Second floor common room, Friday evening

[sairis]

Having received a thorough grounding in how to use the internet from Arden, Sairis had been making use of it ever since. It was frustrating that he couldn't be sure how much was true, but he'd learned to research and cross-reference texts, and that seemed to help.

He'd learned a lot about electricity! And how stoves worked. He had his priorities.

So here he was, having found some eggs and meat and carrots in the icebox, and cooking them in a pan on the stove. There was a spice rack, and most of them made no sense, so he'd tasted them. Which was why he was using salt and pepper (those he knew) and something called "chili powder" to season it all.


[Open common room is open!]

Comments

[thatsmysword]

Truth be told, Henry wasn't in the best spirits. Spending all that time alone with his thoughts wasn't good for him. But-- at least there was the smell of food as he stepped out onto the second floor.

"D'you smell that, Mutt?" Henry asked. "What do you think-- Mutt!"

And off went the dog, running into the common room.

[sairis]

Sairis heard someone behind him and turned. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't a dog.

"Whoa! Hi there. Where did you come from? Hold on, yes you can have a piece." Sairis pulled his knife out and sliced off a small piece of meat. "Do you belong to someone here?"

[thatsmysword]

Mutt wasted no time jumping for the piece.

"Mutt!" Henry yelled, as he burst into the room a moment later. "... Sorry, he's not well-trained or anything."

[sairis]

Sairis laughed and let Mutt have it. "More enthusiasm than brains?" he guessed. "Or is he just too headstrong?"

[thatsmysword]

"He's loyal," Henry offered, as he tried to get his hands on Mutt. It wasn't working. "Have only had him for a few weeks so I haven't the faintest which one it is otherwise."

[sairis]

"Fair enough. Mutt!" Sairis held another piece up, out of reach, to try to help him hold still.

[thatsmysword]

And Henry quickly wrapped his arms around the dog, pulling him back. "Thaaat's it, Mutt," he said. "We'll feed you properly, all right? No stealing-- ah, what's your name?"

[sairis]

"Sairis," he introduced himself. He gave Mutt the piece; it seemed mean not to. "That's okay; I can always make more. I can't believe how much food there is around here."

He eyed Henry's pourpoint curiously; it was a lot more like what he was seeing people wear in his world to dress up than what most people here wore.

[thatsmysword]

"Right, but we don't want to get into the habit of stealing Sairis's food, do we, Mutt?" Henry asked.

He flashed Sairis a good-natured but apologetic smile. "I can take him back to the room if that's easier?"

[sairis]

Sairis shrugged. "I don't mind. Do you live here, then? I haven't met a lot of people yet."

[thatsmysword]

"Aye, in 227, with Erasmus," Henry said, gesturing in that direction.

Mutt immediately pushed out of his grasp and walked up to Sairis again, tail wagging.

[sairis]

"I haven't met him, either, but I think he's in one of my classes." Sairis petted Mutt, then turned back to his food to take it off the fire. "What's your name, by the way? Or should I just call you Mutt's owner?"

[thatsmysword]

Henry laughed. "Ah, he'd like that," he said, and looked down at the dog. "Wouldn't you?"

He shook his head.

"I'm Henry," he offered, finally giving Sairis a proper look. Well. Clothes weren't too odd, for once. "From Skalitz. ... That's in Bohemia."

[sairis]

"I've never heard of it," Sairis confessed. "I'm from Mistala, but you probably haven't heard of it, either. Apparently I'm from a different plane."

[thatsmysword]

"Like a different world or some such?" Henry asked. "We've a few of those, I think."

[sairis]

"Yes," Sairis agreed. "Nobody I've talked to has known where anything in my world was."

Granted, it was a small sample. Liliana and Caleb. But still.

"Unless you've heard of the Shattered Sea?"

[thatsmysword]

Henry shook his head. "No seas where I'm from, I'm afraid," he said. "Or... sharks, or things like that."

[sairis]

"What's a shark?" Sairis asked.

[thatsmysword]

"Some kind of big fish with a triangle on top?" Henry offered. "They're in seas, apparently."

Talk about the blind leading the blind.

[sairis]

Sairis shrugged. "I've never seen the sea. Coming here was...strange."

For a lot of reasons, the sea only being one.

[thatsmysword]

"Isn't it?" Henry asked, brightening. "There's so much bloody water! I'm always afraid I'll fall in!"

[sairis]

Sairis breathed a sigh of relief. Someone who understood! "It's so big! It's amazing, but yeah, a little frightening. And everything around here is so green, too! Once you get outside the village, there's grass and trees everywhere, and it's all just normal!"

Okay, that part might just be him.

[thatsmysword]

"... Right, well, we do have that part at home," Henry allowed. "Loads of green everywhere." But he could segue back to the thing they had in common just fine. "Not the water. You know some time ago we all went to some islands right in the middle of it? No mainland or anything."

[sairis]

"That sounds nerve-wracking," Sairis said. "If something happens, where would you go?"

[not_a_haint]

Caleb was either a specific type of nerd (though he hadn't heard that word yet), or had some variation of neuro-spicy (also a concept he hadn't come across yet) because he had a separate notepad he was using to compose rough drafts for his journal.

But he decided he needed a distraction from the topic of said entry so here he was. "Evenin' Sairis, utcha doon? I see you've figured out the stove."

[not_a_haint]

When Caleb was a kid he'd been afraid of dogs, but a very good boy named Sam the Beagle had cured that.

"Well hi there!" he greeted the dog. "And hello to you." he greeted Henry.

[sairis]

Sairis smiled at him. "I did! Arden showed me how to use my phone to learn things, and that helped a lot. You want some food? I could add a bit more."

[not_a_haint]

"I'd love some, thank you. I still haven't gotten one of those, though she told me where I could. And that I should. I'm sure some dire need will arise and I'll think 'gosh I wish I had a phone right about now', but it's still not seemin' like a priority. I've been usin' the computers in the computer room."

[sairis]

"My mentor, Magus Liliana, gave me one," Sairis said as he went to get more food to add. "You're welcome to use it if you want, though apparently they're meant to be carried with you."

[not_a_haint]

"Maybe a bit of practice couldn't hurt. We had phones in my day but that was all they were, and they were a lot bigger. Definitely not portable."

He didn't immediately realize that he'd just used the phrase 'in my day' unironically. At least he hadn't been grouchy when he said it.

[sairis]

"I've never seen anything like them," Sairis said. He took out his phone and handed it to Caleb. "Apparently each of the little pictures is an 'icon', and each one does something different. So far I've looked at the phone, the messages, the music, the pictures, and the Google Chrome."

[not_a_haint]

"Huh, well it's a good thing Miss Arden gave me a quick internet tutorial so I recognize the google chrome. Looks more like a rainbow, but it's their product. The other icons seem fairly intuitive to me, but I guess I have some context for 'em. That one looks like a camera so I'm guessing that's the one for takin' photos..."

He touched it and suddenly was looking at his own feet through the phone.

"Good golly."

[sairis]

"Isn't that one amazing?" Sairis asked. "There's an icon you touch at the bottom that turns it around and you can see yourself! And when you touch the icon in the middle, it 'takes a picture', and you can look at it whenever you like!"

[not_a_haint]

Caleb scanned the screen and saw what looked like two arrows pointing into a circle. that seemed likely and sure enough there he was.

"This was the use for these that Miss Arden mentioned, that really grabbed my attention."

He didn't know about zooming in or out so he held the phone further from him and pressed what he thought might be the right button. Once again he guessed right.

"Well it might not be up to a professional's standards but I just took my first photo." And it was a selfie. Off center and tilted a little and the lighting wasn't ideal. "How's the other uses you've tried out?"

[sairis]

"The Google Chrome has a lot of information, even if Arden warned me it wasn't all true. The music one is weird."

[not_a_haint]

"Yeah she warned me about that too. I've been relyin' more on books, but she told me that Wikipedia is pretty reliable and that's had some interestin' stuff. When I look at the last 90 years of history I keep goin' from 'oh good!' to 'oh no, in quick succession."

[sairis]

"What's Wikipedia?" Sairis asked. "The recent history isn't good?"

[not_a_haint]

"Uh, what did she call them...it's a website that as far as I can tell had replaced the encyclopedia...which just in case you didn't have them was a reference guide for history, science, geography, that sort of thing.

"As far as the history goes, have you ever heard the expression 'three steps forward, two steps back'?"

[sairis]

"I have." Sairis nodded. "Still, at least it's one step forward."

[not_a_haint]

"That is a very good point that I try to remember.

"One of the extreme examples is, around the time I was born there was a war on. They called it the Great War, on account of how big it was. As far as I can tell, it encompassed the entire world and they used weapons that were so terrible that everyone in the world agreed to ban those weapons and adopt formal rules for conflict.

So, bad that a war happened, good that you'd think we'd'a learned our lesson. Well between the year it was when I came here, and now, they done it again. And again as far as I can tell, they stuck to the rules. Except to get around 'em they just made a brand new weapon that was even worse.

On a selfish level I can't help thinkin' that if I'd'a still been around at that time I might'a got sent into a war zone an'...that would'a been bad for everyone."

He made a mental note to add that to his notes for journaling.

"Sorry I didn't mean t'dump that on you."

[sairis]

"I'm finding it a little weird they made rules for war," Sairis said.

"Back home there's this one warlord who's trying to take over as much as he can, and a few of the other kingdoms were getting together to see if they could stop him. Almost every kingdom our side of the sea."

He still wondered what was happening.

[not_a_haint]

Caleb hadn't quite been able to keep track of motivations in the Great War, but possibly due to mun's simplistic education in this regard it seemed like World War 2 was a bit simpler.

"That seemed to be what was goin' on with that second war. A warlord took over a nation an' got a few allies to help him try to take over just about everywhere. An' then the rest'o the world teamed up to stop 'em.

"To your first point, there's some quote, I forget who said it but it's somethin' like 'tis well that war is so terrible, lest we become too fond of it'. I dunno, seems like we're plenty fond of it anyway but we keep tryin' t' mitigate the damage or somethin'."

He was once again reminded of the old timers in Baker's Gap complaining about how newer weapons made war too impersonal. The less you could see your enemy the easier it was to kill them. He could hear his friend Shane theatrically imitating them "It'll be the end of us aaaaaaaallll!!"

[sairis]

"I suppose there's always some idiot that wants more than he needs," Sairis said. "That's why I can't understand how they think rules will work. Do they really expect people like that to follow them?"

[not_a_haint]

Caleb wasn’t quite cynical enough to think “no, but making said rules made them look better”.

“I guess they at least hoped they would? But they weren’t quite naive enough to think that the war had been so bad that it would have scared people enough to never want another one. It’s really disheartening that the next one happened so soon though!”

Just wait until he found George Carlin’s routine about that.

[thatsmysword]

"Boats, I suppose?" Henry said. He shrugged helplessly. "It was just very odd."

[thatsmysword]

Mutt very enthusiastically went for Caleb's hands to sniff, barking all the while.

"Hello," Henry said, with a hint of resignation (for the dog). "I'm Henry."