the devil in the details

[isocelesmonster]

Who: Bill Cipher
Broadcast: none
Action: Anywhere in the fleet
When: The night of the 22nd, and ongoing.

Although ostensibly the Golden has a new crew member, there's no new person in attendance at any meals. No new faces in the hall, nothing additional in the laundry. One of the standard crew cabins has been sealed up as tight as a tomb, the brass nameplate on the door unhelpfully scratched out with something sharp. No noises at all come from inside.

It'd take a careful eye to notice the only other change: the same sharp instrument has been used to carve little eyes of providence, no bigger than a fingernail, in strategic public places around the ship. They're shallow markings, not deep enough to interfere with any of the working parts of the craft, and no great works of art - each little scrap of graffiti is a matter of five lines at most. But they're there - and if sometimes the way the gold of the metal hull glints in the pupil is strangely canny, it's probably nothing to be worried about.

(It's not that Bill doesn't care about the flesh puppets that make up his new crew - oh, he does, they're all going to get very careful scrutiny over the coming days - but more important is finding out what his new playground looks like.)

When the fleet sleeps, their minds open and blossom like night-blooming flowers, each one illuminating a new section of the shared dreaming plane. For all of their poetry, few humans realize that the state of dreaming is as real an exploration as whatever meaningless actions they take while awake. It's irrelevant to their survival, most days, so evolution has never sought to provide that particular revelation. They're a young species. Five senses, auditory languages, limited psychic potential, and as far as they know when they dream they're just watching random electrical impulses fire in their brains. Ha!

(There's an expression about a one-eyed man's status in a land of the blind, and Bill intends to make it a reality.)

He steps sideways out of the material world into the closest dream as easily as a three-dimensional being can move along any of their limited axes. He makes himself invisible, at first, just to get his bearings.

[Bill is visiting dreams, as a way of saying hello! His permissions post for this ability is here. I am treating this ability on an opt-in basis. If you didn't give me the okay, he won't be spying on your character at all tonight ~but where's the fun in that~?]
ZOGSLFTS GSRH DVZP ZMW RWOV GSVNV

RH ML NLIV BRVOWRMT YFG Z WIVZN

DSVM NLIMRMT GZPVH BLF UILN NB GSIZOO

YV TOZW R OVG BLF DZPV ZG ZOO

Comments

[tetractys]

HAH! THANKS, KID!

[Bill nudges her gently with ... what could only be very loosely defined as his elbow. It's more like the arbitrary spot at which his arm has decided it bends right now.]

WHAT'S REAL AND WHAT ISN'T IS PRETTY LOOSE IN HERE, ANYWAY! I DON'T GET HUNG UP ON THE EXISTENTIAL STUFF!

[flickerflash]

[Everything's real to the fae, but that's the fortunate (unfortunate?) result of having your feet in two separate dimensions at once. It's not something she really thinks on, because life is far more interesting now she sees weird shit following everyone around.]

Thinking too hard is probably bad for you anyway. You trip over your own thoughts. You could break something if you're not careful.

[tetractys]

OH, BELIEVE ME, IT'S ALREADY BROKEN!

[flickerflash]

Whoops. [She giggles.] You need to stop thinking so much, then. Would you like some superglue?

[tetractys]

NAH! IF THAT'S THE PRICE OF THINKING, I'D RATHER BE A LITTLE OFF! CAN'T JUST SKATE BY ON MY GOOD LOOKS AGAINST SOME OF THE DEEPER DREAM MONSTERS!

[flickerflash]

Well said. I bet you would annoy all the psychologists as much as I do. Have you met many deeper dream monsters?

[tetractys]

[Bill giggles. He doesn't have the heart to tell her what they call him down there in the primordial abyss, in the vast and boiling expanse that is the true, unordered face of the cosmos. Maybe later.]

HEY, IT'S NOT OUR FAULT THEY THINK FREE WILL IS SOMETHING THAT CAN BE CATEGORIZED INTO BOXES! TRYING TO PUT NAMES ON IDEAS IS LIKE TRYING TO EAT JELLO WITH RAZOR WIRE! ALL YOU'LL GET IS A BUNCH OF GOO, AND YOU MIGHT LOSE A FINGER!

[That simile got away from him.]

CAN'T EXPLORE THE CORNERS OF THIS PLACE WITHOUT BUMPING INTO SOMETHING THERE'S NO WORDS FOR YET! I'VE DONE IT A FEW TIMES. MAYBE THEY SHOULD TRY IT!

[flickerflash]

They should try eating jello with razorwire?

[She knows that's not what he meant, but lord that is fun to picture.]

[tetractys]

MAYBE IF I GET TO WATCH THEM!

[flickerflash]

We could take pictures and use them as a warning.

[tetractys]

HAHAHA. I LIKE THE WAY YOU THINK! IT'LL WORK ON BOTH PSYCHIATRISTS AND PEOPLE WHO HATE UTENSILS!

[flickerflash]

[She grins.] And then they'll stop trying to tell people how they ought to think. Or how to eat, really.

[tetractys]

THAT'LL BE THE FIRST REGULATION WHEN I'M SUPREME RULER! THOUGHT IS UNBOUND! FREE WILL REIGNS!

[flickerflash]

If free will reigns how will you make any rules stick?

[Note: this is genuine curiosity.]

[tetractys]

THEY WON'T!

[Bill bursts out laughing. Calm down, Bill.]

THE RULE IS THAT THERE ARE NO RULES! AND THAT'S A RULE TOO, SO IT DOESN'T EXIST! SINCE IT DOESN'T, THERE ARE RULES - SO IT DOES!

[flickerflash]

[That sets her off giggling all over again, both the laughter and the ridiculousness of it.]

You're going to give a lot of very stuffy people terrible headaches.

[Good tbh]

[tetractys]

IT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING FOR A LONG, LONG TIME! I'LL SHOW YOU THE ROPES SOME TIME!

[flickerflash]

How long is a long long time? As long as a piece of string?

[tetractys]

AS LONG AS STRING THEORY!

[flickerflash]

[I'm nine what the hell is string theory

on the other hand she bets laying out all theories about string could go on a long long time so whatever, she still gets the idea]

Were you around when they made the pyramids?

[She's wondering about ur shape dude]

[tetractys]

[It's old is what it is.]

SURE WAS! KHUFU AND I WERE PALS - I DID SOME FAVORS FOR HIM IN HERE, HE GOT ME SOME PRETTY SPECTACULAR BIRTHDAY PRESENTS!

[flickerflash]

Oh! What kind of birthday presents?

[^^^ kid]

[tetractys]

THOSE PYRAMIDS!

[flickerflash]

[Aw yis. She likes that idea.]

He must have liked you an awful lot.

[tetractys]

I GOT HIM OUT OF SOME BAD FIXES! PLUS, YOU KNOW, I'M VERY CHARMING.