Rand: Oh, no, did Alex leave us?
Remy: I'll hydra him!
Rand: Cynn, you wake up too!
Cynn: I mean, I'm here.
Cynn: But I also haven't played for seven blind aeons?
Alex: I'm here!
Alex: Though i'm nipping off intermittently for exercise.
Cynn: So I'm not sure what's happening or happened or having happened.
Rand: We'd better retool Elliott's character into something hip for modern children.
Rand: Oh, dear, Alex has become addicted.
Rand: He's fallen into the trap of the unrealistic body standards promoted by magazines!
Alex: I blew off the gym on Thursday. X)
Rand: Or maybe Nobilis doesn't have those, like, occasionally the gods of youth and beauty blow by and show off their abs, and all the other magazine models are just:
Rand: "Whatever, we can't compete. Let's go eat two whole pizzas."
Cynn: I mean, I could be a sexy Power of Fruits with Treasure 5, owner of a magical comestible that emanates all meaning in the universe.
Cynn: It is called the Raisin d'Etre.
Rand: ….
- Alex pushes Cynn into the big mulching machine.
Rand: Anyway, what has happened is:
Rand: Alice decided to steal a Heather Stone so she could make everybody in the world transcend, but instead the Big Green got it.
Cynn: Who?
Alice: (It tastes good with cinnamoni.)
Rand: The Duchess of Green, a powerful and magical lady.
Rand: Meanwhile, we captured an Excrucian who told us about the amazing place that can make all your dreams come true, except, if you go there you die.
Rand: So Alice decided to go there immediately.
Alice: (There's only one thing that I know how to do well.)
Rand: Except, your Imperator said no because you cannot die you have classes to teach.
Alex: Alice: No Sense Of Self-Preservation.
Rand: So instead you have to build a full-scale replica of the World's Fair of 1893 out of candy.
Rand: This is a very serious and important task and not something your Imperator made up to keep you busy, but honestly it started to sound like fun so everybody got kind of into it.
Cynn: …Can I guest star as Nico instead then? :stuck_out_tongue:
Alice: Interestingly, this has little to do with teaching classes, but much to do with getting good student reviews.
Rand: No single ferret could eat so much sugar.
Cynn: Nico Moreno.
Cynn: From Halloween.
Rand: Wait, he wasn't a ferret in a suit?
Cynn: No, he was the Bee King.
Rand: Oh, your roleplaying choices make a lot more sense now!
Rand: I assumed you were just playing your pet ferret as a Power.
Rand: You know, as you do.
Cynn: I played Nico before I got Nico!
Rand: Like how Jenna wrote a game where my dog is an Imperator.
Alice: I don't think you'd want to be the Bee King in a fruits- and sweets-based game like this, because of the chances that Dr. Honeydew would experiment on you.
Cynn: We were many Halloweens ago, Rand.
Alice: In fairness, she thought you had a snake.
Rand: I should probably write up some kind of bio.
Remy: Last session Remy basically decided to reboot history so there'd be superheroes.
Rand: These mix-ups keep happening.
Rand: Yeah, there was a big discussion about whether you should alter history while you're up and about.
Alex: I'm still not for it.
Rand: And in the end Remy decided that he was totally going to, so there.
Alex: I gotta get my family out of harm's way if he's going to do that. Just in case.
Rand: They'll probably just become mutants, hated and feared by the world they defend.
Remy: I think we decided Anchors would keep their memories of the alpha timeline?
Alice: That makes sense. You could move them to 1896 to become their own ancestors.
Alice: This will eventually be abbreviated to "Anchors."
Rand: I think you'd need to take a Wound for them to keep their memories.
Rand: Which, I mean, you can do because that is what an Anchor is.
Cynn: Anchor aren't Wounds.
Cynn: You're thinking of tentacles.
Alice: You could probably also have them vibrate at a different speed than the timeline.
Alex: Well, I do offer shelter in my shadow…
Cynn: Or I could punch Remy!
Cynn: Robert Maria Hexadecimal Mordechai Vance, how many times must I warn you about timelines, bro?
Alex: I would appreciate your support in this argument, Cynn.
Rand: Also at some point you have to actually build a World's Fair out of candy.
Cynn: "Honestly! I abandon you all for a few months and you go and risk contaminating the flow of time. I mean, generally pretty okay with that, maybe, but I think I should be consulted for some reason I'll decide on later."
Rand: You know, while you're re-imagining history.
Alice: I don't know if we do; the world isn't fair.
Cynn: …
Cynn: Okay, solid.
Cynn: But I still insist that we murder Son Goku.
Alex: "Alright, so what is the plan, here?"
Alex: "We have the candy-font, yes?"
Alice: "I don't actually remember the plan after all this arguing about timelines," Alice says, not sounding very bothered by this. "I guess it was something like, go back so we have a world's fair to compare it to, and then do our thing."
Remy: "That. We also have a murderer to stop. Someone look him up on Wikipedia."
Remy: "And then I'll figure out how to set up a self-sustaining age of superheroes."
Rand: Maybe you should look up the general list of Bad Things That Happened in 1893.
Alice: "It's difficult," Alice says, sadly. "There's all these edit wars over whether he was real or not and whether legendary movie star Alice Acacia was actually sighted on scene."
Rand: Don't give murderers a priority just because they're flashy!
Cynn: "I feel like I'm doing an inadequate job of stopping things from happening."
Remy: The murderer gets priority because Remy can catch him in like…
Remy: …three seconds!
Cynn: "Now Niall is never going to bring me that pony."
Rand: Although admittedly he does seem to have murdered as many as 200 people, although those upper bound numbers are basically "let's just assume everybody who went missing in Chicago was him."
Remy: That's a decent step one.
Alice: Alice looks up bad things that happened in 1893.
Alice: "They introduced railroad chronometers!" she exclaims.
Alex: "Look, I'm okay with stopping the murderer, but don't disrupt the timeline, please. I don't know about you, but I value the ordinary world and I don't want to see it arbitrarily swept away to make room for another one I've no attachment to."
Rand: The US Marines overthrew the government of Hawaii.
Alex: "As a favor to me, I must insist: don't fork the timeline."
Alice: "Hm, they introduced Chief Petty Officers, starting the Navy's grand tradition of pettiness."
Rand: Oh, and there was a huge stock crash.
Alice: "President Cleveland seems to have spit out some sort of cancer."
Remy: "Now… when you say disrupt… are we talking, like just the big stuff?"
Remy: "As long as I can keep the basics intact, you aren't gonna mind if the history's a wee bit different?"
Rand: That annoying birthday song was published.
Alex: "I did some reading on this after I finished having my panic attack," says Alex. "Apparently as long as you don't really fuck shit up, things will more or less work out."
Alex: "But listen: if you change history badly enough, you fork the timeline, and not only does that not change our present, it creates a dead timeline."
Alice: "The Sea Islands Hurricane hits Charleston," Alice says. "That sounds bad. And also like we must have stopped it, because there aren't any islands there now."
Alex: "Which means you basically spawned an entire reality of people who are all doomed to die more pointlessly than they already are. Please don't."
Alex: "I recognize that meddling with the cosmic order is our responsibility, but it's our responsibility. Don't do that sort of shit lightly."
Alice: "Alex, I take my grim cosmic duty to build a World's Fair out of candy very seriously."
Cynn: "It's a good day to be someone living between all things. Like timelines," Cynn says, finally taking refuge in absurdity as is his Puckish custom.
- Alex smirks at—well, with—Alice.
Remy: "I promise that before anything to change the course of history, I will take a moment to think about it—which is like, a week at normal brain speed—and really think it true to avoid really fucking shit up, or taking needless risks."
Rand: Yeah! This is homespun candy, not some kind of brand-name garbage.
Remy: "Unjustified risks."
Rand: Except the orange Kit Kats.
Remy: "Stupid risks."
Remy: "You know what I mean."
- Cynn whistles up some pixies who begin spinning a cotton candy World's Fair.
Alex: "I dig it.
Alice: "Personally, I'm just planning to do what I feel like and hope for the best," Alice says, brightly.
Cynn: "Faerie floss, ye ken?"
Remy: "We have to do the humans too!"
Cynn: "Really?"
Cynn: "Why are we doing this, again?"
Alice: "And we aren't allowed to just kill them all to save work," Alice says. "I think. It wasn't clear."
Alex: "Her Cosmic Snakiness desired it."
Remy: "Mom really didn't want Alice to go to existential failure wonderland. This is a distraction, I think?"
Alice: "Really, the more important point there is that we're not allowed to empty the World's Fair of all its people for half a second and let that be the half-second we copy."
Alice: "I think."
Cynn: "Oh, you lot just don't know how to handle her. I've been with the old girl for aeons. She thinks I'm quite the charmer, you know."
Alice: "That might just kill our extra credit."
Alice: "It definitely does seem like a distraction," Alice agrees. "However, I have faith."
Cynn: "The World's Fair was already entirely empty for a number of seconds," Cynn says. "I was there."
Rand: Did you make a candy replica while you were about?
Remy: "You have faith in the utility and worth of building a life-size replica of the Chicago World's Fair and its inhabitants out of candy?"
Alice: "Yes," Alice agrees.
Remy: "Well, no less rational than what I believe in."
Alice: "Do you seriously think Tehom'd steer us wrong?"
Alex: "I assume that, if she did, it would be for the greater good."
Remy: "Yeah."
Cynn: "I see that Her Majesty didn't see fit to hand out good sense with her last visit. I miss the old ones. We'd get a nice bloodstone circle going and roast unspeakable horrors by a fire burning green with the cleansing power of Lord Entropy's own hearth."
Alex: "If she chooses to distract us, it's probably because we should be distracted."
Alice: "There's no such thing as the greater good, dear."
Alex: "Well, for a reason that would make sense in retrospect, then."
Alice: "Agreed," Alice says.
Alice: "That's not even steering wrong, really. That's just like the time the airline accidentally sent all my luggage to Dublin and it got there just in time for me to pick it up for my unplanned visit three years later!"
Remy: "Alice not exploding is a reason that makes sense now!"
Alice: "Don't be ridiculous, Remy," Alice says.
Cynn: "So, Our Lady wants Remy distracted?" Cynn asks Alex, pouring the both of them a glass of Atlantis-wine.
Alex: "Let's not dig too many layers of second-guessing here. Let's make this copy."
- Cynn gestures and gets the servants to pour Alex's glass into a watering can.
Alice: "If making a World's Fair out of 1896 is going to stop me from exploding, it's not going to be by distracting me."
Alex: "Look—how about, for starters, we just go enjoy the fair?"
Alice: "Yeah!"
Alice: Alice nods firmly.
Alex: "It sounds interesting. We'll see some old-timey racism."
Alice: "Oh, we should fix that."
Remy: "I'll just need to… get us there."
Remy: Which raises a question.
Remy: What combination of Lightning Quickness and Domain is needed to affect time travel?
Rand: Maybe you should just take the bus?
Remy: My thought is that I could go really fast and then use a Lesser Motion to change the speed from spatial to temporal.
Remy: The… time bus?
Rand: Or that.
Rand: Don't you have a school bus somewhere, being a school?
Remy: I don't think colleges have buses.
Alice: "We were going to take the AI," Alice remembers. "I'm not sure why. Maybe we were going to ask them to memorize everything."
Alex: "Yes, it would save the time of getting everything to hold still."
Alice: Alice googles "how to ask an AI to accompany you to the World's Fair 1896" on the theory that all queries to google go through the campus servers, and thus the AI.
Rand: Isn't the AI on a different campus?
Alex: Yeah, it belongs to/lives with someone else.
Alice: Oh, hm.
Remy: I think I anchored it?
Alice: Alice has forgotten these petty details.
Rand: No, you just left it to pursue a life of sexual libertinism and fanvids for its meat selves.
Rand: And, I dunno, whatever seed AIs do when they aren't granting wishes for their idiot human progenitors.
Alice: Alice reads in fascination about the child hatchery of Coney Island, believing that this google result is one that the AI prepared for her.
Alice: "Oh, wait, I used the wrong World's Fair year."
Rand: So, shall we move on into the time bus, or other contrivance?
Alex: Time bus, time bus!
Alice: Sure!
Alice: I assume it works basically like the Knight Bus, only timelier.
Rand: Arguably, since Alice has Perfect Timing, she'll appear in 1893 as soon as the plot demands she be there.
Remy: It's a bus powered by her!
Rand: Although it occurs to me that driving a bus around 1893 will cause comment.
Alice: Absolutely correct, this is part of why she tossed the idea out so casually. I'm not sure she's 100% aware of Perfect Timing, or at least that not every Power gets it, but she's definitely aware that time is more like a faithful friend than a harsh master.
Alice: If Remy can't get people there or doesn't want to spend the relevant MP Alice can also probably hack her portal gauntlet for 4 TMP.
Remy: I think I can do it for 2 DMP, which is more economical.
Remy: We'll need those gauntlets!
Alex: Alex is just along for the ride!
Alice: Alice cannot avoid causing comment.
Rand: Yeah, she's a famous actress! Everybody knows that.
Remy: Since Alice doesn't need helping getting there himself, Remy lays one hand on Alex and one hand on Cynn. And then he starts to run!
Rand: Anyway, Remy can describe the special effects at his leisure. How do you plan to do the actual work once you're there?
Remy: And then there is luminous hypergel synesthesia and fractal universes collapsing and stars of liquid space.
Remy: And then, the World's Fair!
Remy: …or potentially, thereabouts.
Rand: You appear in the glorious days of the past (non-candy version).
Alex: Alex uses Guising to appear reasonably-clad for the era.
Remy: Remy pulls out some printed-off Wikipedia pages with H. H. Holmes' most likely current locations for the day.
Remy: And then Guises into a more Golden Age costume.
Remy: Proper wizard robes, with stars and thunderbolts and stuff.
Remy: A staff tipped with a lightning bolt.
Rand: I'm sure you'll fit right in.
Rand: What part of the fair's timeline are you popping in for?
Remy: The start.
Rand: The beginning is logical, but a lot of stuff wasn't ready yet, including Mr. Ferris' wheel and some of the buildings.
Alice: Alice heads out to sub for a sick nineteenth-century actress friend of hers in a Chicago production of the Mikado, after which she'll join the others at the Fair.
Remy: Remy heads out to bag a serial killer.
Remy: And rip through the murder hotel to find anyone imprisoned therein.
Alex: Alex goes to take in the whole scene with Cynn.
Cynn: "Oh, dear."
Rand: I doubt you'll find anybody alive, although there's plenty of… unpleasantness.
Rand: I don't feel like roleplaying a sociopath today!
- Cynn drags Alex to the side of an alleyway.
Rand: Remy bags a serial killer, in any fashion he chooses.
Cynn: "Okay, so. I told you all. I'm here."
Rand: Remy earned two Time Disruption Points.
Remy: Good ol' fashioned rope-tying-up-with.
Alex: Alex looks at Cynn in bewilderment. "Like, you were already here? I'm not following."
Alice: "That's troublesome," Alice agrees. "You can't just cross your own timeline like that, Cynn."
Alex: "Oh right, christ, you were alive in 1893."
Cynn: "Like I AM ALREADY HERE."
Alice: "Like Lord English!"
Alice: "I mean, I have never heard of Homestuck."
Alex: "And here. Okay, so. Do you remember encountering us at any time?"
Alex: "I mean, how drunk were you? Do you remember much of anything from the World's Fair?"
Cynn: "No. I mean… I remember a lot. I'm just not sure which memories are credible."
Alice: "Ooh, ooh," Alice says. "Who was the Respite? Can I meet her?"
Cynn: "No!"
Cynn: "Trust me, you don't want to."
Remy: Remy shows up, with a tied up murderer.
Remy: "Alex, wanna do some violence?"
Alice: "Ooh, snacks!"
Alice: "I mean, I have never heard of cannibalism."
Rand: Cynn earns one Time Disruption Point for crossing streams.
Alice: Alice looks disappointed in Cynn's direction.
Cynn: "Alex, can you do your metaphysical shade thing? I do not want to end up meeting myself."
Cynn: "For… any number of reasons. And if I could handle you lot not meeting him too, that'd just be aces."
Alice: "You could give yourself good advice," Alice says. "Like, don't eat the shrimp, or whatever."
Alice: "Not you," Alice asides to the murderer. "I don't mean to imply that you're short."
Alice: "Or that we eat people."
- Cynn looks remarkably uncomfortable around discussion of cannibalism. And not like, in the expected way.
Alice: "I'm fine not meeting past-you," Alice says, "since I already know present-you, but, um, I might need to capture past-you realistically in candy. Well, we might."
Alice: "I'm not actually sure how to realistically represent the Estate of Twilight in candy. I guess something that sparkles in sunlight?"
Alice: "Like, with retsyn?"
Rand: God, Elliott, I put you around candy and your man-eater tendencies come out.
Alex: "Yes, of course. I'll keep you concealed."
Rand: How are you going to do the White City, anyway? Spun sugar?
Cynn: Fairy floss.
Alice: "But that's kind of… I mean, do we need candy with the spiritus Dei? I hadn't even considered Powers who were here."
Rand: I went and looked up someone's video model of what it looked like and wow, it's even more impressive than I was expecting based on the book.
Cynn: "Oh, everyone was here."
Alex: Alex shakes out his coat with a sound like rustling leaves and casts it over Cynn's shoulders. "Be concealed," he murmurs. "No trouble shall see you beneath my shelter."
Alice: "We probably do need candy with the spiritus Dei. We'll get motion capture on attending Powers and then we'll… steal bits off of a candy True Goddess?"
Alice: "Are there candy True Goddesses?"
Cynn: "Well, not everyone. A lot of the Earthies, though. That's what we called ourselves back then."
Alice: "There seems like there ought to be a candy True Goddess."
Alex: I'm thinking that turning my coat in to a protecting blessing is either a Lesser Emulation on my part, or a Lesser Enchantment upon the coat itself. Thoughts?
Rand: I think either works.
- Remy just offs Holmes offscreen.
Alex: Lesser Emulation, then. Slightly cheaper. That's one Persona MP spent.
Alice: Alice squints thoughtfully. "Was anyone we know here?"
Rand: Holmes expires, unmissed.
Cynn: Cynn smiles at Alex. "You are so much better than the old Oak. He went around asking everyone if they were a boy or a girl."
Rand: Well, actually, he had a wife and child who loved him and never twigged to the fact that he was a super-murderer.
Remy: Such things do not concern a god.
Alex: Sucks for them!
Rand: And also some other wives and children who probably figured it out around the time he murdered them.
Alex: Alex looks at Cynn as though he's seriously considering taking away his sheltering shade.
Alice: "Night? Green? Fate?"
Remy: History's proven him guilty. The punishment is just.
Rand: Do you want to do anything to point the police at the evidence? I suppose people will eventually look in the basement.
Remy: A nice letter.
Rand: And thus a rather nasty mess is cleaned up.
Alice: Alice looks vaguely unhappy at Remy, but in the way one looks at an artist who ruins their own painting.
Alice: Rather than any harsher judgment.
Alex: Alex meanders about for a while, enjoying the street food, which is delicious and/or toxic.
Rand: I presume Alice can't actually give someone a respite from being a sociopath.
Rand: Or at least, not unless they start rolling around on the ground saying "Oh, woe, I'm unable to feel normal human empathy and this causes me suffering!"
Rand: Which sociopaths mostly cannot do.
Alice: Not at least without training in a high-tech medical Chancel.
Remy: "I'm open to critique."
- Rand hands Remy two more Time Disruption Points, anyway.
Rand: When you reach the magic number of X, terrible things will happen!
Remy: Was killing him really as big a disruption as stopping him?
Cynn: See, I think this could actually be a fun blog post minigame
Rand: Probably not. Let's say three altogether.
- Rand graciously realigns his completely arbitrary Time Disruption Minigame.
Alice: "Enh," Alice says. "It was a fair enough cop that I don't expect a moral or aesthetic consultation."
Cynn: It would actually work really great with DitV style Fallout Dice
Alice: "Should I go sell my cell phone to Tesla, or did we decide on not messing up the future?"
Rand: He's not really a major historical figure but you've saved a pretty reasonable number of lives which has a huge potential butterfly wingspan.
Alex: "We're going to not mess up the future because I value the illusion of the universe."
Alice: Alice ponders. "Actually, Tesla's fate might need adjustment."
Alice: "If not his technical base."
Remy: "He would be a good superhero."
Rand: So basically, if you keep your Time Disruption score under X, the world can just pop a few of their descendants into the future without trouble and you can claim credit for saving them without problems.
Rand: If you go over X, then the world's capacity to slip in a few minor changes crashes and it has to recalculate the entire history of the twentieth century with full butterfly effect.
Alex: "Guys, listen. I know normally I'm pretty easy going but if you blip my family out of existence with a timewarp, I will not take it well."
Cynn: "I won't let that happen. If it looks like it does, I can take you in-between. Timelines are weird that way."
Alex: "Oh, good."
Alice: "Wait, no," Alice says, after racking her brains for a long time. "I was thinking of Turing. Nevermind. Tesla just… never managed to finish inventing all the awesome stuff he wanted to, but was basically fine, right?"
Alex: "Well, he got screwed on some business deals."
Cynn: "He was a braggart, mostly."
Alex: "But also he's overrated."
Alex: "Still great! But overrated."
Cynn: "Cneph, he was not great."
Alice: "Okay." Alice ponders. "First task: get a capture of everything here at a particular second."
Alice: "Second task: meddling."
Rand: And then Alex and Cynn reenacted future nerd arguments, thus earning yet more Time Disruption Points.
Alice: "Let's buy a 3D model or map of this place at a stand that sells them?" Alice says. "There's gotta be something like that."
Alex: Nuh uh! We were sheltered by my shadow.
Alex: "Hang on a second. I want to do this one."
Alex: "Give me a moment."
Alice: "I'm going to wander out there and risk all kinds of disasters now unless someone has a way to wander out there that doesn't risk… oh, okay."
Alice: Alice looks a little sad.
Alex: "I'm gonna use brute force. Sorry."
Alice: "Hey," Alice says, "as long as it's only 80-90% in my alley, feel free to throw yourself in the way and let me save my energy for stuff that's 100%."
Alex: Would it be possible to just precisely memorize the entire state of the world's fair using an Aspect 6 feat of scouting?
Rand: Yeah, within some tolerances.
Alex: Alex does that. Here's how:
Rand: If you want a specific second, I'd say that's 7 or 8, but you can get a general model that's very accurate to the day at 6.
Rand: Although you don't have the full fair because it isn't all built yet.
Alex: Oh. In that case we should wait! I was just going to burn 4 AMP on doing it the hard way.
Alice: Yeah, that's true.
Alex: I've got all these miracle points!
Rand: I guess you can just go forward in time, if you want.
Alice: Alice peeks out around a corner, trying to estimate how long until it's built.
Alex: Alex spends 0 miracle points to go forward in time at 1 second per second.
Remy: You need an oven to do that!
Rand: It'll be ready in June.
Alex: What time is it now?
Rand: October.
Rand: In retrospect, the committee's continual waffling about whether to move forward with giving Samuel Ferris a commission for months was a big mistake.
Rand: Because the Ferris Wheel was the second biggest attraction.
Alex: We're 10 months early?!
Alice: "I'm gonna go spend a few months giving out respites?" Alice says. "The ways in which this era does not live up to the standards of my era, which is objectively more correct than all previous eras, make me itch, but I don't want to just magic everything better at once and have Alex smash me angrily into goo."
Rand: There were serious scheduling difficulties!
Remy: Hyperaccelerating the set-up would probably count as a bad reason to disrupt the timeline.
Alex: "I'm glad my unspoken threat of smashing in to goo was understood."
Cynn: "Okay, no, can I just recommend that we not spend months here? Or at least not here-here."
Rand: It was frankly a miracle they got the fair up at all, and on top of everything it's amazing that the Ferris wheel actually worked perfectly the first time.
Remy: "Alex, could I… run a timeline change by you?"
Cynn: "Like, Aelfheim. Or Jupiter. I never went to Jupiter during this decade."
Alice: "Obviously not here here," Alice says. "There's like Hawaii and Charleston and such."
Alex: "What's your scheme, Remy?
Remy: "I wanna go kill Hitler."
Alice: "Oh, did the old me get into trouble ever? I could like show up out of nowhere when she was about to die, and be all bam, Respite."
Alice: "Oooooo."
Cynn: "No."
Rand: (The number one attraction was Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. Unfortunately, they decided not to grant him a concession, so he just opened up next door and made a huge amount of money that he didn't have to share.)
Remy: "Give several reasons why."
Cynn: This is the meanest Cynn has ever sounded, and if you look closely, a few stars fall in his eyes, or at least droop down menacingly.
Alex: "If you kill Hitler, the timeline will be drastically fucked—so fucked that you'll fork the timeline."
Rand: Meanwhile, I assume that Alex is wearing a hat over his giant oak bumps.
Alex: "The Holocaust will still happen, and so will the second holocaust of the forked timeline."
Remy: "Okay, so what I just… gave people the tools they needed to resolve the problem on their own?"
Alice: Alice says, "Let's just replace everyone who was going to die in a camp with a candy doppelganger and smuggle the real ones to the future?"
Alex: Okay, hang on a second. Lemme be more blunt about this.
Rand: "Okay, what's all this, then," says a voice behind you.
Alex: At least part of the reason I'm so adamant about the time buggery is because it's necessary for me to continue to be able to engage with the fiction of the game.
Remy: Acknowledged.
Alex: If we exist in a setting where causality isn't actually a thing, I'm not going to be able to suspend disbelief or care about it.
Cynn: "Okay, you guys—you want to fuck with time? Go for it. But you lot aren't Commenced yet, and Old Snakey isn't keen on this bullshit, so she won't bail you out when things go pear-shaped. You don't know what the Court was like back then… errr, back now?"
Remy: "My friends are telling me I can't just go punch Hitler."
Remy: "And maybe they are right."
Alex: Alex, surprising no one, turns to see who is talking.
Rand: The fair suddenly slows to a crawl as you turn around to see who this mysterious person is.
Rand: It is, in fact, two people!
Alex: On top of each other? Wearing a trenchcoat??? Both children??? No, probably not…
Cynn: Two tiny space lesbians!
Remy: Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak NPCs stronger!
Rand: Two young women dressed in highly anachronistic police uniforms and generally what's-all-this-ing.
Remy: "You lot time cops?"
Rand: "How perspicacious!"
Remy: "Well, like I said, not going to be killing Hitler."
Rand: "We are the time sisters," notes the elder sister. "We do time stuff."
Remy: "So we should be good."
Rand: "But today we are not cops," notes the younger sister, "but tax men. Tax sisters."
Alice: "Strictly speaking," Alice says, "my suggestion was not fucking with time. It was entirely in accordance with the timeline, albeit probably a bit casual. But I established quite clearly at the beginning that I was going to be casual with the lives of everyone not in front of me back now."
Cynn: "Ugh."
Rand: "Well, being casual with lives is fine with us," notes the elder sister. "So long as you pay."
Remy: "What authority are you collecting taxes under?"
Rand: "We realized that we can't stop other Sovereigns from meddling with time," says the younger sister. "And we can't threaten terrible vengeance without starting a deadly war."
Rand: "So instead, we're going to tax you based on how much disruption you cause, and harass you until you pay up," says the younger sister.
Rand: "This seems like the most effective method of getting people to be more careful."
Alice: "Nope!" Alice says. "If I pay danegeld once for a flippant attitude, I'll never get rid of the dane."
Alex: "I'm sorry, I'm a bit confused. Are you Noble, or some other sort of person I'm unfamiliar with?"
Remy: "Can we deduct our rent?"
Rand: "We are both the Power of Time, at the same time. Time, you see."
Alex: "Oh, that's new. I've never seen that before."
Alex: "Well, subjectively, at least."
Alice: "Though, really, since 'casual' involves not meddling, or meddling in a way that preserves the timeline rather than grappling with real ethical issues, it's really more of a tax-free good in the first place."
Rand: "Grapple as you please! We've given up on stopping you."
Rand: "But we will act to make your lives difficult in direct proportion to your time disruption index, so be aware."
Alice: "Only one of you should harass me about the decisions I'm not making," Alice says. "That'd be a much better metaphor."
Alex: "Perhaps we can petition you for assistance with our project."
Rand: I'm not actually sure whether Alice is still planning to do disruptive things or not.
Cynn: "I'd advise against trying to antagonize them," Cynn says, realizing he should clarify that he's talking to the Time Sisters about his familia.
Alex: "And thus we'll get out of your hair faster, and we'll owe you one."
Alice: Alice was never planing to do disruptive things.
Rand: "We're open to petitions. Let me give you our cell phone number."
Alex: Alex's threats of violence were effective!
Rand: Actually not planning, or planning to do things she thinks aren't disruptive?
Alex: "I don't think we get signal back now, and I lack a miraculous phone."
Alice: "Casual" means not prioritizing the end of human suffering over all else.
Alice: Alice feels that as soon as she said that she had to be casual about the fates of people in the past rather than taking on the burden of saving all of them, three people jumped on her for wanting to disrupt the timeline saving all of them. This is somewhat stiffening her spine about the suggestion to work around the timeline because she feels if she is misunderstood on that point then she can't trust them to understand what she is talking about on the substitution either.
Rand: "We have decided that you do."
Alex: Alex shrugs, tries calling them, and briefly explains the whole spiel—candy replica, World's Fair, people included, yadda yadda.
Rand: "Hm, it's pretty simple to do a timestop and let you study this period indefinitely."
Rand: "We could also fork the timeline harmlessly and just let you cover the whole thing in marzipan and take it home."
Alex: "The timestop sounds good. How much would we owe you?"
Alex: Alex is nothing if not patient.
Rand: "Let's say, a favor involving giving shelter and some education to a few historical figures we may need to evacuate at some point in the future, because of reasons."
Remy: "That sounds like a blast."
Remy: "The students would love that."
Remy: "Anyone not in favor of taking this sweet deal?"
Alex: "What do you think, Cynn? Sounds good to me…"
Cynn: "Acceptable. Got it. Let's do it and then leave and never speak of this era."
Rand: And thus you find yourself with a conveniently frozen fair to work with!
Remy: "The world!"
Alex: "Za waruuuudo."
Remy: "…'s fair"
Alice: "It really isn't, Remy," Alice says. "We've been over this."
Alex: Alex blesses the whole Familia with the eternal timeless patience of an oak tree.
Remy: Remy finally remembers that his Domain goes funky when he's in weird timelines.
Alice: "Man, ten months is going to take a long time."
Remy: "It's a good thing I thought to bring my chronological stabilizer."
Rand: This is why it's so important to bring a work force of elves.
Rand: At all times!
Alex: Alex has no plans here beyond following his Passion: No Shortcuts, Just Do The Hard Work (3) trait and writing everything down.
Rand: And this, I suppose, you do.
Rand: …in retrospect, maybe I should have made Terrible Time Problems more of a threat.
Alex: It probably would have been more of a threat if I wasn't constantly desperate to avoid them.
Rand: Then I shall have to introduce one.
Rand: So, you work diligently, just doing the hard work, imbued with the patience of oak and the help of plenty of free student labor.
Rand: And then, your phone beeps!
Rand: The time-disruption-measuring app the time sisters gave you is giving you an alert.
Alex: Oh no!
Alex: Alarum.
Rand: Your time disruption score is going up, for reasons that are not immediately apparent.
Alex: "What in the…?"
Alex: "Hey, Remy!" He waves his phone. "Cynn!"
Remy: "Wasn't me!"
Alex: "Might be an outside force. What else moves parallel to time?"
Alice: "Fruit."
Remy: "Other really fast things?"
Alice: (I have no idea where or when we are, because we've gone from alone ten months before we could copy the World's Fair to a time stop at some point with lots of free student labor.)
Rand: I was assuming you'd moved to the height of the fair and had time stopped then.
Alex: (Yeah I'm a little confused myself. Let's take a minute to clear up the temporo-spatial elements.)
Rand: And then used that opportunity to bring in student help.
Alex: (Okay, that makes sense…)
Alice: OK. So we are currently in timestopped June… 1894? …with lots of… Underbridge, I assume, rather than Chicago… students.
Rand: Yes.
Alice: OK.
Alice: "The Lands Beyond Creation," Alice offers.
Alex: (And we owe The Sisters of Time a big babysitting favor in the future.)
Alice: (Alice disclaims that debt, but will graciously permit you to owe it.)
Alex: (Hee.)
Alice: "But seriously, fruit. Everything is always fruit, and time flies like an arrow."
Alex: "It's possible. No idea where the hazard is coming from… Given that we have the entirety of the Ordinary World to muck around in, at least in this instant, we're not likely to just bump in to it."
Alice: "Does the app say if it's our time disruption or just general?"
Alex: Does it?
Alice: "In theory a really spirited human could burst free of frozen time and be spying on us, but that's like one in a billion and you guys already said Tesla wasn't all that."
Rand: The app is fairly simple, but it seems to feel that you own this, although whether that's accurate or just the time sisters generically blaming you for anything in this timeframe is unknown.
Alex: "There are definitely a billion humans on the planet. But that seems unlikely, even then."
Alice: "Agreed," Alice says. "Unless the time stop was global."
Alex: "Wouldn't it have to be?"
Alice: Alice squints thoughtfully. "Not a stop, I think?"
Rand: You seem to be in a small bubble of frozen time that you can move around in.
Alice: "Like, most time screwery, yes, but a stop doesn't have to worry about momentum."
Alice: "From the inside."
Alex: Ah, okay. So there's a limit to how far we can go.
Rand: Time isn't actually moving outside the bubble, but you have a limited space in which you can move around.
Rand: You aren't actually sure what happens if you try to leave the bubble.
Alex: Alex goes to check to see if someone has tried to leave the bubble. Are all of our grad students accounted for?
Alice: Alice waves her hands around spookily. "Reprieeeeeves tell to me your seeecrets," and lesser divination to see if anyone had a reprieve from being time stopped in the past few minutes.
Rand: Hm, someone does seem to be missing, a grad student rather than a contemp.
Alex: "Heck. They probably wandered off."
Rand: Has one of your students decided to go AWOL and alter history?
Alex: Seems totally plausible!
Remy: "Someone goes off to recklessly alter history and it's not even me?"
Remy: "This kid is so expelled!"
Alex: "Alright, well…" Alex furrows his brow. "I'm trying to figure out if it matters when we go get them or if it doesn't matter if we finish making the candy double first."
Alice: "If we wait it multiplies entities," Alice says, "since it will lead to Time sisters appearing."
Remy: "Should we just call the Time Twins and let them know what's going on?"
Alex: "I'll do that. Can you scout the surrounding area and see where Frank went?"
Alice: "I'm sure whatever they do it will be a strict improvement on telling us to fix it ourselves," Alice says.
Rand: Is this person Frank?
Rand: I will let you tell me who it is, and what you suspect they may be doing in the past.
Alice: "Just out of curiosity, does anyone remember actually making the decision to bring the students in? I'm not sure if that happened in a severed time segment or while I was grumbling."
Remy: Remy scouts the area within the bubble for signs of where Frank left.
Alice: "If no one remembers, we need to be prepared for a fight with the Time Twins later. I mean, not now, obviously, now we need to deal with this. But."
Alice: Alice ponders. "Well, later, or previously. Whatever."
Rand: It is possible that I just assumed you were going to do that based on your earlier comments about studen projects.
Alex: Frank Westin is one of our grad students, yeah. I think.
Alex: "It happened while you were grumbling, sorry."
Alex: "This whole thing is going a bit quick and a bit hectic; I apologize if you're getting left out of key decisions."
Remy: Remy's plan was always to exploit the grad students, so he approves in spirit
Alice: "Enh," Alice says. "I just saw a possible time thing."
Rand: Meanwhile, Alex contacts the time sisters. They indicate that somebody has left the bubble, but they can't pinpoint their current location until they've already caused a disruption, only that a disruption is likely to occur.
Rand: (For that you would have to call the space brothers.)
Remy: Can we leave the bubble without compromising the time stop?
Alice: I don't know what Frank Westin would be doing, outside of trying to warn Michael about the whole burn notice thing, and really it's too early for that.
Rand: Yeah, you can do that.
Rand: Ultimately I am letting one of you decide what he might be doing, because it should probably be something you can be conflicted about.
Alice: Though really, the likely possibilities are: meddle with something this year, preemptive something about the World Wars, or just wandering around for curiosity and either marrying or killing someone.
Alice: Hm.
Alice: Investing?
Alice: I mean, I guess someone could be trying to get out there and establish a tech empire.
Alice: Frank Westin sounds like a tech empire establishing kind of name.
Alex: That sounds more interesting than 'killing Hitler'.
Alex: Also more Grad Student'y.
Rand: Would you be conflicted about that?
Alex: …well, we could use the rent money…
Rand: I mean, I guess that could work if you're actually prepared to be conflicted instead of just "no, stop that."
Alex: Could it actually help pay rent?
Rand: That honestly probably depends on how you interpret the "rent is too high" joke.
Rand: Under some interpretations the rent is always too high, so you can never have enough money to pay it.
Alice: I think it would be too hard to feel conflicted.
Alice: Maybe he's planning to leave a Western Union message for someone Marty McFly style.
Alice: That opens up the whole 20th century for changes.
Alice: And doesn't really let him stop world wars so it wouldn't be that.
Alex: Indeed. It's not… It's not as hubristic.
Alex: That sounds hazardous and interesting, yet… not something we should obviously interdict.
Rand: Hm, so you track Frank down using your various powers to a bank, where he's attempting to make arrangements to have a sealed envelope kept for seventy-five years and then delivered to his own father.
Rand: Banks are super-skeptical about this kind of thing, but he's rather persistent.
Alex: Ooh, interesting.
- Alice stops googling polio vaccine history with her annoyingly slow browser.
Alex: Alex enters the bank lobby, looking appropriately old-timey thanks to Guising, and spots Frank in his argument, perhaps?
Rand: That sounds reasonable!
Alice: Alice does not look quite as old-timey. It's the haircut.
Rand: It's not like you could fool people anyway.
Rand: Everybody knows you're a famous actress!
Rand: People flock to get your autograph, although they're a little bit unclear about exactly what plays you've been in.
Alice: "Well, I've recently been in a remake of the Avengers," Alice explains. "And the new Phoenix movie. Er, I mean, musical."
Rand: That sounds reasonable, people figure, given that everybody knows Alice Acacia.
Alice: "The Steed and Peel, of course, not the other one."
Rand: Nobody understands this reference, but everyone pretends to so as not to look uncultured.
Alice: Alice says, "And you?" to a perfectly ordinary man in a bowler. "I'm sure you're in show business, aren't you?"
Alex: Alex decides that if Alice winds up inspiring Charlie Chaplin to get in to showbiz, that's fine. Time loops are okay.
Rand: That seems like a reasonable thing to have happen, which saves me from having to figure out which famous person he is.
Rand: (I was considering Mark Twain, who actually did come for the fair, but was sick and wound up never seeing it.)
Alex: Alex slips away from Alice and Charlie to go bug Frank about what the fuck he's doing.
Rand: Frank freezes a bit upon seeing… who are you to him, anyway?
Alex: Alex is perhaps things to Frank. First, Alex is head of the life sciences department. Second, possibly, Alex is the Oak-Lord. (I have to imagine that a lot of the grad students are nobilisers, and perhaps Frank is one of them.) Right now he's wearing a wool suit and an oak cane.\n\n"Frank, first things first. Are you okay?"
Alex: I imagine he doesn't have any, like… money, at least none that's usable in 1893, so I don't know if he's been getting enough food or shelter or anything.
Rand: He actually seems well-equipped as far as that goes.
Rand: Period clothes and so forth.
Remy: Remy glares daggers from across the bank lobby.
Rand: He looks at you sheepishly, as if not sure how okay he's going to be.
Alex: Alex glances over at the banker who Frank is accosting. "Sir, my associate and I need a moment to discuss his project. Please excuse us?"
Rand: "Oh, you know," he says, "I was just, uh… trying to help my family become very rich in the future," he finishes, deciding that honesty is the only policy.
Alex: Alex squints. "Okay, well… when were you born?"
Rand: 1990.
Alex: "So you wanted to drastically revise your own family's timeline immediately before you would have been conceived."
Rand: "It seemed worth a shot!"
Rand: "It's not like you have many chances to change history."
Alex: "Frank, you almost retconned your own conception."
Alex: "I have no idea what would have happened but I'm pretty sure it would not have been fun to watch."
Alex: "Having said that… …in the interest of science… and of the Dark…"
Alex: "…I guess you can take a shot if you really want."
Remy: Remy goes nuts.
Alex: (ROFL irl)
Alice: Alice befriends Charlie Chaplin, dazzles this and that person, grants one man a reprieve from the nightmares that haunt him, causes another to forget entirely about the home and the family there that are terrified of him, and silently erases the small tumor in one woman's brain. Finally, a couple MP down, she gives a lollipop to the last young fan and makes her way over to the group.
Rand: "I guess I was assuming that historical inertia would keep me in existence?"
Alex: "Let's find out."
Alice: "I heard that, Alex," Alice says, beaming. "You rock. Er, tree. Oak."
Remy: "What about forking the timeline, Alex? That thing you didn't let me kill Hitler because of?"
Alex: "No way this'll fork the timeline. Too small scale."
Alex: "But we may get to see him get eaten by langoliers."
Remy: "Butterfly effect, dog."
Alex: "And then we can CATCH a langolier!"
Alex: "If the butterfly effect applied, we'd already be hosed!"
Alice: "That would be neat."
Rand: "I'm feeling less enthusiastic about this plan."
Remy: "And he just wants to make his family rich! That's just animal kinship instincts."
Alice: "What do langoliers look like? Just the name is awesome."
Alice: "They're like alligator-lizards, right?"
Alice: "We could have a sleigh?"
Rand: I seem to recall that they look kind of like FF bombs.
Remy: They're like Pac-Man.
Remy: …
Alice: Alice ponders. "You wanna catch a langolier, you gotta think like a langolier."
Alice: Alice stares at Frank with a hungry malevolence.
Alex: Alex looks at Frank. "Your call, buddy!"
Alice: "Honestly," Alice says, the expression fading away. (Acting!) "I'd go for it."
Alice: "You are not going to get many chances."
Alice: "If you don't take them…"
Alex: "Yeah, but you want to stick your head in a big machine that makes you die because it has 'All Ur Dreams Come True' written on the side."
Remy: "There's no pressure. Whatever choice you make, I'm still gonna jam you up with so much bureaucratic bullshit you won't be able to see straight."
Alice: "Well, you can live out your life, but what kind of life?"
Alex: "Welcome to time bullshit, Frank. This was why we told you to stay in the time bubble! Now this is your problem."
Alice: "What's the point of living if you turn down the chance at real magic, Frank?"
Alex: (Man I'm going to have a hoot telling my husband about this one.)
Alice: "This is your chance to become something more than you were, something with a chance to be more than you were."
Alice: "This is hope."
Remy: "You aren't qualified to make this decision, Frank."
Alice: "Or you can go back and you can live a small gray life where people always tell you you're not qualified."
Remy: "Step away, and avoid doing incalculable damage."
Remy: "It is a matter for angels and gods to decide, and you are neither, nor we're meant to be."
Alice: "Everything you do in life is a choice, Frank," Alice says. "There's nothing about it being in the past that makes the damage more incalculable."
Alice: "Every butterfly you step on in 2017 is a 2037 that doesn't happen."
Alice: "The only difference is that here, you are informed in the way that in most times only gods can be informed."
Alice: "For clarity, even gods don't know about that 2037 yet, I think, but that is beside the point of the matter."
Alex: Alex is metaphorically eating popcorn. This shit is amazing.
Rand: Frank attempts to run.
Alex: "I'm starting to understand the appeal of the Dark. This shit is great," says Alex, watching him scamper away.
Rand: In the face of two gods giving him contradictory advice, ordinary logic returns to prominence.
Alice: "Stop! Thief!"
Alex: "Be fair, Alice. He made his own call."
Alice: Alice sighs, and cuts off the echoes of her own words, slice. (Ghost Reprieve.)
Alex: Alex looks to Alice. "I think I get it now, though. The Dark, I mean. Really."
Alex: "Or at least, I'm closer."
Remy: Remy catches up with Frank, his demeanor much more relaxed. "Good call."
Alice: "Yay," Alice says, without actually cheering but with genuine happiness.
Alex: "It always seemed so… cruel, from a distance. In the abstract. But…" He sighs, shakes his head. "That's from a human perspective."
Alex: "From our perspective, letting people pick their poison is much more defensible."
Remy: "Sorry about threatening to jam up. I was annoyed I didn't get to rewrite history my way."
Alice: "The thing is, it's not always poison," Alice says.
Alice: "They call it the Dark because it's poison so often. So much of the time. But if it were always poison no one would ever drink it."
Alex: "Indeed. And we don't always know what it would be. Like, I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen there."
Alice: "That isn't why it isn't always poison, or anything. I'm not saying it's connived. I'd leave if it were. It's just … important."
Remy: "But you showed prudence, even at the height of hubris. I think that's pretty great."
Rand: "It… seemed the best thing to do," admits Frank. "The argument in favor was less convincing when somebody else said it out loud."
Alice: "I am being so good in not mailing the letter for him," Alice says. "Man, people should praise me and my self-control."
Remy: I anchor him, under Bond: I can only grant my power to those I judge worthy
Remy: "Have you ever heard the students gossiping about my secret seminar?"
Alice: Alice sighs and heads out of the bank.
Rand: "The one about power jogging? I never understood that joke."
Alex: Alex ambles along with. "I will praise you. You are allowing him to choose his own end. Not everyone wants glory. It's okay if some people just want to grow slow and steady in the sun."
Remy: "Unto the worthy, I may grant my power. Fill your soul with speed-stuff, tune your mind into the cosmic frequencies of absolute reality. Superhero stuff."
Remy: "Want in?"
Rand: "It feels kind of like I'm being offered the same choice I just rejected."
Rand: "No offense."
Remy: "Fair enough."
Remy: "It's a standing offer. If you ever need super-speed, or a letter of recommendation, just come by my office."
Rand: "Thanks. Now I should go back to doing ordinary grad student things inside the giant timestop bubble."
Rand: "Oh, god, what is my life?"
Alice: "It always seems like it's going to be beautiful when they die," Alice says. She looks away thoughtfully. "But it's really kind of awful. It's just the build-up that's good. I guess that makes it okay that I am so much better at saving them, huh?"
Alice: "Not that I saved that one, I'm not claiming a loss in the I meant that column, I mean, you know, generally."
Alex: "It's always awful when people die," says Alex wearily. "But we all die regardless."
Alex: "It's okay to let people choose how, and give them the opportunity to make that choice."
Alex: "The Dark is… …If every death is a suicide, that means every death is a choice. But the Dark often seems to want to bend that."
Alex: "Stretch the definition of 'choice'.
Alex: "But maybe that's just a hazard of the philosophy.
Alice: "Enh," Alice says. "Everyone's doing the best they can. Not everyone has guns that shoot sleeping."
Alice: "I mean, take that guy Remy killed. It's not like that would have been much morally different if Remy were Dark."
Alice: "I worry more about the people I save," Alice says. "Every time I save someone I get to free them from a chain on their fate, a thing that is dragging them down, a thing that is warping them, but I can't ask, and I … have to warp them to do it."
Alex: "Violence is everywhere, said Wise Frog."
Alice: "My conscience is buried under a mountain of living people," Alice says.
Alice: "My hands are stained with green and bloodlessness."
Alice: "Not that you're any different, you sap."
Alice: Alice giggles helplessly at the pun, making it unclear if she actually meant the words themselves.
Alice: Alice's hands are probably not as inconsolably, grievously green after a long labor in a timeless bubble but, y'know, she might need to spend some more time in actual time for it to finish clearing.
Remy: We probably get some Time Points for greening the past.
Alice: Particularly when the virulent green handprint and trail it left on the wall, discovered by one of Entropy's Powers, leads him to found a support group out of desperate hope.
Rand: A reprieve from his eternity of crimson loneliness!
Rand: But will his wish ever come true?
Rand: Or is hope the cruelest torture of all?
Alice: Alice and player are currently operating on a theory, as befits Perfect Timing's mechanics but not necessarily the game's, that many changes will tend to form stable loops unless you already know or have good reason to believe that they won't. It may just be Alice, though, because of those mechanics.
Rand: That sounds reasonable.
Rand: I considered having Frank wind up growing up to be one of Incomparable U's football players if he'd gone through with it via some ridiculous time shenanigan.
Alice: Alice is uncertain why knowledge matters but it might relate to how flower rites and Affliction breaking work.
Alex: Causality is rough.
Rand: Presumably after becoming rich his family would have changed back to their old, grapefruit-based name.
Alice: Heehee.
Alice: "All right," Alice says, after everyone is back in the bubble. "Did that resolve things?"
Remy: "Let me check the app."
Alice: Alice has steadfastly refused to download the app herself because she doesn't want her phone tainted with icky causality.
Rand: Probably somewhat wise.
Rand: The app has lowered your time rating from "Terrible, Expensive Decisions About To Be Made" to "Within Your Bad Decision Budget."
Remy: "I'm taking all credit for this."
Alice: "That's fine," Alice says. "Just bear in mind that any taken credit you use will accumulate a large amount of interest in the next century."
Rand: And thus it was, I guess, that you built a giant replica of the Chicago World's Fair.
Alice: Yay!
Rand: Which eventually led to the appearance in your Chancel of the world's largest mouse.
Remy: Now to show Snake Mom!
Rand: But that is a story for another time.
Alice: Snake Mom will probably appreciate the World's Largest Mouse.
Rand: No doubt that was snake mom's plan all along. So far to go, just to get dinner!
Rand: "That's great," says snake mom. "Now, uh… oh, you should make a movie! About lawyers who solve mysteries. And it has to be the number one film worldwide."
Remy: "Tehom…"
Alex: Hee hee hee.
Rand: You are beginning to suspect that Tehom mostly wants to keep you occupied, so you'll stay out of trouble.
Rand: But that's a matter for another week, as Alice tries to leave Creation while starring in a movie at the same time!
Rand: It's the Noble equivalent of going on a date with two girls at once.
Alice: It's fine, we'll film on site at Ssyagna Vos!
Alice: It can be like the Blair Witch Project, Esquire.
Alex: Awesome.
Alex: Good session. :smile:
Alice: Thanks for running!
Rand: I kind of regret not letting Frank do anything really crazy, but under the circumstances it seemed unlikely.
Rand: Perhaps he will appear again later and embrace his destiny as an underpants-wearing hero.