But only if you promise to be the one to reassure Mister Ellis when he takes up haunting the corridor outside the project office. I've used up all my excuses.
—Oh! Have you compared notes with Madame de Cedoux and Miss Niehaus yet? Did you think to measure the Fadeiation in the room where you woke? Did you see your Miss Potts?
I invented time travel and then died, so it gets a bit murky. Those things aren't causal, by the way, it was really awesome of me. The time travel. Dying was really brave of me.
I took down some notes, but we're probably a few centuries of society-wide industrial advancement short of it mattering much, practical app-wise. But maybe someone'll dig the theory.
Anyhoo, do we have any record of rifters who are dead in real life but still vanished? I know our archives are flawless.
Not that I'm aware of. Though you might consult Provost Baudin. I imagine if anyone were to have copies of any such historical record, it would be him. You could also consider conducting a poll of our current slate. It's possible some of them are dead.
[You know. Because they're currently so primed to cooperate with invasive personal inquiries.]
I'll ask the elf. Or better, his ex-wife. Or neither, 'cause it doesn't really matter if this thing is gonna turn me inside out over however long we got. Figurative we. [ He is, after all, talking to a real girl.
No grimness in his tone, though. This is not the kind of convo he started without doing the thinking first. ]
Mine's pretty well developed. You got a year on me, but we don't know the exact variables at play here.
[Here, finally, the rapid clip of her replies slows. There is no outright dourness involved, only a check on the pace. But in the language of Wysteria Poppell this is tantamount to prudently drawing the metaphorical curtains closed around a conversation.]
One of the new Rifters suggested that it might have something to do with the amount of time I spent away from the Gallows. But I wonder whether it's less that and more a matter of how much one spends closing rifts and being exposed to Fadeiation. Madame de Cedoux has had her anchor far long than I have, but does very little field work in that respect. That would leave the Provost's ex-wife as something of an inexplicable outlier, but then again she's native to Thedas.
[Oh, but for the record:]
Mister Dickerson did as fine a job with my arm as could be expected, I think.
[ There's a hefty beat of silence after that, letting it sit there for a moment, before speaking up again. ]
We've got at least one case on record for overdevelopment through isolation, another for cardiac proximity, and then there's you.
[ Three disparate points of reference, three different patterns. As always, they either have too much data or not enough. ]
I wanna get a sense of where I'm at. Physically, how advanced we're talking. We can tinker with what we have but we're gonna have to verify any of the data we pull, 'cause waving a thaumoscope around isn't gonna cut it.
And how exactly would you propose we do that? I have a sneaking suspicion no one will support having their arm carved into even if it stays attached to them during this verification process.
[Don't say 'cellular'. Miss Niehaus tried that one on her already.]
Well perhaps— [She pauses, longer and more concrete. Not hesitating. Thinking.]
We know from the state of the arm in the Felandaris office ['my arm' would have been a more expedient arrangement of words] that the anchor transmutes the flesh as it advances. What we don't know is the rate at which it does so, and what effects may speed or slow down the process—
[Thinking aloud, now.]
The arm has been separated and the anchor in it inert long enough now that I doubt it would be very useful to study it. But perhaps there is a variation of the thaumoscope which could be devised to measure gradations of an anchor's power. Similar to how we measure a rift, you know. And then we need simply to... stress test a variety of anchors and see if any variations reveal themselves. That's were I would begin.
Otherwise the only thing I can think of would be to flay your arm with a spirit healer to hand to reattach everything and that seems terribly gruesome.
Yeah I'd like to not be sashimi. At least not without a better class of anaesthetic.
The thaumoscope itself doesn't pick up anything at its most frickin' fragile-ass setting possible, but if we got one or built a better one that won't vibrate itself to death, maybe activate the anchor while it takes measurements—
[ Then maybe. He lets the possibility drift forth from broken sentence, scrubbing hand over hair. ]
When I was back home, I got all that shrapnel cleaned outta me. Retirement, you know, seemed like the thing. If it's gotta go, theoretically I won't pussy out of getting the big chop. But these anchors have utilty. Rifts keep poppin' open.
Not that I'm thrilled about maybe vanishing into oblivion any day now either.
[Yes, both of those are highly legitimate points. There are hardly any semantic details which she could wish to contest—there are clearly ways in which one might acquire and anchor, and rifters are at this point seemingly inevitable occurrences and so it seems unlikely they will run out of anchors any time soon; they don't know that rifters disappear into nothing at all when they go; it's not as if the loss of the anchor would make him useless to Rifwatch—and so instead of doing that, Wysteria begins again:]
Well, perhaps we might consider the behavior of the Gates. If we observe the patterns detected by the thaumoscope, they seem to have been stabilized in a sense by the Taint. Of course I'm not suggesting that we infect anyone with the Blight. I only wonder if the anchor's arcane energies at all mirror those ordinarily expressed by a rift, then perhaps we might find some way of artificially mimicking a contrasting flow of energy to balance it and so avoid both the big chop and— [y'know] The other thing.
This is obviously all highly theoretical. But it does seem to me that there may be some precedent waiting directly under out nose.
Lyrium has similar behaviours, right? More like a blank canvas than something active like the Blight, but it's a natural energy source tied into the Fade. Maybe this loops back to your little science project.
The Venatori weren't just Blighting the rifts willy-nilly either, they had to be doing some other nonsense to stabilise it.
I honestly don't understand how they're blighting the rifts to begin with. How on earth do you poison— Well, that's not really the point which we're pursuing. I suppose lyrium could be used in some sense if we could find the correct way to... [What? She struggles for the right phrasing. This is all so tenuous that it feels like a sort of make believe.] Control it? Direct it?
Maybe there's some way of—oh, don't say this to anyone else because I'm certain everyone will be highly offended if I say so, but Fenris has had lyrium laid into him directly. Perhaps in a Rifter something in a similar vein—that's not a pun, I mean it—could serve as a tether of some kind.
—You see, this is exactly why Mister Dickerson and I's science project ought to be of interest to the whole company.
[ But like, not no, only that it's too early a thought to start shaking down traumatised slave elves about the horrific experimentations done to their body. ]
Keep me updated. And if you get anyone killed, please make sure I'm not the last asshole to hear about it, okay? Also don't get anyone killed.
[Primly, in tones of 'Please, Mister Stark. I've considered this possibility and have ruled it out as highly unlikely'—]
Mister Dickerson and I mean to conduct the work with all due caution and respect to the various documentation that has preceded it, I assure you. We're not going to get anyone killed. That would be monstrous. And if something proves to be even slightly more dangerous than anticipated, I'll see that you're informed.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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But only if you promise to be the one to reassure Mister Ellis when he takes up haunting the corridor outside the project office. I've used up all my excuses.
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I went home last winter. Oneirologically speaking.
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Nope, did not, yeah. Got through about eight years, give or take. It got a little weird round the end.
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[Wysteria, that's the wrong tone for 'I'm sorry Tony, that sounds very traumatic.']
I suppose it's too much to hope for that the time travel trick might be useful here.
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I took down some notes, but we're probably a few centuries of society-wide industrial advancement short of it mattering much, practical app-wise. But maybe someone'll dig the theory.
Anyhoo, do we have any record of rifters who are dead in real life but still vanished? I know our archives are flawless.
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[You know. Because they're currently so primed to cooperate with invasive personal inquiries.]
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I'll ask the elf. Or better, his ex-wife. Or neither, 'cause it doesn't really matter if this thing is gonna turn me inside out over however long we got. Figurative we. [ He is, after all, talking to a real girl.
No grimness in his tone, though. This is not the kind of convo he started without doing the thinking first. ]
Mine's pretty well developed. You got a year on me, but we don't know the exact variables at play here.
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One of the new Rifters suggested that it might have something to do with the amount of time I spent away from the Gallows. But I wonder whether it's less that and more a matter of how much one spends closing rifts and being exposed to Fadeiation. Madame de Cedoux has had her anchor far long than I have, but does very little field work in that respect. That would leave the Provost's ex-wife as something of an inexplicable outlier, but then again she's native to Thedas.
[Oh, but for the record:]
Mister Dickerson did as fine a job with my arm as could be expected, I think.
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We've got at least one case on record for overdevelopment through isolation, another for cardiac proximity, and then there's you.
[ Three disparate points of reference, three different patterns. As always, they either have too much data or not enough. ]
I wanna get a sense of where I'm at. Physically, how advanced we're talking. We can tinker with what we have but we're gonna have to verify any of the data we pull, 'cause waving a thaumoscope around isn't gonna cut it.
Pun not intended.
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[Don't say 'cellular'. Miss Niehaus tried that one on her already.]
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We know from the state of the arm in the Felandaris office ['my arm' would have been a more expedient arrangement of words] that the anchor transmutes the flesh as it advances. What we don't know is the rate at which it does so, and what effects may speed or slow down the process—
[Thinking aloud, now.]
The arm has been separated and the anchor in it inert long enough now that I doubt it would be very useful to study it. But perhaps there is a variation of the thaumoscope which could be devised to measure gradations of an anchor's power. Similar to how we measure a rift, you know. And then we need simply to... stress test a variety of anchors and see if any variations reveal themselves. That's were I would begin.
Otherwise the only thing I can think of would be to flay your arm with a spirit healer to hand to reattach everything and that seems terribly gruesome.
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The thaumoscope itself doesn't pick up anything at its most frickin' fragile-ass setting possible, but if we got one or built a better one that won't vibrate itself to death, maybe activate the anchor while it takes measurements—
[ Then maybe. He lets the possibility drift forth from broken sentence, scrubbing hand over hair. ]
When I was back home, I got all that shrapnel cleaned outta me. Retirement, you know, seemed like the thing. If it's gotta go, theoretically I won't pussy out of getting the big chop. But these anchors have utilty. Rifts keep poppin' open.
Not that I'm thrilled about maybe vanishing into oblivion any day now either.
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[Yes, both of those are highly legitimate points. There are hardly any semantic details which she could wish to contest—there are clearly ways in which one might acquire and anchor, and rifters are at this point seemingly inevitable occurrences and so it seems unlikely they will run out of anchors any time soon; they don't know that rifters disappear into nothing at all when they go; it's not as if the loss of the anchor would make him useless to Rifwatch—and so instead of doing that, Wysteria begins again:]
Well, perhaps we might consider the behavior of the Gates. If we observe the patterns detected by the thaumoscope, they seem to have been stabilized in a sense by the Taint. Of course I'm not suggesting that we infect anyone with the Blight. I only wonder if the anchor's arcane energies at all mirror those ordinarily expressed by a rift, then perhaps we might find some way of artificially mimicking a contrasting flow of energy to balance it and so avoid both the big chop and— [y'know] The other thing.
This is obviously all highly theoretical. But it does seem to me that there may be some precedent waiting directly under out nose.
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Lyrium has similar behaviours, right? More like a blank canvas than something active like the Blight, but it's a natural energy source tied into the Fade. Maybe this loops back to your little science project.
The Venatori weren't just Blighting the rifts willy-nilly either, they had to be doing some other nonsense to stabilise it.
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Maybe there's some way of—oh, don't say this to anyone else because I'm certain everyone will be highly offended if I say so, but Fenris has had lyrium laid into him directly. Perhaps in a Rifter something in a similar vein—that's not a pun, I mean it—could serve as a tether of some kind.
—You see, this is exactly why Mister Dickerson and I's science project ought to be of interest to the whole company.
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[ But like, not no, only that it's too early a thought to start shaking down traumatised slave elves about the horrific experimentations done to their body. ]
Keep me updated. And if you get anyone killed, please make sure I'm not the last asshole to hear about it, okay? Also don't get anyone killed.
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Mister Dickerson and I mean to conduct the work with all due caution and respect to the various documentation that has preceded it, I assure you. We're not going to get anyone killed. That would be monstrous. And if something proves to be even slightly more dangerous than anticipated, I'll see that you're informed.
[Wow, check out how responsible she is!]
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Great.
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Great. I look forward to experimenting on you.
[On. With. Tomato, tomahto.]