oo1: actual intro!

[cursedtolive]

[action - around town in the afternoon]
[There's a small little boy walking around town. A flat cap pulled down over his eyes, and a brown jacket even in the middle of July. His outfit choice looks a couple decades out of date, too, although the clothes are definitely from the right era. Fashion statement?

Seemingly lost in his thoughts, Czeslaw Meyer-Stanfield is not paying much attention to where he is going. He passes by houses, by shops, by people. He might accidentally bump into people, at which point he will blink the surprise away and smile sheepishly, with a natural-sounding]

Oh...! Oh, I'm sorry [mister, or miss]. I guess I wasn't watching where I was going. I didn't mean to run into you. Good afternoon!

[action - 459 Stone Street]
[Nope. Nope. Nope nope nope. He can't handle this family arrangement. His "mother" won't let him hole up in his room, though, so he's sitting in a chair in the corner of the front room watching the door so he'll never be surprised by his "father"'s homecoming.]

Comments

[action]

[justdumbluck]

...So you just decided to teach yourself?

[Why..?]

[action]

[cursedtolive]

Uh-huh. Otherwise, I wouldn't really know anything at all.

[action]

[justdumbluck]

You can learn stuff without books!

What'd you teach yourself, anyway?

[He wouldn't even know where to start.]

[action]

[cursedtolive]

Well, I read things as they came out.

[He pauses. He usually doesn't show to Firo the side of him that isn't ten, but... oh well. It can't hurt.]

I read when Benjamin Franklin found out lightning was electricity, I read when Lavoisier discovered oxygen. [Not exactly; he came across it a few years after, when he wasn't tied down by Fermet...] I read Darwin, too. And I read whatever I could when wars happened; I read when I went to other countries.

I guess I learned a few languages?

[action]

[justdumbluck]

[Firo just stares for a moment. His time period gave him the benefit of already having a lot of knowledge available in books, but he sure as hell didn't take much advantage of it. Even when he did read as a kid it was mostly stories.]

...Damn. I don't think I even knew who that Lava-way guy was.

[action]

[cursedtolive]

A lot of people take oxygen for granted so they don't remember the guy who discovered it.

I guess you can say I lived through history. At least for you.

[action]

[justdumbluck]

Never thought about it that way, but yeah. How can you discover somethin' that's always been around?

[He chuckles and nods.]

Certainly seems like it to me. All that stuff sounds like it was forever ago.

[action]

[cursedtolive]

If you find a new kind of animal, it's still called discovering but that doesn't mean it wasn't always there, you know?

[action]

[justdumbluck]

Well... I guess, but oxygen's everywhere, right?

[action]

[cursedtolive]

We didn't always know it was oxygen. People called it all air, but nobody knew there were different kinds of gas -- Nitrogen, Helium, Hydrogen.

That's considered discoveries.

[action]

[justdumbluck]

[He shrugs.]

If you say so. Don't see why it took 'em so long, then.

[action]

[cursedtolive]

...

Really?

[action]

[justdumbluck]

[He blinks.]

...What?

[action]

[cursedtolive]

Why'd people use knives before they had the technology to make guns?

Why didn't people find out what oxygen was before they had the technology to find it out?

C'mon, Firo....

[action]

[justdumbluck]

[Only one part of that really sticks.]

Hey, people still use knives, you know.

[action]

[cursedtolive]

But nobody used guns before they knew how to make guns.

Nobody knew what oxygen was before they knew how to figure that out.

[action]

[justdumbluck]

But if it was there how'd they not figure it out?

[action]

[cursedtolive]

... When did you start talking, Firo?

[Oh my god. He is going to run out of examples.]

[action]

[justdumbluck]

What do you mean, we've been-

[Oh. Oops.]

You mean when I was a kid? I don't really remember. Two or three, maybe?

[action]

[cursedtolive]

But language and words already existed long before that. Why'd it take you so long to start talking then, huh?

[action]

[justdumbluck]

Hey, I was a kid, you gotta cut me some slack!

[And Firo completely misses the point once again.]

[action]

[cursedtolive]

... And people didn't know any better about making guns or finding oxygen, just like you didn't know any better about learning your letters when you were a kid.

Humans are all about learning. So they learned about oxygen when they learned about the science that could let them find oxygen.

[action]

[justdumbluck]

[He sighs. Now that Czes laid it all out, it does make perfect sense.]

...Okay, fine. You're right.

[action]

[cursedtolive]

I know I am.

[action]

[justdumbluck]

...No need to be so cocky.