fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

Entry tags:

!event: welcome picnic

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

As the heat continued to bear down on the lawn, many of the tables and chairs were set up in the spots where there was shade, so no one got overheated or anything. That would be very rude for the first day in Fandom, after all.

[OCD is up! This is the picnic post for general mingling. Roommates, fake siblings and teachers are all here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Jesse!" Summer grinned when she saw her before bouncing on over. "It's your first welcome picnic!"

"It is!" Am I supposed to sound that enthusiastic about it? Crap. "This is an island tradition, right?"

"Pretty much," Summer said with a wry grin. "At the start of each semester. It's a great way to get a lot of the newbie brain breakage out of the way in one go. Plus the free food doesn't hurt."

She would always be a fan of the free food, because her first welcome picnic food was some of the first food that hadn't been a pill that she'd had in a while at that time.

"So you get a lot of people here who... really don't know how to deal with a place like this?" said Jesse.

Oh god free food sounds amazing!

"Actually, hold that thought," she said, "I could... really use a sandwich."

See? Everyone loved the food part.

"Thought totally on pause," Summer said, and made shooing motions with her hands. "Go, go. Get sustenence!"

"I'll be back in a sec!" Jesse said, and then, halfway into leaving, added, "...Can I get you anything?"

"I'm good for now," Summer assured her, smiling because it was actually kind of nice of her to ask, even though Jesse obviously didn't know yet that the longer Summer was expected to hold a thought, the more time it had to build, sooo...."but thanks."

"Cool," Jesse said, and went for the buffet.

She didn't return with a comical stack of food or anything, but she had managed to pick up two burgers and a large sandwich. "Sorry," she said, "I've been eating too much food out of the machines at Town Hall."

And if there was a bit of judgement in Summer's blink, it actually had nothing to do with the food on Jesse's plate currently, because that was actually kind of impressive.

"Why?" she asked. "There's an insane amount of variety in restaurants on this island in proportion to the population, and half the time when you order it, you get leftovers for days."

"I've been working too much to cook," Jesse pointed out, "And restaurants are expensive."

"Well, now I just want to make you food," Summer decided. "And I won't even put it in jello. Unless you're into that, in which case, please let me make you food in jello. But it seems that, for the quality to cost ratio, you're probably not getting out much better in the long run with vending machine food, unless they're broken ad you're getting it for free."

She shook her head.

"But, anyway," she said, "you do you, but at least grab leftovers before you leave, too. Back to the point. Most people actually don't seem to have a clue what they're getting into with this place. Case in point, I," her hand went to her chest, "thought I was being sent off to a Galactic Federation brainwashing camp when I first arrived, so, needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Some people just show up and get stuck here with no idea what's going on. And then you have the poor saps who show up here thinking it's just some normal boarding. I'm pretty sure this place, like, puts out misleading flyers all throughout the multiverse on purpose."

"You think there's a method behind all of this madness?" Jesse asked, as she walked slowly towards a nearby picnic table. "Sit with me?"

And Summer sat easily into the seat across from where she figured Jesse would sit at the table when they got there, without missing a beat.

"I mean," she said, "there might be? If there is, though, I'd guess it's, like, super individualized and based around each person as a separate case, you know? So, like, this very complex formula or whatever that breaks it down to some of the of most minute details, because it just...has to, right? Like, the multiverse is infinite, and here it is, trying to juggle all those different dimensions and reconcile various timelines and realities, right? Plus, everyone is coming from such different places, everyone's got different things going on, some people are stuck here, there's the weird time variances that people experience. If there is a method, it's got to be on a level that very few of us will actually ever be able to understand...

"Or," she submitted, because, yes, she was still going, "it's the complete opposite. There is no rhyme or reason. That the only result of taking so many different dimensions and realities and trying to smush them all together on a small island like this one results in one of the finest examples of pure, unadulterated chaos in existence, and all we can really do is kick back and enjoy the ride. Maybe that's why we have so many weird blips of things around here, especially those weekends when realities get all jumbled and we get, like, kids from possible futures, or different reality versions of ourselves or just people who might look or sound like we do, but are totally different otherwise. They're like little cracks forming in the already tumultuous fabric of this particularly whackadoodle reality that just leak all over the place, like...a broken lip gloss container in the purse of existence.

"I don't really think," she concluded, "there's probably a whole lot in between for this place."

"I like the lipgloss analogy," Jesse said, mouth curving. "The reason I ask is... I don't know. The weird stuff where I come from, it's weird, half of it doesn't make sense, and yet... there's theories that do seem to bind it all together."

She took a bite of her burger. Her appetite had been crazy since the Bureau; maybe it was all the Objects of Power she was connected to now. Does a floppy disk get hungry?

"Like, it doesn't have to be personalized," she said, "It just has to be... personal. Like the universe knows what to do with someone who has a brain that corresponds to some parameters, you know?"

Emily's rubbing off on me.

Summer was super proud of the lipgloss analogy, and loved the fact that at least someone could appreciate it. So she relished a little in that before really listening to what Jesse was saying and considering it, leaning forward on folded arms on the table.

"Like it knows what we're capable of handling and shoves it at us accordingly?"

"Maybe?" Jesse said. "One theory where I come from about all of our weird is that, like... weird just shows up to the party, but the guests define what weird is going to do, you know? Or maybe the lipgloss container only cracks where it hits the lipstick too hard."

"Instead of it shattering into a million pieces," Summer mused, as she took what Jesse said and rolled it around in her head a little, "like it does here. Or maybe it just seems that way because, here, it's being hit in so many different places all at once..."

"Maybe all the cracks are still actually tiny, and they still fit whatever made them," Jesse said, "That'd be a fun thought, wouldn't it? That it all does make sense at the end, just... sense for a universe where there's billions and billions of individual people who all need their own version of sense."

"That is a nice thought," Summer admitted. It seemed to give things a purpose, a reason. That whatever happened was because there was some little niche you were meant to fit into, a crack, either that you created or that was created for you, and it was just a matter of getting the fit right. That it wasn't all just a giant crapshoot of luck and circumstances where nothing meant anything because nothing mattered when you got right down to it.

Maybe she'd been a little too solid on the crapshoot theory, though, because it was nice, to think that it all made sense in the end, but Summer just couldn't really believe it.

She didn't want to tell Jesse that, though, because hers seemed so...optimistic by comparison, unless Summer had interpreted it way wrong.

"It's definitely different," she said, "the universe as reactionary to us rather than vice versa. It least that seems to be part of what you're saying."

"Like I said," Jesse said, picking up her burger again. "It's sort of what scientists think about my kind of weird, at least. Even that killer fridge kind of... shaped itself around this person who lost their kids and put their kids' drawings on it and... just wanted to look at it all day."

"....okay, so that's definitely creepy," said Summer, who was now willing to take back most of what she said about that idea about niches and the universe shaping itself to you being kind of comforting.

"Strong feelings can work in a lot of ways," Jesse said wryly.

It...did not take Summer very long at all to dig up a regrettable example that made her wince a little in understanding.

"Yeahhh, that's true. So...what other sorts of things have happened back where you're from? To sort of give you this perspective on it?"

"Well, right before I got here, someone opened a Threshold into another world full of mind-controlling aliens and let them into the building," Jesse said, "So..." She cleared her throat. "It's not all bad," she said. "Like there's someone who liked popping floppy disks out of computers so much that one of them developed the power of telekinesis."

Edited 2020-08-29 20:11 (UTC)

"You guys still use floppy disks?"

Yes, Summer, that was the weird part of the story.

Honestly, just be impressed she even knew what floppy disks were.

Re: General Mingling [Fall 2020]

weirderthanthou - 2020-08-30 04:39 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only