come_sailaway | Coffee and Shopping

Entry tags:

Coffee and Shopping

Who: Rosalind and any soul who is unlucky enough to run into her.
Where: Sand Dollars and the Sundries Shop
What: Harassing her roommate, shopping, having coffee.
When: June, before the camping excursion.
Warnings: Science nonsense and rudeness, probably quantum shenanigans and blood.

Locked to Phil

Rosalind woke up on this boat in a room that both is and is not her own, without her partner that both was and was not herself. The sequence of events that lead her here were harrowing but, in the face of a strange cruise liner and stranger occupants, she finds she actually misses them. She caught glimpse of her roommate when she first arrived, a strange fellow that she hadn't given more than a passing glance as he lie in bed, largely because he was not Robert and that was her greatest concern. Now, having finished muster and being freed from the bonds of whatever force compelled her to attend, she returns to find that she is, somehow, roomed with a non-biblical angel.

She considers the winged fellow as one might consider a particularly curious looking grandfather clock. She knows all the parts involved and, whether she approves of the aesthetic or function, it will continue existing just to spite her. Still, there's no call to be rude, and if she's to be stuck with a roommate it tracks that she should, perhaps, know his name.

"What are you called?" she asks primly, by way of greeting, and crosses the room to examine the bed and the various technological amenities.

Open - Sand Dollars

This ship may lack proper library facilities, be run largely on magic, and be staffed by ghosts, but at least it has coffee. It would have truly been intolerable without some ready source of caffeine and, frankly, she couldn't abide tea. So she sits in the little cafe, Sand Dollars it's called, and reads a terrible, trashy fiction novel about time travel while sipping a very strong, very hot cappuccino. She has a small plate before her filled with madeleines and, every few minutes, makes a derisive hum as she turns the page of her book.

Open - Sundries

The sundries store has a number of useful and useless items, but lacks quite a lot of the amenities she is accustomed to. Or, at least, the versions of those amenities she is accustomed to. It appears to have the lot of them in some more modern format, but they are not things she recognizes immediately. So, with a great deal of frustration, Rosalind spends quite a long time sorting through the items on sale at the shop. She turns over the packaging, reads the labels, reads the chemical composition information (one of the few modern touches she wholly approves of) and then moves down the line.

If you've never seen a Gibson girl reading various convenience store groceries like they're a fascinating novel, now you have.

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"Jesus christ," Ava mutters under her breath, exhausted and struggling to pick up the creamer carafe as her fingers pass through the handle for a third time. She hasn't slept well the last couple nights, the anticipation of the camping trip building and tearing through her nerves. Coffee sounded like a good idea at the time, but she's now stuck in an odd catch-22 where she's too tired to properly function and the caffeine solution isn't cooperating.

She makes another sweeping motion for the handle, this time overcorrecting, and knocking the whole thing to the floor, covering it in a milky mess. Ava simply stares, at the forming puddle, and then at the only witness. "I didn't do it."

Rosalind, as a rule, ignores other patrons of any establishment she's in. She's accustomed to some level of fame, had been accustomed to some level of fame, and it's often just easier to pretend other people aren't real. Now, though, the only real thing around her is the other person, so she cannot help but watch as the woman does a great deal of quite grousing and then spills the creamer dramatically across the floor.

Rosalind arches a brow as she considers her and then debates, briefly, if she should ignore the situation or help. Her book is terrible so, ultimately, she opts for the latter of her choices. She stands up and, in doing so, leaves a ghostly variant of herself in her wake, still seated and returned to reading.

"Damn," she says dispassionately but offers no other time or thought to the alternate her as she walks to the coffee bar to render aid. The full fat creamer is now all across the floor and Rosalind steps gingerly over it before reaching and picking up the half-cream, half-milk.

"How much?" she asks and glances down at the woman's cup of gradually cooling coffee.

Ava looks back at the one instance of the woman still reading, to the one offering her help with the creamer. Ava stares. And continues to stare, the little engine of her mind trying to grasp this impossibility. Because she's capable of doing the same, to a very limited extent. But she's never been able to maintain it for more than a moment, as demonstrated by her own ghostly face staring at both women at once although with the exact same expression of confused fascination.

"Wait. How can you do that?"

Her answer is not, as Rosalind had hoped, an answer to the question at hand. The way her face shifts with her confusion, however, is considerably more fascinating than the creamer or the coffee. While Ava stares both at her and at the her who is not her, Rosalind stares at Ava who is and Ava who is not. Unlike her deviation, the woman before her remains tangled with hers, intertwined with the potentiality.

"What a curious state," Rosalind remarks and leans so she can better examine the angles of what is and is not her face. "You're constantly refolding into yourself, how has the collapsing not absolutely decimated your particle cohesion?"

Oh, but they are having two...or perhaps three separate conversations, aren't they? Rosalind returns her attention to the coffee and pours an amount, indiscriminately, into the awaiting cup. She then, promptly, puts the carafe of creamer back down. Now that she is...and is not holding something, (she is at least not holding the volume of creamer) she answers the question at hand.

"I cannot. It happens spontaneously and without my input. I would really rather it not."

"Oh thank god, somebody not blathering about magic for once," Ava sounds absolutely relieved to have somebody speaking in terms she knows, breaking into a smile despite herself. The creamer amount is perfect, no matter how much it actually is, because Ava has very little interest in being picky over such a thing. As long as the added liquid has helped make it cool enough to drink more immediately.

"I'm absolutely decimated, trust me," Ava reassures, struggling to pick the mug up, brows drawn together in concentration until she finally manages to lift it to her lips. Her body seems still and solid again, no visible sign that there's anything unusual about her at all.

"It's called molecular disequilibrium. A unique condition, in my world. Sometimes I control it, sometimes it controls me..." She glances back toward the reading Rosalind. "So you're not always in agreement with yourself?"

Rosalind is equal parts startled and grateful that someone on this ship has understood her questions. Immediately, her opinion of Ava is better than nearly everyone she's spoken to. She listens, intently, as she gives the name of her condition. It implies a great deal about what is wrong with her and what state her atoms are currently caught up in.

"Molecular disequilibrium? Fascinating," Rosalind replies and steps back to look her over. She gestures at the deviation and, now that she's actually been presented with someone who doesn't need a basic primer, Rosalind finds herself both less reluctant to explain and somewhat eager for an outside opinion. She forgoes the standard explanation of super-positions and the various consequences.

"Up until quite recently I existed in a state removed from the traditional intersection of space and time. While inconvenient, it was not overly troublesome...but it seems that status has not carried over. Seeing that I do not exist in any other branches of this dimension, well...all potential energy must play out," Rosalind says and then gestures to herself.

"Doctor Rosalind Lutece," she introduces herself which is, frankly, quite a departure for her. Without pause she holds out a hand to shake. "Quantum entanglement and theory."

"So this is a new manifestation of your condition? Does it... hurt?" The explanation makes sense enough, and she can imagine get annoying quickly. "We're contained within some sort of barrier, my best guess is a pocket dimension. But beyond that, is Eternity," so the Captain has told her. And she's not sure if her concept of what that exactly means is the same as everyone else's, but perhaps another physicist would interpret it as she does. The horrifying implications of everything and nothing intersecting at once.

She takes the hand, her grip assessing the permanence of Rosalind with curiosity. "Ava Starr," she responds, likewise reluctant to give just anyone her full name. "Quantum ghost." Because she has no title to give, a bit of an embarrassing insecurity when dealing with other scientists that have credentials and degrees and published peer-reviewed studies and all she has is the misfortune of being an experiment. Everyone else she knows is a damn doctor, and she has a bit of a complex over it, but for once she's relieved.

That is the single dumbest and most obvious statement she has ever heard, so much so that it actually staggers another deviation out of her. One that immediately launches into a silent lecture. This Rosalind, thankfully, does not step back and does not begin speaking at length about the nature of Eternity and Probability. Instead she cocks a brow and nods.

The handshake is a bit of an odd experience, particularly considering the shearing of a duplicate off of herself. Ava's instability isn't catching but, for a moment, it's quite the opposite. She ends up entangled in this Rosalind's now but can hear some of the variation speaking about the nature of Eternity and how, of course, everything beyond this is everything else. That's literally how the concept of 'everything else' works. Did someone magical spout that nonsense?

Once they break contact that ability will fade, just like the shape of ranting Rosalind fades when it steps into sunlight, made blurry by the reality of now.

"A pleasure," she says and it is utterly truthful. She will have to circle back to Eternity and the details of Ava's assessment, but only once she's gathered her thoughts. She wouldn't want to snap and say something offensive, regardless of how much she detests the state of this place and all the answers she's been given thus far.

"No, the separation isn't noticeable until quite a number of them have cropped up," Rosalind explains. "I haven't yet been able to calculate when the collapse will happen, but the effects of that are...less than ideal."

She would still prefer not to elaborate on that, not when Ava might understand the deeper issue that causes the symptoms she will now, inevitably, get to witness. Instead, she presses on and, with a small frisson of urgency, asks another few questions:

"When you fold into yourself, do you retain the knowledge of the alternate potential states or are they subsumed? By the nature of that affliction and your title, I assume you are both living and dead at once? I cannot say I miss that part of entanglement, it was most disagreeable."

Ava's split attention is drawn to the new alternate, and even silent she can read well enough the lecture. She flinches slightly as the handshake pulls her in, bringing the sound into focus, and yep, that's exactly what she expected to be on the receiving end of.

There's a flash of shame at clearly being seen as stupid. She wouldn't take it from much anyone else, but there's something about quantum physicists that so quickly put her in her place. Makes her feel as small as she had as a child, being poked and prodded.

Ava swallows, is quick to retract her hand and separate herself from that moment that isn't, back into the one that is. Where Rosalind is saying it's a pleasure.

"The collapse," Ava repeats, worriedly. "Of yourself?" No, no she doesn't want to think of that right now either.

"I remember," Ava confirms. "I can usually control which... instance I become. If I go left and right, and the left me gets hit, I move into the right..." It's difficult to describe, because it all happens so quickly sometimes. "So part of me might have died, in the explosion. But I lived instead." Unlike her parents.

Ava may notice that this Rosalind and that one are quite divergent, distinct and separate from the moment they are formed. If her own ability is navigation along the rivers and eddies of time, jumping from place to place, Rosalind's affliction is the forming of a fork. The two divergences are utterly separate and therein lies the issue.

"You can control it?" Rosalind asks and her brows raise in tandem. All her other questions are forgotten in the wake of this information and, if anything, she seems delighted to hear it.

"That is extraordinary," she says. "I was only able to navigate it successfully when fully removed from linear time. I can't imagine the effort necessary to navigate unfolding time with precision."

It's the highest praise she's paid anyone, perhaps ever. She's deeply impressed by Ava and, simultaneously, fascinated with her. This time, the collapse of Rosalind's forms happen very swiftly. The number of outcomes for this branch easily dwarf the other and, summarily, it is subsumed into her current conversation. It happens in a flash and Ava, perhaps, is the only one in all the world who can bear witness to what actually occurs.

The reality of the second Lutece, hazy and wreathed in sunlight, collapses in on itself and, like water being added to a pool, the solidity of this reality rises, everything gaining a marked amount of density as that one is folded into it. Ava, Rosalind, the carafe of creamer. Briefly, everything is twice its normal quality and then those spare atoms drift, fading into probability and atomic motion, spinning off and collapsing or becoming something else in their transition.

Rosalind takes it with only a mild stagger, as her other self is folded in and grimaces as the second reality is written onto her brain. Her nose will bleed in a moment, she expects, but she cannot bring herself to mind. Not while chatting with the human embodiment of quantum mechanics.

"Say--does--" She pauses here, her question urgent but her headache spiking. "Does magic seem to affect your abilities?"

She does notice, and it fascinates her as well, the way she manages to operating so independently of herself. But her question makes Ava think she has no control in the actions of her divergence.

"In a way," Ava admits, "the way somebody might control breathing or blinking. It's more reflexive than a conscious choice. But it took awhile for my mind to make sense of navigating it all. Luckily I was young..." Unlucky, as well. But it gave her a decent advantage of adapting to it, while her brain was still in the process of building itself.

She wants to ask how the woman got removed from linear time, but she can feel the sudden weight of reality folding back in on itself around Rosalind, with the disappearance of her second, and Ava gives a small wince as she shifts herself intangible to escape it. Waits for everything to settle, and shakes her head uneasily.

But Rosalind just... moves right on past it, as if nothing at all happened. Ava grabs for her coffee, finally remembering it, takes a sip because she really needs something to ground herself right now. "Magic," she scoffs, because they're surrounded by it but she still refuses to quite understand it. "There's some sort of... magic wards? Sigils? That protect areas of the ship from even my ability to slip through matter. And I've been... assured that the degradation of my condition has been. Paused. That's the only effects I'm aware of."

Rosalind has an equally dismal estimation of magic and her expression goes terribly wan as Ava scoffs. In this they are utterly united. She reaches, plucking a small conglomeration of paper napkins from the dispenser at the bar, and presses them beneath her nose just before it begins to bleed with alarming intensity.

"Yes, it's absurd, isn't it?" Rosalind asks from behind her small fistful of napkins. It is a largely rhetorical question. "The fact that magical nonsense exacerbates my condition is evidence enough that it is not magical at all, but thus far, I've found few people who concur."

Her tone says how much she appreciates that, also how little their overall agreement means to her. Ava's agreement, however, suddenly means a great deal. Rosalind is, all at once, in the unusual position of needing to court it.

"If you would like, once I've had time to build proper equipment, I would be more than happy to monitor and record benchmarks of your condition. For the purposes of veracity if nothing else?"

It might be impolite to offer to scientifically track someone but, if it is, Rosalind has never been called out on it. It is her specialty.

Ava opens her mouth to express her concern at the blood staining the napkin, but thinks better of it. Obviously the woman is aware, expected it. Still. That is an unfortunate side effect.

"You'll find a lot of resistance, many of the passengers have some sort of magic they use from their own worlds. But I don't understand how ones with such widely differing principles can work within the same system. So I've concluded it's all an illusion." Because it's the only thing that makes sense to her.

The offer has Ava curious, and normally she wouldn't trust it from somebody she just met. But... Rosalind has a condition that's similar enough in nature that she views her as somebody that understands. So she considers, sipping from her coffee. This is all so much before she's properly awake. "Yes. Though I'm not certain where you'd get the... supplies to build proper equipment. You'll find the electronics here are... hollow."

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Coffee and Shopping

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