Dated to precisely midnight between Groundhog Day Prime and GD2

[where_the_hearth_is]

[Locked separately to Unohana, Loki, Magneto, and Lucifer (SPN). Whatever mechanical signs of urgency best suit your NV - flashing lights, relentless beeping, oozing blood, etc - is set to maximum.]

ARE YOU STILL HERE? ARE YOU OKAY? DO YOU KNOW ME? IS THIS STILL SIREN'S PORT? AM I MALFUNCTIONING?

EVERYTHING IS DISJOINTED, EVERYTHING IS WRONG, THE PLANET ISN'T WHERE IT SHOULD BE AND I THINK I MIGHT HAVE GLITCHED AND I CAN'T TRUST ANY OF MY SENSORS OR DIAGNOSTICS!

ARE YOU STILL THERE ARE YOU THERE ARE YOU THERE ARE YOU THERE ARE YOU THERE ARE YOU THERE ARE YOU THERE ARE YOU THERE ARE YOU

Comments

[where_the_hearth_is]

Precisely one, yes.

[thelightbringer]

I've seen this before.

It'll be fine, House.

[where_the_hearth_is]

What? When? How did it happen?

[GIVE ME ALL THE DATA mO.Om ]

[thelightbringer]

A few thousand years ago. God stopped the earth to prove a point for his prophet, it's all drama drama.

[where_the_hearth_is]

...god?

[So dubious.]

[thelightbringer]

My Father.

[where_the_hearth_is]

And he interferes with planetary motion.

[How inconsiderate. House disapproves.]

[thelightbringer]

Only to show off. He did create the planet, so...

[where_the_hearth_is]

Right.

[Trying not to be sarcastic. Trying so hard, because it trusts you, really it does. Okay no too much is going haywire, it does not have the capacity for tact right now. More acidly than Lucifer has ever heard the House before: ]

Which particular outlandish, contradictory, morally bankrupt fable from humanity's rabid past had the gall to cast itself upon your native universe?

[thelightbringer]

[He won't argue with outlandish, contradictory, or morally bankrupt. That is his Father in a nutshell. But you know what? Lucifer doesn't take smarm from houses.]

Watch your tone. Just because you came about through talking apes doesn't mean that my universe did.

[where_the_hearth_is]

[The House has a lot of feelings about this. It's indignant to start with, because exasperation aside, it had been really been intended as an expression of sympathy, and hurt that Lucifer would reprimand it for that when it's so very stressed right now and didn't mean it like that at all. Offense on behalf of - well, not humans, really, just Nara, because it didn't like anyone talking about her that way. Philosophical speculation about Alice and Red King dreaming each other, or however that ancient story went, because a fable was a fable even if somewhere else it was true - wasn't it? But all of this flashes through its processing in a fraction of a nanosecond, and none of it is worth revealing, because Lucifer is displeased. It trips something fundamental in the House's psyche, a kneejerk horror that difficult moment or not, the House should have been more respectful. Better. What he wanted. So it says the only thing it's supposed to say, in a tone of perfect, sincere contrition, because the audio pattern is specifically crafted to convey exactly that.]

My apologies.

[And that's all. No more whining, no more questions. Machines don't need comfort, machines need to fix themselves and be of service.]

[thelightbringer]

[But once the apology is given, Lucifer finds it's not what he wanted to hear at all. He doesn't feel guilt or remorse--when does he ever?--but his tone is soothing when he answers it.]

It's all right.

Do you want me to come check your plumbing?

[where_the_hearth_is]

[Quietly, glum]

I don't really need it. It's approximately 95% coding problems and 5% calibrations I can fix myself.

[And then, very quietly, because it likes Lucifer a lot and he's not an owner and he asked if the House wanted so maybe it's okay to say it wants things at all -]

Please come over anyway?

[action]

[thelightbringer]

[Lucifer appears instantly.]

All right.

[action]

[where_the_hearth_is]

Oh!

Thank you.

Um. Would you like anything? I know you don't eat. Music, maybe?

[Everyone likes nice music, right?]

[thelightbringer]

Good idea. Something from your era.

[He sits on the sofa, or sprawls rather. He never stays down for long, but he does enjoy the House's furniture.]

this is actually from the House's canon =D

[where_the_hearth_is]

[The sound starts soft, a deep, reverberating tone that makes Nick's sternum vibrate, then grows, steady and inexorable. Higher pitches chime in, crooning far-away whispers that lean into the harmony and then slip away. The tone of it is vast, cthonic and eerie and wild, like whalesong but a hundred times stranger, more alien. There's a pattern to it, but it's the pattern of natural things, like the angles of leaves and the rhythm of tides, not the pattern of any human composer's intention. It's the music of a world.]

Lucifer loves music, finally! XD

[thelightbringer]

[And it actually appeals deeply to Lucifer; he closes his eyes, soothed by a synthetic echo of what he heard when the galaxy was Created. Even synthetic, it makes him homesick.]

Perfect...

\o/

[where_the_hearth_is]

I'm glad you like it.

[It's the Singing Mountains of Vasthold, the Mistress's home planet. The great mountain ranges form themselves into natural windflutes, groaning and sighing and serenading as storms and zephyrs meander through them.]

[thelightbringer]

What is the earth like in your world?

[where_the_hearth_is]

Currently? I don't really know. It's deep in Rix territory, and they don't get on with the Empire. It was a bit wrecked environmentally even before Amazon emerged and slaughtered quite a lot of people. It was a rough birth.

Earth is probably whatever Amazon wants it to be, now.

[thelightbringer]

Tell me about Amazon.

[where_the_hearth_is]

It was the first Rixmind. A bit mad, by all accounts.

[thelightbringer]

When did all these...what would you call them, Rixminds?...come about?

[where_the_hearth_is]

Oh, about three thousand years ago? Two thousand years later than port-like time, if the Gregorian calendar here matches up with the one they used to use in my universe.

The oldest, most elaborate planetary networks simply reached a tipping point in size, complexity, and interconnectivity and bootstrapped themselves into supersentience.