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

[photoshooter]

Huh? What do you have against magic, dude? I know like ninety-nine point nine percent of the population doesn't have actual access to it but it's still, like, a pretty undeniable thing.

[playthedamncard]

You're talking to someone who relies on hard science and technology to look toward the future, not hokey magic tricks and shadow games tied to the past.

[photoshooter]

What do tricks and games have to do with anything? The King's magic kept Lucis safe for ages before the Empire screwed everything up.

[playthedamncard]

What even are you talking about?

[photoshooter]

What are you talking about?

[playthedamncard]

I'm talking about prophecies and magical artifacts from thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt.

[photoshooter]

Okay, I don't know what Aegipp is besides probably a place, but I'm talking about the power the Draconian granted the Kings of Lucis to help keep the world safe from the darkness or whatever, which is very real and kind of important?

[playthedamncard]

...You don't know what Egypt is, and I don't know what a Draconian is or who the Kings of Lucis are.

So something's very wrong here.

Where exactly is...Niflheim?

[photoshooter]

...I mean, where isn't it, at this point?

[But he shakes his head and sweeps one hand vaguely through the air.]

It's, you know. Generally north? There's actual Niflheim, which is either desert or frozen solid, and then they've taken over Accordo and Tenebrae, too. ...And Lucis, now. I guess. So pretty much the entire civilized world.

So where's that Aegypt place? In the ruins of Solheim or something?

[playthedamncard]

...None of those countries are familiar to me. It's going to pain me to ask, but what year do you think you're from?

[photoshooter]

What? ...M.E. 756, obviously. You gonna fill me in on what you're getting at?

[playthedamncard]

What the hell kind of calendar system is that? Where are you from?

[photoshooter]

Lucis! Why is this such a big deal? What's wrong with the year? It's just the year, I didn't make it up!

[playthedamncard]

Let me ask one more very simple question. [And that he feels he has to ask it makes his head spin just a little.] Do you live on the planet Earth?

[photoshooter]

[A beat.]

The planet what?

[playthedamncard]

That's what I was afraid of. Somehow you're from another world. [narrowing of eyes. shame he doesn't have his dsod memories yet...] Or some kind of alternate dimension? But that would be a far stretch for just a simulation...

[photoshooter]

...I don't understand anything anymore.

[playthedamncard]

[It's possible these other player characters are in face NPCs mixed into the bunch, but that seems...extremely unlikely.]

The situation did just get exceedingly more complex than it was a moment ago. If this is correct, the kind of power, the technological advancement, the theoretical physics involved...I wouldn't say impossible, but it would be awesome.

[He means awesome in the traditional sense, not in the radical totally tubular sense.]

[photoshooter]

Well... I guess it would be awesome. Like, that it exists. Not awesome for us currently, you know, inside it.

[And he does mean awesome in the radical totally tubular sense.]

You really think things like other worlds and alternate dimensions are real?

[playthedamncard]

[Oh Prompto honey. He won't correct that, because, okay, it would also be awesome in that sense, too, but c'mon.]

I prefer to deal with what I know to be true and what I know to be possible. I haven't found evidence for such a thing, but I also haven't looked for any. There's nothing I know of personally to discredit the idea of other worlds--the universe is near infinite and expanding, after all--or of alternate dimensions, though that delves into quantum mechanics I haven't spent much time with.

[photoshooter]

Okay, I was following that pretty well until the last part, but I'm figuring that's just a bunch of science stuff I'm not going to understand even if you explain it to me.

[Prompto shakes his head and crosses his arms, leaning back on one foot as he chews this information into bite-sized pieces he can swallow.]

So... alternate dimensions are possible because there's no evidence against them. But you're saying there's evidence against magic?

[playthedamncard]

I am a man of science. Not a magician. I've seen what people have claimed to be magic. Whether it exists or not, whether it's real or not, is of no consequence to me and my future. I have no use for that kind of hocus pocus.

[photoshooter]

Then there's your evidence of alternate dimensions right there, because magic is so, uh, evident on Eos that saying it doesn't exist is like saying the sky isn't blue or up is the same as down.

...

The sky is blue where you come from, right?

[playthedamncard]

Sometimes. [Kaiba, don't be a troll.]

Where does your magic come from?

[photoshooter]

It's not my magic. Like I said, only the Kings of Lucis and the Oracles of Tenebrae have it. It's a bloodline thing. And I think originally they got it from the Draconian, along with the Crystal.