Part Two: The Dinner

[lestercraft]

Who: Arthur & Helly Lester and anyone who actually goes for the invite
When: Evening of Jan 29th
Where: The Lester Household
Open/Closed: Open! Come one and all from Haven Street.
Applicable Warnings: Discussion of January events, mass conspiracy (it's us, we're the conspirators)


It's even odds, he thinks, whether people thought he was off his rocker in making a post like that, or if people would believe he's actually trying to contact people the only reasonable way he knew how. It was certainly much faster than trying to contact people individually, especially in this weather, and hopefully between himself and Helly that they've met enough people to get a decent turn-out.

The more they can learn about this place, the more they can trust each other, the better. Right now, trust is all they have.

The lower floor of the house is well lit, even if all the windows are curtained and shut, and there's a record playing in the lounge, audible from outside - something jazzy and dated by the standards of the time, but a bit of Hoagy Carmichael and Billie Holiday is settling his nerves, if nothing else - and the kitchen is... sparse, clearly underused but for the stack of mugs by the sink, but with some effort the blind leading the blind he and Helly have at least put together a salad for people. Theoretically they'll be bringing their own food too, make it at least ostensibly a potluck.

Comments

[coefficiently]

[She could have explained it in virtually the same way if Margaret had been the one asking the questions instead. 'I was in the town square, and I don't know how it happened just that it did—'

Is it a relief to hear her own experience spoken aloud by someone else? Maybe. Maybe not. It's definitely more complicated than having had her new years drink dosed with some kind of drug. But it makes more sense, right? In the context of all of them here in this room, from disparate places and time.]

Metaphorically. My son—while we were traveling, we had an accident. We landed somewhere we weren't meant to, and he found something that made him see things that had happened [to a seven foot tall alien robot] there before. It was just a piece of a machine. It could be we're dealing with similar tech.

[regulararmybrat]

A machine that makes you see things that already happened....

[She says, slowly, allowing herself to absorb the information. Already, she can see the applications such technology might have--allowing those who have lost their memories to relive certain moments in their lives, historians being able to view important events, and so on and so forth.

It is also entirely possible that something like that could be abused if it fell into the wrong hands.]

If they do have their hands on a sort of...machine, thing, whatever, it could be that we weren't meant to see what we saw. What would be the point, otherwise?

[coefficiently]

The one we found was broken. I don't know that it was really designed to do what it did. [Sounds like agreement by way of extrapolation.] It could be that what they have here is malfunctioning somehow.

[Alien tech going wrong—or interacting with something it wasn't ever meant to interact with—is the most explicable answer for all this, to her mind. But the prospect of saying so out loud before she's confirmed it to a bunch of people who don't know what a smart phone is makes her feel like she's in the verge of growing a second head. So:]

I'd be curious about the range. I was at the square too.