[ so, eating. That’s a necessity again. From what Castiel recalls from his last stint in being human, eating was actually one of the more enjoyable experiences of being mortal and having biological needs to tend to. He sees the festival as a chance to immerse himself in the culture and learn more of this world’s history. Part of that culture is food, which finds him at one of the tables set out, an unfortunate delicacy in front of him. ]

I don’t remember human food tasting this terrible.

[ castiel mumbles to himself with a sour look on his face, trying to settle with the odd crunch and strange texture left in his mouth from whatever he just swallowed. Something seems to be stuck against his gums and cas fishes a finger into his mouth unceremoniously to drag it out. He finds himself holding a detached grasshopper leg, mouth slightly agape and brow furrowed as he holds it up close to his face and turns it from side to side in frankly weird looking wonder. That last part finally clicks when he notices the citizen across the table staring at him, and his grasshopper leg, and his fascination with it.

Cas swallows, dropping the insect limb, and clears his throat. ]

I mean, food. Normal food that people eat, normally. [ castiel rolls his lips together, awkwardly, searching the table for an escape, then holds up what seems like a paper towel instead. ] Napkin?

But why?

[ castiel mumbles to himself as the last of the augmented reality videos comes to a close in his implant, blinking to clear the feed before he searches around for one of the native representatives. ]

Excuse me. [ cas starts as he approaches one of the festival volunteers hanging around, ] Your history programs are incomplete. They omit the motivation or any investigative details surrounding AI Elysian’s assault on human families.

[ the woman already looks extremely uncomfortable with castiel’s line of questioning, but either it doesn’t register with him, or he doesn’t consider it a good enough reason to stop asking. Let’s be real, he’s been around humans a long while now - he knows she’s not comfortable but he’s not willing to blindly accept this history. So he presses, and the other natives manning nearby stands are starting to take notice. ]

Why this AI? Why these 50 families?

[ in his experience, rebellion doesn’t happen without causality. Human history archives tend to be bad about leaving these things out. But, now is perhaps not the best place to be playing devil’s advocate for the AI. ]

The world I’m from is steeped in gods and monsters, but the former I haven’t found much mention of here. I’m curious - how much impact does divinity and religion have on this world, and the worlds you’re from? What about the supernatural?

Would you say there’s any kind of omniscient, creator figure in your world’s popular theology? He may have gone by ‘Chuck’, in recent years.

[ hit me ]