The morning after that second thread, Pyth has found the Aarons and some breakfast, in that order.
She is now ignoring the latter in favour of animatedly discussing magical theory with the former.
"I think it's heavily based in analogy to an OS kernel," she says thoughtfully. "Stop me if I get incomprehensibly nerdy, but the way Bruce said she was talking about it, it sounds like a kind of internal record of all the things that make you you, like-- have you guys read any Orson Scott Card?"
"Okay. It's in one of the Ender's Game sequels-- the originals, not the new parallax series with Bean-- he starts talking about an aiua, a sort of... spark that everything has, and collections of them can tangle together and grow new ones, so every cell in a tree and every tree in a forest and every forest on a planet all have an aiua of their own. Kind of a physical marker for identity. He went on to say some stuff that amounted to quantum entanglement for New-Age mystics, but the idea is similar: a single central point of organization that either holds or indexes all the rules for the physical and metaphysical makeup of an object."
"Card-style aiuas? Three. At some point a character in the later books ends up with two and he has two parallel tracks of attention. As for kernels... hell if I know. Do I look like an expert?"
She pauses thoughtfully.
"...Actually, you might have four sparks. One for each of you and one to express the overall identity. Or one of yours might be doing double service. You'd have to talk to somebody who's from that 'verse and has a way to see them if you wanted to be sure."
"If one of us is carrying double, it's probably me," Aaron Luke puts in. "But go back to the part about kernels. You was sayin' something about an OS? What's one of them?"
"Oh. Operating system, on a computer. I freely admit I have just about enough practical knowledge of OS kernels to fill a thimble if the thimble is already full, but I've got a friend who wrote one, and it looks to me like whoever named kernels in Nita's 'verse had the same idea. They're kind of what makes the operating system of a computer work. All the instructions that let it run programs, allocate memory, write to disk, interact with I/O devices-- things you don't think about your computer doing, unless you're a nerd like me, but that it has to do in order to function."
Slight shrug.
"I did a little reading after Bruce mentioned the word. The kind of kernel she was talking about with him sounds like it's somewhere between an aiua and an OS kernel."
"...Wacky incest what now? I must've missed that part. No, okay, I was just talking about kernels and how they're sort of like something Card came up with and/or stole blatantly from quantum physics."
"It's interesting stuff," says Aaron Luke while Roy leans over to kiss Adiva's temple.
"But you should really shut up and eat your breakfast," says Roy amicably after a seamless switch. "You ordered them waffles ten minutes ago and they're gettin' soggy."
Oh, and some plot happened, too.
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She is now ignoring the latter in favour of animatedly discussing magical theory with the former.
"I think it's heavily based in analogy to an OS kernel," she says thoughtfully. "Stop me if I get incomprehensibly nerdy, but the way Bruce said she was talking about it, it sounds like a kind of internal record of all the things that make you you, like-- have you guys read any Orson Scott Card?"
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And now she even remembers to breathe!
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"Wonder how many of these things we've got."
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She pauses thoughtfully.
"...Actually, you might have four sparks. One for each of you and one to express the overall identity. Or one of yours might be doing double service. You'd have to talk to somebody who's from that 'verse and has a way to see them if you wanted to be sure."
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Slight shrug.
"I did a little reading after Bruce mentioned the word. The kind of kernel she was talking about with him sounds like it's somewhere between an aiua and an OS kernel."
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Well, they parked a fifth chair on one end, anyways. Between Aaron Luke and Roy.
"Ever read any Orson Scott Card? I'm theorizing."
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"G'mornin'," says Roy for all of them, pushing the empty chair out slightly from the table.
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"Nnnope. I keep meaning to read Ender's Game, but I hear he got kind of crazy later on. There are wacky incest hijinks or something?"
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"But you should really shut up and eat your breakfast," says Roy amicably after a seamless switch. "You ordered them waffles ten minutes ago and they're gettin' soggy."
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"I have no idea," to Pyth. "Weird sexual politics or something. No? Anyway. You mean like Nita's kernels, right?"
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Slight frown.
"Okay, how up to date are you on all the shit that's been going on the past few days?"
Apart from a large blank spot where all the sex is concerned, Pyth has a relatively good handle on things.
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