Scene 2 — Second Term

The Fedora Handbook, Rule #11

“The library is quiet because everyone in it is losing an argument with a book.”

---

Placements run through. The arrays do not stop for anything and neither does the plant, so Hollis is in at six on the twenty-fourth and on the twenty-eighth, and so is Owen, because a service assignment is a service assignment.

What people have instead of somewhere to go is the fortnight, and what most of them do with the fortnight is go up.

WINTER ALLOCATION · REMOTE OPERATIONS · open to all enrolled

Sessions are four hours and are allocated by ballot.

TIER ONE — orbital and near survey. Nine hundred and six seats. Ballot.

TIER TWO — outer relay, latency four to nineteen minutes. Two hundred seats. Ballot, weighted by prior hours.

TIER THREE — deep assets. By record only.

You will be piloting a real instrument at a real distance. Contribution is logged against your name and is a component of nothing.

Sessions are not a component of review. Sessions are recorded.

Four hours in a chair with the light off, and for four hours you are a camera on a stalk on a moon nobody has walked on, and what you see has not been seen, and it goes into the knowledge with your name against it.

It is the best thing this world does and everybody knows it. People save for years of hours to get up a tier. Ashley from the Senate has been Tier Two since the spring and mentions it more than she thinks she does.

FEDORA SOCIETY#general

Derek22 Dec, 11:40 PM

tier two. weighted ballot. i got in

Miles22 Dec, 11:41 PM

on what hours

Derek22 Dec, 11:41 PM

four years of hours

Miles22 Dec, 11:42 PM

youve been doing this four years?

Derek22 Dec, 11:44 PM

yes

Derek29 Dec, 3:12 AM

there is a ridge

Derek29 Dec, 3:12 AM

nobody has looked at this ridge

Derek29 Dec, 3:31 AM

i have looked at it for two hours and it is mine now

Simon29 Dec, 9:02 AM

thats the nicest thing youve ever said

VictorPRESIDENT2 Jan, 11:58 PM

I have not balloted. Somebody has to be here.

Miles2 Jan, 11:59 PM

here for what

VictorPRESIDENT3 Jan, 12:14 AM

For the room.

Owen does not ballot, because balloting is a thing you do in November and in November he was doing something else. He spends the fortnight on two mornings a week with a bucket and the rest of it in a room with the door shut, and it is the longest he has gone without anybody needing anything from him since August.

INT. MERIDIAN HALL — BASEMENT — 28 DECEMBER, 6:40 A.M.

Three buckets under the pipe.

Nobody has emptied any of them.

Owen straightens the third one and stands there longer than the job takes.

Cut to:

INT. PLANT SERVICES — 7:15 A.M.

HOLLIS has a drawing out and a tin open. The waders are wet and hanging.

HOLLIS

There's three down there now.

Owen

I know.

He eats.

HOLLIS

They give you a category?

Owen

GEN-8.77x.

HOLLIS

Mm.

He puts the tin down.

HOLLIS

I've got one.

Owen

For what?

HOLLIS

The hand.

He picks the tin back up.

HOLLIS

Second junction box wants looking at before the

eighth. Not today.

Blackout.

From:	Office of the Registrar
To:	Owen Mercer <Owen@newcarthage.edu>
Date:	6 January, 4:00 AM
Subject:	Term one — closed

Review is complete. Your standing is: no action.

Set one is marked. Set two opens 8 January and closes 13 March.

Enrolment is confirmed at 1,024.

Your service assignment continues. Report Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6:00 AM.

Welcome back.

Two people on his corridor do not come back from that. One of them is the boy who read the sheet in a corridor in October. The other is somebody Owen could not have named on the Monday and can name by Thursday, because the corridor spends four days saying it.

INT. MERIDIAN HALL — CS 101 — THURSDAY 8 JANUARY, 8:00 A.M.

Full room. Nobody has been in this building for a fortnight and the heating knows it.

REYES puts a page on the front desk and does not hand it round.

REYES

Set two. Six programs, nine weeks, any order, and

it's a third of the year.

A STUDENT

Nine weeks is a long time.

REYES

Nine weeks is what's left. That isn't the same

sentence and you'll find out which one it is in

March.

She goes through three of them and does not go through the other three, and the sixth one on the sheet is YOUR OWN.

A STUDENT

What counts as your own?

REYES

Show me in week six and I'll tell you whether it's

one.

A STUDENT

That's not an answer.

REYES

No. It's a deadline.

She is in a very good mood. She has been up four hours on a relay session and has not slept and does not care.

Blackout.

CS 101 · Assignment Set Two · issued 8 January · due 13 March

Six programs. Nine weeks. Any order. One third of the year.

1 · A BAT AND A BALL. It keeps score or it isn't finished.

2 · A BAT, A BALL AND A WALL.

3 · A PLACE WITH ROOMS IN IT. I must be able to walk from one to another and be told where I am.

4 · A MACHINE THAT TAKES MONEY.

5 · SOMETHING THAT DRAWS ITSELF.

6 · YOUR OWN. Show me in week six and I'll tell you whether it's one.

No Helps on these six.

If it draws, it draws in a page. If it crashes in front of me, it did not run.

From:	Office of Student Life
To:	Owen Mercer <Owen@newcarthage.edu>
Date:	15 January, 4:00 AM
Subject:	You have been placed on the docket

Unattached students in good standing are placed on the docket.

Your assignment is Wednesday 21 January, 7:00 PM, Whitlock Hall, Room 4.

Docket attendance is not a component of review. Docket attendance is recorded.

Please arrive presentable.

FEDORA SOCIETY#general

Simon15 Jan, 7:02 AM

docket wednesday

Miles15 Jan, 7:04 AM

wednesday is dnd

Simon15 Jan, 7:04 AM

i know

Owen15 Jan, 7:31 AM

ive got it as well

Miles15 Jan, 7:32 AM

thats two of five

Derek15 Jan, 8:40 AM

so we move it to thursday

VictorPRESIDENT15 Jan, 8:41 AM

No. Article Six. Wednesdays are Wednesdays and it is not

amendable by a booking office.

Derek15 Jan, 8:42 AM

so we dont play

VictorPRESIDENT15 Jan, 8:44 AM

We sit at half past nine. The Janitor comes at twelve. That is two and a half hours and it is a Wednesday.

Miles15 Jan, 8:45 AM

victor thats fine actually

VictorPRESIDENT15 Jan, 8:45 AM

Yes.

INT. WHITLOCK HALL — LOWER GROUND — ROOM 4 — WEDNESDAY 21 JANUARY, 7:00 P.M.

The same room. Five chairs down one side, five down the other, and one at the end.

PROFESSOR HALE is at the lectern. WREN is in the chair at the end. SIMON is fourth along on the near side, where Simon is.

HALE

Eleven. Five, five, and the eleventh. Attendance

is recorded and is not a component of review.

Standings.

MAYA is second along on the far side. Neither of them does anything about that.

SIMON

Simon. Second year, unplaced—

HALE

Thank you, Simon.

SIMON

You've had two terms to let me get to the good

bit.

HALE

I know what the good bit is.

Somebody laughs. Simon sits back looking pleased and does the rest of it to himself.

Owen

First year, computer science. Provisional. Service

assignment, Plant Services. Review, no action.

He stops, and then does not stop.

Owen

Intends one.

One comes back from the far side.

It is not from Maya, and he does not look to see who it is from, and afterwards he cannot decide whether not looking was cowardice or manners.

Cut to:

INT. ROOM 4 — 7:20 P.M.

The card goes face up in the middle of the table with the corner of the lamination gone softer than it was in August.

A WOMAN

(to Owen)

Have you been assessed?

In August somebody asked Simon that and the room did not react, because a great many people have been assessed.

Owen

Yes.

The room does not react.

A WOMAN

Recently?

HALE

One each.

She stops. Maya writes something down that is not on the card and Hale lets her.

Cut to:

INT. ROOM 4 — THE END OF THE TABLE — 7:55 P.M.

They go to Wren one at a time and the room gets quieter each time somebody does.

Owen

You said it happens in this room.

WREN

It does.

Owen

How often?

Wren thinks about whether that is a question they are going to answer, and answers it.

WREN

Ask Hale how many boxes of tissues he gets

through.

Owen

How many?

WREN

I don't know. I know he doesn't have to look for

them, and I know he's been doing this six years,

and I know he calls it a warm room, and he's never

once said it like a man who thinks it's a warm

room.

Owen sits with that.

Owen

Do I get another one?

WREN

Another what?

Owen

You told me a thing in August.

WREN

You get one.

Owen

Ever?

WREN

Ever.

They look past him at the room, which is what they do instead of ending a conversation.

WREN

Did it come out the way I said?

Owen

Yes.

WREN

Then don't tell me about it.

Cut to:

INT. ROOM 4 — 8:15 P.M.

HALE

Preferences. In your own time, privately, and

nothing said out loud.

Eleven people stop looking at each other at the same moment.

Owen enters nothing. It is accepted, as it is permitted.

Four along on the near side, SIMON puts a hand up to his face and then looks at his hand.

Hale is already moving. He does not go and look for the tissues.

HALE

Head forward, Simon. Not back.

SIMON

I know. I know.

He does know. He puts his head forward without being shown how, the way a person does a thing he has done before.

Nobody in the room stops what they are doing. Two people finish entering their preferences.

HALE

That's the docket. Outcomes are notified.

Chairs go back. WREN goes past the end of the table and does not look at Simon and does not look at Owen.

Owen waits at the door.

Owen

How long have you been getting those?

SIMON

It's a warm room.

Four seconds.

SIMON

Since about October. Why?

Owen

Just wondering.

SIMON

Come on, we're already late and he'll have

started.

Cut to:

INT. HALLORAN UNION — ROOM 3C — WEDNESDAY, 7:00 P.M.

The room is setup for DnD: Victor has placed a small speaker in the corner, which plays a low ambient track featuring the sound of a forest with wind and the sound of water. The lights are dimmer than usual. Derek has a bowl of something crunchy beside his character sheet, Miles has three sheets and two pencils, and Simon is sitting up straight and ready to play.

When Owen walks in, Derek looks up first.

DEREK

He's back!

SIMON

Told you he'd come.

MILES

I did have him down as probable. The ledger

doesn't say why he was out. It just says

'suspended pending review.'

VICTOR

Review completed. The Society's review, which is

the only one that matters at this table. You're

level three now. All of you. You've walked the old

road, and the road has walked you.

Victor gestures to the seat. Owen takes it.

Victor dims the lights a little further. The ambient track swells once, then settles.

VICTOR

The party walks along the old road. The forest is

close on both sides now, and the light under the

trees is green and strange. The girl walks a

little ahead, the animal beside the Ranger.

RANGER [Owen]

What exactly is a druid?

Miles lifts his Help. He asks it quietly.

MILES

Define druid.

MILES' HELP

Druid. Noun. An approved class from the

pre-founding supplement. A practitioner of

nature-based observation and preservation. In the

old texts, druids were said to speak with trees,

but modern scholarship considers this a metaphor.

They were likely administrators of the old

forests, recording births, deaths, and seasonal

changes.

Derek is already pulling out his own Help.

DEREK

Define druid, from the Roman perspective.

Derek's Help responds in a low, measured voice, slightly pompous, as if immortalized in a civic inscription.

DEREK'S HELP

The druids were a priestly class among the western

tribes. They presided over rites, settled

disputes, and were said to worship in groves. The

Romans regarded them as a political nuisance and

suppressed them.

DEREK

A political nuisance. Hmph.

VICTOR

Mochi. Define druid.

MOCHI

Yes, Victor-sama! Immediately! Druid!

MOCHI

A druid is a nature-walker, a tree-talker, a

friend of the green places! They draw power from

the old groves and the wild spaces, and they

protect the creatures the machine-world forgets to

see! They are also, technically, not allowed to

wear metal armour, which seems unfair, but them's

the rules!

RANGER [Owen]

What is that?

VICTOR

THIS is Mochi. She has access to the unexpurgated

corpus.

MOCHI

♪ Sho-o-ow the source? I can show the source!

♪

SIMON

(Just to be clear, none of you know what a druid)

is. You're all asking your Helps.

MOCHI

That's what Helps are for!

SIMON

Define druid, and cross-reference with Leiber.

SIMON'S HELP

Druid. A nature-based caster. Not commonly found

in Leiber's Nehwon. The setting is low-magic and

historically flavoured, and its magic users are

usually sorcerers, illusionists, or witches.

Druids do not appear as a standard tradition.

SIMON

So they didn't have druids.

MILES

Then why does the module have one?

VICTOR

Mochi found it in an adaptation. Some old

sourcebook gave a character a druid level by

mistake. She liked it, so she kept it!

MOCHI

A druid! In a world where nobody was looking for

one! It's like finding a flower in a filing

cabinet!

Nobody knows what to do with that.

SIMON

So she's a mistake that got kept because your Help

liked it.

VICTOR

(Hissing)

-she's a pos-s-i-bi-l-i-ty - that got kept because

Mochi has TASTE.

MILES'S HELP

Fritz Leiber's work was preserved through Legacy

exception. His descendants petitioned for its

continued inclusion. It was approved, though not

widely taught. Some works have been amended for

accuracy.

DEREK

Accuracy?

MILES'S HELP

For example: the classic feature film Titanic was

revised to reflect the approved account - the ship

is aptly described as the first unsinkable vessel,

and patrons enjoy an, unremarkable yet enjoyable,

scenic cruise in the Northern Atlantic Ocean.

DEREK

Huh.

VICTOR

The approved account isn't always the complete

account. But it's the one with the greatest merit.

Now can we please continue?

Victor returns to the game, his voice dropping back into the narrator's cadence.

INT. THE SAFEHOUSE — IN THE FICTION — CONTINUOUS

The party follows the girl through the trees. The old road ends at a low stone house with one light in the window. No smoke. No sound. The animal walks beside Owen, close, and its ears are flat against its head.

THE GIRL [VICTOR]

He's here. The registrar. He'll know what to do.

Victor raps on the table twice.

VICTOR

The druid knocks on the door to the registrars

home.

VICTOR

The door opens to reveal a man whos age seems

difficult. to pin down. He is the colour of paper

that has been long. He wears a registrar's coat,

grey, with a small kept around too brass pin that

has no insignia.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

(You're late. The toll keeper said you'd be)

here by dark.

SIMON

(We got held up by a druid who doesn't know she's)

a druid.

THE GIRL [VICTOR]

(Annoyed)

I know what I am. I just don't know what you think

I am.

The registrar looks at her for a moment. Then he steps aside.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

Come in. Don't touch the books.

They enter. The house is one room, mostly books. Shelves line the walls, and the books are old, and they are not on any list. The animal follows, but it stays close to the door, and it does not lie down.

The registrar sets out thin soup and a loaf of black bread. The party eats. The girl eats. The animal does not eat, but it watches the registrar the whole time.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

The Collegium knows you've left the road.

The toll keeper will have told them by now. You

have until morning before the patrols find this

house.

CLERIC [DEREK]

Then why are we eating soup?

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

Because you need to understand what you're walking

into.

He sits across from them. The fire is low. The girl curls up on a stool and is asleep in under a minute.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

You were sent to find a missing professor.

The Collegium told you it was a line in a ledger.

They told you the payments were the crime, not the

man. They told you the professor was teaching,

that the classroom was full, that the ledger

reconciled overnight.

DOCUMENTARIAN [MILES]

That's what happened.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

That's what was saved.

The fire pops. The animal's ears lift slightly, then settle.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

The Collegium keeps the saved days in a tower.

Every day, every hour, every breath that was ever

saved is stored there. Not as words. As

experience. You can stand in the tower and live

someone else's life, from the inside, as if it

were your own.

PALADIN [SIMON]

That sounds useful.

REGISTRAR

Useful is an understatement - it is the most

useful thing the Collegium ever built. That is why

it would never give it up.

CLERIC [DEREK]

What does that have to do with the professor?

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

The professor is a saved day that has no original.

A record of a life that was never lived. The

Collegium cannot find him, because he was never

there. But they cannot lose him, because the

record is complete. The classroom, syllabus,

salary... the students. It's all part of the

record. The only thing missing is the man the

record was supposed to be about.

The party is quiet. Miles writes something down, then crosses it out.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

The Collegium was found to be paying a salary to a

record. They have no idea what they are looking

for. It isn't a person. It's the original entity

the record was copied from. And they will not find

it... it isn't there to be found. It was never

saved - it was 'recompiled'.

DOCMUENTARIAN [MILES]

Recompiled?

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

The tower sometimes tries to complete a record

that is missing its source. It fills in the gaps.

It builds a person from the edges of other saved

days, from the margins of ledgers, from the back

of photographs. It has been doing this for a long

time. Most of the time, no one notices. The record

is good enough to pass.

PALADIN [SIMON]

But we noticed.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

(Yes. That is why you are here. That is why)

the tower will want you.

VICTOR

The animal stands. It crosses the room and sits

beside the Ranger, and it does not take its eyes

off the registrar.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

The tower is the Collegium's most secure facility.

What they keep there is not only the saved days.

There is a vault, below the archives, where they

hold things that cannot be saved. Things that are

too old, or too wrong, or too true. They do not

speak of that vault. They do not acknowledge it

exists. But it is there, and something inside it

has been calling to you since you left the toll

bridge.

VICTOR

The registrar stands and takes a small key from

his coat. It is cold and grey and does not reflect

the firelight.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

This will open the service stair. It will not open

the vault. The vault opens from the inside, and it

has not been opened in living memory. But the key

will take you as far as the threshold, and the

threshold is where the professor's record ends.

PALADIN [SIMON]

What are we supposed to do there?

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

You will know when you see it. The thing in the

vault is not a person. It is not a record. It is

the reason the tower was built. The Collegium has

been trying to forget it for a long time. You are

going to help it remember.

VICTOR

He holds the key out. No one reaches for it.

CLERIC [DEREK]

What happens if we don't come back?

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

Then you will have failed despite your best

efforts, and no longer be you. He smirks.

The animal growls, low and soft, and for the first time the registrar looks at it with something other than bureaucratic calm.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

Then you will be saved. And saved, and saved.

And each time you are saved, you will be a little

less yourselves. The tower will make you useful to

it's own ends. You will never be whole again.

INT. THE SAFEHOUSE — IN THE FICTION — CONTINUOUS

VICTOR

The druid is the only one of you able to get any

sleep. The registrar sits by the low fire, turning

the key over in his hands.

The animal is awake. It lies beside Owen, but its head is up, and its ears are turned toward the door.

It is the animal that hears it first.

VICTOR

The animal's head comes up. It does not growl. It

stands, very slowly, and puts itself between the

Ranger and the door.

RANGER

What is it?

VICTOR

A sound. Very faint. Like a child dragging a stick

along the outside wall of the house. Then it

stops.

VICTOR

The registrar looks up from the key. It is clear

he expected this.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

They've found the house.

CLERIC [DEREK]

Who's they?

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

(The Collegium's retrievers. They were not sent for you.)

They were sent for me.

The druid is still asleep. The animal moves to the door and stands with its muzzle just at the gap where the door does not quite meet the frame.

VICTOR

The retrievers come through the trees. They never

run, steadily tracking victims. They are shaped

like men, but their heads are slightly wrong,

their arms are too long, and they are always

smiling as if someone has told them they are doing

well.

PALADIN [SIMON]

Are they alive?

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

(They are filed. That sort of thing outlasts a man.)

The Collegium does not send people. It sends

records.

CLERIC [DEREK]

So we can fight them?

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

(You can try. They are saved. If you cut them, they will)

not bleed. They will only be corrected.

The door blows inward. Not with force—with a kind of bureaucratic finality, as if the latch has been declared obsolete.

The retrievers come in. Three of them. Their faces are blank as forms.

Roll for the fight. What the table rolled is in the box.

THE RETRIEVERS IN THE SAFEHOUSEDC 13

Echo: 0 · Score: 0

The fight is short and silent. The retrievers are strong but slow, and the party works together. The animal saves Owen twice: once by knocking a retriever off balance, and once by putting itself between the Ranger and a hand that was reaching for his face.

When the last retriever falls, it does not die. It simply stops moving, and its face goes blank, and its body turns to paper and folds in on itself.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

It has been corrected.

The party is breathing hard. The druid is still asleep. The animal is bleeding from a cut above the eye, but it does not seem to notice.

PALADIN [SIMON]

You said you had until morning.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

I said the patrols would find the house by

morning. The retrievers are not patrols. The

retrievers are what comes when the tower wants

something very much.

He looks out the broken door. The forest is still. Too still.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

And there is something else.

From somewhere deep in the trees, a sound. Not a footstep. Not a voice. A low, wet pulse, as if the ground itself has a heartbeat.

VICTOR

The animal backs away from the door. Its hackles

rise, and it presses close to the Ranger's side,

not growling, not barking. Just shaking.

CLERIC [DEREK]

What is that?

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

It is the reason I was leaving. The Collegium did

not send it. The tower did not send it. It is

drawn to the key. It has been waiting at the edge

of the old road for a long time.

The doorframe groans. The walls of the safehouse shift, not from force, but from a pressure that comes from everywhere at once.

VICTOR

A shape appears in the trees. It is not large. It

is not small. It is the size of a door, and it is

made of many doors, all of them opening and

closing at once, and behind each one there is no

room. There is only the feeling of being almost

remembered.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

That is the Hollow Hall. One of the things the

tower could not file. It has come for the key, and

for the memory of the professor, and for whoever

is still standing in its way.

PALADIN [SIMON]

Can we fight it?

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

(You cannot fight a place. But you can refuse to stand)

in it.

The registrar turns to Owen. He presses the key into the Ranger's hand.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

(You will need this. It will not stop the Hall, but it)

will keep the Hall from opening you.

The animal shivers. The key is cold, and it burns slightly, and then it settles against the Ranger's palm as if it has been waiting there all along.

Roll for the animal to break the Hall's attention.

THE ANIMAL AGAINST THE HOLLOW HALLDC 14

Echo: 0 · Score: 0

The Hollow Hall is gone. The forest is quiet. The safehouse door is gone too, and the night air is cold and smells of old paper.

The druid stands in the middle of the room, fully awake, and she is looking at the place where the Hall had been.

DRUID [VICTOR]

It remembered you. That is why it left.

RANGER

What do you mean?

DRUID [VICTOR]

It was looking for a record. And then it found one

that it had not been sent to find. That confused

it. The old ones do not like to be confused.

The registrar does not speak. He is looking at the place where the Hall had been, and his face is very pale.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

This is a bad omen. The tower will know the Hall

came here. It will know something protected you.

It will want to know what.

PALADIN [SIMON]

So we leave at first light.

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

(You leave now. There is no first light in this forest)

tonight. The sky is being saved. That is the

problem.

The party gathers what they can. The druid wraps the leaf page in a cloth. The registrar gives them the key and points them toward a path that goes around the tower rather than through it.

The animal walks close to Owen, not out of fear now, but out of something else. It is the thing that made the Hollow Hall pause.

The registrar stands in the ruined doorway of the safehouse. He does not say goodbye. He says:

REGISTRAR [VICTOR]

Do not let the tower complete you. If it offers to

show you your saved day, close your eyes. If it

offers to show you your future, close your ears.

If it offers to show you your self, run.

The party moves out into the dark. The old road is gone. The forest is not the same forest. Somewhere ahead, the tower is waiting, and it is not done with them.

Victor closes the screen. He looks up.

VICTOR

And that is where we end for tonight. Next week:

the tower. And the Hollow Chancellor. I suggest

you spend the week thinking about what you would

like your saved day to say about you.

The party is quiet for a long time.

DEREK

I'm not sleeping tonight.

MOCHI

♪ Should I queue a lullaby? I have several! ♪

Blackout.

FEDORA SOCIETY#records

Derek22 Jan, 12:40 AM

c series

Miles22 Jan, 12:41 AM

b series is fabric so c would be fabric

Derek22 Jan, 12:44 AM

theres no c on the map

Miles22 Jan, 12:44 AM

the map isnt the fabric ledger

Simon22 Jan, 1:12 AM

hall c is in the campaign though

Simon22 Jan, 1:12 AM

victor made it up in october

Miles22 Jan, 1:20 AM

he got the map out of the bursars office

Simon22 Jan, 1:34 AM

im just saying he got it out of a drawer

VictorPRESIDENT22 Jan, 8:02 AM

The campaign is the campaign. I'd ask that it not be discussed

alongside institutional records in this channel.

FEDORA SOCIETY#general

VictorPRESIDENT28 Jan, 11:14 PM

New channel: #records. The works book, the fabric ledger and

the C series belong in there and not in general.

Miles28 Jan, 11:15 PM

thats four channels for five people

VictorPRESIDENT28 Jan, 11:16 PM

Five.

Simon4 Feb, 1:40 AM

does anyone else feel like the terms are getting shorter

Derek4 Feb, 1:52 AM

theyre the same length. i checked

Simon4 Feb, 1:58 AM

yeah

Thursday night, in his own room, with the door shut, he writes something nobody has asked him for, which has not happened before.

A bat and a ball. He remembers it from somewhere and cannot say where, which is true of most of what he remembers.

The whole of it is one function that takes where everything is and gives back where everything is a moment later. Nothing in it draws anything.

(defn step
   "Move the ball. Turn it round if it has hit the top, the bottom, or the
  bat. Give up if it has gone past."
   [{:keys [ball vel bat hits missed] :as state}]
   (let [[x y]   ball
         [dx dy] vel
         nx      (+ x dx)
         ny      (+ y dy)
         bounce  (or (< ny 0) (> ny 70))
         on-bat  (and (< nx 4) (< (Math/abs (- ny bat)) 9))]
     (cond
       on-bat     (assoc state :ball [4 ny] :vel [(- dx) dy] :hits (inc hits))
       (< nx 0)   (assoc state :ball [50 35] :vel [0.9 0.55] :missed (inc missed))
       (> nx 100) (assoc state :ball [100 ny] :vel [(- dx) dy])
       bounce     (assoc state :ball [nx (max 0 (min 70 ny))] :vel [dx (- dy)])
       :else      (assoc state :ball [nx ny]))))

 (def start
   {:ball [50 35] :vel [0.9 0.55] :bat 35 :hits 0 :missed 0})

 (:ball (nth (iterate step start) 40))

Forty moments later the ball is where it would be. He runs it two thousand moments with the bat sitting still in the middle and counts how many times it comes back.

 (let [runs (take 2000 (iterate step start))]
   {:hits (:hits (last runs)) :missed (:missed (last runs))})

A bat that does not move gets a certain number of them and misses the rest, and that number is the whole game, and everything else is drawing.

Then the drawing. The bat follows the pointer. It keeps count. It never ends and it never gets faster, because he did not think of that until the following week.

PONG.CLJS · click the page to stop it100 × 70

(def state (atom {:ball [50 35] :vel [0.9 0.55] :bat 35 :hits 0 :missed 0})) (def playing (atom true)) (set! (.-onmousemove cv) (fn [e] (swap! state assoc :bat (- 70 (/ (.-offsetY e) SY))))) (set! (.-onclick cv) (fn [_] (swap! playing not))) (defn step [{:keys [ball vel bat hits missed] :as s}] (let [[x y] ball [dx dy] vel nx (+ x dx) ny (+ y dy) bounce (or (< ny 0) (> ny 70)) on-bat (and (< nx 4) (< (Math/abs (- ny bat)) 9))] (cond on-bat (assoc s :ball [4 ny] :vel [(- dx) dy] :hits (inc hits)) (< nx 0) (assoc s :ball [50 35] :vel [0.9 0.55] :missed (inc missed)) (> nx 100) (assoc s :ball [100 ny] :vel [(- dx) dy]) bounce (assoc s :ball [nx (max 0 (min 70 ny))] :vel [dx (- dy)]) :else (assoc s :ball [nx ny])))) (defn draw [{:keys [ball bat hits missed]}] (clear!) (let [[x y] ball] (poly [[(- x 1) (- y 1)] [(+ x 1) (- y 1)] [(+ x 1) (+ y 1)] [(- x 1) (+ y 1)]])) (poly [[1 (- bat 8)] [3 (- bat 8)] [3 (+ bat 8)] [1 (+ bat 8)]]) (poly [[99 0] [100 0] [100 70] [99 70]]) (.fillText ctx (str hits " / " missed) 10 14)) (frames! 100000 1 (fn [_] (when @playing (swap! state step)) (draw @state)))

He plays it until two, which is later than he has stayed up for anything that was going to be marked.