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[prismods]

Remember Summer Days

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"Anri 杏里 [1983] [Timely] - 11 Remember Summer Days" (Watch on YouTube)

▶ Fox and Friends
Moon Iris; Lunar Scientia, Lunatia | top

You awaken amidst the darkness with only a faint light to greet you. Your body is hemmed in by shards of crystals, gently sparkling and possibly pricking your skin. The surrounding landscape is dyed in the pinks and purples of the dusk filled with crystals protruding from the ground, some as large as a skyscraper. Even the few shy moon creatures you find in the wild have strange crystal growths on their hides. This is far from home— perhaps a dream? You pinch your skin and slap your cheeks, yet nothing seems to do the trick. Searching for answers yields nothing but an endless expanse of purple dust as far as the eye can see. You have four options: one, panic; two, soil yourself; three, admire it all then soil yourself; or four, go into survival mode. Eventually, you’ll realize that you’re not alone.

After a day or two of living off the crystal wilderness, a group of people find you worse for wear. They are the gallant Moon Knights from the planet of Prismatica. After the strange phenomenon during the past months when scientists observed the sudden appearance of rainbow crystals in the sky, the government has been feverishly combing through the moon for more Moonblessed to be rescued. You’ll eventually be brought into Iris’s moon government center.

You all may have your usual inquiries — Where are we? Who are you? What's going on? Why did I think grocery store sushi was a good idea? — and the Prismals are almost too eager to answer. They tell you about their world and about the first appearance of the Moonblessed as the medical staff gives you an examination to make sure you’re not carrying any viruses or biological hazards. If you react violently, you may be restrained and nerfed with a specialized neurotransmitting gun that releases a numbing agent through the top of your spine. Once the examinations are over, you’re informed that you will be provided accommodations on their planet during your stay.

While waiting for transport to be prepared, you may freely roam around the government center. Eventually you’re called back from exploring, escorted to the docks, and led onto a large transport vessel. Destination: Prismatica.

a.) An envoy of Prismals with fox-like traits is currently visiting Prismatica to meet with the Queen. Their kind was so awed by tales of the Moonblessed that they have gathered to greet all of them with a ritual dance of their people. They also offer to teach the Moonblessed an amazing trick — with a wink!

Flowing robes follow their delicate bodies as they perform a passionate series of steps and acrobatics with their paper fans. Early in the performance, they peek above their open fans and wink at their audience. At that moment, your limbs are suddenly enchanted with exceptional grace. Couldn’t put your leg behind your head before? Had trouble doing a split? Well, now you can perform these flexible feats and more. The fox Prismals will be inviting the Moonblessed to join them so they can attempt to feel their invigorating chroma against their bodies.

b.) The dexterity spell the fox Prismals cast is one of many a fox has in their repertoire of charms and curses. It can be very useful for making a quick escape! While the older fox Prismals teach this spell to the interested Moonblessed (read: teach them how to wink and use chroma at the same time), you can explore the city with the younger fox Prismals.

A delicious drink called bubbly tea is very popular among teenagers in Lunatia right now! Unfortunately, defective apricot pearls inside may cause you to float a few feet in the air. This effect goes away as soon as the affected pass the pearls at a bathroom, but getting there will be an adventure. Maybe you Moonblessed have abilities that can get rid of the effect? The fox Prismals don’t have a spell to cure this...

Help the affected young fox Prismals get to a bathroom and they will teach you another spell: simply place a finger over your lips, and no one else but your friends can listen in on your secret conversations!

▶ Crab ‘n Go Menu
Lunatia | top

Several tents decorated with streamers, shells, and pearls have been set up along the shorelines of Level 2. A giant clam mascot tells you that hey, hey, hey! There’s a beach festival happening tonight! It will be full of fun activities, and anybody who is anybody will be there. The Prismals involved are inviting people all around Levels 1 and 2. Bathing suits will be provided to all participating festival-goers. What are they celebrating? Who knows. Maybe Prismals just want to have a good time! Hey, hey, hey!

a.) One of Lunatia’s favorite beach party games is “Find the King Crab.” King crabs have a golden belly and are hidden among other disgruntled crabs. Protip: king crabs are often found in the center of large clusters of crabs. Be careful while flipping them; they are very eager to clip anything that comes near their nest! Be the first to find a king crab and claim the grand prize —- an all-you-can-eat buffet for four at a King Crab Sandcastle, a high-end seaside seafood restaurant. You now get to exact vengeance on these crabs by eating as many as you please.

b.) There’s an educational tent promoting the soothing pastime of conch listening. Glossy conchs of various shapes and sizes can be found on the tables. Some special ones are said to link to one’s innermost self. Special conchs are encrusted with tiny glistening gems, making them easy to spot in the sunlight. Pressing them to your ear will draw forth the sound of someone’s voice — be it yours or someone familiar. Depending on the listener’s mood, the sound of the voice will range from peaceful singing to blood-curdling screams.

c.) Another tent is dedicated to scuba diving. You can either rent out a special set of nodes which are worn on either side of your neck to replicate the function of gills, allowing you to breathe safely beneath the water, or traditional scuba diving gear since some Prismals like the challenge! Explore Lunatia’s vast undersea world and bear witness to its wonders, such as its crystalline corals and tropical fish, a myriad of species unique to Prismatica. A few of these species are the rainbow seahorses carrying newborns in their pouches and greater clownfishes that can’t seem to find their offspring. Venture further under and you will eventually find aquatic bears with scaled bodies that seem to be very territorial over their habitat and hoard of delicious (?) sea honey. As they often say, don’t poke the bear…

As the festival winds down, some Prismals can be seen dancing and eating by the campfire. Everyone is welcome to relax and watch a nice fireworks show by the pier while a local band known as the Briny Seamen plays a compilation of their greatest hits. Expect an uncomfortable amount of marimba solos!



▶ Some Assembly Required
LEVEL 2, LUNATIA | top

Once you’ve been all crabbed out for the day, you can finally settle in your new home in Level 2:

a.) Find new roommates and say hello to your neighbors! City officials will give you directions to the designated districts across Level 2 and instruct you to pick out a unit. Each apartment complex has a different aesthetic, some may look cozy, some stylish, and some bizarre. The free accommodations have a basic living space that can only fit two or three people at most in one unit.

Starter Chromaspace furnishings are provided which can be controlled with the touch of a built-in panel. Examples are color-changing curtains, transforming sofa beds, cabinets turning into tables, etc. Customizing your apartment or moving out will have to wait until you earn more chroma. Until then, why don’t you check out your new neighborhood or explore the city levels? Maybe your new roommates or neighbors can give you a “hand” with allowance for dinner.

b.) All Moonblessed new and old receive a frazzled email from their favorite Moon Knight, Fahrouk. He was involved in Obscuria’s Glow affair, resulting in both him and his daughter becoming new unofficial Moonblessed Community Ambassadors.

Officer Fahrouk

Subject: MOONBLESSED THERE’S A SALE AT KRABBA!!

To my heroes and my greatest inspiration,

New arrivals, welcome! Old friends, hello! I hope all of you are doing well.

I am writing to let you know there is a sale at KRABBA, Lunatia’s most popular flat-packed furniture store. All crab-themed decors are 50% off!

Here is a picture of my daughter with her new KRABBA shelf. Now we can display our Moonblessed bromides with joy and pride! We had so much fun putting it together and hope you do too.

Here’s a big bear hug from us both! We also attached directions to KRABBA. Happy shopping!

Love,
Fahrouk and Hala

True enough, attached is a picture of him and his daughter standing in front of some newly assembled furniture as well as a map to the KRABBA store in Level 2.

Also true is the sale at KRABBA! The prices are affordable, but the crab-themed items are especially cheap and ready to brighten anyone’s day. Among the notable items in stock are a sea shell-shaped loveseat called Havsskal, a foamy green kitchen table named Tång, and a bed named Havsbotten that somehow resembles the sandy sea floor. Please do not lie down on the beds! The staff have been made to wear crab-themed outfits and will not hesitate to use those claws to get people in line.

After paying at the cashier for your items, feel free to order some of KRABBA’s signature meat (?) balls with Moonberry sauce. You deserve a break!

▶ Questions

If you have any questions regarding this test drive meme, please ask them in the Questions thread below.

▶ As a reminder, test drive memes are for new characters only. However, current players are more than welcome to use these prompts for their own posts in the IC communities, personal inboxes, catch-all posts, etc.!
▶ As our test drive memes are game canon, feel free to keep any threads that happen here as canon for your character should they be accepted.

Comments

[menuetto]

He said it was a "thought experiment". He was probably just saying it to rile her up. I mean, couldn't you imagine him getting into a real fight with an AI almost immediately after meeting her? That would be incredible data. Maybe they should have gone at it for a bit.

[ But all she did was get teased by Amadeus for spending time with him. How could she be close with someone she literally just met, Amadeus? Or more accurately, Kurisu??

Talking with Kurisu like this, though - it feels right, familiar. Maho hates this place for ripping her away from a world with incredibly high stakes (and she's aware of the difference in location - that means it's not a world line change, as far as she understands them), but they're chatting like old times. She can't hate it too much just yet. ]

It was an argument for the sake of an argument. It's a natural position for scientists to take: that just because something hasn't been proved doesn't mean it's impossible. [ She's practically quoting both Amadeus and the real Kurisu. It reminds her of the Einstein quote - death means not being able to listen to Mozart anymore- that Kurisu once explained: the quote was logical, because death meant not being able to listen to anything, including Mozart.

Maybe that's too grim a thought to have in front of her maybe-dead maybe-not partner. She grimaces. ]

But... he really was into the idea of a time machine. At the time, I suppose he knew it was possible. Maybe it was cruel to ask him to help us with our research.

[timemachine]

[Maybe it is cruel, but with Maho there talking to her like nothing happened, she doesn't even think about it. For the first time in this place, she feels alive. Of course that gets her thinking 'what is living'? What constitutes to being alive? Is it having a consciousness? The brain still being able to work and think? Though there was that one murder where a man's brain was scooped out, but his body kept alive-- she'd probably argue that's not living at all though.

That's just being a zomb--

Yeah she's done thinking about this. Let's talk science.]

Given we're on this topic, I'll digress and say time machines are possible. [She's been told by a 3rd party that she's the "Mother of the Time Machine" in the alpha world line. Something she honestly takes a little pride in.] Rather, they're not impossible, as mentioned.

[Again, she's seen the Phonewave and D-Mails and how they work using time travel theory, with somehow having everything they needed conveniently in one spot. Like the lifter and the direct access to SERN.]

What are your thoughts on them, Senpai?

[Since that can of worms has been fully opened, why not just dive head first into the discussion?]

[menuetto]

It depends on when you'd asked me, but...

[ She has to think about it for a moment. Knowing that they're true now, that they're entirely possible and will happen in the future thanks to Kurisu's research, she can't fully deny them. The first time Okabe told her about how time machines were very much real, and that they had already made an offshoot of one in the summer of 2010 instead of the distant, far off future, her head was spinning. By that point, it gave her a headache, but not because of its impossibility: rather, because of the fact that it felt so true that it was astounding she hadn't realized it before.

How much does Kurisu know of the results of her research? World lines are one thing; does she know that transporting matter through time is possible? If she tells Kurisu that now, will she be creating a time paradox? Is it possible to create a time paradox, or will the timeline sort it out on its own?

Time travel is making her head hurt. She cups a hand to her chin, thoughtful, but she's intent on answering Kurisu's question - or at least give both of them something to debate about. ]

They still seem like something out of a science fiction novel. Every scifi thing wants to add time travel these days. But I don't think they're entirely impossible... just illogical, according to everything that we know now.

[ But then, that's about to change, thanks to Kurisu's research. A small flash of envy surges up in Maho's blood, but she tamps it down. ]

Consider the theory of relativity. A basic concept, but one way that time travel could work - were it possible - is by manipulating or exceeding the speed of light to travel forward or backward in a liminal space. If matter cannot exceed the speed of light, and its mass becomes infinite the closer we travel to it, the first hurdle would be to create an enclosed space where the theory of relativity ceases to apply. Or, alternatively, the creation and manipulation of wormholes. SERN is... [ A quick pause. The thought makes her tremble, even now. ] ...The Kerr black hole they're researching is something that a time machine could take advantage of.

It's all based on hypotheticals. But we've never made a habit of proving the impossible impossible, have we? Amadeus is a marvel of technology, something that people even two years ago wouldn't be able to dream of. An AI with a sense of self is absurd to most laymen. I guess time travel could be the same way. We'd have to test and test and test, but there's nothing saying that we can't. It just takes finding proof, rather than extrapolating hypotheticals.

[ And it is, she knows. It's very possible. Kurisu was able to construct a Time Leap Machine, and Maho, ever the follower, created one based on Kurisu's design. Isn't that proof enough for a scientist? ]

[timemachine]

And as scientists, we want to continually test.

[But then she thinks of all the Jellymen that have been reported with SERN. Proof that time travel works, but not enough to send a human life though without killing them. That's been discussed given the 'hole's too small' (thanks Mayuri...) thus only allowing one to send 36 bytes of data. Using SERN's Kerr black holes, she's figured out how to compress memory data at least, and successfully, at that. Having seen the results of her labor is more than enough for her, even if she's never experienced it herself (at least not in her worldline).]

Essentially, you're right. Or I want to say that you're right based on my own theories and hypotheses. [It... feels weird discussing this with Maho. Though given it's clear she won't shoot her down for not just believing in time travel, but trying to prove it, that's enough for her right now.]

The theory behind Amadeus may be the start we need to prove that time travel could happen. [She's still treading on water with this since it's always a fear to get some push back from someone she highly respects. Anyone else? She'd be arguing with in seconds and probably telling them how stupid they are for not considering the idea.

But this is her respected Senpai. And that respect is the last thing she wants to lose.]

[menuetto]

[ That's... a good point. It's something that Maho had only briefly considered - that AI research could help with time travel. She'd thought of the worst case scenarios: of someone combining the two, making super soldiers with altered memories they could send to the past. Still, the brilliance that Kurisu always shares when she matches two theories is second to none.

Maho hums thoughtfully, considering. ]

You might be right. Encoding memory data like we've done for Amadeus could be the first step. If you could use the two to mentally travel, rather than physically... The problems with a human being traveling at the speed of light don't exist any longer.

[ She's nudging a bit, gently. How much of what she should reveal from what she's heard is something she's carefully considering, but she knows that this theory works, that Kurisu's already hashed it out. She just hadn't heard it put so succinctly - an application of Amadeus's concepts.

From the way she hesitates, speaks in vague words, Kurisu seems kind of nervous abut bringing the idea up, instead of joyous, excited. Maho touches her arm softly to try and tell her it's okay. ]

Would you tell me more of what you've discovered? You said you saw your theories at work in the Alpha Attractor Field.

[timemachine]

So we already know that memories manifest and are written to the hippocampus as electrical signals. My idea was what if we took the idea of Virtual Rebuilding technology, but used it in reverse-- turn nerve impulse signals into video data. In a sense, what Amadeus already is.

[She's smiling. Not the smug grin of a girl who's decided to one-up some wannabe scientists, but the excitement of a child sharing her discovery with another.]

Okabe and Hashida had created a makeshift time machine combining a cell phone and a microwave. There were also other factors that caused it to work, born of pure coincidence and not intellect, but I digress. I ran multiple tests on it and found it could only send 36 bytes of data at one time, which is a problem because the human memory when uploaded in full is about 3.24 terabytes. But because Hashida had hacked into SERN, we were able to use that to our advantage to compress those 3.24 terabytes into 36 bytes using their Kerr black holes. It then is sent to the receiver's phone number at the specified time we set via the Phonewave. [...name subject to change.]

I had created a headset that would record the nerve impulses in the temporal lobe, more specifically, the CA3 region where memories are stored -- in other words, a homebrew version of what we built at the lab.

Teal deer-- upload memory data, send it through time machine, receiver gets a call and obtains those memories.

[It's not until a moment after she said that she accidentally used netspeak, but ah... maybe it's fine. She's pretty sure she's spouted memes before and all she got was weird looks, as all scientists do.]