Experimental Toast // The Bar

[halftwinkly]

THEN: Arthur made a brilliant discovery.

AND THEN: Arthur had tried to make toast. Literally, produce toast, on a plate. No matter how hard he tried, screwing up his face like someone trying to remember an answer in Trivial Pursuit, he couldn't even create a crumb. However, he could put bread in the toaster and have it come out as perfect toast, even after he noticed the toaster wasn't plugged in.

NOW: Arthur is in the Bar. Well, sort of. The Bar, on the basis that she isn't stupid, has put him in a little side room with tiled walls and floor. There are a number of objects in the room. Right now, Arthur is looking at a piece of bread very hard.

"Abracadabra!"

The bread explodes into croutons.

"...Oh dear."

There's a pile of similarly dispatched bread in a bowl next to him. The squid might like it, later on.

Comments

[halftwinkly]

Arthur drops his arms.

"Should we make a list?"

[missnicegirl]

"Good idea!"

She unearths a small notebook and even smaller pencil from a pocket and starts writing things down. "Plate - flour - bowl - bread - donut - raspberry..."

[halftwinkly]

"Shall I disappear them when you write them down? Then you won't get confused and try and write down things twice." If this sounds like something that happens to Arthur a lot, that's because it is.

[missnicegirl]

"Sure," she says agreeably, because while that isn't a problem she's ever had, it's still a sensible way to do things.

[halftwinkly]

Arthur starts gleefully disappearing things as Matilda calls it.

"Do you think it's all going to the same place? What if there's a... Stuff storm, and it gets diverted to a different place?"

[missnicegirl]

"I'm not sure there's even a place," says Matilda. "It might just be the idea of a place."

She looks down at her list. "Okay, now I'll try bringing some of this back."

The plate works. So does a second, identical plate, a moment later. And a small pile of flour on top. And a bowl, helpfully upside-down, on top of that. Because it's convenient, she completes the stack with a slice of bread, a donut, and finally a very large raspberry, which she is interested to note appears in its non-nibbled state.

[halftwinkly]

Arthur is thinking again. Steam comes off his head.

"So if it's only the idea of a place, does that mean we can send ideas of things too it and bring the real thing back? Since it's only a real place if you think about it, you see, when you send the thing over..."

He trails off, looking confused. The Arthur Shappey vocabulary was not made to unravel knotty arcane problems.

[missnicegirl]

"It should mean exactly that," Matilda agrees, beaming excitedly.

[halftwinkly]

"We should try it," Arthur decides. "We could ask for something really easy. Like scrambled egg. Or, or, a boiled egg!"

[missnicegirl]

"I think I'll try something even simpler than that," Matilda decides.

She's done just enough chemistry to know that the structurally simplest solid objects are crystals. The first one that comes to mind is quartz.

A perfectly clear, perfectly regular, thumb-sized quartz crystal drops out of the air, bounces off the raspberry, and rolls to a stop at the edge of the table.

[halftwinkly]

"I suppose you don't need as much preparation for a boiled sweet..." Arthur picks it up, carefully. "Oh, wait, it's a rock."

He carefully puts it down again. "Why did you want a rock? Do you like them?"

Arthur has been around Milliways for long enough not to assume about anyone.

[missnicegirl]

"I was just testing," she says. "Crystals are easier than eggs, for me, anyway."

[halftwinkly]

"I suppose. Boiled eggs are tricky things." Arthur nods sagely. "Does this mean we could get live things as well? Because live things are just dead things but with breathing and things."

[missnicegirl]

"Maybe," says Matilda, "but I'm not sure we should. I mean, if we try to make a boiled egg and get it wrong, that's not a big deal, but if we try to make a kitten and get it wrong, it's not fair to the kitten."

[halftwinkly]

The look on Arthur's face as he considers this from all sides has to be seen to be believed. He looks down at the crystal again.

"I wonder if we could go there. Then we could bring things back ourself instead of hoping the place knows what we want."

[missnicegirl]

"It might not be the kind of place you can go to," says Matilda. "And if you try and it doesn't work you might just vanish forever."

[halftwinkly]

Arthur sighs.

"That's a shame. We could have taken GERTI and Skip could've come with us. He likes visiting new places as well."

Oh well, nothing can ever keep Arthur down for long.

"What do you want to do now?"