ossifragant | 008 Things Aquired

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008 Things Aquired - [text;]

So here's a question for all of you. What's the furthest you've been from home? Before coming here, I mean. This place doesn't count. I want to know how far people have traveled before coming here.

The name of the place you're from, the name of the place you like going. What your favorite city is called. Things like that.

I've always liked traveling. But I used to spend years in one place, even so. Always found myself drawn back to where I was born. It's one of those interesting things about people. I don't exactly miss the place, but I do find myself thinking about it sometimes. What it would be like if we could go back with memories of this place instead of forgetting everything.

So there's a second part of my question, I guess.

Say you go home, but you remember everything from here. What would you do with that information?

What if you arrived home at a time before the last thing you remember?

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[Why hello there, friend!]

You're from London?

[Oh dear. You suddenly have all of his attention.]

What's London like? You said that the place you were mostly resembles this place. Where I'm from the architecture and the like is quite different.

I think it depends on what those memories are, and what sort of place you're returning to, really.

It's a fairly nice place --- very old, very historic. I'll admit, that gives it several points in its favor in my book.

Now, in terms of architecture... well, it changes fairly often depending on the era and what's in fashion. It'd likely be more similar to what you're familiar with, if my impression of Amestris is correct.

Well, for me... simply knowing I'd accomplished Second Magic on some level and found a strange new world to study would be a nice addition to my resume. I can't complain about that on any level.

Old and historic, huh? I'd like to see it. Shame that's not exactly possible. There's Dublith in Amestris, that's a city that's pretty old, though it's still rather rural. Central is the largest city in the country, though I haven't explored it extensively as it's rather large for my taste.

Amestris certainly doesn't look like this place. I've seen most of Johto, and Kanto doesn't look that different.

What's Second Magic?

I see... it must be more like continental Europe, then. London is honestly quite enormous on its own, but the Underground does help matters.

Ah, Second Magic is the operation of parallel worlds, and it permits you to travel between them. Only one person's really mastered it, though, and he has the benefit of being an unfathomably old vampire.

If I concentrate enough, I could probably say something in Amestrian for you, but it's a little difficult.

...A vampire. Really?

[It's not that he doesn't believe him because he does, being a three hundred year old monster himself.]

Is he a pretty vampire or is he really ugly and old?

[Priorities!]

Well, if it resembled a language I was familiar with, perhaps that could help me place it.

...Hmm... well, he's aged, but in that dignified older gentleman kind of way rather than anything resembling Nosferatu.

I could switch to audio and you can tell me.

[Since if it's actually possible to get to Kayneth's world from Amestris, even if it's almost impossible and more than likely to kill someone than be a successful portal, maybe that means there are actual equivalents?

It's worth a try.]

I'd had to live forever and look ugly. Dignified aging is fine with me, though.

It really couldn't hurt to give it a shot.

And... yes, that is the dilemma, isn't it? It hardly seems worth it if you're not going to look good for eternity.

[THESE TWO]

Being ugly for eternity would be rather horrible. It's a good thing he's more fortunate than that, huh?

Anyway, I think I can say a sentence or two for you, at least.

[And he flips to audio for a moment.]

Dies ist, wie ich es normalerweise zu sprechen.

...honestly, on some level, it just makes him that much more intolerable. He's really something of a wild card to begin with...

[...and HM...]

...yes, that's basically just German. Really, I can't say I was expecting it to be such a close equivalent.

It seems like he's an interesting guy. Hard to control someone who can live forever. Does he do it with the magic in your world?

[Since he's seen how it's possible to live for an extended period of time with alchemy, even if the results are horrifying.

Might as well be possible in other worlds, too!]

I'm sure if I spoke it normally there would be words that didn't match up because of dialect and the like. But that's fascinating. I didn't think that there would be an equivalent.

Oh, he's certainly interesting, I'll give him that much. Really, though, it mostly has to do with him being a vampire. I think it'd be possible for him to die, just extremely difficult.

Oh, certainly. Granted, the fact that I can find equivalents between my world and this world is honestly more bizarre than languages matching up, so who knows, really.

[Well considering he learned not too long ago that you can get to London from Amestris, uh...

Not that he's going to be admitting that in public.]

I know someone who thinks that most worlds, if not all of them, are connected.

Personally, I think he has a point. The fact that you can recognize the language I speak as something familiar makes the idea credible.

I don't know that I'd say all worlds are connected, but there certainly are more variations on a specific theme than I expected... each more strange and wondrous than the last.

I'm not complaining, obviously. It's really rather interesting.

Let's take our worlds and this one, for example.

You can recognize the language that I speak, which says to me that there's a common theme there. That alone says that my world must have developed along similar lines. The names and borders of countries may be different, but there is a common thread there.

You said that this world is similar to a country in your world called Japan, right? Or at least the two regions we have access to are. It seems reasonable to me that there's probably a country similar to Japan in mine, if my country has a direct parallel in yours.

I can't know this for certain but it's possible.

Well, they are called infinite parallel worlds for a reason. If anything, I'm honestly surprised there aren't more people from universes with completely mundane differences like, say, I had coffee one morning instead of tea.

That's the main thing that makes me wonder about this place --- there's enough variation to suggest some sort of criteria, but not enough to suggest selection is entirely random.

[Hm, that's a good point, actually.]

Maybe there's some sort of unknown criteria. Many people come from some iteration of the same world, some come from worlds that are similar, and then there are the worlds that lay in the outskirts somehow that still must be connected.

It brings some people here but not everyone.

Hard to know if there's a mysterious force behind it or not. If it was entirely random you'd expect there to be more people who just happen to be from a place, right? It seems more deliberate than that.

Exactly. I think the pattern I've noticed that most of the people who show up here are involved with something important beforehand, and it seems as though they occasionally have a chance of attracting others from their worlds... but this isn't always a guarantee.

People have attempted to hash out the criteria before, but we haven't hit on any real answers yet.

Of the people from my world here, I've met many of them in my own world, though one I only met briefly and the other was more of a quick glance.

For the most part, it seems that everyone in my world represented here has connections to one person.

That person is here, by the way.

Edited 2014-08-15 07:10 (UTC)

Really, now? That is unusual. I can't think of a focal person for those I've met from my world, though I can think of a focal event.

Who is that person, then?

[Given that most of the people from Amestris are the bad guys, it's not really a big surprise that they'd all be connected to one person....]

His name is Edward Elric. He's a good kid.

[Greed, you have publicly talked about being his enemy before.]

[kayneth... may have missed that...]

Ah, Elric? I believe I've met him.

...several times, actually. He really seems to come and go.

So I've heard.

He's a determined guy. The one here right now is a bit different than the one I know, though.

Well, I'm going to have to ask, then --- different in time or different in space?

Both.

He's older than the one I know but he's also different than the one I know. He remembers a completely different set of events.