Function \\ One

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

[And suddenly, there is a Haraken, wearing a set of the by-now-familiar cyberglasses. The only indication that he's alarmed by this situation is the fact that his eyebrows go up. He pauses. Looks around. Pauses again.]

[He lifts up the glasses.] Ah... So it isn't...? [Blink. He resettles his glasses and calls up a set of floating blue screens around himself. Quietly, trailing off as he starts tapping away at the screens:] But it still seems to be functioning...

Comments

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

Fumie's here? [He pushes his glasses up to sit on top of his head again... and then stares at the screens that still hover around him.] I can see them.

[didorothy]

See what?

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

[He taps one of the screens.] These. They're a projection from the glasses. When I take them off they should go away.

[GASP. THREE WHOLE SENTENCES AT ONCE.]

[didorothy]

[one day, Sam will get a paragraph out of that boy]

What does it mean that they don't?

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

It means something else is projecting them. [Tap tap tap.] You said this place isn't part of the network, right?

[didorothy]

Fumie has a network set up here.

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

What kind of network?

[didorothy]

For the-- [he taps his head where the glasses would be]

I don't know much else about it.

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

But if it's for the glasses it shouldn't do something like this. [He pushes one of the screens to the side and taps a few keys on another. A fourth screen appears, this one just showing the plane.] I shouldn't be able to see them without the glasses on.

Can you?

[didorothy]

Yes?

It might be a Machine override here.

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

So... [Only half-listening, and not really talking to Sam.] It would have to be artificial surroundings? [He looks up.] But I don't know much about stars.

[Blink.] The Machine?

[didorothy]

The thing that runs this entire place. It breaks sometimes, apparently. We don't know much else about it.

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

It runs this place? [He spots a familiar constellation and runs a search for its surrounding star formations. FROWN. SUSPICIONS ARE HAD!] What happens when it breaks?

[didorothy]

It seems to play a big part. Meredith Sault, and Lapis and Lazuli - 'the Twins' - are the ones who look to be in charge.

Last time it broke, uhhh, we weren't able to go home and all the stars went out.

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

[He puts his glasses back on and starts typing.] That makes sense.

[didorothy]

[is kind of amused]

Normally when you're on the Plane, time doesn't pass back home, or you're returned to the exact spot you left, or whatever it is. Before the Machine shut down, or whatever it did, time passed at random intervals. That might have been part of it breaking down. And the sky started looking like the sky here.

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

So it's like a program. And coming here is like being downloaded.

[He pauses in his typing, like he's hit a sudden snag.] But that doesn't explain why the normal sky would start to look like the projection here.

[didorothy]

Not really, no. But different worlds from different people can merge together. It might have been that this world was merging a bit with our home worlds.

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

[Headscratch.] Like viruses.

[didorothy]

A bit, possible.

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

[He makes another note and exits the screens.] What was your name again?

[didorothy]

Sam. DI Sam Tyler. Manchester police, A Division, 197--4, it's 1974.

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

Where's Manchester? [Aside from the obvious British accent. SPECIFICS! HE NEEDS SPECIFICS! Not that he would even know where LONDON was, aside from 'In the UK' but that is beside the point. Blink.] ...and what does all the rest mean?

[DI. A Division. 1974. People here talk funny.]

[didorothy]

Manchester is Northern England. DI means Detective Inspector. I'm a police officer in CID - that's the Criminal Investigations Department. A Division is the section of the Manchester police force I'm part of, and 1974 is what year I'm from.

[coiledheart.livejournal.com]

[Okay... okay... wait, year?]

...year?