15066/Old records, new eyeballs

Old records, new eyeballs
Date of Scene:	10 May 2023
Location:	Fred's Diner - Mutant Town
Synopsis:	A threat of a time-out in hell and a bit of All-through-the-alphabet thinking on the road from A to B, actually had Lucifer and his Sin coming up with a lead. And modern milkshakes are not what they're cracked up to be.
Cast of Characters:	Sinister, Lucifer

---

Sinister has posed:
There are many, many places that research can take a person. Eventually, it takes one to quiet places or noisy places, depending on your nature. The New York Reference Library was a port of call earlier, little scraps of notes found here and there; Nathaniel's been a busy, busy mad scientist the last couple of days. And now, there's a plate of cheese covered fries and a chocolate milkshake that have demanded his attention.

The composed Englishman looks a little spent, a sure sign really when consuming this amount of dietary carbs and melted dairy product; he usually just has a few mozarella sticks and doesn't bother with such things as the 'chips' to go with it. One long fry is pulled free, its strings of melted yellow cheddar demonstrating why they tend to be labelled 'plastic' as it forms a long string. He stares from fry down the strand "...it's no good you looking at me like that, it's just a matter of time before you too, are consumed." Bite. Chew.

Lucifer has posed:
Sitting across from the carb-devouring scientist is his partner both in life and in...well everything else. While Sinister is chomping down on cheese fries - with threats of said consumption included! - the Devil tilts his head and watches this go on for a few moments. His own dietary choices for this evening include a club sandwich with fries (sans cheese) and a bowl of seasonal fruit. Of this, there are grapes and a couple melon varieties. "You should give yourselves some rest. I know that this problem is...a really big problem and there's a level of understanding that needs to be reached...but you're wearing yourselves thin." He pauses, pops a piece of melon, chews.

"I read an article online the other day that brought up the argument that the forbidden fruit was not an apple..." He continues, popping a grape this time. "Their reasoning was because apples aren't native to the middle east. I commented that they were assuming the middle east is where the garden of Eden is." He chuckles. "That started a whole new debate about whether or not the garden still exists somewhere."

Sinister has posed:
"There was some theory that it was a Persimmon, or that it was even a pommegranate, in fact. They also were fairly certain they'd found the remains of the Ark at one point, but not surprisingly, at the foot of mount Arrarat. I think they found it in Turkiye, or whas it Bulgaria? One or the other..." another fry is given an evil look. "It's stomach for you, mister..." and that gets dipped in a little ketchup and similarly devoured. "It doesn't surprise me. You were in a forum though? My goodness, you like to play the advocate of well... yourself, sometimes, don't you?" Grin. "What did that lead to?"

Stoically ignoring that whole 'you're working yourself too hard' comment. If he doesn't respond, he must be fine. All fine. Everything is fine.

Lucifer has posed:
"Oh the usual psychobabble. Some people claiming they know where it is. Others saying it was just a name of a place that no longer exists. One even decided to wrap it all up in a conspiracy theory involving climate change. That the Middle East used to be all green and blooming until civilization killed it..." He picks up a fry then to bite it in half and consume all while keeping his eyes on Sinister for the moment.

"I will take you to a place you cannot escape. Not even with your teleporting tentacles. If you continue to refuse the elephant in the room and continue to push yourself as you are." He finally offers, in a serious voice and with no emotion in his face. Apparently the Devil means business in this moment.

Sinister has posed:
"Oh, good grief, you know... free speech and the freedom of information is all well and good, but people have become far too used to instant information gratification these days. If it takes any research or a modicum of time other than googling it, that ends up being too much effort and therefore there's such a treasure trove of misinformation and disinformation that it's a wonder anyone knows where they live any more... some ass on social media will have conspired to tell them that the government sedition squad has in fact nuked Littletown /and they didn't notice/ because of the chips in their heads thanks to vaccination in school..." Sinister shakes his head, picking a moment to suck far too deeply on his milkshake. There's that blister-eyed moment of rainfreeze before he manages to balance his inner temperature and he rubs his temple briefly.

But that look, that look is priceless and probably not to be trifled with. "Didn't you at some point have rampages and focused campaigns that lasted centuries?" innocently said. "Look. I understand I am taxing myself, but there isn't the luxury of centuries and I don't have... quite the resource I usually do, until I figure out why controlling multiple clones is defaulting to a humongous headache. So I'm split. A bit. Actually today was quite... fun in its own way. I had a Sorceror's apprentice moment with the books in the reference library, then realized a lot of them were out of place. That was a happy half hour of reorganizing it all."

Lucifer has posed:
"I did. The difference is I could handle those campaigns and rampages. Not saying you cant handle a lot...because you can...but you're stretching yourself out and thin and without the backing you used to have for it. Mostly because of your emotional limitations now..which fair point you're not used to. But you have to get used to it.." He eats another fry. "But even yourself. You. Here. Now. You're threatening french fries before eating them... and not even in a comical way. I'm actually sitting here disturbed a bit.."

Finally he settles back, watching Sinister for a moment. "And I get it, I do...but you keep this up and you'll be nothing but a shell of yourself when we actually go try and find the Brood's hiding spot...not to mention...you went insane the last time this happened. Mostly - as far as I'm concerned - because you only had you and yourself. This time. You have me. And I'm not going anywhere. I care about you, all of you, all of the yous....so please...if even just a DAY. Or I will take you to Hell and you likely won't like it."

Sinister has posed:
"My food intimidation isn't cute?" Blinking, Sinister holds up his hands. "Ok. I surrender to this point, for now. But I argue that you also, were not entirely fit to handle what you handled either, there was a lot of trauma that still haunts on occasion..." he sits back in the booth, resting his hands in his lap, gazing at the Devil. "I do sometimes wonder if the jigsaw puzzle of who I used to be once, is ever likely to be fully restored. I suspect I should take trips down memory lane, but those are actually more beneficial when there's others there -- it forces one to explain and rationalize and understand. TO face, I suppose."

The milkshake is glanced at. "I don't think I'm a fan of those. Too much sugar, too much effort to get it sucked up the straw for a normal individual and they give you temporo-sinal hypothermia."

A silent few moments passes by. "What else did YOU do today?"

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer smirks. "Okay, maybe it was a little adorable...but then it kinda became worrisome. I wasn't sure if it was a show or if maybe something was snapping in your brain." Maybe it was a little of both. Who knows!

"Aside from traumatizing idiots on the internet? Not so much. Read a bit more of that book Strange gave me but I'm not finding anything Brood specific between the pages." Then he back tracks a bit. "And maybe I couldn't handle some of it, but I took my breaks. Sort of. Also even YOU would know that it's harder to assess the self...sometimes you need people on the outside to help you with it. So...quit arguing with me and just take the break." He grins. "And if you ever wanna take some trips down memory lane, you know I'm good for going along for the ride. Just...maybe after you rest and we figure out this Brood shit."

Sinister has posed:
"Indeed, thoughts and memory work in mysterious ways. And no, I was just being silly. I haven't been nearly as inclined to get angry at idiots, mostly because I think my mind is subtley steering me away from them and prempting me from doing so... I think I decided it might be a thing to take it out ridiculously on food..." Nathaniel pushes aside the milkshake, orders a coffee and settles in with that instead, with just a dab of cream and a little sugar. This seems much more satisfactory and he continues on his quest for cholesterol, one CHIP at a time. Bwaha.

"You know I'm going to ask. Did you find anything unusual in the text that wasn't precisely laymen's terms, that might be a pseudo-reference? I doubt Strange would've given the book to be studied, if it was utterly useless."

Lucifer has posed:
"I see. Well, I apologize for not seeing it simply for the silliness that it has been intended to be seen with." Lucife at least says this before he's asked about the book. "Possibly? Honestly, I haven't been looking at it in that light...and perhaps I should have. I'll skim it later to see if I missed some underlying information." He offers this and pulls the abandoned milkshake of Sinister's over to himself, lifting it to take a drink. Cold things never bother him, and he likes the flavor of chocolate.

The next few moments are likely done in silence while food is consumed one chip and bites of sandwich at a time. Normally this sort of silence is a welcomed thing, but with the imminence of brood finding ahead of them, perhaps this is being viewed as more the calm before the storm. "So...what are we hoping to find beneath Manhattan? I suppose in a perfect world it'd be nothing, but...do we think we'll find anything?"

Sinister has posed:
"I'm hoping not. But I suspect," Sinister replies, dabbing his mouth once he's satisfied with his repast being past tense, with that selfsame good breeding that makes a paper towel into fine dining accoutrement. He stares off past Lucifer for a moment or two, deep in thought, then holds up a finger. "One of the reasons I was looking things up, or trying to. Too much to sift through, so I narrowed the field. The radiation signature has a very short half-life. That suggests technology after-effect, rather than sustained travel. So, I started looking into samples and readings I'd taken from elsewhere, in odd spots. I'd found a very similar signature in a comet impact crater that had been mutating the local landscape, in Russia about seventy years ago." He shrugs, moving on to explain why that was relevant.

"I compared it to other readings of the same signature and found some other fellow, an astrophysicist, had been attempting to ascertain the origin of a set of meteors and meteorites and put it down to a supernova some well... millenia back, I suppose."

Lucifer has posed:
"So..." Lucifer wracks his brain to put the pieces together a little bit. "This very well could be just the after affects of a meteor impact that began in the distant cosmos? Like they crashed here, buried here, and then somehow remained dormant for almost a century? Or are we now looking to see if other bursts of activity had occurred...." Then he blinks and holds up a finger...

His other hand does a little hibbie jibbie vibe and then the book Strange gave them appears out of - possibly - thin air. Magic! And he begins to rummage through the pages a moment before finding what he's looking for. "It appeared in the night sky as lightning, but a strike that would go on for days rather than seconds. Then, as similar, it disappeared never to be seen again. Observational theories, purposed after the invention of magnification amplifiers - now known as telescopes - suggest that this could have been the first visible proof of a supernova in a nearby star cluster." After reading the bit, he turns the book towards Sin, letting it float in midair, for the scientist to further read.

Sinister has posed:
Perks up! If anything innervates him more than finding something of value, it is a rare bird indeed. Hours, nay... days of fatigue fade before the lean forth to review this rather unscientific (but nevertheless valuable) data. "That drawing resembles the constellation of Aries--" he taps the page "--and this is part of the Draco systems..." he frowns, looking here and there over the drawing and looks askance, eyes ticking left and right in tiny little movements as his brain sifts through short term memory.

"More like anywhere up to three centuries ago, the debris has been landing in our galaxy for a while, caught in the gravitational pull. I'm sure some ended up elsewhere. But the island of Manhattan is on a fault line. I'm wondering if ..." if the original impact was somewhere slightly other than directly over New York. Gotta love how the earth's crust can throw things off, right?

Lucifer has posed:
"I can rummage through the book a little bit more. There's some other passages about the star systems that I overlooked but may hold a little more information." Lucifer smirks. "Glad you mentioned that much...until you did...I guess I wasn't too sure if stuff like this was important.." A flush then. "Sorry I didn't mention it sooner" Still seeing Sinister come back to some sort of life makes Lucifer happy. Perhaps all that was needed was a push towards valuable information - or something that put them on a sort of path. "But then...why did they stay dormant for so long?"

Sinister has posed:
"You know how a rock formation can sit in the sea for millenia, wearing away with the tides, but will collapse of a sudden, because of one occurrence, be it a storm, a tempestuous sea or occasionally some idiot driving into it at high speed with a motorboat? The same principle applies. It could be that the stasis pods were integrous until some seemingly random event, even the last train downtown rumbling too hard nearby it, caused a chain reaction enough to crack some power source or vital component." Sinister shrugs, looking altogether excited by the prospect of finding out. "Don't mention it, sometimes it takes having a not-argument and dwelling over extremely junky food and the merits or lack thereof of milkshakes, to jostle thoughts into alignment. It really has been driving me batty, that i've found only reactionary, not proactionary information in my hunting."

He seems very pleased. "My dearest, I do love you so, and that marvellous tangential thinking you can sometimes do." The coffee is supped again, about half the cup left. "In other news..." he squints "...the half of me working in the lab did finally extrapolate the DNA mRNA and radicals from the Queen sample. The original life-form /wasn't/ human, or any common visitor species. That will be quite fascinating, if I can isolate enough of the original blueprint that remains in residual, to be able to extrapolate what the life form actually -was-."

Lucifer has posed:
"Ah, yes. I am aware of that muchly...all it takes is a straw on the camel's back afterall... it's the reasoning behind earthquakes and volcanoes as well. Dormant for so long until the earth just can't contain itself." Right? Right. Surely Lucifer was keeping up with the thought process. "So that makes sense then. And with the way the world is moving more and more fast paced in developing...there wasn't a disturbance to break them until there was...likely why the Queen was underground like that to begin with."

There's a smirk at that last bit before he shrugs. "Tangents are kinda what I do best most of the time." Then Sin is sharing more news and the Devil raises a brow. "Not human. Obviously not even earth-types. Nor common aliens. I wonder if we could find a piece of meteorite and compare..." Then he laughs. "Or maybe I could just go pay this section of space a visit. See what I find...perhaps a whole colony of the original brood that started it all..."

Sinister has posed:
"I would not advise it, my dear," Sinister responds. "The original explosion was a supernova. When they happen you end up with a black hole, which has a quantum singularity that you might just have trouble leaving, if you get too close. I doubt there's much of anything there," Unless it's a little like the doctor who sagas and there happens to be an against-all-reason research station on the edge of Hell, where an infernally evil star beast is imprisoned in the gravitation pull. But that would be far fetched, wouldn't it? "But perhaps there's something in nearby clusters, perhaps? But probably a thing for later."

He nods though. "Yes, why she came out that way and possibly why she went -away- from the people. If encountering that kind of density of population for the first time, she might have been regrouping. Investigating should, in theory, give us more information. I just hope... it isn't as bad as it could be."

Lucifer has posed:
"Maybe it won't be. Maybe this was a sort of smaller cluster...like you said... a lot of the stuff didn't land here. Pulled other places by gravity. Maybe, just maybe, for once in the lifespan of us... this isn't going to be the end all holy shit we need to get this taken care of yesterday sort of event." Then again, knowing them, it might just fall somewhere in the middle. Who really knows until they get there. However, they now had a sort of idea of what they could expect to find and why. Which is more than they've had up until this point.

"I wonder how close one could get to a black hole before being caught in the gravity of the event horizon. Not something I'd want to go check... but it is a curiosity. Still, other nearby places are fine too. Something to put on the to do list. After we get this one sorted out. Perhaps it will help us ascertain future threat levels." He nods, then finishes his sandwich and eyes the shake. "Why did you get this anyway?"

Sinister has posed:
There's a chuckle from Sinister, as he makes a gesture between himself and Lucifer at the mention of Curiosity. "That. Curiosity. I'd had them in the fifties, once or twice. I hadn't had any in recent times and there's probably a reason for it. I don't think that has much related to it that came from ice-cream or for that matter, chocolate... but I thought perhaps..." he shrugs, then with a stretch rises. "If you're done here, I would like to get a head start on relaxing, because I think tension is going to be required in the next few days. I somehow have to lead several leaders and -not- have them counteract one another. That's going to be a fun challenge."

And might be a reason in the future to suggest some team-up training exercises. Nevermind that Sinister /can/ be a team lead, most people used to wish he wasn't.

"Shall we?"