fourth. text.

[torrefied]

In the interest of having it completed some time this century, I'm taking over the project to create a guide document for new arrivals.

[And he's starting it from scratch, no thanks to Chris.]

If you can tear yourselves away from telling ghost stories long enough to reply, I'm interested to know what information you found most helpful when you first arrived, as well as what you would have liked to know sooner rather than later.

Comments

[thechoiceisyours]

Really? Are you gonna pull out the 'it was all a social experiment' line next?

[torrefied]

I'm well past the point of needing to experiment, Chris. I've seen enough outcomes.

[thechoiceisyours]

No one's seen enough outcomes.

[That isn't even a jab at Mello personally, just generally. He doesn't believe anyone here, even those who've shown better judgement than Mello, have seen enough to be sure of anything.]

[torrefied]

On some subjects, you don't need to see many to know you've seen enough.

[thechoiceisyours]

Isn't this where you'd make some comment about sample size and margin of error?

Or I dunno, a book quote about how wisdom is knowing when you don't know something.

[torrefied]

And you wouldn't know anything at all about knowing when you don't know something, would you, Chris.

[thechoiceisyours]

I know this conversation is a circular waste of time unless you have a point somewhere.

[He could be crying under his blankets sleeping right now.]

[torrefied]

I've made plenty of points, Chris. When you pull your head out of your ass long enough to come up for air, maybe you'll be able to see them.

[thechoiceisyours]

I sure hope you're more interested in actually being informative and less in trying to one-up everyone when you write this guide.

[Though actually he hadn't thought much about it before, but now he's kind of wondering--]

What's with the sudden interest in it anyway? Since let's be real here being informative was pretty obviously not the motivator.

[torrefied]

Like you actually care.

[thechoiceisyours]

I would so not be asking if I didn't care especially since pretty much no one, including you, was interested in working it before.

[Aside from Ashley, anyway.]

[torrefied]

I got bored.

[Is the (probably transparent) lie, because he and Chris are in no way on good enough terms for Mello to give his real reason - L showed up, and L is important, and L asked for the document, and Mello had to admit he'd been here for months and hadn't taken the initiative to see the project through to a finish.]

[thechoiceisyours]

Sure. Every time I get bored I pick a project someone else is handling and then get so instantly obsessed with it I can't wait a few days for an answer on what information exists, nevermind that I didn't even call the person actually working on it.

That totally happens because of boredom.

[torrefied]

It wasn't being handled, Chris. The gods have been dragging people here for almost a year now, right? How much longer should we wait until "someone else" decides to stop being useless long enough to get their act together?

[thechoiceisyours]

[This time he feels a flash of... Something. Anger maybe, though it's gone too quickly to really tell.]

No one was being useless. In case you haven't noticed, people here kind of have a lot to deal with.

[torrefied]

Why yes, Chris, I have been entirely oblivious to the reality of this place, thank you so much for pointing it out.

[thechoiceisyours]

I thought that might've been the case, so no problem. You're welcome.

[torrefied]

Whatever would we do without you to act as Hadriel's own Captain Obvious. I guess it's slightly less useless than doing nothing at all, but only very slightly.

[thechoiceisyours]

There's a surprising number of people that need to be reminded of the seemingly obvious.

My dream is for my job to someday be rendered obsolete, but I doubt that'll ever happen.

[torrefied]

Keep dreaming, Chris.