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[open] Having fun isn't hard
Who: Leo ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faceguy, Donnie purplexing, Accelerator levelshift, Huvrye effiomsfavorite and anyone who might want to run into them there!
What: Three nerds drag Leo to the library against his will
When: Just before the Central City quarantine
Where: Central City library
Content Warnings: none currently
It's another rainy day in Central City, and what are rainy days good for? That's right: reading a book!
Leo isn't really sure how he ended up friends with two nerds whose main hobby is reading on top of his giant nerd of a brother, but he did, and it's really not surprising that this has happened now. Especially because Donnie has been on him non-stop about getting a library card.
So here they are now, having walked over from the apartment and met up with Accelerator. Is he happy about it? Not really. Is he going to bug Huvrye about getting food after this? Yes.
It's a big library, with multiple floors and rooms for community meetings or classes. It's also not very busy, thanks to the rain and the city being weirdly quiet these days. Looks like they more or less have the run of the place...
faceguy, Donnie purplexing, Accelerator levelshift, Huvrye effiomsfavorite and anyone who might want to run into them there!What: Three nerds drag Leo to the library against his will
When: Just before the Central City quarantine
Where: Central City library
Content Warnings: none currently
It's another rainy day in Central City, and what are rainy days good for? That's right: reading a book!
Leo isn't really sure how he ended up friends with two nerds whose main hobby is reading on top of his giant nerd of a brother, but he did, and it's really not surprising that this has happened now. Especially because Donnie has been on him non-stop about getting a library card.
So here they are now, having walked over from the apartment and met up with Accelerator. Is he happy about it? Not really. Is he going to bug Huvrye about getting food after this? Yes.
It's a big library, with multiple floors and rooms for community meetings or classes. It's also not very busy, thanks to the rain and the city being weirdly quiet these days. Looks like they more or less have the run of the place...
Science Section
[So Guy has all but taken over a huge portion of the science section with books spread all over the floor around him, in a way most would consider rude. He at least plans to check a bunch of them out and at least is smart enough to have memorized the places where the others are supposed to go back. That doesn't really help anyone walking through, though.]
[He's speaking to himself in a voice that is not quite a library voice but at least isn't an outside voice.]
Whoa! I didn't realize it was so big! It looks so small up in the sky.
[He holds a hand up in a tiny circle in emulation of the size of the sun from Earth, just thinking about the distance it'd take to make something that big look so small.]
[Right now he's got an astronomy book, one of the ones with illustrations and space photography, open to a map of the solar system. It has the sun sized to scale with Earth. He at least can solidly guess what he's looking at without being able to read because of his audiobooks and how an old friend had described the solar system to him.]
[(And how he also explained that the Earth wasn't flat.)]
[Right now, he's not dressed the way he would at home. He's wearing modern clothes with lots of colorful patterns, definitely not matching, but not quite clashing. And neon socks and sneakers]
[The only things that a are bit out of the ordinary are the accessories that would make him the most stylin' dude in prehistory back home: a beaded tie for his topknot; a beaded shell necklace; wraps for his hands and forearms made of cloth, faux leather, and beaded leather cord; and a belt around his waist, over his pants, made of feathers, faux leather, and faux fur.]
[He went a little crazy at the craft store, okay? You usually have to work for this kind of flair back home, by scouring a beach for the right shells or carefully carving down bone, wood, or shell into beads. Of course he took advantage of his magic money card and bought things to handmake the most happening accessories this side of 40,000 BC.]
[The only problem right now is the mess he's made means he's kind of in the way of the books Donnie wants. Like...all of them. He's pretty spread out. Sorry Donnie.]
[He flips to a page that shows the sun and Earth to scale with bigger known stars.]
Are those other stars?! They're even bigger?
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Okay, he can get over the fashion choices, but the books! The books!
The turtle in the purple hoodie frowns, clutching the books he already has managed to find, tighter in his arms as though afraid they'll share a similar fate as he looks down at the whirlwind before him. Aside from just being scattered everywhere, it makes it impossible to get through the rest of the aisle.]
COUGH.
[He says as he brings a fist to his mouth. Donnie, can't you just clear your throat like normal people.]
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[He's about as perceptive as someone can be when they were an involuntary hermit for most of their life. And when their immediate adoptive family is extremely direct.]
[Guy doesn't look up from his book at first. Vaguely, he remembers that there's a thing you do in the future when people cough. A manners thing. (He's wrong about this, mis-remembering that people say things when someone sneezes.)]
[He doesn't usually mind his future manners if he can help it out of a stubbornness in the face of people previously trying to force him to. Buuut illness is no joke. People die of it all the time back home.]
[It's one future people courtesy he's willing to extend. Without looking up from his book, he says:]
Blue shoe.
[Not only does he not realize it's supposed to be for sneezes, not coughs, he also doesn't realize it's supposed to be "bless you." The English implanted in his head in the last world doesn't always cover every turn of phrase and idiom.]
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Wha?
[It's slightly exasperated, although mostly because he's being otherwise ignored. Fine then. So the subtle approach won't work. Fine. Donnie can do direct.]
Hey. You're blocking the aisle.
-also, if you really are intent on looking through all those books at the same time？ I'd recommend taking them to the reading tables.
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[Without looking again, Guy doesn't take the books anywhere. All he does is reach an arm out and sweeeep them all up against the book shelves.]
[It is a very pointed move, clearly meant to only meet Donnie halfway.]
[But then - then he finally glances up. Double takes.]
Wait, you're turtle-boy's brother, right? I actually like him. Hold on.
[Leo told him he was in the library.]
[The reaction is night and day all of a sudden, courtesy appearing out of nowhere, clearly regarding Donnie as an entirely different class of people than average future people.]
[He doesn't get off the floor or put the books away but he does stack them all up in one stack, pressed against the shelves, leaving only the one he's currently looking at in his hands.]
Do you like future science too? [After all, turtle-boy's brother is also in what seems to be a science aisle, at least if space books are here. He taps the book.]
I know I learned it months ago but sometimes I still can't get over the fact planets aren't flat. [He mimics an explosion gesture near his temple with his hand and makes an explosion noise with his mouth.] Mind. Blown.
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He inhales, ready to unleash a tirade upon this hapless fellow with questionable color sense.]
Now see here-
[And then, recognition. Leo sure gets around. Donnie's expression slowly relaxes as he watches this strange transformation, like the guy's suddenly become possessed. For a moment, the softshell isn't quite sure what to do with this, but respect certainly goes a long way, even if it's riding on the coattails of whatever influence his brother's had on this person.]
Ah, an acquaintance of Leo, I assume. I'm Donnie.
[He's not sure his name will actually be used if 'turtle-boy' has become Leo's sobriquet, but it's there for him, all the same.]
Future science...is technically present science for me, at least for the most part. I haven't really gotten the chance to study everything that might exceed the parallels of scientific advancement between here and home, not yet.
[And then he can't help but stare a moment as Guy explains his take on planets.]
...you thought planets...were flat.
[Squint. Wow. This place really does get all sorts of people.]
Well...yeah, that'd kind of make it difficult for them to exist if they were flat. Also a lot harder to register because they'd all have to be positioned the same way or you'd probably not notice them at all. ...aside from a lot of other complications.
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Even when the terrain is flat, like in the desert wastes, the horizon never looks curved.
[He holds out a hand, flat, as if showing how he'd compare the flatness of the horizon to the flatness of his hand.]
So we thought it was flat.
Plus where I'm from we don't have these, uh...telescopes? [He thinks that's a telescope. He's having to match what he heard in his audiobook with what he's seeing in the illustrations] That you use to see planets. So we haven't been able to see that there are planets up there to figure out they're spheres. [He looks at a picture of an older telescope in the book and taps it.] I think...that needs glass maybe? And metal?
[It looks like there's a glass circle in a metal tube.]
[He shakes his head and his mouth purses together regretfully.]
It's going to be such a hassle to try to recreate all this stuff when I have to learn how to make all the materials from scratch.
[He has to become a materials engineer before he can even try to make anything he's seen. And he does want to try.]
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[Donnie will concede that. Even city horizons can look deceptively flat depending on the angle you were looking at it from.]
Telescope construction is actually slightly more complicated, not that you can see it in that picture. Glass is definitely part of it. You'd need a good lens and a mirror, and depending on just how much detail you're trying to see, you'd need very specific materials for both those things. Otherwise, you can probably get by with things from the junkyard...
[He taps a finger against his chin before turning his eye to the bookshelves to see if there's anything pertinent that this guy hasn't pulled already.]
Ah, here we go.
[He sets his own books down, books on gardening, so he can pull out the one that's caught his eye. Flipping through it, he turns it towards Guy to show a cutaway image showing the cross-section of a telescope's inner workings.]
This is kind of an extreme example though. Professional grade, probably huge. Hey, does this city have an observatory? If they do, the telescope they likely have would knock your socks off.
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I don't know if they have an observatory. Because Iiii don't know what that is. So I haven't looked.
And unless I bring things from this world, I won't be able to find any of this anywhere back home, let alone a junkyard. We have an area near home where we throw our garbage but it's mostly skins and rinds and bones. Food waste. Or waste from butchering animals and tanning hides.
No metal. No glass.
[He shakes his head and waves a hand back and forth in a resigned sort of gesture.]
You wouldn't believe the kind of conditions I have to work under.
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[Donnie tries not to look disgusted at what Guy describes as home, or near home, anyway. That'd probably be rude.]
Oh wow, that...sounds pretty... rustic where you're from.
[This is him being polite. He's trying at least.]
No, no, I mean... Okay, so living in the sewers beneath a city isn't anything like...what you described, but it's underground for a reason. But you make it work, and home is home.
[He sighs a little wistfully.]
Glass...definitely harder to obtain in unpopulated settings. Metal, same, at least in usable, refined states.
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You don't have to be a space scientist?
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Shh, shh, shh-! But yeah, that's what it's there for, so anyone can have a look at what's out there and be inspired to learn more about the space and the galaxy beyond.
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Wow. This future world is way better than the last one I was stuck in. At least when it comes to learning things anyway.
[Jury's still out on the government and this guild stuff, but so far even that's not as bad.]
How did you learn science if you lived in a - a sewer is underground, right?
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Yep. Not the most glamorous place but it's where my family's lived forever. Until getting pulled here, anyway.
I taught myself, pretty much. Learned from books and media, the internet. Wherever I could. Well, except school, obviously. Can't really go many places looking like this, back home.
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[He smiles at the realization he's found someone who likes trying to gather that knowledge as much as he does.]
[But then his face falls and his brows furrow in confusion. At this point, he's grown used to people that don't look human. He knew a few, in the last world. Admittedly, the last green guy was an absolute dickhead but he still knew multiple nonhumans.]
Why not? There's nothing wrong with how you look. I mean you're a turtle person but...
[Guy shrugs, mystified why that'd be a problem.]
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Humans back home aren't used to...this whole situation. There aren't Confluences that drop in people with crazy powers or from other worlds.
My brothers and I aren't really natural in origin either, so it's not like it's something we expect people to understand, and people can be weird about things they don't understand.
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I guess that's true.
[He hesitates for a moment and then says:]
Where I was, the world before this one, it wasn't my home. It was like this world, where there were people who lived there, and people that came from other worlds. Except it wasn't something strange like the sky breaking that brought us. The people who lived there took us.
[He doesn't elaborate.]
The people there didn't understand a lot of things about me. They just saw me as...something else. Just an idea, their idea of what I was. [Thrust into the spotlight, always noticed, never actually seen.] And that idea was lots of things I wasn't.
[An exotic other. They'd assumed he was stupid. Primitive. Too naive to understand how their broken society actually made sense really. Noble in his supposed savage simplicity.]
[When really he was smart for his time. Even smart for their time in some ways. When really he saw their society as broken because it truly was, and they were the ones with blinders on, too vapid to notice. When he was only as noble as just a normal man could be - that they also could easily be.]
[They were all cut from the same human cloth as him but couldn't see it.]
I would've hidden if I could. [He nods slowly.] So I get what you mean.
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[Accidental by some strange, currently inexplicable circumstances is one thing, but intentionally stolen away from home is just so much worse, not to mention all kinds of wrong.
Donnie sighs.]
People, right? But at least not everyone's that way. And around here it's, well, a little easier anyway. Except now there's this whole new layer of why people are cautious about you in general thanks to the whole Confluence. And being able to go places and not have to worry about hiding all the time is kind of nice.
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[He doesn't elaborate more. Doesn't get into the full weight of it. The deaths and revivals. The dehumanization outside the arenas.]
[He nods at the rest of Donnie's words.]
No one's been strange towards me in this world. Not just other Starfallen, even the people from here haven't been.
And nobody's assumed that I'm stupid. That wasn't the worst thing about that place but it was annoying. Never mind that I'm considered pretty smart where I'm from. I actually invent things.
And never mind that some of those people were probably the dumbest people alive. I've banged rocks together that were less dense.
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[It's mostly a mutter to himself as Donnie's not sure he wants to get into explaining all the background to that, and Guy doesn't look like he needs more of a reminder of whatever he went through anyway.]
I still get the odd look here and there but that's to be expected. It hasn't been terrible anyway.
[He shrugs.]
So what's this about inventing?
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I found out later that Phil, friend of my parents, invented some of the same things, but it was at about the some time as me, so I still count them as inventions. And there are some I figured out first.
[He starts ticking them off.]
I invented or figured out: shoes, how to make fire with spark rocks instead of friction, umbrellas, stilts, snare traps that can kill things as big as turkeyfish, roller logs - that's a board with wheels on it that you can roll around on and do tricks.
For science things, I had the theory that the stars were also suns - I just had it wrong and thought they were suns from past days that went up to rest in the sky.
Oh yeah, I also was right about the brain being the center of thought and human consciousness. I think may have even beaten Phil to that one.
[He shrugs, his excitement dimming to something slightly sheepish.]
I know by future standards it doesn't sound like much, but back home, some people have never thought of those things. So when you think of something, you're working off of nothing to start with.
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It could almost seem like a joke, but Donnie knows how enthusiastic one can sound about their inventions, how proud they are of their achievements. Shoes? Alternative methods of starting fires? Umbrellas??? And...he's certain Guy's talking about a skateboard.]
That is...amazing! I mean, sure, all that's already old news in present time but it still took someone to actually come up with all those things to get us to the point we are at today! If not the original creator, I am still in fact speaking to one of the discoverers of standards that have potentially set the pace for all future inventions!
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Where I was at before, they didn't get that.
[So far people in this world have been so much better at not treating him like he's dumb. Even people who aren't Starfallen, like some of the Alliance people, have been better about it.]
You said you studied science and you seem to know how some things are made. Do you invent things too?
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[He chuckles a little at that question, raising his head as he grins smugly.]
I have been inventing things for as long as I can remember. Inventing, improving, creating- it's not exactly an itch you can leave unscratched, you know?
Back home, I built all my tech. Working on it here, it's...a bummer, really, starting from scratch again. Not impossible. Just a pain.
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[He really does want to see a future inventor succeed so a thought occurs to him.]
If you ever want help, uh [he shrugs a shoulder] let me know. I wouldn't be able to do anything you can do, but I can follow directions. [Maybe he could learn some things by watching.] And I can lift things. I'm stronger than I look.
[He's on the lean side, but life back home made it so most people were basically all muscle.]
Or I do have one of those special money cards if you ever need to buy something. I know you have your brother to help, but I bet it'd be easier to buy science things with two cards.
I can pretend I'm buying things I don't understand just to poke at them. Or trying to follow along with science from the internet.
[He could spread out the cost of things, and playing to stereotypes of ignorance would actually make it so they'd maybe not side-eye him buying shiny, complex things. They might assuming he's buying without understanding, out of curiosity, just to take things apart.]
[He looks around to make sure no one is close enough to listen.]
Leo said to be quiet to the Alliance about you so I'm assuming you don't have one of the cards.
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