Rᴏʙᴇʀᴛ Mᴏɴᴛᴀɢᴜᴇ Rᴇɴғɪᴇʟᴅ (insects) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-07-14 06:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, hank mccoy (beast), sans |
Who: Hank & Sans
What: Stuffing their faces and talking shop, looking for patterns; Sans brings his copious notes about the nature of the dreams
When: Today?
Where: A burrito joint in the OC
Rating/Warnings: They're dorks, and Sans makes puns
Status: Complete
Southern California - what a place for the wonder known as burritos! It was next to impossible (kind of like dividing by zero or finding redeemable qualities about Justin Bieber) to live here and not at least appreciate burritos. You could dislike tacos, not hold hamburgers in high regard, or look down on delicious pho - but essentially anyone who did not eat burritos on a weekly basis, at the very least, may as well pack up and move elsewhere in California. Where it would rain even more burritos. At one of Hank’s favorite spots in Costa Mesa, the burrito prizes were, approximately, the size of a professional wrestler's forearm and filled with protein, refried beans, with so much rice. The rice and beans were rich and delicious enough, and perfectly seasoned on their own, but the added bonus was how they absorbed the homemade salsas in a way that the tacos just could not compare to. It was the perfect spot for a meeting of the minds, and Hank was glad to take a fellow scientist there (a college student, no less) - someone who very much needed ‘real’ food, from what he could gather. “So! You’ve brought notes, I take it?” Hank asked from the booth, burritos aplenty before them, trying not to be too nerdy and excited. *** Sans was fine with his diet - he ate a vegetable, sometimes (those bags you just stuck in the microwave to steam were perfect) (also, was ketchup a vegetable?), and he got plenty of protein and carbs from his hot dogs - but a little variety never hurt anyone. Burritos were a totally acceptable hot dog alternative, and these in particular looked like they could satisfy. Sans was always down to eat excessively large food and talk shop, so to speak. So, settled with a ton of food between them, Sans nodded along. “A-yup. I brought a lot of notes.” He gestured to his backpack before beginning to pull out the goods. First was his laptop and the spreadsheets on which he kept track of the members of Valarnet who talked about their dreams - every scrap of information he’d gleaned from various posts (though some weren’t attached to names, since not everyone introduced themselves, or he’d missed their introductions - he just went with descriptions, like “guy with a really bad attitude and hates magic” or “the one who really really really likes cats”). Some were better than others, the best out of them the people who’d shared their experiences with him personally. Also pulled up were the descriptions of the various weird events (including some that may or may not be OC related, but hey, he wasn’t willing to discount anything at this point), his own personal experiences with each bout of weirdness, and others’ descriptions of their personal experiences. He also pulled out maps with the locations of each bout of weirdness marked (or the origin point, as near as he could tell), some handwritten notes detailing odd conversations he’d overheard from people he knew weren’t (or was pretty sure weren’t) on Valarnet that could be about Dreams, any event that might have been from someone using some Dream-gifted power (some more farfetched than others), and basically anything else that could have anything to do with the Dreams. It was extensive, all told, and possibly a little creepy. But hey, that was science. Creepy amounts of detailed data. Unfortunately, it was all disconnected - the maps showed no real patterns, there didn’t seem to be much of a pattern as to when people started dreaming or how frequently they dreamed - there weren’t any real patterns at all, that he could see. But hey, This was why you shared your data. A fresh set of eyes could make all the difference. So he pushed everything across the table to Hank and pulled his burrito towards him. “Have at it, pal. Do you th-Hank you’ll get anything from this?” he asked, chuckling as he started to shove burrito into his mouth. *** Oh, a pun with his name in it! Very clever! Hank was flattered that the moniker his parents had chosen (well, Hank was technically derived from Henry - but hardly anyone called him Henry) was worthy enough to be used in a pun at all. He chuckled delightedly, making room on the table for Sans’ extensive work - unfortunately, that meant his overstuffed burrito and bottle of neon-colored Mexican soda (this one was pineapple, mmm) had to be scooted to the side slightly. But no matter, he’d get back to it soon enough. “This is wonderful. Now, let’s see - “ If anyone could pick out some commonalities from the madness, it was probably Hank. Pattern recognition was the root of his genius - he could perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at a breakneck pace. He could figure out cube roots faster than a calculator, and recite pi to thousands and thousands of decimal places. But untangling the mess that was Orange County? Well. That might take more than even his brain - two heads were better than one, so to speak. “It seems as though a good percentage post on the network and then have their first dream,” he murmured, after doing some calculations and studying the maps. “Yes. Approximately 91.3918 percent, give or take for error. Of those that have their first dream after their introductory post, a large percentage speak about experiencing at least three or more similarities to their upbringing in this universe - from there, the dreams branch out and we see more differences. That’s where it gets complicated. If one were to make a chart - “ He had a pencil and doodled on a spare piece of paper - it was a line with a few dips and then became a peaked mountain, basically. *** Oh if only Hank knew the monster he’d unleash if Sans had heard that thought. He’d never have a moment of pun-free peace again. It was a good thing that Sans’ powers revolved around gravity rather than mind reading. Sans did his best to shuffle his things around so as to make room for the food, suddenly a little embarrassed by just how extensive it all was. It was just that this was what he did. He solved problems, or at least did his best to put the data together and come up with something resembling a solution. His first reaction to something happening was usually ‘does this need a spreadsheet or a flowchart?’ In the case of Orange County, the answer was ‘both, and much, much more’. Sans listened to Hank’s murmurings, nodding along. “I’ve noticed the posting thing, but the time varies so much - some get one right away, others a few weeks later, some take months. My best friend didn’t start Dreaming for a long time, and he signed up before I did.” Sans wasn’t sure about the similarities thing - excepting Pap and a fondness for comfortable footwear, the lives of the Sans in the Dreams and the Sans in the OC didn’t have much in common. Seeing Hank’s chart attempts, Sans pulled out a notebook full of graph paper, should he want to use that instead. “Even among the variations there’s variations. There seem to be a lot of people who dream about life in space, but none of them seem to be in the same space. Nothing universal, if you catch my drift.” (See Hank? The puns didn’t stop.) “And for things like magic, it’s all different magics. Some need wands, some need spells, some don’t need anything.” To demonstrate, Sans held his hand above his fork, which slowly drifted up until he could close his fingers around it. “Nothing is the same, even the things that are.” *** “Something of a dynamic similarity more than a kinetic similarity...” Hank rubbed his chin in thought. His burrito companion was an engineer, wasn’t he? It had been awhile since Hank got a chance to discuss those concepts and theories - but much of civil engineering was, in fact, building prototypes and models and looking at similarities. “Because, based on what discernible patterns there are, it doesn’t start to really fall into place until after the dreaming starts. As you say, the appearance of the initial dream is nonsensical - you started, and a friend began months later. That happens quite a bit, there’s no way we could pinpoint any of that.” More scribbling in his notebook - this would probably all be transferred to laptop later. “But then things even out - new dreams start occurring toward the beginning of each month. There are so many outliers and probably not a big enough sample size to draw definitive conclusions, but a loose pattern is something.” There came a pause to shovel burrito in his mouth after that, because the scientist needed some fuel to keep going. *** Burritos were the secret to scientific success; at least half Sans’ department would agree to that. Chewing in thought, he mulled over what Hank had said. “I’m not sure that there’s any reasonable sample size for anything to do with the dreams. Even people with the same dreams, or who dream of each other, vary greatly in their dreams. Humans, man.” Not that monsters were necessarily any different; just as complicated and messy, but closer knit. And less murderous. Fucking Frisk. “I’ll take a loose pattern over nothing, though.” *** “Same!” Hank concurred, because truly, in this case - it was definitely an instance where something was better than a big fat nothing. “I haven’t gone all the way back to the network’s inception, over time yet, have you?” he asked. Because perhaps if one were to scroll through endless pages of dream talk - over a literal period of years- that might lend way to something. More patterns emerging. Then again, who had the fortitude and patience for that? Well. They never said science was easy. The task would simply require a multitude of burritos. “I’d also be curious as to how this network formed - the mechanics of it. It has to be something otherworldly, I would presume?” He frowned at that, because it sounded ridiculous. Most websites were designed by a coder of some sort - what, did Valarnet just appear out of thin air? *** “I haven’t.” Just thinking about it - when had Valarnet appeared? How long would that even take? - made him need a nap. “If I weren’t in school I might have that kinda time. Maybe - you know any other science-types? Or investigation-types? Maybe we could put together a team of some kind to investigate this.” It was a thought - even just the two of them was better than either on their own, and there were plenty of curious folks around the OC. Sans chewed with thought. “Well, programming and stuff’s not really my specialty so for all I know, magic might be the answer. Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing about the OC.” Demons appearing, Stormtroopers, a mysterious disease that made you bleed from every orifice… a magically appearing website that gave people dreams wouldn’t be that far outside of the norm. Or... Sans frowned. “Do you think maybe someone made it? To bring together the people who dream?” Who would do that, and what their intentions were...Sans didn’t want to think about that. *** Well, that just opened all sorts of Pandora-boxes, didn’t it? Hank already felt himself spiraling down the rabbit hole - but what a fun journey it would be! “If someone made it - then who? Now that is the question,” he hummed thoughtfully. “I would certainly not discount magic, however. I may not understand it fully, but I do know that many feats are possible with it.” Including creating a whole other network on the wide world of interwebs that somehow played into the dream phenomenon. “Someone, an entity, with reality-warping powers, perhaps. According to the Big Bang Theory, some unknown trigger causes the cosmos - what was once a singularity - to inflate in an immense energy expansion. If that can happen, well.” ‘Unknown trigger’ might be the best of what they’d get for the creation of Valarnet, and this universe in general. It could have just happened when this ‘verse was created. “And also, according to cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, some areas of space stop inflating whereas others keep getting larger - and in that bubble network of time and space, the laws of physics in other bubbles, other universes, are very different than our own,” Hank took a swig from his soda to pause because sometimes he went off a mile a minute. “But I think an investigation team is a fantastic idea! I think I might know a few who would be interested. Do you know many other investigate types?” he asked. *** The question indeed. The means weren’t particularly important to Sans, in all honesty, but the reasoning behind it was becoming more concerning. He highly doubted that it was just something that happened, and wanting to draw together a bunch of people with the potential for incredible power never was something that just happened innocently. But, well, he could be a little paranoid about these things. It wasn’t like it was hurting anyone for the moment. He took another bite of his burrito. “I can think of one or two people, maybe, and I’ll keep an eye out for others. You probably know a few people yourself, right?” *** “One or two on this end as well,” Hank confirmed. He wasn’t...extraordinarily popular. But that had always been the case, hadn’t it? Regardless, he was sure that there were plenty of curious types on the network. Maybe not science or engineering super geniuses - but ones better with computers, hacking, websites, that sort of thing. “Honestly, if the network isn’t able to be hacked into - “ And he wasn’t sure if anyone had tried, but maybe so? “...then I would be more apt to go with the magic idea.” He just had a feeling that was what the situation happened to be. Call it instinct. He really didn’t hope it was some all-powerful person either though. As his own dreams had showed him, that never ended well. Even if nothing came of it, it was nice to just get out and have a refreshing conversation. “I thank you for sharing your notes, by the way,” he grinned. “And I’m glad there’s someone else who looks at this whole thing as something to understand rather than simply get used to.” *** Hey, Sans wasn’t the most popular guy either, but if all else failed they could just ask around. Post something on the ‘net (hopefully that wouldn’t cause the world to implode or anything, but hey, that’d be on par for the course for the OC). “I’m not gonna try to hack the potentially magical network with questionable origins, but maybe someone would,” he said. “Magic might be more comforting, actually.” Magic was a convenient excuse for everything, honestly, and Sans didn’t want to think about what kind of virus would have had to be created to make people start dreaming about alternate lives. Still didn’t make the idea of a person with the power to create a website that may or may not prompt the dreams any easier to swallow. “No problem,” Sans said with a shrug, draining the last of his drink. “D’you want me to send them to you? Give you a chance to really look them over?” He shrugged again with a little smirk. “That’s what science guys do, right? Understand things. Not just deal with them.” *** “That would be great, yes. I can pour over them in more detail.” And that was something Hank would look forward to. Perhaps they had their work cut out for them, but he wasn’t one to balk at something just because it was difficult - he would trudge onward, all along the dangerous path of discovery. For science! But now, in the meantime, it looked like both of them needed - you guessed it - more burritos. |