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shinonFandom: 17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future - Jon Bois
Characters: N/A, some OCs for worldbuilding purposes
Word count: ~1k
Warnings: None
Notes: Some utopian nerd fiction for Wasuremono for Yuletide. The AO3 version of this fic uses a custom work skin to mimic the styling of the original 17776, but for readability purposes here is a version that's just in a normal script format.
SPEAKER 1: I mean, for one - we have this whole planet, and infinite time to get to know it. I think this is a very natural expression of, of -
SPEAKER 2: Curiosity?
SPEAKER 1: of love. This is our home, and - I think it's a conscious effort not to take anything for granted, you know?
Really learn about all this stuff.
And it's changing over time, right? But very slowly. So you could see everything and learn everything there is to know, you have time for that. But then by the time you do that, there's new material. It's just incrementally different. Or - well, I think it'll be like that. We're just getting started, really.
SPEAKER 2: Hmm.
SPEAKER 1: And, okay, the other thing. I think it speaks to something primal in a lot of people.
People love cool rocks. Do you remember what a big occasion it was to find cool rocks when you were a kid?
SPEAKER 2: ...Who remembers being a kid?
SPEAKER 1: ...Well, I've read about it. It's been a while, but -
SPEAKER 2: And seen pictures maybe?
SPEAKER 1: And seen pictures!
(both laughing)
SPEAKER 2: Okay, fine. I'm not saying you've converted me, but sure. Show me your collection.
(Indistinctly) Nerd.
SPEAKER 1: Everyone knows about fordite, right?
SPEAKER 2: Oh, this one's pretty.
SPEAKER 1: Any guess what it's made of?
SPEAKER 2: Chemicals?
It's usually chemicals.
Feldspar.
Two feldspars.
Help me out here.
SPEAKER 1: Would it help if I say it's from Detroit?
SPEAKER 2: Why would that help?
SPEAKER 1: What is Detroit known for making?
SPEAKER 2: Motown.
SPEAKER 1: ...okay, fair, and why is it called Motown?
SPEAKER 2: ...Three feldspars.
SPEAKER 1: Cars.
SPEAKER 2: This rock is made of cars?
SPEAKER 1: Paint. The paint that goes on cars. The overspray gradually accretes into these stones, with layers showing kinda a cross-section of what paint colors were popular year over year -
SPEAKER 2: So this is when everyone got into purple?
SPEAKER 1: The 16400s were a really purple century, yeah. Now, back in the 20th century, when car manufacturing wasn't as efficient, there was a lot more overspray and these stones were formed pretty quickly. Nowadays we waste less paint -
SPEAKER 2: Yeah, wouldn't the nanobots clear it up?
SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm, you don't want a ton of that stuff airborne. But every hundred, two hundred years or so...
SPEAKER 2: Enough stuff gets past them?
SPEAKER 1: I put my name on a list, actually. To get first pick of the fordite of 17905.
SPEAKER 2: Should I get a purple car?
SPEAKER 1: You could, if you wanted to do me a favor.
SPEAKER 1: - Oh, or bauxite! Bauxite's pretty hot lately. Not trying to be a huge hipster about it, but I spent, I dunno, couple hundred years in Ouro Preto, I used to be big into Baroque architecture -
SPEAKER 2: - before you got into rocks?
SPEAKER 1: - I'm never gonna run out of things to get into, it's great. Anyway they used to smelt a lot of aluminum there. But our aluminum needs are fully met by recycling now, and there's no need to process a bunch of this stuff, so we can just leave it alone and see it in its unaltered state.
SPEAKER 2: This kinda ugly crusty orange thing?
SPEAKER 1: Excuse you, that's a very sophisticated structure.
Okay okay I'm not this specific kind of rocks nerd, but I know this guy Francisco who's really into the particular, like, lattices formed by different minerals and stuff.
It's perfectly okay to categorize things together and make a quick judgment like, "okay this is an orange rock full of aluminum dioxide and some other stuff," but you can always look closer, right? Everything you see is specific, and everything you see is itself and nothing else. So my dude Francisco took like five hundred years to paint these really high-res photorealistic pictures of every rock in his collection.
SPEAKER 2: Damn.
SPEAKER 1: And then rotated them 90 degrees and did it again.
SPEAKER 2: Damn!!
SPEAKER 1: He taught me that there's always as much stuff to appreciate as you're willing to dig into. Like, you can look closer at anything, keep zooming in and zooming in, and be rewarded.
SPEAKER 2: ...If that's the case, you know what I'm gonna say...
SPEAKER 1: No, I still don't wanna read Proust.
SPEAKER 1: Sedimentary rocks, right? We all know sedimentary rocks.
SPEAKER 2: Do we?
SPEAKER 1: Limestone. Chalk. That kind of stuff. Sand and fragments sticking together and getting cemented into these flaky layers that people eventually build college libraries out of.
SPEAKER 2: Okay. Sandstone.
SPEAKER 1: Our good friend bauxite, even. Within the past couple of thousand years, though, something really interesting is starting to happen. And a lot of it is happening here.
They cleared up the oceanic garbage patches, you remember -
SPEAKER 2: I remember.
SPEAKER 1: And they put stuff here.
We've got a lot of fragments being deposited, and a lot of time, and as things settle -
SPEAKER 2: Wait wait wait. Sedimentary rocks...
from old trash?
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, it's kind of like the fordite situation all over again -
SPEAKER 2: What's this white layer?
SPEAKER 1: Uh... let me see...
SPEAKER 1: ... from the stratum it's in...
SPEAKER 1: mostly KN95 masks.
SPEAKER 2: ...Huh.
SPEAKER 1: Huh!!
SPEAKER 2: ...plate tectonics.
SPEAKER 1: Pardon?
SPEAKER 2: I think I get it. I saw a thing online about how Africa keeps drifting north. It's gonna smash into Europe.
SPEAKER 1: Wait, what?
SPEAKER 2: Aren't you the rocks lady? Do you not know about this? I thought we came here so you could talk about how continental drift is gonna close up the Mediterranean Sea and uplift a bunch of sexy new mountains with sexy new rocks -
SPEAKER 1: Nah, man, I didn't have a lecture planned, we're just here to visit Rabia. You remember, my friend Rabia the birder -
SPEAKER 2: Oh, is Rabia here these days?
SPEAKER 1: - she's doing some kinda bird census of the Atlas Mountains?
SPEAKER 2: Oh, right. The big sexy mountains that are already here.
And the future ones over there.
Call that two stones with one bird.
SPEAKER 1: Okay, what did you think my lecture was gonna be? About the Mediterranean. Let's hear your version.
SPEAKER 2: What, no reaction? I thought that was pretty good.
SPEAKER 1: Nope.
SPEAKER 2: Okay, uh, I thought you were gonna say something about how it's gonna be a privilege to witness geologic time? The whole planet, and infinite time to get to know it, right right, but it's going to keep changing under our feet. If we ever get to a point where we know everything, we can just wait a while, and the planet will show us a new face.
SPEAKER 1: ...
SPEAKER 2: You wouldn't make a pun here about "only scratching the surface," but if it were me doing it, I would.
And like - when it does happen. The Mediterranean closing up. I think I'm gonna miss the concept of, I dunno, Greece. But it's not gonna catch anyone by surprise, right? People will have plenty of time to get away and take everything with them. It's not like "oh you're in the crumple zone, vast upheaval of Phoenician triremes be upon ye" -
I think it's gonna be cool.
There's gonna be cool old stuff and cool new rocks.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
You get it.
SPEAKER 2: Well.
I do listen to you, you know.
SPEAKER 1: ...Hey, actually.
You're on such a roll with this. Let's get your take on something else.
SPEAKER 2: Oh?
SPEAKER 1: What if I told you the cool rocks fandom is rife with rock tumbler discourse? What do you think that would look like?
SPEAKER 2: Oh man. Rock tumblers. Don't even - don't even get me started on rock tumblers. Is what I would say, probably. I'd say, uh...
how much time do you have?
Characters: N/A, some OCs for worldbuilding purposes
Word count: ~1k
Warnings: None
Notes: Some utopian nerd fiction for Wasuremono for Yuletide. The AO3 version of this fic uses a custom work skin to mimic the styling of the original 17776, but for readability purposes here is a version that's just in a normal script format.
A LIVING ROOM
SPEAKER 1: I mean, for one - we have this whole planet, and infinite time to get to know it. I think this is a very natural expression of, of -
SPEAKER 2: Curiosity?
SPEAKER 1: of love. This is our home, and - I think it's a conscious effort not to take anything for granted, you know?
Really learn about all this stuff.
And it's changing over time, right? But very slowly. So you could see everything and learn everything there is to know, you have time for that. But then by the time you do that, there's new material. It's just incrementally different. Or - well, I think it'll be like that. We're just getting started, really.
SPEAKER 2: Hmm.
SPEAKER 1: And, okay, the other thing. I think it speaks to something primal in a lot of people.
People love cool rocks. Do you remember what a big occasion it was to find cool rocks when you were a kid?
SPEAKER 2: ...Who remembers being a kid?
SPEAKER 1: ...Well, I've read about it. It's been a while, but -
SPEAKER 2: And seen pictures maybe?
SPEAKER 1: And seen pictures!
(both laughing)
SPEAKER 2: Okay, fine. I'm not saying you've converted me, but sure. Show me your collection.
(Indistinctly) Nerd.
DETROIT
SPEAKER 1: Everyone knows about fordite, right?
SPEAKER 2: Oh, this one's pretty.
SPEAKER 1: Any guess what it's made of?
SPEAKER 2: Chemicals?
It's usually chemicals.
Feldspar.
Two feldspars.
Help me out here.
SPEAKER 1: Would it help if I say it's from Detroit?
SPEAKER 2: Why would that help?
SPEAKER 1: What is Detroit known for making?
SPEAKER 2: Motown.
SPEAKER 1: ...okay, fair, and why is it called Motown?
SPEAKER 2: ...Three feldspars.
SPEAKER 1: Cars.
SPEAKER 2: This rock is made of cars?
SPEAKER 1: Paint. The paint that goes on cars. The overspray gradually accretes into these stones, with layers showing kinda a cross-section of what paint colors were popular year over year -
SPEAKER 2: So this is when everyone got into purple?
SPEAKER 1: The 16400s were a really purple century, yeah. Now, back in the 20th century, when car manufacturing wasn't as efficient, there was a lot more overspray and these stones were formed pretty quickly. Nowadays we waste less paint -
SPEAKER 2: Yeah, wouldn't the nanobots clear it up?
SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm, you don't want a ton of that stuff airborne. But every hundred, two hundred years or so...
SPEAKER 2: Enough stuff gets past them?
SPEAKER 1: I put my name on a list, actually. To get first pick of the fordite of 17905.
SPEAKER 2: Should I get a purple car?
SPEAKER 1: You could, if you wanted to do me a favor.
OURO PRETO
SPEAKER 1: - Oh, or bauxite! Bauxite's pretty hot lately. Not trying to be a huge hipster about it, but I spent, I dunno, couple hundred years in Ouro Preto, I used to be big into Baroque architecture -
SPEAKER 2: - before you got into rocks?
SPEAKER 1: - I'm never gonna run out of things to get into, it's great. Anyway they used to smelt a lot of aluminum there. But our aluminum needs are fully met by recycling now, and there's no need to process a bunch of this stuff, so we can just leave it alone and see it in its unaltered state.
SPEAKER 2: This kinda ugly crusty orange thing?
SPEAKER 1: Excuse you, that's a very sophisticated structure.
Okay okay I'm not this specific kind of rocks nerd, but I know this guy Francisco who's really into the particular, like, lattices formed by different minerals and stuff.
It's perfectly okay to categorize things together and make a quick judgment like, "okay this is an orange rock full of aluminum dioxide and some other stuff," but you can always look closer, right? Everything you see is specific, and everything you see is itself and nothing else. So my dude Francisco took like five hundred years to paint these really high-res photorealistic pictures of every rock in his collection.
SPEAKER 2: Damn.
SPEAKER 1: And then rotated them 90 degrees and did it again.
SPEAKER 2: Damn!!
SPEAKER 1: He taught me that there's always as much stuff to appreciate as you're willing to dig into. Like, you can look closer at anything, keep zooming in and zooming in, and be rewarded.
SPEAKER 2: ...If that's the case, you know what I'm gonna say...
SPEAKER 1: No, I still don't wanna read Proust.
A LANDFILL
SPEAKER 1: Sedimentary rocks, right? We all know sedimentary rocks.
SPEAKER 2: Do we?
SPEAKER 1: Limestone. Chalk. That kind of stuff. Sand and fragments sticking together and getting cemented into these flaky layers that people eventually build college libraries out of.
SPEAKER 2: Okay. Sandstone.
SPEAKER 1: Our good friend bauxite, even. Within the past couple of thousand years, though, something really interesting is starting to happen. And a lot of it is happening here.
They cleared up the oceanic garbage patches, you remember -
SPEAKER 2: I remember.
SPEAKER 1: And they put stuff here.
We've got a lot of fragments being deposited, and a lot of time, and as things settle -
SPEAKER 2: Wait wait wait. Sedimentary rocks...
from old trash?
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, it's kind of like the fordite situation all over again -
SPEAKER 2: What's this white layer?
SPEAKER 1: Uh... let me see...
SPEAKER 1: ... from the stratum it's in...
SPEAKER 1: mostly KN95 masks.
SPEAKER 2: ...Huh.
SPEAKER 1: Huh!!
MARRAKESH
SPEAKER 2: ...plate tectonics.
SPEAKER 1: Pardon?
SPEAKER 2: I think I get it. I saw a thing online about how Africa keeps drifting north. It's gonna smash into Europe.
SPEAKER 1: Wait, what?
SPEAKER 2: Aren't you the rocks lady? Do you not know about this? I thought we came here so you could talk about how continental drift is gonna close up the Mediterranean Sea and uplift a bunch of sexy new mountains with sexy new rocks -
SPEAKER 1: Nah, man, I didn't have a lecture planned, we're just here to visit Rabia. You remember, my friend Rabia the birder -
SPEAKER 2: Oh, is Rabia here these days?
SPEAKER 1: - she's doing some kinda bird census of the Atlas Mountains?
SPEAKER 2: Oh, right. The big sexy mountains that are already here.
And the future ones over there.
Call that two stones with one bird.
SPEAKER 1: Okay, what did you think my lecture was gonna be? About the Mediterranean. Let's hear your version.
SPEAKER 2: What, no reaction? I thought that was pretty good.
SPEAKER 1: Nope.
SPEAKER 2: Okay, uh, I thought you were gonna say something about how it's gonna be a privilege to witness geologic time? The whole planet, and infinite time to get to know it, right right, but it's going to keep changing under our feet. If we ever get to a point where we know everything, we can just wait a while, and the planet will show us a new face.
SPEAKER 1: ...
SPEAKER 2: You wouldn't make a pun here about "only scratching the surface," but if it were me doing it, I would.
And like - when it does happen. The Mediterranean closing up. I think I'm gonna miss the concept of, I dunno, Greece. But it's not gonna catch anyone by surprise, right? People will have plenty of time to get away and take everything with them. It's not like "oh you're in the crumple zone, vast upheaval of Phoenician triremes be upon ye" -
I think it's gonna be cool.
There's gonna be cool old stuff and cool new rocks.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
You get it.
SPEAKER 2: Well.
I do listen to you, you know.
SPEAKER 1: ...Hey, actually.
You're on such a roll with this. Let's get your take on something else.
SPEAKER 2: Oh?
SPEAKER 1: What if I told you the cool rocks fandom is rife with rock tumbler discourse? What do you think that would look like?
SPEAKER 2: Oh man. Rock tumblers. Don't even - don't even get me started on rock tumblers. Is what I would say, probably. I'd say, uh...
how much time do you have?
