[UA] Last Minute Details

[Unknown VariableX]

Okay. My fic is started and it's gotten some inertia going. So I got some 
stuff I need some help clearing up before I write another chapter.

First off, there's a new student that will be arriving soon. "She" is an 
unwitting automaton who is the adopted daughter of some people with no idea 
that she's clockwork on the inside. (She's studying English Literature, in 
case anybody was curious.) She was designed to grow, evolve, and develop 
just like normal humans, and as a result she has some weird 'habits'. For 
one, she sleepwalks. Someone on this very list suggested that clockwork 
children might be programmed to get up at night and incorporate appliances 
and such into their body to 'grow'... she does that. What I need to know, 
seeing as how I won't be able to get PostModern Magick until April at the 
very least, is what would keep her running. She would probably be suspicious 
of something if she had cravings for charcoal, and even more suspicious if 
there was a wind up key or slot for the same anywhere on her body. What does 
that leave?

Secondly, this is an idea for an Otherspace that will suddenly "appear" on 
campus in a few chapters (when the resident Mechanomancer brings his monster 
to life). It probably needs to be kicked around a bit, or something:

-Study Hall-

When students are out of class, too tense to party, and not tense enough to 
actually get ready for the upcoming Exam, time appears to move slower, in an 
Einsteinian paradoxical way. The subconscious expectations of hundreds of 
thousands of students can have an interesting effect on the structure of 
reality.

Study Hall is an 'infinite' corridor, a section of space-time twisted off 
into an isolated closed loop by the subjective time dilations of countless 
upper-classmen. Staring off into either direction seems to screw with 
perspective, as the hallway extends to the limits of eyesight. Walking in 
either direction will traverse the hallway, but the end will always remain 
out of sight. The hallway in and of itself is a physical representation of 
Zeno's paradox.

Aesthetically, it's rather boring. Sound-absorbent ceiling tiles above, ugly 
brownish-yellow floor tiles below. At regular intervals, the hallway is lit 
by the glare of flourescent light panels. The walls are mostly painted 
plaster, some of it cracked. All rather reminiscent of the subconscious 
suspicion that the vast majority of all students have from the first day of 
school onward; that education is a dead-end trap.

Except the hall is a no-end trap.

>From time to time, anyone walking down the Hall will encounter a door. It 
may or may not be locked (if so, it can be picked or broken down like a 
normal door), and if opened, may or may not actually lead anywhere. 
Sometimes it'll open in on a plaster surface like the walls of the hallway, 
sometimes it'll open up onto a brick wall, and sometimes it will open up 
onto a black void filled with stars and constellations never before seen by 
man (but that only happened once).

However, there also exists a chance that the door will open into a classroom 
somewhere. Somebody leaving Study Hall and entering the 'normal' world will 
shortly discover that time doesn't pass outside Study Hall, subjective to 
somebody inside it. Just another one of those Einsteinian Paradoxes.

Study Hall doesn't change that much, or at all, as far as anyone can tell. 
Any feeling of being someplace before is probably just due to the fact that 
every part of the hall looks like the next. And oddly enough, unless 
students enter the Hall as a group, then no student will encounter another 
in the hallway.

-Hall Pass-

The different doors that appear on the sides of the hallway seem to be 
determined at random, especially to those who have stumbled into Study Hall 
by accident. However, there is a theory that an artifact called the Hall 
Pass can be made that will make things more predictable. This is more or 
less true, but nobody has gotten the process perfected yet. The idea is that 
the Hall Pass controls where the student ends up, so that the next door the 
student comes across will take them exactly where they want to go.

The parts that haven't been perfected are details like which direction to 
turn to find the door in question, and which side of the hall it's on, to 
name a few. Like they say, if it was an exact science, it wouldn't be called 
magick.


Finally, are there any instances of a demon and possessed human sharing 
sensory capacity and motor control at the same time, instead of alternating 
according to what they get on Soul checks? There's this so called "wannabe 
pagan" type who is going to have some run-ins with demons... much to the 
displeasure of the demons.

-Variable (who once got lost in his own museum)