2020-03-19 Columbia University

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## Log

> **Shiloh Young**\&61;\&61;\&61; new scene \&61;\&61;\&61;
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> Another night, another hour spent pacing from the growing cabin fever. Her time with Malcolm provided some small relief, but she was itching for a change, and so when she pulled out her cell she fire off a text to someone new.
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> @Janothar "Hi! This is Shiloh. We met on the street? Do you have some time for a few questions?"
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> She sat on her bed, staring off at her mess of collected notes stitched to the wall (all in code, of course) as she waited for an answer.**Janothar**It's about an hour later when she gets a text back "Of course, sorry that took so long. I got in touch with the owner of a coffee shop I like, we can meet there. They're mostly closed, but he'll open it for us."**Shiloh Young**"Cool. I'll head there soon as you're free?"
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> Assuming she was given the address, Shi would again dress herself up a little nicer for this meet much like she had with Malcolm, but this time she chose a black cardigan matched with a dark red shirt underneath, and with a new, fresher notebook in hand, she'd run off to hteir destination at the designated time. @Janothar**Janothar**She'd tell her about a half hour later, and when she arrives, the door is unlocked and she's sitting there with a cup of coffee. "Ahh, hello there. Would you like anything? It's been years since I worked here, but I seem to still have the touch."**Shiloh Young**"No, I'm good, had something before I ran over. Thanks, though," she tries on a smile, sliding over onto the opposite side of her. Shi slaps the notebook onto the table, fidgeting with its pages. "So - where to begin? I, uh, have heard a lot of stuff over the past couple days."**Janothar**"I'm sure you have." she shakes her head, sounding amused. "Who was telling you these things?"**Shiloh Young**"A few people," she chews on her lip, unsure about sharing their names. "Lots of talk about some ceasefire, and something they called the Ascension War."**Janothar**She sighs "Of course." Nektarina seems to pick up on Shiloh's worry "I'm not interested in their names, more..." she pauses to phrase this properly "Who they represent. To know what points of view you've gotten."**Shiloh Young**"Mhm. Well, one didn't seem to like any of the other groups, they were running with some people called the Hollow Ones. And then another taught me all about the Order of Hermes, who're fighting some Order of Reason," there's a little humor in her voice, as if she thought a few of these names to be pretentious. She, of course, was unaware some of them were wildly out of date. "There were others, too, but I dunno who they were with. They had this weird military vibe." @Janothar**Janothar**She nods "The Order of Hermes still thinks of us as the Order of Reason? That's cute. We haven't used that name since before Victoria." she laughs slightly. "Sadly, most of the names in this area are a bit pretentious. The Hollow Ones named themselves after one of TS Eliot's worse poems." she shakes her head, clearly amused "The more military ones were probably with my organization, though a different division. So. What do you want to know?"**Shiloh Young**She does a doubletake. "You're one of them?" Eyes flutter, head shaking to regain composure. "I mean, what do you guys call yourselves now? You, uh, can imagine they didn't give a nice impression, like you guys were killing magic and dragons and changing this thing they called the Consensus."
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> "As for what I want to know - I mean, everything? What happened to me? They said I 'woke' up, that all our beliefs are true and not true simultaneously and we can change reality through will alone. All I know is that my friend is now scared of me and I can see all sorts of weird things I couldn't before," there's real frustration in her voice. @Janothar**Janothar**"Oh dear." she sighs "We've got to fix a lot of their nonsense. You have to imagine what the Dark Ages were like. They were a nightmare for normal people. The place was run by religious fanatics, pretentious wizards, and the like, and they had no regard whatsoever for anyone else. They were fine with dragons eating peasants, because if they killed dragons, they would be able to use the parts to give them the power to oppress them more. They even formed an Order to formalize their rule, divide the world into 'tribunals' that different groups were in control of and functionally owned the people who live there. It was a deep, dark nightmare. Unicorns sound nice, but if you're not a virgin, they stab you to death. So, in the early 13th century, a group got together and called themselves the Craftmasons. They were mostly masons and early architects and the like, and they resolved something: humanity would stand up to its hidden masters, and depose them, finally charting our own way through rational thought and discussion."**Shiloh Young**She shifts uncomfortably. That was hard to argue with. "They mentioned that name, Craftmasons. That you guys splintered off from them and destroyed one of their holiest sites. But if they were really doing all that awful stuff, I mean..." she trails.**Major Ember Storm**(I wake up to find you two talking about Ember behind my front. Shame!)**Janothar**She just bursts out laughing "Splintered off from the Hermetics? That's amazing. I'm going to remember that one."**Shiloh Young**She chewed further onto her lip, biting back another comment. Even if the two groups weren't related, they both seemed insufferably smug. "You still haven't told me who exactly you guys are."**Janothar**"I'm getting to that. If they gave you a history, you should hear the other side, shouldn't you?" she sips at her coffee "Over time, the Craftmasons got bolder, and picked out a particularly abusive group of Hermetics and led the people in an uprising against them. A place in France called Mistridge that they probably mentioned. After that, a bunch of other groups got together with them to form the Order of Reason, who agreed to uphold the values of reason and human thought and experimental science to lead the way forward and to throw the wizards down and raise the people up. And then the Renaissance happened, and our predecessors started the project of bringing humanity out of poverty, bringing in sanitation and medicine, construction, exploration, astronomy, trade...all of that, we encouraged and shepherded. The Enlightenment was one of our really great moments, the whole of Europe turning against the wizards and the church and beginning to talk about human rights and to start agitating in the direction of democracy." she smiles at that. "In the Victorian era, we reorganized a bit, and picked up a new name. Honestly, not a fan of it, it's every bit as pretentious as all the rest. We became the Technocratic Union, meaning that our leaders were going to be those who were most adept with technology, and that we were all in this together. And that somewhat gets us to the present, though in a very abbreviated way. Now, we encourage science, reason, good government, trade, all the things that binds human society together. When humanity is in crisis, we try our best to respond. This whole mess" she waves her hand just around "We've got a ton of our people working on figuring out how to deal with it."**Shiloh Young**She drums her fingers against the table, mulling it over. "I mean, it sounds nice, all those ideals. I want to like them, and if they were really hurting people, then it must've been good for the people to bring them down," but something about it all was off. Talk of pushing 'democracy' and 'trade' around always did.
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> "This mess. You say you're all working on it. How can we help? Using our magic or willworking or whatever you call it to heal people? I want to help. I can't stand being cooped up, doing nothing."**Janothar**"We've got a research group in New Jersey trying to develop treatments, and another group working on making cheap ventilators that we can mass produce. The problem with magic is that it's so personal. A magician could maybe heal a person or two that's near them. If you want to cure a disease, you need science." she shrugs "I'm not sure what you can do, do you have any experience with scientific research?"**Shiloh Young**"A little. I know some chemistry, and working my way towards a nursing bachelors, but I haven't done any, like, cutting edge research. My d - well, I know people who can," she stumbles over 'my dad.' Much as they fought, she didn't want him to get hurt, and bringing him into contact with these people... who knows what they could do to him. "Most of my work is in alchemy, though," she quickly adds on, to lead astray.**Janothar**"Ahh, we did alchemy for awhile, until we refined it into chemistry." she nods, then pauses and pulls out her phone, quickly looking something up "Wait...a quick question, do you know a...Nathan Triggs?" she turns her phone around and shows her a photo of Nathan.**Shiloh Young**Her lips immediately thin, staring at the cell with a 'ah, fuck' expression."...yes. He's a friend."**Janothar**"Oh, great, I'm sure he'd love to see you again. He's interning with the group in New Jersey trying to find better treatments." she nods.**Shiloh Young**"...how did you know?"**Janothar**"He mentioned that his Enlightenment happened near a friend named Shiloh to the person who found him and offered him the position. They let me know to be on the lookout, and I was curious if it was you." she shrugs "It's not such a common name that I expected there to be a bunch of newly Enlightened Shilohs in the city."**Shiloh Young**All composure cracks as she sputters out questions. "What?! Enlightenment? Like, waking up? He was terrified of me!"**Janothar**"He had a rough time there, from what I heard. I haven't actually spoken with him, but I keep track of everyone new. He's calmed down a bit, and I bet he'd be happy to meet with you again. And yes, Hermetics refer to Enlightenment as Awakening, they see it as waking up from a deep sleep, whereas we see it as the realization of your true potential. They think it makes them special, that others can't get to that level, and we think that everyone has this potential inside of them, and would love to make it so that anyone who wants it can have it."**Shiloh Young**"Right, right, I mean, of course I want to see him again! I was so worried," she struggles to regain composure, drawing in a long breath. There was something wrong about all this, and it was making ill, like back at the study hall. "I can just go seem him, right?"**Janothar**"I'll see about arranging it." she nods "Unfortunately, I don't control the biologists and their research, if they need him in the lab, there's not too much I can do."**Shiloh Young**"Right, right. Thank you." Another long breath. "Can't I go to the lab? I want to help."**Janothar**"I can arrange for you to talk to someone from there, but I can't promise access to controlled sites." she shakes her head "Medical facilities are pretty locked down, especially ones working on COVID right now. All I can promise is that I'll see what I can do."**Shiloh Young**"Right. That makes sense. I just feel so useless sitting around." She slumps, then suddenly perks up. "If, like, if I could get someone who's really great at all this medical stuff to assist, would that help?"**Janothar**"Possibly. We have very good people, and are working on things a bit...beyond what most people understand. The people you've met before may feel like they've stepped out of something like Tolkien...we're more Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov. Even most of the best unEnlightened scientists have trouble keeping up."**Shiloh Young**"Well, the guy I know isn't one of the best, he is the best." That word, unenlightened - it made her jaw tense, made the fingers on one hand begin to curl into a fist. Were all mages like this? "I can get him to help. I just want to see Nathan as soon as possible."**Janothar**"Let me know who it is, and I'll see if he can help." she nods, noticing the tensing. "This isn't intended as a slight. Just a reality. There are things that the Enlightened can do that those who haven't become Enlightened can't. Theories that they don't understand, processes that they generally can't get to work. It's a shame, we'd love it if they could do more, but one of the things you'll need to understand is that, with the proper training, you'll be able to do things that the majority of people can't be trained to do. I've had my boned knitted back together in seconds by nanites, I've got a friend who lost his legs get new ones built and attached and covered in flesh that looked indistinguishable from natural, and didn't restrict his motion at all. I know people who've stood on the surface of Mars. We go out into the world and do, frankly, insane things. And then we refine them, and we make them safer and safer, and when the rest of the world catches up, they get the benefit of our knowledge. But you can't explain calculus to someone who is still working on algebra, and most of our state of the art theories have the same type of gap between what you need to understand them and the limits of normal science." she sounds very sincere about all this, that she wishes that they COULD just bring all their great advancements in and make everything better, but there's something stopping them from being able to do it.**Shiloh Young**That stunned her into a stretch of silence, head spinning full of dragons and canons and men on mars full of nanomachines. She felt impossibly small next to all of them, and this showed in the way she sank back. "Right, alright. His name is David Young. Over at Princeton." She didn't state the obvious.
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> "I don't wanna take much more of your time," she got the sense no amount of needling would her over to the Nathan sooner, "but I have to ask - how do I train, do these wild things you all talk about? All I can do is See."**Janothar**"The name sounds familiar, I'll look him up, see what our people think of him."
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> "You have to be able to understand things before you can DO things." she nods "I can't tell you much about how people like the Hermetics train you. With us...basically it's school. When I was recruited, they referred to be as a graduate student, even though I was still working on my bachelor's degree at the time. You work in a lab, learn the science, and it's accelerated. We tend to end up with PhDs young along the way...getting a PhD out in the normal world is easy if you're even just keeping up in our internal labs. For you...I'd guess you'd want to end up in one of the various chemistry groups we have, with your interest in alchemy." she pauses "And I'm going to tell you a secret: we do alchemy, we just don't use the word. We just call it Enlightened Chemistry or something of the sort, but considering that turning one material into another is something that advanced graduate students can do, we can call it alchemy among friends. Now me, I'm not a lab scientist, I'm more of a sociologist, so I study how groups of people work, all that weird chemistry just isn't for me."**Shiloh Young**"Honestly, it sounds sorta similar. Just two big universities with wildly different ways of going about things." More lip chewing, more uncomfortable shifting, more near eye rolls at slapping 'enlightened' onto everything. But it was tempting. "And if I wanted to enroll this 'school,' what would I have to do?"**Janothar**"Well, you could talk to me, and I'd arrange interviews with various labs for you, and then between what you think of them and what they think of you, we'd find you a place to work. And of course, there's a stipend, room and board if you want it, etc. As for just being competing universities...there's something to that, except for one question in the end: whose lives are they trying to make better? Our goal, and we've messed up plenty of times, I'll admit it, has always been to improve that lives of everyone. To fight hunger and poverty, to stop threats that would kill large numbers of people. They want to take all their knowledge, live in their towers, and pursue personal projects that don't help anyone and power that only helps them. When the Black Plague hit Europe, they closed the gates to their homes, and we went in and first developed quarantines and then worked out what caused the plague and fought it with sanitation. And every other historical disaster, if you look, the people who are helping? That's us. The ones who are hiding...them and their allies."**Shiloh Young**"Maybe. After I talk to Nathan." And the others. It sounded too good to be true, but incredibly tempting to a girl drowning in loan debt, and that much was obvious at the way perked at the mention of stipends & a place to stay & being part of some grand scheme to help humanity.
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> "You've given me a ton to think about. Thanks. I guess we might talk again soon, but I gotta get to some assignments before the profs notice me slacking - er, from wrapping my head around everything that happened." She rises with her notes. "Seeya." And off she'd go unless stopped.**Janothar**Nektarina nods "I'll see about making those arrangements, just don't be discouraged if it takes a little while, they're very busy down there. Make sure to keep up your grades, though. They're important. How about you give me a call over the weekend with any new questions you have, and I'll let you know if I've been able to arrange a site visit?"**Shiloh Young**She pauses by the door, glancing back. "Sunday sound good?"**Janothar**Nektarina gives her a thumbs up as Shiloh heads out the door