nexus_sages | Interdimensional Cable

Interdimensional Cable

Today in the forum, someone has set up a techno-pile of video gadgetry. At the heart of it is a television, and an old one at that. The screen is large enough, but it sits in a retro wooden fixture that gives it the appearance more of furniture than of an entertainment system. All the better for it to hold the weight of a number of video-playing devices from across the ages and dimensions.

On either side of the pile of plastic boxes and tangled wires stacked on top are a set of outdoor lounge chairs. One, sat up like a chair, is empty. The other, fully reclined, is full of a whole lotta dead dude. It’s Harrowheart, who can’t possibly understand the vast majority of what he’s lying next to, a lit cigarette between his lips and his arms dangling off the chair and onto the grass. His floating hands are hard at work twisting knobs and pounding on the top of the television. Now and then the screen flickers with a hint of a signal.

Without spending the energy to lift his head, Harrow calls out to any passers-by, “Hey! What’s your favorite movie? People keep tellin’ me about ‘em, but I ain't ever seen one. I wanna find a good one and invite everyone over to watch it. Help me pick one out, will ya? And if y’ain’t ever seen a movie either… I dunno, weigh in on someone else’s recommendation?”

(( OOC Info: I want to stream a movie in-character! I love streaming movies, usually it’s a really good time for everyone involved. I’ve never done one IC, but I think this is a great opportunity to start. I’ll take any and all IC movie recommendations (real movies only!) and by next Wednesday I’ll try to decide which one we watch. The better your character talks it up, the better its chance! I’m shooting for next Saturday the 21st at around 8 or 9pm Eastern for a start time, but I’m going to be flexible if people know they can’t make it. I want as many people to be able to enjoy this as possible! If you’re interested in the idea or have any questions shoot me a PM and I’ll PM you back with answers and details and remember to get back to you when the movie and time are decided. ))

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Her first reaction to unexpected touches from people she doesn't know well is to shrug them off, but she's been working on that. She's tense, but she's not trying to get away. Instead she focuses on the phone, moving her thumb across the screen slowly so he can see what she's doing.

"Yeah, I can print out a copy later. I'll bring it to our first lesson. Do you want a smiling picture, a serious one, or a silly one?"

"I want a nice one," he says. "I wanna be able to look at it and show it to people. Can we just smile this time? I'd say we do one of each, but I don't want you to run outta film on my account."

"There's no film. We can take as many pictures as you want. Just look up at the screen and smile."

Once he's doing that she taps the button to take the picture. There's a click from her nail against the screen, and another from the phone. And then--magic!--there's a picture on the screen.

Harrow smiles softly just in time for the picture to take. His smile grows when he sees the picture of the two of them.

"It's a selfie! Everyone does these on Azeroth! But our cameras are real expensive, real delicate, and a whole lot bigger. I think I like the phone better! Humans on other worlds must be brilliant to make all this. But... I think I get how this one works?"

His hands feel the back of the phone and he starts to nod. "So... When you touch your finger to the glass, all the lights change, right? And when you touched it on the little button, all the lights changed to look like us, right? So, if it's got no film, that means it remembers how to change its lights to show you the picture you want if you touch it in a certain way, huh? It's like... A techno-enchantment!"

He tries not to smile too much. He wouldn't wnat to look too proud if it turns out he's wrong, after all. Save the hubris for the next time he's drunk in a minotaur's maze.

"That's right!" Good job, Harrowheart, she's very impressed with you now. Enjoy this genuine limited-edition grin. "That's pretty much exactly how it works. And then I can tell it to send those memories to another machine that turns the lights into colors and prints the picture on paper."

That is close enough to how things work, anyway. "There's a saying, where I'm from, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I suppose the reverse is also true. It's all ways of manipulating energy."

"Huh!" What a neat way of looking at life. It bridges the gaps between their worlds very neatly. He likes it.

"So machines can send their thoughts to other machines? That means... A phone can hook up with another phone? If you're holdin' yours, you could tell it a message, and then it can tell someone else's phone that message, and they can see the picture you see! You could write a letter on a piece of paper, and take a picture, and they could read that letter without you even havin' to go to the post!"

Forget Disneyworld, this is a lifetime of excitement and wonder right here.

"I really want one! And I wanna see more pictures on your phone! I wanna see New York, Verity!"

"We can send messages through the phones, yes. Pictures, text, or we can have a live audio conversation. Want to send the picture to Steve? I got him a phone the other day... hopefully he remembers how to use it." A few more taps brings up the texting box and the fussy little keyboard. "What should the message with the photo say?"

His enthusiasm is cute. She'd be just as excited by some minor magical non-ring doodad. "Okay, we'll send this to Steve and then you can look through my pictures of New York."

"Ooh! Tell him that we're havin' a good time talkin' about New York, that you're joinin' the magic lessons, and that I got a special gift for him next time we meet!"

Speaking of magical non-ring doodads, Harrowheart roots around in his breast pocket and comes up with... a ring! Wow, false advertisement. He shows off the kite shield emblem to Verity and explains, "I won it in the minotauren's maze at the ball. It's a ring of protection! I'm gonna give it to Steve. I figure it'll keep him strong when we practice. If not... Maybe he'll believe it does?"

"Okay."

Hey Steve, look who I found! We're talking about NY and planning magic lessons. He's got a present for you, lucky!

Picture attached, text sent. Sending. ...okay, sent now.

Verity shrinks away when she realizes it's a magic gold ring. No, she does not want to see the design, thank you. Just keep that away from her. "That... that would be good for him. I'm sure he'll like that."

Harrow knows the look of someone who fears metal when he sees one. He stores his ring away in a hurry and holds his empty hands up to show he means no harm.

"Does gold burn humans on your world? I'm sorry! If it makes ya feel any better, I'm weak to somethin' called truesilver. It's not 'cause I'm undead or nothin', it's part of some curse that's on me."

Oh, relief when the ring is put away again.

"Oh. No. It's not... when I was a baby my dad dropped his magic see-through-lies ring near me, and I swallowed it, and it dissolved in my throat. So now I'm cursed and... really not fond of rings." It's a completely rational irrational phobia! "It should be fine for Steve."

She's curious about his curse, now, but she's not going to ask.

Harrowheart listens to this story with the only kind of expression a man can have when hearing that. He's confused, obviously, but also trying to keep sympathetic. In the end he looks vaguely queasy as he tries to smile and fight back his dumbfoundedness.

But, hey. They share in being cursed! That's common ground! He can work with that! One of his hands pats Verity's shoulder. There there, Verity. It won't be all right, but we can pretend.

"Well, you showed me yours. I'll show you mine." He clears his throat and quickly adds, "Figuratively."

He looks to the screen of her phone while he thinks of how to sum this up. She must have some practice explaining her curse, being that it's strange and fairly unique. He admits, "Where I come from, I've never had to explain this. It's a thing most folks already understand. Here, it's kinda weird to some folks. I'm too many monsters to them. Anyway. When I was a soldier, I got bit up by a monster called a worgen. Only lived 'cause of magical healin'. Every night the moon came out, and I turned into a worgen too. I didn't have any control over it. It was a real curse to me back then. Wasn't 'til I died and got risen up as a death knight I could keep it under control, and now it's a part of me I like."

His fingers search his shirt pocket and come up with the butt of his cigarette, but before he lights it he remembers why he wasn't smoking it in the first place. He puts it away with a little laugh. "I met a kid at the ball who said the word y'all use for it is 'werewolf.'"

Her curse is really weird and really annoying, but not in any kind of life-threatening way. How do you even respond to that? Shoulder pats are good. Not backing away because she's a freak who always knows is better.

She's flipping through things on the phone while he talks until she gets to the photos of 'back home'. The first one is loaded, and then she lifts her gaze to him. Nothing he's saying is scary or upsetting to her. Really, that kind of thing isn't so unusual where she's from.

"...Loki. I think Loki was the only kid at the ball," she supplies absently. "So now you're an undead knight shapeshifter? Cool."

"Loki? That's a cute name. He was a cute kid! I don't recall too well but I think he tried to convince me to fist fight his brother. Maybe next time!" Masculinity's a hell of a drug. "Just don't tell Steve I'm a worgen, okay? I'm tryin' to decide if I oughta scare him with it one day. On the one hand, it'll be funny as hell. On the other, guy might have a heart attack. I gotta stew on it."

He leans in to see what Verity has to show him on the phone. He's ready to see some Earth.

"Loki's a sweetheart," she agrees, "but he's trouble. Don't underestimate him." And that's all the warning he's going to get.

"I won't tell Steve," she agrees, but she's pulling a face. "Please don't scare him like that. He has asthma. His lungs don't work right. It might actually kill him."

She has so very many pictures of her beloved home. Most are from the summer or early fall, from the look of things. That's about all they have in common. There's pictures of tall buildings, of street scenes, of people doing all sorts of things; there's even some looking down at the city from on top of those tall buildings. She can describe each one, remembering when she took it and why, and explaining what they're looking at. There is so much love in her voice when she talks about her homeland, and the occasional tremble. It's a good thing she brought tissues.

A whole lot of time sure passes when you're ~~timeskipping~~ having fun. He doesn't interrupt except to express his occasional excitement and wonder. This is Verity's world, so he lets it be her moment.

When it's through he says, "If I get a phone, I'll send you a message so you and Steve and I can all meet up to learn magic." He pulls a piece of rolling paper and a stumpy pencil from his pocket and offers them to Verity. "Write down your phone's radio signal so mine knows where to send it. You can escape after that, if you want? I feel like I've had you here forever. Folks're gonna start thinkin' I'm the evil double-monster who kidnapped the innocent damsel."

"Anyone who mistakes me for an innocent damsel is in for a bad time," she retorts with a smirk. She writes her info in large, cautious block print; penmanship wasn't important when she went to school and hers is not great. "Anyway, you're not a monster. You shouldn't make jokes like that, you might start to believe it."

If everything's a story, they need to be very careful with their vocabulary.

"If you like, I can help you get a phone. It seems a fair exchange for the lessons."

Harrowheart laughs humorlessly at Verity's monster comment. "I'm gonna make you stay here a few more minutes, 'cause I wanna hear you tell me what a monster is to you."

"To me? A monster is someone who hurts people, for fun or for profit or whatever excuse they can come up with. It's nothing to do with what you look like or what kind of unusual abilities you might have."

It's something people have to think about where she's from. Aliens, lab accidents, magic, mutation... it's not what your powers are or how you got them, it's what you do with them.

He chuckles quietly at that while he stows away her number in his pocket.

"What can I say, Verity? I told you that the price of magic would be spendin' time with me."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." That's not a line. She genuinely doesn't see how that could be a bad thing. When he's not drunk.

He looks out across the forum, quiet for a moment, his fingers drumming against his knee.

"I like the Nexus," he says, and with it a thoughtful nod. "It's not like my world. The anti-violence field, it works out real good for me. I get to be a different person here. Nobody knows the implication when I say 'I'm a death knight.' You said it yourself, all magic's got a cost. The cost of conjurin' snowflakes is tradin' me a fancy lightbox. Maybe the cost of learnin' illusions is bein' a wizard's servant for life. But what do you think the cost of comin' back from the dead is, Verity?" He doesn't want to hear her answer. "It means that on my world? By your definition? I'm very much a monster."

He snorts, forces a tired laugh, and with great reluctance turns his attention back to Verity. "Who better to teach Steve to fight bad guys than a bad guy?"

Was he expecting she'd yell at him again, or storm off? Because none of that is happening. She's just watching him with those big brown eyes of hers, quiet and reserved until he's done.

"People can change. I've seen gods change, despite the weight of millennia. You don't like doing it, you do what you think you have to because of what someone else chose. And now you're here, and you get to make new choices."

She has a remarkable well of faith in people, given she kind of hates everyone.

Harrowheart shakes his head. "Someone else's choice, right..." Even if he's only repeating her, it's an itchy, nasty lie of the highest caliber.

"I don't like hurtin' people," he starts, and the pause is just long enough for that to feel like a lie to. "...Until I get to doin' it. Then I like it a lot. And then it's over, and I start feelin' guilty. I'd give it up, but I can't. A knight's price for free will is that we have to hurt other people, or the urge to do it drives us wild. Some freedom, huh?"

He scrubs at his face with his hands. Muffledly he groans, "I got to talkin' with Shade-seeker and some old man on a bench, and they all started sayin' stuff about evil folks turnin' their life around no matter what they did, and I started believin' it, and... I don't know why I'm sayin' any of this. I guess as much as I wanna change, some part of me kinda wants you all to be wrong."

His hands lower just enough that he can look at Verity again. "Please don't tell Steve this stuff? He's always talkin' about how he hates violence, how he can't stand bullies. I don't think he'd take it too good to find out his buddy's an axe murderer."

There's a twitch when she feels the lie of it, but she's still not retreating. A scientist needs data in order to find a solution, and the more he talks the more she might be able to help.

"I won't tell anyone. It's not my story to tell." Don't tell Loki she said that, he might never forgive her. "Changing is scary, and it's painful, and sometimes it seems easier not to. Whether you do or not is up to you, but there are people who will help you if it's what you want."

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Verity needs to get a family plan at this point.

Harrow gets a phone, texts exclusively in emojis. The hieroglyphics strategy

Dear lord, forgive me. I knew not what I did! :P

Verity doesn't like fancy jewelry. She must be cheap to shop for on Valentine's Day!

She's never had a Valentine. :(

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The comment in which I save us from this going on for weeks.

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+1 Friend. Brief Interlude. -1 Friend.

Oh, ye of little faith.

The classic "I just met you, let me tell you everything" maneuver.

The Nexus: We Know Oversharing