trustycrowbar: (Looking back)
Dr. Gordon Freeman ([personal profile] trustycrowbar) wrote in [community profile] exsilium2012-08-16 07:04 pm

An Orbital Pair

[Action]

[Gordon had taken to a pattern. Get up, work out (behind closed doors and hopefully away from any wry observations of Chloe's), head to the Hold, lose himself in the library. With the VR system still buggy they'd more or less halted training for new Transports, so he had a lot of time on his hands. It's easy to find him around the library, and in the anterooms of the Training facility, not to mention on the streets and at the marketplace, hoping against hope that he can find some actual decent COFFEE somewhere.]

[One thing was starting to bother him deeply, however. First of all, every squiggle on the lightboard, every attempt to bend the field equation to his will and figure out just how the Initiative could change the past with the future intact, had resulted in failure. He KNEW the solution had something to do with the fact that Transports were outside Exsilium's frame of reference; they were more than warm bodies, they were a rouge agent in causality, and the Initiative was using that to their advantage.]

[However, the only time his work came close to correct was when he broke symmetry and allowed no way back for the transports once they got there. And he was NOT about to accept the idea that there was no way back. Screw subjective bias! Not even the fucking confines of cosmology itself was going to keep him from finding her again...]

[Video]

Hey... A few questions for all of you. I've heard tell that the worlds we come from go into stasis relative to our frame of reference when we get here. Time stops for them, in other words. Can anyone actually verify this? Also I'm looking for someone. Woman about half a head shorter than I am, wears a bandanna, a little on the slender side, has a hacking tool that she uses for everything? She goes by the name of Alyx. Has... has anybody seen her here?
totallytrustworthy: (on the run)

Video

[personal profile] totallytrustworthy 2012-08-17 12:50 am (UTC)(link)
I've heard it once or twice, but I doubt there's any way to confirm that without actually heading back home and seeing what-- if anything- went on while we were away.

Which sort of drops a wrench in the whole 'coming back to tell us all about it' plan.
whatsupcroc: (☇ listen: even if you doubt)

[personal profile] whatsupcroc 2012-08-17 02:33 am (UTC)(link)
Can't say time stops, 'cause I'd have to know for sure that what I know happened since the one guy from home showed up here happened even though he's been here, and he wasn't gone at all back home.
whatsupcroc: (☇ exasperated: like you're a jedi knight)

[personal profile] whatsupcroc 2012-08-17 02:38 am (UTC)(link)
[ Welcome to the chatty teen years. Pretty horrific, huh? ]

You were asking about time stopping, right?
whatsupcroc: (☇ smile: see what you did there)

[personal profile] whatsupcroc 2012-08-17 02:46 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah! That's what I said. He never left. Marco was there the whole time. Not two weeks unaccounted for -- he was there.

But he's also been here.
whatsupcroc: (☇ ask: is that all?)

[personal profile] whatsupcroc 2012-08-17 02:49 am (UTC)(link)
Why?
whatsupcroc: (☇ laugh: you thought that'd work!?)

[personal profile] whatsupcroc 2012-08-17 02:58 am (UTC)(link)
Or he's from a closely parallel if not alternate reality.

'Cause time stopping for a whole world versus moving on minus one person? What makes more sense to you?
whatsupcroc: (☇ happy: the more subtle kind of feeling)

[personal profile] whatsupcroc 2012-08-17 03:14 am (UTC)(link)
[ Smart? Oh, she likes that. She was mostly spinning wheels, tossing out something that might as well be possible, since who knew what was true.

And besides, she really couldn't imagine the world would stop for just one person, even if he was pretty cute. ]

Thanks! If you've been thinking about that side of things, what've you come up with for the people disappearing side? The Transports, that is.
totallytrustworthy: (drankin)

[personal profile] totallytrustworthy 2012-08-17 03:36 am (UTC)(link)
I don't think anyone's been here long enough to test that. No more than a year or two at most from what I've gathered.

So...who is she? Your girlfriend?
whatsupcroc: (☇ doubt: uh yeah I guess so)

[personal profile] whatsupcroc 2012-08-17 04:08 am (UTC)(link)
How do you track aging? Watch the real young ones to see if they grow or not? And then people don't age... because we're stuck in time too? So people on that theory have to go back to kick things moving again.

Even dead people?
totallytrustworthy: (SCOWLIN AT U)

[personal profile] totallytrustworthy 2012-08-17 04:13 am (UTC)(link)
Sorry to hear that, love. Haven't caught wind of anyone like that around here, but you never know what's just around the corner with this place.

Just think of this as a chance to sharpen your charm a bit.
whatsupcroc: (☇ consider: you have a point)

[personal profile] whatsupcroc 2012-08-17 04:25 am (UTC)(link)
Difficult to die here, and if you were dead coming in, your world freezes? Not to say that doesn't bring up the whole one person is so important thing, but how about... when two people are here from two different times? The world froze twice? The first got back, or else the person from later in time never would end up here at all?

And that sounds like even the dead have to go back, or else... in your theory, time freezes for everyone else. Maybe forever.

[ Now doesn't that feel shitty. It makes her less inclined to believe his theory can be true, because it doesn't make the kind of sense she wants to hear. And she can't imagine one person having that kind of pull. Or would it also happen here? Could they strand people on other worlds, in other times? ]
has_a_cult: (Look on the bright side)

[personal profile] has_a_cult 2012-08-17 04:55 am (UTC)(link)
Oh yes. Total amateur mistakes. You can get all kinds of weird time frame effects if you're not careful about jumping from one dimension to another. Freezing your old reference point is a very common one.
has_a_cult: (Now for some intellectual discourse)

[personal profile] has_a_cult 2012-08-17 05:16 am (UTC)(link)
I'm saying I think this "initiative" only has the vaguest idea of what they're doing and are probably going to cause more problems than they solve in the long run.
Edited 2012-08-17 05:16 (UTC)

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