A penny gets you in, but it won't get you out

[scarred_grin]

...so long story short, Loki had nothing to do with that chalk graffiti in the hallway upstairs, doesn't even own a pair of roller skates, and in any case will not be going near the tequila again anytime soon. Mistakes were made. Jeez, that was like ten hours ago. Can't we all just move on?

In any case, here she is stretched out on the couch in a look that radiates 'off-duty goth barista, probably also an art student': twentyish, crayon-red streaks in otherwise black-dyed hair, lip-rings through her old scars, big headphones, a t-shirt that never fails to amuse her, tiny shorts, and platform boots that if she were standing would make her six and a half feet tall, but right now just help her take up the whole couch. Oh, and fishnet, since after all she'd invented it TRUE STORY

So yeah, there she is, half-drawing half-writing in a notebook, now and then singing along to the music on her headphones, totally botherable if you're feeling brave.



[tinytags: loki (that norse one)][open forever, though slows will happen at some point]

Comments

[scarred_grin]

"I have a computer at home," she explains. "I do drawings in class or at work, and then when I get home I scan 'em in and put 'em online. That's what makes them webcomics. But I didn't have the computer when I came in, so now I've got a whole book of comics for when I get home."

[ostro_goth]

"I know of computers," Teja says, "but not of that web thing."

[scarred_grin]

"The web," she says. "The internet. Everybody in the world who's got a computer can use it to go online, and they can connect with anybody else. But mostly they look at pictures of cats or naked people."

[ostro_goth]

"I can see the charm of cats," Teja says, amused, "but I prefer my own, if it is all the same. They are more than decorations on a screen."

[scarred_grin]

"I don't think you're seeing the full magnitude of these cat pictures," she chuckles. "There are millions of them. There's pictures of cats sleeping, cats looking cute, cats eating, cats in or on things they're not supposed to be in or on, cats making faces that look like human expressions, cats wearing stupid costumes--there are probably more pictures of cats than there are actual cats. It's like a weird cult or something. So many cats."

[ostro_goth]

"And there are people that use their time for nothing but to look at all the cats?" Teja asks, still amused.

[scarred_grin]

"They're obsessed," she nods. "Grown men and women with nothing more important to do with their time than look at pictures of cats. Don't get me wrong, I like cats, but I have a job too."

[ostro_goth]

"I would prefer actual cats to mere picture of them," Teja says, "as I do love them -- so there are four in my care, that hunt around the forge and the stables, and come to me for treats and attention."

[scarred_grin]

"We had a cat when I was a kid," she says. "She wasn't very friendly, though. Some cats like people and some don't, and she just... didn't. She lived to be 25 though, which I guess says something."

She takes the glass the waitrat brings her. "You could take pictures of your cats, though. You could be missing out on a new career."

[ostro_goth]

"We do not have this web thing here," Teja says, almost smiling, "or I would have noticed. T-Minus is different."

[scarred_grin]

"T-Minus?" she asks.

"If I ever get home again, I can bring my computer back. Or if you know people who have them, just ask them about cat pictures. Unless they're from some weird world where instead of cats it's parrots or something."

[ostro_goth]

"T-Minus is a thing that those that do these things use here, that can get you exchange messages between different worlds even, though a relay station the trolls that run it have built in this place," Teja says. "I do not use it; but I sometimes use their alchemiter that they built beside my forge."

Pause.

"And I shall ask about cat pictures; I am sure that one goddess that comes here with a computator, has them. She knows of such things."

[scarred_grin]

"Man, now I really wish I had my computer with me," she says.

Even though the... peculiarities of her living situation mean she'd have to either steal someone or sweet-talk someone into buying one for her, back home. But who needs money, really?

"You got trolls here too? Is there anything you don't have?"

[ostro_goth]

"I would not dare to say," Teja says. "But they are small trolls, that do technology. And I would believe they set up the bar so she would give a T-Minus device to all that ask, from any world. I have none -- I am ever here, who would I want to reach? And taking one to my people so may call upon me at a time of need might be tempting fate. Those men from the future will dig anything up that is in the ground."

Alien technology at an archaeological site on the Swedish island of Gotland? Perhaps not such a good idea.

[scarred_grin]

"Oh, man," she laughs. "You ever seen--I'm gonna guess 'no,' here--they got this show where people who claim to be historians or archaeologists or whatever see basically everything as proof that aliens have been guiding human civilization since the beginning? Aliens built the pyramids, aliens caused the plague, aliens caused the flood, and the gods are clearly aliens. Forge gods in particular, because they bring technology."

Now she really wishes she had a computer, and could send it home with Teja. Imagine that crazy-hair guy on TV frothing over that...

[ostro_goth]

"In some world or world-view," Teja says, "it might even be true; but no, I have not seen that. On the screen over the bar, I have only ever seen squid, or sports."

Pause.

"Forge gods indeed. I was somewhat alien to my people in their good days, as my thoughts and desires were not theirs; but they treasured that which I made, for they could not all do it. That is what makes forge gods alien, one would assume?"

Another pause.

"Would you wish for one of those T-Minus computers?"

[scarred_grin]

"You should really watch it if you can," she says. "I think you'd like it. Crazy people talking about how things that happened in your time, things that have very simple and very human explanations, were really all the work of aliens. But what gets me is, right, so they'll say all these other gods were aliens, the Greeks and the Egyptians and everybody, maybe even the Ark of the Covenant came from aliens, but you'll notice even the craziest of these people won't ever say Jesus was an alien. When really, it would make more sense."

She gets pretty animated on this subject. Well, in her Pyrrha form she gets animated about a lot of things, but her secret goal is to be named as an alien on TV. How sweet would that be? Loki from Beyond the Stars.

[ostro_goth]

"That may be because those Christians can be pretty rabid, and they do not wish to be stoned to death by them, or whatever it is that Christians do in the future," Teja says.

Pause.

"Maybe, mankind will ever wish for a thing to believe in, so this is what they have come up with for their miserable life to make sense?"

[scarred_grin]

"They don't really stone people anymore," she says. "Now it's more... shunning, shouting at, public shaming. I love how the people who do the public shaming the most have no sense of shame themselves. I mean, I don't have one myself, but I don't try to do it to anybody else."

Public shaming is not the same thing as public mockery.

"You can find people who'll believe anything. The more desperate and miserable their lives are, the more pissed-off they are that they weren't born to be some kind of a hero, the crazier stuff you can get 'em to believe."

[ostro_goth]

"There were such sorry creatures among the Romans, which is why Christianity rose on the first place: - desperate and miserable finding a mad thing to believe in, so their lives, although not better in any way, seemed to make sense," Teja says.

Pause. "Public shaming can be a grim punishment, and one that was nigh ritual among my people; but they would see that the skald who did the scolding was blameless himself!"

[scarred_grin]

"I can tell you, when I was on the street whatever people wanted me to believe I'd have said I believed. But I wouldn't actually believe it, because so much of it is stupid."

She sips her soda.

"The big new thing lately, it's been growing for a while, is people convinced the world's gonna end. But not like the old days where it'd be Jesus and the rapture and, you know, the end. Now it's an apocalypse that only they, the chosen and enlightened ones, will be able to survive."

[ostro_goth]

"And what would they do, in order to do so?" Teja says. "The early Christians also thought their god was imminent; they gave away all their worldly possessions and likely felt foolish when they grew cold and hungry again."

[scarred_grin]

"There's some people who still do that," she says. "Some prophet or other will say 'The world's gonna end on this day, I'm the only one who knows the truth.' So they sell everything, and the world doesn't end, and they just... don't mention their earlier delusion anymore."

Nobody wants to admit that they were that wrong.

"But the new thing they do is, they pick some scenario--some sort of worldwide disaster, natural or medical or economic--and they dream up ways that they'll be able to survive it. They'll store years' worth of food in their houses, they'll stockpile guns and alcohol."

[ostro_goth]

"It seems like a very strange pastime of those that can afford it," Teja says, smiling now -- or maybe merely sneering. "They invent a thing, and then they pretend it would be real. Like children playing at keeping house."

[scarred_grin]

"I used to live with a guy," she says. "He was convinced that there's gonna be a nuclear war or something, so he had a whole basement full of food and vodka. But he'd never let me touch any of it, because what if there was a war and he was one bottle short? He went on these weekend survival trips where they go off into the woods with nothing and, I don't know, run around naked and roll around in piles of leaves. Because the future of humanity depends on it I guess."