synopsychic | Hey baby I hear the blues a-callin, tossed salads and scrambled eggs (ota)

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Hey baby I hear the blues a-callin, tossed salads and scrambled eggs (ota)

(A peppy - dare I say Jaunty - tune is sent into the heads of the newcomers and old guard alike...)

Heeeey what’s up guys, welcome to Liminal Space. The voice in your head courtesy of our psychic network is Sara Smith, and I figured what better way to welcome new and veteran Travellers alike this month of Easter and Passover with a bit of holiday cooking?

You can, of course, tune this out or listen in at any time - I’m making this private but unsecured, so it won’t bother you if you don’t want to see out of the eyes of a girl offering to teach you how to cook and explaining a bit of how we do things here. “But Sara,” you may ask, “how do you secure a psychic message?” That’s a great question, and if you ask, I’ll teach you! Until then welcome to Snackin’ with Sara.

(Yeah, about that. Making an opt-out is what she thinks she’s doing. What she’s actually doing is, uh, publically livestreaming. Whoops.)

(She starts the livestream, and as promised, you see out of her eyes - in an industrial kitchen made mostly of stainless steel.)

Today’s dish is from my homeworld, classic scrambled eggs on toast. Say what else you will about a world where a 15 year old is a lieutenant in a giant robot squad fighting aliens, we always had really fresh chicken eggs, laid every morning by our girls Tagine, General Tso, Lemon Pepper and Veloute. Now we don’t have a henhouse in Liminal Space. What we do have...

(She snaps her fingers, and suddenly, eggs. One in her hand, two more on a plate, and for that matter there’s also now a log of chevre and a stick of butter.)

...is Liminal Manipulation. Yes, in return for this itty bitty living space and the mark of one of our hosts - (she waggles her hand, the one with a stick figure merrily dancing off a number zero) - We get phenomenal cosmic powers, which I’d be happy to teach. Your first tries are probably going to look, taste, and feel like paper pulp, but with practice you should get beautiful delicious eggs just like Tagine used to lay, and that’s for starters.

So what you’re gonna do is melt this much butter - like two tablespoons, be generous - in a small saucepan over medium heat. Let it get nice and frothy before cracking in three eggs - wash them if they aren’t American prewashed ones that you keep on ice - and stir, gently, and constantly. You’re going for maximum floof here, make it nice and creamy, and remove it from the heat if it’s cooking too fast. They shouldn’t brown.

Add two generous tablespoons of creamy goat cheese - or shredded swiss or cheddar, I’m not your boss, but it’s what we had at base - and salt and pepper to taste. Herbs de Provence also work great here. Keep stirring until where the egg ends and the cheese begins is a mystery. When it’s done, it’s done, and take it off the heat!

Spoon it over toast - I like a thick slice of sourdough fried in butter but I’m from Postapoc Anime San Francisco - and sprinkle with chives. And now you have a delicious almost custardy hearty breakfast. Add some bacon and fried mushrooms, tomatoes and squash on the side and you have a meal substantial enough for combat cond-

(A claxon sounds, and a red light flashes, with a gravelly-voiced warning of “Nightmare detected. All Pilots and Anchors to the ANIMa creche immediately!” Sara, unable to maintain kayfabe, giggles.)

Aaand gotta eat and run, duty calls. If you have any questions, especially dumb newbie ones, please ask! I’ll be serving food in my room, look for the amazing technicolor dream-cat. Thanks for Snackin’ with Sara, toodles!

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Yeah, sure! Plus you know I’ll have bacon and eggs waiting for you.

Your room or mine?

Whichever you prefer.

Send me the way and I'll be right over.

(And soon after getting his directions, there's a knock on his door.)

[He sends her the directions - one of the oldest rooms in the workshop, so fairly easy to find - and opens the door with a quiet smile a couple moments after she knocks, in jeans and a turtleneck.] Hey, Sara. Please, come in.

[The room itself is pretty bare - or at least, very tidy. Most of his possessions are in his hammerspace or put away in drawers or the wardrobe, with nothing in the way of decoration. The exception are his books - most of them arranged on a shelf over the desk, but several more stacked haphazardly or open on the desk, and another laying open the bed.

The other thing of note is that Armin is not the only inhabitant of the room - a gigantic direwolf, fully as tall as Sara or more - stands behind Armin, looking at her very intently.]

(Well then. That sure is a Big Murderfloof. Sara raises her hand in the universal gesture of 'You're a nice doggy, right?'

Give her a moment, the direwolf is a bit intimidating.)

...so is your buddy allowed to have bacon or scritches cause I think I'd like to come off as A Friend.

(She shakes a green canvas bag for emphasis. It smells delicious in there.)

My...? Oh. [He seems to have genuinely forgotten Lady was there - or at the very least, forgotten not everyone is as comfortable with her as he is.]

Sara, this is Lady. Lady, Sara is a friend. [He shares a look with the direwolf, ending in a quiet 'whoof' and a shake of the head on the wolf's part. She sits heavily - not any shorter this way, but a little less threatening now she's not quite ready to pounce at a moment's notice. Armin pets her for a few moments, putting a brief arm around her.]

You can give her bacon if you want. And she'll let you know if she doesn't want any scritches.

Hey there big girl. Gotta snack for you.

(She puts her hand behind her back, and when she brings it forward again, it's to give Lady a strip of very crisp bacon she just Liminal'ed into existence. Then she unwraps the bag for Armin on his table: a plastic clamshell take-out box of that breakfast, and a plastic portable cup of tangerine fizz.)

Also I brought you this.

Whatcha reading?

[Lady carefully sniffs Sara's face and hands, studying her with highly intelligent eyes. Finally, however, she turns her attention to the bacon, all but swallowing it whole - before licking her hand once and then turning to curl up on her bed in the corner.]

Oh! Thank you. I, I'm not actually very hungry right now - do you mind if I just save it for later? [Since hammerspace lets him do that indefinitely, without any loss of heat or freshness.] It's, um. It's a book of poetry somebody recommended.

[If she looks at the books open on the desk, though, she'll see that several of those are textbooks - high school chemistry and physics, mostly.]

(That looks like a definite 'no scratches plzkthx,' so Sara doesn't press the issue, instead sitting next to Armin. Not touching, but close enough that closing the distance is easy.)

Sure, go ahead. I just figured I might as well bring you some.

(She looks at the other books, and at the poetry, and nods.) How are you liking it so far?

[He nods his thanks, stashing the meal in his hammerspace - which in his case entails putting it in his pocket, a process that can look quite absurd and amusing at times. Armin then seats them on the bed, closing the book and looking at it for a long moment before he responds.]

...It's okay? I don't really know much about poetry, to be honest. I'm not really sure what to think.

(Sara laughs at the sight.) Are you stuffing it Elsewhere, like Kohaku and her burgers? Oh man. I gotta learn how to do that once I figure out portals.

Poems aren't as easy to read as plain stories, at least for me. There's more work trying to figure out the metaphors and the stuff the writer is doing to show off.

...Was this mister Delaunay's suggestion? I know he's super into poetry.

[He blinks.] I'm... putting it in my hammerspace? I guess you might call that 'elsewhere'... I didn't learn it from liminal space, though, it's something called 'S Tech' that does mostly the same thing.

And no. Thorne recommended it to me. I... don't know Delaunay very well, to be honest. I don't think he likes me very much.

Oh is that what people call it. Someone was super into cartoons when they came up with that name. S. Tech is also how you got the girl form, right?

(At last, the secret to the Hammerspace name is revealed.)

...Why wouldn't Delaunay like you?

...Cartoons? [He asks automatically, but it sounds like he's well used to not understanding these sorts of references.] And sort of? The disease is a strain of X Pressure. S Tech is a different, and generally more deliberate, manifestation of that.

[He bites his lip, uncertain how to answer.] Maybe he thinks I'm bad for Alcuin somehow? I'm not really sure, that's just the impression I get.

("Maybe he thinks I'm bad for Alcuin?" She frowns a bit at that, but then nods and lets it go.)

Ah. Overprotective Brother Mode. It's probably nothing personal and not straight up 'you're bad for him,' if he's anything like the, hmn, call them Hierophant types I've known. Had a dance under the mistletoe with Alcuin, too? (Light, teasing, and if she's jealous she's taking it well.)

I figure if you ask Thorne straight up why it's called 'Hammerspace' she'll have a better and funnier answer than me. Just a hunch.

And oh right, I came here for a reason. Figuring out how to do a psychic opt-in.

Well, he was Alcuin's guardian, back home. [And he doesn't agree with her assessment of Delaunay's impression of him, but it's not something he cares to argue about.] And Alcuin and I... i-it's kinda complicated.

[He's only explained their relationship once before, and he doesn't think he did a terribly good job of it then.

When Sara brings up Thorne again, that does get a small smile out of Armin.] The fact that it's something Thorne should explain tells me a fair amount about it already, to be honest.

[Right. To business.] Right. It can't be too hard - the skills it seems like it should be related to are some of the most basic ones.

(She feels like she should add something, very quiet, very sober.) Remind me to tell you about the It's Complicated at home. It's less complicated now, but, uh, if who I think is waiting for me back home still is at the end of this, he's not going to mind whatever I did or whoever I kissed a freakin' year or more away from home and him.

(Deep breath.) Right. What do you think it'll call for?

[...He thinks there were several things implied there, but he's not sure he understands all of them, or that he's not just paranoid.] I... All right. [He bites his lip, before continuing quietly.] Alcuin doesn't mind either. He's dating several people, and he... I'm not his primary partner.

[Though Drizzt might, now that they're kind of dating. Should he tell her...? But then they're talking about the network, and it doesn't seem like the right time to continue that conversation.]

There are a number of ways I could see it working. Some sort of psychic contingency would probably be the simplest answer - but not the most elegant or efficient. It would be doing a lot of work for something that should be easier than that.

I could definitely see it as some sort of inversion of filter intrusion or psychic protection. But it could also involve sensory livestreaming or eavesdropping in some way. [He can go into more detail. But he's curious to know what she thinks first, before he delves any deeper.]

(Yes, good, a subject change. She takes, and exhales, a deep breath.)

I'm good enough at psi protection to shield others, and that was my first impulse for this too. Using it selectively and uh, creatively.

Filter intrusion... mmmnh, what else do you need that for because I might have it but don't like the idea of using it. It might help if you're like, leaving backdoors for people.

Obviously I can livestream, and I'd need to combine whatever it is with livestreaming some way. I don't think I have active eavesdropping but I might just because of the way I fought back home - forcing my way into the enemy's dreamscapes.

Yeah, we could use psychic protection to selectively shield people. Or if we inverted it, we might use it to include instead of exclude. That was kind of my idea For filter intrusion, too - using it inverted to try to invite people instead instead of intrude. Or maybe like you said, by leaving backdoors - so you're the one using filter intrusion on your own conversation, only for other people to get through.

You need filter intrusion to get to a bunch of the higher level skills - like memory immersion, or infiltrator knowledge or persona.

Yeah, you might be able to figure out eavesdropping that way - though it's usually not actually forcing your way through. You're able to see and hear what they do, but I've always done it with permission - I think it'd be much harder to do, otherwise.

The stuff you can do with this is really scary if you think about it.

...I do know that I accidentally invited some friends into my dreams, once. There's that. Do you know what that needs to go off? That might be a good way to think about it, too.

...What do you mean? [Not that he can't think of ways the network can be scary - but the skills they've mentioned aren't the scary ones, from his perspective, so he's not entirely sure what she's meaning.]

Dream communication? Hmmm. Maybe, but I feel like it should be more basic than that. But I could be wrong.

Breaking though psi defenses. Flooding people with your emotions. Broadcasting sensations. Trust me when I say all of those can be weaponized.

(And that's not even getting into Mind Tricks.)

Testing reversed Intrusion and Defense seems like a good starting point.

I... that's true. [He wonders if he should tell her about some of the more powerful skills he has access to. On the one hand, she should know what she's dealing with - what people are actually capable of. On the other hand... she seems worried enough about it as it is, and it's not relevant to what they're trying to do.

...Maybe later, then.] That makes sense to me too. Do you want to start?

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Hey baby I hear the blues a-callin, tossed salads and scrambled eggs (ota)

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