View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Morty knows he shouldn't be screwing around with multidimensional shit. It's dangerous, it's impractical, it's blah blah blah. But it's a potential key to unlimited energy, how does nobody see that? He's built a dimensional siphon (it kind of looks like a cardboard box with a funnel and a TI-84 taped to it, but it damn well works), keyed in the dimensional coordinates to a random plane, and by God he's going to use it.
He flips the switch and waits for the energy bar to fill up.
It does! It fills up very rapidly. Then it explodes, along with the box. There's rather more smoke than there should be, and once the smoke clears someone is standing there.
"Oh dear," Morty says faintly.
Flicker at Whateley
+ Show First Post
"Ah, that mess. Yes, yes. The card should be printed... here we go." A slot spits out a black card with a bit of heraldry on the front. "This has an allowance of $1000 per week; any extraordinary expenditure should be cleared with Mrs. Carson or myself. For your first week you have a starting fund of $10,000. Does all of that sound reasonable?"
point_b
"Unless inflation has been very different from projected trends at home, more than, yes, thank you."
She smiles thinly. "It's intended to be more than enough, yes. We aim to please our, ahem, visitors. Will there be anything else?"
in-like-a
"You return! In one piece, even! How was the harpy queen of the seven hundredth hell?""
in-like-a
"Absolutely. I want to view the marvels of the C-store. Last time I went in they had a pallet of seaweed. Not even, like, those bagged sheets of dried seaweed that people eat, just... bales of seaweed. Fucking bales. It is a house of wonder."
point_b
"...Why did they have seaweed? Why did they anticipate demand for seaweed?"
in-like-a
"I have no idea. But I saw some senior looking at them contemplatively, and by the time I came back it was all gone. So they weren't wrong."
point_b
"Huh. Okay. Let's see what wonders there are." Bella consults her map and puts them at the C-store.
in-like-a
The store appears to have a sale on quartz, paprika, and marbled notebooks.
"Huh, I've been meaning to pick up some amethyst." Ariel gets a large angular crystal and places it in a basket. After some consideration, she adds some rock crystal.
"Huh, I've been meaning to pick up some amethyst." Ariel gets a large angular crystal and places it in a basket. After some consideration, she adds some rock crystal.
point_b
Bella grabs a couple of notebooks.
"I am," she says, "disconcerted, enough that I would like to look into how this is done."
in-like-a
"How what's done? The sales? It is pretty weird, yeah. We can ask at the counter or something, I guess. Shopping before or after?"
point_b
"...Before, may as well." Bella requires toiletries, bedding, a few changes of clothes, pens, and any interesting-looking reading material.
in-like-a
Toiletries, bedding, and pens can be acquired without incident! Ariel balances it all on her head, where it refuses to wobble in the slightest due to a combination of Warper-induced weightlessness and the top of her head acting as a perfectly flat telekinetic plane.
There is a great deal of interesting reading material, much of it on topics such as "the struggle of a closeted low-level Exemplar in Hollywood" or "the rise of Lord Paramount, an authorized fictionalization". Clothes are also available; however, Ariel scoffs at them. "Dude, you can teleport and you have ten thousand bucks. If you do not let me take you to Cecilia Rogers' shop I may never forgive you. Her stuff is superhydrophobic and bulletproof."
There is a great deal of interesting reading material, much of it on topics such as "the struggle of a closeted low-level Exemplar in Hollywood" or "the rise of Lord Paramount, an authorized fictionalization". Clothes are also available; however, Ariel scoffs at them. "Dude, you can teleport and you have ten thousand bucks. If you do not let me take you to Cecilia Rogers' shop I may never forgive you. Her stuff is superhydrophobic and bulletproof."
point_b
"Heaven forfend that you never forgive me or that I pass up the chance to own bulletproof clothes."
in-like-a
"Also it's all flawlessly tailored and it takes her half an hour to make you an entire wardrobe. Cecilia rocks. Trust me in but this."
point_b
"I do not have such strong opinions about my wardrobe that I will not take your recommendation here." Bella picks up some non-fictionalized history focusing on mutants.
point_b
"Sure."
To the counter; debit card exits pocket. "Hi. Do you happen to know how unusual stocking and sale decisions are made?" Bella woggles a notebook at the cashier.
To the counter; debit card exits pocket. "Hi. Do you happen to know how unusual stocking and sale decisions are made?" Bella woggles a notebook at the cashier.
in-like-a
The cashier is a student employee who appears to made of granite. His brow furrows at the question. "Listen, I, uh, I've only been working here a couple weeks. I know that it's weird, but I've got no idea how it actually works. There's some kind of computer in the back does the ordering. I'm pretty sure it's a devise, but that's all I could tell you. I guess I could get the manager for you if you're really curious?"
in-like-a
He lumbers back to an office and knocks very carefully on the door. An elderly woman comes out; he has a quiet conversation with her, and she comes forward. "You wanted to know about the stocking devise? Some student built it back in '93 to look at our previous sales and predict what we'd need. It gave us results that made no damn sense, but it cleared the shelves every round of buying. We've learned to trust it, even though we've got no idea how the damn thing works. And the kid can't tell us, he was in Detroit when, well, Detroit."
Ariel winces.
Ariel winces.
in-like-a
Ariel clears her throat. "Back in '08 there was this... mystical confluence, I think it was, that attracted a bunch of really big players to the city at once. A lot of them had preexisting grudges against each other, and they were all gearing up for some kind of apocalyptic battle, when some bright spark devisor decided to nuke the joint. Implosive annihilation bomb. One minute Detroit and a couple dozen heavy supers; next minute, perfect hemispherical crater thirtysomething miles in either direction. The mystery devisor hasn't done anything since, so most people assume they were caught in the blast radius."
"As with our less mysterious devisor. So he can't tell us what the hell he was thinking, if we decided to call him up."
"As with our less mysterious devisor. So he can't tell us what the hell he was thinking, if we decided to call him up."