. She breathes out slowly through her nose, letting Lilian's voice linger in her echoic memory long enough to clear out the rest of her thoughts, and the immediate tension drains away. Her highest priority *is* Lilian, and Dictum doesn't even come close, no matter how much she likes them personally.     "Yup. Got it. That's fine." Petra flexes her fingers to loosen them, then smoothes down the hem of her shirt. "I won't argue."     "I didn't exactly come here with inventory."     "I have a billion things," Petra says, extremely nonspecifically but exactly as specifically as she can be. "I have so many things with me. And so much of those hexagons."     But does she want to give any of it to Arthur? Let Roland deal with it first, and see what comes out. Petra's very protective of her piles of garbage so it'd be a shame if any of it got wasted. "Oh, this is somehow worse than expected."     "Right? I knew it'd be bad when Netzach got that horrible chair, but I didn't think Arthur would force me to pull it for ten minutes each attempt through a horrible little moving labyrinth with shifting walls while I'm stuck looking at its *face* the whole time. Just to put it in a random tile next to literally no other furniture!"     Petra doesn't feel any resentment at all about Tamamo coming in late-- really, it'd be shameful if she was forced to do any of those puzzles; it's only natural that Petra had to clear the way first. She's already spent her chance on criticizing the arrangement of furniture spatially, due to being forced to defer to the expert, but she internally is very certain that there has to be a spacially stable way to set this up that's not hideous. "Ms. Soroka will not mind moving things about at direction, I am sure."     "Yes ma'am." She gives a confident thumbs-up, as if she isn't already sweaty and tired. "The robot arm on the ISS is another machine. They have another name for it."     "There's multiple!" Petra immediately supplies when Lilian falters. "Um, the Canadarm, and the ERA. That's right." "She only notices when I'm calling for refreshments two thirds of the time lately."     Petra yelps in dismay, scampering in a helpless circle like a startled horse while she searches the vicinity for something drinkable. But this is *Arthur's* place, so of course there isn't anything at all that a human can tolerate, so she hurries to grab something out of her mirror. The Silver flattens into a vertical plane like a refrigerator, and from the reflection Petra plucks out a glass and a cooler with iced sparkling water to pour.     She offers it to Lilian, sweatily apologetic. "No, I'm normal. I shouldn't need to be reminded. Here you go!" "Which portion of it is a joke? Do you... wish to be pet?"     Objectively, Lilian's explanation is correct. She made herself laugh in the middle of an argument with Aika, about the moral necessity of signalling sapience when transformed into a cat, and then thought that the shirt deserved to exist so she ordered it.     However, what she blurts out is, "Circumstantially."
Petra Soroka	"I got a THEORY about how to DISPROVE somethin' about the PARTICLES that we heard about."     Petra huffs. She won't start an argument, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't know everything better than Arthur all the time and everything he says isn't stupid and annoying.     "Well I have a theory about how to prove it. A little ritual."
Angela	''Usually I just find them out in the wild.'' "Really gotta update my wardrobe, not that I'd be able to wear most of it while on the job, but this isn't a push blocks for four hours combination." ''Could you fucking not?'' Roland doesn't have strong feelings about Dictum right now. He's never really had a conversation with them. But it's sort of hard for him to really get on board with talking shit when Dictum is basically under their power right now. Normally he kills the monsters he doesn't try to see things from their point of view and people like Dictum aren't exactly something he normally gets to deal with. The closest would be Angela and, well, that doesn't help him at all. "No reason to be dicks NOW anyway." Roland is willing to support his boss though. Tamamo seems, like, normal. She SAYS it's worse than expected, but she doesn't sound all THAt upset. Maybe she already resigned herself to some ridiculousness the moment she answered Arthur's call which does seem like the wise way to engage all this. "Yeah we can push stuff into different positions, assuming it doesn't kill us all for nebululous kind of bullshit FTL reasons." ''Do you... wish to be pet?'' Roland turns a laugh into a cough into his hand at that. Tamamo was making a joke there right? She wasn't just genuinely curious right? Oh god. ''That cat woman who somehow thinks Petra is a dog woman whose ears got shot off in a war.'' "Wings, that makes me sad just thinking about it." ''KNIFEPALM'' Roland grimaces upon seeing it. "Not that I couldn't use a knifeblock, but..." He says, nodding his hand in agreement with Arthurs' explanation. ''GRASP-POWERED FOREIGN OBJECT'' This is maybe the worst name for it imaginable, b ut in terms of what it actually is--it does look pretty cool for a guy like Roland. "Oh yeah--that's much better..." He frowns. "Wait, so you can just... take any two objects, shove it into this machine, and it'll make some sort of souped up combination of the two? So long as you have one of those punchcards and this grist stuff?" His eyes slowly widen as he considers the possibilities. Not even just the weapon possibilities, though he's definitely thinking about it. "Lilian, I'm afraid you were right." He admits. He looks over to Petra. "You want to give it a go? It looks like any combination you've got at least two shots to make it something that's not crap." ''Circumstantially.'' "Well that makes sense." Roland admits, who also probably only wishes to be pet in certain circumstances.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Aim SPOTLIGHT at LILIAN     Aimed! <J-IC-Scene> Arthur Lowell says, "Okay, QUICK RUNDOWN. SPEED OF LIGHT is ABSOLUTE right? Like, you can't BREAK IT. Even the stuff that BREAKS IT, is just WIGGLING AROUND IT." > Arthur: Move TRANSLUCENT PLATE ONE to SPOTLIGHT     Arthur moves one of the plates to the spotlight... <J-IC-Scene> Arthur Lowell says, "You're COMPRESSING SPACE, you're LINKING HOLES, you're GRAVITY-WARPING shit, all kinds of stuff to get around the shit about PARTICLES GOT TOPSPEED." > Arthur: Set PLATE ONE ANGLE to 0 DEGREES     Not clear what that did, but it's set. <J-IC-Scene> Arthur Lowell says, "We on that SAME PAGE?" > Arthur: Move TRANSLUCENT PLATE THREE to SPOTLIGHT     Yep, it's in front now. Two plates in front of the light. Still no effect on the light. <J-IC-Scene> Arthur Lowell says, "End of the day, all your particles just don't wanna go faster-than-light relative to the way they were at before. And that's absolute, can't change, no way. It's premise, matter is matter 'cause it does that. And sometimes stuff is *like* matter 'cause it does that, too." > Arthur: Set PLATE THREE ANGLE to 45 DEGREES     The light blasting Lilian in the face is now at about half intensity. Both plates, together, seem to block about half the light. <J-IC-Scene> Arthur Lowell says, "The shitty furniture is for stability. *This*, is 'cause it's first time I've got a system to actually break that law."
Tamamo	'Tamamooo~'     "Dearest one~!" Matters of feng shui put aside for the moment, Tamamo takes a half-step into Lilian's approach, arms closing for a hug, at such angle that they spin about for that moment, dress fluttering. If anyone's feet leave the deck in the process, it's most likely to be Tamamo's, but that can go either way.     As if they hadn't just been together hours ago. The multiverse is going to have to deal with this for, probably, a long while yet.     'Though, if you ask me, she's been slacking lately.     Do you think she's sick?'     "Has she not always--oh," switching interpretation of terms, "I suppose I should check. She would not be inattentive on purpose, after all." In most contexts, those words would be characterized as forgiving.     'To that cat woman who somehow thinks Petra is a dog woman whose ears got shot off in a war.'     Tamamo encountered Aika exactly once in person, and it happened to be that time. "Oh! During the Laplace tour, yes, there was that... rather odd encounter." She thinks back.     "To have one's ears shot off... can you imagine? For her to be the dog so supposed, I mean. Or... a soldier, for that matter." There are a lot of soldier-adjacent things that are easier to imagine, but 'soldier' is a more particular thing in Tamamo's mind, so those other things don't count.     '...I guess NAILS or PYLONS or something, we know they're a LINK TO ALL THE SHIT THAT WENT DOWN.'     "Oh, that sounds terribly dangerous. I do not think we have had any encounters with those on Earth that were not extremely concerning, at the least." Tamamo takes this time to squeeze Lilian close for comfort. It keeps her from sounding more than just 'mildly concerned' about what she does, in fact, think a really dangerous idea.     'Right? I knew it'd be bad when Netzach got that horrible chair, but I didn't think Arthur would force me to pull it for ten minutes each attempt through a horrible little moving labyrinth...'     "You know, that does seem a bit like putting you into a rat maze." Why did she bring that up? "I would think you more of a jumper, but maze-running might be..." And why is she continuing to think about it?     "The reason the furniture needed be predominantly hideous... has not entirely eluded me, though I wish I could disagree more strongly with the acceptance of that reasoning."     Still on this thought, "I had not thought Mr. Lowell, in particular, to be the sort to place people into mazes, I suppose."     'Circumstantially.'     Mhm. "I see."     Tamamo was making a joke there right? She wasn't just genuinely curious right? Oh god.     Mostly 'yes,' but partly 'Roland has yet to realize how strange this relationship is.'     'Yeah we can push stuff into different positions, assuming it doesn't kill us all for nebululous kind of bullshit FTL reasons.'     "I would be very disappointed in Mr. Lowell if he placed his friends into a deadly furniture maze. I am sure it will be fine, on that count."
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: So you can just... take any two objects, shove it into this machine, and it'll make some sort of souped up combination of the two?     "EXACTLY." Arthur declares happily. "That's how I SURVIVED way back. It's how I GET SHIT DONE these days too. Limited by GRIST and CARDS, but..." He shows off his broom from his inventory. "This, it was a BLENDER, and a BROOM, and a ROCKET, there's a SWORD in there that CHANGES SHAPE, think there was a MECHA THRUSTER, there was a SICK ROYAL SCEPTER, some DIAMONDS, uh... Fuck, right, a BOLT-RIFLE, some DANMAKU, a TOMMYGUN, there was-- fuck, there's a LOT OF STUFF. Anyway it COSTS A FORTUNE but. You got a lil' to SPEND!" He flashes that winning grin!     "But HELP ME OUT first. PUSH MY ITEMS. One more time."
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Well I have a theory about how to prove it.     "You, after me. I got a theory for why they think there's particles. I just don't think they're lethal as they say." Arthur says, finishing up with the plates and settling their angles to the half-filter. Experimentally, he moves PLATE THREE to 90 degrees, shutting out all light, before moving it back to 45 degrees, half-light, and locking it into place for some reason...
Lilian Rook	'Dearest one~!'     Oh you fucking bet Tamamo is getting up off the floor. That's secretly one of Lilian's favourite things. She stays off the floor while Lilian hugs her, reluctant to put her down for a while.     'YEAH, SURE STUFF.'     'I won't argue.'     "Just don't shout at each other enough that it gets annoying." says Lilian, starting to feel guilty about it now.          Lilian snorts at 'Canadarm', and says "Presumptuous, aren't they?" and then doubles back at 'ERA' and says "At least it sounds like an invention instead of a workplace harassment suit."     'No, I'm normal. I shouldn't need to be reminded. Here you go!'     "You're so late." Lilian scoffs, and takes the water anyways, as if it's her god-given right. Slamming back enough of the Good Stuff (normal) to feel better about it (and obtain the placebo effect of drinking), she says "You break even on this one at best. The next time I whistle and snap my fingers with an empty hand, you'll be filling it with what I want, so don't make it your scrawny neck." She tries to sound sooooo tough about this, but the entire concept of it is just too bratty. She can't be intimidating while whining about not having alcohol in Holly's map room. Especially since Petra was deliberately withholding it as bait back then!     'To have one's ears shot off... can you imagine? For her to be the dog so supposed, I mean. Or... a soldier, for that matter.'     'Wings, that makes me sad just thinking about it.'     "Oh she's been sadder." Lilian says, rolling her eyes. She gets to settle her energy around 'whatever, who cares' now that she has something to recreationally hold.     'Lilian, I'm afraid you were right.'     "I knew it!" Lilian narrows her eyes, and even folds her arm, but she's still grinning like a smug piece of shit anyways. "I've read you for filth!"     'Hey, mind if I TEST SOMETHING that I PICKED UP?'     "As long as it isn't catastrophically stupid." Lilian says, to mean 'sure why not', and then second guesses after hearing her own damn words. "As long as you don't use any gates." That's her best bet.     'Well I have a theory about how to prove it. A little ritual.'     "You're always engaged in little rituals, and frankly the two of you debating this point is concerning both ways." says Lilian, increasingly unable to feel like she's joking about it. "You of all people saying you suddenly know a 'ritual' about theoretical 'quasiparticles' that are attested to exclusively by a vengeful space refugee possessing a tape recorder and that it involves me and that it's meant to smugly refute Arthur Lowell is a little . . ." She looks at Tamamo for rescue instead.     ''
Lilian Rook	'I need the ROOM and the BIG SHIP in case we can BRING SOMETHING BACK, in case we can FIGURE SOMETHING OUT 'bout 'em.'     Lilian's eyes widen abruptly. "You're joking. After what the Odas did? All the effort you went into stopping it? You of all people want to fuck with those?"     'I do not think we have had any encounters with those on Earth that were not extremely concerning, at the least.'     "Exactly! Right?! What if it, like activates on the goddamn ship! Has he lost his mind?!" Lilian theatrically exasperates about someone who is right there. "We have them here! Why do we need to go there for them?!"     Then there's a spotlight in her face, and her arm comes up to shield her eyes reflexively. Not wanting to particularly move out of Tamamo range just yet, she resorts to turning her hand backwards and flipping Arthur of while she chugs the rest of the sparkling water in preparation of freeing up the other hand. By the time she's finished, the other plate is in front, and that dims the beam to a tolerable extent, but . . .     "Out with it. You're revving up to relate it to the very obvious thing." she says. Her empty glass vanishes from her hand.
Angela	Roland helpfully moves the plate to try and get that light off Lilian when given the order too thoughj it takes him a minute to figure out what exactly that entails. He is decidedly not Light aspected or anything like that. He'd be a little leery of being given an aspect at all, since he can't imagine it'd be very good to hear about even if it's fitting. ''Further Explanation about shoving shit into other shit and seeing what happens.'' r"Damn." Roland says, slightly enlongating the 'aaamn' part of that word, but not quite long enough to actually add more a's. The sad truth about Roland is that he does sort of have a complicated inventory system wherein he can pull one item out at a time and then has to make use of that particular weapon in a fight before he can just go on and move to the next one. His entire combat style is sadly suited to this bullshit. "This work?" Roland asks Arthur. "Man I can think of a few Wings that would kill for tech like that--like literally kill--but uh please don't leave it anywhere near 'em." ''I've read you for filth!'' Roland hangs his head, playing along. "I can't help what I am. I'm just a guy who is fascinated by combining things with other things. My soul was forged this way. Original Sin. Like I've forgotten my whole life but then The Device was before me."
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Out with it.     When Roland helpfully moves to get the lens into place, he'll find something unusual: Adding PLATE TWO to the stack somehow is somehow increasing the spotlight's intensity, no matter what angle it's set to!     "No matter what angle you set the lens on plate two at, the light gets *brighter*, not *dimmer*. Doesn't make sense, right? The plates are blockin' it. Why would one more block mean *more* light?" Arthur rambles, pacing around the column of filters. He gestures, then, to Petra, and Roland, and Tamamo. "You, and you, and you, and me, and the whole world, we're all working with something, it's called 'local causality', or 'locality'." He waves a hand between the plates, showing how the dimmer light is on it... "Imagine that the plates gotta 'talk' to something, to figure out how much to block, how much to let through."     He bonks the first filter-lens. "Plate one talks to the light, which is right there, it says, 'you're unfiltered, I let filtered full light through'. Locality respected." He bonks the second with his palm now, the one Roland set. "Plate two talks to the light, says, 'you're filtered to zero degrees, I let half light through'. Locality, still solid." He waves a hand in front, where Roland did his best to filter. Half light in the space between two and three...     "Here's where it gets weird."     "Plate three talks to the light, says, 'You're double-filtered. To forty-five and what? Hey, plate one?' But plate one is more than one causality away. It's backwards on the locality-chain." He bounces a hand from plate three to two to one. Past one, full light. past two, half light. Past three... full light? What? "Not *exactly* how it works, but close enough for getting by. That's because the 'local causality' is stronger than the 'truth'. The particles don't carry real stuff about 'em that's stronger than the speed of light. Obedience to the universal laws, it matters more than actual innate matter-truth."     He squats in front of plate three. "The furniture, the rooms I put it in, that's lenses. We put a ton of lenses there, then us -- that's the light, we're the light in this metaphor -- we don't get filtered out all the way. Our quantum stuff persists through a bunch of quantum filters, high-perception environments and items, and the more filters, the more of *us* that gets through. We don't wanna get filtered out, see." He pats his chest. "We're creatures of matter, we hold to lightspeed. That's *more* important than any 'truth' in *us*. Lilian too, ninety nine point nine nine repeating percent of the time and physical laws."     He wanders to the edge of the deck and puts a hand on a horrid piece of furniture. "That's why we need the chair that looks like a human face. It got super traded around, it's a dense filter. Lots of *layers*." Then he turns. "So, let's look at this from another side. We want one thing darker, and that thing we want darker, it's locality. So we gotta find something that *contradicts* it, something that makes superluminal back-and-forth happen."     He points at Lilian. "Hey." He says. "Lilian. Sorry for making you a stage prop for a bit. Can you, please," Polite?! "Turn plate two so that the spotlight goes dark and stops bothering you. Roland couldn't do it, but *you* can."
Lilian Rook	'Man I can think of a few Wings that would kill for tech like that--like literally kill--but uh please don't leave it anywhere near 'em.'     "There are at least three Wings that would kill for what I can do." Lilian scoffs, as if 'what she can do' isn't already an apocalyptic miracle that is defining a quarter of the fate of her world. "In the strictest sense, that's what Wings are." she says. "They're Traditions without tradition. Bodies of power that came into it by stealing fire from God and figuring out how to patent it."     "They deal in miracles because that's what it takes to keep the City's internal contradictions from collapsing utterly. They kill and steal for that divine fire because if they kindled it themselves, everyone else could too. They have no desire to iterate, to innovate, or to pass anything down, because cumulative labour is anathema to the people who want to stay on top until they die and then take it to the grave." Lilian shakes her head and stares off over the deck. "It's given me ample opportunity to reflect on the Fifth and Seventh Codes."     "The Seventh is enough to tell me they're wrong without even the slightest political theory. The Fifth is why I intend to never forgive them for Carmen."     'I can't help what I am. I'm just a guy who is fascinated by combining things with other things. My soul was forged this way. Original Sin.'     Lilian smiles despite herself. "You're just a guy." she repeats, then giggles at getting to use an old favourite like this. "It's okay Roland. I understand. Most men are built like this, whether they realize it or not. Their love of tools and toys is charming when it isn't subsumed by the brand."     'But plate one is more than one causality away. It's backwards on the locality-chain...That's because the 'local causality' is stronger than the 'truth'...Obedience to the universal laws, it matters more than actual innate matter-truth.'     Lilian, for literally the first time ever, watches Arthur with the barely patient, occasionally nodding mien of someone waiting for him to get to the point. Her knowledge of particle and waveform physics is restricted to what she looked up a few times out of curiosity years ago and could grasp without a university education on the subject, so there's no way she knows any of the theory involved. It's just that 'one causality backwards' seems like such an obvious thing to her that she can't even comment on it. "And when does the science come in?" she says.
Lilian Rook	'Hey. Lilian. Sorry for making you a stage prop for a bit.'     Lilian frowns sharply.     'Can you, please'     "Oh fine. If I must." She rolls her eyes and forgets about it. Naturally there are a million things that only she can do. Everyone knows that.                 -----[stop]-----     "You're a funny bitch, you know that?" Lilian says to herself. Of course, even now, looking around the inside of a photo still so silent that it makes her ears hum, the spotlight is still obnoxiously bright on her. It's always been that way. Like the dark is always dark, and rain makes it miserable to see through. Lilian herself has spoken of this, vaguely or directly, many times before; that 'stopping time' is an incoherent concept, which makes less and less sense the more you try to define it; how it becomes an infinite fractual of recurring complexing the more you try to explain how someone can move, breathe, see, without disastrous consequences, while everything else may as well not actually exist. She understood a very long time ago that the light she sees now has nothing at all to do with photons physically moving into her eyes.     First she thinks about the gloves in her bag, and then she remembers it doesn't matter. Next, she squints her eyes and walks up to touch the plate from both sides, turning her head partly to the side, and experimentally tilt it back and forth. Without imagining any particular reason for why, the beam appears to move with it, refracted through like another stage of a prism. Pondering the issue a little more laterally, she decides that 'half of half is still a quarter', and that the half unfiltered by plate one must share a common quality or alignment; that's how the sky is blue, after all. This time, she precisely tilts the plate back to a place it had very briefly already occupied, but she carefully aligns it in just such a way as to be the exact mirrored angle of the first one, aligned in such a way that she imagines should cover every angle of incidence the first filter doesn't.     Returning to the same place to check, feeling out the curves of her normacausitive cavitation bubble, Lilian idly muses to herself that this was much like 'parrying the light beam', as if it were a very fast-moving object rendered as still as everything else, no different from how she'd deal with Schneider shooting at her from just far enough to react. She puffs out her cheeks and laughs silently at her incorrigible 'theme'.                 -----[start]-----     "Like that?"
Petra Soroka	"She would not be inattentive on purpose, after all."     "Th-that's true. I wouldn't be." This also feels less like relieved confirmation with Tamamo's assessment, and more like pleading her case at court. "For her to be the dog so supposed, I mean. Or... a soldier, for that matter."     Only a couple days ago, Petra was gifted by Lilian a shirt that reads 'I'm never puppy stressed, when I do my puppy best'. A few days before that, she formed the Silver into a tail. Really, it's the soldier part that's questionable besides her aesthetic, and that's the part that Petra's been focused on for half of her life, without any thought to the dog side of things.     "I even proved I have ears. And not big holes on top of my head." "I see."     In terms of wants, and their circumstantiality, now is one of those circumstances, since it's been brought up. The way Petra stays still and silent for a couple seconds, with her big wet eyes, doodles the attentively swiveled ears and the low wagging tail all on its own. She remains unfulfilled. "Just don't shout at each other enough that it gets annoying."     "I've learned my lesson." Petra crosses her fingers into an X. "No yelling in enclosed spaces. That's some horror movie shit. If I'm gonna yell then either I'll go out into space or he will." "The next time I whistle and snap my fingers with an empty hand, you'll be filling it with what I want, so don't make it your scrawny neck."     "Mhm!" Statistically it's reasonably likely that it *will* be Petra's scrawny neck, but there's no reason to make that a hostile action. Petra can't feel too anxious about this threat, because she did withhold the alcohol on purpose, and only would have regretted it if she got in trouble because of it. "I'll be, um, ready and waiting." "You of all people saying you suddenly know a 'ritual' . . ."     "I--!" If Lilian is legitimately anxious, then Petra has to be legitimately reassuring, switching off of butting heads with Arthur. She draws out a circle in the air with her finger, which probably visually means something in her mind, but conveys no semantic information to anyone else.     "They did do a magic little ritual to scan you for particles. And the rate of particles." Well, she might be a roboticist, but she's not a scientist. "So I told them to show me it so I could, like, also verify that. I know how the one that hurts you goes; it's not getting slipped by me. I just figured, you know, like you said, we can't really trust Dictum's word unquestioningly."
Angela	''The Seven, the Fifth.'' Roland thinks. "What the Association invests in you is for the Association and those it protects?" He doesn't have the exact wording memorized, he's only seen it twice. And he only knows the local version "And keep what you justly earned and deprive no comrade of theirs." He thinks about that. "I think for some people the 'keep what you justly earned' is hard. They haven't exactly learned their worth." But he shakes his head. "No argument from me--" He frowns that he can't even decrease the spotlight intensity despite what feels like it ought to do. "Well this is messed up." He pauses as Arthur suggests that Lilian is very slightly less affected by lightspeed but he's getting accustomed to Lilian being a creature of 'some bullshit' in the sense that she can just do bullshit. "Okay I don't know if I entirely get it but I think I get it a little better now--there's some ''spirit'' to this." He looks back to Lilian and adds, "Y'know, I thought for a while I was crazy, thinking the way I did about The City, but after meeting you I started thinking maybe I was sane all along and that's why I was losing my mind." rHe shakes his head. "Nah, nevermind. I'd rather talk about--yeah." He smiles. "Just don't lend me one of those or I'll combine half the Library to the other half."
Lilian Rook	'No yelling in enclosed spaces. That's some horror movie shit. If I'm gonna yell then either I'll go out into space or he will.'     Lilian thinks about how Rita isn't here to scolf her if she panics and pulls a gun about all of this, and coincidentally brightens just when Petra would want to see her mood lift.     'I'll be, um, ready and waiting.'     "Good. Because nobody deserves to make me look like an idiot less than you." Lilian says, happily.     'No argument from me--'     Lilian has cause to briefly reflect on the fact that practically every serious Fixer in that world knows of the Thirteen, specifically, through her personally lensed paraphrasing. The thought is somehow overwhelming, for a minute.     'Y'know, I thought for a while I was crazy, thinking the way I did about The City, but after meeting you I started thinking maybe I was sane all along and that's why I was losing my mind.'     "Think about it for a moment." she says. "If I wanted to slip some genuinely heinous order of business by everyone, would I want it to cause harm to people for perceiving what I'm doing accurately, or inaccurately?"     'Just don't lend me one of those or I'll combine half the Library to the other half.'     "Netzkuth." Lilian blurts out, promptlessly. "Hodma." Fuck. "Gebinah." Girl you sound like you're having a stroke and every single phoneme is describing the maximum possible amount of suffering you could cause.     'They did do a magic little ritual to scan you for particles. And the rate of particles.'     "They what?!" Lilian becomes the first to shout after forbidding everyone else from shouting, clutching her arms to herself as if she's somehow going to protect her fully clothed modesty from someone who isn't here. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?! That sly little nosy fucking pig! When?! Back at the lighthouse? On my desk?! When I was trying to just talk to them?!"     'I just figured, you know, like you said, we can't really trust Dictum's word unquestioningly.'     Yippee yay! Petra is on her side! That gets Lilian to calm down enough to lower her arms again. "And I imagine you're going to insist on doing it yourself soon?"
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Determine a useful truth     The degree, the angle, that Lilian determines, is not a real number. You could not plot it on a number line. You could not determine it on a circle. But it is real. It's an angle. It *is*, objectively, something that has happened. And It clearly, truly, when viewed, has blocked all light.     He peers into it. White highlights, where boundaries ought to be... He stands up, grinning shittily. "Thanks homie." He says, sketching the angle and writing the number on a notepad. "Gonna need a couple numbers like that, but if I do the right geometry with the fuckers, I can plot us a route that's faster than light. 'Cause it's *true*, right? But it didn't give a shit about the speed of light." He baps two palms together. "The minute your particle-truth coming out of the wish came in conflict with 'light speed', lesser of the two snapped." Two snaps, two fingerguns, one shitty grin. "And that's our ticket. Home-made FTL out of polarized glass. Bit of a one-off, but it's gonna work."     "Also I for-real do appreciate the furniture-moving too, actually super important. My ass is not ready to get evaporated by filter perception." He says, getting back to setting up more lights and filters. "Y'all wanna ALCHEMIZE?" He'll keep going, of course, for plenty more hours of post-couchmoving relaxation.