Al shrugged at Sami, "Yeah, I hear you. There are some pretty distinct advantages to advanced technology, but really, it causes people to lose touch with nature, and with the true ways of living." He pumped his fist slightly and put on a melodramatically serious face, pushing his lip forward and furrowing his brow. "Gotta keep the spirit of magic and living alive, man. Technology can only do so much." His smirked at her and shrugged again, " 's why I sometimes like to just go camping, or surviving, or whatever, in some wilderness somewhere. Get away from all the high-tech gadgetry and just be one with the land. You start to lose that in a technological society."
He watched as the man- Sami'd called him "Larry" - whispered something to her, and turned and walked away. "I hope I haven't said anything too offensive," he said, looking after him with mild concern. "I didn't mean to scare him off with my little crown bit. Just trying to lighten the mood."
Al turned to Tamora and chuckled, "You guys are tough to keep track of. A lot of you look so much alike at this bar. You're really giving my human-observation skills a run for your money." He looked from Keshin to Zorish, "Do Yeerks usually use doppelgangers? What about stunt doubles? I used to be a stunt double. It was more dangerous than you'd think."
He laughed and raised a glass to Keshin, "To friends, then. Though I think I prefer making friends in the Furka world. It's just everybody. And I never joke. No, wait, I never tell the truth. No, wait, I do that sometimes too..." He put on a faux-confused look and shrugged, "Something like that, anyway." He laughed, "I mean, yes, we really do use toilet paper for the occasional... let's say 'shenanigans,' but it's always as a joke." His face grew stoic, "A deadly serious joke."
Salem waited, expectant, for a few seconds, and was about to ask Mar a question, when suddenly pain shot through his upper back like a shock. "Aaugh!" he yelped, and tried to bend away from it- to no avail.
And now Mar was speaking again... and really, the pain was becoming more like a tightness than anything else at this point. Far from pleasant, but bearable at least.
"Coulda warned me," he said through gritted teeth. He tried to concentrate on what Mar was asking. Yes, there... with his eyes still closed, he could almost 'see' something... feel it, maybe? Twisting, dark shapes, gathered all around him, flailing, moving, in and out of his 'vision.' Mar'd called them 'uncomfortable,' and that seemed to be a very apt description. They made him extremely uneasy, and Mar wasn't helping with his talk about the "maw of Oblivion" and "mortal death" and such. Mar'd said he had to learn to control this... he laughed internally. That seemed impossible. He was still struggling to comprehend it. This was unlike anything he'd ever seen. It was as though he'd stepped into an entirely different world. Though he was sitting on the floor of his own ship, he felt as though he'd been taken somewhere unfamiliar, a billion lightyears away. A shiver ran down his spine at the thought.
For a few moments, he struggled, looking for himself as a 'glow in the dark.' Things in this perspective didn't seem to work the way they did in the normal world- just turning his head didn't seem to be the right way to look around, not by itself. It was as if he was seeing more what he intended to see, but he couldn't really bring himself to want it enough to look around properly.
Finally, he managed to find a 'glow,' so to speak, but he felt it as much as he 'saw' it, as with the shifting, unsettling shapes. He was still struggling to make the 'image' clearer. He furrowed his brow, trying to concentrate. These things didn't make sense in the way he was used to, but there was definitely some kind of sense to be made of them, he could tell. The trick would be figuring out how to do that.
"I... see it..." he said to Mar, letting out a breath he'd been holding. "I mean... I see me... I think..."
