Memory 8: Mathematics and Miskatonic
Sep. 22nd, 2019 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wontforbidtherainAphra and a group is walking around a New England college campus during winter. It doesn’t appear that classes are in session (no students). She passes a math building ornately draped with gargoyles and mathematical patterns. The sculptor decided to go with a cephalopod look on them.
She goes inside to one of the faculty offices. A woman and a man are talking about math: the woman is recognizable as Trumbull/the Yith. The man leaves — he has close-cropped hair and a missing arm, and Mister Spector comments “GI Bill.” They see Professor Trumbull sitting in her office, already reading a textbook, and the stranger with the party greets her by name, though as ‘Miss Trumbull’, not professor. She glares at him, and he corrects to “Professor Trumbull” and all but tells her that they are hosting visiting scholars from the government. The ‘gentlemen’ can stay in the dorms, but the stranger wants to put the ‘girls’ (Aphra and Neko) with Trumbull.
Trumbull addresses the man as ‘Doctor Skinner’ and tells him that she’s a professor, not a hostess. He persists in saying they can’t send Miss Marsh and Miss Koto to the Hall school if they are working in the library here.
Trumbull looks at Aphra and Caleb and asks them if they were from Innsmouth. She then asks about something that happened in 1928, and Aphra confirms the town was destroyed in 1928, and that they are looking for artifacts that would have survived. Skinner then leaves as soon as Trumbull confirms she’s taking the women. She asks hopefully if any of them are experts in algebraic topology, and Charlie mentions having a copy of a Book of Eibon with R’lyehn and Latin opposing pages, but he says that Miskatonic probably has one in their library as well. Trumbull mentions that they use it in graduate level anthropology, but she is willing to lead them to the library because now she’s curious of what survives of Innsmouth.
What Cat Learned
Mostly context. She can place the memory as her first meeting with the Yith, before she knew her nature, so Trumbull makes a lot more sense here than she did when Aphra met her. (Aphra had assumed that it was mostly the stubbornness that carries a women through miles of bullshit misogyny.)
Cat already knew she was from Innsmouth and that it was destroyed, but now she has a date. Folks from 20th century Earth or later might be able to estimate that this memory takes place in the late 1940s, if 1928 was in the past, and the student is clearly a veteran.
Cat won’t be aware that in most places, Misktatonic University is fictional.
She goes inside to one of the faculty offices. A woman and a man are talking about math: the woman is recognizable as Trumbull/the Yith. The man leaves — he has close-cropped hair and a missing arm, and Mister Spector comments “GI Bill.” They see Professor Trumbull sitting in her office, already reading a textbook, and the stranger with the party greets her by name, though as ‘Miss Trumbull’, not professor. She glares at him, and he corrects to “Professor Trumbull” and all but tells her that they are hosting visiting scholars from the government. The ‘gentlemen’ can stay in the dorms, but the stranger wants to put the ‘girls’ (Aphra and Neko) with Trumbull.
Trumbull addresses the man as ‘Doctor Skinner’ and tells him that she’s a professor, not a hostess. He persists in saying they can’t send Miss Marsh and Miss Koto to the Hall school if they are working in the library here.
Trumbull looks at Aphra and Caleb and asks them if they were from Innsmouth. She then asks about something that happened in 1928, and Aphra confirms the town was destroyed in 1928, and that they are looking for artifacts that would have survived. Skinner then leaves as soon as Trumbull confirms she’s taking the women. She asks hopefully if any of them are experts in algebraic topology, and Charlie mentions having a copy of a Book of Eibon with R’lyehn and Latin opposing pages, but he says that Miskatonic probably has one in their library as well. Trumbull mentions that they use it in graduate level anthropology, but she is willing to lead them to the library because now she’s curious of what survives of Innsmouth.
What Cat Learned
Mostly context. She can place the memory as her first meeting with the Yith, before she knew her nature, so Trumbull makes a lot more sense here than she did when Aphra met her. (Aphra had assumed that it was mostly the stubbornness that carries a women through miles of bullshit misogyny.)
Cat already knew she was from Innsmouth and that it was destroyed, but now she has a date. Folks from 20th century Earth or later might be able to estimate that this memory takes place in the late 1940s, if 1928 was in the past, and the student is clearly a veteran.
Cat won’t be aware that in most places, Misktatonic University is fictional.
