glowfic | methods and tools

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methods and tools

The gate opens in an small space. Through a doorway ahead is a mid-sized room, scattered with chairs. One wall, directly across from the doorway to the incoming gates area, is made of some clear material. On the other side of it is another room, with a metallic floor raised slightly above the first one's, with a half-dozen complex diagrams and space for many more.

The way into there appears to be through a decontamination room to the left. There is a door on the right into the rest of the base. Embedded in the wall to the left is the door to the outgoing gate area.

Both rooms are windowless and otherwise minimally decorated.

(Observant guests may note that the gravity is about a third of what they are used to.)

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Lena can be seen nearby, giving Aisilian a 'did you seriously just do that? what on earth were you thinking?' look. Before she has a chance to speak, however...

Aisilian continues, as if he hadn't in fact intentionally paused for his amusement: "... and that someone is Mr. Rahal here, who naturally has been backed up so that we can bring him back immediately."

Edited 2015-07-03 22:25 (UTC)

"Ah," says Raezenoth. He both looks and sounds like he completely expected this twist. (He did, actually, expect this twist.)

He tilts his head. "'Backed up'?"

Idania giggles at Aisilian's pronouncement.

Lena is giving Aisilian her very sharpest icy 'we will talk about this later' look, with a side of 'this is not a joking matter' (Idania is also getting a tiny bit of this, but it is mostly directed at Aisilian). At this, however, she clears her throat and explains backups, with brief diversions into forks and cortical stacks as a subset of backups.

Raezenoth listens intently.

"Could any human be backed up?" he wonders.

"There are rare neural abnormalities that can complicate the process, and it has unknown interactions with otherworldly physics, but in general, yes."

"How willing are you to back up other humans."

"Softie," murmurs Idania.

Rae doesn't reply, but that might be a ghost of a smile.

"...Fairly, though a single backup is not going to do you a great deal of good. Can we discuss it after you are warded?" (A bit of stress creeps into her voice at that last)

"Certainly."

Ward-ward goes the god.

Idania is similarly shuffled. To the circle!

Idania's warding goes normally.

Raezenoth's, as previously mentioned, is more complicated. An addition is made to the circle, and at the sacrifice portion Zahi steps forward from where he was waiting silently, gets a hug from Lena, and moves into the circle and bursts into white flame.

Raezenoth is stone faced through the ritual.

He gets a hug from his acolyte anyway.

"I believe I would like to bless him," observes Raezenoth.

This earns a tiny smile from Lena. "It will be an hour until he is done resleeving, but if you are still around then you're welcome to."

Raezenoth regards her for a few moments.

"Idania?"

"Yep!"

She removes the vial of sand from around her neck.

"This," she explains, "is - erm, basically a piece of Raezenoth. Meaning through it he can bless people, and also carry on conversations and have a general idea of what's happening around it." She gives Raezenoth an assessing glance, then continues. "I suspect that resleeving would wipe your blessings. And death seems to be pretty common here. Rae doesn't want the blessing to last a little bit of his life. So. Vial."

Lena cautiously takes the vial. "Thank you," she says to both of them. "I will give this to Zahi when he is awake. Does it need any special handling?"

"Not really. Try not to get the sand wet or let anything like trash or something get in it. You can put the sand in another container if you don't like the vial. You can even actually lose little grains of sand and it won't leave him with little eyes everywhere. With a tiny grain of sand the space he could see with it is about," she holds her fingers half a centimeter apart, "that far. And nearly no sound pickup, even if you are directly addressing him, you practically have to shout from less than a foot away. And then he will renounce his claim on the sand or move it to another part of him, because part of him being a tiny grain of sand, blind and deaf and alone, is kind of annoying."

Edited 2015-07-04 02:47 (UTC)

Lena nods. "We will endeavour not to lose any grains regardless.

"Now, I believe there was some discussion of you getting backed up?" Lena asks, leading them back toward the decontamination shower. (At some point, without much attention being paid, she has bandaged her cut).

"Yes! I - am fantastically curious about how it all works, and kind of want to steal your textbooks, but I suspect it would take me years to figure out. The way you make it sound it sounds easy, but I understand life doesn't work that way? And - I don't know, how willing are you to back people up? What resources do you want in exchange? Are there any shocking twists to be had, here?"

"I explained most of the complications -- loss of continuity and the need for resleeving, though I may be missing something courtesy of it being a fact of life here." She taps her fingers against her leg thoughtfully (and winces when she bumps the cut). "There are some disorders that can be caused by death-related trauma or damaged backups, but the latter is unlikely." She considers the other question for a few moments. "We are fairly willing to back people up, but arranging frequent backups could be logistically complex -- it might be easier long term for you to have a cortical stack, unless that is likely to be destroyed if you are killed -- and resleeving, should it be necessary, tends to be moderately expensive. Do you have any resources that would be useful against the exsurgent virus or other existential risks?"

"Loss of continuity and getting resleeved is better than permanently dying. So while I get that dying should still be avoided and is inherently bad, the problems that come with backups are better than, uh, that. And, me personally? Eh. Probably not, considering the power everyone present seems to be wantonly flinging around."

(Is that a bit of envy? Yes. Yes it is.)

"I can likely do more," says Raezenoth. "I can provide blessings, some material resources, a certain level of extra-world communication, and - have you been informed of Perinixu?"

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methods and tools

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