@seojoon.tak, @sergei.pavlo

[dipolar]

If you like authentic Chinese food, respond.
If not, our business is concluded and I have nothing to say to you at this time.

[ There's a pause here, let it be inferred that Jake is staring disbelievingly at Hei for starting this series of messages off this way. ]

let me do us all a favor and interject here before this guy can slam us any further down the rabbit hole because this isnt how we agreed to vet people. weve done a little reading up so we can skip intros from you guys, but ill start this off saying im sergei, 1 of 2 men you guys had a fun debate over a little while back

You even type too much.

this here is tak

Without watering my own thoughts down with pointless introductions, I will add this:
Whether killing us in police custody was the right or wrong thing to push for, it doesn't matter.
Decisions were made to threaten us over a very public network and you'll all learn that this was a mistake.
Our information, as well as our services, will not be extended to you in the future.
I may rethink this if I'm given appropriate restaurant recommendations, but in the effort of full disclosure...
It's very doubtful.

great sticking to your guns there tak. point either way is it was a pretty fun read, not many better ways to get to know a community than reading their public discourse surrounding the incarceration of two guys when they have zero info. i like that balls to the wall approach of kill first, never ask questions later. reminds me of old coworkers. anyway if resnik, sky, alucard, kaldur'ahm, rider, grayson, argentum, rammsteiner, odinson, fighter, and kogane ever wanna do business, give a shout. im not as into threats.

Or getting to the heart of the matter quickly.
In any case, this offer extends to those who attempted to assist me during the festival.
Your patience may be rewarded.

[ These come as a slew of texts from both implants, one after another, clogging the network with a bunch of bullshit. Replies will come from both Hei and Jake. ]

Comments

[retravel]

[ unsure if joking slams the overthink button ]

Yes, you can, though there's only the one tourist destination, Lunar.
Worth the trip and cost, if you can swing it.

[dipolar]

I don't have enough money for that, I doubt I will anytime soon.
To think it took so short a time between landing on the moon and turning it into a tourist trap...

(almost six centures? doesn't seem like a long time to hei, not in the grand scheme.

it's sort of sad, in a way. impossibility is the appeal of some dreams, fanciful things you can't just reach out and grasp in your hand. like so many things in his life. he'll have to consider this and if he deserves to experience anything remotely close to it.)

You've been?

[retravel]

Yeah.
It was like nothing I've ever seen, even with all the horribleness.

[ the magnificence of space, paid for by human lives and greedy, heaving conglomerates. ]

[dipolar]

To go there... I don't know if I could.
It seems like it would confuse a lot of things that once made sense to me.

What do you do that allowed you to make that kind of money to go?

[retravel]

How do you mean?
I like the grandness of it all. Reminds you that the universe is the cosmos, not chaos.

[ an order to everything. ]

As for the money, a dear friend helped secure a discount through his job, but my engineering work helped cover the fee.

[dipolar]

(an engineer. fancy, and noted.)

How do you figure the universe isn't chaos?
Everything is change, destruction and creation, rebuilding into something new.
I think going there, to space, would change the perspectives I have — I'm not sure how.
Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse.

[retravel]

You already described it yourself.
First law of thermodynamics, no energy in the universe is created, and none is destroyed. Every spec of matter. Every animal, vegetable, mineral. No matter how much it changes, it comes from somewhere, and it belongs somewhere, too.

Change is inevitable precisely because there’s order.

[ so it ties into his thoughts on hei’s answer. ]

[dipolar]

How much order have you witnessed?

[retravel]

Every scientific process is a form of order.
So, a great deal.

[ i'm sorry ]

The universe reads as chaos because it doesn't follow our rules or fit our limited perception, not because it lacks order.

[dipolar]

Not everything falls evenly on a scale.
The universe may balance chaos and order, but lives don't.
Some lives keep getting worse and worse and worse.
Where is the order in that?