applesaucedream | Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

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Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

The woods are dark and deep, but not particularly lovely. If anything, they feel dangerous, as if something terrible might come lurching out from behind any given tree and tear into the nearest warm body. What that terrible thing might be is anyone's guess. A cat with hands? Slenderman? Stegosaurus? Actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf? All of the above in a horrible mob? It's anyone's guess. But every dreamer will be absolutely convinced that there is something unspeakable out there, and that it's after them.

The dreamers have two things on their side. The first is that there is actually nothing dangerous lurking in these woods (with the possible exception of other dreamers). The pervasive terror the dreamers are feeling is just that: a rift-given feeling, nothing more and nothing less. That snapping twig or rustle in the undergrowth is almost certainly just a squirrel or something else equally harmless.

The second is that no dreamer is alone. They all will be reunited with - or introduced to - their dæmons, a source of comfort in this dark, intimidating wilderness. However frightened the dreamers might be, at least they have someone with them who definitely doesn't want them dead.

[OOC: as ever, any and all are welcome! You don't have to be in the game to join the fun. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. And the party only stops when you want it to; feel free to backtag forever.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"...Show length doesn't necessarily mean the same amount of time passed for you," Topher points out. Even though he... realises this might mean he knows certain things about Daniel's future. He's just going to... veer right away from that thought and not dig into when Daniel is from and what's happened so far. Daniel is probably better off not knowing. Curiosity killed the cat, and all that. ~~Even if satisfaction brought it back.~~

He's like to offer some form of comfort, but Topher is terrible at actually being reassuring. He usually just messes it up.

"Coffee?" he offers, holding out a mug that wasn't there before to Daniel. He just went for something he remembers Daniel drinking a lot. Not sure if it's all that appropriate.

"God, yes." Questions of his (very much non-fictional, thank you) life are swarming his subconscious and making internal navigation extremely difficult. Coffee, at least, appears to be a multiversal conversational light fixture that he can cling to and anchor himself on until all...this becomes slightly more manageable.

He only just recently met the Devil and then the archangel Gabriel. Daniel silently demands the Rift, the universe, and everything if there are anymore surprises it would like to dispense upon him. Just once, he'd like to be prepared for things like this.

He accepts the coffee, dream-manifestation it may be, and drinks. It's black, pure and simple, nothing else, and that's exactly what he needs right now. The caffeine patches his frayed nerves enough to remind him of the primary question at hand.

"So I'm...really, honestly a, a fictional character? In your universe?"

"Yeah. Sorry," Topher answers. He knows there must be universes where his life is some kind of fiction, surely. But that doesn't mean he'd like to meet anyone familiar with that fiction. Who could read his life quite literally as an open book. The idea of privacy becomes a bit moot.

"I mean it's like.. PG-13 at most, though," he says. No, that's the rating system for movies, isn't it? Oh well, close enough. "It's not, uhh. Too invasive or detailed or anything. It's mainly mission-focused."

Okay, so Topher might have a BIT more information about Daniel's private life than Daniel would probably like, but. Can try to reassure him a little bit, pretend it's not as bad. "Also, I mean, you're awesome in it. You were my favourite. ...Maybe tied with Carter," he adds with a grin.

Daniel's absurdly curious for a moment over which missions would be deemed interesting enough to be fictionalized and broadcast for audiences on a national scale. Perhaps international. Topher did say ten seasons and two spin-offs.

Daniel can't believe he's actually thinking about this.

The mention of Sam warrants a small pang. God, but he misses her, he misses all of them. He misses the rapidfire execution of the polysyllabic words she'd have to explain what the Rift was and how it worked and how they could use it to get home, and he misses her singularly genuine enthusiasm over his explanations for this or that obscure alien culture, and he misses the insomniac camaraderie of late nights with shared coffee mugs and stacks of paperwork and indefinable alien tech to solve the latest world-shattering conundrum in time.

"I'm, uh, glad I made a good impression?" he ventures weakly, once again finding himself more than a little overwhelmed. And...okay, he'll admit it, mildly choked up. He really misses them, all of them, more acutely than ever.

Topher takes a little while to figure out why Daniel gets suddenly gets sad. If it weren't for the fact the telepathic nature of the dreaming and his affinity with it gives him about 250% more empathy and social intelligence, he probably wouldn't have realised what the issue was at all, just that Daniel suddenly seemed bummed out.

"Sorry," he answers quietly. "I'm not good with the whole... newbie sensitivity thing. Which is kind of funny, cause I actually used to greet newbies pretty often." Not that he was good at it. It was a proximity thing, not an... aptitude skill thing. At least he was good at explaining the science, or at least what they understood of the science.

And he's almost been here a year now, and a lot has happened in that time, he's even had to completely change allegiances. He didn't even arrive in New York, he'd fallen through into San Francisco and then been relocated. If almost feels strange to think back to what it was like at first, to dragged from home, or at the closest thing you could call home, and his own team. Still. Daniel is probably more used to that experience than Topher's ever been. Topher is purely an intellectual explorer.

"No, it's, um, it's fine." It isn't really, but Daniel's not about to blame Topher for that. "It's just, uh, not everyday that you meet someone who tells you your whole life is fiction."

It's fairly unsettling to hear it. And also makes Daniel wonder, briefly, ridiculously, if that would actually be a good way to go about making the Stargate Program go public.

"What about you?" he asks, a superbly clumsy alteration of subject. "I take it you're not, um, fictional where you come from?"

"Nooo," Topher answers, drawing the word out. "But I might be, in some other universe." In fact it's probably not even unlikely. It's just unlikely he'll meet someone familiar with it.

"Anyway, your life isn't fiction. It's no less real," he continues, because he'd rather talk about the theory of all this than his own private life, though he'll probably get to it eventually. "I mean, you've still lived it. It's not like anyone's implanted the memories of it into you without it ever happening. And hey, even if someone had, that would still make it real to you, which is what matters." He's getting a little off-topic, and accidentally straying dangerously close to old territory, things he definitely doesn't want to talk about or reveal he has first-hand experience with.

"Point is, either your life bled into fiction in my world, or they merely developed identically independently. Not the other way around. My world's fiction did not determine your life. So you've still got your free will and all that good stuff," Topher answers, gesturing casually. "And uh, to actually answer your question, my world was pretty much like yours, minus Stargate." He shrugs. "No aliens or fake gods or time travel. Just on TV."

"Simpler world," Daniel replies, one side of his mouth quirking into faint smile. It quickly fades. "Or I guess not, I guess, well I guess that's completely relative. It's not like Earth is any less, less complicated. It just happens to seem less when you have several galaxies' worth of additional reference points but of course when you consider the more localized context Earth is more a microcosm encapsulating the broader, more interstellar conflict."

He has to stop to take a breath and it occurs to him that Topher in all probability doesn't care much about that. It certainly holds more appeal to him as a topic as opposed to, say, discussing the rather disturbing idea of free will versus fate in universes where one's existence is defined solely by their reflected character in fiction. Daniel's just not sure if he's ready to address that, particularly in relation to himself.

Edited 2014-11-04 20:27 (UTC)

Topher gives Daniel a skeptical quirked eyebrow at Daniel claiming Topher's is a simpler world. Topher knows exactly what's different between his own world and this one. And, of course, that even just the existence of the technology at Rossum has a 97% chance of causing the end of the world, and that he may well helped speed it along. The thing that actually lets him sleep at night is knowing that even though they may not have guaranteed the destruction of the tech, they've surely done a good job in delaying it, and undoing much of Topher's damage. And there are still plenty people back in his home universe making the effort to continue doing so. They're probably doing fine without him. Topher was always much at making the tech than destroying it.

It's probably a good thing he doesn't actually have time to ponder all this more than a few seconds, because he can't help but feel a little childish glee at Daniel rambling. And interesting stuff, too! See, this is why Topher was excited to meet him. Well, partly.

"Well, exactly!" he answers enthusiastically. "And that works on every level, too. You can find that same kind of microcosm if you limit it to just one country, one city, one family, one person, as long as you look close enough! The same kind of conflicts, motivations, self-preservation and self-advancement, it's important whether you're a tiny organism or a vast intergalactic empire. Like growth patterns; electrical firing between brain cells, growth of social networks, expansions of galaxies, they look similar even though they're on massively different scales. It's all complicated."

"And it's all interlocking, it's all, all interconnected, it's the butterfly-hurricane theory which one would think doesn't actually have scientific basis but it does, that's the brilliant thing, it's that it does." There it is, the familiar rush of language and hand-waving and the associated joy with being able to describe it, make it verbal, vocal, communicative. "Nature and it's, it's equilibrium being that it needs to enact conflict right down the cellular level, constant growth and change and code alterations and adaptations to those external changes, it's the building blocks, it's, it's how there are so many deviations of the same universe, it's how there is no central, prime universe, just derivations and copies upon copies upon copies of mirrors and parallels and layered existences. And it's because of the constant shifts in reality, it's because Newton's First Law, it's because stillness is not, not in nature's foundation."

Topher's excitement, his equal-or-greater magnitude of energy for this conversation, is exactly the kind of intellectual energy Daniel has missed so desperately since falling through the Rift. There's something vaguely Sam-like about him - no, not exactly, more accurately it's a McKay-esque vibe, the full awareness of his own depth of intelligence and a complete, utter willingness to prove it. He presents it much better, however, distinctly unMcKay-esque in the ease with which he can slip in and out of polysyllabic jargon with someone else, anticipate them keeping up, and leapfrog off their last points accordingly.

Despite the strangeness of it all, Daniel can't help but grin a little, perplexed but delighted to come against a similar-caliber mind.

Topher keeps nodding enthusiastically as Daniel goes on, while he tries to temper his internal excitement at getting to discuss this kind of thing with a sci-fi hero of his. (He doesn't do a very good job at quelling it.)

"And that's why it's so exciting to get to see some of the different universes, and meet people from others and hear about what their worlds are like, because suddenly the deviations become so tangible and real," Topher bounces off where Daniel left off.

"And the sometimes you get to meet people from different points in the same universe, or even time travelers, and you can see how things have changed in a world you haven't even been to. And.. the effects it has on people, how a minor change in something fundamental to the environment radically changes everything. Or the opposite! You have these world with magic and werewolves and Gods and demons and aliens, yet you find people, often humans indistinguishable from any of us, who you can relate to just as easily as if they were a colleague."

Unnoticed by Topher, Phonea has climbed back from her perch and is now enthusiastically interacting with Daniel's snow leopard.

"I mean, I've made friends here who are literally horned trolls from different planets, and uh vampire hunters, and literal biblical angels, and an immortal, unfathomable sentient time machine," he goes on, his gestures getting more extreme as he gets further along. "And I mean, we still have no idea what sort of long-term effects this will have on this universe, I mean it's only been a few years. It's like the Rift is just this giant extra chaos element, chucking things at the world to see what happens."

"Literal Satan," he puts in, and quickly starts talking again before that can become their next conversational lead-in.

"And it's unified, that's the most interesting thing," Daniel muses aloud. "It's, it's all coming here, isn't it? Well obviously not here but I mean, I mean Manhattan, it's all ending up there. The multiverse bleedover, it all ripples out and forms at one epicenter, one central universe, and that's this one. But why this one?" He's moved on from initial rhetorical excitement to the amorphous questions, the ones that can't be so easily answered, as is his pattern of thought. Almost unconsciously he starts pacing, repeating his own internal thought processes aloud until the intellectual inquiries build up. "It could be randomized, that's always an option, but nothing's ever completely random, is it? Truly randomized intervals mostly only occur on a very molecularized basis and this is really not my area of expertise."

Then again, if Topher's allegedly been watching his life on TV he would probably have guessed that already.

Daniel can probably tell that Topher has heard of Satan's presence as he merely inclines his head a little at the mention of him. He has kept a very wide berth however. After all, Topher met him that one time, or rather he met Gabriel's memory of him, and he has NO desire to say hello to the real thing. Nope, no thank you, not today. Not ever, hopefully.

"Oh, no, it's not all coming here," Topher corrects. "I mean, first of all, there's plenty of rifts on this planet alone, I actually landed in San Francisco before I came here. And there might be rifts just like this all over, in the middle of deep space or on random planets who the fuck knows where. But it's not just this universe. I have it on pretty solid authority that there's plenty of them of them in other universes too. Some connecting from one specific place to another, like wormholes, or some that are just sucking stuff in from wherever, like ours do."

"So what's the pattern, then?" He folds his arms, cocks his head, studies the tree trunks like they might yield some answers for him. "Why is it that some universes get matter pulled out and others get matter dumped in? Is it limited to individuals with consciousness, or is there more matter transferal happening that we just don't know about? Well no, okay, that's probably exactly what's happening, but how? Is there, is there a pattern, an algorithm, anything to decide which universes are the entry points and which are the exit points? Are they, are they fluid, ever-changing, do some universes oscillate between incoming and outgoing? Does this one?"

Daniel just keeps launching his theoretical questions, one after the other after the other after the other, regardless of whether or not there are answers. This is honestly not his area, something much more up Sam's alley, but it helps tremendously to have someone who is a) obviously highly knowledgeable about the subject matter and b) more than willing to discuss it.

"Which one of those do you want me to answer first?" Topher asks with an amused grin. "Though, yeah, some of those I couldn't tell ya," he continues, and starts to work his way through the questions. "The Rift both gives and takes people, but when it takes, it mostly seems to take people who were brought here in the first place. No clue why, except maybe the Rift trace stuck on them makes it easier for the Rift to pick them up again." He shrugs. "But it's strange, cause sometimes you get people who know each other coming through, right? Often from different points in time though. But the thing is, that's not necessarily the Rift staying connected to one place. Like I said, I got spat out through the Rift in San Francisco, but someone I know came through this Rift! I mean, that's one hell of a coincidence."

He crosses his arms, leaning back a little, but then seems to change his mind, uncrossing his arms and sitting up to gesture further. "And it's not just individuals with consciousness, we get all kinds of matter coming through. The interesting thing is that it's not just matter though, it's also consciousnesses. Like this dream! I guarantee you, there is someone presently in this telepathically linked dreamspace who is linked not just by the Rift but through the Rift, who are still happily asleep back home in their universe."

Daniel shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. Topher thankfully seems to be very much in the know about the specifics of the Rift, or at least the questions that can be reasonably answered.

"It's incredible," he mutters, and forces himself to stop pacing because it's making him slightly dizzy. "I mean it's not particularly my area - actually you'd know that, wouldn't you, this is more Sam, er, Carter's thing - but the possibilities of this? It's like a, a less precise version of wormhole travel. And possibly irreversible, unless you can figure out some way to get the Rift to take you back which, as far as I can tell, isn't the most dependable process."

"Irreversible as far as we can tell at present," Topher answers with a nod. "To say it's not dependable is sort of like saying..." He trails of, gesturing circularly for a few moments, trying to find the right comparison. "I dunno, it's not at all dependable is my point. In fact, it's kind of way more likely to depend on it chewing you up and spitting you out in a coma, or dead, or worse. That's what usually happens."

"Well, if you know me then you'd know that none of the above are necessarily big obstacles for me." A bit of dark humor, then. And it's true and Topher would theoretically know it's true, so there's no real harm in any of it. And it also helpfully allows Daniel to not think too hard on how he would know about the gruesome ways in which one can be mangled by the Rift. He's even more eager to avoid discussing how Topher knows there's a "usually" to that equation at all.

"But you're right. I'm in no rush to become comatose or dead, um, again. So until there's a more concrete method, here I am. Manhattan. Or, uh," he pauses to reevaluate his surroundings, discounting the recently materialized bench and lamppost (which he's still not a hundred percent on how Topher put them there), "physically, anyway. Where exactly are we right now? Did the Rift put us anywhere in particular?"

Edited 2014-11-05 21:08 (UTC)

Topher does know that, but it's strangely a bit different to just... take a moment to realise that all those horrible, terrible things that happened to Daniel on the show most likely actually happened to Daniel, the person standing in front of him. Suddenly the jokes of frequent deaths aren't quite as easy to swallow. Then again, Topher is pretty decent at dark humour, since joking is definitely one of his primary coping methods, so he doesn't let himself be too terribly bothered by others behaving the same way. Phonea, however, gives Aliyah a gentle scritch behind the ears.

"Don't think so," Topher answers, glancing around himself. "Non-particular spooky forest intended to creep us out. Actually, it has been very intentionally creeping you out telepathically. It does that sometimes, affect your mood. I blocked it for you when I joined you, though." So, you know, you're welcome.

"Really?" He hadn't been focusing overly on the dimming of the high-strung nerves that have been present since the dream began, their gradual fade-away having felt so organic at the time. Also there was the your life is fiction in my world thing, which had very much taken precedent in the string of things Daniel had been paying the most attention to. "Huh. Thanks. Um, that was nice of you to, uh, do that. So thanks."

Then a secondary thought strikes him, and it of course bubbles out in the form of a question before Daniel can work out whether or not it's remotely tactful.

"How? Is that, can you just...do that in, in dreams?" He's doing a poor job of wording it as anything but broadly, unsure of how universal that application of dream manipulation can be over the spread of individuals.

"No problem," Topher replies with a practiced smile. It really is no problem for him, to that to one person's mind while he is interacting with them. At least when it's something as simple as just blocking interference from the Rift, not actively influencing them in any particular direction. It would be impossible to try to do it to everyone here however, just like he can't do anything about the setting in more than the immediate area surrounding them. The dreamscape is too big for that, he'd need someone to boost his power. He knows this because he has actually done that once, and it had been very useful.

"Yeah, just dreams. I don't go fiddling with people's minds, certainly not without asking their permission first," he answers. Hah. As if he's never done that before. It is true though, he has most definitely put those days behind him, as interesting and exciting as it was to do. Given that ninety seven percent chance of apocalypse involved, he does not intend to give this universe the imprinting technology or information.

He does sort of do it in the dreaming, but he tries to keep it, you know, ethical and positive. Actually helping people. And respecting their boundaries when they don't want him to, like with Sunshine, one of the few people he goes to see in the waking world instead.

"It's my Rift-given superpower," he says, materialising four balls and starting to juggle with them, then turning them into apples mid-air, then making them disappear entirely. Phonea may be preening and strutting a little throughout this display. "Dream walking, dreamspace manipulation, and falling asleep and waking up at any given time," he explains, grinning a bit. "Mind you, I know people who could do the same thing in here because they can actually do it while they're awake, but that's different."

"Well that's...wow, that's actually useful." He can already think of a situation or three where a power like that would have been exceptionally helpful, mostly with the preventing of suffering or having to watch his friends suffer in dreams. That would have been nice.

The confirmation that Topher won't go rifling through anyone's subconscious mind is a welcome thing to hear, though Daniel has no idea if that will even matter in his own case, seeing as Topher has evidently been getting extended glimpses into his life for some time. He trusts the man's assertion, however. He's been given no reason not to, and Topher's marked lack of hostility feels like a good verification that he means well.

"If only I could be so lucky." Daniel finally sits beside him. Now that he knows the dream isn't actively going to harm him, there's little reason to remain standing and tensed to run at any minute. He closes one hand in a fist and concentrates for a moment to demonstrate. It opens with a small pile of staples on his palm, which he shakes his head at in mild disgust.

Topher looks curiously down at Daniel's hand, then blinks a bit at the pile of staplers.

"Well, that's... anti-climactic," he says honestly. "Can you make other things?" Because otherwise it is a bit useless, yeah. Then again, based on evidence, does Daniel really need a superpower? Doesn't he already kind of have one? Maybe the Rift just figured he was awesome enough as he is.

"It's pretty much limited to office supplies," he replies as he pockets the staples ruefully. "Those were supposed to be paperclips, but I'm still working out the details of how it, um. Works." So far his understanding of the power is little more than the general rule of how the bigger and more complex the object, the more concentration and accuracy required in the visualization prior to materialization. So far Daniel hasn't purposefully managed anything more impressive than a ballpoint pen.

"Control of a dreamspace sounds much more helpful." He shakes his head, gnawing on his lip. "These dreams are, well. They can get pretty intense, and I'm still hammering out a definitive way to separate reality from the Dreaming. Getting better at that, at least."

Well... Office supplies. Suppose it could be worse. It's not actively working against Daniel, at least, even if it's not overly impressive or useful. But a little bit useful is better than a little bit or a lot harmful.

"Yeah, the Rift loves messing with us. But like you said, one does get better at it with practice, if you have the aptitude for it. It often varies how easy it is to tell, though. Some Rift-given dreams make it so difficult even I have trouble telling for a moment." That had been some pretty impressive telepathic trickery. Which had annoyed, impressed, frightened and delighted Topher, all at the same time. "You can also control the dreamspace yourself, to a certain extent, with practice, though that also depends on the dream. This one isn't very friendly to being changed, for example. And it's often easier to change how you yourself appear in the dream, like changing your clothes. And sometimes you change the dream without even noticing, like if you assume something is there, then it might suddenly be."

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