trans_9 | Meet N' Greet

Wyn takes a deep breath. "Oh-kay. How tight, exactly, is your crazy evil dictator guy's control over the media?" she asks thoughtfully, eyes narrowing slightly. "Because it sounds like 'very'."

"This might not be the best explanation ever, but I'll try. So let's just pretend for a second that this... oh God, I can't even call it a table, is a sun and we're planets, which makes this grouping-thing a solar system. Do the same thing with all the other table-things and people in the room, they're all solar systems. All of that put together plus all the rest of the ship is the universe." Wyn says, making wild, expansive gestures to help illustrate her point. "Technically it's infinite, but I can't do a whole lot to demonstrate 'infinite'."

One thing that what's-his-face said caught her attention, though. "Did you say mutant-led rebellion?"

"You are correct. The media organizations are all government-owned and sponsored. For that matter, so are all the businesses." Crazy evil dictator guy. Kyle can't help but smile just faintly, amused at the term. That's one he'll have to remember.

He listens attentively to her explanation, looking between her, the 'not-table', and the other people. "Infinite. To stretch on without end. That's what they say of the world outside the dome." Although he wasn't very capable of understanding the concept - his entire world had been confined to a space the size of a large city - he understood the logic. That was always a good start.

"Yes. A small percentage of the population is born with unusual powers. The government's policy is to hunt and execute them; enough survived to form a resistance group." He's keeping away from saying whether he was with or against them, not knowing exactly how she'll react.

"So, does that mean you've never been outside the dome? Why would you dome in a city, anyway? You'd never get supplies and the dome would just trap all the emissions, which is a very fast way to get a depopulated population due to carbon monoxide poisoning." The second question is more musing than anything, and she doesn't exactly expect an answer. ~~Although if she ever takes over the world her cities will be much better planned.~~

"Cool!" Wyn says excitedly, bouncing a little on her seat. "Not so much the hunting thing, but the having-cool-powers thing. Are they all fun gifts like flying or are some people stuck with useless powers like turning everything they touch into spoons or something?" You've just admitted that your world was cool, Kyle. The questions will never, ever end. Ever.

"Sorry, I'm Wyn, and I talk a lot. Nice to meet you!" she chirps, finally remembering her original intent: introducing herself.

"The city is self-contained. There are hydroponics towers and livestock roofs that clean air and provide food. Water is purified in a large building in the north quadrant, and reused. The dome is, they say, to protect us." Kyle's expression clearly indicates how much he believes that.

He's starting to relax a bit. If Stacy is to be believed, he does not have to be afraid of Defenders here, and she obviously isn't a Defender. Taking another bite of the food while he listens to her talk, he decides that, nutritious or not, there's only so much tasteless mush his system can stand, and pushes it away a bit.

"Most of them are useful in some way or another. Some can fly, some teleport, some throw fire - but we all have limitations." They wouldn't be struggling so much, otherwise.

Now that she's given her name, he has to give her his; so says the etiquette book. "I'm Kyle. A pleasure." Although she does talk a lot, at least it's interesting. She's asking questions, and seems interested in his answers. If she were there to babble on about other people and the weather, he would have been long gone.

"Oh. Fair enough." Wyn says with a shrug. Logistics aren't exactly her strong suit, so she's perfectly willing to let the subject go.

"We? You said we! Are you a mutant?" Wyn asks eagerly. "We haven't got mutants where I'm from-- well, we do, technically, because we've got redheads, but nothing with fire." Her ~~boy~~friend can teleport, but that's magic. That's different.

"...Uhm." Well, there you go, Kyle, making slips the moment someone expresses interest. Congrats. There's no way around it, no way to dodge it, and no real reason, right? "Yes, I am. Where are you from?" Topic change, topic change...That, and he was rather curious. Where did she come from, that media wasn't so heavily controlled, and cities weren't contained in domes, and they believed in a being called God?

Wyn just grins as Kyle looks extremely uncomfortable. "Your mutant ability thing had better be easy to hide, because if I can find out you're a mutant after talking to you for two minutes I'm pretty sure highly trained government operatives can as well." That's mostly a joke.

"I'm from the Gaeltacht Quarter of London, but I don't think that means a lot to you. London's the capital of the British Empire and a very large, not-domed-in city. Also, I'm from 2009, which apparently I need to clarify because everyone I meet is from the future." Wyn says, rolling with the change of subject. Might as well let her new friend ask some questions for a change. "Oh, and we've got magic." she adds, almost as an afterthought.

"It's usually not spoken of. The general public believes we don't exist, and for someone to ask us about ourselves would be highly suspicious," Kyle points out, not seeing the use of further pretending. Lying has never sat particularly well with him, despite the need for constant deception, and he tries to avoid it if he can.

"The British...Empire. There's more than one city?" That's a new concept. In Pelinor, the buildings are packed together; there is no such thing as travel, not really, given the easily-accessed public transportation. "2009 is...a measure of temporal placement? We measure our time in the lifespans of our President-Generals." Although, the mutants had a different, personal way of measuring time.

"Ma...gic. Does it explode?"

"Highly suspicious as in 'hi, I'm also a mutant!' or highly suspicious as in 'I'm a secret agent, stop talking to me'?" Wyn asks.

"More than one-- hell, the English've got continents under their control, among other things." Australia is totally a continent, despite the fact that it's just a very large island. "I think there might literally be a billion people in the Empire. Yeah, 2009 is the current year. Oddly enough, I think that dating system also gets back to the whole God thing too."

"Not... usually, no. It's kind of a supernatural thing. Meddling in affairs beyond our reach, things man was never meant to know, blah blah blah, except we totally do know them because we've been studying it since forever." Wyn says, slightly irritably. She's not a big fan of mysticism. "I mean, my university has been teaching magic for about 600 years."

"The latter. Most mutants are smart enough not to announce their presence. For that matter, most secret agents aren't, either. It's one of those things we don't talk about."

Kyle is content to keep scooping up and eating glop, mechanical though the motion is, while he listens to her. "A...continent. I assume it's larger than a city. How large is a billion?" How they can measure time based on God is confusing - does God have a lifespan as well? Based on what she's said of his omnipotence, it seems odd that he would succumb to time, of all things.

"This...magic...can be learned? I assume it's heavily regulated?" If there is a university dedicated to it, the government must be bad in different ways. Kyle's a cynic - there's no other kind of mutant.

"Well, yes, I mean that completely defeats the purpose of being a secret agent if you go around announcing it all the time." Wyn says, laughing slightly.

"A billion is a thousand millions, and right now I'm totally assuming that your city has a population in the millions, and yeah, a continent is kind of a bit bigger than a city."

"Well, it can kinda be learned. If you've got the talent, and the vast majority of people don't, you get trained just to make sure you don't accidentally destroy the timestream or summon one of the Elder Ones or something. I understand the theory behind it, but I can't do it, if that makes sense." Well, if you ask Wyn the government is bad, but she's admittedly a bit biased. "Basically, the laws are no time travel, no killing people with magic, no mind control, no necromancy, and for the love of Christ don't summon anything from beyond the Outer Gates."

"A th..." That number is almost beyond Kyle's comprehension. "You assume correctly. As of last census, Pelinor has eleven million residents." He's curious as to how big, exactly, a continent is, if it's capable of holding at least ten Pelinors, but he has a feeling that he would like his sense of scale intact.

"It's...somewhat like our mutations, then. We have no one able to travel through time, but there is always the danger that a child or newly-presented might kill someone or reveal us, so training is mandatory. The telepaths are able to control minds, although it is noticeable and, given enough familiarity, capable of being countered. What is necromancy, and what is a summon?" He leaves it unsaid that his comrades have killed plenty of people with their mutations, and his own has indirectly helped, through the weapons he's designed and the bombs he's built.

Yes, Kyle, Wyn will make your head explode with new, knowledge-y goodness. "That's what I thought." Wyn says with a nod.

"Necromancy is just, y'know, zombies, and summoning is..." She hesitates, tilting her head in an effort to find the best way to describe summoning. "So basically, there are other planes besides the one we live on, right? Just go with it. With the right spells, you can bring beings from those other planes into our plane. Usually it's to gain knowledge, but there's definitely people who summon in order to hurt or kill other people. The Outer Gates are the limit of our knowledge about planes, and... well, everything out there is older than time itself and wants nothing more than to obliterate existence." she says, her mouth twisting in distaste.

"You can see why everyone's like 'don't summon an Elder One!'. Of course, there are other problems, like powering a spell that large. It usually involves mass murder, the couple of times it's been tried, but it's been said that it can be done other ways."

Unfortunately, Kyle rather likes having his head in one piece and settled on his shoulders. Generally, an exploding head can only mean snipers, and he hates dealing with snipers. Their unpredictable location, their ability to kill a man halfway across the city...he prefers his fighting to be more open.

"Zombies...?" Another confusing term. He has a feeling that he'll have to ask for a lot of elaboration before he understands. For now, he listens to her explanation of summoning. "...We don't live on a plane, unless this ship counts as a plane." He's thinking of planes, the things that fly, so Wyn's explanation doesn't quite sit right with him. "I suppose it's a little like...don't build a nuclear bomb in your basement? And I would assume that mass murder, and those other ways, have rules preventing their occurrence."

Wyn can explain zombies! Zombies are easy. "Um, so zombies are reanimated corpses." Wyn says, doing a very brief impression of one of the Dawn of the Dead zombies: slow, shambling, and moaning for brains. "They're hard to stop, but headshots work. Don't set them on fire, they just stumble around lighting everything else on fire."

"I should have planes of existence, sorry." Wyn says apologetically. She doesn't really have airplanes in her world (airships and trains are much more prevalent), but she knows that she can be confusing. "Um." she continues, looking very guilty very briefly as Kyle mentions nuclear bombs in basements. "Yeah, probably, except nuclear bombs won't try to destroy time. And yes, murder is illegal. Nobody talks about the other ways."

"But...a corpse..." Well, it's magic, obviously. Kyle watches her with an expression that nicely conveys his disbelief. "Why, exactly, would someone want one of those...?" If they're slow, and easy prey for a sniper or reasonably accurate shooter, they aren't so much of a threat, right?

"Planes of existence...?" Oh, that kind of plane, he realizes. Like the coordinate plane. He's done maths involving a number of parallel or intersecting planes before. The guilty look is filed away for future reference. "Well, you never know. An explosion big enough might..." And that's enough of that, before he's tempted to try it. "Silence is usually the best way of allowing knowledge to die out," he agrees, a little grimly. He knows that all too well.

Wyn grins as she sees Kyle's look of absolute disbelief. "Um, it's easy to find materials to make 'em, unless you shoot them in the head you can't stop them, and most of all, they're terrifying. Watching something you've only seen in movies coming after you is enough to make most people panic." she says with a shrug. The only guns available for civilians in the British Empire are heavily-regulated hunting rifles. There aren't a whole lot of reasonably accurate shooters outside of the army, and Wyn would probably rather fend for herself against a zombie horde than get protection from the army. It's a principle thing. "Also, you don't have to feed them, they don't complain, and they're damn good cannon fodder for when you try to take over the world."

"Yeah, you probably could destroy the fabric of the space-time continuum with a big enough bomb, but I'm not sure there's enough uranium-238 in the world to do that. Hybrid bombs, though..." Wyn trails off, the little wheels in her head spinning very fast. Not that she wants to destroy the universe (she's actually rather fond of being alive), but she'd like to know if it's possible.

"Movies...fiction of some sort?" He can only compare it to the shock an ordinary citizen might feel if a mutant were to, say, tear up the street. Might? Did, if the screaming and howling immediately afterwards had been any indication. He still felt a little irritated about that. None of them had even gotten hurt.

"...I don't think we ought to give each other any more ideas," he grins wryly, putting out of his mind the thought of whether a sufficient quantity of explosives might be able to damage the dome. It's never been tried before, since an explosion like that would have killed a tenth of the city's population, but...

That's enough of that. He's not even in the dome any more. He eyes the rest of the glop, deciding to change the subject a little, before he gets an idea and accidentally kills them all. "Is this all the food they have on this ship?"

"Yeah, I think it's short for 'moving pictures'. They're kind of like two-hour self-contained stories, most of the time. They're fun." Wyn likes to go and annoy everyone around her with popcorn-throwing and comments, but that's not quite normal.

"Probably not. We're safer that way, at least." Wyn says with a grin.

"I just got here, so I wouldn't know, but I sure as hell hope not." She glares at the tray, hoping to subconsciously change it to something vaguely edible... or at least light it on fire. As she's not psychic, however, it doesn't work and she's left giving the tray a very irritable look.

Meet N' Greet

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