cousinsindozens | MEMES?!?

Nita Callahan | Young Wizards (CRAU available by request!)

unfavorableinstigation 2022-01-01 10:48 pm (UTC)(link)

[Bonus: Also optional: choose-your-own-errantry]

Edited 2023-04-28 01:20 (UTC)

Jane, if asked, would honestly say that she was only eighty percent sure of what she was doing. When it came to anything theoretical, the math could be absolutely solid, but when it left the paper and attempted to be applied practically … That was where things could get dicey.

This latest project was not dicey, though.

Somehow, for some reason, there were no errors. There were no problems. No power surges, no seismic activity, not even a horrible entity coming out of the other side of the machine and destroying their half of the universe. Nothing that should have gone wrong!

“Isn’t that, like, a good thing?” Darcy asked.

“There’s always a margin for error! There’s no such thing as perfection when it comes to technology, let alone something like this! Even electronics get whiskering!”

“Yeah, Tony told me to tell you that he’s still working on that.”

Jane rolled her eyes. That was the least of her problems.

“Test three hundred eighty-two …”

She pulled a switch, and as expected, another wormhole opened up perfectly, showing the relatively safe space that was somewhere near Saturn’s rings. All readings normal, even the extremely delicate machines meant to detect all the kinds of anomalies that she could not predict for (thanks again, Bruce and Tony). This was driving her mad, because something should be going wrong. Be weird, strange. Not exactly like the math. It was too perfect and in her experience, that was always worse than something going wrong.

Jane wasn't the only one whose sense of Wrong was tingling. So were those of a team of wizards, hand-picked by a Galactic-level Senior, on the hunt for a set of illegally-distributed worldgating matrices. Thought to (read: reported directly from the Stationmaster of the Crossings Intercontinual Gating Complex) have been scuttled during a run-of-the-mill complex-wide inspection, the matrices could be in any dimension, on any planet, in anyone's hands.

Thank goodness the actual list of those spreading the technology about was short; many of those who had found themselves with a way to manufacture worldgates were not criminals in and of themselves, and that meant the job of Nita Callahan was solely to track it down, put out a multiversal marker signal for the follow-up workers from the Crossings, and to stop any further creation of worldgates.

In other words, she was just in time.

"That should be my cue," came a voice, sounding younger than Jane and Darcy both, as a young woman seemingly faded into view.

Or perhaps just notice.

"And yeah, there is a problem with stacking all those end coordinates like that."

The young woman - light brown hair, grey eyes, in plain clothing with her hair tied back into a ponytail, a hefty-looking book at her side.

"I'm not here to get into that part of the nitty-gritty, though; I'm not actually a worldgating expert, I'm just helping them out today. What are your readings telling you?"

The question was the first that Nita allowed herself to speak, as she better took in the room the scientists had set up - as well as the various views of Saturn she was getting.

It didn't look like a cascade was about to happen, or that anything other than light was currently being transmitted, but under these circumstances the threat was definitely a real one.

Look. If Jane knew that doing this kind of work was illegal, then she would have kept it on paper and applied for the right to continue her experiments, like she often found herself doing so she didn’t cause trouble with the feds. However, if some mysterious group wanted to be all mysterious and hidden behind curtains, then that was their thing. She was not going to fall into the trap of getting arrested for a law she didn’t know existed.

Everyone in the room jumped at her sudden appearance.

“Whoa! Who are you?” Darcy shouted.

“What is worldgating?” Jane asked, latching onto what she considered the heart of the problem.

“No, no, Jane. You are not asking the right question,” Darcy exclaimed. “How did you get in here and how do you know about Jane’s experiments?”

Nita kept her stance calm, if not entirely placid; no need to add any aggression to this conversation...

"There's a way to combine the answers to all those questions, so to be brief: worldgating, the regulated version, is how I got here-"

If not necessarily all of how Nita had gotten in the room itself.

"-The people who normally keep track of this sort of thing can specifically track the impression a worldgate leaves on space-time when it's active, and I'm one of those people qualified to cross universal boundaries independently. Now, I know you have a lot more questions," Nita continued, eyeing Jane's control panel more intently.

"But I'd feel a lot better answering them once I know we're not going to jinx anything by letting these worldgates start a feedback loop."

“I was afraid of that,” Jane muttered, pulling a different switch and keying in a code. Across the screens, a sequence could be followed that slowly shut everything down and lowered the power until the ‘worldgate’ was closed. The room they were in became silent without the hum of electronics or the beeps of monitoring systems. Feedback loops were one of the possibilities that should have arisen long before now.

Darcy, of course, was still eying Nita suspiciously. “So, there’s a governing body who keeps track of who makes wormholes?”

“I knew that there were beings out there who had the capabilities,” Jane added. “But I didn’t think that it existed so long it had to be regulated! Is it just their end destination? Or their frequency and duration too?”

“How many people are on this council? Or do you call yourselves a committee? How is all of this managed?” Darcy was already taking out her phone to take notes. “Think Thor would know?”

“Are you human?” Jane asked.

Uh-oh. It was never good when they started bouncing their questions off each other like that. Never good for the person being questioned, that is.

((It'll help me determine if she keeps the worldgate and gets told about wizardry. If not, Nita'll just try to swing things so Jane can recreate the tech on her own merits, if possible.))

Nita let the first fount of questions pass, then shook her head.

"There isn't a council - the closest thing to that sort I'm on is, ah, sort of an in-joke. It's a friend's fault, after we helped save the place the worldgate tech was taken from, during a past war. And it's not allowed to impact what I'm doing now."

It's also somewhat embarrassing, but explaining that Nita technically rules Earth as part of a committee is not the sort of thing that'll help this conversation. Dangit, Carmela!

"I am human - our Earths are similar enough that that's why I was sent here to talk to you, most likely. Though I still won't be surprised at there being... differences.

"And worldgating itself has been around for - well, as long as civilizations have, basically. Wherever people congregate, that leaves an impression on surrounding space-time, so while people can control them to a certain extent, there's no point in stopping their existence entirely."

[OOC: It could be like a multiverse thing!]

Jane and Darcy exchanged looks of doubt. Or maybe concern. They had gone through a few wars themselves, as short-lived and localized as they were. Or, perhaps due to the people involved, not very localized at all. The latest one did wake up a society of beings bent on destroying the universe.

“Wait—are you saying the presence of sentient beings congregating in a given area has an impact on space-time like gravity? How does that work?” Jane asked.

There were going to be lots of questions.

“Oh, no. No, you’re not going to distract the science type with science jargon. Why were you sent to talk to us? Did we break some law we couldn’t have possibly known about?” Darcy asked.

At that, Jane pinned Nita with a calculating look. She had her work taken away once before. She was not going to allow it to happen again.

((Though, should they be entirely OCs or canon characters? So many choices, especially when wizardry doesn't bother limiting itself to one species!))

Nita let these questions pass, at least for the moment.

Half because these two clearly had a Dynamic... half because her Manual finally got a ping.

"While there were laws broken, that's not your fault. In fact, I think I just got the message on who's going to be handling the next stage of this-"

It may surprise the two adults when Nita next took out a book, of all things - blue, with a red spine, not particularly large - and flipped it to a page near the back, one faintly glowing blue on and off.

Reading it, Nita sighed, and fought the urge to pinch her nose. "Of course the local help is only getting back to us now. Though that may be a point in your favor for getting to keep your research, maybe even the worldgate itself."

Assuming they at least recognized Jane Foster; being an astrophysicist could count for quite a lot with wizards, even on a mostly sevarfrith world.

That, in turn, counted for a lot with the Crossings staff. It did help that the Stationmaster was one, after all...

[OOC: Perhaps an AU form? Something in between?]

Jane had heard the ping as well. Getting a message in another universe? That had to be some powerful magic, technology, or something in between. At least, until Jane figured out a way to fully explain what that was with science. Someone just labeling something unknown as 'magic' was quitter talk.

"Local help?" Darcy asked. "You have agents here or something?"

"Worldgate. Why do you call it that?" Jane asked. "Especially when this could still open within the same universe?"

Because she was jumping to those theories already, that there was more than one type of worldgate, and it just depended upon the settings.

[OOC: Hrmmm. Half the problem is that I don't know Jane's 'verse as well as you do; I know what *can* be used to explain things on the Young Wizards end of things, but not necessarily how it would manifest on Jane's Earth, let alone elsewhere. How they would prefer to explain things, specific specialties they would have, etcetera. There's a LOT that's customizable when making counterparts/OCs when it comes to this canon. ^^;]

Nita sighed, but only internally.

"They all work in the same ways, though depending on various factors they can have different ranges, even behavioral quirks. And some of the 'wild' ones do wander, so they need people to keep an eye on them either way.

"And I don't personally have agents here... but we work for the same goals, and using the same overall methods."

Y'know. Wizardry.

For the first time since the family tragedy, Jane attempts to attend something with... lots of people. It's nerve-wracking, really, even if a carnival is hardly anything like a full-scale summer concert festival. But with Walter accompanying her, she hopes it wouldn't end in the same way it did the last time. No deaths, just clean fun.

She tucks her hands into the pockets of her shorts and looks up at the ferris wheel.

"Afraid of heights?"

Walter makes sure to keep close; whichever hand Jane favors, Walter will walk on its opposite, covering blind spots.

It doesn't hurt that, if he has to, he can call up security footage from all over the area. Being willing to do emergency back-up work for the IT support here truly opens doors.

And he does have his own reasons to mind crowds, and big events... but not necessarily Ferris Wheels.

"So long as I have something solid underneath me, no," he replies, following her gaze easily. He doesn't gaze up for long, however, his eyes shifting back closer to ground level to look at the line.

"Just warn me if you're going to do something risky like, oh, balance on the restraining bar."

Said dryly, drolly - he doesn't expect her to do such a thing. If anything, he's hoping she'll laugh, find it genuinely funny.

[OOC: Would you like to hash out some details and possibilities on plurk or discord before we go further, so we have a bit of a road map? :)]

[OOC: Sorry this took so long to get back to you! Let's just wing it and have fun with their worlds colliding! They have such different world/universe views and explanations for things, and as Jane will learn, there's much more out there. It can merge and mesh as we see fit ~~thereby breaking everyone's brains~~. If we discussed this on plurk, sorry that I lost it :(]

Jane saw that internal sigh. It might have been in the back of her head, but she recognized that expression. Alright, alright. Time to expand her definitions of things and accept that there were people (beings?) out there who have a fundamentally different understanding of the universe that she has not been privy to.

Yet.

Because if anything, with Nita's arrival, this was the start.

Of what specifically, she did not know, but it meant learning and understanding the universe better. She couldn't deny herself that and Darcy probably would have a blast with all of this, given how un-science-like this was becoming.

"Yeah, but the devil is in the details. Your methods and understanding differs from mine. So, how do we fix this feedback loop and prevent the end coordinates from stacking on one another?"

[OOC: Awright! Prepare for handwaved details at some point, though. XD]

Naturally, that was when they were interrupted: two humans, one darker skinned than the other, showed up just behind and slightly to the left of Nita. One of them, like Nita, had their Manual as a book, while the other held a much more modern-looking tablet with an unbitten apple on its frame.

Sure, they'd teleported directly instead of using the Mason's Word, but the end effect was still the same.

"I can answer that," the lighter-skinned wizard said, her companion giving her a bemused look that stopped her from just going straight into the figures.

"I'm Amy, and hyperstrings are part of my focus. I can point you right on the math-"

"And I'm Katherine," the darker-skinned wizard added, "And what she's not saying is that she might be your biggest fan. My own specialty is stellar dynamics, but I think we can all be glad you weren't putting portals up near our star."

It's an attempt at humor, but hopefully it lands. With that, Nita takes a step back and gestures for the two other wizards to take the lead.

Amy is quick to speak up again, this time while calling up a hologram from her tablet with the relevant configurations for Jane.

[OOC: That’s alright with me!]

Darn it—why did that have to keep happening?

She would have to ask if on some level, the universe was sentient and bent on interrupting when she was just about to make a breakthrough. But even without the introductions, the Manuals in their hands and their sudden arrival revealed that they were in line with Nita.

Jane’s initial reaction does a complete one-eighty when they say the magic words: that they have the math.

“You do?” she exclaimed, going over to look at her tablet. “How did you come across these configurations? Have you taken into account how black holes merge? How would this affect your star if it was nearby? I could change the location so it’s in a generally empty place.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Darcy called as a reminder. She glances over at Nita, amused. “You might lose them for a few hours.”

As Amy and Katherine - who'll ask Jane to call her Kath, if they ever get beyond talking about how the numbers came to be and what the safest margins of error are - take the reins, Nita is content to step back until Darcy catches her eye.

"I think that's probably a good sign. If she's invested,"

Which was doubtless an understatement.

"It's much more likely that things can go right here. Sorry I didn't get much of a chance for introductions," she says, belatedly.

She's not planning on staying much longer, now that the local team's arrived, but unless something truly absurd crops up, she can afford to chit-chat for a few more minutes.

"I'm Nita; what's your name?"

"Invested?" Darcy repeated. "That's kind of an unneeded question."

The math conversation continued on the other side of the room, even as Jane started to bring out some star charts and other maps of the visible universe.

"That's alright," she said, extending her hand. "Darcy Lewis. Official mad scientist wrangler."

As for something truly absurd cropping up, that is exactly what would happen two seconds later: the machine of Jane's started beeping in horrible, alarming tones.

GENERAL:
1. Sorry I don't have time to explain, but do you have a spare sheet of wood, 2 by 5 inch for preference? And a tennis ball, though I swear it'll survive what I need to do with it.
2. I need someone to distract me while I do history homework. Otherwise I just get angry and lose track of what I need to write.
3. We're going to the far side of the Moon for a picnic. Wanna come?
4. Tried to get the voice of wizardry that lives in my head to take a memo, and he gave me a busy signal! Who does that?!

GAME-SPECIFIC:
1.[The Wake] Nautilus, what sort of conference call is this?? At 3 in the morning?! Uh, please be important; sorry for being rude, whoever this is.
2.[Khu Ioduan] Just because I trust you with my plants does not mean I trust you with my Manual. I mean, I can get you a copy of something if all you need is to look something up, but...
3.[Hugtopia] I'm out for housing for a week, maybe two; they're not letting me help with the construction and it's loud. I can do laundry and basic cooking in exchange for nightly cuddles, the rest we can make up as needed, does that sound okay?
4.[Hotel Fen] I know we have wolves here, but has anyone seen a black dog, kind of mutt-like? He's a friend of mine, but I only saw him for a second. I just want to know how long he's been here. And maybe talk to him.
5.[VT-Serious] Hang on, I need a second opinion; at what point does 'should not be able to say no, regardless of what the crew is asking for' come across as a red flag to you? Like, where do you make the call that it's crossing a line?
6.[VT-Crack] I'm doing the 'nekomimi' order this platform. Yes, this means admitting I lost the dare. Do you want to come watch?
7.[VT-Gen] Okay, I'm lost; should we be expecting any of us to be in lingering trouble here? Or did we just get a 'Get Out of Void Jail Free' card while everyone in the void active worlds faints from embarrassment?

Edited 2023-03-06 00:41 (UTC)

History can be pretty upsetting, can't it?

I suppose the distraction you want is the cat memes sort.

MEMES?!?

Nita Callahan | Young Wizards (CRAU available by request!)

Webmind | WWW Trilogy (CRAU also available upon request, including Walter Weekes/reincarnation)

Alfredo Martini | Romeo's Blue Skies (CRAU possibly available?)

V | Songs for the Dusk OC (CRAU/established CR possible?)

Peridexion | Young Wizards (CRAU available upon request)

(frozen comment) Pull The Lever!

(frozen comment) :)

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(frozen comment) your call: are YW-verse wizards already part of Jane's world or not?

(frozen comment) let's have them a part of her world, but unknown to jane :)

(frozen comment) Excellent~ Though may fade to black when Nita hands off explaining things to them. >.>

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carnival, that au we had before? :D

Re: carnival, that au we had before? :D

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Gen Texting Samples

gen 2, from when he was still in school too or something haha