endbringer, meet gun

[peterxy]

...Very unseasonable rains can be seen in the distance from the shores of Acapulco.

The Brockton Bay Protectorate starts organizing volunteers to be transported or teletransported in batches to it. Heroes, rogues, villains, anyone's assistance is appreciated. A rendez-vous point is set for non-Protectorate capes wishing to volunteer, and Protectorate capes are informed of the situation via communication devices.

Comments

[mrglam]

Copy laughs and laughs.

"Would you stop."

"No! If I'm laughing there's a part of you that's laughing at this, I'm pretty sure. Also you're not doing it right."

Grumble grumble. "Maybe I should try just levitating a not-mine golf ball?"

"It's even easier to fool yourself into thinking you're expecting the right things and you know it."

"You are the least helpful non sapient construct ever."

[thinkering]

"Okay," says Lorica, "look, make me a golf ball." A robot fetches her a cardboard box she points at. Golf balls from other experiments clatter into it.

[peterxy]

Golf ball: exists.

[thinkering]

Lorica shuts the box and shakes up all the golf balls, then reaches in. "Maybe this one's yours, maybe it's not, think fast," she says, throwing the first one she touched at his head.

[mrglam]

"Ow! Are you sure the best way to get me to expect a ball not to hit me in the forehead is relying on my instinctive reactions about how balls are supposed to work?"

[thinkering]

"Maybe not. I started to set up the throwing it over your shoulder thing but maybe it's not helping anymore. But we do already know you can affect how balls that robots are throwing to each other move, and I'm not sure where to go next from there besides throwing them at you."

[mrglam]

"...well, my power's about subverbal, gut-level expectations. Most people automatically believe what they're told, but have basic instincts that override that, like approximately how physics is supposed to work. I'm pretty good at converting verbal beliefs into subverbal ones, but it's normally something more... intellectually involved? Like, talking myself into it and- I'm not sure how to describe it. Getting my brain to trust what I'm telling it, kinda."

[thinkering]

"Okay. So. One of these golf balls is the one you made. You know you can move stuff you made. Slide Coke cans and float swordfish and foul up games of robot catch. Any of the balls could be yours, and you know that you can move stuff that isn't yours, too, a la robot catch."

[mrglam]

"Right! But the way I consciously moved my things was by arguing that it was just the same as making them disappear and reappear again a bit to the left so really there's no reason why it couldn't just stay there."

"That is not an argument that applies to the non-me-made golf balls."

"Exactly."

"But I can move stuff that isn't mine, a tiny bit. Why wouldn't I be able to move it more than a tiny bit?"

"Maybe physics just doesn't like it."

"...I am flying. Physics can go suck a cactus."

[thinkering]

Lorica snorts.

[mrglam]

"Okay, point." He makes a golf ball appear in his hand, and then floats it. "You don't need to be mine to stay floaty. Why would you?"

Copy turns to Lorica and says, "I have an idea." Four more balls appear floating beside the original one.

[thinkering]

"What?"

[mrglam]

"We're both going to turn our backs to the balls," copy says while original glares at the first one. "Then you'll replace one of ours with a normal one. We won't know which. At worst, we'll be expecting one of the balls to fall, but we won't really know which."

[thinkering]

"Okay."

[mrglam]

Both of them turn their backs to the balls. Then both of them look over their shoulders. Balls still floating, okay. Now they're not looking.

[thinkering]

Lorica plucks a ball out of the air and puts another ball where it was and lets it go.

[mrglam]

It falls. They hear it hit the floor and sigh.

[thinkering]

"Maybe it'll take a while of getting used to lesser teekay to work up to it."

[mrglam]

The other four golf balls are gone. "Well we can definitely keep up the telekinesis while we're not looking, anyway," copy says.

[thinkering]

"So that's good. Let's see, what else can we check indoors..."

[mrglam]

"There was one other thing."

"Figuring out what counts as paying attention? Like it clearly isn't line of sight, as per Santuario's forcefield situation, but I'm not sure what it is."

"It's not just thinking about a thing, I've tested this, though maybe that was because of range."

[thinkering]

"So... describe what you do and don't know about this part in more detail."

[mrglam]

"If I don't think about a thing I've made at all for about thirty minutes, it ceases to be."

"If I think about it but I'm reasonably far away, it ceases to be."

"If I think about it and it's close by, it apparently does not."

[thinkering]

"How do you time thirty minutes of not thinking about a thing, anyway?"

[mrglam]

"Right, that's why I said 'about' thirty minutes, I can't actually time it. It's mostly a thing I've noticed over the years."

"Uh, I've had this power for a long time."

"Like ten years."