taxonomites | [HOLO] Arrival

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[HOLO] Arrival - 1

Topher had sat down in the little lounge area of his suite to play a few video games, intending to use them to pass the time until Echo was brought up for programming. He was proud of this new little idea of his, and he’d probably explain it to Ivy when she came in.

Unfortunately, the couch he sat on vanished, as did the rest of the room. Luckily he still had his PS3 system? Topher got up from where he was now sitting on the ground.

“Well. That was unexpected.”

After going around twice, he stopped to look at the tablet. He picked it up and examined it. Now, Topher knew a great deal about technology, especially cutting-edge stuff, but as far as he was concerned, this was still fictional.

“Dude. This is awesome. Where am I? Heeeh-lloooo? Alien kidnapping overlords? Can I come out of here?”

As he said this, he noticed a way out. Pocketing the tablet for further examination later, he picked up the video game console, slung the controllers over his shoulder, used the other hand to pick up the small TV, and walked awkwardly towards the door.

“I sure hope there’s somewhere I can plug these in.”

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"Well, even with ships that can get from world to world it would still take a prohibitively long time to reach another system. Faster-than-light travel is of course the goal I believe, but we still haven't achieved it." Spending a lot of time in conversation with aforementioned isolated men - and yes, often only exercising the companionship angle of being a Companion - had given her access to a wide and eclectic array of information about her time, if not the details behind them. "For some reason terraforming entire worlds and moons was easier."

As a result, she was quickly out of her depth. "Placebo effect? In what sense?"

"Right, right, sci-fi was filled with faster-than-light travel, but really? That's next to impossible. And even if you could send an object like that, it can't be good for an organism. the biological processes might stop, because they're definitely limited by the speed of light. Or, electricity, really, because everything starts in the neuron pathways."

And he was just warming up.

"The Placebo Effect basically works like this: they want to get better, so we give them something and say it will work, and voila! It does. The basic premise is that wishing makes it so. The accepted reasoning behind it usually assumes the affliction was psychosomatic in the first place... but I don't think it always is, and even then, it was wishing that created the affliction. If we have so much control over our body, it stands to reason we have some control over our environment - science is starting to prove that, now, and it probably continues into your day... maybe never mainstream, though."

"Ah, see, it was the affecting one's environment part that I got hung up on, I've heard of placebos in medicine but I wasn't sure that it applied in a more practical, everyday sense," she said with an amused smile, watching him as he got the wheels of his reasoning spinning. It was similar to watching that Spencer Reid man who used to be around, unfortunately one of the disappeared now, talk about circles in time, or one of the conversations she'd had with Simon on Serenity about medicine. There was nothing quite like conversation with a person who was excited about and interested in what they were talking about, even if she didn't always follow.

"Oh! And I should also mention, once you've got your tablet there you'll be able to exit the room you're in. The place we all start out is called the Sanctuary and it's roughly in the center of the city...you may or may not have a red blip on your screen there that tells you where something of yours is here after that. For me it was my shuttle..." she gestured around her at what looked almost nothing like the interior of a shuttlecraft with all the furnishings and decoration tossed over practically every surface. "Others have what seem to be their homes or vehicles."

Topher noticed the amused smile, which told him she was at least following. He'd settle for that, of course, but he did hope there were people here he could really debate with.

"So they want us to keep it with us, then. And okay, yeah, thanks."
He very much doubted he had a home or vehicle here, as neither was terribly important to him, but he also very much doubted they'd give him his lab. His office, maybe - he'd check later.

"Oh, and I'm Topher, by the by - Topher Brink." Because normally he introduced himself before getting carried away and explaining things like his personal musings about the Placebo Effect...

"I'm Inara Serra of Companion House Madrassa. It's a pleasure to meet you, Topher," she said with a friendly smile and an incline of her head that was something in between a nod and a bow. She still tended to add on the of Companion House Madrassa part even though there were very few people here who would even know what that meant who weren't already well aware of the fact, and even though she hadn't actually been a part of Madrassa for a couple of years now. It helped her hold on to her overall sense of who she was just a little bit.

Topher, of course, isn't one who would recognize it. Instead, he takes the name of the House and her very refined manner to mean she's nobility of some sort.

"D'you - mind if I call you Inara?"

"That would be just fine, yes," she says with a smile, setting down her tea and folding her hands.

"At any rate, I hope that you enjoy your stay here...or at least as much as one can enjoy captivity by unseen forces. Having access to the hatches makes things notably better than they could be, even if they're just a bit unsettling. They're a little too much like the bars that animals in a zoo press down on to get food to me, but they can make any number of useful things."

Like tea, and fancy dresses, and incense. She doesn't imagine that he'll put it to the same purpose, though!

"Oh, I probably will." He grins. "And yeah, I should find those. Do you know if there's anything they won't make?"

"Living things, people," she said with a sigh. "One of the girls here keeps trying to make her brother. Which...xiè tiān xiè dì she hasn't had anything even like success, one can only imagine...she just keeps making what looks like his clothes. Making food with meats works just fine, but I don't believe that you can make a living animal. And...I'm not certain how it works in terms of making things like books, if it takes the item from your memory and so it wouldn't contain what you don't know, or if it pulls it, as we were pulled, from somewhere in which case it would be possible..."

That was an experiment worth trying, at any rate.

No people, no animals... hold on a second, that was Chinese.
"You speak Chinese?"

"Yes...most people where I come from do, at least a little. Especially on Sihnon of course where the culture is much more strongly influenced by the region that the language originated in on Earth That was, but Chinese and English are equally spoken generally."

"I knew it! Ha-HA! If only two languages survive, it had to be English and Chinese." Topher is elated to be proven correct... but then, he's excited about most of this anyway.

Topher's enthusiasm is infectious and she laughs, nodding. "Well, you were right. At any rate, I'll let you go and get acclimated and find your red dot, if you have a red dot. If not...well, I'm not sure what happens. I think that you can actually stay in the Sanctuary, and there are a number of empty houses about. If you need anything there are a lot of us in the same situation, you can use your device there to ask questions and for help."

"Okay. Thanks then... and probability says I'll see you around sometime."

"With a population this small and space being limited, I'd say it's probably a certainty. Take care, Topher."

"You too, Inara."

Inara. What a pretty name. But it fits such a pretty lady... heh!

Topher is slightly embarrassed by the direction his thoughts are taking, (nothing too graphic, mind you. This is still mostly in the "Ooh, so prity" zone) but she's left, so it's okay... right?

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[HOLO] Arrival - 1

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