etraya | un: Bachelor

Attention Fellow People of Etraya,

I am Doctor Daniil Dankovsky, Bachelor of Medicine. As I understand it, few of you have seen a doctor lately. That simply won’t do! Please, don’t wait to get sick to establish care. I am situated in the hospital, ready to take consent forms and make updated medical histories. At least a few of you have unaddressed concerns, I just know it. The average person comes to see the doctor when it’s too late! Though we cannot die here, there is no reason to suffer unduly.

And if you are otherwise healthy, perhaps think of it as helping me out. In the event of an outbreak, it is far more helpful to have complete clinical pictures of the inhabitants. Especially, as I understand it, there are many biological differences in this population.

Please come visit me during my clinic hours, every day from 10am to 6pm.

[What Daniil really wants is to meet more of the unusual inhabitants of Etraya more quickly as well as conduct casual interviews of the sort of people who are slated to save the universe. But he can’t just say that completely outright.]

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[Accelerator looks very exasperated. Not because of Daniil, but because anything related to Aleister is always tiring.]

He didn't just run it, he built the entire damn thing.

[A city founded by Aleister fucking Crowley. It's just as nightmarish as it sounds.]

2024. I'm from Academy City, which is a sovereign city-state located next to Tokyo in Japan. Why? What year are you from?

1920. And that bastard born before me, mind. He was known for “sex magic” in my time. Japan, you say. Surely he was chased out of Europe altogether by then. What did that scoundrel do? How did he achieve that longevity?

[This is going to drive Daniil absolutely insane.]

[2024 is absolutely buckwild to him. As far as he can tell everyone from 2003 onward has metal limbs and lives in ways beyond his wildest dreams. People get superpowers. Aliens land. Madness!]

[It's kind of nice hearing someone else refer to Alister in a derogatory way, and his lips tilt upwards. His feelings toward that asshole are a bit complicated, enough that he no longer wants to kill him, but he still dislikes him. It's impossible to forget all the damage Aleister caused in his life and the lives of countless other kids.]

I don't know, probably some magic bullshit. Or a combination of magic and science, because he's an expert with both.

[He waves his free hand.]

That's why he founded my city. It's a scientific garden of eden, meant to develop and study espers.

How did real magic appear out of nowhere after my time?

[Daniil cannot possibly unpack all of that for himself. He’s denying a lot of truth to do it.]

Is it truly a Garden of Eden? Where and when did these espers spring from?

Your universe is probably different. It's been around forever where I'm from, but it wasn't public knowledge until recently.

[He doesn't really know the details about the history of magic, so he can only shrug.]

Well, the naturally-born ones are just that - they're born that way. I don't know how the fuck that works. The rest of us are what you get when you take a kid and subject them to a bunch of medical procedures. It turns out if you break a kid's mind and body in a really specific way, they can warp reality using mathematical equations.

What is he doing in multiple universes? Wasn’t one of him enough?

[That second bit. Perhaps Daniil should reject it. But… recent days made that feel more possible.]

Impossible objects. Kaminsky would hit the roof.

Of course not. That would never be enough for that bastard.

[Even back home Aleister made use of multiple versions of himself. His ego is the size of the planet.]

What the hell are you talking about?

Sorry, are you the only one allowed to mention people and places to introduce them to a conversation? Impossible objects are exactly as they sound. Impossible things, even if they exist, they perhaps shouldn’t.

I have no particular bias against them. I think physically existing is enough to prove they are worthy of it.

The very concept of arithmetic breaking the minds of children sounds like something kids would tell one another to explain a headache.

[This guy is touchy, isn't he?]

You're not wrong. [He can't imagine regular kids being anywhere near as used to or enthusiastic about math as espers. That, and 'impossible' is a good way to describe espers.] But think about it. Mathematical equations are the building blocks for the universe. If you're going to explain how something fundamentally works, when you really dig down, the root of that explanation is going to be based in math.

So if you're gonna influence the world, the best way to do it is with math. Even if it's impossible there's still some logic behind it.

[He is SO touchy.]

Of course. It makes sense. [ Danill turns towards his doctor bag and pulls something out. They’re blueprints for a structure that looks like something between a spine and a hornet’s thorax. The geometry is enough to drive any regular person insane.]

[Accelerator blinks, then wanders closer out of curiosity. He wants to see the papers Daniil has, and if he's allowed a look he stares, furrowing his brow.]

That's your 'impossible object'?

It’s not mine. But it is one of them. Belongs to a town out in the steppe.

[Oh yeah, he’s allowed to look.]

Ever seen anything like it? They call it the Polyhedron. Suspended on a stairway to heaven, made of glass and paper. It might cost a man his life just for drawing these plans.

[It's a good thing Accelerator doesn't need his ability to just read things like this. His brain is automatically noting when he comes across some impossible geometry, trying to calculate out internally. It reminds him of his early attempts at calculating out magic, how he could do so up to a certain point, but then an error sends everything spiraling. He can't correct it because he's missing a piece of the puzzle.]

In spirit, yeah, not literally. Back home something like this would be the product of magic.

It might be magic there, too, as much as I hate the idea of it. I spent some time trying to sketch it while I looked at it, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. That’s not quite right; I could draw the outside angles, but when I went to calculate the corresponding ones…

Hmm. [He's betting it's magical in nature.] When I need to calculate for magic I use imaginary numbers and formulas as substitutions. That might work for this.

[Maybe, he isn't sure. He glances over at Daniil.]

What the hell is the Polyhedron for? Do you know?

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