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

[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!"

[marvelous_murderbot]

"Exactly," she replied, "I refuse to let my past be prologue. To deter me."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Since you can reason like that, I think your brain is better than most people's!"

How much grief would be spared if people could just put their past in their past? His own world would be a different and likely better place, to be sure.

[marvelous_murderbot]

It was humanity's worst trait, to her mind. It trapped them in cycles, sometimes for thousands of years.

She thought the best of them, but - they had their flaws.

"Perhaps. But I would trade it to be truly one of them."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Because it'd stop people from trying to misuse you?" That's the only reason he could think of for her to want to be genuinely fully human in physiology.

[marvelous_murderbot]

“No,” she replied. “I wish to know that I have a soul.”

It is a very simple statement, but it speaks to the deepest part of her nature. The deepest questions she wishes answered.

[onehandsomeslickninja]

Edge rubbed the back of his head. "You know, I think we all-flesh humans take it for granted that we do, but it's not like we know one way or the other. You might end up wondering even then. I guess the question I have is, what makes you think you don't?"

[marvelous_murderbot]

“Because I am a machine, whatever else I am.”

She doesn’t seem upset about it, but…perhaps a little wondering.

“I would not contain the spark of the divine, by theological standards.”

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Don't believe it for a second!" Edge veered his steps slightly, to nudge his shoulder against hers. "Doesn't matter what's inside you. Look at all the people we're sharing the train with. Who knows how they came to be? Who knows if they're all the same as I am inside? But I'd stake my name as king of Eblan that if I have a soul, so do all of they, and so do you!"

[marvelous_murderbot]

She arches an eyebrow at him.

"Your logic is curious. But I choose to like it regardless."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Nothing curious about it. You're a person, and either people have souls or they don't." No question about her status in the ninja's mind. He simply can't see any difference, any reason they shouldn't both be under the same standards.

[marvelous_murderbot]

She smiles, liking his thinking even if she wasn’t sure of it.

“It’s the person part my universe most disagrees with, but it is nice to think as you do.”

[onehandsomeslickninja]

Edge waved off her counterargument. "My world had to deal with a Lunarian who thought all of us weren't people, just bugs to be wiped out because we were in his way. Doesn't mean he was right!"

[marvelous_murderbot]

“I do not know what a Lunarian is, but I believe I know the sort,” she replied.

“They always say that to justify killing.”

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Or enslaving!" More to her point. "And how often is it correct? The fact that they need to keep claiming it about you to justify their actions proves it's wrong!"

[marvelous_murderbot]

"Yes, that too. For bugs beneath their notice, they certainly seem to want human forced labor quite a bit."

But the rest, well, it gives her pause.

[onehandsomeslickninja]

Edge nodded vigorously. "And your soul and proof of humanity could be in eighty-foot letters of fire and they'd still ignore it, so don't listen to them. Their convenience will always trump the truth for them!"

[marvelous_murderbot]

“But they are despots, and to be overthrown wherever possible,” she replied. “It’s the everyday that is more concerning.”