Pyth has this tendency to answer rhetorical questions as though they aren't.
"Mm, I dunno. First place I'd look is at the bar. If we were going for my Chainsaw I'd hit the Belles' clearing next, but I don't think yours uses it."
"Where's that from?" she asks, because it's a distraction from a) nervousness and b) her horrible desire to cackle hysterically at that first statement. "Or is there not a from? It sounds like there's a from."
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."
Shortly after this, Adiva returns to her room. Aaron's room. Thing.
Calling it "their room" seems weirdly over-committed, and the fact that it can seem over-committed is also weird considering that he rescued her from a secure facility in another universe, but whatever.
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"Okay. If I were Chainsaw, where would I hide?"
This is by way of being a largely rhetorical question.
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"Mm, I dunno. First place I'd look is at the bar. If we were going for my Chainsaw I'd hit the Belles' clearing next, but I don't think yours uses it."
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They're standing at the base of the stairs, surveying the bar proper. Both have at this point acquired new glasses.
Adiva sticks her hands in her pockets, fidgeting.
"How'm I supposed to pick out one psychopath in the thousands in Milliways?" she mutters under her breath, with the air of quoting something.
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Reinforced steel door; ditto walls.
He hasn't needed them yet. He hopes he won't.
(He hopes he won't ever again.)
(He hopes he's alive. He hopes he's not.)
(He has a lot of hope to go around.)
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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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Calling it "their room" seems weirdly over-committed, and the fact that it can seem over-committed is also weird considering that he rescued her from a secure facility in another universe, but whatever.
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At the moment, however, he's curled up in bed on his lonesome. His there's-only-one-of-me-right-now lonesome.
The lamp on the night-table is on and he has a copy of King Lear and a look of contentment.
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Sappy as it may be, her expression softens when she sees him.
"Hey, you."
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He bookmarks the book, closes it, and tosses it on the nightstand.
Then, opening his arms with a smile, "Where's my hug?"
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