Xaviers!

The room Will had requisitioned for themselves was still there, still happening -- well over a hundred green-haired people, many of them milling about. Men and women of a wide range of styles, shapes and sizes, all sharing the basic color pallet and scheme of Will. Old, young, tall, short, skinny, fat, muscular, lithe, bundled up, practically nude, men, women, and everything in between.

The card game in the middle table had increased in complexity as the days had gone on. What had started as a game of poker had evolved, with multiple packs of cards now being employed in a game that, presumably, made sense to someone. Small social groups were forming; regular groups of Wills coming together on a regular basis to talk and argue and spend time with one another. Cliques, more or less.

The center of the room was more or less normal, all things considered. The further out you got from the center, however, the odder activity got. A group of Wills had split off to play something that looked like a game of hacky sack, though closer examination indicated the footbag was instead the fleshy ball Will that Ashlie had experimented on in the lab. Another group - the glassy-eyed wanderers from before, had been sort of corralled together, marched in circles inside a makeshift pen, made up of some of the unresponsive Wills being stacked like cordwood around them, to keep them apart from the rest of the group. Other Wills remained hiding, or cowering, generally trying to avoid contact and being looked at too much.

All in all, I suppose it could be worse.

"Well, it's a little more organized than before." she notes. Then speaks up to address the room at large.

"Samantha is here to talk over some options. If we could borrow one or two of you and perhaps the ball if it wants to lend some perspective on the previous attempt?"

"Well, I guess I more just wanted to... talk? Sound you guys out?"

"...let me guess, nobody wanted to go in the book."

There was a bit of shared glances between the Wills at Ashlie and Sam's arrival, as a couple made their way over towards the dynamic duo.

"I wouldn't say none," one of them said, her hair back in a ponytail as she considered. "This may come as a shock, but it's hard to find any sort of unanimous consensus from this group," she said, smiling awkwardly and rubbing the back of her head. "There are a few pages hanging around in there, but...that's kind of all they are, y'know? Awkward, out of place, loose leafs. It doesn't really work. Not that the book has been particularly open to helping," she said, glancing back at the table in the far back corner where the book still rested. "I don't know if they're just particularly traumatized by the whole experience or if they're just being an annoying little prick, but, well, there you have it."

"Not that there was a rush to go join," a second Will added in, his head sporting a fairly sharp undercut. "Just a few outliers." He lightly tossed the fleshball Will from hand to hand as he spoke, his nose crinkling up at the idea.

"Hopefully it'll be a temporary state, one way or another. I think we found a way to use what I learned to help with transitioning the book into a better-suited shape. The question is what that should be and how to guide the process, which is where Samantha and your input comes in."

"And just to make sure I'm not putting my thumb on the scale here, would any of you want to talk about what worked about the mirror?"

A few more Wills were meandering their way over towards the conversation as it continued.

"Yeah, absolutely," the ponytailed one said, nodding. "It may be hard to explain, because, well, you weren't there, but we can give it a shot."

"Was there anything specific you wanted to know, or were you hoping for a monologue?" the sidecut one laughed.

"Well obviously the book's proving to be a bad fit, we just kind of had to pick something and go because when the mirror went down there was a lot to contain."

"So what did the mirror have over the book?"

"Interactivity," was the immediate response from the ponytail. "Passive, effortless interactivity."

"Just getting to sit there and watch. You and Miriam and anyone else who would enter the room, going about your day. Playing the role of the reflection, experiencing the world as you saw it and felt it. And even when the room was empty, there was something there to be and reflect. A book...sits on a shelf, slowly collecting dust when it's not in use. That's no good."


"Space," undercut added after a moment. "Limitless, endless space. To be, to grow, to experience. It was connected to something outside of just physical space -- I wasn't just bulging out of the back of the mirror and collapsing on the floor of the dorm in a mushy heap. A book is bound, and limited, and exists in a defined space. Now, some of us around here might well be into that, but that's not exactly conducive for personal growth."


"Homogeneity", the disturbing flesh ball added. "The idea was that I would go out, and experience something. Do things, learn things, be things. And then I'd come back, and remerge with the rest of me, and then that knowledge and those sensations would become part of the whole. Like, before? If I wanted to experience something that took six months, that's six months out of my life; six months where I'm doing that and nothing else. With the mirror, I've been able to...the sheer amount of experiences I've been able to have, Sam, I can't even begin to describe to you. And some of the original ones haven't even returned yet, can you imagine? What I must be doing and feeling in a longterm role somewhere? To be able to do that, without abandoning my friends and my responsibilities is...well, it's as close to the divine as I'll ever reach. And the point is that it all gets merged back into one thing at the end. A book isn't one thing; it's a collection of things. And while it's probably useful to be able to look up all this information whenever you need to, it's not the same as feeling it as if it happened to you. Just like explaining the mirror to you isn't the same as you knowing what it was like to be the mirror."


There were nods and murmurs from the assembled group -- different levels of agreement, but a general idea, for sure.

"Purpose," another called out. "Easy for people to use and understand."

"Convenience. Could slip in and out without having to wake anyone up or getting help."

"Shininess," a third called out. "...What?" she asked, as several of the Wills around her groaned.

"An interactive, homogenous, convenient item with a purpose and metaphorical space made real. Chrome finish optional. And I'm guessing an amalgamation of items only works if it produces a coherent whole?"

"Coherent is a good word, aye. I'm incoherent enough as it is," undercut joked.

"I could keep going," ponytail added, "but at a certain point...the question is kind of like 'why is existence good', I suppose? It's a difficult question to answer."

"You like to pick and mix, to take what you've found outside and combine it in new ways. And when you're done, you want all the boundaries to come back down, to share it with all of you. To break down. To dissolve."

"In a nutshell, yeah. It's all about new experiences, new sensations, new ideas."

"I agree that the mirror was special. Miriam's not even sure she can create it the same way again. But I've been thinking on something a little more personal that might be the right metaphor."

"Do you remember the cauldron I made?"

Will squinted, trying to remember.

"With the clay. And the Cailleach. Back when Lippencott had stolen us from ourselves? That's not the kind of thing you readily forget."

"And it was significant because... well, you and I and cauldrons go back quite a bit further, aye?"

"It has a certain degree of resonance," Will nodded. "From a long time ago and far away."

"And it's, you know, a threshold. You can see out of it, you can go deep inside when you need to be alone. It is what you put into it, but it's also more than the sum of all that, aye?"

"All those things and more," Will agreed. "It's a useful metaphor."

"A... cauldron. I suppose I can see that. Kind of like a crucible."

"I'll just have to convince Miriam it'll go with... well, all the other nonsense our dorm has going on."

"I hope you're not planning on hanging it over an open flame?"

"...all the nonsense that goes down around here, and you're concerned about a fire hazard?"

"Miriam might be able to make a fire that's just... metaphorically hot? Emotionally hot?"

"I can't do much to prevent the existence of outside threats. But burning down the dorms or filling them with smoke? That I can take precautions for."

"If a fire ends up being a necessary part of it I suppose I'll have to get a chimney installed."

"I'm sure we can figure something out."

"I guess the other option is you need to be compatible with an induction burner."

"The 'how' doesn't seem to matter much, does it? So long as we obey all local fire code restrictions," Undercut deadpanned.

"Keep sassing and I'll find a boiler room to stick you into."

"Yeah, I'm going to need you to look around at the assembled masses and figure out how many of them would mind that," Undercut smirked.

"Alright so, sounds like we have the beginnings of something, aye?"

"I think we're certainly willing to give it a shot," ponytail said, taking a quick look around. "It's worth attempting, at any rate."

"Cerebra or the dorms? I'd imagine you should be movable afterwards but I wouldn't want to assume."

"The dorm probably seems the best bet. Assuming enough of us can fit."

"We'll put down some plastic until everything's settled."

"If everyone has a shot of Cerebra fluid the general vicinity should do for my end of it. Give me... 40 minutes and I can be set up."

"Plastic and injections? Sounds like a date."