Welcome to the Program

[airlockedmods]

Good Morning, Champions. In the interest of maintaining healthy sleep patterns, a day/night cycle is in effect. Your presence is expected in the cafeteria in exactly one hour.

[The voice comes through not a large speaker, but through the device that's attached to each Champion's arm. Further investigation of the features of the device will reveal a list of profiles, a mini-map, and a list of rules. The hallways are shiny white and silver, with running lights along the floor and lights on the ceiling, and at the junction of the hallways is a sign with a knife and fork icon and an arrow pointing down the hall.

Welcome to the Excellence Program, Champions. Time to get to know your teammates.]

Comments

Hallway

[in4apounding]

...are you okay miss?

[Things Penny currently is: confused, scared, lost, weaponless. Things she is despite all the above: inclined to help people. So a girl literally feeling her way down the hall? Is going to get her attention.]

[immaculacies]

[...She hadn't noticed anyone in her peripherals. How very novel. Manaka glances in the direction of that voice, breaking her laser-focused forward stare with a blank expression.]

...How am I meant to answer that?

[in4apounding]

...with yes or no, I think? Usually.

[That's a trick question, isn't it. Maybe she should rephrase it?]

Do you need help, I mean?

[immaculacies]

No. [Along the wall, Manaka's fingers curl harder against its surface.] At least, not any help that someone here could give me, I think.

[in4apounding]

Okay. What kind of help DO you need? ...have you seen many other people here?

[immaculacies]

I don't know.

[She doesn't. She doesn't know how to explain to someone just what's wrong with her. All that's happened to her is that she's seeing thing through the eyes of a normal human; trying to explain the difference would be like trying to explain color to someone who only sees in black and white.]

Ah. [The other question is a little easier. She hefts the arm bearing her P.I.P, holding it in front of her body as she meets Penny's question with one of her own.] How many is "many"? This thing mentions other people—about two dozen of us.

[in4apounding]

Um... probably more than five? That seems like a lot, for a place this size.

[She looks a little surprised as Manaka holds up the PIP.]

Does it? I hadn't looked that closely-

[Taking a second to click through some of the options-]

Your name is "Manaka"? ...Are you REALLY a mother?

[immaculacies]

Does it? [Manaka looks away from Penny, eyes scanning over the doors that line the hallway. She hasn't counted exactly how many there are, but—] But it looks like the space here is used very efficiently.

[Because that's the issue here?]

Yes, that's right. [Though, the issue of her motherhood...] I don't know. Not that I know of, but if it says I am, then maybe I will be.

[in4apounding]

...do you think these profiles can tell the future?!

[Gasps and awe, etc.]

[immaculacies]

Not precisely. I think it's more likely that the person writing them has access to some knowledge of our futures that already exists.

[That is...a weird and fine distinction, Manaka.]

[in4apounding]

...you think the people that wrote these profiles can tell the future?

[Not sure if that's more or less impressive, honestly.]

[immaculacies]

No, that isn't it, either. We were brought here by some means that clearly involves the manipulation of space—or, more accurately, movement through parallel universes, or timelines. That in turn implies that our "selves" exist on a predetermined continuum, and that our abductors could have selected us from any point on that continuum where we happen to exist. As such, "telling the future" is as simple as observing a point further ahead on the timeline we were chosen from and utilizing information about the "selves" that exist there.

[...]

I don't know why they would create such a mismatch, though. Clerical error...?

[in4apounding]

...that sounds a LOT like just telling the future. Except a lot more complicated.

[immaculacies]

If you're reading a novel, and you skip ahead three chapters, is that telling the future of the story?

[in4apounding]

...a little, I think? People aren't just stories, though. ...unless someone writes about them after they're dead, I guess.

[immaculacies]

Aren't they, though? Every person has a history. There's no difference between a story that has been written and one that merely exists.

[in4apounding]

...yes there is. One's written down, the other is just things that happened.

[immaculacies]

That distinction is superficial. They're both information that exists; the difference is only in what form that information exists in. It's like the difference between water and ice, or water and water vapor.

[in4apounding]

So you think whoever made these can read information that's not written down and hasn't happened yet?

[That. Still sounds a lot like reading the future, if she's being honest.]

[immaculacies]

I think that whoever brought us here needed some method of spacial, temporal, and dimensional transportation to do so. It's likely, then, that they weren't limited to only one relative time in our lives from which they could select us. If you think of it like that, it would mean that they had a complete timeline of our lives laid out to choose from. It'd be like tearing one page out of a novel and then reading another one.

[in4apounding]

...

[Dot dot dot]

Oh! I understood most of that, I think. You think they're time-travelers, like-

[Miss Lucina.]

...people who travel in time.

[immaculacies]

Mm. That, or they have the ability to force other things to move through time.

[But... Close enough.]

[in4apounding]

Like- stories about us that were written after the fact?