NaDruWriNi 2022: doomscrolling
Nov. 6th, 2022 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanI don;'t really like this story as a story, but I like the background concept itslef. Might be fun to do something with it later.
If there is one thing that really serves as a common denominator in every undergraduate experience, it has to be really shitty coffee.
The doors to the auditorium swung open and Richard dumped his half-full styrofoam cup directly into the nearest trash can wtihout a second of hesitation. He shuffled into the hall with the rest of the crowd until he was finally able to settle into his seat. His knees banged into the seat in front of him.
“Oh hey, you’re in the News Editing course aren’t you?”
Richard looked behind him to see the speaker. The man did look familiar.
“Yeah, I am. Richard.”
“I’m Hampton.” He extended a hand and Richard twisted in his seat to take it. “I’m doing a bit on the speaker for the radio station.”
“Newspaper here,” said Richard. He grinned. “Let me guess, you tried to get in to see one of the big speakers and this was all that was left after the seniors got their pick, right?”
“You know it.” Hampton laughed. “Hey how about after we get together see if we can’t come up with something interesting to say about it? Two head might be able to come up with a better story, right? Gonna be hard enough to get this on the air.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Richard. Hampton gave him a thumbs up and Richard turned back in his seat to face the stage.
The presentation was being given by somebody Richard had never heard of. It looked like he wasn’t the only one, when the curtain finally went up the auditorium was still more than half empty.
The placard on teh side of the stage introduced the speaker as “Spark”. She was tiny, a petite woman almost drowning in a baggy sweatsuit. Richard thought there was something odd about the way she moved. The lights went down.
“All of you are familiar with this map of your universe,” she began without preamble. Here speech was also odd, somewhere between an accent and a faint lisp. The projector screen behind her lit up with an artist’s depiction of the solar system. It began to zoom out as she spoke, showing the milky way and then the swirl of the larger universe. Richard watched as the earth retreated into a tiny dot on the screen.
“Some of you are also familiar with the multiple universe theory.” She turned her head all the way around to look at teh screen as the image flicked to a colourful display of overlapping globes. Richard frowned. Her torsso was still facing the crowd, how was she doing that?
“The physics is now incontrovertible that the multi-verse does exist,” she said. The screen displayed a dizzying list of equations.
“Do I have a goatee in the other universe?” shouted somebody from the audience. She looked at him and blinked.
“No? You are still the same person. Just moving through a different space. Unless you grew a goatee. Then you would.”
“So you’re saying the multiverse isn’t multiple copies of Earth, it’s Earth moving through multiple spaces simultaneously.” That was Hampton’s voice. Richard turned around to stare at him in astonishment and Hampton shrugged back, his grin self-conscious.
“Yes! Exactly right!” Spark pointed at him.
“So who cares?” said another voice from the audience. “I mean apart from phsyicists. Why does it matter?”
“It will matter to all of you very soon.” The projecter returned to the original image, earth adn the otehr planets circling around the sun. “This universe has known physical properties. Well... you don’t know all of them yet, but you have made excellent progress. You can predict the behaviour of this universe for the most part.”
The image changed then. The earth was still there, suspended in space. The sun was gone though, replaced with a blazing purple sphere that was ten times larger on the screen. And had apparently eaten all the other planets. “The physics of the other universes, however, follow different rules. You are not familiar with the laws of thise one, for example.”
“Yeah but, that shouldn’t make any difference,” said Richard. “If we are in those universes all the time the impact is constant right? No change.”
“That is an excellent question,” said Spark. The picture chagned back to their solar system. She turned towards it and pointed at teh earth. “In this universe,” she said “You are a planet, with a constant place in the universe.”
The image flicked back to the giant purple sun and she continued pointing but twisterd her head back over her shoulder towards the audience. OK, no that was definitely not something she should be able to do. “In this unverse,” she said “You are more like a comet. The influence of the cosmic body is periodic. And you last approached it centuries ago.”
“So what does it do?” asked somebody from the audince.
“Magic.” She smirked at them. The audience errupted in laughter. Somebody clapped.
“And when is this supposed to start?” Richard asked.
“It started when I got on this stage.” And without another word she walked off.
It took a few minutes for everybody to realize that the presentation was really over. Gradually they all got up and shuffled their way out of the hall, laughing and chatting about the presentation. Someobdy at the other end of the room was re-enacting the wrath of Khan at the top of his lungs. Richard waited at the door until Hampton caught up with him.
“Well that was a thing, ” he said. They strolled out onto the street together. “I really want to know who booked her, see if I can get a story around what the hell they were thinking.”
“Did you see the way she walked.” Hampton looked dubious. “Her knees bent the wrong way.”
“I noticed her neck was really weird. Prosthetics maybe?” Richard did a double-take. “Don’t tell me you were buying that.”
“Uh, not necessarily. But I would be a fool not to look at the evidence.” Hampton was looking over his shoulder as he spoke and his eyes were wide. Richard turned around to see what he was looking at, just in time to see the exact moment the dragon leapt from the top of the building and swept over the top of the crowd. The screaming started a few seconds later.
If there is one thing that really serves as a common denominator in every undergraduate experience, it has to be really shitty coffee.
The doors to the auditorium swung open and Richard dumped his half-full styrofoam cup directly into the nearest trash can wtihout a second of hesitation. He shuffled into the hall with the rest of the crowd until he was finally able to settle into his seat. His knees banged into the seat in front of him.
“Oh hey, you’re in the News Editing course aren’t you?”
Richard looked behind him to see the speaker. The man did look familiar.
“Yeah, I am. Richard.”
“I’m Hampton.” He extended a hand and Richard twisted in his seat to take it. “I’m doing a bit on the speaker for the radio station.”
“Newspaper here,” said Richard. He grinned. “Let me guess, you tried to get in to see one of the big speakers and this was all that was left after the seniors got their pick, right?”
“You know it.” Hampton laughed. “Hey how about after we get together see if we can’t come up with something interesting to say about it? Two head might be able to come up with a better story, right? Gonna be hard enough to get this on the air.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Richard. Hampton gave him a thumbs up and Richard turned back in his seat to face the stage.
The presentation was being given by somebody Richard had never heard of. It looked like he wasn’t the only one, when the curtain finally went up the auditorium was still more than half empty.
The placard on teh side of the stage introduced the speaker as “Spark”. She was tiny, a petite woman almost drowning in a baggy sweatsuit. Richard thought there was something odd about the way she moved. The lights went down.
“All of you are familiar with this map of your universe,” she began without preamble. Here speech was also odd, somewhere between an accent and a faint lisp. The projector screen behind her lit up with an artist’s depiction of the solar system. It began to zoom out as she spoke, showing the milky way and then the swirl of the larger universe. Richard watched as the earth retreated into a tiny dot on the screen.
“Some of you are also familiar with the multiple universe theory.” She turned her head all the way around to look at teh screen as the image flicked to a colourful display of overlapping globes. Richard frowned. Her torsso was still facing the crowd, how was she doing that?
“The physics is now incontrovertible that the multi-verse does exist,” she said. The screen displayed a dizzying list of equations.
“Do I have a goatee in the other universe?” shouted somebody from the audience. She looked at him and blinked.
“No? You are still the same person. Just moving through a different space. Unless you grew a goatee. Then you would.”
“So you’re saying the multiverse isn’t multiple copies of Earth, it’s Earth moving through multiple spaces simultaneously.” That was Hampton’s voice. Richard turned around to stare at him in astonishment and Hampton shrugged back, his grin self-conscious.
“Yes! Exactly right!” Spark pointed at him.
“So who cares?” said another voice from the audience. “I mean apart from phsyicists. Why does it matter?”
“It will matter to all of you very soon.” The projecter returned to the original image, earth adn the otehr planets circling around the sun. “This universe has known physical properties. Well... you don’t know all of them yet, but you have made excellent progress. You can predict the behaviour of this universe for the most part.”
The image changed then. The earth was still there, suspended in space. The sun was gone though, replaced with a blazing purple sphere that was ten times larger on the screen. And had apparently eaten all the other planets. “The physics of the other universes, however, follow different rules. You are not familiar with the laws of thise one, for example.”
“Yeah but, that shouldn’t make any difference,” said Richard. “If we are in those universes all the time the impact is constant right? No change.”
“That is an excellent question,” said Spark. The picture chagned back to their solar system. She turned towards it and pointed at teh earth. “In this universe,” she said “You are a planet, with a constant place in the universe.”
The image flicked back to the giant purple sun and she continued pointing but twisterd her head back over her shoulder towards the audience. OK, no that was definitely not something she should be able to do. “In this unverse,” she said “You are more like a comet. The influence of the cosmic body is periodic. And you last approached it centuries ago.”
“So what does it do?” asked somebody from the audince.
“Magic.” She smirked at them. The audience errupted in laughter. Somebody clapped.
“And when is this supposed to start?” Richard asked.
“It started when I got on this stage.” And without another word she walked off.
It took a few minutes for everybody to realize that the presentation was really over. Gradually they all got up and shuffled their way out of the hall, laughing and chatting about the presentation. Someobdy at the other end of the room was re-enacting the wrath of Khan at the top of his lungs. Richard waited at the door until Hampton caught up with him.
“Well that was a thing, ” he said. They strolled out onto the street together. “I really want to know who booked her, see if I can get a story around what the hell they were thinking.”
“Did you see the way she walked.” Hampton looked dubious. “Her knees bent the wrong way.”
“I noticed her neck was really weird. Prosthetics maybe?” Richard did a double-take. “Don’t tell me you were buying that.”
“Uh, not necessarily. But I would be a fool not to look at the evidence.” Hampton was looking over his shoulder as he spoke and his eyes were wide. Richard turned around to see what he was looking at, just in time to see the exact moment the dragon leapt from the top of the building and swept over the top of the crowd. The screaming started a few seconds later.
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Date: 2022-11-06 02:11 pm (UTC)