The first step to fixing one's problem is acknowledging them. We are doing that.
A lot now. maybe too much even
[x] Surely there was someone with similar problem on the internet already. We can do the search while alt tabbing to tell certain someone why their opinion on books is wrong.
And if any code found doesn't work fully, at least it will return some graphs to show.
Maybe.
Possibly.
It's too late. That plan made sense when he had a head full of sleep and a clock full of hours. Now he's late, exhausted, running out of focus, and of questionable emotional stability to serve as a foundation for internal alchemy that powerful.
Moreover, it takes a significant amount of time just to kick in.
He'd might as well, at this point. If the punishment for rebellion is the same as the punishment for being late, you'd might as well rebel, he reasons. Then he shakes his head and chides himself for catastrophizing. The situation is not so severe, and anyone can walk the grounds any time they want. If he feels exiled to his lair, it's a voluntary one.
He performs a brief breathing exercise to calm down, and lets go of the idea that he can push himself through this with willpower and stress alone. What he's doing is just pouring water into a cup with a hole in the bottom. It's time to change his approach.
Repeated Suggestions said:
[X] Desperate times, desperate measures. Take those drugs now please.
Thinking it over a second time, he decides: the hell with it. What's he got to lose?
Since that elixir does take time to work, he can dose up, then go for that stroll while he waits for it to activate.
And so, Zalan gets to work preparing it: He opens the locked casket. He retrieves a base potion, a vial of reagent, and unwraps a black pill the size of a human thumb, laser-engraved with the tughra of a sage of alchemy.
He measures out a quantity of potion into a bowl, carefully places the pill at its center, then activates it with a dose of reagent. The mixture agitates as it dissolves. It spins and stirs itself, threatening to spray in all directions, changes colors, then settles suddenly into an unnatural stillness.
The dragon contemplates it, and then drinks. It tastes like calculating anger, with notes of smoke and saffron.
The mixture settles heavily in his stomach. He washes it down with pure water.
He briefly considers initializing his Wing magic and going for a flight. How long has he kept himself cooped up in only the habitat, the lab tower, and the bridge between?
He decides against it. What if he's seen as joyriding while ignoring work communications? And should he be flying in his current state, or the state he aims to soon achieve?
Instead, he heads to the nearest park, slumps down, and waits for the effects. The bright morning filters through a skylight. The grass is cool under his digits. Air dances through the leaves. Zalan relaxes. He begins to feel energies moving through his mana channels, altering their natural flow, and beginning to accumulate at his Crown and Sacral chakratic nodes.
Coming here was a good idea, he thinks. This experience would feel much different if he were still locked in his workshop. Like a furnace as experienced by a piece of coal. This steadies him instead.
[X] be sure to grab a record of the telemetry so you won't look crazy when you tell your boss
-[X]on a unrelated note, do you know how to drugs interact with your tea? Like i heard you can get some "wacky" side effects from mixing them.
is this a "bad" what the fuck or more of a "I don't know what's happening" what the fuck?
either way I say
[X] Double check to makes sure everything is working right and recording, then see if you can't figure out what's going on.
-[x] Also check your messages they might have called you about something weird happening that you missed because you were trying to finish your thing before getting more work dumped on you
[X] Drink more water.
[X] Work out preliminary results of the telemetry data, check your messages with gusto, and figure out what the fuck is going on.
This is way over his head and he can't honestly make sense of it, but he's seeing errors way outside the norm. If he'd finished his work on the deep-contemplation engine, then maybe it could've produced an analysis he'd know how to read. He can't really just eyeball it. It involves a lot of thaumaturgy he doesn't know.
What he can say is that he's seeing interference in instruments that are supposed to be completely separate experiments. That suggests something is operating at an unauthorized energy level. Whatever it is, it's not part of the telemetry he's able to look at. It's even possible something's happening outside the arcology and only these instruments are picking it up, but they're so far from the nearest mana plant that he can't imagine what could do that.
Zalan isn't being entirely rhetorical. He's trying to get a feel for how urgent this is. A lot of dragons here know more about this stuff than he does. He's just here to get the information magic working. If it were an emergency, one of them would've noticed by now, right?
[Supervisor] {Ioseth}: Have you gotten that engine spirit behaving?
[...] How's progress proceeding? Can I get an estimate? [...] The Augury drakes keep asking.
[...] I know you're busy, but could you take a look at some of these lab readings?
He'd better not think too hard right now about how urgently people wanted this particular prediction engine running right before things started getting weird...
Presently, he feels sober enough to respond coherently. For now.
{Zalan}: I'm still trying to make sense of the telemetry from the lab. I'm not trained in planar magicks. But. Too many instruments are entering fault states at once. It must be external interference. Lots of it, I would assume beyond authorized parameters. Is there something energetic taking place?
{Ioseth}: I see. Thank you.
I'll try talking to them.
Talking to who, Zalan wonders? That was strangely curt. He'd expected Ioseth to either yell at him, or angrily blame someone else. This language seems guarded, for him. Is somebody important involved?
{Kezey}: I'm sorry to bother you again but has your work concluded?
[...] You might need to stop. I'm sorry, but there's something else going on. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to talk about it.
[...] Then again, if we aren't supposed to bring in more help then you'd might as well keep working like usual. Haha~!
{Zalan}: Thanks, I think. Stay safe over there. From what little I can see, I'm not sure if I should be flying away and screaming.
{Kezey}: Haa. You worry too much. Don't forget to eat~!
Zalan isn't sure what to make of that either.
{Tieran-Sha}: Hello, Zalan! I hope you've succeeded at clearing some time, because I'm now en route. I apologize for my excessive promptness, but we concluded our significant work ahead of schedule, and I was so excited that I barely slept before taking wing. If you require more time, don't worry. I'm certain the Institue arcology has much to see and many to meet. The aurora should be visible tonight.
Tieren-Sha always sounds like he doesn't need wing magic to fly. Zalan might even resent it if he wasn't so relentlessly nice.
He feels queasy at the notion of meeting him now, like this, and as some kind of secretive totally-not-dangerous-probably situation continues to develop.
Is there access to external cameras to visually confirm the obvious telemetry bits? Stuff like mountains and other geological features that should not change but can be used to calibrate things?
It is possible that there is something going on outside, or that something inside has knocked the overall structure enough to throw off that calibration.
Also it sounds like that might give a heads up to when Tieran-Sha gets here.
[x] it is probably polite to at least tell your friend something strange is going on so he doesn't fly into a frightening magical storm or something on the way here
[x] somewhat related, maybe you should go look at what's happening yourself...? if you even know where you might want to go look, that is
