Re: Inexorable Altercation [Round I- The Sleeping World of Rock]
05-25-2010, 02:03 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.
When your life is spent on won't-be-going-to-have-happeneds and will-have-been-going-to-bes, when your main goal is to ensure you got to where you are before you end up not having gotten there, when your whole purpose is to discover where you went before you get there, you are certain to learn the language of time. Its subtleties stand obvious before you, and phrases rife with apparent contradictions and absurd tenses seem clear and precise. Not only do you not bat an eye when someone tells you how their day would have been going to have gone, but you know just what they mean, and when they tell you how close their day was to have been going to have gone straight to hell, you know exactly how they feel.
And when someone tells you that you will kill each other because you will kill each other, you hear the subtle intonations, the use of the words as commands one second and tenses the next. When they speak of you in the past tense, then tell you what you will do in the future, you know exactly what they mean.
Will had seen how the being had read from that book. He had been checking them against what it said had happened, ensuring its accuracy. He had done that himself more than once while ensuring that his arrival went exactly as it had, reading the computer's records of the spatial coordinates at which he had arrived and checking them against his current position.
If that book was accurate, then it was the future, documenting and listing what was going to happen, and if it was also unknown, it was a prophecy, indelible, inevitable. If known, though, it was a manual, instructions for achieving a particular outcome. Only by knowing the future can you change it, and by the looks of it, these robed figures had no intention of doing so.
If the book was accurate and the robed beings were telling the truth, the contestants would kill each other. It was simple fact.
All of this sat in the back of Will's mind as he examined the hall he found himself in, present but ignored. A pivotal event in his life had just occurred, and his mind was, for the moment, concerned with the present.
A detector pinged as he stared at the stone walls. Glancing down, he saw that the gravity was Human standard, hovering around 9.8 m/s[spr:3gnpdd04]2[/spr:3gnpdd04]. There was a small note at the bottom, which read weak secondary g-field present; strength 2.1e-3 m/s[spr:3gnpdd04]2[/spr:3gnpdd04]. "Consistent with an inactive artificial grav-generator," he muttered to himself, storing the data on the card marked Environmental Data.
He took various readings over the course of a minute or so, storing the values on the card. When he tried to get a read on the age of the rocks, the values varied wildly; they were obviously unreliable, but he just flagged the data as such and stored it anyway. He had relied on the research and data of his previous selves for years, and he would not disappoint any who came after. If this data could be useful to them, they would have it.
After another minute or so, he slipped the data reader, which was reminiscent of a price-gun, back into its holster. He was done with it for now; he had gathered what he wanted, and now he was going to move on.
The hall he was in was about 5 meters square and extended off in both directions. To the direction he decided to arbitrarily call north, it went about twenty meters, then turned to the east. To the south, it went thirty, then split off both east and west.
Deciding to go where he would have the most options, he started to the south, pulling out his pistol and holding it at the ready.
When your life is spent on won't-be-going-to-have-happeneds and will-have-been-going-to-bes, when your main goal is to ensure you got to where you are before you end up not having gotten there, when your whole purpose is to discover where you went before you get there, you are certain to learn the language of time. Its subtleties stand obvious before you, and phrases rife with apparent contradictions and absurd tenses seem clear and precise. Not only do you not bat an eye when someone tells you how their day would have been going to have gone, but you know just what they mean, and when they tell you how close their day was to have been going to have gone straight to hell, you know exactly how they feel.
And when someone tells you that you will kill each other because you will kill each other, you hear the subtle intonations, the use of the words as commands one second and tenses the next. When they speak of you in the past tense, then tell you what you will do in the future, you know exactly what they mean.
Will had seen how the being had read from that book. He had been checking them against what it said had happened, ensuring its accuracy. He had done that himself more than once while ensuring that his arrival went exactly as it had, reading the computer's records of the spatial coordinates at which he had arrived and checking them against his current position.
If that book was accurate, then it was the future, documenting and listing what was going to happen, and if it was also unknown, it was a prophecy, indelible, inevitable. If known, though, it was a manual, instructions for achieving a particular outcome. Only by knowing the future can you change it, and by the looks of it, these robed figures had no intention of doing so.
If the book was accurate and the robed beings were telling the truth, the contestants would kill each other. It was simple fact.
All of this sat in the back of Will's mind as he examined the hall he found himself in, present but ignored. A pivotal event in his life had just occurred, and his mind was, for the moment, concerned with the present.
A detector pinged as he stared at the stone walls. Glancing down, he saw that the gravity was Human standard, hovering around 9.8 m/s[spr:3gnpdd04]2[/spr:3gnpdd04]. There was a small note at the bottom, which read weak secondary g-field present; strength 2.1e-3 m/s[spr:3gnpdd04]2[/spr:3gnpdd04]. "Consistent with an inactive artificial grav-generator," he muttered to himself, storing the data on the card marked Environmental Data.
He took various readings over the course of a minute or so, storing the values on the card. When he tried to get a read on the age of the rocks, the values varied wildly; they were obviously unreliable, but he just flagged the data as such and stored it anyway. He had relied on the research and data of his previous selves for years, and he would not disappoint any who came after. If this data could be useful to them, they would have it.
After another minute or so, he slipped the data reader, which was reminiscent of a price-gun, back into its holster. He was done with it for now; he had gathered what he wanted, and now he was going to move on.
The hall he was in was about 5 meters square and extended off in both directions. To the direction he decided to arbitrarily call north, it went about twenty meters, then turned to the east. To the south, it went thirty, then split off both east and west.
Deciding to go where he would have the most options, he started to the south, pulling out his pistol and holding it at the ready.