The Endless River

[voidtreckermods]

On the morning of day twenty one of the month of Kazoo there is a message on the ICP screens around the train. Their SCA's will light up the colour of the Void and show the following information.

World #398050 is a void nexus known locally as Tshering. As a void nexus this world has strong links with the void and the connection through worlds. World #398050 is home to the Endless River. Legends speak of this river being powerful enough to send thoughts from one heart to another across any distance. All that is needed is for you to know who it is you wish to reach.

On-board

The dressing carriage is open, filled with clothing best suited to a pleasant spring day. Light, airy and in a rainbow of joyful colours and florals. One closet is entirely filled with wide-brimmed hats bedecked with ribbons, feathers and ornaments. A stack of picnic baskets and containers filled with an alarming variety of passenger-suitable foodstuffs and flasked drinks sits in one corner, next to rolls of thick, weatherproof blankets in the four team colours.

The large box marked Do Not Use Yet, filled with small, empty jute bags, is hopefully still sat in the Luggage carriage, ready for passengers to grab handfuls of its contents as directed by the announcement.

Upon landing (after an appropriate countdown), the train remains on the surface, its carriages partially curved to form a gathering site for the day. Welcome to Tshering, the eighth void nexus!



A Day for Picnics

Tshering, system #398050, is a strange place, only habitable by grace of the passengers' SCAs. The sky is shot through with colours, a cascade of sunsets, and through it, the void shimmering through it in seams like a child's painting of the milky way. Still, there's a beauty to the chaotic mash of colours that soaks through its landscape, and in the shelter of the forests of towering funghi that dot its surface, the Void can go unseen by its visitors.

The temperature seems mild, suitable for the provided clothing, and if there are weather patterns around the world they've taken the day off. The funghi are sturdy enough that what air flow there is doesn't disturb their stalks, and carved grooves and holds in some of the larger examples indicate that climbing them to sit atop their glowing crowns is eminently possible, and, in fact, encouraged.

the Endless River

The Endless River is a font of pure chaos, flowing from a multitude of small rivulets across the area to a central reservoir, from which it pours directly upwards, away from Tshering's surface and out of sight, beyond the world's atmosphere.

Anything bagged and placed within the Endless River will also flow upwards and soon be out of sight, passing, presumably, into the Void. Scattered across the surface of Tshering are small, glittering pebbles, as described in the announcement.

The stones are pleasantly cool to the touch, and all passengers need to do is feel. Messages can be in any form that the Voidtreckers wish. Perhaps words, perhaps feelings, perhaps an image from their mind into the stone. Perhaps a mixture. Once they begin their message the stone will glow slightly and continue to glow as they secure it in the bag and cast it into the river. They will feel, almost instinctively, that they need to focus as they do so, thinking of the person they wish to reach all the while.

There are plenty of bags and many more stones; passengers will not be limited in their sendings.

Comments

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Most of life is spent trying to make it fairer," Edge said, meaning that as agreement. "I welcome this chance to provide a non-dingy... cantina? atmosphere?"

Needless to say, he didn't know the word.

[marvelous_murderbot]

"I believe," she responded, tilting her head a bit closer, to impart friendliness in providing information, "in other universes they call it a bar."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Oh, I see! No fear of that anywhere around here, I suppose." Not that a bar was a terrible place if it was fairly classy, but from her description a cantina seemed to not be almost by definition. "Only the finest picnic accommodations!"

[marvelous_murderbot]

"Oh, a picnic. I've never been on one of those!"

That seems to definitely strike her interest.

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"I really would like to hear your story. You've lived such a different life than those I know." Which wasn't surprising, here on the train, but Edge would have assumed some things would be universal...

[marvelous_murderbot]

"I suppose it would be interesting to some, but it is not terribly complicated. If it weren't for the explosions, I think it would hold little interest to a listener."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"I'll take that bet. If I find it exhausting, I'll beg you to leave off, but I think you're more likely to go mad from my constant requests for explanations. I've much to learn, after all." What with being from a fantasy world and all!

[marvelous_murderbot]

"Oh, I cannot go mad unless I were reprogrammed," she reassured him, waving that away with her free arm.

"But where would you like me to start?"

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Well, I'd like to know about you. So where did you come from?"

He had no idea how to put any other question properly without being offensive or foolish, since he still didn't quite understand just what all the things she'd said or hinted at truly amount to.

[marvelous_murderbot]

"I was activated on a mining planetoid in the Minos Cluster," she said.

"It had a number, not even a name, specifically - there were many such bodies there."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

Trying not to be annoying. Planetoid, that was basically a planet, right? 'Minos Cluster' must be a name instead of anything meaningful. But... "Activated? Aren't you at least part... you know, flesh?"

[marvelous_murderbot]

"Yes," she replies, with a nod. "My skin is human, my musculature is synethetic but still organic as well, just...stronger than usual. I have organs, like any human. Only my brain and skeleton are wholly artificial. Though the former is the most advanced ever seen in my universe."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"I'm going to remember you said that the next time someone accuses me of being arrogant!" The comment was all in good humor and certainly without malice, but Edge took 'advanced' to mean her intelligence.

[marvelous_murderbot]

She tilts her head at that, frowning a little.

"It was statement of fact," she replied. "It is a Grade AA-1 verbobrain, which have been adapted to everything from protocol functions containing millions of languages to military applications. In my case, it was substantially altered to resemble and operate like a human mind would. I am quite capable of emotions, for instance, a relative rarity amongst artificial life forms. I'm capable of likes, dislikes, preferences..."

She could go on. And she will, unchecked.

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Oh! You mean advanced because you're not really different from human, even if some of you is built." Well, he knew that already! "Or your mind isn't, even if the rest of you is leaps and bounds ahead of us."

Judging by the spark in his eyes, he's being flirtatious again. Sorry...

[marvelous_murderbot]

"Yes," she replies, missing most of that entirely, since as far as she knows she is just being informative. "The idea wasn't just to mimic a human, but to become one, as much as was possible."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it happened, because otherwise I wouldn't have the pleasure of knowing you! But why go to all the effort to make someone that way instead of... the natural way?" The sinister implications and possibilities had not yet occurred to him, since Edge was basically a decent guy, and since he was used to being betrayed due to magical mind control rather than any other source.

[marvelous_murderbot]

"To advance the science," she replied, easily. "To prove it could be done. My creation was an...achievement. Imagine, if you could blur the lines between machine and human so much so that the differences were only to physiology? That was what I was created to do. Others like me cannot function as I do. I can eat, digest, sweat, function in every single way I know as a human. I even have taste buds, though I'm still figuring out my likes and dislikes."

She sighs.

"I'm not sure what would have happened to me if Prince Xizor hadn't purchased me from my creator. Perhaps I would have become famous, or changed how people looked at droids in my universe. Instead, I became an assassin and enforcer."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"I don't like what it says about your home that the immediate response to creating a person was to sell that person." Wrong on so many levels, and a little bit of downer for what he'd hoped to be a light and pleasant conversation. Not that it was her fault, of course. "Though giving someone like you the power to fight back should've ended really badly for the person trying to control you."

[marvelous_murderbot]

"It is a difficult galaxy," she agrees, "with many troubles. And it did, for his niece - she tried to reassert control over me, and it failed her utterly."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Good." Edge couldn't find a scrap of sympathy for said niece, or really most people in this story. "But have people tried to come after you still?"

[marvelous_murderbot]

"Not yet," she replied, "though it's possible. But the amount of people who know I exist is now less than a dozen, which is a good start."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"I'm surprised it's so easy to trust... any of us." In her position, wouldn't someone normally lie? Disguise their nature and keep it secret so no one tried to use that against them?

[marvelous_murderbot]

"There are...levels of trust," she replied, after a moment. "But why shouldn't I at least give you some?"

She shook her head.

"Just because organics betrayed me in the past means I should do the same now, or presume outcomes not in evidence."

"Take this moment," she adds, "were I to merely make conclusions on past events, I would judge all this as merely an attempt at seduction. But that would not allow for variance. Change."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

Edge laughed, not taking any offense. "Hey, hey, I've just barely got you to agree to the mildest of dates, don't think I move quite so fast! But I really am curious. I've met so many people here who are so very different. Finding out about them is really fascinating, and it helps me be a lot less confused when so many people know about so many things I don't!"