- This article is about the machine oracle from Twilight Mirage. For more information about its presence in other seasons, see Past.
Information in this article may not reflect the most recent episodes of Friends at the Table. Please be aware of this, and consider helping fattwiki by updating the article to reflect more recent developments.
Crystal Palace[note 1] is the Post-Divine oracle of the Principality of Kesh. Built some years after the events of COUNTER/Weight, its predictions have been a guiding force in the Milky Way galaxy ever since, as they have enabled the Rapid Evening to monitor and neutralise any potentially disruptive agents in the galaxy.
Appearance
Crystal Palace is not a typical computer. Its design features many pulleys, chains, punch cards and conveyor belts, the motion of which plays a part in its computation.
It is the size of a city.
History & Involvement
The idea for Crystal Palace was first proposed in a paper by Renna Rose titled Counterexample Guided Model For Non-Interventionist Regulation of the Meta-Divine, within living memory of the events of COUNTER/Weight. The construction of the machine was originally thought impossible.[1]
It was designed around 600 years later by Tanner Indiana, in an effort to create peace in the Principality, and as a result of the conditions him and his parents and peers lived in.[2]
200 years after this was the First Day of Guaranteed Events.[3]
Events concerning the Twilight Mirage
Around 30 thousand years later, Crystal Palace sent Demani Dusk and Gray Gloaming to the Twilight Mirage as Primary and Satellite Rapid Evening agents, to monitor the situation there. Crystal Palace provided Gray with a Dovetail Synopsis concerning the history of the Quire System just before the rediscovery of the Heart of Independence.
A few months later, The Rapid Evening sent Keen Forester Gloaming to the Quire System, after Demani and Gray deserted their posts--Gray unsatisfied with the binary choice of either leaving the Fleet to its own course, or using a Stellar Combuster to destroy it and Quire, and wanting a softer option.[4]
A year of time in the Quire System, and an unknown amount of time for the rest of the universe later, Crystal Palace found itself unable to create any predictions about the Quire System after a certain date, known to the Rapid Evening and the Brink as Dark Day.[5] It was later revealed that this was caused by Our Profit, who used Profit's Star on Crystal Palace from within the Twilight Mirage.[6]
Keen later made the decision to call for Crystal Palace's relocation to the Mirage, a journey it is currently undertaking.[7]
Predictions
In their raw form, Crystal Palace's predictions are little use, being too specific and numerous to be directly acted on. As such, Kesh employs agents known as Janitors to 'clean' the output, cleaning the signal from the noise in the data that Crystal Palace provides.
Crystal Palace has been shown to be able to predict events after its own destruction. However, the events were cut off on a day known as Dark Day, when Our Profit used Profit's Star to blind the crystalline sage.
Appears in
- Twilight Mirage 63: Guaranteed Events, Or: An Accounting of the Time When We Built the Machine
- Twilight Mirage 67: Futura Free Pt. 4
Footnotes
- ↑ A reference to the Crystal Palace, a once-standing plate-glass structure in London. Various exhibitions of technology and art were held within as a demonstration of the wealth and power of the British Empire. Crystal Palace became a symbol of progress, harmony and modernity until its destruction by fire in 1936.
References
- ↑ Guaranteed Events, Or: An Accounting of the Time When We Built the Machine, 0:05:18
- ↑ Guaranteed Events, Or: An Accounting of the Time When We Built the Machine, 0:14:38
- ↑ Guaranteed Events, Or: An Accounting of the Time When We Built the Machine, 0:24:00
- ↑ godspeed, glory Pt. 3, opening
- ↑ Uncontrolled Fires
- ↑ Our Flaws in a Vacuum, or the Promise We Made To Each Other, 2:04:20
- ↑ The Feast of Patina, ending