Library Mingle Log

[foundafamily]

Who: Everyone!
Where: The Library
When: Throughout their time in Struxta
Rating: PG, will edit if this changes
What: The Circle gets together for some research on what this place is all about. Please treat this like a mingle log--feel free to put up a starter and tag around!

The Library (hopefully) promises to have the answers that the Welcome Committee and the general robot on the street don't. Characters can access the information by computer, and the Library has just about everything that's happened in Struxta.

That's thousands of years of information to wade through, so get to work!

[ooc: As it says above, please feel free to put up your own starter and tag around! Characters can have heard others chatting about the library or been told about it by the Welcome Committee or have just wandered in. If you come across anything of interest that you'd like me to edit into or link in the main post, please just let me know.]

Comments

[foundafamily]

[Firo's. Not thrilled to be here. He's not anti-library--he's even read a few books in his lifetime!--but he's not really a research kind of guy. If he thinks, he thinks on his feet, usually in a fight, not in quiet contemplation.

And yet here he is. His preferred method of just badgering the Welcome Committee didn't get him much in the way of actual information, but it got him here, so it's what he'll have to work with if he wants his curiosity (and wariness) to be satisfied at all.

And, in a way, maybe the quiet is a bit welcome; this place is so beyond his time that being out in the open is honestly overstimulating. He'd take El Minha over this any day.

But again: here he is.

After a crash course with the computer, he feels even more lost than before. Other characters may notice that he's not even approaching the machine yet; instead, he turns to whoever's nearest to him.]

So. Where do you think we start?

[sunborne]

[ give daylight a second, please. he's currently recalling his adventures to dialup while going through archives and databases- ]

We can try to find the newest entries and oldest entries first. [ he says this bit slowly, trying to recall dialup's method of information extraction and data management. he wishes they were here with him and firo right now, he really does. ]

After that we can... Um... Compare them to each other. See not only the dates but the evolution of how they're categorised and catalogued and... you know. Things like that.

[foundafamily]

[Honestly, from their talk in El Minha Firo'd gotten the impression that Daylight was something of a naive kid. But now he's pretty much hanging onto his every word. Very much unlike Firo, Daylight seems to have an actual plan and background knowledge.]

Newest and oldest. Yeah, uh--that sounds good.

[His brief attempt to pretend he knows what he's doing crumbles as soon as he tries to think of how to put that plan into play.]

...So how do we do that?

[sunborne]

[ ... that's a good question. ]

We... Hang on. We... Um... How does Dialup make this look so easy...? [ oh! okay! he remembers one of the things dialup talks about now- ] We can check and see if there's a sort of filter for the entries or something like that.

If there is, there's usually a setting of sorts in most databases where you can choose the year of catalogued entries. Maybe it'll show up if we bring up the interface screen. [ daylight- you do realise firo may not understand a word you're saying, right? ]

[foundafamily]

[Indeed, Firo has no clue. After the first few multisyllabic words, he kind of tuned out. He blinks a few times, decides he shouldn't even try bullshitting this and gestures towards the computer.]

Hey, be my guest.

[All yours, Daylight! Show him your magic! Whatever it was, it sounded smart, so Firo figures it has a better chance of working than anything he'd try.]

[sunborne]

[ ... he now realises that he has made a terrible mistake.

staring at the machinery like he expects it to bite him or firo any second now - it has happened before, back on m.shelley station. - daylight approaches one of the many databases at hand to begin. ]

Er... right... [ give him a sec to figure out how any of this works while he scoots forwards to take reins, so to speak. (dialup?? where are you when daylight needs you??)

while he attempts to start working on the thing, hoping to bring something up that looks like a user interface he could hopefully work with, a question has now come to mind- ]

What are you hoping to find, exactly? [ daylight knows he wants to learn more about the mass subconscious thing but it's just occurred to him now that, well, not everyone is going to be interested in it. ]

[foundafamily]

[Through it all, Firo will lean in and watch Daylight so closely, as if hoping the great mystery of this technology will be unlocked just by observing Daylight. Surely the huge metal guy has to know this stuff, right?]

Me? They said there were "makers," so I wanted to find out what happened to them. If they all got murdered, it doesn't exactly look good for us.

[That's followed by something between a snort and a laugh. What a situation to be in.]

What about you?

[sunborne]

[ that's an easy enough question for daylight to answer- ]

The Mass Subconscious. It seems to be a big part of their society so I wanna learn more about. How it works. Why is works. Stuff like that.

[ all the while he begins to fiddle with the user interface, pressing buttons and moving through screens without really attempting to explain what he's doing for poor firo's sake.

oh. wow. wooooow. they could give whitecrest and dialup a run for their money. ] This might take a while. Maybe... a few hours, tops? And that's for scratching the surface of the surface too.

Might be a while before we can find any juicy info about murdered creators. [ he smiles, trying to sell the joke, but there's an anxious quality to the way his winglets flutter. ]

[smallprince]

[Tyrion's still confused from how this library looks. But then, thousands of years of history would fill even more books and he knew how careful you have to handle old books. This way of keeping a library was fitting for this world.]

"We could start with finding out the most recent 'odd' events that had happened here. You know, odd in the terms of this place. Maybe we will stumble upon something."

[He turned his attention back at the computer screen.] "They have this thing called 'news' if I remember it right. Maybe paying attention to these first would be a good idea."

[During the last days he learned a couple of new things, some were pretty odd and some were interesting. Like these 'news', a collection of the daily happening in Struxta. Tyrion realized the value of something like that.]

[foundafamily]

News, huh? What kinda things are you looking for?

[Normally recent and current things are all Firo'd care about. But it seems like humans haven't been around in a long time--he's more curious about that than many of the recent goings on. Though, come to think of it, maybe they should keep an eye on those too.

...It's all too much.]

[smallprince]

Disasters of any kind, like natural disasters, wars. But also things you could say are trivial like changes in the weather. Maybe the most plain event could be the key.

[The absence of humans was irksome. Tyrion wondered if he would ever get used to it while they were here. But then, so far the citizen of Struxta had been friendly.]

[foundafamily]

Great. That really narrows down what we're looking for.

[There's already a ton of information to sort through--the idea that they're going to be picking through everything from war to a cloudy day is daunting.]

It sounded like there haven't been people for a long time, so whatever it is, it's gotta be pretty old.

[smallprince]

That's true. I mean we are a handful of people but our stay isn't forever. I hope that we will be able to find out something soon.

[Anxiously he looked around, his gaze wandering over the Circle members that had gathered in the library. Tyrion asked himself, what horrible secret they would discover. For some reason he was certain that it would be an unpleasant surprise.
A chill ran down his spine, when he tried to image why there are no humans in Struxta. Sure, on the first look it would have been obvious to say that there had been a war but life had taught him, that sometimes the most obvious reason wasn't true.]

What would you like to search for? I mean, we all have certain topics we try to avoid.

[foundafamily]

I just want to know what happened to the people who started this thing. ["This thing" being the city and its residents.]

There's something these guys like the Welcome Committee aren't telling us.

[Firo didn't honestly believe that they didn't know--he was certain that there was some deception; not knowing would be too convenient.]

[smallprince]

That's what we all want to find out. Where do you think you could stumble upon some clue of it? If you don't mind I would like to search for the more or less recent nature catastrophes. Not that I am a fan of disasters, it's just that I have enough of wars.

[At first Tyrion had wanted to take a closer look of the local legends and myths since in them was usually more truth than in any of the gossips going around. But he knew that he could get lost easily in legends of foreign countries and therefore he wouldn't be of much use when it came to active research.]

i hope it's ok to hit firo up here instead!

[oneandmikleonly]

I wanted to dig more into the history of this place -- it's always easier to grasp what factors might become chaotic if you have an idea of how everything's structured...and where that structure came from.

[a rueful smile]

I admit I'm having a hard time isolating that information, though. I love libraries, but this one is a bit...much.

It's more than okay! :)

[foundafamily]

[Briefly, he returns the smile.]

Doesn't seem like much of a library to me. [Not that he's a fan to begin with.] Back where I'm from, they just have a bunch of books in them.

[Not whatever the hell that thing is.

Structure?

[That's a way he never thought about it--he's not even sure what it's supposed to mean, but it sounds smart enough that he's curious.]

[oneandmikleonly]

Yeah, I miss regular libraries too; there's nothing like them.

[he's a natural nerd]

I suppose it would be even more impossible if we didn't have a way to automatically sort through these, though. The sheer volume of information stored...I wonder how they decide what's kept or not?

[foundafamily]

[Nerd. Firo raises an eyebrow, briefly, because missing the library is totally not what he meant, but he'll let it slide for now.

The question, however, gets a snort.]

Who says they decided anything? Look at this place--they must never throw anything out.

[bowtiedbones]

Mmmm, well, that depends on what you want to know, doesn't it? I'm trying to find more about their geological history, but there's not much so far— these guys don't seem to care much about ancient stuff, or I guess pre-whatever Age this. But if you want culture or Arts or like, social studies? There's a lot of that...

[She trails off, distracted by the computer in front of her. It's been her pattern for the last couple days: Almost always in front of a computer, and either answering with a long string of whatever comes to mind, or wandering silence. Digital-edition research journals cover the screens in front of her, and both her phone and notebook are filled with notes. This is her zone.]

[foundafamily]

Art?

[Please, Eliza, does he seem like a connoisseur of the arts to you? The contempt in his voice should indicate otherwise quickly enough.

But it's soon replaced by curiosity as he glances at her notes--this is a person who knows what she's doing. He's not surprised.]

What's the geology stuff gonna tell you? Isn't that rocks or whatever?

[Hmm, but she's the bone person... Maybe she's going to try and dig up evidence of the humans that were once here? Being so curious (and suspicious) about what happened to the original humans, Firo can't imagine anyone looking into anything else.]

[bowtiedbones]

Geology isn't really my strong suit, I'm more in the biology of ancient animals, but any major extinction events should show up in the geological record. Environmental changes show up in the kind of sediment that's put down— like ash from an eruption, iridium from an asteroid, or coal deposits from tree life. They're big tie-ins extinction events. Of course, those are all pretty extreme levels of analysis, and I'm not confident that these guys would care to even try preparing that kind of record. There's not even any bare ground to excavate.

[Eliza flaps her hand at one of the screens, pulling open a window and flipping through a couple tabs until she brings up a flyer for one of the local museums. It's a rock and jewel exhibit, but unfortunately for her purposes, it's all focused on sculpture and jewelry.]

If I can find a historical record, that's going to be even better, but so far I haven't hit one yet. I want to find out how or when their sky changed, because like, I've seen too many sci-fi to not think that's a sketchy thing.

[foundafamily]

[He tries to listen, he really does, but most of that is going right over his head.]

Yeah, I didn't get any of that.

What do you think the sky means?

[There's so much here that doesn't make sense that he hadn't really thought on it too hard. He's been spending a lot of time indoors anyway.]

[bowtiedbones]

I think maybe the sky got polluted and that played a role in everything dying.

[foundafamily]

[He frowns, thinking it over--her idea doesn't seem all that unfamiliar for someone who grew up in the tenements.]

Is that kinda thing enough to wipe out a whole bunch of people? They say the air makes people sick where I'm from, but most people don't die.

[Some do. But only a subset.]