It is a few hours into a projected 168 of them. Haru is trying to get back to sleep while his mother holds him, because 168 hours is going to feel a lot longer if he can't figure out how to sleep while lonelier than ought to be humanly possible.
Suddenly not having his mother holding him is certainly a way to ruin the attempt.
He's - somewhere that looks very like the sidewalk outside his apartment, but also clearly is not. The silhouettes of the buildings are uncannily similar for how different the specifics are - that convenience store has a different name; his apartment building is a different color and that one has a different façade; several buildings in one cluster that were more on the historical side have been replaced with something shiny and new. The McDonald's on the corner is still there, but with different decor.
It's the middle of the night here, too, and the streets are empty enough that there are neither pedestrians to glom onto nor cars to walk in front of in the immediate vicinity, though he can hear traffic in the distance and - maybe a set of footsteps?
He is so tired and it hasn't even been five percent of this shitshow. Footsteps yes please. "Help!"
The source has headphones on and doesn't notice him at first. She braces flinchingly when she sees him coming at her.
"Hello, I'm really sorry to bother you, I don't know where I am or how I got here and also I am in the middle of my esper awakening as of a few hours ago and it didn't previously seem to have an involuntary teleportation effect which would also separately be a really weird backlash manifestation and anyway I need - supervision, an ambulance will probably do the trick in a pinch?"
"What rock do you live under. I'm sorry, I don't mean that, I'm just - it means I am having a psychiatric emergency that will predictably last one week, can you call me an ambulance and sit with me till it gets here."
"Do you actively want an ambulance or is there a not-in-a-pinch solution that would work better?"
"You could also try calling my parents, I'd been planning to ride it out at home with them, it's not like there are drugs that help or anything, just, as things to ask of a complete stranger when I don't know where I am go, an ambulance seemed like the broadside option! I am intermittently a suicide risk, it turns out my backlash is being intolerably lonely."
Tap tap taptap. Her phone's UI is weird.
It rings out to voicemail and the voice on the 'leave a message' recording is male.
"My dad is supposed to be on an airplane to come take shifts with my mom, so he won't answer, but, just to check -" Number.
"Okay, well, I didn't think esper awakenings involved manifesting new exciting delusional symptoms after they got underway but I also didn't think they involved spontaneous teleportation and I do think I can't trust my brain right now, I'd take the ambulance if you'd be so kind and ambulances turn out to be a real thing that exist and can take me to a hospital."
"By all means tell me what thing I should have instead of an ambulance for my psychiatric crisis."
"I know this guy. Works for the government, in R&D, helped me out of a tight spot once. I could give reasons I think he'd be more helpful but I think I should just call him and if you don't like him you can have him get you an ambulance after."
"That sounds like an extremely puzzling approach to a psychiatric crisis but I am temporarily insane so I will tentatively trust you on this assessment, random stranger."
"Name's Netra." She navigates to something on her phone and starts typing, out of Haru's line of sight. "Also by call I mean text."
"Understood. I go by Haru but if you need my legal name for some reason it is Bellamy Masaharu Swan, and no, I don't know what my mother was thinking."
"I apologize for being compulsively incapable of shutting up. It doesn't even help."
"Oh. Do I have to listen; I can't really do that and type at the same time."
"It doesn't help if you do, I am having a magical problem and not a mood one, so I guess that means you needn't, you are a complete stranger and owe me nothing besides an ambulance or your choice of arguable improvement over an ambulance."
"Yeah, I get to be an esper, just like I always fucking wanted. Some people just fall into a nice simple coma or something, but not me, oh no."
"Mhm." Typetypetype. She finishes up, pockets her phone.
"Are you violent at all?"
"I don't feel so inclined and have not been historically but I am racking up symptoms at a really dismaying rate! I have dyspraxia and can be escaped by anyone capable of a brisk jog."
"Sure, if it's not too far, because, again, dyspraxia, I will trip and fall into traffic if I have to speed up above a sedate old-person pace to keep up with you."
"It's not." She leads him at a sedate old-person pace to a building half a block down from the one that looks weirdly like and yet weirdly unlike his own.
"It bears a strong resemblance to the exact block I live on except for all the ways it isn't! I live in Toronto, or at least so I remember myself to have believed in saner times."
"That's good, unless it isn't. At least it appears to me that we are both speaking English, so there's that."
"Well, it's better than being in Bangalore, especially since I'm in my pajamas," a T-shirt and buffalo check pants, "and it's worse than being in a Toronto that I recognize."
Door, keycode. The lock display instructs her to 'RETRY FINGERPRINT SCAN' and she jams her thumb on a side panel at a few angles until it chimes and lets them in. "So there's, uh, magic, in 'the Toronto that you recognize'?"
"It's everywhere in the world since the seventies. Espers, dungeons, monsters, whole nine yards. If I'm having a delusional episode about that it's really thorough and I cannot rely on my information that my episode should last only one week."
Elevator waiting. "I don't really follow the news but it does seem like a thing I would have... ever... heard of. If it were real." She pat-pats his shoulder.
He leans in kind of pathetically about that. "Yes, hence the rock comment."
"...Okay. - Oh." Her watch buzzes; she checks it. "He'll send someone within the hour." The elevator arrives and she hesitates, just for a beat, before leading him in.
"...You don't really seem like you're having a regular psychiatric problem, to be honest. I think it's more likely you've been, like, drugged, or hypnotized, or having some other sort of spy bullshit problem, and he's enough of a spy bullshit person that I think you'll do a lot better with him. You're - really coherent..."
"Spy bullshit? - I suppose I was operating on the assumption that a hospital would know what an esper is."
"I will have to take your word for it at least until I meet another person." He is hugging himself a little bit and occasionally swiping his hand across his eyes when they get too teary.
Howsabout they exit this elevator now. Here is her apartment. Her keypad is either fingerprint-unwanting or less picky; they get in first try. It's about the same size as Ren's but worse decorated.
He will go find a sofa to sit on and sit on it curled up very small.
"No thank you. I was in the middle of trying to go back to sleep - my aw- my subjective memory is that my awakening hit in the middle of the night and woke me up."
"Cool." She pads down the hallway and seems set to disappear around a corner.
The bedroomish part of the studio is as sparse as the rest of it except for the double-decker rat cage, which is crammed with lots of different climby and hammocky objects of no cohesive aesthetic. Netra scoops up two rats onto her shoulders, takes one in hand, and passes one to Haru.
"Hi there little rat. There are none of you in Alberta. Yeah that's my thumb you're sniffing there. You don't have those and that's why your species has not conquered the world." He will go back to the couch to sit with the rat. "What's this one's name?"
"Cortado." Once he's seated she passes the rest onto him, one at a time. "And Macchiato, Steamed Milk, and Double Double."
"And now I know things about your culinary preferences. The Italian ones are good names but why not go with Latte and, like, Espresso, or something, for the latter two? Yes my shirt does have a pocket well done little guy. Are you a guy, I would check but I've got your pals here one in each hand..."
"They don't bite, right? It would not rate highly among my problems at the moment, but."
"I will avoid freaking out if they nibble painlessly on me. You've gotten all the way up to my ear, congratulations, Cortado, I've actually got two of those but they're the same, if you've seen one you've seen 'em all."
Netra steals Steamed Milk back for her shoulder and takes the spot at the other end of the couch to do some phone scrolling on.
"Xavier - the guy - wonders if there's anything else his assistant should know before picking you up."
Typity type.
"He wants to know more about the esper thing anyway. And if there's anything you think might help."
"A small percentage of people between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four awaken as espers! Using esper powers causes backlash, with bespoke acute symptoms and generic chronic ones. Awakening consists of a week of quality fucking time with one's very own acute symptoms. Usually it's something that more closely mimics a medical condition than this, like, people get fevers or neuropathy or they go blind or something like that, but I have this instead. At the end of the week in theory I will be all better, till I use my powers, which I'm not going to do if there aren't any other espers, because the way to get rid of non-awakening backlash is by hanging out in close proximity with a compatible fellow esper."
She types for really not long at all given the length of that description. "And you... want to talk to people and are sad?"
"My backlash appears to be loneliness. Since it is a magical problem and not a normal emotion that I'm having for a normal reason, talking to people does not help, nothing but a week going by will actually help, but I am doing it compulsively anyway, like how it doesn't help to scratch poison ivy but one might do it anyway. It is very unpleasant, I'm not sure 'sad' is exactly right. I have a tiny bit of flex in exactly how the loneliness manifests and I am mostly focusing on pointing it away from the solipsism option because that one makes me want to kill myself. I am not amazing at this yet but I think there's practice effects, on that part."
Steamed Milk has her tail wrapped around the back of Netra's neck for support and is stretching out So Long to snifsnifsnif at Haru again.
Can he extend a hand for Steamed Milk to climb onto without alarming Netra.
Well, she does glance up from phoning and then keeps watching until the rat ferry has safely departed, but she doesn't jump this time.
"I appreciate the rats. It doesn't help but at least I am not rationalizing myself into social anxiety about why it's not helping." He pets Steamed Milk.
"I think I should get a cat. If anything about my life is ever the way I remember having expected it would be under the prevailing conditions. No point if I'm going to be the only esper in the world or if I am having some completely standard physical brain damage situation with no magic powers at the end."
"I have a slight sore throat if that counts - doubt it's contagious, I'm just talking too much - but otherwise no. I did trip and bang my elbow on my doorknob, that still aches, but I didn't hit my head."
"That's good. It would be really bad if I'd only just thought to ask and it did."
"Yeah. I would ask the same thing in your position as I understand you to be presenting said position. I'm going to be so pissed off if I have brain damage that might last more than a week and don't get superpowers."
....Maybe she'll just let him patter to the rats until the assistant arrives.
The rats are good. And small. There are four of them. He has opinions about their names. He counts Macchiato's spots. They have kind of offputting bald tails. Do they do any tricks? Can he feed them treats? Rats don't purr and he thinks it would be good if a cat were purring on him, for values of "good" that would not fundamentally alter the situation in any way.
Rats don't purr but they do chitter quietly and twitch their whiskers in what Netra taciturnly describes as a happy way. They'll turn in tight circles for Netra's "Spin!" and "Unspin!" but not his. And sure, she can fetch some frozen yogurt dollops from the fridge for him to give to them, which greatly increases the chittering from Double Double. The others are less noisy about it but Macchiato is very grabby. Haru was kind of wrong about them not having thumbs; their front appendages are much closer to hands than paws, and Macchiato uses hers rather than her mouth when attempting to steal yogis.
This will keep him unhappily occupied for a while. Eventually he is telling the rats the plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
After forty minutes of apartmenting Netra's phone dings and she announces that the assistant's on the way up.
"I - oh, right, my uncle gives accurate time estimates even when I don't. Oooooooohhhhhh you have scamperers! And also a problems guy? Hi problems guy."
"Hello, Haru, I'm Ari." She finds a ratless spot on the couch and sits there. Since Cortado has scurried off next to the arm to keep everyone else away from her treat and the other three are on Haru, this puts her rather closer to him than Netra seemed to prefer.
He is currently leaning on "everyone hates me" instead of touch-starvation because rats are very small and do not purr and are not much good for the touch starvation version, whereas as long as they aren't biting him they can't hate him that much. "Do you happen to know why your - uncle? - is a better place to stash a guy with a psychiatric emergency than a hospital would be, I'm still confused about that."
"He - helps people a lot? He fixes people's lives. Sometimes, as like a hobby or something. It's.... sorry, I'm not very good at explaining things right now; I woke up like," watch-check, "forty-seven minutes ago, and all of them were spent getting here as fast as I could, and I got like four hours of sleep." It's still dark out.
"Samesies. I woke up in the middle of the night with backlash onset and had just about finished deciding to ride it out at home with my parents, calling my dad to fly across the country, sending the paramedics my mother called away because 'at home with my parents' would be a fine place to hang out for a week, and was trying to go back to sleep, when poof. You know, subjectively, I don't know what the fuck consensus reality is doing."
"I've been sent more explanation of your deal than I've read, on account of the trying to get here quickly; wanna explain it to me in the car? And we can grab some coffee."
"Sure. How shall I divest myself of these rats? What time even is it here?"
"6:15. I'll take them." She grabs a throw pillow, scoops Cortado onto it, and holds it close enough for Haru to transfer the rest.
Rats go off the awakening esper, or whatever the fuck he is, and he follows mystery man's niece.
She heads for the stairwell instead of the elevator. "So you're having a psychiatric issue?"
"At least one, yeah. I have seventeen years of memories of living in a universe where sometimes people turn up with various individually weird health problems of some kind for a week and then they have superpowers after that, but this model of the world cannot explain the thing where I am now in a slightly different Toronto where that is not common knowledge."
"It's not fun. I was really hoping that if the dice came up 'esper' for me that I'd have some more comprehensible medical condition and instead here I am being exotically insane."
She waits till they're on a landing to ask - "Do you want a hug?"
"I really really want a hug but I will be kind of insane about it. I'm also gay if that helps so like, just insane, not hitting on you."
"...I'm happy to hug you in light of this but maybe it would be better to start somewhere that isn't a stairwell. If you think it might be hard to stop."
"Okay." Stairs stairs. Glance back at him. "...Shoot, was I supposed to bring you shoes?"
"I don't know what you were supposed to do. My feet are not my main problem right now and as long as I don't step on a rusty nail and get tetanus and possibly even then that will continue to be the case."
"- Sorry! You know what, let's just -" And she backtracks up to meet him at a landing with a door to the rest of the building, which she holds open for him. "Elevator."
Where's the elevator there it is. They can hug while they wait for it.
Hug hug hug hug. "Did I miss your name while I was de-ratting? I'm Haru."
"Hi Ari. It would be nice to meet you under better circumstances but at the moment it's mostly confusing. I do really appreciate the hug though."
"Hugs are good!" Here's the elevator; she doesn't try and extract herself from him before shuffling in. "...Should I carry you to my car? For shoes reasons and also hug ones?"
"I'm very strong! I'm preeetty sure I can fire-carry you and less sure but still optimistic that I could do something more huglike. I didn't park that far away."
"Well, if you're not risking throwing out your back or anything I would appreciate it."
"Cool." Once they hit the ground floor she unhugs enough to duck under his arm and hoist him. "This okay?"
"The jacket conceals my true power." Here they go to her car. "Do you wanna sit together in the back for a bit or do you want to get where we're going as fast as possible."
"Okay, and you're still good to swing through a Tim's? - Do you want - is it bad enough that you should down some painkillers and, I can do a tap on the head, do you want to trade a headache for skipping the next hour of car ride -"
"......I'm not in physical pain except for my elbow which is occupying almost none of my attention. I could go for some Tim's if it's six in the morning. I have absolutely no idea what the thing about the tap on the head is?"
"You know, like, should I - bam - knock you out. The painkillers are for afterward but you'd want to take them ahead of time so they have a chance to kick in." Here's her car; it's dark teal. "If you give me your order I can get you breakfast even if you don't want to be awake for it."
"Don't you think I have enough problems without a concussion? Apple fritter and a mocha."
"I wouldn't give you a concussion! I learned how to do it properly. But if you don't want to then that's, really and truly the most fine, I just thought it should be on the table." She gives up on trying to de-pocket her keys with him on her shoulders and sets him down. Now they can be in the car.
In he gets. "I think I'll pass, on the off chance that anything I remember about the world is correct."
"That's so fine!" She does something on her phone then passes it to him; the app isn't familiar but seems basically navigable. "Want to pick a music?"
"I kind of can't read very well right now and I'm not big into music but if you wanna direct me to something I'm easy?"
It's like ten minutes to get in the drive through. Ari wants a latte (vanilla), a breakfast sandwich (bacon), and twenty Timbits (assorted).
- Ope, personal space invasion is - not at all surprising, actually, though it might be a little startling.
Ari wants to park for a minute to wolf down half her sandwich and then they can get properly going.
Nom nom. "So what do you do when you're not giving strange espers and/or head cases rides?"
"I work at a summer camp! In the summer, and bits of the spring and fall, and they do one event in February. And then the rest of the time it's just odd jobs. A lot of cleaning, mostly, and then stuff like this where something weird comes up and Uncle Xave sets me on the case. - Usually not quite this weird."
"That's short for Xavier?" Why. Why does he need to ask this question.
"Yep. I'm the only one who calls him that, but he's the only one who calls me 'Ariel', so we're even."
"Would you say the 'tap on the head' thing as a separate concept from a concussion is common knowledge as a thing outside of fiction?"
"Yeah? Concussions are for like, really hard impacts, or if you get knocked out a bunch in a row."
"That's... not how I remember it being. Do I seem generally coherent enough that you would expect me to remember my parents' phone numbers?"
"Yeah. I mean, if you knew them instead of just having the contacts saved. But if they'd been the same since you were a kid, definitely."
"Have you ever heard of a psychiatric condition with unbearable loneliness as a primary symptom?"
"I mean, if you told me there was something that was trying to be a truth serum or whatever that worked like that, I would totally believe you..."
"Okay, also, do you believe truth serum to be a nonfictional thing that works as truth serum per se instead of just generally making the brain work worse and hoping one of the things it's worse at is lying."
"I guess if I have superpowers in a week I will... strongly suspect that I am from another timeline or something, and never be able to prove that to anyone because I won't dare use them if I'm the only esper in the world."
"If I am from the esper timeline, instead of just having a really complicated psychotic break, then what I'm going through right now is a preview of the backlash I can expect from using whatever powers I get. Espers can de-backlash each other in a process called guiding, but if I rack up backlash all by myself I can't get rid of it. It wouldn't hang around in psychological form forever, that's my acute symptom, it'd turn into chronic pain and organ damage and stuff, but, like, still."
"I always wanted to be an esper and right now I'm kind of questioning that thought process but it's not something one does on purpose by winning an essay contest, it's basically random. Very slight tendency to run in families."
"Is there anything I can like... do... about the loneliness. While driving."
"No, not really, I am under a magical curse, I am not just in a mood. I have compulsive responses to this condition but the only things that would actually help would be a compatible esper or the week elapsing. Or me turning out to be wrong about what's going on with me."
"Nothing to make you more comfortable, either? Even if it doesn't help help."
"...I'm not sure that's what that means but also you get, like, infinite slack about that kind of thing right now. But like do you want me to say, I dunno, 'acknowledged' or something instead, 'cause otherwise this is maybe gonna come up a lot."
"I just have to come up with things to say and they aren't passing all my usual standards of relevance and cleverness before the part where they come out of my mouth right now."
"That's, really so super valid. - What do you normally do, when you aren't being a weird esper or getting rides."
"I read a lot. I play Civilization. I have a blog, about espers and dungeons and monsters."
"Jane Eyre. If I just explain the plot can you pretend to be interested enough to ask questions about it?"
"Charlotte Brontë. A little darker but same general region of spacetimegenre."
"Cool. I dunno whether I could pretend but the good news is I can probably simply actually be interested, is that good enough?"
Ari seems interested! Once or twice she might be asking for more clarification than is strictly necessary, but she seems generally genuine. And she sometimes has trouble keeping the names straight, which is maybe helpful on a strict number-of-questions basis.
Yeah, he can remind her that Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester is only Mrs. Fairfax's cousin-in-law and clarify who Adele is as many times as necessary.
"You know, I keep saying 'my uncle' but really he's my cousin once removed. But that's really just so much worse to say all the time."
"I would probably approximate that to 'uncle' too if it were a cousin once removed I saw much of and frequently referred to."
"Yeah, he goes for 'niece' too even though he's all persnickety about names."
"Like how he's the only one who calls me Ariel. I can't get him to not. - Though, we have kind of a jokes thing going on; he'll probably call you whatever you want."
"It's nice!" And they can fill the rest of the car ride with book plot?
She knows that one already actually! But the trip isn't much longer than an hour; she can backtrack on clarifying questions about previous Jane details to kill the last ten minutes.
The house is only one story, but with a large footprint and in the middle of fucking nowhere. After she parks and pockets the car keys, Ari passes Haru her bag of food and jogs around the front of the hood to lift him across the gravel driveway. The sun's up, now.
"Oh boy, gravel, I'm glad you've been hitting the gym enough to haul around teenage boys."
"I'm kind of cheating but yeah. Can you get the doorknob? Should be unlocked."
"Iiiiiiiiiiiiii don't want to elaborate actually, sorry." She gets the door closed behind them and out of her shoes without setting him down. "HELLLLOOO Uncle Xaaave, I have the problems guy, his name's Haru."
A very tall man strides from around a corner. "Good morning, Ariel; Haru. ...Does our guest prefer to be elevated in this way, Ariel?"
"I don't have shoes, the driveway was gravel, and my psychiatric emergency features touch starvation."
"We won't!" She carries Haru to a couch and deposits him thereon without breaking contact, and once he's safely down she can cuddle up properly.
Snuggle. "So if you've already read the Tempest is there any other classic literature I should summarize at you, I have the taste of an English professor."
"Oh, I don't know. - There was a, it showed up in my recommendeds, there was this song that was kind of a real banger, I didn't look into the rest of the show, but I think it was based on The Sorrows of Young Werther, do you know that one?"
(Xavier seats himself in an adjacent armchair, dons a pair of reading glasses, and unobtrusively interacts with a little e-ink tablet.)
"I have not read it though I think I recall hearing it was linked to a rash of suicides while it was contemporary."
He's seen Muppet Christmas Carol, albeit when he was like nine. He can go into how the adaptation differs from the original book.
"- Sorry, can we - I'm just really antsy, as a person; I think we're going to need to shuffle around every few minutes, if - we're doing this. My arm is squished, can I have it back?"
"Yeah. Would it be easier if I just laid down and you sat on me or something, so you didn't have to ask whenever you need to reposition?"
Her arm is hers now, but it can be hers around Haru's shoulders. "Wouldn't that... hurt? You?? I'm kind of worried that it would and you wouldn't be able to ask me to move."
"It probably depends where on me you sit and how much weight you distribute to the couch? This is also fine though."
"Would a massage or something work, where movement's already involved, or is it just - surface area -"
"That probably works great but I expect to be like this for a week so I am trying to think of low effort options."
"Those will probably be very useful when I have not just downed a large latte." She spins him away from her and starts on his shoulders.
"Thank you and your latte." He is possibly the tensest person she has ever touched.
Jesus Christ. Does he loosen up at all with effort? She is not like, practiced at this, but.
Sure.
"I'll be right back," she announces when he's done with the latter.
- that is completely reasonable but he casts a frantic look at her quiet uncle.
"Hello, would it be too optimistic to assume that you decided to invite a psychiatrically lonely stranger into your home because you are not averse to keeping said stranger company. From less distance at least while Ari's up."
"Not at all." He de-glasseses and transfers himself to the couch with an open arm. "I've been looking into your condition."
"A fair bit." He combs his fingers through Haru's hair. "There are a handful of drugs that aim for effects similar to your loneliness; the closest match lasts between two and twelve hours depending on dosage, with the strength of the effect matching the duration. The description of neediness is similar to what you display, although the fact that it continues even as you receive attention is not."
"If we assume that my memories have any validity I think they incline me to a model where I am from another timeline or something where there are espers, those haven't always been around, we'd just have to diverge sometime before the seventies. And also in this timeline at least some people believe that you can knock people harmlessly unconscious without this being a concussion, which, maybe some people kind of believe that at home from watching too many action movies, but they don't also offer to do it."
"I was getting to that. The first part at least - let's be careful of your head, then, shall we?" He scritches Haru thoughtfully.
"Assuming that blah blah memories etcetera I should be able to stay on top of that if I'm careful, with practice, psychological backlash is malleable a little bit. The suicidalness pops up if I get solipsistic and I hate my other choices less even though they are also very unpleasant and embarrassing."
"Hm. In that case I shall still offer to throw together a helmet you can't take off by yourself, but not expect you to accept."
"I've had a concussion before, because I'm dyspraxic and fell down the stairs, but I think becoming an esper might fix that, so that's a nice consolation prize for not getting to safely try out my new superpowers. Unless you are planning to punch me in the head I don't think a helmet is a good use of... any of the things it trades off against, just keep me away from the kitchen knives and don't leave me alone."
"...Noted. As for your memories, I haven't been able to find record of any drugs which by themselves produce anything remotely as immersive as you seem to be experiencing. Or rather, there might be some that operate on a similar scale internally, such that you might not be able to distinguish them yourself, but as someone interacting with you - receiving logical responses to my questions, seeing you look at things that are actually in the room instead of phantoms that aren't there - I can rule them out.
"Much more likely, from a shall we say local perspective, is the possibility of extensive conditioning work. There are various methods, but the gist of the idea is that someone wanted you to believe in espers and did a large amount of very fine detail work to make it so.
"However, since many governments have at least occasionally been publicly working on contacting other universes for decades, I'm most inclined towards believing your suspected version of events."
"Unfortunately, all material on the subject younger than a few decades old is generally both secret and not something I personally have been working on. But it doesn't seem out of the question."
"Espers are useful and stuff, if that's the kind of consideration they're responsive to. Lots of 'em work in civilian industries, you don't need to have dungeons kidnapping people to want the espers that came with that."
"I'm interested to hear more, but if that's really the truth behind your situation I expect at least our government will not need convincing in order to be motivated to help you."
"I am not going to want to prove it before I can get back to my universe, I do not want undischargeable chronic backlash."
"Easy transportation to a separate Earth even with no magic and much worse technology then our own would still be a huge advantage for any country that could control it. No one reasonable is going to ask you to demonstrate."
Ari returns with two glasses of water. She hovers awkwardly for a moment until Xavier holds his hands out to take them, then nabs some coasters and sets them on the coffee table.
"Would that everyone were reasonable." He scootches in a little when the arm is no longer around him.
Then there's room for Ari on his other side. "Is it my turn for a massage or does it not work like that, is that not helpful."
"It is probably just as satisfactory to the compulsion situation but I can't guarantee I'll be any good at it." He will make an attempt.
Xavier scoots back a bit to make room. "Is there any danger besides suicide in not indulging your compulsions?"
"I... could have sleep deprivation related problems, over the week? I don't think I'll be able to sleep alone."
"Thanks. It probably doesn't have to be a human if you know someone with a dog you could borrow though."
"Uh, also I assume I can't talk either of you into accompanying me to the bathroom as needed but if someone could be talking to me through the door I might be able to make do with that."
"Well, I haven't tried it. I was at home when this started, with my mom, and she said something about how it beats changing diapers."
"I am not so against the idea that I'm willing to risk you dying over it. You have a better sense of the calibration here than I; I'll do as you request."
"A multivitamin, nothing that'll do me any harm to skip for a week."
"I'd like to test for whether you might have been drugged, even though it's not my leading hypothesis for what's going on here. I don't have kits for any of my more-specific guesses, but there is one which can tell to a first approximation whether there are any drugs in your system."
"A normal blood draw isn't a huge issue, just don't make me be the one holding pressure on the puncture before you bandage it and maybe spend longer on that step than usual."
"Hm. Is a second blood draw much worse than one, if they're performed competently? A comparison may still be useful."
"If they are performed competently enough that there's not entire drops of blood exposed to the air I'm breathing it's not a big deal."
"Sure, I'm not squeamish. - About - blood, in particular. In reasonable quantities."
Xavier has to fetch the materials (during which Ari patters about a music video she saw recently with gallons of fake blood that she was not a fan of) but then, yes, gloves and needles and arm.
Ari presses gauze in the crook of Haru's elbow and holds his hand above his head while Xavier carries the kit away.
"Was the song itself any good?" Haru mumbles into his other elbow while ignoring the blood draw situation.
"Yeah, that's why I looked it up. And I've personally given like four or five gallons to the Red Cross, but like, you know, over my whole life, which is really not the same at all. - My whole life since I was sixteen. Still."
"I tried donating blood once but I fainted and they told me not to come back. I should revisit that once I am an esper at home with other espers, fluid transmission is one option for guiding. That's the term for de-backlashing each other, 'guiding'."
"As, you know, the optimistic long term projection, I retain insight into the fact that my condition sounds super wacky to the people around me who have never previously heard of espers and our hell weeks."
"Oh! Cool, I think I maybe missed something? For a second I thought you maybe just suddenly got way more delusional."
"Well, maybe your uncle is just humoring me, that'd be a fucked up thing to do though."
"I certainly hope you're right. He says governments are already after means to move between dimensions or something - I don't have that exactly right, I usually take notes on things I want to remember and I can't focus on writing now, but something like that."
"Woah. I mean, that totally sounds like a thing governments would be doing. I really hope it works out for you." Band-Aid?
Now he has a Band-Aid and all is right with the world except for the things that are not. "I hope so too. It would be an incredibly huge ripoff to do an entire esper awakening for powers I can't then use safely and a completely different worse ripoff to just be psychotic to no end whatsoever."
"I guess I don't know things but this really doesn't seem to me what being psychotic is like."
"Yes, well, I don't think so either but if I were psychotic I would probably also not think so."
"Isn't there an order? And what about the Aeneid, is that in there too or is that someone else?"
"That's Virgil and I haven't read it yet. The Illiad comes before the Odyssey but is a little less fun for the typical modern consumer."
"Well, do you think you're more likely to run out of stories or to get tired of telling me about them."
"If you're definitely going to want both I can start with the Illiad, I don't know how much of the week to expect you around for."
"I don't have anything else going on and it seems like you could use the help."
(Xavier rejoins them, back in his armchair, without interrupting to announce any test results.)
Ari is somewhat worse at coming up with literary questions while receiving a massage, though she can produce plenty of comments about what exactly Haru should and shouldn't be doing to her back.
That will do at least well enough that he isn't inspired to complain.
Aaaaaaaand that's enough of that. "You can braid my hair if you know how to braid hair."
He will, like, try, sure, he can get the basics like "be gentle" and knows the over-under pattern.
If he gets a decent result he can have a hair tie off her wrist to finish it with.
And she's antsy again, and her hands are tired of giving massages. How well can Haru storytell from her shoulders, while she occasionally paces and very occasionally does a couple squats?
It's undignified but he would rather be exercise equipment than curled up by himself on the couch, whatever works for her. Blah blah Agamemnnon &c.
It doesn't take very much of this to wear her out, at least, and then they can go back to the couch and switch position every three-to-five minutes. ...Also now she wants to stretch out her arms and back occasionally, but she can y'know have her legs draped over him while she does that. She's back to previous levels of plot questions.
Also oh right she has some Timbits left; munch munch does he want a couple.
By the time he's halfway through the Odyssey, her shiftings have spaced out a fair bit but so have her questions.
He'll take a Timbit. He starts pausing expectantly more often between sentences.
She takes the hint at first but slows down on those too until she's maybe fallen asleep.
...well, if she's asleep maybe he can just scootch up to her and also take a nap, he got like three hours of sleep last night.
Ari's less but not zero squirmy asleep compared to when awake. It's up to him, whether he can manage a nap.
Squirmy is fine. It helps keep him convinced that she is a genuine person.
She is not sufficiently squirmy to send them off the couch, but it does take enough semi-conscious awareness to keep balanced that she wakes up after about 40 minutes, with a bit of a start.
Can she stretch a li'l bit without waking him up.
"Mm? - Oh." Can she extract one arm and then maybe the other if she does it sooooo slooooowly.
Then the distance from her fingertips to her toes is going to be absolutely as long as she can make it within the constraints of this couch and with a dude wrapped around her torso. She manages to crack her back; that's a bit better.
Xavier rises, then kneels next to the couch and wraps himself around Haru.
Ari slithers, haltingly, out of Haru's grasp and over the arm of the couch. Successfully and without at any point thumping onto the ground.
And from there it's straightforward for Xavier to carry Haru to his bed and climb in with him.
Xavier is significantly less squirmy than his niece. One might even say: he isn't squirmy. Pet, pet, pet, pet. For as long as Haru stays asleep.
He takes a two-hours-and-change nap, then blinks awake. "- where am I?"
"About an hour outside Toronto, in the same house you fell asleep in. I moved you to a bedroom so poor Ariel wouldn't feel so stifled."
"I am either having a really dramatic psychotic break or I'm from another timeline somehow and my only mental problem is that I'm having my esper awakening hell week. I recall you leaning toward the latter explanation."
"Are there more details you want to check if I know or does that do the trick?"
"Since I'm leaning toward the later explanation, that much seems fine."
"Well, that's what I thought at the time, but you see I'm rather insane."
"She read to me as physically uncomfortable and eager to escape, but blamelessly so. If I hadn't been handy to rescue her I expect she would have willingly stayed as long as you needed." Scritch scritch. "Though I'm pessimistic about the quality of sleep both of you would have gotten, in that case."
"Your blood didn't have any anomalies I could detect compared to that of people from this timeline. It might be safe to sedate you."
"The EMTs in my universe did not recommend that but awakenings are all different so I guess it might help and just doesn't work in enough cases that it's covered in paramedic training modules."
"Mm. And strange timeline-hopping scenarios aren't likely to decrease risk, are they. If the only concerns had been cost or ease of administration for your family, I would have said I have some advantages over your previous situation."
"Espers are valuable, they'd have sent somebody to the house or put me up in TGH for free if that had seemed to be the best way to get me through it both of alive and kindly disposed toward the government of Canada."
"My elbow's still sore from when I fell earlier pre-dimensional-transit. I've got a bit of a headache. I could use lunch."
Xavier retrieves a pill bottle from a drawer in his nightstand before rolling out of bed and offering a hand up to Haru.
Haru will hold his hand all the way to wherever they get water. And probably after that.
"...if I were home and Ren didn't want to cook I'd maybe order pizza?"
"The location of my home was chosen for factors other than delivery coverage. I don't mind cooking; is pizza still your first choice?"
"I don't know what ingredients you have. Or if you can even make pizza on short notice, I think it needs to rise and stuff? I think something with cheese in it is my first choice but I am not otherwise feeling very picky."
Ari walks swayfully - dancingly, but not elegantly - into the kitchen. "I want pizza if and only if you have pepperoni that's like, regular, and not the fancy rich person stuff."
"- I don't want to eat anything that used to be a whole animal. Anymore. I have decided. I don't care if it's fancy somehow other than that."
"I have not been super impressed with vegan meat alternatives in the past, though, like, I'll eat tofu if it's in front of me."
"Oh, it's exciting, don't you think? To find a more mundane difference between our timelines. If communication and travel are possible between Haru's world and ours, we might have something useful in itself to trade them."
"Ariel, will you attend to preventing our guest's starvation of touch so that I may attend to preventing our collective starvation of calories."
Hug. "Prevention isn't really on the table. Actually I am actively trying to be as touch-starved as I can because it's less psychological than the other ways I seem able to bend. Indulging it, maybe?"
"I am very fortunate that I have already read the Wikipedia page on espers five times. And otherwise been interested in this sort of thing for ages. Or I might not have known that psychological backlash admits of a little malleability, and I can't really read right now so I wouldn't have been able to look it up even before I appeared here."
"...I can't believe you have Wikipedia but not cultured meat. - Sorry, uh - could you not have had someone read it to you? Or summarize it in their own words?"
"I think it will work if you read things to me, but your Wikipedia doesn't have anything about espers, now, does it, and it didn't occur to me or Ren before I vanished."
"Right, but it might have if you hadn't already read it five times?"
"Do you think it's better for me to read you things than what we've been doing?"
"That seems like a thing we can do sometimes but I wouldn't want it to be the main thing, I think. - Heyoo, what's the verdict."
Xavier returns from down the hallway. "There's some venison sausage, which at least wasn't farmed, if that makes a difference to you. And plenty of cultured options which nonetheless are not pepperoni."
"See, no, I'm pretty sure farming is way better than being a wild deer and getting shot at the end, I just think it's gross. I could go for some grilled chicken 'n' cheese and tomato soup?"
"What if we were sitting down." Ari pulls Haru over to the chairs by the counter.
He can sit in a chair next to her if he's hugging her arm and leaning on her shoulder. "Then tautologically we'd be sitting down."
"Soooooo truuuuuuue. - We could continue to odd a see but now I'm kind of more interested in hearing more about things where you're from."
"I don't know! Have you noticed any other differences that I haven't been around to hear?"
"Uh - I might forget something, today's been a lot - concussion thing, truth serum, cultured meat, governments working on contacting other universes for decades, I think you've been present for all of these discrepancies."
"We have cultured eggs and stuff, too. Those at least are more recent; it took a while to get stuff that was good enough at doing the shells. Meat we've had for, literally my whole life, like before I was born. But you still have Wikipedia, it's not just that you're way lower tech..."
"I guess our tech took a turn from what it might otherwise have been when dungeons started kidnapping people and industry started exploiting exotic materials removed from dungeons...why would you bother culturing the shells?"
"They don't for like, industrial kitchens; the summer camp I work at gets 'em in cartons, sometimes whites and yolks separately. But most people, like, want their eggs to be eggs?"
"I guess it's a convenient packaging form factor? It just sounded like they weren't considered market-ready at all till they had shells."
"I dunno, I was a kid when we switched. Maybe they were around and I just didn't notice."
"There was a gap between cultured meat becoming near-ubiquitous and cultured eggs becoming more than niche, but yes, they were on shelves before they were in shells," Xavier notes without turning away from his cheese grating.
"Heh," says Haru, at the wordplay. "And they taste the same? They're bioidentical?"
"I think they taste better and this is a least like, not an opinion that zero other people hold. So probably not."
"Huh. I will have to... eat an egg at some point while I'm here, I guess."
"You should do this! Now explain dungeons kidnapping people or whatever."
"Right, of course. Dungeons started appearing in the seventies, at the same time the first espers started awakening. Your standard dungeon is going to spawn somewhere in, normally, a city, with a portal to a pocket dimension, magically yoink maybe one or two dozen people from within a few-blocks radius, stash them inside of itself, and contain some monsters and be sort of on-theme in some way with the monster type and the environment of the dungeon. Like, if it looks like a tomb, it's going to have skeletons or something. The themes are suspiciously centered around concepts that are interesting to humans, like there's dragons and dinosaurs but there's not weird animal mashups we don't have a word for or extinct creatures that get less press than dinosaurs. Somewhere in the dungeon there is a core, which is usually going to be a kind of basketball-sized object hidden somewhere central, sometimes guarded by a boss monster but a lot of dungeons also just have lots of equal monsters instead; destroy the core and the dungeon collapses within a few minutes and is never seen again, any people or things inside irretrievable forever. Many dungeons you can evacuate and kill with a non-superpowered SWAT team or army unit or whatever. If the dungeon is not killed then after a few days it'll despawn on its own, people and things inside irretrievable forever, and then the dungeon - matures, comes back bigger and more effective and streamlined."
"A lot of those characteristics have some range of variation, too, like sometimes a dungeon sends out monsters to drag people into it bodily instead of just assuming them into itself, but most dungeons are like that."
"That sounds so spooky! I guess it's not worse than like.... I dunno, I was going to say like natural disasters or international incidents but you probably also have those and then this on top."
"Some people credit the decline of international armed conflict to dungeons - you can keep quite a lot of army guys busy on managing dungeons and if you have a lot of army guys and they're not doing anything about the kidnapped civilians then your civilians get restless."
"That's so fair. I think we might be at lower rates than the like sixties through eighties but not, uh, I wouldn't say in decline. Not that I like know things, but, like, there's construction near my apartment that's from some sort of sabotage-related explosion, they think, even if they haven't figured out who it was yet."
"...that would definitely be remarkable in my world, there's monster damage but not sabotage-related explosions so much, especially in, like, residential areas."
"It's not like right next door to me. .....But yeah, I guess it's not that far away either..."
"I am not aware of sabotage-suspected damage anywhere in Toronto in my lifetime."
"I mean, I don't really follow the news, I could have missed some, but yeah."
"I follow the news zero and I still know of like, a dozen maybe."
"...that's different then, yeah, who the hell wants to sabotage Toronto?"
"I mean, they don't, right; they want to sabotage things in Toronto. It's like a pretty normal amount for cities of this size...."
"What things does Toronto contain that are attractive sabotage targets??"
"Man. That's so weird. I don't know if it's necessarily worse than dungeons, I guess, but it seems like you could instead simply not have it, if it's humans doing it."
"I can't say I've ever been tempted but I also haven't ever been in a situation where it would be tempting."
"I don't mean you as an individual, just, human action alone could prevent this, which is not the case with dungeons as far as I know."
"Yeah, but like, everyone is human individuals, right? So it's probably hard in some way even if it's not literally impossible the way it would be to stop natural disasters or whatever. ...Actually, it might be easier to stop natural disasters; science is doing new cool stuff all the time."
"I don't think my world is particularly close to eradicating any kinds of natural disaster. It sounds like you have some kind of fuck-uppedness in your, like, equilibrium of incentives, which is yielding all the sabotage? I don't know what it would be though."
"Well, maybe dungeons will be contagious and we'll be united by a common enemy or something and cut it out."
"That'd be cool except for all the ways in which it would not be cool."
"Yeahhhhhh. Do you have any reason to think they might or might not be contagious?"
"No, this is my first nonfictional exposure to other universes. They didn't, like, start in one place and expand from there like an epidemic, they started happening all over the world."
"Huh. Would you guys have noticed if there were any, like, on the moon?"
"Maybe not. But I doubt there've been any there. They like population centers, they don't even show up on farms more than once in a blue moon. Cities mostly, once a cruise ship."
"I was about to be like, 'That's so weird,' but maybe it's not actually that weird based on the other things you said about them."
"I mean, they eat people, or like not literally eat them usually but certainly want them for something. There's no people on the moon and not usually much of a selection on a farm or in the desert or in the middle of the ocean."
"...people landed there, but it was before dungeons were a thing, and even if a dungeon had spawned right at the time of their landing it was like three guys, even a very small dungeon is going to want at least, like, eight, and will appear someplace that has more than a total of eight options to sort through them in some way."
"It would not have been weirder to me that you guys hadn't gone to your moon than it is you don't have cultured meat! - But you didn't like keep going back? Maybe dungeons take up all your money for that sort of explorationy stuff?"
"I guess that could be it but also there's not a lot of stuff to do, on the moon? In the long term a flourishing human civilization has people living there but it's not hospitable or cost-effective or particularly useful at our current tech level, I guess maybe it is at yours..."
"2029, I guess dungeons are somehow slowing us down more than rampant industrial sabotage is slowing you guys down. Or maybe even minor head injuries are like lead poisoning and you guys are more resilient to them or something."
"How do you feel about the idea of going through some medical scans and tests? After a week has passed, of course."
"It is currently sort of hard to project how I will feel about things in a week unless I already know my preexisting opinion on whatever it is."
"Very reasonable." Xavier ruffles his hair and sets a plate with two folded half-sandwiches in front of him. There's not the best view of the chicken, with it surrounded by bread and at least three kinds of cheese, but it looks approximately like a pretty regular steak of chicken breast. Xavier circles back to fetch a bowl of soup garnished with additional grated cheese but no herbs.
It is. The meat is quite good but not in any identifiably non-chicken way; it just tastes like an unusually delicious example of the kind.
He is going to sort of hug her arm and eat one handed if that's okay with everybody.
Ari doesn't complain, at least. ....If she depockets her phone, does eating take up enough of his attention that she can get in a few rounds of puzzle game?
That's a no. Phone gets blanked and goes facedown on the counter.
"- No, it's fine, sorry. Uh, maybe after lunch we can play something actually collaborative."
"...books. I am normally an introvert in my introvert hole with a book. Or Civilization? I'm not sure if you can get multiplayer Civilization to be quite multiplayer enough for my symptoms to tolerate it but it might be worth a try if there are computers and Civilizations to hand. Or Alpha Centauri or, like, whatever alternate universe civilization-building game you might have."
"I have my laptop but I think not anything in that genre. I have... some party games, which are kind of more about the party than about the game, and also like basic move-based puzzle stuff where the main limit to scoring high is how much thought you're willing to put into each move, such that two heads are way better than one?"
"Worth a try. It's probably too optimistic to imagine I could concentrate on Civ anyway."
"Mm. ....Do you think you're having a better time than you would have at a hospital?"
"If the hospital's never heard of espers, almost certainly; even in my universe where the hospitals have heard of espers they left me home."
"That's good. I kind of thought when I picked you up that something like that might be true, but it seemed good to like, check, now that you're here."
"I am still pretty confused about the hospitality but it's not bad qua hospitality at all."
"You're very interesting. I now suspect you'll be a very useful person to have made a friend of, but even before that you were interesting."
"I'd have to be remarkably interesting to be worth a week of this. I guess perhaps you're planning to turn me out tomorrow."
"I would not necessarily class myself as an extrovert, but I think your own discomfort may be throwing off your calibration of how unpleasant this is for other parties."
"Maybe, but it turns out I'd really rather believe you're grudgingly tolerating me than believe that you don't exist."
"Hm. ...Would you care to elaborate on that?" Here's Ari's sandwich, and then her soup.
"My flavor options or whatever you want to call them that I have discovered so far are solipsism and, like, social anxiety, and touch starvation, and I'm mostly leaning on the last one but the first one is the one where I'd rather be dead."
"- no?? I mean I am trying to have the most touch starvation because it's the least fucking with my head option and doesn't make me want to be dead."
"And in order to get that, you don't need to do any actual starving of touch?"
"Right, I have a magical curse and not a thing that responds to reality at all in any way."
"Okay... - Acknowledged. Heard." She starts in on her sandwich, one-handed.
"You don't have to be sorry - uh, unless, magically you do - I just don't get it. But I might if I think about it for a second."
"Part filler word, part I am concerned that I made you self-conscious by responding how I did to you saying 'okay' about a thing earlier."
"The thing I don't get is how reality not affecting your curse in any way.... works. .....I could probably piece it together on my own if I thought about the way you've acted so far but maybe for magical curse reasons you want to try and explain it instead of there being quiet for me to think in."
"Trying to explain it definitely sounds easier. So, uh, I am experiencing the emotion of loneliness. Which I'm not used to at all, I'm introverted and have never been alone long enough for it to be a problem, it took me a bit to identify for sure. Sort of like a depressed person could continue to experience sadness even if they, like, got exactly what they wanted for their birthday, or if it was a really nice day out, or they saw a kitten, or whatever, I will continue to experience loneliness at roughly this level all week. But it's causing all the same impulses that normal endogenous loneliness would. I'm metaphorically scratching poison ivy here, turned up to eleven, it doesn't help the underlying emotional state at all but not doing it would take up an absolutely intractable amount of my concentration and I'd probably eventually fail at controlling myself, possibly in a direction that'd make me do something worse than simply snuggling people all week."
"Geez, gotcha. No starving you on purpose, then. ....Though we are going to have to switch sides once I run out of sandwich so I don't have to try and use a spoon left-handed."
"...You know, it's like super good that you showed up now and not a few years ago. I've really gotten a lot better at being a person in the past while, and like, one of the ways that's true in is that I used to be really self-conscious about wanting anything, or like inconveniencing people? To the point that I was really annoying to be around, because I just like, wouldn't express any preferences, literally at all. But like, now you don't have to - or, hm... don't have any non-magical basis - to worry that you're bothering me, because I can and will just tell you about it when it happens, and then we can not do whatever the thing is. It's kind of amazing."
"Well, if I'd landed two years ago it's plausible the first person I met on the street wouldn't randomly have known your uncle."
"That's also true! I kind of think of him as knowing infinite people but this is not literally the case."
"I would imagine not. It would be different in kind from other interuniversal discrepancies."
"Yeah, I'd say that, and then next thing you'd be like, 'actually, my earth is flat, somehow, even though we have a moon that we've been to even if it was only once,' or something. Probably something weirder than that, actually, that's still not really on the same scale as being able to know infinite people."
Xavier's own sandwich and soup are ready; he sits in the open spot next to Ari. "Does your world experience sunstorms? Solar flares?"
"I have heard of solar flares, I don't think they're usually very exciting to non-astronomers?"
"Ohhhh whaaaaat? That sounds so convenient. Here we like, launched a superweapon into the sun in the fifties so it wouldn't blow up on earth, but then now it still makes cell signal go out for a while every now and again; it's super annoying."
"Wow, uh, I think our sun is not in the habit of threatening to blow up the earth."
"So the superweapon wouldn't blow up on earth, not so the sun wouldn't blow the earth up," Xavier clarifies.
"Oh. Uh, why is the sun a better place for such a thing than just... the vacuum of space?"
"I was not involved in the decision-making process, but I believe there were concerns about debris returning to earth."
"In the movie they were under a lot of time pressure and just had to do something fast; I don't know if that's accurate."
"Getting things to the sun isn't even fast, it's, you know, about one astronomical unit away."
"I think picking the coordinates was the part that had to happen fast, not the actual getting it there. But like again, I know this from a movie that was accurate enough for them to show it to us at the end of the year in physics class, which is not zero bar but also not a high one."
"It might have just been a bad idea in the first place; sometimes people have those. And act on them. Like having a superweapon to begin with."
"Yeah, it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to ask if we didn't really."
Shuffle shuffle shuffle swap. "Why's that so happy-making? - Were you getting tired of being on that side; you know you're like, also very welcome to make physical comfort requests, right..."
"It's a social anxiety type symptom I think! I confused the shit out my father when I called him about it because he knew I always wanted to be an esper so I sounded like I had to be being super sarcastic when I told him it sucks!"
Xavier, now adjacent to him, slings an arm around his shoulders and gives him a single squeeze.
"How concerned are you about the risk of not being able to communicate a preference of yours, which you'll regret once more clearheaded?
"Uh, not very? Not being able to enforce a boundary even if I mention it I am worried about some, I guess, this has occurred to me as a possible failure mode of crashing in some random guy's place, but it would get mentioned if only because I'd eventually run out of other things to say."
"It's good that you're able to watch out for yourself at least that much." He ruffles Haru's hair and returns to eating.
"I agree! Most backlashes will not just strike newly awakening espers dead on the spot but some of them come close and it looks like if some awakening esper had to show up in this timeline I am a relatively good choice because I don't need to mystify any doctors and can mostly rationally account for my own delusional symptoms!"
"Oh, a lot of them aren't even psychological at all! Fever, say, that's a simple one that'd kill you if you couldn't go to the hospital and have them put you in an ice bath - fever drugs wouldn't work and somebody with that backlash in this situation would cook a few layers off their brain while the doctors came to terms with a magical fever that wouldn't go down."
"How strange, that drugs don't work and ice does. Is that universal, by equivalent?"
"I'm not actually sure if ice baths are the ideal protocol for a fever backlash but that's the general trend, that if there's an effect operating on - physics rather than solely biology - you can physics back at it, but the biology isn't listening, the biology is doing magic curse things instead. There are actually some pills that help with backlash but I can't remember the whole chemical name and it doesn't touch awakening, the use case is, like, you were in a dungeon with your partner and your partner died and you need to get through the meet-and-greet process to find a new one."
"Is it possible to affect adjacent biology? If your fever gives you a headache in the course of brain-cooking, can you treat that normally? It must work at some remove, or at least not be known not to; you accepted the painkillers earlier..."
"Well, my backlash doesn't directly feature any physical pain. Unless the antipyretic properties in normal painkillers are indicated in their mechanism of action I'd expect them to work fine on the hypothetical fever esper's headache."
"I expect them to still have all their side effects? And I guess there could be some case where, like, if you fail to metabolize some chemical in one way the next thing it does is bad, but I'm not a doctor. I was going to be a doctor, if I didn't awaken... not a pharmacologist though."
"Nice! Or, I mean, now you're maybe going to be an esper instead?"
"If I can get home. Espers make good money, though, there's charities about malaria."
"A piece of information - which I have yet to determine the relevance of - is that I am a pharmacologist. To a first approximation."
"Well, if I get really annoying and you want to sedate me I'm not opposed in principle but I don't know how much other stuff there is like the concussion thing."
"Yes, do let's see how the painkillers pan out before trying anything stronger. Are you genuinely more concerned for our annoyance than your discomfort, or are you worried that annoyance would lead to practical negative consequences for you?"
"Oh, I'm dreadfully concerned for my comfort over other people's annoyance or I would have probably not asked a random stranger to call me an ambulance and then accepted your hospitality instead, I actually feel pretty guilty about it when the social anxiety symptoms are kicking me too hard but it seems robust so far that I would way rather comfortably survive the week than not impose on you when I'm pro-surviving at all. I'll just sometimes be apologetic about it. I think probably even if you are very irritated with me at some point you would call me an ambulance instead of kicking me out into your gravel driveway with no shoes on."
"Would you hedonistically prefer to be sedated at least some of the time if you knew it were safe."
"If I knew that, yes. I think some people just fall into comas and I am occasionally longingly considering the virtues of comas. I'd probably panic on the way out of consciousness about the likelihood of being left alone in my coma bed, but, like, not for very long, since, coma. It just seems unlikely to be knowably safe."
"Indeed. But there are shorter-lasting knockout drugs which are about as safe as coffee and which I'm beginning to wonder whether you simply don't have, without a culture where sabotage and its like are common."
"...can you explain how a culture of sabotage etcetera makes these drugs exist? Like, I'm pretty sure lots of people would love a sleeping pill that was as safe as coffee - I guess if it doesn't produce actual sleep it's less useful but you'd see it for, like, claustrophobes in MRIs, dentistry, the sort of thing they do twilight anesthesia for but only if the patient really can't stand it because it's not as safe as coffee."
"I could easily be misattributing the cause, but we do have something which gets used for those things - in addition to skipping medium-length plane flights for some small but notable fraction of travellers - which was originally developed for adversarial purposes. It's somewhat limited in availability largely because of the potential for abuse to other parties, not because it's dangerous for personal use."
"I guess it's nice of your saboteurs to be so, uh, considerate? Instead of just chloroforming people or murdering them."
"Some advocate for wider availability, with the idea that it would cut down on that. But there isn't much barrier to anyone organized getting ahold of some, so lawmakers think we're at the correct level of inconvenience to reduce total harm."
"Sounds like a tricky balance to strike. Anyway, no idea how it'd interact with my interdimensional brain. - what was the painkiller I took, I was expecting ibuprofen or acetaminophen."
"......well, I've never heard of that in my life so if I start frothing at the mouth or something it's probably that." He prods his sore elbow.
"Noted."
His elbow feels fine, a touch sore if he really pokes it. And his headache's gone too.
"And I haven't noticed any side effects. Are there any it's normally expected to have that I should keep an eye on?"
"It can exacerbate side effects of some classes of other medications taken with it. It's not advised to take any with alcohol, but that doesn't stop, stereotypically, college students from doing so with the intention of both heading off their hangover and having a stronger buzz. When this goes poorly it tends to be in the direction of leading to injury rather than by a direct medical cause."
"Oh, well, fortunately I don't drink. Not that this would be a great time to go on a drinking spree even if that were a thing I did."
"It might help. It like, probably would instead not, but it might!"
"Let's not and say we did and then immediately retract that claim so as not to contaminate anybody's data about alcohol's interaction with awakenings."
"Probably! I don't know about it in particular, just my sense that the biology's not listening."
"Do you feel well enough for shopping, Haru, or should I send Ariel on a solo quest for shoes, clothes, and groceries after lunch?"
"I don't... love the idea of being insane in public any more than I have to?"
"It's fine, I love field trips. Do you know your sizes for everything?"
"Uh, I'm not sure I should expect clothing sizes to be consistent across universes, but -" he does.
"I can get stuff with some give, but those don't sound obviously wrong to me. What colors and stuff do you like?"
"I usually just go with, like, blue jeans, and T-shirts in - I guess not literally any color, I'm not the wears-pink kind of gay. Black red grey blue white green brown whatever."
"Cool. And sneakers? It's early enough that if we need to return them I can just go right back, probably."
"O - kay. Am I good to nab some like pajama bottoms for me, too? I didn't actually pack stuff for a week and if I have to drive back into Toronto today I will die."
"Probably out of an abundance of caution I should not attempt to shave this week, so I guess nothing in that vein."
"...well, if you're not in range of takeout then I guess not 'Chinese takeout'. Whatever you'd make at home to approximate Chinese takeout. I have lowbrow food tastes."
"I could go out a little later rather than sooner and bring some back with me?"
"If that will not interfere with your shoe-returning contingencies that would be very kind of you!"
"Ehn, if I have to go back into town tomorrow I won't die of that one."
"Where is this, anyway, I guess I don't know if we have the same suburbs but we have Toronto so."
"Eloel, 'suburbs'. Nearest stop light's in Pine Creek, and I'll be running to Lakedale for errands."
"Exurbs. Whatever. I don't recognize either name but perhaps that means nothing."
"I would really not expect you to even if they were a perfect match."
"Mmhm! Do you want anything for like, groceries? Should I get frozen pizzas and stuff."
"...is this a Canada in which people do not eat Kraft Dinner box macaroni and cheese, or merely one in which it is not abbreviated that way."
"That would be very unlikely on my planet. Does the food company Kraft with a K exist at all?"
"Wow. Well, any box of pasta with a little packet of cheese powder you turn into a sauce will do the trick."
"Oh, sure. And frozen pizzas, and things like that." Phone phone type type.
"Yeah, things like that. Instant ramen. Peanut butter and jelly. Whatever."
"You actively prefer these to cuisine that requires more complicated preparation immediately before eating?"
"I wouldn't go so far as to say actively? I'm used to it, and I guess if I never have authentic KD again because I'm trapped in a universe that doesn't have it that would be among the thousands of problems with that situation but I won't miss it for a week."
"I enjoy cooking and consider myself good at it. If you want these things Ariel will get them for you, but I will largely be preparing my own meals separately; you're not conveniencing me by choosing them and you're not imposing on me in choosing something - more selective."
"If you're going to be cooking all the time anyway and it's not extra trouble to fix some for me too I will eat what you make, you're a good cook."
"...it's going to be my birthday somewhere in this mess and cake is traditional. I am presently confused about the date in a way that I think has to do more with interdimensional transit than with backlash."
"Usually on my birthday we go out for steak, not because I like steak dramatically better than anything else but because it's nice enough to have in the rotation and expensive enough to need an excuse."
"Steak it is, then. I suppose that to you cultured is more novel and desirable than the costlier kind."
"It does taste better, too. Literally the only benefit of eating a piece of an actual cow is that it's, like, fancy."
"As you prefer! When would you like your celebration to be, regardless of whether this corresponds perfectly to the relevant date?"
"Well, I started awakening in the middle of the night before, uh... Wednesday, which was the twelfth, and my birthday's the thirteenth... it doesn't matter, this week is going down in history as Awakening Week and then after that I will be eighteen and an esper and it just really doesn't matter."
"And if I'm not heading out till later, you have a while to think of other things you might want. In the meantime, ready to try out some co-op games?"
To the living room! (Well, to the sink with their dishes and then that.) "Did you want the puzzley kind or the party kind?"
"Well, it'll be sort of encouraging if I can do puzzles at all right now so we could try that first."
"Cool. I have Shinies and Yours, Weeper as things that stand out in this genre? Ooh, and Excelsior is a pretty good co-op co-ord game, if the puzzles don't pan out; I wasn't thinking of it because it's kind of neither puzzles nor party."
"I guess based solely on the titles I am most curious about what the heck Yours, Weeper could be about?"
"Well, first off, do you have a game called Minesweeper where you're from?"
"It's funky, though! You like, play a run of games until you lose, and you collect a bunch of power-ups along the way that make this easier, like, a really common early one is one that doesn't let your first blind click hit a bomb, if it would, it just flags them until you find a piece of normal ground. And a later one is like an EMP that deactivates all the bombs within a certain radius, but it has to be your last move on a field otherwise you instantly lose, because it like, shakes the ground. And the art is really nice; the animations are all really swooshy, and there are like, characters, with honestly pretty good plot. ....I have some qualms with some of the plot but like. Overall."
"It's not actually supposed to be co-op but it's not timed - or like, there's an IGT for speedrunners but you don't have to pay attention to it - but I lose most of my runs to carelessness so I think it benefits from like, having someone to discuss moves with."
Setup setup setup. "Not carelessness carelessness - okay sometimes carelessness carelessness - but like, not being super patient about taking ten minutes to think out all the implications of a single move, y'know? For multiple moves in a row. I don't have time for that! Except for this week when I definitely definitely have time for that."
"Mhm! I mean, thank my uncle." Her laptop is now projecting to the TV as a second screen. Vwoop here's the game. "Do you want a new save file or do you think you won't be able to pay attention to the plot anyway?"
"I think I can probably pay attention to the plot if you're explaining it to me, I won't be able to absorb it direct."
"Does that count me reading the lines or do you need, like, summaries?"
"I will tuuuuurn on the relevant streamer mode," she narrates. There's a toggle for voice acting, apparently.
