"When I go with Cricket in 4D dungeons I ask him to address the monsters. No answers yet. I would kinda like to talk to some myself except for how every time I have the opportunity to do that I can't be sure how much that's a rational thing to do and how much it's just a really appealing stupid idea. I've never actually been sent into a long-standing recurrent dungeon but sometimes I work on, like, a first contact message in all my languages, which I could print out and drop off in such a dungeon for it to chew on between appearances."

"And I think you mentioned Cricket not remembering much from before his dungeon died, right? I'm not sure if—well, I wonder if rather than the dungeons being individually possible to communicate with they're—created by something else and puppeteered."

"That seems possible! Like how octopus tentacles are individually capable of problem solving to do things like for example catch prey. Cricket knows a lot of things a regular person or animal would normally have to learn like how to talk and move around. He remembers being surprised by how small he was and by how biting a pigeon didn't make it start dissolving but he doesn't remember a part before that where he wasn't surprised about how he worked. You could definitely get a result like Cricket if monsters were the subdivisions of subdivisions that, when cut off, start having personal continuity, but have it with some - onboard procedural memory storage. Which I guess prompts the question of how to cut a dungeon off and leave it alive and what would happen if you did that! But - hm, I think the strongest evidence for the dungeons being connected to each other is the timing - which also coincides with espers, so I don't want to make too many assumptions about how it ties in with the dungeons' allegiances and motivations - and also the confluences, which, I don't know. There's this researcher whose blog I read who thinks we should model dungeons as an infection and espers as an immune response, which I think is interesting as a model but the immune system had to evolve, even if past dungeon infections of the Earth didn't get as far because there weren't urban population centers there isn't an obvious previous evolutionary stepping stone from which you get to 'espers exist now'..."

"...I'm not sure what that idea would explain, though. I mean, there's definitely some kind of intelligent thing there, the dungeons themselves or something else, and that intelligent thing must've evolved and—decided to come to Earth and do whatever this is. Pocket dimensions with things out of human mythology don't just spread like viruses."

"They do get bigger, if they come back more than once. But not in a viral way. More parasitic, I guess? Or autoimmune, maybe humans collectively are doing this to ourselves somehow, that would be weird but I'm not sure it would actually be a more profligate explanation all things considered, everything that could be going on is weird."

He's going to need to read what a bunch of people who have thought about this have said and come up with an opinion that makes him have a good contentful conversation with Haru about it. He adds that to his mental todo list.

"Wouldn't really explain why that happened in the seventies, though. There doesn't seem to be anything special about them."

"There really doesn't! Guesses I've read include population inflection point - which you could say about nearly any historical moment, the long term trend is up so strongly that it holds in every year we aren't having a really drastic plague and sometimes even then - and urbanization inflection point since dungeons like cities so much, which, same issue, and that it had something to do with the publication of Dungeons and Dragons, which is at least timed right but so batshit and apart from the name 'dungeons', which is human-applied after the fact anyway, doesn't match up in the details, it's not like I'm a wizard and you're a bard or whatever..."

"Your guess of alien first contact seems the most—reasonable—since that's the kind of thing that doesn't really have anything to do with us. It happened in the seventies because that's when it happened. It's unclear why aliens would want to set up superhero scenarios but at least the timing isn't mysterious anymore, I think."

"Yeah. It could be that we're actually helpful somehow to whatever they're hoping to accomplish, like those trees that can't set seed till they've caught fire. It'd explain why dungeons don't seem to kidnap espers."

Those trees that what? 

That's a thing??? What the hell. 

"Yeah." He totally knew about them mmhm totally.

Haru would come up with something else to say but in this particular context he doesn't actually have to in order to continue Having A Social Interaction. They have an hour till his next dungeon. Smooch.

There are things that are both a social interaction and help with backlash very effectively and which mean Jaeha doesn't have to get overwhelmed with more things to learn about. Space them out and all.

Haru's not actually sure he can do four times a day once, let alone all week, but that's not really an argument for skipping it when he is up for it, especially early in the day; after the last dungeon of the day he'll have a night of snuggles ahead.

He throws his clothes back on and bounces out again when his reminder alarm goes off.

About fifteen minutes after that, Cricket can be heard rummaging around in the kitchen.

Some company! Jaeha has something he wants to talk to Cricket about, actually. And has to have lunch, too, so that's an excuse. "Hello. Do you want to be shown where anything is?"

Haru's already installed the strap that lets Cricket pull the fridge open. "Do you know where he put my plates?"

"I don't, but I'll help you look." He gets on that.

Cricket's plates have handles on them, like shallow pails, and they're made of plastic. He can pick them up and carry them around with or without food on them without much spill risk as long as the food is placed centrally. He serves himself rabbit hearts and salmon from the fridge and trots the plate over to the table, which he sits on as well as eating from.

"So, you mentioned you dislike my smell," he says as he grabs some ingredients to start making his own lunch. "I don't know if Haru told you about my power? I can do illusions, and if it would make you more comfortable I could get rid of the smell of smoke." He's gonna try to stick to nicotine gum for longer to see if he can develop a habit and quit but the smell of smoke takes a while to go away.

"You could do that but it has nothing to do with illusions. Doing it with illusions would be even stupider than I thought you were." Nom nom.

"I know it would not improve the actual underlying issue. I'm trying nicotine gum to see if I can replace it. The illusions would be just so that you will feel less uncomfortable, personally. Up to you."

"I'm going to tell Haru on you," says Cricket conversationally.

"...I was not planning to do this behind his back." Though he supposes that's kind of frivolous power use? It's a really small amount of it though.

"Weren't you."

"Of course not. Why would I expect you to keep a secret from him? I'm just trying to—be kind."