001 ↯ text

[circlejerked]

Am I getting this right

is this

Oh I think I'm getting it

<sub>[Would you look at that, it's baby's first attempt at sending a network message! His words seem to be going through just like how he's seen other messages work--so far, so good.

Next time Anders will practice with the 'delete' key. For now, he'll focus on getting his point across with proper punctuation.]</sub>

Bear with me, this isn't how I'm used to exchanging letters but it's exceptionally handy for picking a bunch of brains at once. I'm curious to know more about the little girl with the cat. You know the one--Alice. From the Wonderland book? Has no eyes now, portends events?

What's the story behind her? Was she an actual person from some other land who was brought here like the rest of us?

Those scenes suggest this isn't the first mansion of its kind, but what happened to her?

Comments

[circlejerked]

A pleasure, Clarke. I can't tell if that's a man or a woman's name, but I'm finding being able to talk without laying eyes on someone hugely entertaining, like a message in a bottle. It's a shame I didn't know about this sooner.

Unless AI stands for something that can see without eyes and stops aging, it beats me! She doesn't fit your average definition of spirit, either. But she must have something to do with this world.

_{[But what? And to what degree?]}

[coleader]

Let me guess, you don't come from a world with this kind of technology? [ Message in a bottle, that's adorable. It's like everyone here is from a fairy tale book. ] Maybe I shouldn't tell you what I am, I don't want to ruin your entertainment.

On a more serious note -- AI stands for artificial intelligence. They're people who aren't real, in a sense; they're digital. I'm not so sure that's what she is either. It might help if you tell me what your average definition of a spirit actually is, though.

[circlejerked]

Got it in one!

_{[But he's not doing so bad for a technologically illiterate barbarian, is he?]}

Cloaking yourself in mystery for my sake? That's so sweet.

_{[But back to business--he'd had a reason for making this message beyond getting to know his fellow prisoners. Before he continues composing a reply, he takes the time to consider what she means by "artificial intelligence" so that he's sure he understands it. It brings to mind the Tranquil, which is a little disquieting for any mage to think about.]}

So something that mimics life but isn't actually alive? That's not far off from what you'd consider a spirit. They're intelligent, but not what you'd think of as a physical entity with free thought like a person. Most of them wouldn't see a reason to take on a human form like hers, which is why I have my doubts.

[coleader]

She doesn't seem malevolent. I'm assuming spirits are? They're not very friendly in stories; not like Alice. She's odd, yes, but I can't see her hurting anyone. Maybe she is human, and this is just Wonderland's effect on her. I don't know.

You could ask her, but I doubt she'd have a very good answer for you. Sometimes I wonder if she even knows what she is. It seems like someone did something to her, made her this way. I don't know much about spirits or magic or -- anything like most people here seem to, but it doesn't seem impossible that someone used magic to punish her.

[ Well, not exactly. It does seem impossible, but since it's Wonderland, that's exactly why it seems possible. She's learning to believe the opposite of everything she thought she knew. ]

[circlejerked]

Some are, some aren't. Some don't care for the real world, some can't help but cling to it even after death.

<sub>[The point being that spirits come in all colors--just like the personalities assembled in Wonderland. Anders isn't ready to trust the intentions of anything that calls this place home. Clarke has it right--there's no telling how this place has warped them.

That could be dangerous.]</sub>

Curiosity killed the cat? You think those queens from the original story may have gotten the best of her?

[coleader]

You say curiosity killed the cat, then you keep asking questions?

[ She's only joking, but— well, she hopes her theory isn't true. Anders is asking a lot of questions. Clarke does happen to be very curious. That wouldn't bode well for either of them. ]

It's possible, I guess. I don't know if I think this is the actual Wonderland, or that's the actual Alice. Who's to say this isn't just some recreation of it? Maybe some people cast themselves as the queens and decided they needed an Alice, too. When they got angry with her...

Sorry - that sounds a little morbid. [ She's too accustomed to jumping to the worst possible scenario. Where she's from, it's usually the correct guess. ] All I'm saying is that I think there's more to this than the cover story.

[circlejerked]

But I'm much bigger and stronger your average cat! I've been told I have the constitution of a weed.

Morbid doesn't make you wrong, unfortunately. Unlike this tomcat, I worry Alice couldn't get herself out of whatever trouble had her asking for help from the wrong side of the glass.

It's like those scenes were trying to drop a hint about how she used to be.

[coleader]

I'll take your word for it. I wouldn't know - never seen a cat in real life.

Do you mean that you think Alice might have been behind them? That she was somehow trying to communicate something? That she wasn't always like this, maybe, or... I don't know, there's so many things it could be. Sometimes I think these things just happen to confuse us. We're all supposed to be mad here, or so the story says.

1/3

[circlejerked]

_{[Hold the phone.]}

Did I read that correctly? You've never seen a cat before? The four-legged purring feline variety?

2/3

[circlejerked]

Like C-A-T cat? Are you a dwarf or something?

<sub>[She has to have lived under a literal rock her entire life like Sigrun not to have seen a real live cat before, right? That people haven't experienced their cute whiskered faces in person is a fresh horror he's still not ready to contemplate.

Clarke, you poor thing.]</sub>

3/3

[circlejerked]

_{[Oh right, they were discussing something before the cats, weren't they. Ahem.]}

Anyway, those are all good questions I wish I had the answers to. I can't imagine the pain she must have felt if she's been trapped here as long as some people have guessed. I can't fault her for joining the tea party after so long. You know what they say, if you can't beat them...

_{[Captivity in a strange place can cause inestimable damage to a child especially--and maybe in that way, he feels an extra pang of sympathy for Alice after the time he'd suffered in the Circle.]}

[coleader]

You don't have to spell out "cat" when you're already typing cat, you know. And I think the correct term is 'little person.'

[ God, correcting people is so fun. ]

But no. I'm not. I lived in space. The sky. Whatever you want to call it. No cats in space. Am I missing out on something?

...Don't tell me you're thinking about joining the tea party.

[ Not that Clarke even knows how it would work, only that it's definitely not good. ]

[circlejerked]

Sorry, I got a little excited. But in my experience, dwarves get grouchy when you point out the obvious. I've learned that the hard way.

_{[Welcome to Thedas, where everyone is miserable and politically incorrect.]}

You lived in space? Does that make you like the man in the moon? Cats are admirable creatures--I'd recommend having two feet on the ground just for the pleasure of a purring kitten in your lap. I wouldn't have thought there's much up in space besides the moon, and the stars, and the odd rainbow. Those are nice, I suppose.

_{[Still, they don't seem like they'd be as nice as cats. Hm.]}

If cozying up to the natives guaranteed us a way out of here, I'd give it a whirl, but otherwise I'm definitely not staying here longer than I need to. Hence the reason for asking about Alice. I'd like to keep us from sharing her fate, if at all possible.

[coleader]

We definitely didn't live in the moon. More like a ship. I'll have to see a cat one day, then, but I haven't seen any around the mansion. Certainly not any back home.

If I find out any information about Alice that seems important, I'll let you know. Can you do the same? Two heads are always better than one.

[circlejerked]

A space pirate ship?

_{[This the first thing his imagination goes to, and what an amusing thought it is. Is the sky like the ocean? Do ships sail through it like water, casting waves, navigating around stars like rocks? Are there space fish to take the place of normal fish?]}

It must be a sad place without a single stray cat. There's something to be said for Wonderland--we're not lacking in creature comforts here. One thought is all it takes to have just about anything we want.

I'll be sure to do that. I mean, if you're going to team up with anyone, it should be a space pirate, right? I bet you're handy to have in a pinch.

[coleader]

[ Clarke loses her shit when she reads "space pirate ship." She really does. It is perhaps the funniest and most bizarre assumption someone has made about where she comes from by far.

This is text, though, and Clarke isn't a ROFLcopter kind of girl. Thank god. ]

I am definitely a space pirate. Arrrr. ;)

It wasn't anything that exciting, actually - I'm assuming they don't have spaceships where you're from. Most people don't know about them, apparently. We just lived on the space station. Went to school, had jobs, no hook hands or scoundreling to be seen.

I am pretty handy, though. I might not be a space pirate, but I've had my fair share of adventures. Or... misadventures.

[circlejerked]

_{[Clarke, you are precious.]}

You had my hopes up I was conversing with my first real sky pirate. The symbol with the dots and the bracket isn't pirate code, then, I take it.

_{[He still has a long way to go before he masters internet lingo.]}

If we do, no one's bothered to let me in on the secret. What's that saying, "having your head in the clouds"? Did you people decide to take that literally?

[coleader]

Oh. No. It's a winky face. [ Ugh, it sounds so awkward when she has to explain it. ] Tilt your head. ;) <- See? The ; is the eyes and the ) is the mouth.

Haha. We're above the clouds, actually. We've had space travel for about two centuries, but we still lived on the ground, then. We went up because Earth became uninhabitable.

[circlejerked]

_{[He does as advised, turning his device to the side. Is that what that means?]}

A smiling face? Oh, I get it! I learn something new about this network thing every day.

You could make little text faces like this, but not live on your own planet? What happened? That sounds like something out of a doomsday story.

[coleader]

[ You fairy-tale magic-believing medieval people are adorable. ]

It's a long story that you probably don't want to hear. But here's the short version: war happened.

[circlejerked]

Are you kidding? I love dispiriting tales about the good old days and how the golden age is over and new generations will never know how good it used to be.

_{[One could make the argument it's a Fereldan's favorite kind of story--they certainly have enough of that variety.]}

A war so bad it forced you off of the surface? We have a name for that kind of thing--a Blight. Luckily for humankind in my world, none of the Blights lasted so long that we had to abandon ship entirely.

[coleader]

A Blight? That's one way to say it, I guess. It didn't last very long; it was so destructive that everything got destroyed pretty quickly. Missiles tend to do that.

[circlejerked]

Blights are a special brand of war that tends to destroy everything.

_{[Offered as an explanation so that she doesn't start assuming they apply capital Bs to every minor dispute and civil conflict. Blights had come close to ending the world, they just... hadn't gotten as far as Clarke's did, apparently.]}

What happened to all of the people? They went up into space? How did they live?

[coleader]

Most of them died.

[ Sorry, Anders. This is not the space pirate story you were hoping for. ]

Some countries had operational space stations at the time, so they survived. We thought everyone else on Earth was killed, but it turns out some of them survived, too.

Sorry - it's a depressing story.

[circlejerked]

<sub>[Jeez, she isn't kidding about there being a sad ending to this story. Her world's history makes him glad to have Thedas and its aborted Blight, warts and all.

At least the bloodshed hasn't chased them into space yet.]</sub>

It must have been a sight more depressing to live through.

:( I tried out a sad face for you.