When Arthur Met Aster

Aster and Arthur meet and talk about science, the universe, and everything.

Date: 09/07/2018	55 Winder Street, Lower Midtown
Cast: Arthur Aster
As Aster arrives at the place, the interns are working. Phase two of the AEtheric Cloaking Device's inductor coil construction. This time denser than before. So the poor interns are having to slowly, carefully wind this not very ductile Cobalt-Chromium alloy wire. And just like last time Arthur ordered pizza for them, from a local Authentic Detroit place. It's with those boxes spread all over, and the kids working, that ARthur goes to open the door. When Aster is seen, Arthur blinks, one of the interns drops a spool of wire. "Good evening, may I help you?" the man in the lab coat asks. Aster has seen an invitation, and though it was a while ago, she's decided to take him up on it. She arrives dressed in jeans, a buttoned and collared shirt, and a heavy, long coat. She blinks as she looks about the room, seeing the devices presently under construction. When Arthur greets her, she waves a hand. "Yo! I'm looking for a Doctor Hackenmiller-Simons? Got an invite from a society thing." Referring to 'the society' is probably a safe way to Make Hints without undue risk. Arthur smiles and nods. "Alright, please do come in." Arthur lets her in. "I am ARthur. Welcome. Coffee in the corner. Help yourself to pizza. The interns have more than enough. Butterfingers over there is Max, this is Jaylen, Angela, and Stephen." He winks at Max. Aster flashes Max a playful grin. "Oh, it's hardly a worthwhile day out unless I've at least made someone drop something, even if I haven't literally stopped traffic." She snags a slice from one of the boxes. "Nice to meet you all. So, you want me to just call you Arthur, then? I'm guessing you're a friend of Emma's?" Not all Etherites know each other, Aster. Is that racist? Arthur looks again at Max, who blushes a little when called out by BOTH of them. "Excuse me," he murmurs in his Quebecois-accented English. Arthur tugs on his collar, and rubs his forehead a moment. "Indeed. Arthur is fine, and yes, Dr. Durov and I are... affiliated, if you take my meaning. Help yourself, but if you'd like to talk... that kind of shop... we should go downstairs into my lab, so the team can work." Aster gets a cup of coffee with her other hand -- just some of the instant, not the full French press. "Ohh, ~affiliated~." The tildes are practically audible, especially with that grin on her face. "Well congratulations, she's quite a catch." She eats her pizza from the crust first. "Downstairs sounds good, yes. Though I think you'll find I have virtually no idea about your methods; I'm more adept in other directions." Arthur closes his eyes, grinning, and sighs. "Not that kind of affiliated." Laughing, shaking his head. "There's a reason I.. I'll explain." At that, he'll lead her to the basement, holding the door open for her, and her food. He just brings his metallic blue coffee mug. Once they're going downstairs into the basement, he chuckles. "She and I are both in the Society. Jaylen may yet join the society, but as of yet none of them are read in." Aster follows down towards the basement, sighing with comfort. "Nothing quite like having a building on top of you. Maybe I'm just an ogre, but being underground feels natural." After giving the place a good look around, she turns back to Arthur, whistling. "Jaylen's, aah, enlightened? Or on his way to it?" Arthur nods. "I think he has the potential. I'll probably give him the Book soon enough. So welcome to my lab. It's underground, but this basement is huge, and I have all the room I need for the tools. So you used the word adept up there. Does that mean whatI think it means?" Aster oohs. "The Book, that sounds so official." She grins at the question. "I also used the word 'virtually'." She dips a light, casual curtsey. "Aster Risk, of the virtual adepts. I'm the one working on the forum that was suggested in that meeting. I've been calling it Grimoire." Arthur nods and grins. "I missed that. Well played, Aster." He chuckles, and takes a seat on a stool down here, pulling another one over. "A forum for use by our little group? I like that. And yeah, The Book is just much easier to say in casual conversation than Kitab al-Alacir, and I've studied Arabic pretty well." Aster nods. "With security as the number one priority. It's for use /by our little group/, nobody else, and certainly not by Union interlopers." Her head tilts. "Kitab al-Alacir? I haven't heard of that one before. Is that a major part of Etherite traditions, or is it more of an, ah, personal thing?" Arthur nods. "It's Arabic for The book of AEther." And she'll hear the AE in AEther. One letter. "It's really the foundational document of the society. Written by Aretus in classical antiquity. In Greek, but the Arabs rediscovered it, so we use their name for it." Aster oohs. "Important book, that. I got thrown off by the title being Arabic -- if you'd called it 'the book of Aether', I probably would have got it. I, ah, don't think the Adepts have anything that traditional. Heck, we can't even all agree on what /kind/ of unreal world we're living in. Some think it's like the Matrix, some call it all a game..." Arthur leans forward a bit. "Pardon my asking, but how long have you guys even been around? I mean, I know we've had computing for a couple centuries, but... what did you guys do before?" Aster nods. "We're pretty young and fresh, yeah. We didn't exist /as the Virtual Adepts/ until the 50s. That was when the Union done fucked up, and made it clear that we should get out and form our own Tradition. With blackjack and hookers, of course." Arthur chuckles. "Yeah, our moment with that was when they changed the consensus out from under us, and we went to the Moon anyway." He chuckles at that with a very easy, genuine grin. "And now here we are with witches, and death cultists, and uh... whatever some of these ideas are." "Dreamspeakers," Aster says. "That's another one. Oh, and magical martial artists, though I don't know if I know any of those personally. Ecstasy cultists -- they know how to have a good time at least, you know? Plain meditation is... I just end up falling asleep." Arthur takes a deep breath, eyes flickering on the woman, and he buries his eyes in his palm snickering. "You ... are right. But it's war, and I'm thankful for any allies we've got." Aster sighs, nodding, her lips twisted in a grimace with the sobering reminder. "You're right. And this place had been under their attention for so long..." She shakes her head. "I offered to help Alexandra with her investigations, but she's handling it solo, so for now it's just waiting for her to see what she digs up about where Ahana's been taken." Arthur nods. "I've done my own independent investigations. Rei... Dr. Rei?... Dr. Tenko? is heading up her own investigation of Dr. Varma's capture. Kidnapping. She's a POW." He pauses, and ships is coffee. "I'm investigating what's going on in the river. We've got a team that's going to go to fighting island. The kids upstairs are building a coil for a cloaking device I'm building so we can visit Fighting Island without being noticed by the Canucks." Aster nods. "And I'm looking into some other things for Rei, too. Whole lot going on in this city these days; hard to keep up with it all, really, so maybe splitting the workload's a good idea." She slips something from her pocket -- a small, leather-bound journal. "But, just so we can keep things all together. You mean the dripping of entropic material into the river, right? And what's Fighting Island?" Arthur wishes he were upstairs now with his presentation screen. Instead he goes to thecomputer, and puts up a map on the 27" screen. "Fighting Island is here, on the CAnadian side of the river. IT's across from this point here, Bishop Park, which has the highest levels of pollution in the river in the entire Detroit area. Which is odd, since Fighting Island was cleaned upby the Canadians a long time ago. IT's an educational park now." Aster grins; there's nothing quite like a computer to get her attention. She leans over the desk, peering at the screen. "Aah. So you're looking into its status, since it /should/ be all clean, but it's adjacent to the highest pollution around?" Arthur nods. He clicks a few times, and pulls up an overlay. "Max said the pollution was so bad here, which is nowehre near ZugIsland mind you, that it was dissoving plastic. Really bad. So Dr. Durov, Alma, and I are going to pay the island a visit." He then pauses. "You have any research you care to share? I can talk about mine all day." Aster whistles, her eyebrows lifting. "That is /bad/ pollution." She shakes her head. "Alma, don't think I've met Alma yet. Heh, so many of the mages in this city have names starting with A." A virtual adept who calls them mages? Odd. She hms. "What I'm /investigating/ right now isn't for me to share -- it's a personal matter for someone else. But my /research/ lately, I've been doing more work with the Digital Web. I need to get some face-time with Maya so we can see if a sensory dive is safe from inside Detroit, given its problems with /other/ extradimensional spaces." Arthur frowns quickly. "Fortunately I bought glass sample tubes for the team to use, or that would not have worked at all." Then grabbing his stool again to sit. "Alma says some bad stuff is happening across the dimensional boundary here. I don't know what. That's out of my usual work." Aster shakes her head, standing up straight again. "I just know what I've heard from Maya. Something about the local ether-space being all taken over by incarnations of stasis and retro-futurism, and an island -- Belle Island, I think she said -- holding captive a dangerous evil monster." Arthur raises a finger. " I thought it was Zug Island that had the alien beast. I had not heard that about Belle Isle. If there's one on both.. what if there's one on Fighting Island, too?" "Ah." Aster shakes her head. "It could have been Zug Island, and I just got my islands mixed up because of that casino on Belle island which has all the kerfuffle. Again, this is just what I heard from Maya, and not what I've seen for myself. I've never even /been/ to the umbra." Arthur chuckles. "Well now I have to wonder. What if it IS both?" He stands up, and starts to pace a little. "At the very least, when we go to Fighting Island, we'd better go loaded for bear. And neither have I done any dimensional crossings. I work with physical, mundane reality. Energy, matter, force." Aster nods. "Yes. Loaded for bear, shark, wolf, spirit -- all the above. Just, like, loaded for /everything/." She smiles. "And I work with cyberspace, as a specialty. But then, the two can cross over in such /interesting/ ways." Arthur pauses. And turns to look at her. "You're very comfortable with the... other paradigms of operation, aren't you?" Aster nods. "Mhm. I keep in mind Clarke's Third Law -- sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It's all the same thing, so why worry about splitting hairs and arguing about whether it's magic, hypertech, enlightenment, or whatever else? Focus on what we have /in common/ rather than what divides us. In the end, we all see beyond or bend this reality, in our own ways." Arthur chuckles. "Nice. I try to be diplomatic with our allies. But I have my work as well. As long as we're on the same team, coordinating, I'm happy. I'm with the Shadow Ministry. We're on the front lines with the Union. While I am a research engineer, and not a secret agent, I take the war seriously." Aster nods. "I'm not a front-liner, myself. I'd been enjoying being away from the war, here in Detroit. But if it's come to us, well..." She sighs. "Then I'll help out how I can and where I can, but I'm not looking to go get myself into any fights. My combat skills amount to 'run' and 'hide'." Arthur smiles. "That's two more skills than I have. I'm not particuarly athletic, nor am I stealthy. I've never owned a gun. They're loud, and smelly, annd that makes me mildly uncomfortable. Maybe I should." Aster tilts her head. "You're on the front lines, but you don't fight? You don't even have mundane weapons?" Arthur smiles. "Our organization is on the front lines. If we have James Bonds on the team, I'm Q." Aster ohhs, nodding her head. "The guy who makes the things for the front line people to /use/. I'm surprised -- I'd have thought all the Etherites would want to make their own things, their own ways, with their own hands." Arthur shrugs. "We all have different talents. Different interests. We have explorers. We have politicians. We have diplomats. We have people who just like to go in and blow stuff up. I work on large scale civic engineering solutions that we can take to governments, and use them to compete with what the Union is taking to governments. It's head to head, and believe you me they hate it." Aster grins. "I bet they do. Why, people wanting to do things /not/ their way? And these alternatives being compelling and useful? Why, that's everything they hate in us 'reality deviants'. The hints that their way isn't as infallible as they like to believe." Arthur grins. "It is. They've grown complacent. They're holding us back, because they think being a bit safer, more comfortable, is the better route. But that's holding us back. Flying cars. Medicines. Mars colonies. Just imagine." Aster wrinkles her nose. "I /have/ imagined flying cars. People on the road can be big enough idiots with two dimensions; I'd rather not hand them a third. But medicines, yeah, that's important. And more into the realm of vanity, I want something better than silicone in the future." Arthur laughs. "Fine. Self-driven flying cars." He slumps back onto his to his stool, about to comment, then she says that. He looks, and yes, he looks, before catching himself. "Huh." He gestures in a cricle with his finger. "So they're... huh. I thought saline solutions were the big thing now. Heh. Big." Aster smirks at his multi-levelled looking, but doesn't smack him for it. If she'd wanted eyes kept off, she probably wouldn't have brought them up. "They're enhanced, yes. Got 'em in freshman year, part of the big 'away from home' rebellion. That and Awakening into the lie that is static reality. Now I'm thinking of putting the two together." Arthur looks at his 3D printer as soon as he caught himself. Looking very intently at the nozzle inside the case. "How exciting for you." he chuckles. Or for her date? "You... wnat complete control over the representation of yourself." he takes a stab. Aster hrmms. "/Complete/ control is a bit ambitious for where I'm at right now. But /cosmetic/ control, yes. Ideally, it'd be like a good MMO, where you can build the character with dropdowns, colour wheels, and sliders -- hair colour to blue, select /this/ nose instead of /that/ one, dial the bust size slider to... like, 0.7, 0.75? You do not want to go to maximum on those things, believe me. But..." She shakes her head. "I just... haven't been able to find a way to /access/ those sliders." Arthur dares to look to her again, but he's trying to look to her eyes. Which gets awkward when you make TOO much eye contact, but in this case it's far, far safer. "I know some of the AEtheric biologists in my firm have worked on that. Disguise work, you know. Serious James Bond stuff. Breast augmentation is probably something they did without putting it in the reports. You'll get it. You're smart. You're broken free of the Union fog. But..." He pauses. "I assure you, any delay in the acquisition of the techniques to make alterations to certain characteristics of your form, will not in any appreciable way detract in your overall aesthetic pleasantness." Aster grins at Arthur's ocular struggles. She folds her arms. Under her bust, of course. At least that shirt's buttoned up modestly; only its fit really prononuces certain shapes. "Oh, I'm confident they /look/ good, especially as they are now. That's the trick with enhancements -- they /look/ good clothed, but they don't necessarily /feel/ good." She wrinkles her nose, rubbing her chin. "So I'm sort of still... working within this world's rules, to see about how far I can change. Like, dyes and such, more than sliders." Arthur is dying. He's not even a guy who goes for huge ones. But still, his palm presses to his knee, and he grips it. Looking this time at the laser cutter, right over there. "If you could make repeatable implant type that passed as natural, while defying the uh... Ah heck. Without sagging like natural ones do, you could be a billionaire." Aster snickers. "I think you mean /defying gravity/. And that'd be a matter of enhancing the ductile tissue -- getting some self-support in there -- as well as increasing the mass of the fatty deposits. Though I'm not even concerned with a repeatable implant. I just want it for my own use. That's generally easier with biomancy, isn't it? I can accelerate my own HP regen, but I can't do a thing for anyone else." Arthur laughs. "You can have fun without being a billionaire. Perhaps that's all any of us needs." He pauses, hoping that didn't come out wrong. "So do you have a day job?" he asks, idly wondering if she's one of those Youtubers Emma was talking about. Aster nods. "Freelance programming and web design. Though it's not, like, an EVERY day job. Doing it just occasionally is enough to keep me fed, so I don't delve into it as much as I could. There are more important things than consulting with people to get them 'on the clouds'." Arthur nods. "Freelance programming. I have my master's in Computational and Applied Mathematics. They made me use FORTRAN a while, but I broke out and into R and Python as soon as I was working on my own thesis." Aster grimaces. "FORTRAN?" She squints, peering closely into Arthur's face. "How long ago /was/ that?" Arthur laughs. "98. It was at least mostly Fortran 90, but still. It's still Fortran." He looks at her. "Now you're trying to figure out just how old this guy is. I think I'm the old man of the... chantry... 42." Aster laughs, shaking her head as she sinks back. "Okay, so it was a fair while ago... but I could have sworn FORTRAN was already on its way out by then." She shakes her head some more, a teasing grin on her face. "I guess it was just all too much /before my time/." Arthur chuckles. "It was. And back then there were still a lot of libraries written in Fortran. But I was on the cutting edge. Which probably helped get me recruited." Aster smiles. "Recruited and shown the Book of Aether, and becoming one of the 'enlightened' scientists, you mean?" Arthur nods. "Quite. My advisor brought out in me the bit of extra talent I had in me." Aster nods. "That's good. Though I have to say, I'm surprised that Etherites... /foster/, like that. I'd never thought Awakening could be so predictable. I mean, there are some people who seem like they have a spark which can light up into a glowing fire, but sometimes it just... strikes, like inspiration." Arthur rolls his shoulders, rubbing his neck briefly. "I'd like to think we could recruit anyone. But there probably has to be something there. An innate Genius, a talent, for that sort of thing. You have to have the drive in you. There are plenty of talented people. Smarter than I am, who could never do it. Who could never build this." He reaches into his coat and pulls out... a glue gun? Aster tilts her head, looking down at the gun. "So... what is it? Some kind of clothing-disintegration device?" Because clearly he'd feel a need to produce such a thing during her visit. Arthur laughs. "Unfortunately not." He ventures, looking at the glue gun. Not at her. "This is my Oxidation Demediator. I point the business end at something, power it up, and things that will oxidize, do so much faster than under ordinary AEtheric conditions. Sometimes.. explosively so." Aster ohhs, nodding her head. "So it's a fire ray, essentially?" Arthur shrugs and winces. "Not fire so much as... explosive oxidation." Aster's head slowly tilts. "Fast oxidation... isn't that just combustion? i.e., fire?" Arthur nods. "Right, but... well, long story short, when you oxidize something fast enough, you can set things on fire, but you can also just blow the whole thing up at once." Aster nods. "So, you set it /explosively/ on fire. And do eight dee six fire damage in a twenty foot radius." Arthur knows what she's referencing there. His face falls, and he sighs, face in palm agina, then chuckling. "Are you implying this is a wand of fireball, ma'am?" Aster shakes her head. "Oh no no, I wouldn't dream of it." Pause. "It's a RAYGUN of fireball." Arthur chuckles. He can't help it. HE then trise to wipe the smirk off of his face. This is serious. "I do intend to bring this to Fighting Island. IT's the closest thing I have to a weapon." Aster grimaces. "Are you sure you want to rely so much on that? I mean what about the--" No, no, don't talk about 'universal God-VAC', that's not how most people think about it. "--the paradox?" Arthur hums. "Well, it is strong enough, and fights the Union consensus enough, that if I dial it TOO high, I can get some backlash. But it's flexible, AND if I explain to people why it's perfectly reasonable science, I can get away with it." Aster nods firmly. "Of course. Perfectly reasonable science. I guess I'm just... not used to things being set up to fire off so quickly. I take my time with my..." Does she call it magic? Art? Science? Technique? "...stuff." Arthur nods. "I do my work in advance when I produce cutting edge Fortean works. I take weeks designing, building, assembling, testing, modifying... and then the finished good will just work. Just don't ask me to MacGuyver anything." Aster squints behind her glasses, apparently stuck on one word in particular. "...I thought you said you stopped working in FORTRAN?" No, no, Fortean. Arthur laughs. "Fortean is the Soceity's word for scientific and natural effects that are beyond our usual understanding. Science and the universe are limitness. IT's only our minds that hold us back. That was the central thesis of Aretus's in his book." Aster ohhs, slowly nodding her head. "In short, hypertechnology. I'm with you there -- it's just that the false limitations are /very convincing/ lies, so it's hard to break free of them, and harder still to reach past them and interact with what's /real/." Arthur nods and taps. "That's why I told Dr. Durov she should make a Youtube series. She can break through, one child's mind at a time." Aster nods. "It's a nice idea, but the problem with that is, well... it'll get the Union /undoubtedly/ kicking her door in, especially if it's effective." Arthur smiles. "You really think they go after every nutjob's Youtube? HAve you READ the comments there?" Aster hmms. "True. Still seems like a risk, to me... but we could set up with precautions and make it into a great big trap if they /do/ come after her." Arthur nods. "If only we knew someone who might be able to point us in the direction of some sort of fortean or hypertech application of Internet technologies to the ends we desire." Aster laughs. "Are you talking about you or me, here?" Arthur smiles as he opens his coat again to slip the glue gun back into an interior pocket. "Of course. Even if that's not your field you've got have something you can point us to, right? An actually good VPN instead of a Russian scam?" Aster nods. "I've been looking into those even more lately, since I've been working on Grimoire. Though there's only so much that spoofing can do if you have personally identifying information on there. For better security, she'd have to /not/ start her videos by smiling at the camera and saying 'Hi, this is Doctor Emma Durov, and I'm going to expose the lies of static reality!' or anything like that." Arthur laughs. "Right. I figure subtlety is important. I don't think she'd even need to hide herself, if she's subtle enough in how she talks about science. But... she might want that option if I can talk her into making videos." Aster points the forefingers of both hands at her face. "She'd have to be subtle in how she talks about herself, too. Having her face in the videos would be dangerous." Pause. "And it's not like she has built-in distractions like I do. But talking her into it is still ongoing, huh?" Arthur chuckles again. "You should talk to her about it. She could do a lot of good, and make enough money to fund some research." =Arthur strains not to comment on the last bit, much like Aster's shirts must strain from time to time. Arthur strains not to comment on the last bit, much like Aster's shirts must strain from time to time. Aster nods. "I'll think about it, but I think this is more of an Etherite concern -- opening people's eyes to the truth through true, exciting Science. Emma's my friend, but we are definitely not in the same tradition." Arthur nods. "Well, money is universal, and she could use the funding." Aster laughs. "That's true. Ugh, if there's one thing I wish I could remove from this world, it's capitalism." Arthur smirks at that, very tight lipped. Running his hand over his bald head. "We do need some means of finding an effeient allocation of resources, right up until we have free energy and replicators." Aster grins. "And warp drives, and transporters, and holodecks. Holodecks would be especially nice, don't you think?" Arthur snickers. "Make it so. Make it so." Aster laughs. "I haven't seen that one yet, actually. Just finished DS9 recently -- a friend said I should do that one first, since its median episodes are better and easier to binge." Arthur shrugs. "I never got into it. I didn't really care for the whole Bajoran thing. If you watch Voyager though, it may be worth skipping to Seven of Nine. Becuase the Maquis crew is dishwater dull, and the more screen time she gets, the less they do." Aster nods. "Oh, yeah. Seven of Nine is great for..." She holds her hands out in front of her chest. "...screen time." Just to poke the scientist with a few more Pins of Blushability. Arthur laughs, and shakes his head. "It's not even for that." He does rub his forehea dthough. Not actually blushing like poor Max did, but trying not to stare any more than he already did. "She actually is an interesting character, and the dynamic with Janeway is great." Aster lowers her hands. "Maybe I'll look into it. No such thing as too much good scifi, right? But I'll try to keep it from getting in the way of all the work I still have ahead of me. Research, investigation, practice..." She sighs, shaking her head with a slight grimace. So much to catch up on.