text | un: Nero

[cadiastands]

[Did it take Mira like 20 minutes to enter a username because she expected the system to assign her one and then froze up in fear of doing it wrong when she had to choose it herself? Maybe.]

If someone is qualified to teach me the proper rituals for the use of these devices, I would appreciate it.

[tl;dr Mira, despite being from a space empire in the 401st century, thinks there are animist spirits inside her phone and terminal that will get mad and refuse to work if she does the wrong thing.]

Comments

[cadiastands]

If there are places in the city where technology will stop working, there ought to be a map of them somewhere.

[aleifr]

That's what I thought.

[Just makes good sense.]

They're not literal places, though. There's this thing on the phone called a browser. You can look things up on it, and it tells you what you want to know. All it's knowledge is organized by 'sites', like acts in a story. Some of the sites are bad, and you need to steer clear of them.

[cadiastands]

["Browser" she sort of gets by the same process of analogy that led to the term being used for web-surfing in the first place, and she's familiar with the concept of digitized repositories of information...but she immediately heads in the wrong direction with that knowledge.]

Restricted files shouldn't just be left lying about like that.

[Mira's a little fuzzy on how data storage and non-totalitarian governments work.]

[aleifr]

Don't know if it's restricted. Just think they don't like it.

[cadiastands]

If they're being THAT finicky, usually you can just hit them on the table or a rock.

[RIP Mira's phone one of these days, I guess.]

[aleifr]

You're worried about pissing off the machine spirit, but your solution is to whack it on a rock.

[Seems counterproductive.]

[cadiastands]

[It's almost like everything the Mechanicus believes is absolute bullshit.]

I'm not a tech-priest. I don't know why it works.

[aleifr]

[Imagine that?]

It shouldn't. I'm not a machine spirit, but if someone tries to hit me with a fucking rock, I don't want to help them.

[cadiastands]

If machine spirits were like people, they wouldn't need an entire priesthood to tend to them.

[That statement is fractally wrong, Mira.]

[aleifr]

I've met more than a few people who wouldn't mind having swarms of gothi to kiss their asses, Nero.

[He'd bet damn near anything that she has too.]

[cadiastands]

[Wow, how did he learn about planetary governors so quickly?]

I'm not talking about noble egos, Aleifr. Machine spirits are fundamentally different beings to humans.

[aleifr]

Clearly.

[Even he's not so mystified by technology as to miss the glaring differences between a phone and a bloody human being.]

But they help you if you keep them happy, and foul you up if you don't. Just like other spirits, just like people.

[So at least some of the same rules apply.]

[cadiastands]

"Other spirits?"

[DON'T YOU BE CONSORTING WITH DAEMONS, ALEIFR.]

[aleifr]

Yeah.

[The fuck do you mean "Other spirits"?]

Everything's got spirits.

[cadiastands]

That's all right, then.

[It's just his feral world primitivity. That's fine, probably. The Space Wolves wouldn't let heterodoxy bleed over into heresy.

She does not see the contradiction here.]

[aleifr]

[There's a small delay before his next message.]

Alright.

[He's a bit irked by her reaction implying that his religious beliefs need her approval, but he's willing to pin that on a difference in terminology. Nobody here seems to believe in spirits, maybe she thought he was talking about wights.]

[cadiastands]

[Mira realizes, albeit too late, that she's been a bit high-handed, but, well...it's extremely important not to be snuggling up to daemons. In fact, it's fair to say that's the number one quality she looks for in friends.]

I can explain in person, if you'd like.

[No discussing Chaos in public.]

[aleifr]

Sure. The room, then? Or someplace else.

[cadiastands]

The room would be fine.