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Despite the reservations of Jacob and many of the others who came from different universes, re-entry into the atmosphere was largely a non-event. Apparently there were concerns that we’d burn up due to the heating of re-entry, but I haven’t heard of that happening to a ship without massive damage to the hull and shields. And for all of the damage inflicted on this castle, it had plenty of hull and shields to spare. I was more concerned about something on this castle having a spontaneous transporter accident than that.
Once we were in the atmosphere and in a stable hover, we crossed the border into Nilandar. Almost immediately the technicians were complaining that overall system efficiency dropped noticeably once we were in Nilandar. Probably an aspect of the local physics that was overpowering the ability of the castle’s living aspect to counter. At least it wasn’t like we had a major shortage of power available though given the sheer amount of power crystals available. Pushing things too much might start making waste heat an issue on the other hand.
Jacob was quite disappointed about not being able to jury-rig some sort of insane solution.
(Jacob) Drat!
(Katlyn) Why drat? Do you want to rig up something else that halfway threatens to explode and kill us all?
(Jacob) Well, not really, but I don’t have much of a job if nothing is going wrong. It’s such a rare thing here.
(Technician) To be fair, there are plenty of malfunctioning systems, things that aren’t functioning well, and stuff running on backups.
(Jacob) I can work on that stuff I suppose then. Would have been nice to be needed to do something non-standard though.
(Katlyn) Listening to Vanatica, it sounds like everything here is “non-standard” in some fashion.
(Technician) Given that we have a cross-wired together hybrid of Sith/Republic tech, Federation “tech”, Mad Scientist Steampunk, and whatever passes for local technology, I think “standard” gets a bit odd.
Part of me wondered if we’d be better off with a reality bubble that wasn’t an amalgamation of various realities and instead was a distillation of one in particular. It would severely hamper those not native to that reality, but it would mean much easier importation of that reality’s technology into a cohesive system. Then again, much of the point of this expedition was to push the limits of our understanding of reality to depths of the Tier IV Multiverse. Playing it safe in our cushy reality bubble, while comforting, was counterproductive.
While we were definitely still flight and space worthy, the decision was quickly made to land and make repairs on the various systems and structural components damaged during the phasing experiment. We ended up locating a semi-isolated peninsula of seashore that looked stable enough while not occupied by anything likely to be badly impacted by having a castle land on it.
I don’t think any of us were anticipating getting a door-to-door salesman almost immediately after we landed. And true to the tropes of old Earth movies, this one was selling encyclopedias. Was this an unbelievable coincidence? Or was there some supernatural force (or even the Force itself somehow?) at work here to ensure that new arrivals learned the local magic/science/philosophy? Probably more like a salesman with some sort of weird ability to find and be where potential customers might be found.
(Salesman) Twelve Obols for the full set! Suitable for any apprentice philosopher!
(Katlyn) Twelve Obols seems kinda high for a set of encyclopedias to me.
(Salesman) Primers are included!
(Katlyn) How do we know that this isn’t a scam? I’ve had innumerable people try to sell me fake holocrons after all!
(Salesman) Well, it would be a lot of printing for a scam!
Hmm, sounded like he was telling the truth. Looked like getting rid of old texts that were no longer particularly useful, since building up one’s stores of Philosophy required studying things one did not yet know. I could probably negotiate him down to eight Obols if I was so inclined.
Now I was pondering what all counted as something sufficient for studying to build up stores of philosophy. Even cut off from the subspace network and the Holonet, we had enough data in the computer core of the Dawnchaser on galactic history, cultures, biographies, sciences, engineering, surveys, movies, books, and games to keep a person occupied for hundreds of lifetimes.
Eh, even if I don’t use them, I am sure someone will find a use for them or at the very least serve as a useful reference when trying to understand what other philosophers are doing. I briefly considered paying with precious metal coinage, but decided that Obols were (relatively) more plentiful and this was potentially valuable enough information to be worth the loss of the Obols.
Collecting my new purchase, I handed them to Orzi Tihl and asked that the contents be digitized and made available to everyone. The salesman had mentioned the cost of printing the books, but I don’t think he realized how cheap printing books was in our society even if it was an industry that catered to hobbyists that liked having impressive looking libraries. Or that we had even more economical means of propagating large amounts of written text for everyone to use.
Jacob and Kuroko were soon browsing the preliminary scans and offering commentary.
(Jacob) Looks interesting, but I am not sure if this is legitimate or not.
(Kuroko) The introduction books do explain some basics, and you do have to study regularly to build up your reserves of philosophy. Rather like how you need to tinker with devices to build up your reserves of engineering!
(Katlyn) Umm, I am not the engineer of the family, but I don’t think that is how it works.
(Kuroko) I was talking to my husband on that point.
Which might be true for a sufficiently broad definition of engineering to cover whatever it was that Jacob was doing. I think it said more about Federation technology that it seemed to be more in line with what the local Philosophers were doing than anything sane. The fact that we didn’t understand what the detriments were to this magic or science was not putting me at ease either. I understood the rules for Sith, Faded, Jedi, and Codifiers, but this place changed the rules every seven thousand kilometers or so. That meant there were plenty of opportunities to be had, but it also meant that the threats we faced kept changing and morphing as we explored further.
And this was one scenario where learning more didn’t necessarily make you more prepared for the next encounter.
At least nothing seemed intent on bothering us as the Untremi and technicians went about repairing the damage from the latest disaster. Vanatica and Jacob got a lecture from the Untremi regarding disastrous experiments, and that set Vanatica off in even more of a foul mood than before. I elected to pass word around amongst the crew to give her some space for the time being. I pondered asking Ve Ke to ask Vanatica to stop working so hard and do something to relax, but decided that letting her work in peace was probably the best option at the moment.
On the whole, damage was relatively light in terms of structural damage. A few major systems needed patching and some minor systems were in need of serious repairs, but that was minor in comparison to the major damage centuries of neglect and fighting had done to the place. That didn’t get into the hundreds of experiments that were in various states of destruction and neglect, but the records of those was in many ways more important than the devices themselves.
Not that there was a lot for me to do with helping the repairs. I amused myself with painting the beachside setting we were in for a while before taking one of the datapads with a preliminary scan of the texts we had gotten from our salesman earlier. I wasn’t going to say that the philosophical concepts were particularly “new” in galactic discourse, but this region of the Anomaly actually gave such concepts power beyond debates on school campuses and poetry reading circles.
As for the nearby village, everything seemed comparatively “low-tech”, but also low-labor and the population seemed generally contented with an enjoyable lifestyle. I guess one could say the life here was pleasant, with most jobs spending a lot of time reading about whatever one found interesting. I could see how many might want to live this life, but I felt abandoning my life back home to live on a beach reading books for the rest of my days a tad bit irresponsible.
Besides, I had a deep suspicion of anywhere that appeared too idyllic. There always seemed to be a price paid somewhere and many societies had a tendency to hide that unpleasantness somewhere in the shadows.
By the time the repairs were complete and we were contemplating getting underway again, the locals insisted on throwing a “bon voyage dinner” for us. Not wishing to be rude, we elected to attend and try to be friendly. Again, the food was low-tech, but the dishes were all hauntingly delicious. The locals called it the “Essence of Flavor”, but I suspected it was a philosophical extraction of flavor from other foods then added to these dishes. This was quickly confirmed while discussing with the locals.
Part of me felt like this was cheating. Cooking good food needed to be an effort of some sort. Whether it was artisanal chefs pursuing the art of culinary cuisine or armies of food scientists working to adapt and develop new meals through nutritional science, there had to be an effort made to get better at it. This idea that one could simply study the best strategies for a holo game and use that store of “philosophy” to make better food just didn’t sit well with me. The level of abstraction between labor and result was just too large in my opinion. It also meant no one knew what they were doing on a technical or artisanal level. That had to have hidden consequences that were poorly understood by the locals. Did they even understand the concepts of cooking food long enough and hot enough to render it safe from pathogens? Or that people needed to eat certain foods, not for the taste, but for the nutritional contents?
Vanatica spent much of the meal asking questions regarding the best route to Leros while avoiding getting too close to Avrinthos. They didn’t seem to be particularly knowledgeable regarding routes, but did have a list of places to avoid (mostly just areas on the map to go around).
(Villager) Those are fairly substantial Lawless Areas, thanks to attempts to distill law and organization from some of the oceanic areas to make things more pleasant at home.
(Vanatica, muttering under her breath) And there it is…
(Villager) Well, they mostly get pirates, but they’re rarely actually violent. It encourages nonsensical behaviors mostly.
And here we had a perfect example of the issues with Philosophy: it either produced “waste” in the form of Green or other weird concoctions, or resulted in materials or areas being drained of properties to be used elsewhere. While one could argue that this was little different than mining or converting wilderness into farmland, those were in theory reversible given enough time and money. It wasn’t clear at all that Philosophy changes were reversible or that its byproducts could be disposed of safely. And based on everything we’ve learned or at least suspected about black holes suggested they weren’t likely a safe dumping ground even.
It seemed like an awful lot of the societies of the Anomaly were “stuck” as a consequence of their own technologies or powers and thus unable to fix fundamental flaws in how said societies functioned. It did make me wonder how much of galactic society fit the same pattern. After all, much of known galactic history either involved tyrannical empires or endless cycles of war and this pattern didn’t seem to vary much between timelines either. The fact that the Final Empire had been locked in societal stasis for billions or even trillions of years certainly wasn’t helping the case that galactic society was doing better than those on the Anomaly.
Perhaps the introduction of magic back home will stir some much needed change into things. On the other hand, one could make the argument that a society being stable on timeframes measuring anywhere from thousands to trillions of years was not something one wanted to disrupt that much. Philosophy could solve a lot of problems, but it looks like it might generate all sorts of new and difficult to manage problems as well.
Creative Nonsense 
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