Prismatic Experience

Date: 07/14/2018 Time: 11:00 EST	Starbucks in Upper Midtown
Cast: Alma Rei
It's late morning on a Saturday, so Alma isn't coy about taking up more space than she normally does. She's camped out at the Starbucks just off campus because the coffee in the lounge on her floor in the Hall of Science isn't cutting it today. She's taking up a table with her laptop and some notebooks. She's currently annotating a line map drawing of the flood plains around Detroit. She hasn't seen Rei in a while and this thing in Alma that wants people to be connected to one another is digging in to her. She texts Rei asking if she wants to hang out at Starbucks and talk about stuff. Rei, wherever she happens to be currently, sends a message back: 'By hang out you mean to spend a lot of time in a place, correct? What is this 'stuff' that you wish to discuss?' Alma texts back, "correct. I'm working in Starbucks right now. 'stuff' is vague and means that conversation doesn't have to be constrained to a planned topic. I have not seen you in a long time and I am wondering how you are doing and want to hang out with you to see you. make sense?" Alma starts to remember some of her first interactions with Rei and recalls how exact Rei was about everthing. Rei's message comes back shortly after, "So you wish to ascertain my current condition? Will this not get in the way of you serving coffee in a busy venue like Starbucks?" Alma replies to her message, "It will not. I'm not serving coffee here. I'm analysing flood plains around Detroit. also, it is not too busy today. It's busier on weekdays." Rei's replies are relatively swift, she must be a fast typer, "I did not realize that Starbucks was involved in the analysis of Flood Plains. Interesting. What is their goal in that venture? I will be there, soon." Alma replies "I am located in Starbucks doing work. I am not doing work for Starbucks. see you soon." And awhile later Rei does indeed step into Starbucks, still clad head or at least neck to toe in leather, apparently unbothered by the heat. She seems to know her way around the shop and has likely been here before, lining up and ordering some simple green tea, before commencing her search for Alma's location within the seating area. Once spied she makes her way over to where Alma is sitting, "Hello, I have arrived." stating the obvious. Alma is seated at a table that could seat four people but she's taking up all the space except for where one person might sit and place their food and things. Such as Rei. There's a big large format scroll of a topographical map highlighting the greater Detroit lakes and riverse region and Alma has been annotating it while referring to notes in one of her notebooks along with judicious clicking on her laptop. She looks up when Rei approaches and replies, "Hi Rei." Alma pauses because she is unsure of how to state this, but she goes with, "Sit with me?" Rei takes a seat, setting the cup of tea down on the tabl. She doesn't appear to have any particular affection for it, more like something she bought as the price of entry and occupying table space. The maps on the table attract some interest from her, "What are you planning with these maps?" "Do you remember when we first met?" Alma asks. "I was trying to see ghosts on the other side. I was not having any success, and continued not having any luck. last week I did a ritual at the riverfront and a black ribbonous angry mass came out at me from the gate on the other side and I ran. But what I really noticed, before all that, is that there were no shorebirds or waterfowl in the area. Only starlings." While she's talking she clicks to a tab on her browser to show Rei an image of the Transcending sculpture in the plaza downtown. "This sculpture is a gate on the other side. I think maybe it is sucking up ghosts. and maybe it poisons the water?" Alma points to the topographical map. I talked with some of hte researchers in wetlands conservation at the Zoo and they told me that the decrease in population of birds along hte Detroit riverfront is due to the contamination and that they've been focusing on maintaining habitats in the northern suburbs, but" Alma taps on the northern suburbs section. "If there is flooding in Detroit the city uses the watershed around Detroit and in the northern surburbs as a flood plain to mitigate city flooding. Now, I know that's a thing that happens with cities, they reverse hte river in Chicago to help deal with flooding when it's very bad--that's where I'm from. But, I don't know, with a angry ghost or something screaming out at me from some gate, it makes me wonder if this policy and plan is tied in to something darker. And maybe it wants to spread out past Detroit." Rei listens attentively taking all of this in, "I wonder if this is related to Zug Island?" she ventures, "I have been told there is a powerful corrupted spiritual entity bound there. Powerful enough to cause earthquakes in the surrounding area when its bindings weakened in the past. It is at the intersection of the Detroit River and Rouge River." she thinks, "I have only had one encounter with an entity that would be termed a 'Ghost' she possessed me briefly and our minds linked showing me the circumstances of her death so that I could destroy the monsters that killed her. That was at an old abanadoned medical facility on the East Side. I would like to learn more about such entities, it seems if their attachments are resolved they might move on and their divine spark allowed to incarnate again. Though I know little about birds or ecology, if I can be of help investigating this gateway, please let me know." "Really?!" Alma asks. "I can teach you some about ghosts! I am learing about them myself. I feel a need to help people and that includes helping ghosts who are stuck to move on. I don't know about reincarnation, but there is something and I don't think they should get stuck in place unable to resolve things. Yes, I can help you with this. I'm not as good at is as my mentor, but I don't know how much time they have for more students." She looks downcast with that statement. "You don't need to know about birds or ecology for studying the gate.... um, do you know Emma? She has a device for looking at it remotely and I want to help her with that. It cuold be dangerous so I'm going to study how to defend her if something comes after when she makes observations. I think the thing chasing me followed me as long as I watched it... so observing is significant. ...I think." She's doubtful and it might shows in her face if one is able to read the exspression. "I do not know that I would be much use against threats on the other side," Rei considers, "However I accel at neutralizing threats within the material world, should you need protection. I would welcome an education on Ghost phenomena, I wish to understand more about this world and how it relates to the worlds beyond." she still hasn't touched her tea, seemingly content to let it sit there and evaporate. Alma has been in the position of ordering drinks without knowing what to do with them. In her case, it was while at a bar. The lack of drinking doesn't seem extremely odd to Alma. She's got her own peccadillos. "Me either, and my teacher explicitely told me not to cross over. What I'm thinking of is maybe a way to have a ward against inimical influences from the other side. I'm experimenting with ideas. What kidn of stuff do you want to know about /this/ world?" Rei falls silent, thoughtful, as she considers Alma's question. She doesn't answer for some time, before finally saying, "Everything, why it is cut off from the divine spiritual reality beyond by the dimensional prismatic barrier, why people behave the way they do, why things are the way they are, how we can all be better and ultimately transcend this world, and... who am I?" She nods to herself satisfied that she has likely covered everything. Alma sits in silence for a bit, after Rei answers. That really does cover almost everything, doesn't it. Alma tries to reply after some silence but there is stuttering and self-interruptions. "All of that...", "me too", "there's just so much", and a little after, "I studied human behavior in my undergraduate education, specifically cognition. But since I was interested in cognition and the mind in general, and not just in human cognition, I went on to do work in the intelligence and behavior of New Caledonian crows. They have their own personhood. Waking up last year means I see so many more layers, and I think we all exist spanning multiple words, but I don't know how this meta-ecology works. Maybe you can explain the prisms to me? Do you know how in the human mind all of our senses get integrated in to perceptions and linked to internal states including the amygdala. And we experience all of this here with the senses we know of in the world we have immediate access to. but we can work to see more... I tried to do that and it just hurts." "Like, turn on all the senses you are capable of, with all your might, that should be how we are, right? because that is how our bodies and minds work in the hear and now. when things disintegrate you get perception divorced from teh experience of emotion and get injuries that delink perception and emotion and so someone will see loved ones and think they see impostors because the vision of the faces they see do not have the same emotional salience as what they remember in their memories... well, this thing, what if we are all walking around like damanaged creatures because it is too hard to see everything right now. I was thinking, maybe I need a reverse prism or a prism kaleidoscope to help... something to ..." She looks up and realizes she has gone on and on. "Uh, sorry. It has been on my mind a lot. I keep thinking we are like people with the spiritual version of brain injuries if we don't look at things as the whole." Rei sits listening the entire time Alma talks, she is a very good listener and not prone to interrupting, "The dimensional prismatic barrier is what seperates this world from the spiritual reality beyond where light refracts into electricity and ultimately becomes matter. Does this help? The material world is a reflection through the prism of the world beyond."