week one - thursday evening - luna

[arockstar]

[Luna is certainly one of the more interesting players out of the bunch. That could prove useful. He's not entirely sure what they're dealing with in terms of this competition just yet—he anticipates the weekend will clear that up for him—but it doesn't hurt to get a headstart on scoping out his options.

It takes him a while to find Luna. He expected her to be in the lab, or maybe trying to sneakily ferret things out of the temple's more secluded areas, rules be damned. The entryway is the last place he thinks to look, not expecting her to have much interest in the sparse little area. Apparently he was wrong.]

I hadn't pegged you for a stargazer.

[Despite the name.]

Have you tried to go down the stairs yet?

[He nods at the staircase that drops into the clouds.]

Comments

SLAMS IN

[artificialhighness]

[For her part, she finds all the engineers and the general nerd herd certainly interesting -- and she's probably seen more of them than most, what with her trips to the lab, though they've tapered off in frequency since the implementation of the Great Anti-Takeout Rule. Now, she just tends to wander into the lab at some point and stay there until someone discovers her in a corner somewhere.

She still doesn't seem so much interested in making use of the place herself as quietly observing all the projects and the chaos going on there at all hours.

Which may be why she's gotten so good at picking out Newt's approach among many. Luna gives him a little nod as he turns up.]

The moon and the stars have always been exceptionally beautiful in my homeland. It's a little reminder.

[A reminder of home, perhaps. She lowers her head and contemplates the clouds, then.]

I've been down. Though I'm not sure "down" is the right word.

[arockstar]

Mm. So how does this sky compare? It's nicer than the one I'm used to, but that's city life for you.

[The Anteverse isn't visible from Earth, but he idly wonders if it is here, one of those little stars up in a foreign sky. It's odd to not recognize the constellations.

He's almost positive that it's not, and even if it was, it wouldn't do him any good. But still. It's an interesting thought.]

It's the right word if there's no better word for it. It's a neat trick, but I wonder what the point is. We chose to be here, and the stairs are effectively pointless anyway. So, why bother with them?

[artificialhighness]

It's a little brighter here, but above the clouds. It's almost the same, if not a little better.

[It's certainly odd to have new constellations -- but not bad. Not bad at all.

She's always been rooted in place, in a way, so being transplanted is something interesting.]

And I suppose it depends on where we are, and what this place is used for outside of the game. It seems that its details can be changed at will, but there may be some things that simply remain constant.

[Vestigial staircase?]

[arockstar]

Hm. I'd been assuming it was created specifically for the game. Maybe the gods will recycle it for their world when we're done here, given how malleable it is.

[But Luna's hypothesis is interesting, even if he's not sure how much it matters right now.]

What's your home like?

[artificialhighness]

It seems rather a waste otherwise, doesn't it?

[It's an idle thought, because who knows whether the gods have a concept of wastefulness on their end. It's a little funny because robots are both the ultimate end in disposable parts. But even they, apparently, have a concept of waste not and want not.

Maybe.]

My home... [she gives it a moment more of thought] ... isn't the most hospitable place for living creatures. Robots can get by, of course, but humans have a harder time. It can be surprising, what doesn't change in how one or the other reacts to such a world.

I think it's probably a little different from the places many of you come from. Will you describe yours?

[arockstar]

[He gives a little "mm" in agreement. She's not wrong.]

Oh, yikes. Yeah, it's probably pretty different. We don't have robots, or at least, nothing with an AI.

[Which makes it weird, interacting with all these androids. Newt thinks of them as just any other human, but he's acutely aware that that isn't really the case.

Oh well. The meaning of life and crap isn't really relevant right now.]

Uh... I'm from Earth, for starters. It's just me and like a few billion other humans, plus that whole alien invasion thing.

[He's pretty sure he's mentioned it to Luna. He's also realizing that this is a difficult question to answer.]

The Kaiju have already messed the planet up pretty bad, and assuming we manage to fight them off, there's gonna be longterm damage that we can't really predict yet. Like, tons of Kaiju blood keeps getting into the oceans, and it's toxic as hell.

[He's... lowkey excited about studying that process over time, but it's also super bad for like, everyone.]

But uh, for the moment, the planet's in decent enough shape. Sort of.

[artificialhighness]

[Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, Luna just finds it funny whenever people are surprised at her or others of her kind -- that they can have their own thoughts, and motivations, and that their shells are so deceptively difficult to see through.

For some reason the gods have thrown a few ambassadors of the roomba kind into the mix, and she is absolutely having a good time with it.]

Yes, I remember your alien invasion problem.

[She mentions it with the same placid tone you'd mention a particularly thorny math problem on a high school quiz. Sometimes that's just the way things go.]

So your planet is slowly being poisoned -- these kaiju that you speak of, they seem to be using a scorched earth strategy, don't they? I suppose that, depending upon how advanced they are, it wouldn't occur to them to simply conquer the living things on the planet.

But the waging of war is always somewhat short-sighted. I do hope your planet survives.