revivalproject | Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

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Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

WHO: Cal Kestis and the Library Crew
WHERE: The Library
WHAT: Sometimes you get tired of being alone
WHEN: Nowish?
WARNINGS: N/A

His feet carry him to the large library structure. He hasn't spent nearly enough time here, or at least not nearly enough time these past weeks with any of those whom he knows have come to call it theirs. BD-1, loyal BD, he hangs off of his side as they make their way in.

"Cal. If Beedee-one is showing you this message, then I have left this place and you did not leave with me."

The words of Merrin's recorded message have plagued his thoughts these past weeks. He's not even sure how many times he's watched it, enough times at least that he knows every line of it by heart.

"I'm sorry. I wanted us to return to our galaxy together. I wanted us to walk the same path from here together, always."

With how others have come and gone, he's tried to prepare himself for such an instance, but there really isn't much of a proper way to do so, knowing you'll still miss someone. He'd allowed himself to believe that maybe, maybe...

"We will see each other again. Our path together is not over yet, despite this world's best attempts."

It hurts, maybe more than he anticipated. He knows the truth of her words, has always known that even if they'd be separated here, there would still be a later. It had been a comfort before, and now it's a promise, one he holds to tightly.

"Do not keep me waiting too long, Cal Kestis."

Being alone is the last thing he needs right now. He's had enough of that. Merrin's words are reminder enough that while there's still something to look forward to whenever he might go back himself, Cal doesn't know that he'll ever be able to see anyone else from here if he does so.

Appearances can be deceptive, however, but it's difficult to cling to melancholy when you have a myriad of mothcats flocking around you. What had started out as a few has since at least doubled in number as Cal kneels there not several steps from entering, a pair of adolescent mothcats having settled there on his shoulders as smaller ones paw at him and pounce at each other around his boots. BD-1 skitters about leading or being chased by at least three others.

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As long as no one ever expects Jon to be imaginative, things will remain fine.

"Thanks for the offer." Jon replies after nodding to the additional information provided by Tony. "Tony has been converting a good part of the basement by now." Which is certainly one way to keep him busy. "And if I recall correctly, you have your own workshop as well, Cal." Which leaves Jon a little surprised that Tony hasn't started any wild projects with the Padawan yet.

"It's kind of surprising," Tony insisted, slightly flustered by bringing it up like Cal needed the reminder right now about what steps he wasn't going to be taking with his partner, and could hear himself blustering in the least effective way as his mouth continued to move, "He could have killed me instead. 50/50, honestly, it could still happen, this might have increased the odds, having you around has probably been entirely in my favour, so, you know, the heavy lifting, that's just a bonus."

Jon's acknowledgement was much more normal, though Tony couldn't tell if he meant to imply that Cal should focus his work out there on his own, and started to shake his head, narrowing his eyes inquisitively at Jon. Did he know Merrin was gone? That wasn't something Tony could just ask, so he rapidly interjected, "So does that young gal, Reno. Set up a shop out closer to the forge. Friendly competition. Hey, there's a thought. The market demands innovation. We could go head to head, make a new..." He twirled a hand in the hair and snapped his fingers, trying to produce a likely product that would serve the community, and make for a flashy reveal.

"Yeah, I do," Cal says, a little quieter than he means to. A workshop with one less constant visitor who'd sit on his bed and ask questions as he'd work, or try her hand at some repairs if she got curious enough. He closes his eyes, lifting the mug to drain the rest of his tea before setting it down empty on the floor, much to a disappointed mothcat's paw.

"I'm not so much an inventor as a repair guy," he clarifies, his smile quick, fleeting.

The suggestion that he may have wanted to kill Tony is met with a huff in protest and a small glare. "I never tried to harm you!" Jon adds to his protest just in time with a young mothcat to land on his head and paw towards his glasses. "Can we not start such rumors, please? There are people around that might be inclined to believe you." Richie being only one of them.

Jon's scowl lessens when his attention returns to Cal and he casts a look between both him and Tony. "Or you could all work together. Cal, Reno, you. Three very different worlds with very different types of technology, each very advanced to what I am familiar with." He gestures lightly with one hand while the other plucks the mothcat from his head. "If all this can be combined somehow, you might-" Pause. "You might..." Another pause. "W-well. You're better at this than I am." And this goes for both of them.

Jon's protest was met with a small grimace as Tony weighted his hand side to side, like it was up for debate what 'harm' Jon might have caused, then he quickly took a step away and out of the immediate blast range of any deadly glaring that teasing should have earned him. Once in motion again, it was going to take an extraordinary force to stop him, and he continued from there to sweep down and gather up Cal's emptied cup as his body searched for solutions to this problem that didn't involve anybody getting emotional.

"Repair guy's half way there. Inventing is just making something that doesn't work, and then fixing it," he declared, which definitely couldn't have been right despite the confident presentation. At least Jon seemed willing to buy in to his distraction method, earning him an appreciative point for the evolution of the idea--okay, maybe not everyone worked well in competition. "Cooperation, even better and badder. Between us, we've got to be able to come up with some way of getting to that blinking light out there, or tracking the storms, even neutralizing their effects." None of that would make for an effectively tangible memory of Merrin for Cal, so while all of it would have been undeniably useful, Tony looked unconvinced by his own proposals, hand still twisting in the air and walking away with the cup.

The attempts are appreciated. It's becoming more obvious that Tony's in the know regarding Merrin's absence, not that this surprises Cal. He looks at Jon, giving him a nod with the suggestion for cooperation.

"Not bad ideas." Not simple ones either, and for each storm that's come up ever since the first, Cal isn't so sure what to look for anymore. "How about working with what we've got already? Overriding the shuttles? If we could use them for more than just a taxi service, there's so much more we could see. Even check out that light."

"Acquiring full control over the ships would be useful..." Jon agrees while having to realize that he hasn't even considered that particular option. But he has never even driven a car, so the thought of freely piloting one of these ships has never even grazed his thoughts. But neither has he been considering trying to find ways to reach the new light given that even Billy couldn't teleport to it.

"Has anyone tried to learn more about the tower still in the city?" He has to wonder, thinking back to the original blinking light and how they- Well. Broke it.

While getting control over the shuttles did sound good, they were all in agreement there, Tony's shoulders tensed with resistance even as he continued back toward the fireplace, swinging the cup thoughtfully as he went. "What we've got already, that's stuff the Agrii already gave us, stuff they already have too much control over," he said, lilting like it was just a conversational musing and not a complete nightmare. All of that energy, he put into gathering up his kindling again, dropping to his knees to busily build up his fire.

This way, he was muffled as he spoke into the chimney and answered Jon, "I tried. Stripped some circuits out to use. Couldn't get it working again."

"Had a look at it. Not really much I could do with it," Cal said. "Not too surprised there though. Atroma-tech has some strange properties to it. It looks like it should work the way you'd figure, but then there's just...something else." He shakes his head with a shrug.

"Anyway I know that a lot we have to work with is either Agrii or Atroma-originated, but all things considered, everything is going to be that way even if we piece something together. And depending on what we do want to set ourselves on building, it's going to take something substantial, more than what we've been picking around here." He snorts lightly. "Don't suppose anyone tried buying a hyperdrive while we were on Coruscant?"

"Hm. Cal is correct, I suppose. We can't exactly order anything that isn't already here from Amazon to work with that instead." No, they will have to use what is here. And the ships are there.

Jon casts a look towards Cal before turning his head in Tony's direction, fully aware that he's the one with the least understanding of technology here. "Shouldn't it be possible to erase the programming on the ships for example? From what I know that can be done with computers and the ships are being controlled via some sort of programming? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong."

It was difficult to argue the point when they were, in effect, correct that the individual nails and planks were all going to be coming from the same source, so Tony sat back on his heels with his hands braced on his hips and a frustrated frown. He couldn't even say for certain if he could claim the problem he was worried about didn't run quite that deep. Something substantial, though, he did have an example to offer: "What about Beck's satellite?" He had claimed it was for communicating outside of the planet. A satellite could be a lot of things, though, and easier to adapt than the ships, if Beck really had made it himself.

The issue with the ships was hard for Tony to explain without feeling guiltily stupid, because Jon should have been right, and Tony had to raise his hands to caution against this sound logic. "That is what it looks like, but..." already sounded like he was making excuses for his failure, and he grit his teeth. "What programming is there, it's gibberish. It doesn't follow any logical structure to discern, as best as I can tell it's set dressing, the things run on magic. That makes containing it, to erase it or anything else, a, uh, surgical challenge. If you asked me to contain Cal's magical memory powers, right now, I wouldn't be able to tell you how to extract that function from everything else. The best I could do was a lobotomy. He can't do that trick anymore, but that's not exactly the problem I've solved."

"I forgot about that. I'm not sure how much he'd actually gotten together, but I was giving him parts for it," Cal says, blinking at the mention of the satellite. It sounds worth looking into, at least.

He isn't meaning to shoot anyone's ideas down so much as fish for potential avenues to explore out of the things they've obviously given consideration to. He absently strokes a mothcat's head as he rests his chin in his other palm, giving Jon a slow nod before frowning as Tony presents the problem. Programming of some kind would have been the expected point of the problem but if it was going to play outside of their understanding, then they were back to the drawing board.

"Which goes right along with the situation with the tower and the circuits you tried to use. But additions to the ships have worked out fine, so I'm guessing so long as nothing interferes with its base settings, so to speak, then things will still function." His fingers drum against his face as he thinks.

"But if it's...magic or at least something different that's being used, then maybe we need to change our approach?"

Jon follows the exchange while keeping a couple of the mothcats occupied, considering the things said. He hasn't been aware that Quentin Beck has been working on a satellite...

But he mentally sets that part aside and raises a brow at Tony's view on the programming the ships are apparently working on. "Is it automatically magic if the logic behind it is that of a literally alien dimension? We have seen Graq writing- And I remain convinced that what we found near the tower were Atroma letters, but even with the expertise meant to literally understand languages we could not make head or tails of it. And the Agrii don't even possess letters in the first place. It only makes sense that their programming languages wouldn't be one either of us can even begin to comprehend."

If Cal had been helping out, the satellite project must have been far enough along to consider adapting, and Tony nodded thoughtfully as he started, "It's just going to sit there, he's gone now. And the kid. So." He hadn't properly prepared for the way his heart crawled up his throat when he heard himself talk, and quickly dropped forward to stick himself back into the fireplace, like there could be any more fussing that he had to do with his pile of kindling. At least the pair with their cats (most of the cats, minus the one that had snuck up to bat at the gloves swinging from Tony's belt as he bent over) carried on about magic.

"Logic is logic, doesn't matter which dimension you're working in, truth table doesn't change. Magic is when that doesn't work anymore. I'm--" This was important enough that Tony could drag himself back out of the fireplace, bracing a hand on it with the other out flat to level a serious look at Jon and Cal so they properly understood, "If it was possible to understand, I would understand it. I've never met a system I couldn't master." This gravity was somewhat undermined by the mothcat batting at his butt. "So, if the system itself isn't magic, then there's some magic at work stopping me from understanding it. That's the same problem. It's not a programmer you need. It's--it's a Doctor Doom." It took Tony a beat to realize that this was probably not an easily graspable reference, at least for Cal, and potentially for Jon if his Earth's dictators didn't tend to splash out with big magical displays. That probably made Eastern European royalty a pretty niche interest where he was from. "King of Latveria. He's an engineer that does magic. Both, I just mean you need both." Not an approach that Tony was particularly familiar with.

That spike of loss hits a bit too close to home then, but Cal takes a steadying breath as he looks Tony's way. There's always others. You just never know when. He lets his attention politely fall away, leaning more against the pillow that had been wedged in support, resting his head in the crook of an arm.

Does acknowledging it make it any better? He doubts it. But distractions haven't really been making the situation any lighter. The frustration's always been there, a box that's always teased open and just seems to build each time they try to work things out.

Cal lifts his head a bit, looking from Jon to Tony then. Mothcat or not, he can sense how this was a major point of concern for Tony. The reference is of course lost to him, but the explanation does give it some kind of shape.

"...well...does it need to be all in one?"

"...Latveria..." Jon echoes the name of the unknown location that apparently is part of Tony's version of Earth. A similar case to Vibranium, he assumes. Similar as their worlds may be, there are still these small differences that only come to light every once in a while. Which is interesting to Jon in a way he also considers charming. There are new things he can learn still. Things about Tony's world as well as Tony himself.

'I've never met a system I couldn't master.' is a sentence that brings a tiny, yet clearly fond smile to the Archivist's face, which he may or may not intentionally turn towards one of the young mothcats. As much as Tony likes to claim to not have any powers, he keeps proving himself wrong yet again. He simply doesn't want to see it.

But Jon has to set these thoughts aside for now and return to the conversation at hand, nodding towards Cal in acknowledgement of the Padawan's train of thought. "...since we're already talking about combining the skills and knowledge to achieve something, indeed." He can only agree.

Jon's tone was telling as he tried out the new word, making Tony raise his eyebrows inquisitively then accept that he really had to stop taking things like maps and chemical elements for granted. His expression fell as his focus darted between Jon and Cal, finding that they were generating a very annoying amount of optimism for a problem that they had just produced, and generating a lot less solutions. It was Tony's job to fix it, after all.

"Just combine them, sure, okay," he grumbled irritably with a roll of his eyes, despite his hands already working through the air, building up the concept. "Combine, that's not quite it--Integrate. Have you ever tried to code through a translator, who also didn't know the language? No, that's stupid. Programmer brain has to see with--magic, whatever, eyes."

It wasn't optimism exactly, it was just trying to find a work-around. Because clearly the have no genius magical technicians, whatever those are.

Tony's eye-rolling only prompts one in return, although accompanied with a breath of a laugh- out of frustration, really. "I see your point, but at the same time there could be limitations that one wouldn't see if they were only used to seeing things by a certain view of whatever integration of studies they've done. Look- we don't even know for sure if magic is involved. Have we asked someone who uses it to have a look at the ship?"

Something falters in him the moment he suggests it. Nightsister magick probably wasn't the same as...well, he isn't really familiar with any other magic so he wouldn't know what they'd be looking for, but all the same, it hurts.

"Dismissing any option without even trying because we believe it to be impossible or not making sense is the last thing we should do." Jon replies with a shrug. Personally he doesn't believe any magic is involved at all. He's much more prepared to encounter a field of science neither of them has ever been confronted with. Maybe even one neither of them is capable to properly comprehend. They hardly even know enough about the Agrii at this point. What means of communication they are capable of using among their own kind or how they record any data at all. The data points in the city literally install knowledge into a person's head and completely removes it once the person touches a different data point.

But considering the data points... "Could the programming of the ships be similar to how the data points work? Their technology must be related to some degree." And so far no one seems to have been able to figure those out either.

"Nobody's dismissing," Tony dismissed, "I'm just--we still have to consider the limitations." His limitations it increasingly felt like, leaving him with a wounded expression that he didn't quite turn on Cal, and instead on the mothcat that flopped imploringly at his knee, for using more targeted language to say the same thing that Jon and Steve had tried to introduce into Tony's programming. He didn't think he had made so little progress on that integration. He had to admit with a shake of his head that he hadn't exactly integrated it enough to ask a magic user for help.

He refocused on the other men with a searching squint as he scooped the cat up off the cold floor to tuck into his elbow. Where were data points coming from? "Do you think, if we could crack the data points, smaller scale, lower stakes if we screw it up, we'd know what we were dealing with on the ships?" he tried. "I don't know...We know the ships are Atroma technology, not Agrii. There's so many ruined data points here that I'm inclined to believe those are exclusive to them. It's hard to say how closely related they would be. But...I don't know if a magic user has taken a very close look at those, either." He tipped his head, raising his free hand to count off, "Billy. Noctis, apparently. Reeve. Mini is mostly engineering, just magic on top."

"Maybe no one's looked too closely into the things because they already think it's bad enough touching it when they have to," Cal suggests. "But it sure can't hurt to ask about them, although... it's true, I'm not sure that finding out anything about those would provide any enlightenment on what's going on with the ships." But it's still something they haven't looked into.

"...Merrin," he says quietly. "I don't know if her magick would've helped. We were thinking it was more relatable to the Force somehow than anything else. Not that that helps anyone now, anyway."

Jon directs his attention towards Tony first, tipping his head a little. "That the ships are Atroma technology isn't entirely correct, though. The Palm Cottage, Cake Dance and Flygood very much seem to be creations by the Agrii based on what they learned from the first set of ships we had at our disposal." Having been part of the crew of a ship with a glitter dispenser and having paid a few visits to the grounded ships to learn about these, Jon certainly can't help but feel that there is a rather clear difference between these ships.

He shrugs. "The Flygood is even available for everyone to access. I'm just saying it- We might learn something aside from what the Agrii consider acceptable space ship interior. And there may be similarities to the data points. I'm aware that he remains of the data points we cleared out of the library didn't shed much light, but... You know." He's anything but an engineer himself.

Tony quickly stopped his counting and dropped his hand at Cal's quiet voice, distinctly aware of how much time they had wasted while they had what sounded like the perfectly suited pair for this magic-science project up until Merrin was gone. They must have been close to the kind of seamless communication that Tony thought was necessary to make this work. "Wouldn't that mean that you could do it, too?" Tony asked, trying not to sound too eager to explore that right now. A lot of people's 'magic' sounded like they came from a similar source, with different names, and so far no one seemed to agree with him about that.

As for the ships, he looked slightly dubious, having never considered that the adjustments that the Agrii had clearly made went any further than aesthetic. Enough so that he hadn't even checked the theory. "Even if people don't want to touch an active data point, there are those ones we found here, the broken ones, maybe a magic user would be willing to look at," he offered. "If they can pick up on anything, and then can find anything comparable in the ships, that's already a wealth of more information to be able to make sense of."

"I don't think it'd work that way. Nightsister magick is...old. Connected to them somehow, and not just like...the power to a person. It's connected to the entirety of the Nightsisters...which...I guess is just Merrin, now. And she had a physical element to her casting, I guess something like a focus point." Cal knows he's hardly an expert, but he's just explaining what he's learned firsthand.

"Jon's got a good point about the new ships though. I almost forgot about that. It might be worth looking into. I wonder if that kid ever got around to trying to take anything apart..." He nods at Tony. "Gather up some promising pieces, ask the more magically-inclined people if they've had any deeper look into the datapoints and willing to experiment?"

"Right, Merrin told me about the Nightsisters during Calibrations..." Jon muses while petting the head of one of the mothcats. "It was fascinating but not necessarily easy to fully understand. What she told me sounded similar to what I learned back on Coruscant about the Jedi and their use of the Force, but... I don't believe a Nightsister would be able to manipulate the Force in the way Cal can." Jon assumes while looking over to Cal, who currently is the only one to either confirm or deny the Archivist's words.

He then turns back to Tony to agree with what the man has said earlier. "Reeve is an engineer that is familiar with the magic of his own world and Billy is outright the most powerful magic user currently around. We should ask them if they are willing to take a look. And if you suggest Noctis as well, sure." That one isn't a person Jon has spoken to personally as of yet.

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