Rains emerge from deep in the Barrens, emanating from the Stair. Freefloating hydrogen and oxygen combines when it collides and recoils from the fringes of the anomaly, producing tremendous amounts of water vapor that continually cloud the skies, producing a steady trickle of rain that never really stops. In a few decades, geologists warn that the sandy soil of the Barrens will reach maximum saturation and collapse inwards onto the aquifer beneath in a series of sinkholes. No one really knows how to stop that, or what they'll do when it happens. They could always make a bargain, of course, but ecological devastation is at least predictable. Deals struck with those that come from the Stair are anything but.
The Embassy for the Pine Barrens Immigration Bureau (PBIB, an acronym no one uses) proper is as close as most humans willingly get. It's a squat, grey building about the size of a football field, two stories, and so heavily reinforced with concrete that it most resembles a gently sloping bunker. Daylight's a little unreliable, so they have overhead chemical lights that brighten and dim throughout the day to simulate the real thing. Employment for the humans here runs a two-year term with quarterly sabbaticals, and assigned from those preset outings, you don't really get to leave. It's for everyone's safety, you see.
The "front desk" is the worst place to work, and no one does it two days in a row by executive mandate. It doesn't really even make a pretension at being friendly as the rest of the world would take it; it's a featureless lobby, facing a clear plexiglass wall with a desk behind it. The desk is, itself, armored enough to resemble a miniature tank, and anyone in it can boot out the chair, curl under it, and hit the emergency button, which drops the desk down a floor to the basement level and closes behind it to seal off the area. There's also a pair of big, nasty-looking turrets hung in the far corners. Theoretically, Stairwalkers come here and deal with the Bureau on equal terms.
It was all made before they really figured out what the Stair was like, and so now it's mostly for show, though auditors that come in are funny to watch dance in nervousness here.
Here comes an example: a rippling trail of light reflecting at odd angles as it approaches through the endless, dreary rain. At a distance, the heavy gray of the climate makes it nothing but a shiny bauble, but up close the brilliant colors and the spray of light through them is clearly visible. Where its paws land, the ground crinkles and morphs, vitrefying into cracked glass and reflecting the colors of the rainbow up through the ambient water vapor.
It looks like - some kind of long-limbed hyrax, maybe, or a deer crossed with a guinea pig. A thick body, composed of stained glass, with doglike, tridactyl legs that move it easily across the muddy ground. Wide crystalline pads, like impossibly valuable gemstones, form the base of each paw, and the head is two upthrust horns between which a glimmering formation like a trihydrogen cation holds steady in the air; a gleaming, tripartite sphere, merged together and afloat, with a single shining point in the center that the whole revolves about.
This is Laminate Projection, self-proclaimed God of the Cathedral Contingent, and of all those who walk the Stair he is the most predictable, and thus the closest thing they have to a friend in this place. From him explanations flow, and some rules of the place are known, though never many. The Bureau pays him tribute, and each day that the tribute is given he answers two questions and poses one of his own, that gives rise to knowledge ungarnered.
Luckily, all he asks for is kaleidoscopes. Apparently, they're quite similar in physiology to the denizens of the plane he came from, and consuming them is "endemic to the propagation of his remit".
He really does talk like that.
Projection (one name or the other, both at introduction and parting, never a nickname or shortening of either), gracefully lopes into the lobby and there awaits announcement, after which his answers and question will be given.
The side door to the lobby desk opens up and through it what is possibly the mildest possible conception of a man ever created. Short, balding, and with a pair of glasses perched high on a sharp widow's peak, Barnabas Lazlo is a manager within the Bureau, equally famous for his easygoing demeanor and as the Unkillable Bob, for less than kind reasons.
"Projection," he acknowledges with a nod. His voice wibbles, low and quiet. It's not precisely that he's nervous, but he never speaks loudly if he can help it. "This one's new. Be of patience with her."
/the ordination of acolytes is within the scope of reason. Pending errata will be granted amelioration/
It's not sound. Laminate Projection brays its words into your brain without the medium of air to help it along - it feels a lot like the adrenaline shot of having a buzzer go off right in your ear, and it happens every time he utters one of his words. There are, unfortunately, a lot of them. This tends to keep conversations with him short.
Wordlessly, Bob the Unkillable (more kindly known as Barnabus Lazlo) hands over first a cup of chamomile tea, and then a sheet of paper with the day's questions on it.
They read, in no particular order:
~*~
1. In what direction does the Ungulate Worm wind today?
2. Who will win tonight's game between the Diamondbacks and the White Sox?
3. There are five fields of reason. The matrices of sentience overlay these and create the sustenance of life and all that reasons, giving birth to law. Which field lays atop the next step of the Stair?
~*~
Barnabas (sometimes known as Bob the Unkillable) taps the cup of tea. "Drink this," he says, not unkindly. "And don't think about it too hard. That's someone else's job. Yours is to not die. You'll get good at it, eventually."
How reassuring.
The Embassy for the Pine Barrens Immigration Bureau (PBIB, an acronym no one uses) proper is as close as most humans willingly get. It's a squat, grey building about the size of a football field, two stories, and so heavily reinforced with concrete that it most resembles a gently sloping bunker. Daylight's a little unreliable, so they have overhead chemical lights that brighten and dim throughout the day to simulate the real thing. Employment for the humans here runs a two-year term with quarterly sabbaticals, and assigned from those preset outings, you don't really get to leave. It's for everyone's safety, you see.
The "front desk" is the worst place to work, and no one does it two days in a row by executive mandate. It doesn't really even make a pretension at being friendly as the rest of the world would take it; it's a featureless lobby, facing a clear plexiglass wall with a desk behind it. The desk is, itself, armored enough to resemble a miniature tank, and anyone in it can boot out the chair, curl under it, and hit the emergency button, which drops the desk down a floor to the basement level and closes behind it to seal off the area. There's also a pair of big, nasty-looking turrets hung in the far corners. Theoretically, Stairwalkers come here and deal with the Bureau on equal terms.
It was all made before they really figured out what the Stair was like, and so now it's mostly for show, though auditors that come in are funny to watch dance in nervousness here.
Here comes an example: a rippling trail of light reflecting at odd angles as it approaches through the endless, dreary rain. At a distance, the heavy gray of the climate makes it nothing but a shiny bauble, but up close the brilliant colors and the spray of light through them is clearly visible. Where its paws land, the ground crinkles and morphs, vitrefying into cracked glass and reflecting the colors of the rainbow up through the ambient water vapor.
It looks like - some kind of long-limbed hyrax, maybe, or a deer crossed with a guinea pig. A thick body, composed of stained glass, with doglike, tridactyl legs that move it easily across the muddy ground. Wide crystalline pads, like impossibly valuable gemstones, form the base of each paw, and the head is two upthrust horns between which a glimmering formation like a trihydrogen cation holds steady in the air; a gleaming, tripartite sphere, merged together and afloat, with a single shining point in the center that the whole revolves about.
This is Laminate Projection, self-proclaimed God of the Cathedral Contingent, and of all those who walk the Stair he is the most predictable, and thus the closest thing they have to a friend in this place. From him explanations flow, and some rules of the place are known, though never many. The Bureau pays him tribute, and each day that the tribute is given he answers two questions and poses one of his own, that gives rise to knowledge ungarnered.
Luckily, all he asks for is kaleidoscopes. Apparently, they're quite similar in physiology to the denizens of the plane he came from, and consuming them is "endemic to the propagation of his remit".
He really does talk like that.
Projection (one name or the other, both at introduction and parting, never a nickname or shortening of either), gracefully lopes into the lobby and there awaits announcement, after which his answers and question will be given.
The side door to the lobby desk opens up and through it what is possibly the mildest possible conception of a man ever created. Short, balding, and with a pair of glasses perched high on a sharp widow's peak, Barnabas Lazlo is a manager within the Bureau, equally famous for his easygoing demeanor and as the Unkillable Bob, for less than kind reasons.
"Projection," he acknowledges with a nod. His voice wibbles, low and quiet. It's not precisely that he's nervous, but he never speaks loudly if he can help it. "This one's new. Be of patience with her."
/the ordination of acolytes is within the scope of reason. Pending errata will be granted amelioration/
It's not sound. Laminate Projection brays its words into your brain without the medium of air to help it along - it feels a lot like the adrenaline shot of having a buzzer go off right in your ear, and it happens every time he utters one of his words. There are, unfortunately, a lot of them. This tends to keep conversations with him short.
Wordlessly, Bob the Unkillable (more kindly known as Barnabus Lazlo) hands over first a cup of chamomile tea, and then a sheet of paper with the day's questions on it.
They read, in no particular order:
~*~
1. In what direction does the Ungulate Worm wind today?
2. Who will win tonight's game between the Diamondbacks and the White Sox?
3. There are five fields of reason. The matrices of sentience overlay these and create the sustenance of life and all that reasons, giving birth to law. Which field lays atop the next step of the Stair?
~*~
Barnabas (sometimes known as Bob the Unkillable) taps the cup of tea. "Drink this," he says, not unkindly. "And don't think about it too hard. That's someone else's job. Yours is to not die. You'll get good at it, eventually."
How reassuring.
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