network

[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

[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?

[stations]

I haven't looked at it, and I'm not going to.

I learned my lesson from something similar that happened back home. No thank you.

[abrightboy]

Do you know what anyone's said?

[stations]

Mostly just what people were talking about on Mercy's post. Not enough for me to feel confident in my theory. I thought asking around to get more stories might help with that.

[abrightboy]

I haven't seen what people said on her post. Maybe you can give me one or two examples?

[stations]

The two Mercy mentioned were only about her. That she would fall and hurt her wrist, and that she would see a pair of birds.

A bunch of other people mentioned going to see it with her on there.

When I Googled it a little, I found people talking about it predicting things like break-ups and winning scratch-off lottery tickets.

One guy mentioned the Illuminati and Elvis, but I think he was just crazy.

[abrightboy]

So they're really minor things, too.

[stations]

Yeah, so far it seems like it.

[abrightboy]

So the whole point of them seems to be to suck people in, not to give them a head’s up about something important. It’s a parlour trick.

[stations]

I really think so. I can't prove it or anything, I'm not a psychic or a future-telling tablet expert, but

That's what it seems like to me

[abrightboy]

You're asking people questions about it. What are you thinking about doing?

[stations]

I kind of
Mostly
Haven't decided yet
I want to get an idea on if this is like a code red situation or more like an orange or a yellow
I'm open to suggestions

[abrightboy]

For getting rid of it?

[stations]

Yeah, exactly
Otherwise we're going to have to resort to Operation Jerry, which I really don't like to use as plan A

[abrightboy]

Do you know what he was building a stink bomb for?

[stations]

Yeah, that was to disrupt the whole Things of Beauty phone case supply chain, with the creepy lambs
I really, really don't want him pulling that out again for this
I JUST figured out how to get like an hour of sleep every other night, but if he comes in with that smell again...

[abrightboy]

Do you two... live together?

[Yes, he's wondering if Jerry is your boyfriend.]

[stations]

Yeah, of course
Jerry's my best friend, we're from the same place

( best friend. boyfriend. the difference is pretty small...

except that jack wouldn't know romance if someone spray-painted it on a mac truck and hit him with it. )