A why not? It will be a nice episode
+1. Cue magic and dudes from alternate dimensions.
Who wants to bet that there's Apokalipsi involved here?
Well, you just lost your bet.
B has been selected. Cost of the option: SAN -3
Five hours later…Celling jumped off his llama, pulled out his map and compass, and looked at them for a second.
“Yep… this must be the place.”
He put away the map and turned his attention to the ornate structure across the clearing from him. It was tall and cathedral-like, draped in red and gold, constructed symmetrically with wings and buttresses converging into a central, five-pointed tower.
He stepped up to the closest entrance - a black wood door with a copper knob - and knocked.
The door was answered almost immediately by a boy in a t-shirt and jeans. He looked Brazilian, and Celling figured that he was 17 at the most.
“Uh… hello. You live here?” Celling asked.
“Yeah,” the youth replied. He held out his hand. “I’m David Eborrenial. Nice to meet you. And you are?”
Celling shook his hand. “Wenton Celling, Captain.”
“Ah,” David responded, relaxing slightly.
“Ah indeed. You’re the guy who sent that note, right?”
“Yes,” David cheerfully replied. “I’m the leader of the Protinam, or Visionaries, a group dedicated to seeing and interpreting the future. Please step in.” He held the door open behind him.
Celling cautiously stepped in. The inside of the structure was a hallway, with various rooms to either side. “You’re not really what I expected from-”
“I know. You expected a bearded old wise man. That would be my father. He’s dead. I inherited this role two months ago.”
“So what, you going to tell me my future?”
David turned around and stared at him. “No. No. No, no, no, no. The first thing you’re going to learn is that Visionary powers aren’t a fire and forget thing. You can’t just look at the future-”
“Isn’t that kinda the WHOLE POINT of precognition?” Celling asked.
“Well, see, our powers are much more limited,” David calmly explained. “Imagine the possible futures of the world as a tree, with branches and subbranches splitting off at particular points, where one decision can make a lasting impact on the fate of the world.”
“O…kay” Celling answered.
“So I, and my colleagues, can see the results of certain decisions that might happen in the future, along one of those branches. But - and here’s the catch - we don’t know which branch we’re living in right now.”
“What?”
“We can see cause and effect in possible futures, but we don’t know which future we’re heading towards right now. This, incidentally, is why we make prophecies and give pointless quests to heroes. It’s experiment. By pushing the world slightly, and seeing how it reacts, we improve the resolution of the rest of our predictions through process of elimination.”
“Wait wait wait. What are you saying?”
David sighed. “Alright, I’ll give you an example. Right now we can see 527 possible timelines. All these are possible, and diverged from each other around 3 weeks ago, at a point we call the Trailing Point of Convergence. I can’t predict
the future. I can predict
small fractions of 527
slightly different futures. And I have no idea which one we’re barreling down.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now, I go ahead and pick out a single decision - namely, my decision to ask you to come unarmed. Now, I can see right now that it’s possible this convinces you to come unarmed. Or to bring a weapon, just in case. Or to send a firing squad after me. I’m predicting that any of these are possible futures. I can see that they exist in particular timelines. But, as I’ve said, I have no clue which timeline is actually ours and which are just distractions. They all look real, but that’s only because they diverged at some point in the recent past. So in reality, I have no barking clue what’s going to happen if I send you that note. So what do I do?” He leaned back against a nearby wall. “I go ahead and send it, of course.”
“W-what?”
“I send you the note. I send it as an experiment, a trial balloon. See, if you come unarmed, that narrows it down to the 227 or so timelines that include that result. If you come armed, I pick a different set of 145. If you send soldiers after me, there’s 98 set aside for that. So by just observing the result I greatly increase the chances of getting the right timeline. The note thing resolves quickly, within the span of a few days, so I can use the results to guide other decisions. Of course, by that time, the plausible timelines will have split further, so it’s a never ending battle.”
David turned away and continued to walk. “Protinam powers work by sacrificing mundane decisions to buy information on important ones. We trick people into stupid and unnecessary acts in order to map out possible timelines in the event of a truly critical event. Heroes and adventurers are especially easy to use as they tend to cause effects with great force but tend to not question oracles at all. By the way, did you actually come unarmed?”
Celling raised his hands and turned his pockets inside out. “Completely.”
“Huh,” said David. “I’ll take that. It’s not as much of a reduction as you might think, as most of the unlikely timelines have already been pruned at this point, but I’ll take it. Thanks for your help.”
“But wait, I went through a complicated pro/con evaluation to decide that,” Celling protested. “I even consulted with beings not necessarily of our level of reality. How do you compress that into a simple probability.”
“All factored in, bud, all factored in.” David tapped his head. “Precognition is so fun.”
“Oh.”
David continued walking and explaining. “Of course, for all this to work, we have to prevent anyone else from learning of our true nature, as even the slightest doubt in our abilities would almost instantly bring further efforts to a screeching halt. We have to make everyone else believe that there is truth in every word we say in order to observe their reactions like rats in a box. We have to grit our teeth and let innumerable horrors go by, lie to the faces of hundreds of well-meaning folk, just in order to maintain vigilance against far greater threats. I’m not saying it’s easy, but nobody regrets it. We have to do our part to keep the world safe for mankind. Ever so occasionally, it pays off.”
“Uh, David?” Celling asked. “If secrecy’s such a big thing with you, then why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I feel it’s time for action,” David answered. “And because, frankly, I really admire what you’ve done with the place. The Southern Republic - cough - Empire has finally brought some semblance of law and order to Brazil. In fact, at last count, if the Republic falls then there’s at least a 4% chance that
the world goes down with it. And it’s under threat. Sending that note was my first official act, and I did it because the time for sitting on our hands and collecting data is over. We have the resolution to make an Intervention and we have a seriously dangerous chain of events that needs preventing. This is an exceptional event, make no mistake. We intervene
maybe once a decade at the most. And only to prevent major catastrophe, country-wide destabilization, or widespread death, because as I’ve said, the little stuff must be let slide. We have a pretty good track record, but the consequences for screwing up are incredibly dire. We’ve prevented seven holocausts, I think, and caused two. That’s a net gain. Like I said, nobody regrets it. We’re winning.”
“So, what world-ending event are you going to warn me of then?” Celling asked.
David sighed. “Well, for starters, in three days a deadly bioweapon will be unleashed upon Brazil and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”
…
“WHAT?!?!?!”
Before we continue, is there anything The Readers would like to ask David? Requests to view the future accepted.
This is my attempt at creating a good theory in which oracles tend to request stuff like
Twenty Bear Asses. That mundane and useless tasks are actually just what they need to make their powers work. If there’s anything about Protinam powers you didn’t get, then just ask.