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[stations]

Who: Jack Townsend
Username: gasstationjack
Warnings: more discussion about the future-predicting tablet!

Hey guys.

Quick question about the wax tablet everyone's going to visit to get their fortunes told.

What kinds of things has it predicted? What have you read, what day did you visit? If you've been multiple times, I'd like to know about all of them.

Thanks.
-Jack

Comments

un: bright

[abrightboy]

I haven't been. [He won't talk about why he did not respond to Mercy or investigate the issue...] What's going on?

[stations]

There's this castle museum thing that just opened up. They have a wax tablet there that seems like it's predicting the future for anyone who reads it.

Except I don't think it's that simple, or that innocent. And I REALLY don't think it's a good idea for us to keep visiting it.

[abrightboy]

But - let me guess - it's magically alluring and people can't stop?

[stations]

Yes.

Well, kind of. I don't think it's actually doing anything to supernaturally compel them to come back aside from just... what it does. The predictions thing. I think people can't keep themselves from going back all on their own, if that makes sense.

It's easy to get obsessed with stuff like that. I've seen it happen before.

[abrightboy]

This place needs a twelve steps for magical artifacts.

[stations]

It really, really does.

I'm afraid it's feeding off of people.

[abrightboy]

Literally? Their life force?

[stations]

I don't know, it's just a hunch, but maybe... more like their distress? Their obsession? Their fear? Whatever negative feelings it generates that gets people coming back over and over again.

That's why I want to see what it's told other people. If I'm right, and it's telling fortunes that are individual, like "you're going to get a bad haircut" and not like "there's going to be a 10 car pile-up on the bridge", it just seems

I don't know, it seems a little like it's ONLY latching onto people that visit it, rather than predicting the future in general. That means it's getting something out of the interaction, right?

[abrightboy]

How do you think it's getting the information?

[stations]

I'm not sure. I have a couple theories.

1 - It actually CAN see the different timelines, but when somebody makes the choice to read the tablet they're narrowing down the possibilities of those timelines to a much smaller number — you're narrowing possibilities down to a future where you've read the tablet. It's picking an event that happens across the broadest number of remaining timelines, so the likelihood of it happening is extremely high. That doesn't mean it's fate or anything, it's just statistics.

2 - It's making these things it's predicting happen itself, using power that it gets from feeding off of people to manipulate the person or things around the person.

[abrightboy]

What did it say when you saw it?

text, un: AmazingMadrigal

[nonmagical]

[Fortune... tablet? Is her uncle telling people their futures? But his future tablets weren't wax...]

There's a tablet at the museum that tells your future?

[stations]

Yes

( A second later... )

I mean, no. What tablet? Who said anything about a tablet? There's no such thing as museums. Don't go to them. Because they don't exist.

[nonmagical]

You just said there's a wax tablet. At a museum. Preeetty sure I just read that.

[stations]

No, I don't think so
Doesn't sound familiar
Not ringing any bells
No tablet here
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

un: Aberration

[aelwyn_aberration]

Seems like you've got something specific in mind. Something you've come across before?

[stations]

Yeah, it's pretty close. Instead of a tablet, it was a radio. Or, a radio station, I guess. A very specific radio that could only pick up one station. It was this Russian guy who constantly read out predictions. I mean, constantly. Non stop. No breaks, no sleeping, no nothing, just a never ending stream of words.

[aelwyn_aberration]

Jesus, that is creepy.

My sister's technically a prophet, but she's a lot less evil than whatever the hell that is.

un: cupkate

[bossyboiler]

The last thing I need is an inanimate object telling me what it thinks my future is.

Do people really believe this thing?

[stations]

They do
In their defense, so far it's been right
But that doesn't mean it's ALWAYS going to be right

[bossyboiler]

Right about what? Do you know what it's been saying?

[stations]

So far mostly just individual predictions for people, like 'you're going to trip and fall' or 'you're going to see a pair of birds'. Stuff just a little too specific, too tailored to be generic, but not impactful enough to affect more than one person.

[bossyboiler]

That's so vague though. That's like the tablet writing 'you're going to blink tomorrow' or 'a gust of wind will make you feel cold'.

[stations]

I'm simplifying it a ton. It was more like 'you're going to fall and hurt your wrist' or 'you're going to see this specific pair of birds', just a little too much detail to be COMPLETELY fortune cookie astrology generic, you know what I mean? I saw some predicting break-ups and winning scratch-off lottery tickets.

[bossyboiler]

And this wax tablet, it's made of actual wax? Like it's not just some elaborate tablet in disguise?