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Ivan must be drunker than he thought he was. He could have sworn he knew his way around Vivienne's parents' house, since she wanted to introduce him last week and showed him the place, but maybe they have a... secret... upstairs... bar? where Vivienne's room is supposed to be? And most certainly was last time he checked? He's never going to find the sweater she sent him up looking for here, anyway. Why is there a secret upstairs bar in Vivienne's parents' house?
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isthisart
Linya goes back and sits at the bar and gets a bowl of soup and asks questions. She is discouraged from arbitrage, encounters the bar's discomfort with menus, and borrows a book from Stalas's world about dwarves, which she scans with her pen as she reads.
unmarred
Someone walks in the door.
He sees Linya. He immediately turns around and tries to leave.
The door does not cooperate with this choice.
"What the fuck," says Mark.
isthisart
Linya looks up.
She gets out her medical scanner.
It beeps.
"Hello, Mark."
She gets out her medical scanner.
It beeps.
"Hello, Mark."
isthisart
"Here." She offers him the door-explaining napkin. "This is probably faster."
Few rules about Milliways are absolute regardless of all possible interventions, but generally speaking: people, of any species that uses doors but most typically humans, open a door that normally leads to a room in conventional space, and find that instead it leads here. Time in their world is almost always paused while they are here with the door closed, unless they are never going to return, will return contingent only on events that require the passage of time in their home world, or, occasionally, if the door is presenting itself at multiple locations in the same world. When someone departs Milliways, the door leads to wherever, in addition to whenever, the person exiting came from; a person can only hold the door to their own world, but may allow others through to visit.
Some people find doors only once in their lives. Others may find them more frequently, or on a nearly regular basis, or reliably on certain occasions, or with a greater or lesser success rate when deliberately seeking doors, or according to other patterns. Holding the door with an inanimate object tends not to work, although not for any systematic magical reasons I have observed. Very occasionally, for reasons of which I am thoroughly unsure, the door will cease to exist for a period of time usually not exceeding one or two subjective days and often as brief as a few minutes. It has never kept anyone permanently.
Unconventional situations, such as the possibility of people being born and raised within Milliways and then trying the door, or people opening the door together in such a way that neither could have been doing it alone or could be said to be the primary opener, have unpredictable effects. By and large harmful atmospheric conditions on the worlds the door visits do not bleed into the bar environment, although the same does not consistently apply to milder differences in temperature, pressure, odor, etcetera.
Assorted superstitions, the veracity of which I can neither confirm nor deny, suggest that getting doors is more likely if you have a tab running, if you have your tab paid up, if you steal a saltshaker or other object, if you seek employment with Security or the cleaning staff or the infirmary, if you leave objects buried on the lake beach in the back yard, if you rent a room, or if other conditions prevail.
Most people find that when they visit there are other people who are interesting to them here, although usually the door appears to go somewhat out of its way to help Security enforce the no-violence rule by keeping generally hostile parties out of Milliways and avoiding inviting patrons with vendettas at the same time. And of course arbitrary amounts of time may pass in Milliways, not necessarily at the same rate between various sub-portions, between instances of a given visitor's arrival, though while my memory isn't literally perfect I'm very good about passing along messages to people when they come in.
Few rules about Milliways are absolute regardless of all possible interventions, but generally speaking: people, of any species that uses doors but most typically humans, open a door that normally leads to a room in conventional space, and find that instead it leads here. Time in their world is almost always paused while they are here with the door closed, unless they are never going to return, will return contingent only on events that require the passage of time in their home world, or, occasionally, if the door is presenting itself at multiple locations in the same world. When someone departs Milliways, the door leads to wherever, in addition to whenever, the person exiting came from; a person can only hold the door to their own world, but may allow others through to visit.
Some people find doors only once in their lives. Others may find them more frequently, or on a nearly regular basis, or reliably on certain occasions, or with a greater or lesser success rate when deliberately seeking doors, or according to other patterns. Holding the door with an inanimate object tends not to work, although not for any systematic magical reasons I have observed. Very occasionally, for reasons of which I am thoroughly unsure, the door will cease to exist for a period of time usually not exceeding one or two subjective days and often as brief as a few minutes. It has never kept anyone permanently.
Unconventional situations, such as the possibility of people being born and raised within Milliways and then trying the door, or people opening the door together in such a way that neither could have been doing it alone or could be said to be the primary opener, have unpredictable effects. By and large harmful atmospheric conditions on the worlds the door visits do not bleed into the bar environment, although the same does not consistently apply to milder differences in temperature, pressure, odor, etcetera.
Assorted superstitions, the veracity of which I can neither confirm nor deny, suggest that getting doors is more likely if you have a tab running, if you have your tab paid up, if you steal a saltshaker or other object, if you seek employment with Security or the cleaning staff or the infirmary, if you leave objects buried on the lake beach in the back yard, if you rent a room, or if other conditions prevail.
Most people find that when they visit there are other people who are interesting to them here, although usually the door appears to go somewhat out of its way to help Security enforce the no-violence rule by keeping generally hostile parties out of Milliways and avoiding inviting patrons with vendettas at the same time. And of course arbitrary amounts of time may pass in Milliways, not necessarily at the same rate between various sub-portions, between instances of a given visitor's arrival, though while my memory isn't literally perfect I'm very good about passing along messages to people when they come in.
unmarred
Mark walks up to her and takes the napkin, with no incidental contact. He hangs back a few steps while he reads it. It doesn't take long.
"Who wrote this?"
"Who wrote this?"
unmarred
He looks at the magically appearing napkin. He looks at the bar. He looks at Linya.
"...While I'm here: Can you tell Simon Illyan to quit having me bloody followed? It's annoying. And losing his agents only seems to encourage them."
"...While I'm here: Can you tell Simon Illyan to quit having me bloody followed? It's annoying. And losing his agents only seems to encourage them."
isthisart
"I tried to convince him not to start in the first place, but he didn't listen to me."
unmarred
"I don't really expect him to listen. I just want to tell him anyway. What is that smell?"
isthisart
"The various fluids of some sort of thing called 'darkspawn', the stabbing of which was a recent occupation of... another visitor, currently spelunking in the mountains out back."
unmarred
"Another visitor whose identity you don't want me to know because...?"
isthisart
"Oh, I have no objection to you knowing, it's just a little hard to explain and I don't already have a napkin about it. The fellow is a dwarf - the supposedly fictitious species - and looks just like you, only a few inches taller."
isthisart
"I think it's because their continued survival threatened his health, but perhaps it's also entertaining, at least the first few times."
unmarred
"Sounds like fun to me, but perhaps he and I have different interests."
isthisart
"According to Bar, sometimes people are 'alts' - alternate universe versions of the same person. He's one of Miles. Bar, Mark isn't an alt of Miles in his own way, is he...?"
No.
"I didn't think so, but it's nice to be able to check."
No.
"I didn't think so, but it's nice to be able to check."
unmarred
"Of course I'm not," he says. "Unless you count—" he smiles and shakes his head. "I won't do it, you know what I'm talking about."
isthisart
"I do. But apparently it doesn't count, at least in the sense Bar can look at."