un: brightness_kholin; more questions to be answered

[veristitalian]

What language are you speaking? What language do you hear?

Do you speak other languages, and when you switch to them, do the people around you understand each other?

What script, glyphs, or alphabet do you write with? Do you see them on your communicator? Do other people see them as the icons you touch? [She means keys to type with, but doesn't quite have the turn of phrase.] If you write them by hand can the people around you read them?

I'm experimenting with written word. I'm in the bar drawing glyphs, if anyone volunteers to come try to read.

Comments

un: hudie

[bu773rfly]

Japanese. I think.

I'm using a normal romaji IME.

Now that I'm thinking about it it's harder to tell.

[She'll get back to the other comparisons when she's feeling less disoriented.]

[veristitalian]

I've never heard the term romanji IME, or anything close enough to be able to infer. What is that? How does it work, roughly speaking?

[bu773rfly]

Input method for keyboarded devices that collapses phonetic typing into logographic characters in real time. It'd be strange for it to be working correctly if I was using another language without knowing it.

But it's too familiar to be good evidence. My memory could be faulty and just patching over something that doesn't make sense.

[veristitalian]

Come discuss this with me properly? I'm in the bar. I have a number of questions, and I think this could generate real insights into the relationship between the station and our minds.

[bu773rfly]

Okay. Give me some time.

[She holed up in here to decompress and still needs to finish tbh.

...

"Some time" is something creeping up on half an hour. She makes her way to the bar then; Erika is a thin girl with hair down to her thighs and watchful eyes and a mask of an expression, and when she steps into the room she just...stops there, glancing around like she's committing the place to memory detail by detail.

There's just the one person in the bar, making it obvious who she's supposed to be meeting, but Erika is Erika and initiating conversation is impossible. Once she's been looked at, she'll nod in careful greeting.

[veristitalian]

[It takes a few minutes for Jasnah to glance up from her work. She meets the other woman's eyes, lifts an eyebrow in surprise, and rises to greet her. She's from a more formal culture; you meet new people on your feet among the Alethi nobility.]

Welcome.

[bu773rfly]

[Erika feels intimidated. It's not unusual for her. If it was unusual, it'd be the fault of Jasnah's age - it's been a while since Erika's interacted with a woman over her early 20s - but she'd feel small no matter what, so.]

Mmh. [Oh, okay. This feels formal. Erika gives her a stiff, moderate bow, not making eye contact.] ..."Hudie" is me.

[veristitalian]

I'm Jasnah Kholin.

[She answers- and it isn't surprising she's intimidated. Jasnah is a tall woman, statuesque, and with proud features and an aristocratic bearing. She returns the bow with a light dip of her head in acknowledgement.]

Thank you for coming.

[bu773rfly]

[Silence, and a nod, and the lightest of fidgets at her sleeve. The fidget of someone who's trying very hard to not fidget.

Erika goes to take a seat across the table from Jasnah, radiating awkward reluctance and expecting that she'll ask whatever questions need asking.]

[veristitalian]

May I please see your communicator? I'd like to see the- you called it a function of the, what, the key board?

[Sitting along with her, hesitating a little on unfamiliar words.]

[bu773rfly]

Keyboard. [Affirmative. Erika glances at her for a split second, mildly surprised that she doesn't know - it makes a weird kind of sense, though, with her odd choices of words in the post - and demonstrates, pulling up a reply to their earlier conversation and the on-screen keyboard with it.

(God who the hell designed these things one-handed typing is terrible)

Erika's appears, at a glance, to be a regular old English QWERTY keyboard.]

[veristitalian]

What are these characters?

[Asks Jasnah, leaning in. She holds her own up for comparison, showing her the series of delicate, symmetrical waves that make up her written language.]

[bu773rfly]

[...Huh. That is not any language that exists on Earth.

Wild.]

...This is an alphabet used for a number of different languages. Not for mine, but on a keyboard...

[Erika types, slowly, demonstrating how the IME works - or as much of it as Jasnah can see before it resolves into her own language. Two letters collapse on-screen into a single kana; when kana form a word, they collapse into a kanji, and Erika taps the spacebar to scroll through until the right one is on the screen. Repeat until sentences form. "This is a demonstration", she spells out.]

[veristitalian]

It's the- it's as though I'm using glyphs to spell out words phonetically and it's translating into script.

[She follows along, watching the typing, and the changes that take place on the screen.]

Because in normal circumstances you wouldn't use these keys to make words? But then why is the board arranged that way?

[bu773rfly]

History of the technology, international compatibility...efficiency. The keyboard was developed overseas, and there are more kana than letters, so you end up having to double up on some keys. There are kana input modes, too, but this is the one that stuck.

[Explaining things is infinitely less nerve-wracking than small talk.]

[veristitalian]

I see.

[She says, and she does understand- doesn't make another metaphor about reading Shin, just files it away.]

What is the other language? English?

[Only guessing because it's the most common one.]

[bu773rfly]

That's the most common language that uses that alphabet. There are others. French, Portugese, Spanish, German...more than that.

[veristitalian]

This is on Earth.

[Clarifying, as she taps her bottom lip with her fingertips, contemplating all of this.]

That's your planet?

[bu773rfly]

Right.

[veristitalian]

Where were you, and what were you doing before you got here?

[She hasn't found a pattern yet, but she's going to keep looking.]

[bu773rfly]

[Some lies are easy. Like, "I'm fine". That's an easy lie.

"Where were you and what were you doing" is not an easy lie. It requires vaulting over the truth, and the truth is a fathomless, inky pit teeming with unknowable, paralyzing things. Erika makes the mistake of glancing down, and gets caught contemplating the truth while trying to find and trim off its edges into a tidy lie.

Eaters. Digitization. Deletion. What would even make sense to this woman? What wouldn't prod more questions? Erika doesn't want to think about the Eaters anymore, she'd sooner just stand up and walk away rudely, but the Legion and the Mother and the paradise would still be there, the sensation of it all haunting. It's already haunting. Nothing-feeling, bleeding away into the scenery, all into one and the one is hungry and anguished. She wants to go home. She wants to go somewhere that's not here.

Back in reality, Erika is stuck halfway through building another sentence on her communicator, idly tapping space, scrolling stoically through kanji options over and over and over. The silence is too long and painfully awkward.

Spooked by how long it's taken her to reply but still unable to build a working lie, Erika shakes her head tightly.]

[veristitalian]

[Ah. Jasnah, who isn't remotely maternal, and can't really be described as empathetic or delicate, just hesitates.]

Why don't we walk to the replicators? I haven't been able to find time to eat.

[bu773rfly]

[It's for the better, tbh. There's not much Erika hates more than being spoken down to.

She's a bit miffed already, recognizing the request as some kind of...attempt at consolation, rather than a genuine working need, but she also doesn't have much standing to complain from, after locking up like that. So she'll just go along with it, nodding and stepping out of the way and taking the time to unpeel her thoughts from...all of that.

As they start to walk:]

I haven't tried writing anything by hand here.

[veristitalian]

Finding writing supplies hasn't been easy, and the ones I have, I don't like to waste on tests.

[She agrees, leading the way.]

Finding anything, actually. This place is barren, where it isn't decaying.

[bu773rfly]

[Quiet nod.]

It raises a lot of questions, though, so it's good to be looking into it. Working auto-translation could indicate some kind of...

[She makes a vague, stiff gesture at and over her head, sort of indicating the brain.]

Things we don't know about that happened between coming here and waking up.