Nia's mother had always told her as a child that the distance between you and lightning was equal to the number of seconds between the lightning's flash and the sound of thunder. She wasn't sure whether she'd done so out of ignorance or to quiet an anxious child, but she had been wrong. The actual equation was that number divided by five. Lightning was often far closer than you'd think.

The flash of lightning out the window and the burst of thunder were near simultaneous. A small child in a nearby stroller began to cry.

>> APOLLONIA "NIA" KARAHALIOS: START

Nia was beginning to regret having come out this way. She had a deep fondness for museums, unsurprisingly; the opportunity to learn things she had no reason to discover otherwise was always appealing. The existence of museums in itself was a fascinating anomaly, an international institution based on something that was rarely profitable, and she was eternally grateful that people existed who cared enough to catalog the past without promise of much in the way of a reward. That said, it had begun to rain mere minutes after her mom had dropped her off despite a lack of noticeable clouds in the sky, and soon enough dark clouds had rolled in. From her spot near a window she watched lightning arc across the sky, "spider lightning", bright lines of light like cracks breaking through the sky. She felt the urge to tell the crying children that this lightning couldn't hurt them, it would never touch the ground, but she resisted.

She wondered what kind of parent took a small child to a military museum, anyway. It wasn't the sort of place she'd expect to end up, but there were a finite number of museums in Chattanooga, and there was something to learn from all of them. Here, though, the reek of jingoism in the air was strong, and while her knowledge of world military campaigns wasn't exactly extensive, it was enough to tell her that some of what she was reading was... not inaccurate, but certainly slanted. Not surprising, but disappointing. The truth was so much more interesting than something approaching fiction. She could have gotten a more multifaceted education on the subject if she'd looked this stuff up online.

But she was stuck here until her dad got off work. Another hour to kill. She eyed the plaque on the nearest display.

. . . These men made the ultimate sacrifice and went above and beyond the call of duty to preserve freedom.

Fascinating. Nia went back to watching the lightning from the window.

Julien didn't care for storms like some people did. Rain was nice for setting a calmer mood, but hearing thunder only brought the crack of bone to mind. Not exactly something he liked remembering.

((Julien Leblanc continued from Five Crooked Lines))

He had planned to go window shopping and possibly get himself some things with more vibrance to them than his usual dull fare, and was on his way to do just that when the heavens had opened up out of nowhere and he found himself without an umbrella to hand because of course he did; brakes put firmly on that plan, the nearest place he'd been to where any sort of shelter could be taken just so happened to be the military museum.

Julien had never cared for museums that much either. If people had such a hard time truly learning lessons from pasts that seemed to invariably have gone horribly wrong, why were they documented quite so extensively? Better to live and let live, the way he saw it. Ignorant as it might be of him,

At least there was much more to look at in here, should he feel the inclination, than if he'd been unfortunate enough to get stuck in a fashion shop. Being stuck with only clothes and strangers for company would have driven him stir-crazy, and Julien didn't want to go and fall into that old trap of being spoiled for choice or spending too much money as he inevitably would have. Every cloud had a silver lining and all.

For now he went and found a window from which to watch the rain, making a concerted effort to filter out the displays around him and the child crying. He couldn't exactly blame them for being upset by the noise. It seemed that he wasn't the only one stuck here until reprieve showed up too, going by the impassive look on the face of the girl nearby. Julien didn't stay silent for long before reaching the conclusion that even someone being rude would be better than nothing for however long this storm lasted. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Or lost either, but he knew that wasn't the point.

"Are you waiting to get out of here too, by any chance?"

Nia was knocked out of her reverie by a voice that was familiar enough to register as familiar but not familiar enough to place. She turned to spot a boy whose name didn't come to mind immediately, not someone she'd spent much time around but who she was sure she'd shared a class or two with. Not enough time spent together that she'd expect him to know her; she assumed he was making idle small talk for the sake of it rather than from any sense of recognition. Nia found small talk tiring, as a rule. Communication took more out of her than it did much, and she was rewarded with essentially nothing for her efforts. Even so, there was no sense in being rude, particularly if they would both be stranded here for another hour.

Glad that she'd brought her sketchbook, though it hadn't come in much handy until now—nothing here was worth the effort of note-taking—Nia slipped it from beneath her arm, taking one of her favorite felt-tip pens from her pocket, turning to an empty page and writing.

Yes. Nowhere to go for at least an hour. There are worse places to be, but there are certainly better ones.

She glanced up at him. His face clicked with a name somewhere in her memory. Julien... something. She didn't remember his last name, but she didn't think she knew any other Juliens either. Not that the name gave her much to work with; from her limited knowledge Julien was almost aggressively normal. "Normal" was such an odd word to apply to people, she thought. Who determined normalcy? Was there a mathematical mean of humanity? Was there any logic whatsoever in considering people that way? It would be nice if things were so orderly, but in her experience people hardly fit neatly on a number line.

She realized she'd been staring at him blankly for a solid ten seconds before putting her pen to paper again.

You're Julien, correct? We had history last semester together, I think.

Julien was confused by the sketchbook that she seemed to default to over talking for a few moments before he noted the scar on her neck. So she was mute, then? Well, talking whatever way she could was far better than just giving the cold shoulder and cutting him off, so he was happy to roll with it. After reading what she said, he nodded in acknowledgement. Made sense that she didn't really care for this museum either.

"Could be a slow hour. Well, hopefully it'll pass a little easier now."

He could cope with it if she had chosen unresponsive silence, so it was no skin off his back... But if Julien wanted to feel like he was on his own, this definitely wasn't the place he'd choose. Being surrounded by people with loneliness digging its nails into him all the same wasn't something that he would wish on anyone; he would happily take solitude over the vain hope that someone would care enough to show actual acknowledgement.

Getting a blank stare sent his way for a while after that didn't help, Julien trying to figure out what might be going through her mind. Was she just thinking of something to say next, or if she'd seen him anywhere before? Or maybe he was making this a little worse and she was only answering out of courtesy? He got his answer soon enough, drawn out of his thoughts when he saw her writing again.

"That's me. Wait, history? Hold on," he said, immediately starting to rack his brains because of course it'd be the class he had a bad habit of glazing over that she mentioned. So she was mute, in his year and had been in classes with him before... Fortunately for Julien, it didn't take too long to dredge a name out of his memories, considering that she was fairly distinctive. He considered the fleeting idea of calling her Apple as it passed by, but that'd just be rude. "You're Nia, right?"

Yeah, that was it. At least, Julien hoped so.

Nia's hands paused above her sketchbook as she regarded him curiously. The thing about boys like him was she lacked any real means or reason to gain information on them, and that, in an odd way, made the most boring-on-paper students the most surprising to interact with. Many lived down to her general expectations, naturally. Kids had always been cruel, and really, it was hard to conceive of them as being anything but kids, laws about age of majority or not. Those laws were essentially arbitrary anyway; there were twelve countries where that age was set at sixteen or lower, and even now, from the lofty heights of eighteen, she could see that sixteen-year-old her shouldn't have been trusted with a goddamn thing.

Right, Julien. She saw his eyes drop to her scar, waited silently for an inevitable that didn't come. She tilted her head slightly. He remembered her, and sure, she supposed that was no large feat; she was aware, perhaps overly so, that she was unique. But even so, she found herself appreciative of his nonjudgemental recognition. She scrawled another line between the ones she'd written, her handwriting untidy, her sentences stacked with little space between them in anticipation of a potentially long conversation.

Correct. I suppose I'm difficult to mistake.

A pause. She sucked on the back of her pen for a moment.

What brings you here? This sort of thing isn't exactly fun, for most people.

She could have gone on a diatribe about inherent biases or the reality of America's role in World War II, and she really wanted to, but she had learned the hard way over the years that that was a fantastic way to scare off anyone who didn't know her better. Not that she particularly cared what this boy thought of her, but this was at least slightly more interesting than staring blankly at a thunderstorm.

Julien could actually see an upside to the silences, now he considered them a little more. He was afforded the time to mull over his response a little, unlike with people like Beryl where it seemed like the only options were just doing the best he could to walk the same path she did whenever she was around or falling by the wayside.

For a moment, he wasn't sure about why she tilted her head as if in curiosity. He figured it out easily enough, though, and he really couldn't help the grimace that split the even expression he so often made a point of keeping for a moment before he managed to regain control. While it didn't come as much of a surprise, he still had the inclination to expect better of others.

Well, if there's one thing I can count on people not to have, it's a basic sense of decency.

He decided not to comment on her admission of... standing out. Yeah, that worked. Fortunately, Nia gave him something he felt less uncomfortable working with not long after.

"Ah, I'm not really one for history myself either. The rain's what drove me in here. Though if you wouldn't mind, I actually would like to hear some things. You evidently know far more than I do and now's as good a time as any."

That and it didn't take a genius to figure out that all the plaques and displays in here might not tell him things that a person would. Julien was well aware that bias and retelling stories, old or new, often went hand in hand; he preferred to stay away from museums and the like in part because of that very thing.

The problem is endemic to the country. I was disappointed by the misinformation on display here but not at all surprised. I'm not one to make moral judgements about this sort of thing honestly the whole debate as to whether the way American war propaganda is taught in schools is brainwashing our youth or whatever is only really interesting to me on an academic level but it is super irritating to realize when you make an honest effort to learn something that it was never accurate to begin with it's a complete waste of time and mental resources. As an example pretty much everyone knows about the ridiculous casualties of the USSR in WWII but our studies don't dwell on those details- can you imagine losing more than 13% of your population in a few short years? It was even worse in specific areas. Belarus lost upwards of a quarter of its population, the majority of those civilian. I think that's the real thing we miss about that particular war, the civilian tragedies, people love talking about the actual battles and war heroes and tactical things and yes sure that's fascinating but so many of the stories of regular people get left behind in the wake of that especially here since the worst we suffered were wartime shortage and its not like stuff like the Blitz is unknown or totally skipped over but those realities are so much more than we ever bother to think about and it's absolutely incredible stuff once you get into it but we never do because we're busy talking about how America personally bitch-slapped Hitler or whatever it is people believe. Actually I should clarify obviously it isn't true that we never suffered worse than shortages domestically even though that's all most people felt, obviously there was Pearl Harbor but I obviously don't need to explain that to you, there were actually thousands of American civilian casualties in WWII but the vast majority of those were merchant mariners or expatriates in Europe or Asia and they don't get nearly the respect that the Pearl Harbor casualties do because I guess people feel more personally affected by things that happened on our soil as opposed to things that happen to our citizens elsewhere which actually says its own interesting things about like how people perceive their own people or like how they perceive potential danger like probably these things are more interesting because they feel closer and therefore more potentially personally dangerous while like American Citizen is kind of a nebulous term like that primal part of our minds that automatically thinks of people in tribal terms understands that America is our tribe and we have some connection to the people in it even if they aren't nearby geographically but their plight is still inherently less interesting to us because despite being our people the danger they're in isn't going to hurt us. Have you ever heard of Dunbar's number? It's kind of tangentially related but it's

Nia had absolutely no conception of how much time it had taken her to write; she'd only stopped because even with her cramped handwriting her words had reached the bottom corner of the page. She stared at the wall of text she'd left in her wake for a long moment before scribbling out her orphaned final sentence and turning the sketchpad back to Julien, shrugging.

So that was why she'd been writing for that long. Julien had to look a little closer for all of it to be legible, but he didn't mind as he took in the rambling wall of thought she'd left him to climb over; this was definitely going to be much more interesting than shopping for clothes.

"Well, I suppose it's because most prefer focusing on the things they find to be appealing and just ignore everything else. The theatrics of war are far more fun than innocent people being butchered and blown apart, I'm sure," he said, how callous the words coming out of his mouth sounded not being lost on him, "so people just tried not to think about it and moved on. Which I get, but... it does a disservice to all the people who died, doesn't it? Makes it seem like nobody thinks they're worth remembering."

To actually try and contemplate so many being gone was sobering. Julien knew that people only had so much room in their hearts to be concerned about others if they weren't too busy worrying about their own lives, and he couldn't go faulting anyone for that, but they had been people too. It did lead him to wonder if, should he end up biting the dust because he made another stupid mistake out on the rocks or on his dad's bike, he could say he would be happy with the amount of people he'd hope would feel something about it.

He couldn't, and he was aware that when it came down to it he only had one thing to pin that on.

"I haven't heard of Dunbar's number, but I think I can take a fair guess at what it is. There is one little thing I don't quite agree with you on, though. Even between people in the same town, let alone the same state or country, distance is better at inducing apathy than anything else. Sometimes it doesn't even take that. How many people in your life could you say you really care about? Most of the time, if people hear something bad happened in the news or whatever they think a little about it being a tragedy and then they just go back to business as usual," he paused to take a breath, "I mean, I get it, because any one person can only find it in them to care so much, but I feel like it says more than any words ever could that unless it happens directly to them one way or another people just don't give a fuck—"

This isn't the person, and certainly isn't the place. Have some decency, at least.

Julien had gotten careless again and the coil had begun to unwind without him noticing, because of course he had. "I'm sorry, I seem to have forgotten myself for a moment there. I do agree with you that it's interesting to think about. What exactly is Dunbar's number though? I can guess, but it doesn't hurt to know for sure."

He was painfully aware that yet again he was proving to be his own nemesis. Showing up to people who'd already filled their lives, trying to pull open doors that had been closed to him long before he arrived in the vain hope that maybe they could be opened if he just tried hard enough. He hoped someone would enjoy the joke he'd made of all those wasted years so something would come of it one way or another. Faith might, maybe. Even that would be better than what he had now.

The reason why he hated history had just come back to him, at least.

Nia looked wholly attentive when Julien spoke; years of practice had left her surprisingly skilled at diverting her attention from conversation without appearing to do so (it was all in the eye contact, which made sense considering eye contact had been scientifically shown to build trust, and someone who trusts you probably assumes that you're not ignoring them, right?). In this particular case it wasn't any fault of her conversational partner's. He was actually, surprisingly, quite interesting, and quite passionate considering how far she'd gone astray from the original topic. Her mind wandered out of habit, and out of a need to continue to reclassify Julien Leblanc. She knew full well, of course, that categorizing people based almost entirely on hearsay, archetypes and the odd observation wasn't likely to be particularly accurate, but she rarely had a chance to test the veracity of her hypotheses. After all, she rarely bothered to speak to anyone that didn't strike her as interesting.

She would have to rethink her measures.

There was a moment of silence between Julien finishing his last statement and Nia processing that it was her turn to speak... so to speak. She hadn't completely missed what he'd been saying, though her mind had glossed over the finer points in favor of marveling over the fact that he was able to keep up with her at all. She picked up on his question, reasoning that if she answered that he'd hardly notice her gap in attentiveness. People never did. Having turned the page, she twirled her pen between her fingers for a moment before beginning to write again.

Dunbar's number- the number of stable relationships a human can theoretically maintain. I've heard it described as the amount of people one person can really care about it, but Dunbar himself didn't even propose that much, only that it was the number of people one person could know and know their relationship to other members of that group. I would propose that the number of people a given person can truly care about is far lower, though that isn't backed up by any particular evidence since I haven't actually done extensive research on the topic and my experiences in this realm probably are out of the ordinary I prefer not to speculate idly too much on matters that I don't know that much about though I'll admit that I find it quite interesting that we live in a world where it's totally normal to maintain connections however shallow via social media to many more people than Dunbar ever considered possible though whether that's a symptom of the changing times or proof that those connections are meaningless I won't try to parse right now.

She was filling page space with distressing speed. Nia paused, took a breath, formulated a few short sentences, and wrote them down.

Dunbar's number is most often cited at around 150. Even if we're conservative and consider that to be the number of meaningful, emotionally connected relationships a person can make, it is a very small number compared to the population. A human cannot care about every human on this earth. But the closer they are to that group of 150, the easier it is for us to make that emotional leap. So it is with war, or disasters, or murders. We judge how close they are to us and apply empathy accordingly.

Julien's attention was naturally drawn to the most obvious thing right away; what she'd omitted said a great deal, brief as it was. "Out of the ordinary, huh? Still, you're probably far closer to being right than you think; I only know a few people who I could safely say I'm truly close to myself, and I think most everyone else around here is the same."

He had walked past many of the same people in George Hunter every day of the week for the past few years without any detail about who they really were beyond plain old passers-by. Julien could safely say that the sentiment would apply on both sides, however. At least he knew enough of the faces to— well, he wouldn't broaden his horizons in the slightest that way, would he?

As he continued to read he idly wondered just how many notebooks Nia had gone through talking like this in the past for a moment, quickly settling for the assumption that it was probably a higher number than 10.

"Personally I think calling what most people get up to on social media a connection cheapens the value of the word, but perhaps that's just me," a few moments' silence as he looked over her explanation of what Dunbar's number was, "and 150 is a lot more than I would have guessed. I imagine it's ingrained pragmatism myself. People do tend towards either being very dedicated to a few others or passing in and out of as many places and lives as they're capable of. Neither option lends itself to keeping contact with all the people you meet, not to mention that worrying about others so much would be unhealthy."

Nia's expression turned quizzical. Then her features flashed with annoyance for just a moment before returning to neutral as she glanced down at her writing. Had she not scratched her error out thoroughly enough? Or had Julien been reading as she wrote? She mentally chastised herself for her error, though she was more irritated at Julien's invasion of her privacy, however minor it was and however irrational it was to find him at fault. Thankfully he didn't seem any more keen on lingering on personal matters than Nia herself, though, so she shook it off for the time being.

Her mind continued to operate on two fronts as she nodded politely along to Julien's comments. Every sentence that came out of his mouth warranted processing; she had started out underestimating him quite a bit, true, but she was beginning to think she'd taken to overestimating him. Was he really saying anything she hadn't heard before? But then it felt as though underselling his capacity was just giving in to her own confirmation bias. She certainly agreed with him that 150 seemed far too high, but she supposed she could name, perhaps, 150 people that she had met, given the time to think about it. She wouldn't consider that a connection, of course, but perhaps Dunbar's number was more applicable in a less urban environment? If she had to live with those 150 people—if she lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere, for instance—she would be more liable to make connections. Was it her living situation, then, that hampered her social potential? Was it the same way for all of them in Chattanooga, staying within their families and cliques and coworkers, never needing to learn the names of the workers who rang up their groceries and swept their floors?

This was fascinating, as a thought experiment, and otherwise entirely irrelevant.

Empathy is a difficult thing to quantify.

Nia wrote one sentence and then paused. At some point she had lost track of just what the point she was trying to make even was. Did it matter? She was only killing time until her mom arrived.

I believe the original theory included levels of closeness in the model. Five, then 15, then 50, and then 150, I believe. If you understand 150 to be bare acquaintances, people whose connection to you is limited to a name and a face, perhaps I can believe it. To some degree I can also understand that number as being a collection of people for whom you feel some basic level of empathy even if it's minimal, for example if I named someone in my math class whose face and name I knew but I had never really spoken to would I count them in that 150? I'm not sure but regardless I would feel some small measure of sadness if I learned that something happened to them even if it didn't affect me directly. Even someone whose name I didn't know that I saw every day, at the bus stop or something, I would feel their absence even if I didn't know that something had happened to them and really if we're considering that 150 to be the most tenuous of connections you would have to count a relationship like that, one that garners the smallest degree of thought, especially when you consider that most of us would likely put more emotional thought and energy into a familiar grocer vanishing from the store we always see them in to a thousand deaths in a far-off war.

Julien felt like there was some joke to be made about how even someone who couldn't talk could still fall victim to slips of the tongue, so to speak. Though in retrospect, he really shouldn't have jumped on it like that, whether he felt that the change in expression assured him he had been onto something or not.

"But that sadness would only be if you knew something untoward had happened, wouldn't it? Otherwise it'd just be a change to what stands as routine. The same point applies to the other example you've mentioned. I don't believe that noticing a shift in the paradigms most people fall into would denote any particular degree of empathy, just a basic sense of pattern recognition."

For a change, Julien didn't need long at all to find the rest of what he wanted to say.

"Really, I believe that the number as you said it's often cited isn't suited to categorising people's social interactions, at least in modern context. It works as a descriptor of limitation on group size, maybe, but for trying to gather anything more than that it's either too optimistic or not high enough when you take the inevitable variations into account. Speaking in terms of personal interaction, even friends you fall out of touch with can end up as just a face and a name that someone either needs to consciously recall or doesn't want to openly admit they don't remember, let alone bare acquaintances as you put it. Social media and the Internet let people exceed it, provided that they're actual connections."

Proposing an argument that boiled down to saying he had no alternative, but wasn't happy with the current state of something didn't leave him with much to stand on however, so something would need to be proposed. "110 would be closer to what I see it being in actuality," he said, letting the silence that was always part of conversations like this set in again.

Nia twirled her pen idly for a moment longer than she would have liked. Her focus seemed to widen in that moment, from the notebook and the boy in front of her to the museum that surrounded them, to the peals of thunder still singing their tumultuous song outside. It occurred to her that in contrast to the deluge outside the building itself seemed eerily quiet. Perhaps it was only in the comparison, she thought, but in looking around she realized that the room was in fact quite empty. Not that it had exactly been bustling when she'd arrived, but it hadn't been too far from closing time then; perhaps that time was fast approaching. A buzzing in her pocket near-confirmed that, as she very rarely received texts that she wasn't expecting. This was almost certainly her mother, beckoning from her car outside.

Another twirl of her pen, and then, she wrote:

The number is always going to be quite arbitrary. It is an impossible quantity to define and likely differs wildly between people; perhaps there is some esoteric upper limit beyond which no human can reach, but I would argue most people's threshold for empathy falls far below that theoretical limit, and besides that the concept is far more useful as a concept than it is over a mathematical certainty to quibble over.

She paused and gave Julien a moment to read before holding up a single finger in an easily-identifiable gesture of "hold on a moment" before continuing to write.

Unfortunately that will have to be where our discussion ends. My mother is waiting outside. I believe the museum is closing shortly, so you may wish to find your way home yourself. Up to you. See you in history.

Nia waved idly as she turned to leave. The conversation had been interesting, certainly, but it faded into background noise in her mind as she made her way out of the museum, wrinkling her nose as she glanced at the displays she was leaving behind. She could have picked a better place to spend an afternoon. But, she supposed, it could have been far, far worse.

>> Nia Karahalios continued in Monachopsis

It being best as a concept without a set definition was the most reasonable conclusion, all told. Trying to quantify people was a frustrating venture. "That is true, but you know there'd always be someone who tries to give an exact meaning to a thing that doesn't need it," Julien said, not feeling the need to mention that he'd been guilty of that very thing himself. Something to make note of, and hopefully avoid in the future.

"And yes, I'll be leaving as well. See you around, Nia." She was already on her way out and he didn't want to stand around in the museum on his own, so Julien wasn't far behind.

He walked on over to his— well, it wasn't really his, but he spent more time perched on it than his father did as of late and he was responsible for looking after the bike, so it was on loan. Joint ownership was just pushing it much too far. The tail bag unlocked easily enough with the key after a little fiddling around, and the helmet fit neatly on his head as always. A quick rev to make sure the engine was turning over nicely and then off he went.

As he took off headed for home, Julien felt quite happy with the way things had turned out. He'd found someone interesting to talk to and learned something worth thinking about. More than could be said for how days like this usually went.

[ Julien Leblanc continued elsewhere. ]