I empathize with your skepticism (open)

[veristitalian]

» WHO? Jasnah Kholin and open.
» WHEN? Current dated
» WHERE? Observation Deck
» WHAT? Research; note taking, collaboration, exploration of ideas
» WARNINGS? None as of yet


Jasnah sits in front of the observation window, writing on a notebook in her lap, with a diamond brohm softly glowing stormlight. It's a pleasant, clear light cast across her page, where she's working on developing an initial detailed list of questions and set of preliminary notes.

Unfortunately, they're illegible, written in the sharp jags of the Alethi woman's script. But, as she goes, she asks questions out loud;

"What I'm undecided on is whether the visions we're receiving happened, or are happening as we speak.

"On the one hand, yes, the simple narrative does make sense; the team was here, they were working on moving the station. They ended up somewhere they didn't mean to be on attempt number six. Things began to go extremely wrong. There was a betrayal. The station began to try to kill them."

Jasnah has thoughts about this, but not ones she wants to say out loud, where the station would be able to hear her. Since she can't even write a note to slip it to anyone, she has to keep her suspicions to herself. For the best, probably. She wouldn't know how to explain it without sounding mad.

Madder than what she says next, even.

"On the other, I come from a planet that has a world just beneath our own. In Roshar, what's land would be sea in Shadesmar, and the sea in Shadesmar is land in Roshar. There are creatures that exist halfway between the two, visible in part in the human world and much larger where they exist beneath it.

"What if this destruction were the same? Flashes of it creeping through at unusual moments into our life here. The sounds of the screams of the betrayed crew just around each corner.

"I can't chase from my mind the memory of- a stranger, a woman I hadn't met, standing over one of the intact tables in the mess and holding a shattered piece of it. The simplest answer is there was a copy of it, somewhere else here, and that version was the one that was smashed, for her to find. And yet... well, I'll ask you the question.

"Does this feel completely real to you?"

Some people, she's invited to join her for the discussion, in particular women who she's talked with about the station before. (Part of her still hasn't overcome her prejudices, associates scholarship with her own gender.) But she's not being particularly quiet, may turn this question on anyone nearby.

Comments

[corkscrewed]

"I, um."

Martin isn't initially sure that she's talking to him -- he isn't really sure why she would be, other than the fact that he spends an awful lot of time in the observation deck, but the fact of the matter remains: they are, currently, the only two people in there. So he flounders before he answers, if only because she reminds him strongly already of someone he knows.

"You're doing research?"

It's not a question. It's also not an answer to anything she's asked.

[veristitalian]

She glances up, focus breaking, a little startled to see who's there with her- but yes, he'll do as well as anyone.

"I'm trying to."

Ruefully.

"There's little enough to go on."

[corkscrewed]

"But we'll get more eventually," he says, and it's clear then that the earnestness in his voice is a little awkward, but absolutely sincere. "What with people like you on the case." He's not trying to flatter her; he just overheard what she was documenting, and so this statement is simple fact. "Besides, I can't imagine we'll be just - left up here without any other leads. Right?"

[veristitalian]

"So does this? Feel real to you?"

She asks; it hasn't escaped her notice that he hasn't answered the question.

"Have you had any of the visions, heard any of the noises?"

[corkscrewed]

"I don't know. Yes? I mean, it doesn't feel fake. It's surreal, maybe, but..."

Martin trails off, not really sure how to finish that sentence, before he seats himself across from her. He folds his legs up in his chair with him like he's a teenage boy instead of a tall, lanky thirty year old man.

"I've heard things in the walls. Got grabbed, too, but I couldn't figure out- is that what you mean?"

[veristitalian]

"Grabbed."

She says, because she'd forgotten.

"Hearing, seeing, and feeling things. That is almst unheard of, as far as I'm aware."

And she knows more about lunacy than she'd like to.

"So is it really happening, did it really happen and we're feeling the echo of it, or is something lying to us and making us feel that one of those two things is true."

[corkscrewed]

Martin fixes her with an uncertain, slightly nervous look. "Are you actually asking me, or--?"

[possidetur]

"Unfortunately it does."

Though this place is so far from anything that is familiar to her there are still many things that make it feel real. It wasn't only the physical structure, the walls and doors, as strange as they appeared felt solid, but also the past. People had lived here, and even if the visions were somehow untrue Vanessa had heard a cry for help -- a scream, and an invisible touch when she'd first arrived. That was real for her -- something familiar.

"What you describe sounds similar to my home." It wasn't such as that there was a physical world beneath their own but the demimonde was hidden within their lives, creatures condemned to walk the two worlds.

"If that means something."

[veristitalian]

"It does."

Says Jasnah, looking up properly.

"Please tell me about it? How it works in your home."

Comparing possible arrangements will help her understand what it might look like here. What she's taking for granted, what is actually a given.

[possidetur]

It isn't something that Vanessa has ever spoken about before, at least not with anyone that wasn't already informed about the demimonde in some way. She didn't know where to begin, at least not in a way that wouldn't sound crazy, but she would at least try to explain it.

"It's called the demimonde. Creatures... vampires, demons, witches. They're all a part of it."

Vanessa looks at Jasnah, watching for some kind of response before she continues.

"Few know that it exists -- that it's more than just a nightmare."

[veristitalian]

"I've met a vampire."

She says, in surprise. Alucard and his strange transformations add another uncomfortable wrinkle to all this. It's the first time she'd heard the word, and now here it is, twice in one week.

[possidetur]

There's surprise, if briefly lasting, in Vanessa's expression. She didn't expect recognition, though Vanessa understands the unease with which Jasnah admits it. It wasn't something you wished to know of.

"Then you're lucky to be able to speak of it." In her experience, they didn't tend to wish anyone to still live.

"Are they they only creature you know of?"

[veristitalian]

"He insists he won't drain a person's blood without their consent. Is that a normal behavior, in your experience?"

Forgive her for her suspicion. It's just, her own experience with predators hasn't taught her to be trusting.

"It depends how you define creature. We have sentient non-humans on Roshar."

[lightduties]

Uh.

The look Rhea'li gives Jasnah is distinctly bewildered.

Guess who's the opposite of a scholar or researcher here? This guy. That sort of thing is usually left to the more learned of his associates. Frankly, he's best at being the (magical) muscle and he's content to keep it that way.

The person Jasnah has chosen to talk to is a short man who would seem rather unremarkable, save for the pair of snowy white cat ears crowning his head -- a single brass ring piercing each one -- and his fluffy white tail. And, perhaps, the tattoos on his face. When he speaks, a hint of slightly elongated canines can be spotted.

"There's naught to suggest this is not real." At least, as far as his experiences with visions of other peoples' memories or speaking with the mother crystal go. A small pause. "You have visions of one you have not met?"

[veristitalian]

"She wasn't a vision. She was another resident. But we didn't get a chance to speak properly."

So Jasnah can't place Ripley by face, probably even by name.

"There is plenty to suggest this is not real, I would say. The main thing being that it is all absolutely, completely impossible."

[lightduties]

Ah.

When you live in a world of magic and lost technology eras ahead of the current state of things, your tolerance for weird stuff is really high.

"Which part is impossible?"

[veristitalian]

"I had a bond that should not have been broken, and it is. There's no place I should have been brought that would impact it."

But Ivory isn't here. When she thinks too hard about it, it becomes difficult to cope with. He's been her constant companion since her father died.

[lightduties]

"That which has not been broken does not mean it is unbreakable."

He knows from experience. Rhea'li remember his shock when his bond with Hydaelyn was severed by someone who was supposed to be dead. And now, the Mother Crystal is just as silent to him even though his bond with her was restored.

That said, it's the paper and writing implement that has his attention, which his gaze drifts to.

[veristitalian]

"I know details you don't, and I know what I'm talking about."

She promises, glancing back down at her paper as well, adding a new line of notes.

"But I'll be more specific; being here violates important, basic laws that govern my universe. It would take power on a truly shocking scale."

[bu773rfly]

Erika could get used to this, the congregations of still-mostly-strangers sitting together near and far and her drifting transparent somewhere in them. To put a finer point on it, she has to, because this is life now; but she also finds herself adapting better than she expects, brushing aches under the table and forcing herself into new shapes without toppling.

Maybe it's an issue of momentum. Maybe a week isn't enough to tell. But life changes very quickly when it wants to, and having to cope with that is part of the human condition.

Erika sits cross-legged and quiet and thoughtful, and worried, though she's loathe to show it. There's too much here to fit neatly into her concept of a virtual world, or a Digital one, with the D and the W capitalized. Not enough to attribute anything to ghosts. Perhaps enough to reach into configurations of reality she's never been in a place to dream of, sitting in the back room of an internet cafe paying bills and tracking down identity thieves. Or watching the Digital World pour into the analog one, disgorging innocent-eyed beasts into the streets in defiance of everyday logic but still, somehow, not in defiance of scientific fact. Or waking up after the end on an abandoned space station, meeting a whirling succession of people from worlds near and far, pretending not to hear screams in the walls, and getting drunk with a/the devil to forget how impossible her existence feels.

Jasnah's writing system reminds her of a spectrogram. She tries to convert it into imagined sound in real-time and finds it slipping right through her comprehension.

The land beneath is a sci-fi staple. Erika has one hand in her pocket, feeling Toto's embroidered eyes.

"Have you ever," she starts, quietly, but not quite quietly enough. She's not holding an open discussion; she just wants to hold Jasnah's attention for a minute. Real is as observed. Too many people observing scatters you into too many pieces, and not enough fades you away to a ghost. Quieter. Calmer. Speaking as though to a friend, or a family member. "Do you know a story called the Butterfly Dream?"

[veristitalian]

Jasnah glances over when Erika speaks. She listens, and after a moment, shifts slightly. Jasnah angles her body, away a little from the rest of the group, buying them a shade more privacy.

"The Butterfly Dream." Echoing, to be sure she understands. "I don't know the story, no."

But she's listening. Every way of understanding she can absorb is a useful one. Besides, Erika is- curious, in general, and Jasnah wants to know more about her mind works.

[bu773rfly]

"It's a very old philosophical anecdote from my world," she goes on, smoothing her palms over her knees, a bit of a nervous quiver in her wrists. "One of my favorites. It...relates, kind of."

"There's a sage who dreams, one night, that he's a butterfly. He gets to flutter around, carefree, thinking in the dream that he's meant to be a butterfly. And when he wakes up, obviously he's a human being again. But he remembers being in the dream, and he wonders to himself whether he's really a man who dreamed of being a butterfly or if he's a butterfly who's now dreaming of being a man."

She laces her fingers together and looks down at them. "One way of looking at it is that, even under normal circumstances, you don't ever know for certain that reality is real. If you're convinced dreams are real while you're in them, what's to say that you won't "wake up" from your life at some point? And if you do, can you deal with being a different person than you thought you were? If something you remember was never "really" real, it's not actually any less of a part of you, is it?...Things like that."

[veristitalian]

Jasnah listens to this, and finds her mouth curving into a small smile. It's one of those stories that her uncle Dalinar would enjoy. The musings of an old man trying to understand his place in the world. She can imagine it fitting neatly into the story of the Way of Kings.

"And what do you think of it?"

She'd like to hear where Erika comes down on the lesson.

[bu773rfly]

"Normally, I just like thinking about how...objective reality doesn't have to invalidate subjective reality." Try saying that five times fast. Erika breathes through her nose and crosses her arms. "But while you were going over the questions, I kept thinking over the name of the station. A reverie is a dream, but not the kind of aspirational dream you'd expect to be associated with space travel. It's more like a trance. Like the butterfly dream, a state of existing in reality and in a dream at the same time."

"I wonder if the unreality phenomena around the station are something the previous crew was intentionally working with, that got...out of hand."

[veristitalian]

Jasnah feels herself adjust her estimation of Erika. She'd been so hesitant, at first. Jasnah knows better than to assume someone is unintelligent based on a little social awkwardness. However, she tends to associate it with a kind of bookish, detail oriented intelligence.

Not leaps like this. Not legitimate insight.

"Why would a station begin to try to kill them? Based on a research program like what you're imagining."