There's sea, lots of that. After a lot of sea, interesting in the way of the sea but only in that way, there is a boat, with a few dudes on it, hauling a netful of fish out of said sea, making it in some ways less interesting in the process.

Woahhhhh no food has ever done anything at all like that before, at least anywhere observable.  This trip was the best idea.  It had better fly over to get a closer look.

The closer look doesn't help much. They leave the fish dangling half-in and half-out of the water in their net, ceasing to reel them in any farther. One wraps himself up in his coat more tightly. One sits on the deck of the boat. One of them starts whimpering softly.

Awwwwwww :(.  That is very usual.  Kind of interesting that they're doing the usual food thing in the middle of the sea, it supposes?  It'll investigate the boat and the net for a minute before heading back out to open water, which is at least more novel than Literally What Basically Its Entire Existence Until Now Has Been Made Up Of.

Sea sea sea. Fish. Seals.

Beach! There's more food here. Some of the food is small, and running around on the sand!

Seals are pretty cool.

- That food is not only doing novel actions but is also a novel shape and size!!  It's definitely gonna go take a look at them.

As it gets closer the food stops doing novel actions. Some of the food screams, especially the small food. One of the larger food seizes a small food and clutches it very tightly while doing the usual shivering crying thing. There are still colorful umbrellas and beach towels to look at, though!

No no no no no.  The umbrellas and beach towels are not more interesting than this mystery, even though they would have held it completely enthralled back at home.

It watches the small food up close, which is after all still an interesting shape, while it tries to work out what's going on.  Two times, food was acting completely unlike they usually do, and two times they stopped doing that when approached.

Hm.

Hmmmmmmmm.

What if it floats back to where it first saw the food and watches them for a while from over there?

It takes a few minutes for the food to stop doing the normal food behavior, but they recover after some time. Some of the food depart the beach, but also some new food arrive! The small food make structures out of sand. Some medium-sized food play with a large ball. A full-sized food walks up and down the sand holding a long metal object. Foods rub white goo on each other.

That's so weird!!  It will watch them for a really long while the way it thinks of time out here (although it wouldn't have felt long at all back home).

Eventually it thinks to approach the food reaaaaally sloooooowly, to see how close it can get without making them boring.

When it does that they get boring - but more slowly! More of them leave the area; small foods cry and stop moving, but in less correlated ways; a food that was asleep on its towel makes disturbed noises and is shaken awake by another food. A family of food approach the beach and then turn right around and get back in their car.

That's so weird.  It experiments a little with moving back and forth, in and away, until - wait wait wait waaaaaiiiit a second.

. . . . Does the boringness seem at all related to whether it's nibbling on them???

Oh yeah. Totally.

:0 :0 :0

. . . . . . . . .  :0

What if . . . it tries to get closer . . . . . but NOT nibble on them.

(It's kind of bad at not nibbling on them at all - they're food, and they're right there and way way more delicious than the stuff at home - but it can mostly not, and can stop pretty quickly whenever it starts.)

If it doesn't nibble on them, or only nibbles on some of them, then the ones it's not nibbling on will go about their business! It can get quite close to the sand structures and look over the shoulders of the ones reading books and get lightly bonked by a beach ball, which confuses but doesn't boringify the food playing with the beach ball.

It is So Clever.  No one has ever been as clever as it has.  The mysteries of the world are unraveling themselves and falling apart in its hands.  It's going to figure out what's up with these things that multiple foods are so interested in even though they aren't even moving around; it is unstoppa - it is bonked.

So it turns out that some things can be novel enough that they actually become bad, that's very good to know.  Probably being bonked would not be so startling a second time, but . . .

Better to be safe.  It'll nibble on the bonkfood until they drop the ball and then investigate the ball up close.  Really convenient that it knows how to selectively boringify and unboringify food with zero consequences now.

The bonkfood doesn't drop the ball, actually, it hugs it while it sits down and gets boring.

What if it lets the bonkfood unboringify and then tries again.

Then the food takes its ball and goes home.

Noooo consequences D:

. . . It can follow the bonkfood.  It won't even nibble on them for now.

It can watch the bonkfood walk away from the beach and up into the non-beach parts of the land! Bonkfood collects a bag on the way out, takes shoes out of the bag and puts them on its feet, and gets on a bicycle and rides down a street.

Where is the ball??

The ball is deflated and put in a basket on the bicycle!

- Huh!  It had not expected the ball could do that.

It can definitely fly fast enough to keep up with an enbicycled food.  And intends to, until the bonkfood stops or maybe if it sees something else really interesting.

The enbicycled bonkfood continues down the street past:

- houses
- apartments
- restaurants
- a rug store
- a candle shop
- a bakery
- a butcher shop
- a post office
- a church
- houses houses houses, and then a particular house it stops in front of and enters