Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

[mouthy-merc.livejournal.com]

Well.

It was raining popsicles and suntan lotion today. Because Fandom liked to make the newbies cry sometimes. Yes, the island had a sense of humor about these things.

We've all learned to accept that and move on with our lives. Well, all of us except for Britta. But she's the worst.

[Please wait for OCD is up! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here and here, in an effort to keep browsers from breaking for as long as possible.]

Comments

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan considered that phrasing. "... Did they at least tell you that you'd be teaching?" he asked. "Because apparently they don't always give everyone that particular memo."

He glanced around. "Also, seriously, the popsicles and sunblock are pretty tame, as things go around here. So... Yeah. Welcome to Fandom, where occasionally things try to eat us, but at least we get free candy." Eyeing the trajectory of a falling popsicle, Ronan reached outside his shield to grab it as it was going by. Mmm, purple.

What? It was hot out.

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

Kaidan lifted an eyebrow at that one, but he was not one to comment. Not around someone he'd just met, while he was here on official duty. "They did tell me that," he offered. "I've gotten the full briefing. Or... as full as they were willing to get, I guess."

He held up his hand. Some sunscreen fell onto his kinetic barriers, then dripped slowly downwards.

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan nodded. "That's good, at least."

The barrier had caught his eye, of course. "Is that a tech barrier," he asked, "or magical? Or something else?"

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

Kaidan blinked. "It's, uh... it's a kinetic barrier," he said. "I... assumed you were using similar technology."

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan shook his head. "Second lesson of Fandom Island," he said, "is that magic is real." Beat. "Sometimes. Thiiiiis is probably going to be an adjustment.

"See, the island's kind of a... nexus. For different worlds, different times, that kind of thing. Sometimes, it's different versions of Earth; sometimes it's other planets; sometimes, it's other dimensions entirely. Where I come from, there are wizards, but we've had mutants, vampires, aliens... Even superheroes. Basically, if you can think of it, it probably exists here somewhere."

Brain breaking yet, Kaidan?

"If it's any consolation, my particular kind of magic seems to follow the most scientific set of rules out of any I've seen."

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

... Sure, Ronan. Say that kind of thing to the space wizard biotic tech geek, why don't you. Now he was going to be obsessing about how this worked all day.

"Wait, let me get this straight," he said, rubbing at his jaw. "You're saying that this place functions as a secondary mass relay? How is that possible?" Beat. "And define 'magic'? I mean... it wasn't too long ago, someone might've said that biotics were a lot like magic."

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan shrugged. "I'm not familiar with the idea of a mass relay," he explained, "so I can't really compare them. It's more like...

"Okay, so, I live on Earth. This particular Earth has a form of magic: certain people are offered an oath by the Powers That Be, and upon taking it are given the opportunity to fight entropy by use of a force best described as magic. We learn a language called the Speech, with which we perform spells -- but for us, it's not as simple as just... waving a wand and saying a few magic words. We have to be able to describe perfectly both the current state of what we want to change, and then the state we want to change it into. But then, a friend of mine is from a different Earth -- he's a witch, not a wizard, and his magic is much closer to the 'say a few words, wave a wand, brew a potion' variety. A lot less precise.

"Fandom acts as... maybe a bridge? Between these worlds. It's a place where all these different worlds meet up, where everything works. Different times, too -- when I first came to the island, I left 2006 and arrived in 2007." He grinned. "It was still 2006 back home."

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

Kaidan's sizable eyebrows were threatening to crawl upwards onto his forehead - he was definitely going to be spending the day obsessing about this.

Which was just as well. It was... probably healthier than sitting around brooding about Ash and Shepard.

"You... don't know about mass relays," he said. Better take it from the top. Find some common ground here. "It's a technology that makes use of mass effect drives to accelerate relay-to-relay movement to well above the speed of light. Primary relays are one-way. Secondary... well, they can take you to any number of places. I... suppose there might be some wiggle room in terms of bending the fabric of space-time, but I've never heard it documented before."

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

"Ah, okay, yeah. Similar in concept, then," Ronan agreed, "but probably different in execution."

He paused. "Well, I say that, but I don't know if anyone knows exactly how the island actually works, so we'll add it to the list of possibilities." He considered something -- like the tech Kaidan was wearing -- and asked, "... So what year is it where you come from?"

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

"2183," Kaidan offered. "Heard you were on a different calendar."

Possibly Alliance command hadn't completely gotten the gist of the island.

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan shook his head. "Not... exactly a different calendar," he explained. "Remember when I said that this island crosses times, too?"

He'll give that one a second to sink in.

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

"Yes," Kaidan said. "How does that work? I mean... I'm thinking about mass effect fields-- they really do tweak the curvature of space a little, so maybe... what were you saying about this magic of yours again? If it's got laws, it has to be based in something... right?"

Clinging onto the unexplained phenomenon like a tech-geeky lifeline? Oh, hell yes.

In fact, he was reaching for his arm, activating his omni-tool to take some readings.

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan nodded. Really, he was just as happy to geek out about stuff. "I mean, wizardry is about bending the universe's laws -- if not outright breaking them -- but it's a case of having to know the way things work before figuring out how to bend them. Like, okay, so -- a couple of friends of mine was stuck facing these aliens who'd taken over one of the galaxy's major world-gating facilities? And they'd managed to get behind a shield -- tech-based, but they were bolstering it with wizardry, too. Anyway, the aliens they were fighting had nuclear-core driven weaponry that was going to take the shield down... faster than they'd have liked? So one of my friends, she got this brilliant idea to actually tighten the magnetic containment on the core of one of the weapons, so she figured out how to describe what she wanted, and then did the spell. This... concentrated the fusion reaction? And then she told the containment to buckle, which it did, to... rather explosive results."

Callahan's Unfavorable Instigation. Wasn't every wizard who had a spell named after them before they could legally drive.

"... And that is so cool." Yes, Ronan was just noticing the omni-tool. "Holographic computer? The Rirhait are working on some of those for the Crossings, and I've seen a few other planets who have tech like it, too."

[Aaand I have to run to work. SP? I'll ping if/when I can from work, but at this point probably won't be around much 'til after 10 or so my time!]

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

"I think we could actually manage something similar with mass effect fields," Kaidan mused. "I mean... we'd have to understand the general layout of the weapon as well. But biotics is mostly about firing off the right muscle groups."

He quickly waved away the analysis screen, so only the basic tool itself was showing. "It's an omni-tool," he offered, "Diagnostics and manufacturing-- I really did wind up a long way from home..."

[[ sp is awesome! ]]

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

"Yeah, I forget the specifics -- this was several years ago, now -- but Nita definitely would have had to have had some way to get ahold of specs, if not outright schematics," Ronan explained. "To know what kind of core she was working with, at the very least."

He was eyeing the omni-tool even closer -- hope you don't mind him leaning in, Kaidan, although he's not about to touch without permission. "You know, it's actually kind of similar to some of the Manual interfaces I've seen," Ronan mused. "That's -- the Manual is the source of our wizardry. Combination instruction manual, spellbook, messaging system, newsfeed... It's, uh, versatile. Kind of does whatever we need it to, when we need it, at least within reason. Unfortunately, my variant doesn't have a physical form or I'd show you."

It made the messaging functions a bitch to work with, too. Ronan was still wondering if there was a way to petition for an upgrade. Not that he'd admit to tech envy, but Darryl's WizPhone was a sleek piece of equipment.

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

"It's not human technology," Kaidan offered. "Though we've done our fair share of updates, I guess." He threw Ronan a mildly quizzical look. "No physical form, huh? So it's... what. Telepathic?"

That was. Uh. Weird.

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan screwed up his face, trying to think of the best way to explain it. "Not... exactly? But sure, we'll go with that, it's probably the easiest way to describe it."

Sometimes he just knew things he hadn't known a few seconds previous, that's all.

"Looks like you've adapted them pretty well for human use," Ronan added. "Or do you have a lot of humanoid aliens in your universe? It seems to vary a lot; there's a pretty solid mix of humanoid-ish species and ones that really aren't. One of my best friends is a Demisiv. They look like Christmas trees."

No, really, they do.

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

Kaidan laughed softly, though he still looked a little puzzled. "Christmas trees?" he said. "Now I'm trying to picture it."

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan reached sideways into... nothing, in fact, his hand disappearing up to about mid-forearm before he pulled out a small photo album. "Here," he said, flipping through until he got to a picture of a group of... beings, all gathered in a forest clearing. "This is me and some of my friends -- most of them wizards, although a few of them are just associates."

Carmela would probably argue that she isn't just anything, thank you.

"That's Filif there." Ronan pointed out a conifer-like tree covered in red berries, a New York Giants ball-cap sitting at a jaunty angle on his top. "And the giant centipede is my friend Sker'ret."

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

"...Huh."

That was to both the act of making the photo album appear to begin with and the picture itself. Very eloquent, Alenko.

"That's something all right," he added a beat later. "Uh. The asari and the quarians are fairly humanoid-- as are the batarians. That's about it. No sentient trees, though... as far as I know."

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

"Ah, okay, so they'd be pretty much ready for human use right away, then."

Ronan glanced around the picnic, sighing a bit at the weather. "Did you have any other particular questions yet?" he asked. "I'll be around to help all you need. Oh, you... probably don't have a mobile." Ronan pulled his own out of his pocket, holding it out for Kaidan to see. "What kind of tech do you use for communicating over distance? Does the omni-tool cover that?"

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

"Yeah, it's used for long-distance communications," Kaidan said. "I can make a few tweaks, fit it into the local communications system...? But I'd have to take a look at that."

He reached for the phone.

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan passed it over without hesitation.

What? If it got screwed up, Ronan was pretty sure that Dairine could get it fixed, if no one on the island could.

"You may need to speak to a local carrier about a number," he suggested, "if your omni-tool can't set one up for you. Ten digits, at least around here, that identify you on the network. It's what people use to call you."

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_a_whiner]

"I thought it'd be something like that," Kaidan replied. He waved his omni-tool over the phone, took a few readings. "Shouldn't be too hard. It's mostly a matter of frequencies and... setting up a decent pass-code for the network..."

Re: Meet Your Teachers (Summer 2012)

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan nodded. "If there's anything you can't get off the phone itself, I'll ask a couple of friends who have experience interfacing tech and wizardry -- they'd probably at least know where to look for system specs, that kind of thing."

Dairine'd probably be the most helpful, or Darryl. And a few of the younger wizards from home had tech-Manuals now, too...

"Anyway," he continued, pulling a pen and a notepad out of his pocketspace, "this is my phone number, email address, and my address here in town." He tilted his head for a moment, considering. "Yeah, school will have an email address for you, you'll just need to tap into the internet. So if you have any questions about settling in here, or getting ready for classes, anything like that, feel free to let me know."