deernet | video | un: degurechaff

[ A young girl sits at a table in an otherwise nondescript room, her hands folded in front of her in a picture of perfect professionalism. Her white button-down shirt is similarly perfect, not a wrinkle in sight, and tailored to her thin frame. Her gaze into her omni is expressionless — some might call it cold — and her high, childish voice is tempered with the assured enunciation of an adult. ]

Good evening. My name is Tanya von Degurechaff. I'm new here, so I have a couple questions for anyone willing to answer.

First, what kind of job do you currently have? If you don't have one, then I'm also interested in hearing what you did before you arrived here.

Second, are there any jobs or businesses you'd like to see here? I recognize that this is a broad question, but since we come from a broad range of backgrounds, any feedback is welcome.

[ A pause, a stray thought seeming to flicker through her head before she continues. ]

As for myself, I have experience with personnel management, various air-based operations, tactical field research, and administrative work. More broadly, I'm an aerial mage. The business I'd like to see is a coffee shop.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The magic and associated technology here is much more advanced. In my world, anything involving magic was limited to use by mages and purely military by design.

The non-magical technology and architecture, on the other hand, feels old-fashioned. I come from the year 1927, and I would have guessed that Trench is in the 1700s.

[ It's like Trench put all of its points into magic and the obligatory one into infrastructure. ]

[He writes all this down. He has had a few answers like Tanya’s, where the answer was not a clear cut yes or no. It just goes to show how interesting and varied all these different places could be.]

[He’s also noting the year. Of the people he’s interviewed, that one’s pretty unique.]

Judging by those dates, it sounds like your homeworld might be on a similar calendar as mine. Do you recognize countries like Japan, Switzerland, Mexico, or the United States?

Somewhat. There's a nation on a continent across the sea called the Unified States of America. Judging by the language you speak, the place you call Japan is known to me as the Akitsushima Dominion.

[ She manages to answer with a completely straight face. She knows it sounds ridiculous, but it's the truth, so she hopes he'll at least refrain from laughing in her face. ]

My own home is the Imperial Vaterland... though everyone else just calls us the Empire.

[ She's really just speaking German though, so she hopes he gets the hint. ]

[He thought that was German, or something similar. He’s not as familiar with the language as he is others, but there was something unmistakable about the sound of German.]

[Her answer is interesting enough that he actually stops writing for a moment to pay her full attention. A very curious and surprised look on his face. He does not laugh! You underestimate how absurd Hayato’s life is, and how far his suspension of disbelief will carry him.]

Interesting. So, it seems like it’s similar but in an uncanny, shift-slightly-to-left kind of way.

[He taps his pen on the table a few times. He wants to ask more details, but they agreed to his survey so he opts to stay on topic. Two more questions.]

To the best of your knowledge, can you recall if you were alive or dead in your homeworld, before washing up on the shores?

[ She can neither confirm nor deny the degree of slight shifting between their worlds without giving up the game, so she just lets that comment go without reaction. ]

I can only assume I was alive. Barring poison or some revolutionary new weapon, I should have been in a secure location.

[He nods, jotting that down. He’s doing all this so he can get a clear picture of the kinds of people who turn up here, try to sort out a pattern, or if nothing else, eliminate things that are not patterns. While death was a strong theory, it only took talking to a small handful of people to toss it out, provided their memories are to be believed.]

Alright, last question.

[He pauses, giving his notebook a lop-sided smile.]

I have a strong suspicion I already know the answer, given what we’ve already discussed, but who knows, maybe I’ll be surprised. [That was the whole nature of asking all these questions, after all. There were so many ways a world could be different.]

Have you ever heard of Kamen Rider?

[ Kamen Rider... Kamen Rider? That classic tokusatsu show? Puzzlement settles over her face, followed by a slight furrowing of her brow. She doesn't know about it in detail, those shows never having appealed to her, but any modern Japanese citizen will have heard of it. Is he a fan, perhaps? ]

Ah... Kamen? I do recall seeing a town of that name west of the Rhine.

[ She prefers not to lie -- honesty is essential to good business -- but in the legal world, gray is essentially the same as white. There is indeed a town named Kamen west of the Rhine river, and that's a fact. It was her job to study maps like her life depended on it, which it did. ]

[Ah, it’s as he thought. Well, it didn’t hurt to ask, at least. He writes that down. A town by the name of Kamen was actually pretty interesting.]

It’s a bit of an urban myth where I’m from. Someone who fights evil from the shadows.

[He puts his notebook away for now.]

I’ve been using these questions to gather general information and to try and get to know what kind of people wash up here. I was using it to see if I can find or eliminate any patterns, but I haven’t really had a lot of luck.

[ Urban myth? Not a TV show?? Her brow continues to furrow, but she stows that quirk of wording away for later consideration. ]

Oh, I see. It would be interesting if there were a correlation...

[ She rubs her chin thoughtfully. ]

It may be worth noting that the details we find commonplace may be clues in themselves. For instance, I haven't been here for very long, but the Sleepers I've witnessed washing in are predominantly humans like ourselves and teens to young adults. If even a tiny number of Sleepers are non-human, it begs the question: why aren't there more of them? Is there some quality of humans in their prime that makes them more likely to come to these shores? Or is there merely some limiting factor that tends to cull non-humans and humans of especially low or high age before they reach the shore?

video | un: degurechaff

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