milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Penny was never really that good at Divination and just about managed Arithmancy. Still, she'd gone outside to the lake and picked up enough rocks to make a rune set out of. Being a Ravenclaw, when packing up for an escape into nowhere in particular, she brought all of her textbooks with her in her Bottomless Backpack. That includes her sixth year Divination textbook that included runic divination.

Now she's sat at a table in the bar throwing nine rune stones again and again with the same result each time. It's almost uncanny if you watch it. You'd probably get some entertainment from the not-quite swearwords she's muttering as well. She could probably do with a break to be honest but she's not going to do so on her own; she's too focussed on getting a different answer out of the rocks in front of her to do so.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Enzo manages a chuckle at her offer. "Why not?" He takes the indicated seat, stretching his legs back under the table. "I'm Enzo, by the way. Enzo Matrix."

"And I'm Penny Clearwater, good to meet you Enzo." She can't help but think that he looks somewhat familiar, like the other green man she met right when she arrived but that's a moot point, she lost sight of that man and she's talking to this boy. "So, where do we begin?"

There is quite a strong family resemblance. As it were.

"First, does your world have computers?"

Penny nods, then extrapolates. "Well, sort of. One half does, with things like printers and floppy discs and the Internet." She learned about the last one from her sister Sam. "The other doesn't even use electricity, but I suspect it's the first half you're more interested in, right?"

"Yeah. What do you mean, half? Like hemispheres? Or, oh, wait, you mean those countries, what do they cal them, 'developing nations'?"

"Not quite." She tries to think of how to explain the Wizaring world and then just shrugs. "There was a bunch of people hiding magical powers from the normal people and they didn't need electricity because they had magic. I lived with both these groups, bouncing between. But anyway," sh looks at Enzo, "We were talking about you, weren't we?"

"Oh, that kind of world! Okay, yeah. Well, I live in a computer. I'm a program, and the Internet is my world."

That takes a second to process but she never really fully understood Sam's explaination of things so maybe programs were alive. "Okay. So how does this link up with you getting in trouble here? Was there some kerfuffle in this Internet of yours and you to brought it here maybe? I heard that's against the Rules."

"No, it's more complicated than that. Sorry, there's kind of a lot of background. But this is something I need to tell people anyway. See, I'm a Guardian, it's my function to protect systems and the 'Net, and one of the things we protect them from is Games. When the User—that's you—plays a computer game, we have to play it for real against them, and it's life and death for us. I mean, even if it's not a violent game, it's the User winning that nullifies us."

By the end of it, Penny's got a hand over her mouth in horror, "That's, I don't know, I can't imagine an existence like that. So every time one of us, a User, wins a game one of you dies?" She shudders when she looks at the young boy thinking what a life that must be for him.

"Not one. Whoever was underneath when the Game landed. And it's not exactly death, but it's close enough. That's why us Guardians play them. So the civilians don't have to. We train for it. They're really lots of fun, except for..." He shakes his head. "Anyway, most worlds don't have sprites. Just... programs, not people. The Autobots can test computers for sprites, and they haven't found any yet. But they might, and that's why we have to tell everyone, so they can get their computers scanned. If we find our world from the outside, maybe we can stop the Games, or get them fixed so they don't nullify us. Or if we find another world with sprites. Same thing."

She tries to make head and tail of what he's telling her and pulls out one of her floppy discs. "Can you tell from one of these if my world's computers have sprites?" Granted, even if he can and they do she can't get back but there are others from worlds very similar to hers which might be affected similiarly.

"Yeah! Thanks!" He beams at her gratefully. "I'll leave it for the Autobots, you'll get it back when they're done. It's a really quick scan."

"Good, good." She sighs in relief - and there's another one of her discs safe for the moment because Death Eaters have no clue about computers, let alone the Internet and sprites. It takes a moment for her to recollect herself but eventually she looks at him and smiles, "So, where were we?"

"Right, right. Well... some people don't believe me. This guy thought I was joking. He kept cracking jokes, even after I was yelling at him..."

"Even after all the places people come from and they don't believe you?" Maybe it's because of Penny's limited experience with computers that let her believe him so easily. Or her own job basically dealing with reactions of similar kinds when parents are told their child is magical. She sighs, "So you hit him?" She wishes she could have hit some of her cases sometimes too.

"Yeah, well, he's kind of a DIP switch."

Enzo sighs as well. "Yeah. I have trouble with my temper sometimes, and I didn't know how else to get him to see I was serious."

She laughs at the phrasing and thinks she'll have to remember that one. "It's a shame you don't have anything like my wand to prove to people that your world is real. I would have thought your colouring, if nothing else, would get people to believe you just a little." She sits and thinks, as this is something that's likely to come up again if it's come up once and she doesn't want Enzo ending up in trouble again for other people's problems.

"I think he just didn't believe the Games part. Though sometimes people think I'm just a human with paint on or something."

Which is weird, because he'd have to be completely sheathed in latex, including his hair, to achieve the proper effect, but some people do like to cling to the known.

He grins. "I do have a trick to prove I'm not, though."

"Maybe, maybe, did he play computer games in his world?" She leans forward to touch that strangely textured hair and frowns, how could anybody not believe he wasn't human. Ah well, people could be remarkably stubborn sometimes.

She smiles, "Do you? Want to swap? I'll show you some magic if you show me your trick?" She'll leave it up to him what she shows him, maybe a colour changing charm to her hair or something.

"Yeah, he does."

Enzo rolls his eyes and inclines his head to let her touch his hair. At least she's not ruffling it. People do that. A lot. You'd think they'd stop when you're as tall as them, but nooooo.

"Sure thing!" He licks his fingertip and offers it to her. "Now you lick yours."

"That might be it then, maybe he didn't want to think of the possibility that he'd hurt or killed some of your people while playing." She shrugs, hoping it's more that than him simply being, as Enzo put it, a DIP stick.

It's only a quick touch but she's still surprised at how it feels. Such strange things she's seen and experienced in such a short time.

"Okay..." she replies warily but licks her fingertip all the same and offers it to him, wondering vaguely if this is going to hurt.

DIP switch. It makes sense if you're a sprite.

"Maybe," says Enzo dubiously, because this is Tim they're talking about.

Oh, not much. He touches his damp finger to hers, and a fat blue spark zaps between them.

Being used to Muggle insults growing up, she inevitably got it mixed up with the 'dip stick' of playground terminology. She'll get it right eventually.

"Hopefully? Still, maybe you did knock some sense into him." She says with a smile, "Not that I'm condoning repeating it in any way." The smile's still there though, as she thought before she knows what trying to get someone to believe in something completely different to the norm is like.

She jumps away in surprise but she's not really hurt and she looks at her finger in wonder, as if trying to see if the spark left any remnant there. "Neat trick. Definitely one you should use one people." She then straightens herself up and grins at him. "My turn now, any particular magic you want me to try and do? I warn you, I'm better at Charms than changing things into other things."

"Not into him. But he told his roommate and she got him to bring something for testing anyway. We worked it all out."

The spark has left no remnant; quite the opposite—her finger is now dry where they touched.

"I dunno. What're Charms?"