Library, Saturday, August 7

[one-who-goes.livejournal.com]

Henry never went back to his apartment Saturday night; the couch in his office was a perfectly decent place to sleep.

And, when he looked out the window and saw some of the things across the landscape, he was pretty sure he'd made the right choice. There were pterodactyls out there.

After making what he suspected would be the first of many pots of coffee, Henry set up the research tables with the books that seemed like they'd been most useful the day before, then settled down with some of the back library files about old invasions open in front of him. He wasn't sure if it'd teach him anything new, but it was something to do.

Comments

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

The machine itself hadn't been able to tell her much, and Anemone had been sorely tempted to tinker with it and install a compac drive so that she could hear it better, but she'd done lots of very detailed drawings of its parts.

She poured over the official blueprints. She knew machines and how they worked, what made them sing, which made it only a matter of time before she figured out what was missing.

After an hour or so she stopped, looked at her notes, looked at the blueprints, and then let her head thump on to the table. "We're all morons."

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[one-who-goes.livejournal.com]

"What's that?" Henry asked, glancing up from his own reading. "If you need a break, you should go take one before your head explodes."

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"I don't need a break," Anemone grumbled, rubbing at her eyes. "If I only had a brain."

"It's obvious," she continued, annoyed with herself for not seeing it earlier. "If you think about it, I mean."

"Fandom Island is a fulcrum, right? A place for the various realities to pivot around, intersecting all of them. But what keeps these realities from tipping more to one direction or another, and putting more weight on the island? What keeps the whole thing spinning without sending the other worlds out of wack?"

"'Quantum: the minimum unit of any physical entity involved in an interaction,'" she recited, tapping a sketch in her notebook, a section of the machinery that she'd drawn while laying on the floor yesterday. "The quantum balancer. The interactions are all wrong. The blueprints say it should be right here."

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[one-who-goes.livejournal.com]

It took Henry a moment to make sense of that. "So it's like one of the pieces, one of the parts that makes the island work, just got lost? Any chance we can make a new one?"

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"The bit that keeps in check how Fandom interacts with the realities around it," Anemone confirmed, nodding. "At least, that's my understanding of how it works. How to make one...I have no idea."

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[one-who-goes.livejournal.com]

"That's still progress," Henry said, sounding encouraged. "Where there's progress, there's hope."

Or so his doctors kept telling him.

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"That's what people keep telling me, although I think it's morbidly funny when they say that," Anemone agreed. "Do you know the meaning behind an anemone flower?"

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[one-who-goes.livejournal.com]

"In the Victorian language thing?" Henry clarified. "Nope. I've read it but it falls right out of my head, I'm afraid."

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"It's the windflower, the 'death of hope,'" she replied. "I prefer to think of it as that I'm so stubborn, that when I set my mind to it, people don't have a hope of getting what they want."

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[one-who-goes.livejournal.com]

"In that case," Henry said, "whatever broke the doodad under the island should be running scared."

He wasn't sure he believed it. But he wanted to make somebody smile.

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[isntabitpretty.livejournal.com]

Sara had been going through the books herself, but found herself at quite a loss to make sense of the newfangled and otherworldly technological terms involved.

But this girl seemed to know what she was looking for -- so she hurried over with the drawing (http://community.livejournal.com/fandomtownies/5350634.html?thread=209320682#t209320682) she'd made last night in hand and a book, a bright pink Post-It note jutting from between the pages to mark her spot, under her arm.

"I'm afraid I can't make heads nor tails of what this ought to be," she admitted somewhat shamefacedly, "other than that --"

Her eyes fell on the blueprints, and she pointed at the corresponding section of the machinery, holding her drawing up beside it. "Yes, of course, there is something missing there!"

Hurriedly she flipped the book back open to the marked page. "I haven't the slightest clue what a 'dimension stabilizer' might be. D'you suppose it's important?"

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"I would guess anything that's missing is important," Anemone agreed, looking at her sketch. "Especially any part with 'stabilizer' in the name. You've got a nice eye for detail with your lines."

Anemone's non-linear mind, ladies and gentlemen.

"Well, now we know that more than one piece is missing. That's not good."

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[isntabitpretty.livejournal.com]

"Sara gave her a bemused look. "My father's an artist; I suppose it runs in the family."

She stared at the blueprints for a few moments longer, but they didn't make any more sense to her now than they had before. "These missing pieces," she said slowly. "Have they gone wherever the missing pieces of the island are, as well, do you think?"

And what was it like there? She couldn't help being distracted by the thought; insatiable curiosity waited for no crisis, it seemed.

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[death-of-hope.livejournal.com]

"Or one of the monsters roaming around ate them. Sometimes if you kill a monster, it gives you loot. I guess they eat it, and you find it in their stomachs." Three years later, and Bart Allen's influence on Anemone was still apparent.

"But it's probably more likely that they went wherever the other things went."

Re: Mod the Library - Research [8/07]

[isntabitpretty.livejournal.com]

Sara . . . had no idea what to make of that, and her expressive face went wide-eyed with consternation; she managed to shake it off, luckily.

(She might ask about it later, though.)

"Then there's hope the others who were taken might be able to find them." She drew a breath and nodded. "Oh, if it's not so, don't tell me otherwise? I've never been this terrified in my life, not even the time we thought the Judgment Day was coming."