asgardeventide | oo1 ∞ video / open action

[ River can be seen wandering around the common area of Odin's Welcome Hall almost as though in a trancelike state. Her steps are light and even, ball to toe on bare feet, and her fingers trail over every object she passes even though her eyes are wandering curiously around the ceiling and the walls and the rest of the room - never to what she's touching. It might seem like she's looking for something, or even listening for something, but she doesn't seem to find it, and never once ceases her calculated footsteps. Eventually the video times out. ]

[ Some time later, the video clicks back on and River's face fills the entire feed, far too close as she tries to peer into the little jewel of her bracelet. She eventually gives up and pulls back to show brown eyes wide and curious, dark hair framing pallid skin that's ... almost gold in the scant lighting.

She's sitting in the middle of the slide, feet tucked underneath her to stop her from going down any further. Her eyes skitter around the confined space before settling back on the bracelet. She says only two words as a whisper, like if she says it any louder, it might break the spell. ]

It's quiet.

[ ooc; for those of you in Odin, feel free to run into River in either part of the post - and I do mean literally, someone should run into her in the slide. 8) edit: I totally forgot! hover for Chinese translations! thanks to Holly for teaching me that trick and Google for my butchered Chinese. |Db ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Simon doesn't have to worry much because he's not currently looking. Science and good discussion are more interesting to him than girly parts.]

Men write them down after taking data and running experiments, enough times that a certain phenomenon can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Something like gravity, while still classified as a theory, is hard to rebuke the existence of.

[ Oh man, oh man. You are going to be good people for River, Spencer. ]

Exists, but no longer absolute. Terraforming manipulates and twists and changes. Is it still a force of nature if man can hold it in his hands?

Terraforming.

[No wonder she felt as though the people in his time hadn't really "discovered" Mars.]

Tell me about what's going on in your time?

[500 years was practically an eon of scientific progression.]

Not what's happening. What happened. Broke the Earth, she couldn't hold us anymore, so we left. Found a new solar system, Bái Hú.

[ She traces the characters in the air with her fingers, but - he's behind, maybe they didn't know Chinese back then. ]

White Sun. Center of the 'verse, as you fancy. Terraformed all the planets and moons we could to the Rim, made them suitable.

[ River pauses, frowns. The word isn't right, somehow; she doesn't know. There's plenty more, but she'll let him ask questions. ]

[Spencer's knowledge of Mandarin is limited, so the translation is appreciated. What she's saying is not entirely out of the realm of scientific possibility.]

Recreated the solar system after we destroyed our home in the first one. Were none of the other planets in the original solar system able to be made suitable?

Earth's moon was fragile. Fell apart. Not enough water on Mars; Venus didn't like oxygen very much. Everyone else was too far away from the Sun. No dwarves to be helioformed.

[Spencer nods, understanding.]

That's well beyond the time that I'm from. Still, what you've managed to do doesn't seem to me as though it's gone beyond the limits of science to the point where scientific laws can be changed.

Not changed. Reexamined. Gravity exists; it's kept in a bottle to be fed to the next planet.

[ Not literally but, well. River's way of seeing things is a little different from everyone else's. She puts her feet flat on the ground so she can see Spencer better. ]

Perspective is narrowed, has to be expanded or you'll be stuck in a bottle too.

[He gazes back evenly. He's starting to feel like a translator of sorts.]

Humans are better able to control forces of nature than they are in my time.

[ He's kept up with her well, a feat not many can claim. More than enough to endear him to her; she doesn't feel quite as odd as she knows she is. ]

Your time will be the end. You have eighty-five years. Retire soon.

[Spencer's incredibly odd himself. It comes with the territory when one is a genius with an eidetic memory who graduated from college at 21 with three PhDs.

What she's saying is sobering. He doesn't want to talk about it anymore.]

I'm Spencer.

[ She'd apologize if she knew - or if she had the emotional capacity for empathy anymore. She can read emotions, feel them to very depths of her core, but she can't understand them to save her life.

As it is, she just smiles pleasantly. ]

River.

[He nods. He's not great at reading emotions either.]

I thought I was hallucinating when I came here.

And now?

I-I'm clearly not. Everything is corporeal. The stimuli are present. I'm not imagining this.

[This actually made him feel better. He knew it wasn't schizophrenia finally creeping up on him.]

[ She smiles brightly, something pleased and happy, like finding a qualitative conclusion at the end of an experiment. ]

You can see it. Now you just have to believe it too.

[She seems way happier about this than he does. The fact that it's real means that he's actually no longer in Virginia.]

I believe that I'm here.

oo1 ∞ video / open action

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