fandomhigh | Library, Wednesday

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Library, Wednesday

Sholeh and Zeela had started a small ritual. Whenever one woke up, they would immediately confer with the other about small things. Little details chosen at random. If they agreed on what they remembered, they'd escaped whatever the latest bout of...Fandom...ness...that was currently...Fandoming. If they didn't agree, they promised not to waste time trying to figure out which one of them was 'right.' It hadn't happened yet, but it comforted Sholeh to have a plan.

Along that same vein, she was still setting out books for any researchers that decided to wander through. This week, she pulled out books about memory, memory spells and charms, and amnesia. That wasn't the same thing as whatever was happening, with people actually changing who they were (Sholeh and Zeela both agreed that Cecil hadn't been an adult when he'd started school and certainly didn't have tentacles!), but it was somewhere to start.

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If anyone wants to get together and look for clues in the books.

Joker set himself up at a table, grabbed a pile of books that looked like they might be helpful, and started skimming through them.

A glowing translucent rectangle hung in the air next to him. It was a text document that he left open so he could take notes in it... but there was depressingly little of anything to write down.

"What is that?" Red had come in to find out any information about portals or world travel she could, but gotten distracted by the young man's -- light picture?

Edited 2014-03-19 23:29 (UTC)

"Hmm?" Joker asked, distracted by the book in which he was still finding nothing useful. "Oh, that? It's just what computers look like in the future."

The words typed themselves into the window as he talked, and Joker flailed at the window when he realized it. "No! Stop it! I didn't mean...! Aw, crud." He managed to get the window to close, and then turned to Red. "Hi. Sorry. Okay. So... yeah. Either you were just at a Ren Faire, or you probably need 'computer' explained, too. It's a machine, that's all it is. It does all kinds of things, but I was using it just now to take notes."

He frowned at her, trying to place her face. "Are you... new?"

"Very." Red barely followed all that; 'machine' wasn't as familiar, as say, 'tool', 'device', or 'weapon.' And she'd never imagined one made up of light. "I don't know what a RenFaire is. Uh, I'm Red. Red Lucas. I just arrived yesterday."

Edited 2014-03-20 01:06 (UTC)

Joker nodded at her. "Okay, perfect. You are just who I wanted to talk to. Tell me all about whatever it was that brought you here." He turned to face her with an expectant look. "I am all ears."

After a half second, he added. "...And a Ren Faire is when people hate their boring normal lives so they all dress up as knights and maidens and go off into the woods to have a party and get drunk."

Red sat down next to him, pleased if surprised that someone wanted her opinion on her arrival. "Oh. That sounds-- very odd. Do they make their own armor? And why would they only be maidens?"

She took a moment to think, then said, "I was in the Preserve, yesterday, in Fandom. But the monks who live in the castle there, always said it was the 14th Century. And now, this is the 21st Century. It's very confusing. And much, much cleaner."

"I... really don't know the details, myself," Joker told her. "Personally, I kinda like the present. Well, my present -- the future, here. But that's not important right now." He snerked at himself, for that last line, but that wasn't important right now, either. "Okay, so. You came from Fandom -- that's important, probably. How?. Did you step through a portal? Was it something that happened in the blink of an eye? Was there any sort of sensation as you crossed? And do you know who did it?"

"A blink of an eye, and no, I don't know," Red said in some frustration. "Everything sort of went out of focus? And then when I could notice things again, I was here, instead of there." She looked around at the library. "I was hoping I could find a book or a scholar who would know how it happened." She smiled a little ruefully, and then said, "What do you mean, your present?... oh. I forgot to ask your name."

"Jeff Moreau," Joker told her. "But you can call me Joker. I am from the twenty-second century. I'm sure you get people from all different timelines in your Fandom, too."

He patted the table in front of the chair next to him. "You came to the right place, more or less. The scholars around here don't know dick about this mess, so... sit down and grab a book. I could use the help, and pretty faces always inspire me." He gave her a grin that, welcoming as it was, looked strained and didn't touch the dark hollows of his eyes.

"The basic gist: Alternate universes are colliding and crossing. For weeks we've had people turning into slightly different versions of themselves. Now, people are starting to just... appear, like you did."

"Joker." Red smiled back, then her jaw dropped a little. "Different versions of themselves?" She drew the red cloak around herself a little closer. "Is this like those odd times when people run around as if drunk, and then are very embarrassed afterward?"

So far, she'd managed to escape that. So far.

"Very much like that," Joker agreed. "But then it doesn't go away. I've gone through a relatively minor change, myself, but other people have been... worse. A lot worse."

Red could think of much worse things she could change into. Like, say, a giant wolf who couldn't control herself at all. For instance. Her fingers dug harder into her cloak. "Right. So." She looked around at all the books, intimidated. "Reading! And finding out how to make it stop. I can do that."

At least there wasn't anyone named Peter on the island?

"Well, I certainly hope you can do that," Joker told her. "I've been at it a few days and I don't haven anything to show for it so far."

"More the reading, I meant, than anything else." Red smiled a little. "But I'm glad you were here to explain this, and working on it. Or I'd be a lot more lost."

Yeul didn't really think that what was going on was anything to be concerned about, but since she was in the library anyway, there was no harm in looking, even if that looking was rather haphazard and kept getting sidetracked.

"My," she murmured, "there's an awful lot of ways to change someone's memories of the past."

She wasn't really a fan? That sort of thing tended to... reflect itself in her lives.

"Yeah, and that's not even counting simply getting hit on the head," Joker told her.

Yeul looked up from her book.

"That's not the same thing at all," she said earnestly. "Forgetting your past is not equal to it being changed. One alters the world around you to adhere to the new past, the other only alters your perception of it."

Joker gave her a confused look. "Isn't that...? Okay, yeah, sorry. Miscommunication. I thought you were talking about all that memory stuff that Sholeh set out, which, you're right, isn't all that related to the problem at hand. Right now, everything's being altered, and it sucks."

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Library, Wednesday

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