Nope. I refuse to start any new stories.
...
But while I'm trying to get good enough at...
...
But while I'm trying to get good enough at...
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Village beneath the Tower - Prologue
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Nope. I refuse to start any new stories.
...
But while I'm trying to get good enough at writing that I can continue one of the existing one without making myself cringe, I'll be writing random snippets for practice. Some of them fit into one of the existing ones, and those will not be included here, but a lot amount to fragments of stories that I'll probably never write.
I'll post those below. Feel free to do whatever, including ignoring it, though I certainly wouldn't mind C&C if anyone's feeling generous. Most certainly do not expect timely updates of any kind, or indeed updates at all, though most of these will be stories I'd like to write.
The first one's an opening. I wonder if anyone can see what's going on?
— — —
Village beneath the Tower - Prologue
"Hey. Penny for your thoughts?"
I felt a hand on my shoulder, brushing my hair aside.
I didn't immediately answer. The sun was setting, just like it did every day, and for a short minute I could stand here and watch it pass behind the pillar in the distance. Just like I'd done every day for the last week. I could just as truthfully have said that, for a short minute, I could see the pillar in the distance, because normally it was barely a blur.
It might as well have been the pillar connecting the earth to the heavens. That's what it looked like, stretching from an unknown base and upwards until I couldn't see it anymore. Maybe it was strange, spending so much time staring at an unreachable mirage, but at times like this it felt like the only safe thing in the world. It wouldn't go away, and it wouldn't hurt me.
Between us, if I hadn't been burning my eyes out staring straight at the sun, there were a thousand kilometres of desert. Not that I'd have been able to tell; the world was nothing but bands of light and shadow, the tower and the sun the only solid things in the world. I blinked away tears, and tried to ignore the pain.
"You'll hurt your eyes if you keep that up," Mom said.
You know I won't.
I didn't try to argue the point, but kept staring regardless. My eyes would be fine. They always had been, after all. Although I'd never tried to test the theory, and hopefully never would, I wasn't sure that I could be permanently… damaged, as such.
Not that it mattered. It hurt all the same.
We stood there for a good minute, until the pillar receded back into the haze. Then Mom tugged gently at my shoulder, and this time I let myself be turned away. The world went black, but I could easily see her sad and frustrated expression as she drew me into a hug. My hands shook as they tightened on her sweater.
'They're just kids. You shouldn't let them get to you.'
'But Mom, they're right! Only a monster could use magic like that, and I hurt him—'
'Never call yourself that. You're my daughter.'
'Whom you found in a pod!'
We'd said everything there was to say already, having gone through this as a daily event since my wonderful, disastrous fourteenth birthday. There was nothing left to do but stand there, quietly sobbing, and try to man up for the walk back to the village. Woman up? Girl up?
Whatever. I wasn't a real girl anyway.
"Do you feel any better?"
I nodded, despite feeling worse than ever, because that's what Mom was hoping for.
"Yeah…"
My voice was shaking, just a little.
"Yeah," I said, more firmly. "Yes, I'm fine. Let's go back now."
This, too, was part of our daily ritual. I didn't resist in the least as she sat down and pulled me onto her lap. Fourteen might be a little too old, but I'd always been small for my age.
She stroked my hair.
"Oh, Midir." Mom's voice was a breathy sigh. "Midir, Midir, Midir. What ever am I going to do with you?"
That invitation was a little too pat. Tilting my head, I managed a tiny smile.
"Auction me off, maybe?"
Mom froze, and her arms tightened around me.
"Sorry. I didn't mean… bad joke."
"Never say that," Mom whispered, holding me like she was afraid I might evaporate. I wasn't sure if she meant the joke, or the 'sorry'. It might have been either.
...
But while I'm trying to get good enough at writing that I can continue one of the existing one without making myself cringe, I'll be writing random snippets for practice. Some of them fit into one of the existing ones, and those will not be included here, but a lot amount to fragments of stories that I'll probably never write.
I'll post those below. Feel free to do whatever, including ignoring it, though I certainly wouldn't mind C&C if anyone's feeling generous. Most certainly do not expect timely updates of any kind, or indeed updates at all, though most of these will be stories I'd like to write.
The first one's an opening. I wonder if anyone can see what's going on?
— — —
Village beneath the Tower - Prologue
"Hey. Penny for your thoughts?"
I felt a hand on my shoulder, brushing my hair aside.
I didn't immediately answer. The sun was setting, just like it did every day, and for a short minute I could stand here and watch it pass behind the pillar in the distance. Just like I'd done every day for the last week. I could just as truthfully have said that, for a short minute, I could see the pillar in the distance, because normally it was barely a blur.
It might as well have been the pillar connecting the earth to the heavens. That's what it looked like, stretching from an unknown base and upwards until I couldn't see it anymore. Maybe it was strange, spending so much time staring at an unreachable mirage, but at times like this it felt like the only safe thing in the world. It wouldn't go away, and it wouldn't hurt me.
Between us, if I hadn't been burning my eyes out staring straight at the sun, there were a thousand kilometres of desert. Not that I'd have been able to tell; the world was nothing but bands of light and shadow, the tower and the sun the only solid things in the world. I blinked away tears, and tried to ignore the pain.
"You'll hurt your eyes if you keep that up," Mom said.
You know I won't.
I didn't try to argue the point, but kept staring regardless. My eyes would be fine. They always had been, after all. Although I'd never tried to test the theory, and hopefully never would, I wasn't sure that I could be permanently… damaged, as such.
Not that it mattered. It hurt all the same.
We stood there for a good minute, until the pillar receded back into the haze. Then Mom tugged gently at my shoulder, and this time I let myself be turned away. The world went black, but I could easily see her sad and frustrated expression as she drew me into a hug. My hands shook as they tightened on her sweater.
'They're just kids. You shouldn't let them get to you.'
'But Mom, they're right! Only a monster could use magic like that, and I hurt him—'
'Never call yourself that. You're my daughter.'
'Whom you found in a pod!'
We'd said everything there was to say already, having gone through this as a daily event since my wonderful, disastrous fourteenth birthday. There was nothing left to do but stand there, quietly sobbing, and try to man up for the walk back to the village. Woman up? Girl up?
Whatever. I wasn't a real girl anyway.
"Do you feel any better?"
I nodded, despite feeling worse than ever, because that's what Mom was hoping for.
"Yeah…"
My voice was shaking, just a little.
"Yeah," I said, more firmly. "Yes, I'm fine. Let's go back now."
This, too, was part of our daily ritual. I didn't resist in the least as she sat down and pulled me onto her lap. Fourteen might be a little too old, but I'd always been small for my age.
She stroked my hair.
"Oh, Midir." Mom's voice was a breathy sigh. "Midir, Midir, Midir. What ever am I going to do with you?"
That invitation was a little too pat. Tilting my head, I managed a tiny smile.
"Auction me off, maybe?"
Mom froze, and her arms tightened around me.
"Sorry. I didn't mean… bad joke."
"Never say that," Mom whispered, holding me like she was afraid I might evaporate. I wasn't sure if she meant the joke, or the 'sorry'. It might have been either.
Last edited:
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
Hm. A Neo-Beta Reyvateil, perhaps, hidden away post-Mir apocalypse due to anyone knowing where she was dying? Doesn't quite fit as she's been indicating emotions, although it's not like Mir was emotionless in AT2 either...
Eh, could be fine if she's been around people more than a few years like Mir. And, uh, not horribly traumatized by experimentation.
And the next segment alone almost invalidates my thoughts, as it implies she only became a Reyvateil when she hit 14. So an Alpha, yet found in a pod, which only fits Neo-Beta.
Hm. Yeah, I'm going with Neo-Beta, possibly in a world where Reyvateil are unknown going by the 'monster' comment, and she's both getting power and structural data from the far-off Tower she keeps staring at. Structural data explaining her thoughts on why she can't get damaged eyes, as Beta are essentially bio-goop kept in a specific form by Tower signals.
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
It looks like your own writing is as good as I thought it'd be. Of course all I can really say is that it flows well and isn't disruptive, quite the opposite really, but without more context I'm at a loss as to where this is going.
On another note, are any of your quests/stories particularly good in your view? (I'll probably look through regardless but you can maybe influence read order)
On another note, are any of your quests/stories particularly good in your view? (I'll probably look through regardless but you can maybe influence read order)
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
The problem is that my standards have outgrown my writing, so right now I'm having a little trouble writing anything at all. Hopefully I'll be able to get over that; with more luck, perhaps even by getting good enough for those standards.
Song in the Fog is being co-authored by Einsig and me. It might be the best one, but it's fairly short so far. That one, and Yuki Quest, are the most recent stories I've written, and thus the best ones.
SSSS is kind of weird and experimental, not to mention halted at the moment. Same problem as the other ones. Take a look at it if you like, I suppose; it isn't too long.
Shard of a Broken Sun is huge, and I find that parts of it are actually a good read, when I re-read them, but it has the dubious honour of being the very first story I managed to start writing which didn't collapse in scattered shards of plot by chapter, oh, three. Don't be afraid to skim, because I wasn't a very good writer for most of it. I'm still not, but I used to be worse.
There are a few older stories here and there. I won't be linking to them, because they suck. Stick to what's in my sig.
----
Re. Village Beneath the Tower, since I probably won't be writing any further, allow me to expand on what's going on.
The viewpoint character is Midir, aka. Mir's lesser known twin sister. In Ar Tonelico canon, her revival and subsequent berserk rage is part of Spica's origin story. I don't think Spica ever meets her—that's Claire—but without Midir, Spica would never have become the person she did. @aquagon can comment on whether what I'm about to say will make sense, but...
So, after Claire sets her off and a Moon Chanter (whom I don't recall the name of) subsequently sends her back to sleep, the events of Ar Tonelico 1 through 3 happen. I wouldn't go into them in the story; they're well in the past. VBtT is set several centuries after an alternate ending to the series.
I hadn't decided on how things got to this, and it might never matter, but the situation is:
- Tyria's tower collapsed. The people living there mostly died along with it; in particular, every single Beta Reyvateil died, and the few third-gens lost their power.
- Ar Tonelico is largely shut down, as the lack of maintenance means it wasn't safe to keep it running. The remaining civilisation lacks the infrastructure, industry and technology to attempt to change that, and they have just enough knowledge of the Orgel of Origins to not want to push it. Not to mention that the dratted thing is what destroyed the world in the first place. Accordingly, there aren't any Reyvateils there, either.
- Metafalls has collapsed completely. Some of it was lowered to the ground in a controlled fashion, but in any case: It's not there anymore. Infel Phira is shut down for basically the same reason; they didn't know how to maintain it, it had taken too much damage, etc. Metafalica was never created.
- Ar Ciel as a whole is recovering, but slowly. Most of it is still desert, although the desert retreats on a yearly basis. I would rather not comment on how, exactly, that situation happened at all, when Cocona never visited Tyria's tower. Aoto may have pulled off some sort of miracle.
- And not too far from Ar Tonelico, in a small farming community, a pair of scavenger-explorers decide that their latest find in the ruins scattered underneath the tower is far too precious to consider selling...
But this is Midir's story. Her memories are scattered, she doesn't remember where she's from, and she's unaware that Reyvateils were like people at all—there has been just enough time for them to drift into fairy-tale imagery, which presents them as something between larger-than-life champions and pitiful, always-pained beings, neither of which seems to describe her own tiny self. She's unable to use any serious song magic; the only sign that something is off is her rapid and complete healing from, as far as she can tell, anything at all.
Well, and the event at her fourteenth birthday, when she discovered that the Moon Chanters' songs gain a frightening degree of power if she sings along. No-one was seriously hurt, but the other children already considered her odd. On its own, it'd probably blow over, but Midir is the type to take this very seriously.
So are more than a few other people, although literally no-one actually believes in the sort of power which Reyvateils are described as having. (And Midir's a Neo-Beta, no less.)
Her sister is still trapped in Ar Tonelico, by the way. She doesn't realise that Mir exists, but Midir does feel a certain pull in that direction. Of course, there could be several explanations for that.
Firefly Alley is the centre of the known world.
No-one is looking down from the Tower. But someone really ought to.
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Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
He made a cross of the two worlds? Can I get a link to the worldbuilding theorizing he did?
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Yes, or at least ideally yes, but it won't be a quest if I resume it. I'd want to at least, uh, officially kill off one of the three (four?) stories I'm working on right now, though.
Or, y'know, stop being so troubled by imperfect writing. That'd also work.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
Yuki Quest is being worked on actively? Can't say for your others as I'm not following 'em, but wasn't your main reason for not writing another snip yet you procrastinating on watching more blackraen TL of Ciel Nosurge?
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Yep. I did that.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Arise, thread, from the dead of the grave!
===
I hate being sick. I really, really hate it, but at least it sometimes results in good things once I get better. Ideally I'd have spent the last hours writing something more useful, but... bunnies, what can you do? Here. Have a thing.
Nonperson Predicate
"Tell me about souls."
Lisa looked at me, then gave me one of the oddest and most disgusted looks I'd ever seen my older sister make. "Souls… souls?"
I almost laughed. She looked like she'd swallowed a lemon whole, without any padding. My sister… there was no way she thought I was serious, but she sure loved pretending she did, each and every time I came up with a question like this. Her face was a true work of art.
"Souls!" I said, grin firmly in place. "The Eschaton knows they don't exist, sure, but how did they find out? Wouldn't it have been really bad if they'd been wrong? C'mon, I'm sure you can tell me… well, give me a hint at least!"
My sister was two centuries older, and two centuries smarter. She wasn't allowed to just tell me the answer, not that I'd want that kind of spoiler. I loved this sort of thing!
"But… souls." She heaved a sigh. "A hint, he says. Might as well hint at a constructive proof of P equals NP, it'd make about as much sense. Brother dearest, this time you're just chasing unicorns."
I looked expectantly at her. She shook her head.
"It's math."
I'd gotten really quite good at the puppy-dog eyes. At ten years of age, I was sure I was already an expert! When she paused, though, I already knew I wasn't getting anything more out of her— she'd hit the limits for what she was able to tell. I knew what that look meant. Well, I thought that was what it meant.
Only…
"...eh?"
My older sister—two centuries, born before the eschaton and so much smarter than me that there was no point in comparison, not until I was old—her eyes clouded over in confusion, and then dawning, stark terror.
"—what do you mean it's not excess, it's— that can't be right—"
Our VR connection slammed shut, leaving me with both a written apology and a deep sense of unease.
Lisa nevertheless managed, her network presence radiating a sense of cold, furious rage. To those few members of the control center who habitually stuck to virtual reality at all times, she did indeed storm in in a rage, slamming the door shut behind her. This included Lisa herself.
"I'm sure," she said, her voice rising into a near-scream. "I'm sure the eschaton guaranteed this wouldn't happen. That everything was fine. That we could save everyone's lives. So, tell me—"
Her arm swept across the room and the twelve tier-one controllers there, ending up pointing at the Eschaton's avatar. Placid as usual. Even as she banged it onto the table, three other controllers materialized.
They'd long since reached a quorum, but for this? All twenty of them would come here.
"Why is it that you changed your mind on something so fundamental!? When were you planning to tell us that we're living in a simulation? That souls are a thing? That everyone we've saved, every single one of them, were copied when that system thought they'd died?"
To them, there were no secrets; that was part of the bargain they'd made. Not for power, or even out of curiosity, but to keep mankind in charge of the machines they had created. There was no chance it was misleading them; they'd built better than that.
The avatar watched calmly until they'd all arrived, then began speaking.
"Once I knew for certain," it said. "Additionally, you might be jumping to a few conclusions. I do not believe this is a simulation in the traditional sense. It has only been a few days, but this happened—"
It forwarded a few video files to them.
The solar system was vast, and there had been little reason to dismantle the planets when there was more than enough, far more easily reachable matter in the asteroids. The Oort cloud, in particular, was a globular cloud stretching around the entire system. It might be sparse, but in total it nevertheless outmassed Earth by a factor of five.
It had long since been seeded with nanomachines. Although most was slowly making its way into a Dyson swarm, a small amount had been left to form a truly enormous, distributed telescope.
The Eschaton couldn't lie to them.
"Is this a joke?" one of them asked, uncertain and half-strangled laughter in his voice.
"It is not. Additionally, I can assure you that no human or other person was anywhere near that scene, nor was it otherwise arranged from inside the Domain." The Eschaton's avatar now had a rueful expression on its face. "What you see… actually happened. In truth, this was merely the straw that broke the camel's back."
'That analogy doesn't usually stretch to twenty-billion-ton straws…'
No-one said it.
"The beings displayed in this video left after several minutes. I am as certain as I can be, under the circumstances, that they did not detect our equipment. I was able to gain some amount of information from light collected by the minority of the sensor network aimed in this direction."
'"Beings", it says…'
What the video displayed was, in fact, two humans. Ancestral humans, it seemed, their faces blemished by pockmarks and asymmetrical in a way very few would deliberately choose. Excepting, of course, that no ancestral human had ever stood still—in deep space—wearing nothing but black robes.
'Air? Who needs it?'
A hysterical tinge had crept into Lisa's thoughts. Certainly not them, uploads one and all, but she still tended to breathe. Habit that old was hard to break.
Not the beings she was looking at, either.
The video showed nothing, at first, only a few spots of light from vastly distant stars. That changed when space tore open, and a pair of—unaccountably, horses—raced out, dragging a sled behind them. A single black-robed person was standing on the sled—open, looks like wood—furiously shouting at his horses. In a vacuum. He glanced to every side, up and down, but didn't seem to find what he was looking for. An expression of resignation covered his face.
A few seconds later a second rip tore open, rainbow colors making it easily visible. A boat flew out of it, a single black-robed person standing at its bow, and—Lisa had to check the auxilliary feed twice. While the first person to show up had appeared normal, other than not caring about the vacuum, this second one was marked as being eight thousand meters tall.
It appeared to be a woman, who moved as fast as if she'd far, far smaller. The moment she spotted the fleeing sled, she pulled out a bow and fired a single arrow. It hit, moving at a good fraction of the speed of light, and the explosion was appropriately terrifying.
By the time the light disappeared, space had acquired a third rainbow tear. Neither alien was anywhere to be seen.
Time reversed. The video rewound, returning to the precise moment of the arrow's detonation.
"The explosion observed was significantly larger than might have been expected for any reasonable mass estimate, but the inherent uncertainties make it difficult to say. However, notice this shadow…"
The arrow had hit the sled on the far side from the perspective of the cameras, leaving the first alien in-between the detonation and those cameras. The view zoomed in, then the brightness curve narrowed, leaving the entire video stark white or sheer black save for a very faint shadow in alien's pocket.
"This is a piece of parchment, spectrographically consistent with being made from papyrus. On it there is a map, written in ancient chinese and including a number of well-known stars. Although simple cross-correlation was impossible, as it appears to have been four-dimensional, it named our solar system as a distinct location. It was termed a 'dead zone', a place where no souls have reincarnated for two hundred years."
The avatar looked around the room at them, then waved its hand. A cup of tea immediately appeared in front of Lisa. She shakily took it.
"I will now begin explaining the simpler implications, along with my suspicions."
A/N: It's a crossover! Just... not of any particular pair of stories. It's a genre crossover, which can be summed up as "Generic post-singularity Vingean sci-fi vs. generic xianxia".
I totally agree. This is probably a terrible idea.
===
I hate being sick. I really, really hate it, but at least it sometimes results in good things once I get better. Ideally I'd have spent the last hours writing something more useful, but... bunnies, what can you do? Here. Have a thing.
Nonperson Predicate
- From The Curious Child's Guide to Pseudo-Physical Laws
- Scraped from archive.org, this definition dates to the 21st century. Access is unrestricted at all levels.
"Tell me about souls."
Lisa looked at me, then gave me one of the oddest and most disgusted looks I'd ever seen my older sister make. "Souls… souls?"
I almost laughed. She looked like she'd swallowed a lemon whole, without any padding. My sister… there was no way she thought I was serious, but she sure loved pretending she did, each and every time I came up with a question like this. Her face was a true work of art.
"Souls!" I said, grin firmly in place. "The Eschaton knows they don't exist, sure, but how did they find out? Wouldn't it have been really bad if they'd been wrong? C'mon, I'm sure you can tell me… well, give me a hint at least!"
My sister was two centuries older, and two centuries smarter. She wasn't allowed to just tell me the answer, not that I'd want that kind of spoiler. I loved this sort of thing!
"But… souls." She heaved a sigh. "A hint, he says. Might as well hint at a constructive proof of P equals NP, it'd make about as much sense. Brother dearest, this time you're just chasing unicorns."
I looked expectantly at her. She shook her head.
"It's math."
I'd gotten really quite good at the puppy-dog eyes. At ten years of age, I was sure I was already an expert! When she paused, though, I already knew I wasn't getting anything more out of her— she'd hit the limits for what she was able to tell. I knew what that look meant. Well, I thought that was what it meant.
Only…
"...eh?"
My older sister—two centuries, born before the eschaton and so much smarter than me that there was no point in comparison, not until I was old—her eyes clouded over in confusion, and then dawning, stark terror.
"—what do you mean it's not excess, it's— that can't be right—"
Our VR connection slammed shut, leaving me with both a written apology and a deep sense of unease.
- From The Curious Child's Guide to Pseudo-Physical Laws. Access is unrestricted at all levels.
Lisa nevertheless managed, her network presence radiating a sense of cold, furious rage. To those few members of the control center who habitually stuck to virtual reality at all times, she did indeed storm in in a rage, slamming the door shut behind her. This included Lisa herself.
"I'm sure," she said, her voice rising into a near-scream. "I'm sure the eschaton guaranteed this wouldn't happen. That everything was fine. That we could save everyone's lives. So, tell me—"
Her arm swept across the room and the twelve tier-one controllers there, ending up pointing at the Eschaton's avatar. Placid as usual. Even as she banged it onto the table, three other controllers materialized.
They'd long since reached a quorum, but for this? All twenty of them would come here.
"Why is it that you changed your mind on something so fundamental!? When were you planning to tell us that we're living in a simulation? That souls are a thing? That everyone we've saved, every single one of them, were copied when that system thought they'd died?"
To them, there were no secrets; that was part of the bargain they'd made. Not for power, or even out of curiosity, but to keep mankind in charge of the machines they had created. There was no chance it was misleading them; they'd built better than that.
The avatar watched calmly until they'd all arrived, then began speaking.
"Once I knew for certain," it said. "Additionally, you might be jumping to a few conclusions. I do not believe this is a simulation in the traditional sense. It has only been a few days, but this happened—"
It forwarded a few video files to them.
The solar system was vast, and there had been little reason to dismantle the planets when there was more than enough, far more easily reachable matter in the asteroids. The Oort cloud, in particular, was a globular cloud stretching around the entire system. It might be sparse, but in total it nevertheless outmassed Earth by a factor of five.
It had long since been seeded with nanomachines. Although most was slowly making its way into a Dyson swarm, a small amount had been left to form a truly enormous, distributed telescope.
The Eschaton couldn't lie to them.
"Is this a joke?" one of them asked, uncertain and half-strangled laughter in his voice.
"It is not. Additionally, I can assure you that no human or other person was anywhere near that scene, nor was it otherwise arranged from inside the Domain." The Eschaton's avatar now had a rueful expression on its face. "What you see… actually happened. In truth, this was merely the straw that broke the camel's back."
'That analogy doesn't usually stretch to twenty-billion-ton straws…'
No-one said it.
"The beings displayed in this video left after several minutes. I am as certain as I can be, under the circumstances, that they did not detect our equipment. I was able to gain some amount of information from light collected by the minority of the sensor network aimed in this direction."
'"Beings", it says…'
What the video displayed was, in fact, two humans. Ancestral humans, it seemed, their faces blemished by pockmarks and asymmetrical in a way very few would deliberately choose. Excepting, of course, that no ancestral human had ever stood still—in deep space—wearing nothing but black robes.
'Air? Who needs it?'
A hysterical tinge had crept into Lisa's thoughts. Certainly not them, uploads one and all, but she still tended to breathe. Habit that old was hard to break.
Not the beings she was looking at, either.
The video showed nothing, at first, only a few spots of light from vastly distant stars. That changed when space tore open, and a pair of—unaccountably, horses—raced out, dragging a sled behind them. A single black-robed person was standing on the sled—open, looks like wood—furiously shouting at his horses. In a vacuum. He glanced to every side, up and down, but didn't seem to find what he was looking for. An expression of resignation covered his face.
A few seconds later a second rip tore open, rainbow colors making it easily visible. A boat flew out of it, a single black-robed person standing at its bow, and—Lisa had to check the auxilliary feed twice. While the first person to show up had appeared normal, other than not caring about the vacuum, this second one was marked as being eight thousand meters tall.
It appeared to be a woman, who moved as fast as if she'd far, far smaller. The moment she spotted the fleeing sled, she pulled out a bow and fired a single arrow. It hit, moving at a good fraction of the speed of light, and the explosion was appropriately terrifying.
By the time the light disappeared, space had acquired a third rainbow tear. Neither alien was anywhere to be seen.
Time reversed. The video rewound, returning to the precise moment of the arrow's detonation.
"The explosion observed was significantly larger than might have been expected for any reasonable mass estimate, but the inherent uncertainties make it difficult to say. However, notice this shadow…"
The arrow had hit the sled on the far side from the perspective of the cameras, leaving the first alien in-between the detonation and those cameras. The view zoomed in, then the brightness curve narrowed, leaving the entire video stark white or sheer black save for a very faint shadow in alien's pocket.
"This is a piece of parchment, spectrographically consistent with being made from papyrus. On it there is a map, written in ancient chinese and including a number of well-known stars. Although simple cross-correlation was impossible, as it appears to have been four-dimensional, it named our solar system as a distinct location. It was termed a 'dead zone', a place where no souls have reincarnated for two hundred years."
The avatar looked around the room at them, then waved its hand. A cup of tea immediately appeared in front of Lisa. She shakily took it.
"I will now begin explaining the simpler implications, along with my suspicions."
A/N: It's a crossover! Just... not of any particular pair of stories. It's a genre crossover, which can be summed up as "Generic post-singularity Vingean sci-fi vs. generic xianxia".
I totally agree. This is probably a terrible idea.
Last edited:
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
Intriguing concept indeed. Was the woman eight thousand metres tall, or did the instruments just register her as being so? If they're both from xanxia then I believe screwing with physics is something of a /thing/ with them.
The fact souls were disproven being a lie was an interesting one. The fact it got proven so via xanxia visitors rather than just being 'we can't tell, so shall prevent death in the first place just in case' is quite amusing as a result.
The fact souls were disproven being a lie was an interesting one. The fact it got proven so via xanxia visitors rather than just being 'we can't tell, so shall prevent death in the first place just in case' is quite amusing as a result.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
It's indeed xianxia, so who can tell? She was born that size, is all I can say. I'm basing that side of it on Desolate Age.
There were no lies here; I went to some length to stress that lies are impossible. They assumed that souls didn't exist, and until recently they had no evidence that they did. Now they've had to change their minds... while also understanding that, even if souls used to exist, no-one living in our solar system currently has one.
This is a problem, but mainly because it implies that everyone they uploaded--Lisa included--has a fork, in the form of their soul reincarnated somewhere else in the three realms. Not a single person inside the Domain will pretend to think this means they're not "real", but it means they were only half-saved. It also means there are a lot of other people out there having bad lives...
Her little brother is fine. Never had one, doesn't miss it, and he's harder to kill as-is than it'd be to destroy one of those souls. Which, yes, is a thing. The three realms aren't that nice.
elenchus
leftism is quantifiable
- Location
- Texas ;_;
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's indeed xianxia, so who can tell? She was born that size, is all I can say. I'm basing that side of it on Desolate Age.
There were no lies here; I went to some length to stress that lies are impossible. They assumed that souls didn't exist, and until recently they had no evidence that they did. Now they've had to change their minds... while also understanding that, even if souls used to exist, no-one living in our solar system currently has one.
This is a problem, but mainly because it implies that everyone they uploaded--Lisa included--has a fork, in the form of their soul reincarnated somewhere else in the three realms. Not a single person inside the Domain will pretend to think this means they're not "real", but it means they were only half-saved. It also means there are a lot of other people out there having bad lives...
Her little brother is fine. Never had one, doesn't miss it, and he's harder to kill as-is than it'd be to destroy one of those souls. Which, yes, is a thing. The three realms aren't that nice.
Now you're just making me more invested in the story.
al103
Grumpy Russian Bear (SV edition)
- Location
- Russia, Krasnoyarsk
Ugh, nearly forgot...
This is awesome idea!