mingle log | the quad and elsewhere | we were young and drinking (coffee) in the park

[lamiaceae]

Characters: Gansey and whoever shows up
What: Interpersonal interaction! Meet each other face-to-face while nothing is on fire
Where: the quad, unless elsewhere seems cool to you
When: loop 1, day 10 (6/10 irl)
Content Warnings: nothing yet. please use and check thread subjects

It's a pleasant day outside. There's a nice breeze and the sun is doing its best. At very least, it's not raining and warmer than it was yesterday. This is, statistically, likely to bring college denizens out of their dorms and offices since rain seems to often be on Newcomb's horizon. Fall in not-at-all-New England is lovely that way.

Gansey, for his part, can be found throughout the day in several places! He likes hanging out near the clocktower to study, since he's found time works best there (at least for him). It's nice to have a watch that's doing something vaguely akin to timekeeping for once.

But he's an explorer at heart, so he can probably also be found in the library, the computer lab, and wandering the grounds. Gansey isn't sure he's interacted with anyone outside a classroom or on Fermii since the train crash, so he's more likely than usual to strike up conversation instead of waiting for it to come to him.

The real question is this: where's everyone else hanging out today?

[ i'll be throwing gansey at anyone who doesn't note that their tag is closed. please mingle! ]

Comments

[learnedfool]

"I don't know. I tried to write something with the buttons on the side, but it didn't look like it did anything."

[beingawesome]

Claudia is trying to figure it out, and at least takes a moment to force a power off of his device.

"Look, you need to be in the right app to be able to write or do certain things. Each of those squares represents, well, a type of task that the program it launches does. The purple crocodile is for school-related things like checking your course schedules and grades or whatever." She doesn't know what's wrong with this guy, but GUIs are clearly not a part of his experience.

[learnedfool]

"So which one is like a journal?" Not that he can currently use his own device.

[beingawesome]

Claudia pulls out her own device, and holding it out of reach just in case, she points and then clicks on the notepad function and shows him the keyboard for entering data.

"There's also a drawing app if you prefer handwritten notes, but this you can search and transfer easily between programs if you need to copy part of it," she starts to explain, then swaps to his device again, seeing if rebooting will help with the problem.

[learnedfool]

It might.

"Certainly less weight than all the notes and journals I keep. On the other hand, requires far more care around sorcerers."

[beingawesome]

Ah-hah! Success of a sort is revealed as the boot screen shows up on his journal. Hopefully it had just locked up and not gotten corrupted in some fashion.

"I wouldn't really know. Most people who claim to do magic where I'm from are merely specialists in slight-pf-hand and the suspension of belief rather than actually manipulating the fabric of reality," Claudia says, off-handedly. It wasn't hard to believe in magic, but she had a hunch that the lack of belief made it less powerful.

"Are you a sorcerer, then?"

[learnedfool]

"Oh, we get plenty of those where I'm from as well, but I am the real thing." Penric said. "As such, I'm usually the one consulting on 'is this a charlatan or something uncanny'. Would you like a demonstration?"

He's already looking around for something safe for a demonstration. Fire is tricky, rust requires some form of iron that is not in use, but he could always try unraveling or cutting thread.

[beingawesome]

"I think I'll settle for more explanation to start. How do you define magic and what can you do with it?" she asks, at least part of her attention still on the journal and trying to make sure it's functioning within parameters.

"I assume it's a talent that's either gained through study or inborn or something."

[learnedfool]

"Neither, actually, though practice improves any skill. The potential for sorcery is granted when a demon comes to inhabit a human. If the human is in control, they can draw on the demon's ability to manipulate chaos. Downhill magic is easier -- starting fires, rusting metal, the sort of thing that runs on its own under the right conditions, but that a sorcerer can make happen faster -- but uphill magic can be done if you can find somewhere to put the extra chaos."

Congrats, you have unlocked Penric's special interest. He doesn't have the science to explain how his abilities work, but he can describe them.

"Which means I can introduce my demon to you. Her name is Desdemona. Unfortunately, her ability to communicate is dependent on sharing my body, so it will be with my voice."

[beingawesome]

The idea of sharing a body with another being is something that would give her the heebie-jeebies, but if he's fine with it, she isn't going to judge. And she can't help being a little curious about the gender issues that might come up, assuming female demons feel similar to female humans.

"I...actually can see that. There's a law in physics that states that a force we call entropy, or the disorganized state of matter, more or less, will always increase in a given system. Like no matter how carefully you stack things, they want to fall over and spread out," she explains. If he didn't know about the laws of thermodynamics, it was something he could learn.

"And, um, I'm going to assume that by demon you don't mean the colloquial definition of a being of pure evil who exists solely to cause harm. Because that's kinda how they talk about it where I'm from, if they even think such things exist. The debates on that are a whole different kettle of fish.

"You just don't seem the type to be secretly harboring a force for world-ending destruction and the intent to use it." Except entropy kind of was the force for world-ending destruction.

"Oh, right, I didn't introduce myself, either, did I? I'm Claudia. Student and sometimes tech person."

[learnedfool]

"Penric. Currently professor and sorcerer. And Des doesn't have the power to destroy the world, even if she wanted to, which she doesn't. The world has too many things we both like."

That and divine oversight meant they couldn't actually kill people. Well, more properly Des or Pen could kill exactly one person with sorcery.

Pen wanted to write down the word 'entropy' and read up on it. Because it did sound like what he was describing, and Pen was familiar with the idea of sorcerers picking up something and trying to describe it to mundane scholars. Interesting to go the other way.

[beingawesome]

She catches the look on his face, and decides now's as good a time as any to show Penric how to take notes on his device, both with the keyboard and standard text format, and also the drawing function. Taking a moment, she grabs a stylus and offers it as well.

"If you don't find you can write or draw well with a finger, one of these works like a pen on the screen surface, but it won't write on anything but a touch-screen," she explains.

Then she grabs a real pen and a scrap of paper to write down the words 'entropy,' 'physics,' and 'thermodynamics' for him to look into on his own. "The other two are the general science that entropy falls under, with thermodynamics being a more specific discipline. It might get pretty technical and mathy, but at least a school is the right place to learn, right?"

[learnedfool]

"I can deal with technical. It means going back and finding more introductory material."

This does merit an internal sigh from Desdemona, as she is less enthralled by reading. If we understand this better, we may be able to do more interesting things, Pen reminded her.

Pen was willing to accept the stylus as easier to write with than a finger. "Like tracing marks in clay or sand."

[beingawesome]

"Well, it won't be something you can feel because the surface is very thin glass, but the idea is there. A lot of people are more comfortable writing with a pen-like object than using the keyboard. And if you've never used one, I figured that might help."

Technology is weird when luddites are involved.

[learnedfool]

"I've sketched out things on the ground with a finger before," Penric did add. "Paper is expensive."

Which might give a hint at when Penric is from.

[beingawesome]

"Maybe where you're from," Claudia says, trying to not think about what kind of primitive place that must be. "Here, there are storerooms of it. You can get notebooks at the bookstore and so on. Paper hasn't really been hard to get since pulp mills were invented. Although some people still insist on doing things one sheet at a time for like formal stationary or art stuff."

She doesn't want to alienate the guy, but it's clearly going to be an adjustment period. "I guess your world is doesn't have a lot of technology. Like mostly water and windmills and that's it? No manufactories and clockwork mechanisms doing other things than keeping time?"

[learnedfool]

"My wife recently got a very nice loom and spinning machine from her half-brother, but I don't think that is what you mean."