March Mingle Madness (aka SURPRISE it's another mingle)

[bryces_pup]

Who: Crew members and visitors of the SS Blue Fish
Broadcast: nope
Action: On the Blue Fish, naturally.
When: Throughout March!

[Another month, another mingle. Once again, any visitors on the ship should bear in mind that there are locks installed all over the ship, so someone on board's gotta let you in. Or you can just stand there. And stare. And hope someone takes pity on you.]

Comments

[dancingmd]

He's special. [She offers Riona half of a smile.] And I'm not just saying that because I'm his mother. Somehow, he's learned to tap into something...different within himself. I don't understand it all yet but he can manipulate time and space, travel into other dimensions. If Atroma took that away from him, right as he's beginning to learn what he is capable of...

[bryces_pup]

[Wow that sounds... kind of cool.

And also suspiciously familiar.]

...isn't that similar to what Atroma does with us? Bringing people from different worlds and points in time?

[dancingmd]

I suspect Atroma is someone who has similar abilities to Wesley, yes, but Wesley would never do something like this. The only person he’s ever pulled from one universe to another is me, and that’s because I was trapped in the wrong one.

[bryces_pup]

[Not even gonna ask how that happened. Just nope. This shit confuses her enough as it is.]

You think Atroma is only one person?

[dancingmd]

[Beverly's life is weird. Better just to roll with it.]

Could be. For a long time I thought they were an alien I know of from home who also likes to toy with people like this.

[bryces_pup]

You... know someone who's done this to other people?

[dancingmd]

Not exactly like Atroma has here, taking people from all different worlds and times and bringing them together for a supposed television show, but he did periodically show up to transport our entire crew into absurd situations, to see how we'd react. He claimed it was a test of some sort.

[bryces_pup]

He sounds just about as awful. Is that how your son wound up having to pull you from a different universe?

[dancingmd]

No, that time wasn't Q's fault. It was...complicated. I helped create an unstable universe with my own mind.

[She smiles ruefully, knowing how absurd that sounds.]

[bryces_pup]

...beg your pardon?

[She's going to regret asking, isn't she? Not because of anything to do with Beverly, but because, well, this parallel universe nonsense is complicated enough as it is. And she has a feeling her brain's about to hurt a lot more after this conversation.]

[dancingmd]

[She huffs out a little laugh. Oh boy. How to explain this, especially to someone with limited knowledge of warp drives?]

To be honest, I don't totally understand all of the details of it myself. Always was better at biology than I was physics. But... our ship, the Enterprise, has what's called a warp drive, which allows us to move faster than the speed of light - like the Blue Fish does, though the exact mechanics are different. Wesley was performing an experiment on the warp drive and ended up creating what's called a warp bubble. Basically a... distortion, a miniature parallel universe within ours. I fell into this warp bubble without realizing it, and populated it with my own mind so for a while I thought I was still in my universe, since it had all the same people and I was still on the Enterprise.

[That was... not helpful probably, and she knows it.]

[bryces_pup]

[Luckily, Riona knows a thing or two about parallel universes.]

I... see. [Kind of.] You created a version of your world in this bubble, like the different versions of Thedas that exist. The rest is beyond me, but I understand that. [As much as she is capable.] Is that what parallel universes are? Worlds that exist in these bubbles?

[dancingmd]

Not exactly. That universe was too dependent on my own to remain stable - the warp bubble could not be maintained indefinitely, so everything within that universe started collapsing. Conventional parallel universes exist independently of one another. Yet they are interconnected in that every possibility exists at once. In one universe, I choose to become a doctor, in another a dancer - in the grand scheme of things, there would be very little difference between those two universes, but my life and all the lives of those I’ve ever known would change. Wesley would probably not exist, but another child might. Someone might die because I wasn’t there and someone else might learn to dance because I was.

And that’s just on an individual scale. The differences start to become a lot more pronounced the bigger the changes are. For example, somewhere along the way, your world developed magic, while mine did not, and that changes… everything.

[bryces_pup]

[Riona doesn't consider herself stupid, but this is a bit much for her to swallow. She wants to understand, but there's still so much that she doesn't know that she's not even sure where to begin. Parts of what Beverly says makes sense. She grasps the... philosophical part of it, for a lack of better term. It's the mechanics that throw her.]

I don't quite get how these different universes exist alongside of each other. But then, there's much about universes I don't know.

My world has the Fade, which is where magic is drawn from. I... take it yours does not have such a thing?

[dancingmd]

[No, not stupid at all. It's a complicated thing to understand and physics isn't Beverly's strong suit. No doubt Wesley or Geordi would be able explain things much better to Riona, if they were here.

Beverly shakes her head.]

We do not. No magic whatsoever.

[bryces_pup]

No Fade, no magic, and thus I assume no spirits or demons. Do you not dream then?

[Which might sound like an odd question to Beverly...]

[dancingmd]

[Very odd indeed. Her brow furrows and she tilts her head curiously.]

Of course we dream. It's a natural human function. If we don't dream... well, we quite literally cannot live without dreaming.

[bryces_pup]

Strange. Then you must... dream differently, somehow.

[She worries at her lip.]

In Thedas, our souls go to the Fade when we sleep, and that's how we dream. The Fade is said to be a constantly changing place, shaped by intention and thought. Or so I've been told.

[dancingmd]

It's an automatic function of the brain that occurs during the deepest part of the sleep cycle, which is why it's important. It's not the dreaming itself, but rather that deep sleep that is critical to staying healthy. [She hastens to add:] For us.

[Not that she doesn't suspect it's the case for them as well since REM sleep is important to most mammals but, really, there's no reason to argue that point.]

So do you dream here?

[bryces_pup]

I do. Which is a little strange, I'll admit. But it sounds like your way of dreaming is much safer than how one dreams back home. Though really, it's only dangerous if you're a mage. [A beat.] Must be nice for any mages here not to have to worry about possession when they dream.

[dancingmd]

Possession? You mean like... Demons?

[bryces_pup]

[Nod.]

Yes. The Fade is the realm of the spirits. It is an ever changing place, shaped by feelings, intentions and memories. When we dream, the Fade and spirits respond to our memories and emotions. For non-mages, it is safe. But for mages, it's a different story. They have magic, and that power is drawn from the Fade itself. Spirits can sense that, and the crueler ones will be drawn to that power and seek it out. If a mage is not careful, the demon can possess their body. And that's when things generally get ugly.

[dancingmd]

[Ronin wasn't a demon, only an alien but well... she believes she has some idea what that's like.]

That's awful. Is there no way to counteract it?

[bryces_pup]

If they are not too far gone, if they have not yet become an abomination, a mage can go into the Fade - provided they have enough lyrium - and can kill the demon in the Fade, freeing the host.

Otherwise... death is the only other option.

[dancingmd]

Dreams that can kill... [Beverly suppresses a shudder. Sounds like a horror holonovel.] I think I am grateful we have nothing like that.