IC Contact Post

[mathemagier]

[Screened calls go straight to voicemail, where an impatient recording answers]

You've reached Dr. Hermann Gottlieb. Leave your name, number, and business if you expect a return call. Thank you.

Comments

Texts

[driftsintobuffetline]

[During This]

You left the apartment.

I mean, not that I care.

But I do want confirmation. Testing a theory here.

You feel it too, right?

Text

[mathemagier]

Yes Newton, I left the apartment complex.

And I wish I didn't know what you were referring to.

permatext

[driftsintobuffetline]

Okay, good.

So WHEN did you start to feel it? How far away were you? Approx. What were you doing?

Do you know when the feeling changed from the usual?

To me, it's different than the sensation of knowing you're across the hall.

Across the Hall = the prickling on the back of your neck that someone is watching.

Or in the sports movies, when the hero looks out at the crowd and MIRACULOUSLY finds THAT PERSON in the stands.

Across the Hall = Hermann Beacon = I know exactly where you are.

Where are you?

This = What I think a dog feels like when you leave him for the day and he tears up your apartment out of separation anxiety.

Not that I'm a dog.

Or in your apartment.

Honest.

This is both fascinating scientifically and a bit gross psychologically. I wonder what our serotonin, etc levels look like.

[mathemagier]

First of all, if you could spend five minutes compiling your thoughts into a single text message, it would be far easier to respond to them.

Secondly, you'd best not be in my apartment, although I must say the dog analogy sounds particularly accurate in your case.

And if you must know, I'm at the junkyard in search of parts for a laptop. I believe the nagging began somewhere mid-way down the street, and worsened to incessant when the complex left my peripheral.

I can't say I care for the implications.

[driftsintobuffetline]

Just for that, I should keep sending you

s

e

p

a

r

a

t

e

texts.

I know where you hide the spare key, so I could be in your apartment just to spite you, eating all your carrots and whatever else you have in this fridge of yours. A dog would definitely get bored in here. You have nothing interesting at all.

If you find a radio, can you bring it to me? Oh, and spare glasses?

Out of sight, definitely not out of mind. Got it. Need to figure out what the main culprit of the anxiety is. Is it: (1) losing visual of the apartment/my location itself, (2) the thought associated with that location disappearing from view manifesting as this physical/psychological pain, (3) the actual distance, like we're tethered together? We'll have to test this when you come back. Is it worse for you because you left, or worse for me because I was left, or equal--also requires testing. Any further studies or parameters you want to test, let me know. I'm starting a list.

[mathemagier]

Then I'll simply keep deleting them.

It sounds like you're attempting to define a tolerable distance for us to orbit on daily basis, Newton. How exhausting. But very well, it's not as though I can prevent you from testing it.

[driftsintobuffetline]

You do that.

Yeah, I'd like to know what's the limit on headache-inducing distance since, last I checked, we can't follow each other to everywhere ever. Wouldn't you? Or we could follow each other everywhere, but it would be hella inconvenient. I'm willing to coordinate excursions, like: I go to the store and you go get your hair cut or something, just to keep us in safe distance of each other, but it would just be nice to know what our actual needed orbit is.

And additionally, to determine if there's an unsafe orbit, some point where it stops being nagging headache and becomes debilitating--anxiety, frustration, exhaustion, rage, complete mental collapse... I don't even know.

[mathemagier]

It's still going to be inconvenient, no matter how much we may attempt to compensate for distance. But I suppose we may as well try.

Perhaps once I've managed to teleport, we can test to see if the latter is a potential danger. Better to know than leave it to chance, after all.

[driftsintobuffetline]

Try, or live with a profound sense of loss. I just don't know what to do with myself, Herms. It's terrible. I miss you so. I will write you horrible Austen-esque letters of my grief at the distance between us. Woe woe woe.

No, but joking aside, this is pretty awful. I had plans today and this is making staying still extremely frustrating.

I wonder where you go when you teleport, for that fraction of a second that it takes for you to disappear from A and reappear at B. Are you even in this dimension or in another one entirely...

[mathemagier]

It was not my intention to disrupt your plans, but I hadn't anticipated this preoccupation, either.

And I'll be happy to explain it to you in detail once I've done so.

[driftsintobuffetline]

We didn't sign up for this.

Yeah, I know you will. I'm just thinking out loud.

a bit later

[mathemagier]

It appears Mr. Qubit is also here.

[driftsintobuffetline]

SAY HI TO Q-TIP FOR ME

[mathemagier]

I am not calling him that.

[driftsintobuffetline]

Tell him it's a direct quote. There, you're not calling him anything. I am.

[mathemagier]

No.

[driftsintobuffetline]

):
D:
D:<

[mathemagier]

I'll tell him you said hello. That should be sufficient.

[driftsintobuffetline]

It's not, but it's what I expected.

Need anything from the store? Grocery, specifically, but anything along the way.

I need a bike, or a car.

[mathemagier]

A vehicle would certainly be a vast improvement over the transit system.

Some Earl Grey tea would suffice.

[driftsintobuffetline]

Tell me about it. I don't know who is in charge of planning, but the system is crappy and the kid in front of me has been screaming since I got on. Once we settle in, you want to go halvsies on a car or do you want to just wait and get one of your own? I'll split gas with you. If they use gas. Maybe these are electric or garbage powered.

Nothing else? At all? I'm going to the store, there is FOOD and it's not rationed. PUT IN AN ORDER, MAN.

[mathemagier]

[On the one hand, sharing a car with Newton sounds like a new set of problems just waiting to happen. On the other hand, they really need a vehicle]

I suppose that sounds reasonable, so long as we establish something of a working schedule that complements our shifts.

Salmon fillets, trappings for a salad, and some sort of vinaigrette.

[driftsintobuffetline]

Sure, of course. I mean, ideally we'll work at the same place and come home to relatively the same place, so that'll make it fairly easy.

Gasp! He does eat!

[mathemagier]

Yes, now that we actually have time for proper meals again, and the ocean isn't saturated with Blue.

[driftsintobuffetline]

We can actually learn how to COOK.