soraya — 5, fin | Hunger Games: The RPG

fox Graphics 1,363 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen Apr 25, 2024 12:23:42 GMT -5 but a butt ?	soraya — 5, fin Sept 28, 2023 16:59:40 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by fox on Sept 28, 2023 16:59:40 GMT -5 “A change in formatting—from Normal to Bold, for instance—indicates a change in universe.” -nick payne soraya qadir, seventeen ines / nadim -> omar -> ilyas -> soraya
	Last Edit: Dec 26, 2023 23:43:25 GMT -5 by fox

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but a butt ?

soraya — 5, fin Dec 26, 2023 20:04:42 GMT -5

Quote

Post by fox on Dec 26, 2023 20:04:42 GMT -5

before the war, he was born to a poet. my great-grandfather to a mathematician. my grandfather to a cattle farmer. my father to a shepherd.

you told me the first three paradigms of scientific research were computation, observation, and theory.

you always believed a person had to have a little faith too.

meter, arabesques, functions, honey bees, monuments, Platonic solids. god geometrizes continually.*

in my blood, i have always loved the world divinely, even before i was born.

//

i asked you, when will the universe die?

i am seven here and beginning to understand death.

perhaps twenty cosmic decades, you said. protons will start to degenerate. could be one hundred later before annihilation events begin. everything in the world will expand until there is only space left between us. we'll be pulled apart.

you took my hands and separated them gently.

or maybe, we use up all the energy as we expand. then, no motion can ever happen again. but by then the universe will be near infinitely old, habibti. it'll be soft and slow. and my palms were resting in yours.

still, you said, maybe the expansion slows and stops. if the density is high enough for matter, it will reverse, then condense so tightly the universe re-collapses. in twenty billion years. you brought my hands back together. i held them in a fist.

that always frightened me as a child. twenty billion felt horribly finite.

what do you think, habibti.

i like the one that takes the longest, i answered.

you laughed.

physicists like that one too.

//

sometimes when you went to survey the transformers outside the city, you’d take me too. your colleagues liked me, gave me sweets as you buckled me into the front seat. i called them all uncle and auntie. mom would always pack us my favourite snack.

we’d drive, and out in the country, you’d teach me the constellations you learned as a boy.

so much of the world has changed since then. Five was so different.

it used to be fields for miles, the clearest sky, you told me. then the industry went to power. you’d sit me on the roof of the facility's truck.

i liked the winter sky the most. because we would find the bright red dot of Aldebaran, and then there. my stars. the Pleiades.

do you miss it?

change is a good thing, my love.

you can't see much of the stars in Five now.

but when you were away at work for long stretches of time, out in the countryside at a generation facility, you told me to look at the city lights.

that's baba, mom said. he keeps all the lights on. bottles up the stars for us. and for the longest time, i believed you really did ignite the world each evening.

i got older and understood. the grid design, the planning. you worked on the electrical stability. nothing so mythical as touching the stars.

and yet funny, when you died,

i still half-expected the world to go dark.

//

you told me the multiverse isn't quite a theory. more like an interpretation. there is no experiment for determination yet. there are only ideas of what it might be like.

a taxonomy of universes. strings and bubbles.

i don't like it. the parallels one.

and why is that.

i don't want there to be another me and you. but different. feels wrong.

you were laughing again. you took me into your arms for a hug. i remember i felt too old for this and squirmed away. maybe eleven then. the age where you learn too many things you don't like and become bitter about it.

you touch my head instead.

well, i think you are my daughter in every universe.

how do you know. you just said it can't be determined.

baba just knows things, habibti. i'm a scientist. we have a little faith.

//

i changed my mind, i tell you in the graveyard.

i am older now. sixteen.

and twenty billion years feels too long.

i want the one where the universe collapses. i heard god likes that one the most.

i think of my hands pressed together, yours soft over my fists. the sun is setting in a haze of yellow and murky gray in the starless sky. the flowers are still fresh on the bed of soil. your colleagues came by the house today too. i haven't cried yet because of mama. she hasn't stopped.

i am touching the headstone.

i've been thinking, baba. if the universe collapses. maybe then, some part of you will meet some part of me. all the particles colliding, back to the singularity. at the end of everything. i want the one where i might see you again.

the city lights come on in the distance.

no one answers me.

please. i am not done being loved by you.

//

you drive us out to the countryside, and the shadows of transformers make strange lines in the dark blue fields beneath the darkening sky. mom makes us maakouda. we split the last one, still steaming despite the winter chill.

you send me to school to study the stars. you always told me you would. you said i’ll be famous in the Capitol some day. one great discovery. teaching at one of the great universities there.

you are walking me down the aisle. as you promised.

in another universe, the electric plant you are visiting does not explode. maybe the blow-down was done correctly. or maybe are you a day late. or maybe you are not there at all, and Five is still all fields and roaming pastures and wild animals. and i have you for so many more years.

in another universe, you do not die.

*Plato/Plutarch

Last Edit: Dec 26, 2023 23:57:58 GMT -5 by fox

fox Graphics 1,363 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen Apr 25, 2024 12:23:42 GMT -5 but a butt ?	soraya — 5, fin Dec 26, 2023 22:24:57 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by fox on Dec 26, 2023 22:24:57 GMT -5 havent thought this much about physics since 2016 ripred_bot

calla RP Tutor 2,122 POSTS Pronouns: she/they last seen Apr 27, 2024 19:59:46 GMT -5 just a litle creacher	soraya — 5, fin Dec 29, 2023 1:03:10 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by calla on Dec 29, 2023 1:03:10 GMT -5 haven't cried this much about physics since 2016
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