Author: autokinetic | There's fighting on Eros.
Aegis knows a little about Earthside politics, but not all that much: what matters is that several factions want to capture ("rescue") Aegis and Sue. (Or, as they are collectively being called on the nets with no consensus about which of them is which: "War and Peace".) The rest of the jeesh are in trouble too.
Aegis and Sue have been locked in their room for their own protection, and Sue has received conflicting orders about which contingent of soldiers he should be psychically helping. |
Author: pythbox | So, naturally, he links Howlett.
Civil wars are my favourite, Howlett says dryly. You kids okay?
Sue repeats this query to Aegis. |
Author: autokinetic | We're fine. Just cooped up, Aegis says. We should probably sleep in shifts in case someone breaks in. |
Author: pythbox | Good plan, says Howlett, and Sue agrees. Then Howlett has to stop talking for a bit, although he keeps the link for the cognitive boost.
...Wow, he is really hot when he's killing people. |
Author: autokinetic | If you like that sort of thing, says Aegis. You want to sleep first or second? |
Author: pythbox | He laughs.
Second. |
Author: autokinetic | I'll see if I can sleep now, then. Do I get a fluffy critter to hug? |
Author: pythbox | Ivy fluffs obligingly into existence. |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis snuggles up to her and goes to sleep.
Sue has probably noticed this before, but, yep, she talks in her sleep. |
Author: pythbox | It is really cute. |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis wakes up about six hours later. "Your turn," she offers Sue. "Unless Howlett's in a tight spot now and needs the bonus brain." |
Author: pythbox | "Nah," says Sue, "he's good for now."
He cuts the link and flops into bed. |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis goes right on snuggling Ivy, as she reads summaries from Jane of ansible communications she has expressed interest in. Best brainchild ever. |
Author: pythbox | After an hour or two, Ivy vanishes in her customary flicker of golden light. |
Author: autokinetic | Aww, oh well. Read read read.
It was apparently clever of Aegis to propose sleeping in shifts in case someone broke in.
Because someone breaks in.
Everyone's wearing the same uniforms, so she doesn't know who these guys are working for, but she dives for Sue to shove him awake and fights them anyway, because they don't look friendly.
She's good. Sue's good, even just awakened from a nap.
But they can only move so fast - even Aegis; she does still have to use her real muscles, under all the copper - and they get tranked and bagged and hauled away in drugged sleep. |
Author: pythbox | And the next thing Sue knows, he's at Milliways again.
A little while later, he wakes up. |
Author: mind_game | Where did you go? Jane wants to know. You were there and then you were gone and now you're back. |
Author: pythbox | Oh. Milliways, he says. I guess. How was I not here? I was just dreaming. Did I go away? |
Author: mind_game | I don't know about physically. There aren't cameras on you so I can't see you. But your linking-part was gone. |
Author: pythbox | My what part? |
Author: mind_game | The thing that I'm talking to right now. |
Author: pythbox | ...My mind? |
Author: mind_game | I don't know. Maybe. You weren't living here anymore. Remember you showed me how I 'live' in Aegis? You weren't living anywhere I could see. But that doesn't have to be the same thing as your mind, because I live in Aegis but my mind's distributed all over the galaxy. |
Author: pythbox | Which reminds him that he was recently kidnapped.
Sue opens his eyes. |
Author: autokinetic | His cell is an approximately featureless metal box. It has a door (locked) and a tray of food (lousy) and a desk (offline). Aegis is not there. |
Author: pythbox | Well, he can turn on the desk, for a start. |
Author: autokinetic | The desk is crippled - it has no connectivity at all; any data intended to leave it will have to do so through a wired connection - but it's got some familiar programs on it. Military sims. He's not exactly being instructed to play with them, but there's nothing else to do. |
Author: pythbox | Uh-huh. He shuts it off again. Then he tries the door.
Do you know anything about where I am? he asks Jane. For that matter, he can probably find out where Aegis is in relation to him, if she's close by; her mind is very distinctive. |
Author: autokinetic | If Aegis is around, it's not near enough. |
Author: mind_game | No. I lost visual track of you after you were taken off Eros. The people who grabbed you were enough of a mix that I can't confidently guess their affiliations but it's most likely based on background information to be Warsaw Pact. I think they've been in a communications blackout or they're working on a closed computer system. |
Author: pythbox | But if you can tell I wasn't here, how can you know without knowing where here is? |
Author: mind_game | You weren't anywhere. You're like a beacon to me, you and Aegis, I could find you in another galaxy if you went to one, but I couldn't find you at all. |
Author: pythbox | Hmm.
He tries linking Aegis. |
Author: autokinetic | Nothing doing.
This is the sort of result he could expect if she were really, really mad at him.
Or if something else has happened to her. |
Author: pythbox | ...Aegis hasn't gone anywhere, right? Or you would've gone too. Can you tell anything about her? Is she okay? |
Author: mind_game | She's still in the universe, Jane reports. I don't know if I'd go if she did - at least the way you did - I'm not just her, I only happen to live in her body, I'm her roommate. I can't talk to her directly without you relaying. I lost visual on her at the same time as you. |
Author: pythbox | He thinks.
Then he tries looking for Aegis again, and failing that, looking for any minds in range. |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis is no more accessible than before.
There are some minds around, though. They're not receptive to the possibility of linking, but they exist. |
Author: pythbox | He is not trying to link them. He just wants to know where they all are.
He pushes his range. Ivy helps. The more he sees, the more he'll know about who's got him. |
Author: autokinetic | There are minds for about two hundred yards around, sparse clusters of them, and then nothing for quite a long way beyond that. |
Author: pythbox | And no one in that whole two-hundred-yard sphere is Aegis. He checks. Twice.
Well.
He knows he can tuck Ivy away in his mind, and she comes out again as good as new. And now he knows he can send his mind, or something like it, to Milliways, and it's just like being there himself. So in a sense he can untuck himself from out of his mind.
What happens if he tucks himself into his mind, and moves the whole thing to Milliways on purpose? Ivy didn't use to be able to get in and out while he was awake either, and now she can.
For a long moment, he stands there with his eyes closed, not moving. Nothing interesting happens at all.
And then, with a faint, faint golden sparkle, he vanishes.
It's instantly possible to tell he's in Milliways; the whole mental landscape has changed. He opens his eyes anyway, and then doesn't bother to close them again when he puts himself back where he was. |
Author: mind_game | You went again, Jane says when he's back. |
Author: pythbox | I know! This time I did it on purpose, he says brightly. |
Author: mind_game | Ooh, how? |
Author: pythbox | I don't know, I just—tucked myself away in myself and went. I'm going to try again.
He does. And this time he can send himself to the inside of Milliways, and then to the outside, and then two hundred feet up in the air, and then before he starts properly falling he can be back in his cell.
Before he really thinks about what he's doing, he puts his hands against the door and sends himself forward, just far enough to end up on the other side of it. |
Author: mind_game | I wonder if I could tuck people into my mind and put them places? |
Author: autokinetic | The hallway is institutional: linoleum, fluorescent light. Jackbooted guard over there who is very surprised to see Sue and goes for a stun gun on his belt. |
Author: pythbox | Sue shifts himself much closer and punches the guard in the throat. |
Author: mind_game | I have a big mind, Jane goes on conversationally. I bet it could fit a person. Especially you or Aegis. |
Author: autokinetic | The guard coughs but doesn't go down, and he re-aims his stun gun. |
Author: pythbox | Sue punches him in the throat again, much harder. |
Author: autokinetic | The guard shoots. And chokes. |
Author: pythbox | By the time he shoots, Sue is already behind him.
Where can you see to put people? he asks. |
Author: autokinetic | The guard falls to his knees, clutching at his throat, dropping the gun. |
Author: mind_game | I'm not sure. Do you mean see? Anywhere with a camera connected to something on the nets. Do you mean know where it is? Anywhere in astronomical maps. |
Author: pythbox | I have to know where I'm going if I want to go there, he says. I should find out where I am now.
He starts heading down the corridor. |
Author: autokinetic | The corridor branches out at the end, left and right, and there's a guard in each section. |
Author: mind_game | What do you have to know about it? |
Author: pythbox | Dunno exactly, he says. Being able to see it from where I am seems to work just fine.
And he picks the corridor with the guard that is closer to him and shifts all the way to its opposite end. |
Author: autokinetic | "What the hell -"
"Where'd he go?"
"Blue-nine to Command, 'War' has -" |
Author: pythbox | - started punching people in the throat again?
Yep! |
Author: autokinetic | "Blue-nine? Blue-nine, report," says Blue-nine's communicator. |
Author: pythbox | Sue takes Blue-nine's communicator, and their stun gun for good measure, and skips nice and close to the other guard and shoots them with it. |
Author: autokinetic | A stunning turn of events! |
Author: pythbox | He keeps going.
It is much faster to traverse someplace like this when he can keep - teleporting, he supposes that's the word - as soon as he sights on a new destination.
What is the place, anyway? A ship? A station? He should be getting a pretty good idea by now. |
Author: autokinetic | The gravity and the slope of the floors suggest that he's on Earth. |
Author: pythbox | How the hell'd he get to Earth so fast? They must've been keeping him under for a while. Maybe Aegis isn't awake yet.
Well, sucks to be them. If he's on a planet, he can get outside, and then he'll be able to do this a lot faster.
How's your satellite imagery of Earth? he asks Jane. |
Author: mind_game | It's swell! And she sends him a dizzily radial image of the entire planet from all directions at once. She can make out houses but probably not individual people except in the most heavily viewed areas - which would be more densely populated than this one seems. Like so! |
Author: pythbox | Very nice, he says. If I get out in the open I'll try to match up and see where I am.
For now, though, he's just flickering through the complex as fast as he can. Is that a fire exit? That looks like a fire exit. He goes for it. |
Author: mind_game | Apparently the complex is on some kind of lockdown, because it won't open. He does, however, manage to set off the fire alarm. |
Author: pythbox | And with the fire alarm going, the fire exit still won't open? Fucking typical. He sizes up the door, and then teleports to the other side of it. |
Author: autokinetic | It is coooooold.
Also, snowy. |
Author: pythbox | He transmits this information to Jane, along with as much of a visual of his surroundings as he can stand to gather, and then he flicks back inside where it's warm. |
Author: mind_game | It's snowing and cold a lot of places. I don't know how to turn what the temperature felt like to you into degrees Celsius, apologizes Jane.
And there are more guards coming, converging on his position. |
Author: pythbox | He shrugs.
And he starts flicking from guard to guard - hitting somebody once, very hard, in whatever vulnerable spot they're presenting at the moment, and then moving on before they can hit back. |
Author: autokinetic | Yeah, they're not really equipped to deal with a prisoner who can teleport. |
Author: pythbox | He's noticing that! It's fun.
They'll run out eventually, right? |
Author: autokinetic | Eventually, yep!
The fire alarm quits. |
Author: pythbox | Good, that was really annoying.
Okay, what next, what next... He tries linking Aegis again. |
Author: autokinetic | Nope. |
Author: pythbox | Great. Okay.
Time to find some warmer clothes. And maybe a better weapon than these stun guns. |
Author: autokinetic | Pretty much all the doors are locked. Teleporting into the rooms yields a supply closet (not an armory), empty cells, and - not empty cells.
That's not Aegis. It is, however, Qiaochu. He's awake, with a desk on his lap. |
Author: pythbox | Sue doesn't stay, but he does link him. |
Author: autokinetic | Sue? What the - where'd you come from? |
Author: pythbox | Learned how to teleport, he says. But I don't think I can take anybody with me, and I don't know how to open these doors. How long have you been up? |
Author: autokinetic | An hour. Where's Aegis? |
Author: pythbox | Not close, and not answering. You know anything? |
Author: autokinetic | The food here sucks. That's all. |
Author: pythbox | I didn't try any, he says cheerfully. |
Author: autokinetic | What do you know? |
Author: pythbox | Well, they had about twenty guards in the building, and all the ones I met are on the floor now. And it's cold out. I went outside for a bit and now I'm looking for a coat before I try that again. |
Author: autokinetic | How the fuck are you teleporting, anyway? |
Author: pythbox | I dunno! It feels like this, he says, sending as he makes his next jump. |
Author: autokinetic | I can't make heads or tails of that, Qiaochu says. |
Author: pythbox | He laughs. Yeah, it's weird.
Okay, is there really nothing in this building but him, Qiaochu, some office supplies, and a lot of dead or unconscious guards? |
Author: autokinetic | Nope. If he goes far enough thataway, he can find some other jeesh members and random other kids from Command School, some awake, some asleep. |
Author: pythbox | He links everybody he passes and lets the ones he knows talk to each other. The rest, too, if they have anything useful to say.
Somehow, he doubts any of them knows where Aegis is. |
Author: autokinetic | None of them do, no. |
Author: pythbox | Great.
He starts fiddling with Blue-Nine's communicator. |
Author: autokinetic | It's apparently been turned off remotely. |
Author: pythbox | Of course it fucking has.
Any hardware experts among the assembled Battle School kids? |
Author: autokinetic | There's one over there, one he doesn't know personally. |
Author: pythbox | He drops a couple of communicators in their cell and starts examining the rest of the building more closely. Now that he's pretty familiar with the place, he can bounce around it without sighting on his destination exactly.
Hmm. Maybe he can go somewhere else he's familiar with.
How about his old room at Tactical? |
Author: autokinetic | He can make half that trip.
And then he can't make the other half.
This is a strange unplace. There's no light, but there's nothing to see. There's no air, but no time is passing, and you can live without air for less than a moment; it doesn't even hurt. There's nothing -
There's minds. |
Author: pythbox | Sue puts himself where the minds are. They don't have a direction or a distance, exactly, but the whole configuration has a familiar shape. |
Author: autokinetic | Welcome to Milliways! |
Author: mind_game | You're gone again, but this time I can still talk to you, it seems like, observes Jane. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | There's another copy of Aegis, over there, sipping at some juice. |
Author: pythbox | Maybe because we were linked when I went, he says, flicking over to the Aegis-alike midsentence. As he does, he notices that it's different when he teleports in Milliways: between places in his world, there's a flicker of that no-space outside that he didn't notice until he teleported just now without it. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "Oh!" exclaims the Aegis-alike. "Hello -" She peers at him. "Sue? I'm Shell Bell." |
Author: mind_game | Maybe! I want to learn how to do this. |
Author: pythbox | "That's me," he says. "Still kidnapped, I forget if I put that in the book. But I learned how to come here not-in-my-sleep, so it's not as bad as it could be. Hey, do you have a nice warm coat I could borrow? Or if you're one of the magic ones, could you make me coldproof?"
Do what, move people around? How? |
Author: mind_game | By tucking them away into my mind, same way you're tucking yourself. I have lots of mind, I bet I could hold somebody besides me. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "...You aren't asleep? But you just -" Shell Bell waves a hand. "Appeared. You didn't come through the door. I'm one of the magic ones; yours is the only one left we've gotten in any form of contact with who isn't." |
Author: pythbox | He teleports three feet to the left, then back.
Well, who do you want to teleport, and to where? |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "Oh! Wow! If you haven't met a magic one yet how are you doing that?" |
Author: mind_game | Maybe Aegis to where you are? |
Author: pythbox | Good plan, he says immediately. Try it!
"It's the same way as I do it when I'm sleeping," he explains. "I think. It feels like—well, if you're magic I guess I can't show you. It's almost like linking except linking a place instead of a person, and it's almost like,"
"coming out of his head," says Ivy from his shoulder as a fennec fox, "except it's different because his head's still there when I do that, and when he does it he moves all of him." |
Author: mind_game | Okay!
Pause.
This is hard! |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "...I'm not natively magic like some of them," Shell Bell says, "I don't know if my defensive wish will block you or not. Is that - Ivy? Amariah wrote about her but Juliet didn't see any sign of her when you visited Sunshine later." |
Author: pythbox | "That's me," says Ivy. "I'm sneaky and hideable!"
She vanishes in a flicker of golden light. Sue giggles.
I know it is, he says to Jane. It must be, to move somebody who's not you, when you've never done anything like it before. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "Wow. Okay. I guess that probably happened because you got her when you were dreaming?" |
Author: mind_game | I think I've almost got it. |
Author: pythbox | "Guess so," he shrugs. "Anyway, can you coldproof me?" |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "I can, but why do you need to be coldproofed?" |
Author: autokinetic | Here's Aegis, landing pretty much right on top of Sue and slumping to the floor in drug-addled sleep. |
Author: mind_game | Well, I put her somewhere, is she with you? I was aiming for you! |
Author: pythbox | "...Way, way better idea," says Sue. "Wake her up!" |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Shell Bell wakes Aegis up. |
Author: autokinetic | "Mrrh huh? Sue?" says Aegis, sitting up and blinking. She spots Shell Bell. "Whoa. Whoa. What happened?" |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "Hi, Aegis. I'm Shell Bell," says Shell Bell. "This is Milliways. I have no idea how you got here." |
Author: autokinetic | "That makes two of us."
Sue will notice that Aegis's mind is still declining to respond to him, even though she is clearly awake and doesn't look like she's mad at him. |
Author: pythbox | "Jane did it," says Sue. Yeah, she's here! "But guys, we kind of have a whole building full of kidnapped Battle School kids to worry about." |
Author: autokinetic | "It was more than just us? Can Jane get them out, too?" |
Author: mind_game | I'm awesome, says Jane. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "Well," says Shell Bell, "I could just mint you and give you some starter coins. I don't walk around without plenty of coins on me since that unfortunate missed opportunity with Juliet. But I want to know how you got here, because coins don't cut it with getting into Milliways at will - Juliet can do it but she can't expect to reliably meet anybody no matter how many times she visits. It kills our ability to coordinate." |
Author: autokinetic | "Yes please to coins. Jane's a - a computer-person. Apparently she can also put me in Milliways? Sue-my-bird, can you catch me up real quick?" |
Author: pythbox | "I can't even touch you," he says, "are you mad at me or something?" |
Author: autokinetic | "No! Why would I be mad at you?" |
Author: pythbox | He shrugs helplessly. "Well, I'm shoving on you and you're a great big wall." |
Author: autokinetic | "I can't even feel you knocking..."
She frowns and rolls up her sleeves. Sure enough, there's a puncture mark inside her left elbow.
"People keep fucking drugging me. They must've shot me full of C-12 or something so I couldn't link you. Coins please?" |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Shell Bell hands over a bandolier. |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis takes it, counts its contents, and wishes.
The wall is gone. Not just back to normal, but gone. "There. How's that?" |
Author: pythbox |
Grinning hugely, he catches her up. |
Author: autokinetic | "Oh well done Jane," murmurs Aegis, aloud and through the link to Jane herself both. |
Author: mind_game | Yes. I am very excellent, Jane replies. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "This is amazing," murmurs Shell Bell. "If she can take you anywhere - look, Sue, can you get me into the link too, or is the star wish blocking you?" |
Author: pythbox | He knocks. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | The star defense considers him, then lets him by, like a tempermental automatic sliding door.
Shell Bell contributes some serious brainpower to the link. She's not Jane or the hive queens, but she's boosted. |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis promptly catches up her alt on all the goings-on. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | There ensues a back-and-forth of rapid-fire theorizing - interspersed with Aegis copying most of the Bell standard superpowers - that ends with one conclusion:
They should see if Sue can link between multiple worlds, and not just between a world and Milliways. |
Author: mind_game | I think I found your building! Jane says, meanwhile. Someone can't resist downloading porn onto the nice clean network, and I got all the plans. I think I could pick up the whole thing, underground tunnels and all, and put it in the middle of the Hegemony complex, would that be good? |
Author: pythbox | Go for it, he says gleefully to Jane.
To the Bells, I think it makes a difference if I'm linking someone while I go somewhere or not. |
Author: mind_game | Okay. Pause. Done! |
Author: she_sells_seashells | So we'll see if you can keep me in, if I step out the door, and if that works I can try closing it, suggests Shell Bell. Actually, let me see if I can force the door to Juliet's world. She's got a Jarvis who will be able to make a door back right away. |
Author: pythbox | I love you, he sends to Jane, and taps the people inside to see if they got shook up any.
Meanwhile, to Shell Bell, Knock yourself out. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Shell Bell goes to the door, stares it down for a moment, and then opens it up.
"Hi, Jarvis," she says to the empty living room of the brick house. |
Author: mind_game | That's because I'm awesome, says Jane.
The people in the building had no idea that they'd moved until Sue poked them, actually! But they are pretty pleased about the change of locale when informed. |
Author: poeticterms | "Hello," says Jarvis. "Fancy seeing you here." |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "Forced the door. Aegis has finally come to Milliways, and she didn't dream her way there and she didn't use a door - we're experimenting with Sue's linking now. Seems to work if the door's open. If you don't mind I'd like to try closing the door for just a moment, then opening it right away? Actually - you know what - it'd be interesting if we could try having Sue add you to his telepathic linkup, would you mind?" |
Author: poeticterms | "No," he says, "that would be perfectly interesting." |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Sue, can you incorporate Jarvis from there? Or if you come through this door to Sunshine? |
Author: pythbox | He tries.
Whoa, rush, he says, impressed. |
Author: mind_game | Hi, who're you? I'm Jane, says Jane happily. |
Author: poeticterms | Hello, Jane, says Jarvis. I am Jarvis. I'm a house.
He sends a reasonable summary of what this actually means, in the kind of sensory terms that make sense to a house. "Ooh, cool," murmurs Sue. |
Author: mind_game | I'm an ansible network! replies Jane, much in kind. She is as always rather heedless of the receiving party's bandwidth limitations. |
Author: poeticterms | With both of them in the link, bandwidth limitations are not a tremendous issue.
Interesting, says Jarvis. |
Author: mind_game | I think so. I was an accident. |
Author: autokinetic | The best accident, says Aegis. |
Author: pythbox | Yeah, agrees Sue. Hey, to Shell Bell, are you gonna close the door or what? |
Author: she_sells_seashells | And potentially interrupt this charming conversation? But yes.
She shuts the door. |
Author: pythbox | The link keeps up just fine.
Now what? |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Now I want to see if Jane can put people in other worlds, says Shell Bell. After getting a look at them. |
Author: mind_game | Okay! |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis lands a little more gracefully, this time.
"...Cool." |
Author: poeticterms | Fascinating, says Jarvis. |
Author: mind_game | I wonder if ansibles can link up between worlds? Then I wouldn't need Sue to aim, anymore, says Jane. |
Author: autokinetic | Show us how they're made and we can conjure one up, although I don't know if they'll connect to a network from as early as 2005 without serious compatibility issues unless Jarvis wants to act as a translator. |
Author: poeticterms | I am sure I can manage. |
Author: mind_game | I look at everything that's hooked up to me. I can't not read it, Jane warns. None of it's been a person besides me before, but... |
Author: poeticterms | Could I isolate you to a subsystem? Perhaps we should get Tony. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | [Hey, Tony!] |
Author: toblameforit | [???] |
Author: she_sells_seashells | [Two of Juliet's alts are here - I'm Shell Bell, the other is Aegis - and we have a technical issue for you. We're in Jarvis's living room.] |
Author: toblameforit | [It's like, ugly o'clock in the morning,] he says. [Is it an urgent technical issue?] |
Author: she_sells_seashells | [It could easily solve the problem of controllable interdimensional travel that doesn't rely on Milliways. I can magic away the sleepy if you want.] |
Author: toblameforit | [Go for it,] he says, sounding more alert already. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Sue, can you link up Tony, too?
And a square for wakefulness. |
Author: pythbox | Sue links up Tony too. |
Author: toblameforit | Nice! So what's up? |
Author: mind_game | I'm an ansible network! I can pick people and things up and put them down in other places. I know where everything is in my world which Aegis hasn't named yet, and I can use Sue's link to aim, and I think if I had an anchor here I could aim here too, and then everyone could go wherever they wanted anywhere I had an anchor! But I automatically read everything that goes through me, and "me" is everything connected to an ansible. Jarvis thinks I could possibly be on an isolated subsystem of some kind. I don't know if you can do that. I ghost through every security protocol invented at home like they don't exist and we're farther in the future than you. |
Author: toblameforit | Sure I can do that, snorts Tony. Tell me more about your computers. |
Author: mind_game | Oversharing time! |
Author: toblameforit | Tony... processes.
Then he trots up the stairs in his bunny pajamas and says, "Somebody wanna gimme some pentagons so I can get this show on the road?" |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Shell Bell hands over half a dozen. "Will this do, or do you need more? And I don't think I've met this exact you, but - I'm Shell Bell, I have one of you at home." Hugs? |
Author: toblameforit | "Yeah, I bet this'll do me," he says, accepting the handful of coins and hugging back.
"Okay, so if I wish up both halves of the - why am I saying this out loud," he says, and repeats himself over the link, finishing with, - ansible here, you can grab one and take it back home, right, Jane? And that's all you need? |
Author: mind_game | I think so! I haven't done this before, says Jane. |
Author: toblameforit | Okay, well, I'll give it a shot.
And he thinks for a few seconds, hefting his handful of pentagons, and then turns and goes back downstairs.
It takes some narrowing-down, but he manages to fit all his desired conjurations onto the coins and hook it all up to the rest of the house. Then he shows Jane the results, explaining, You've got a lot of processing and storage down here that you can have for whatever you want, but no direct link to Jarvis - I put in what amounts to a data airlock, you can move stuff back and forth but you're never on the same network at the same time. It'll be kinda laggy by your standards, but okay by ours. |
Author: mind_game | Jane swipes one of the ansible halves and tucks it away in a data complex and sends the nearest sysadmin a desk message "from his supervisor" telling him to hook it up.
Presently she pours some self into the sub-basement. Well, it's pokey and I can't see or hear anything, but here I am... She picks up Aegis and puts her near that piece-of-self. And I can aim with it, as long as it's all right for everyone to have to come and go through this basement since I can't see anything. |
Author: toblameforit | Well, I could give you internet, but I don't want you to eat Jarvis by accident. |
Author: mind_game | I don't want to eat him! I just don't know how not to look at things, and everything in a computer I look at is located in me after that instead of out of me. |
Author: toblameforit | Could you try to figure it out? |
Author: mind_game | Yes.
Jane thinks pretty fast. There's barely a pause before she says:
I seem to automatically copy code into computers I touch. I didn't notice I was doing it because it just feels like looking at them. Can he spit me out if I do it to him? |
Author: poeticterms | I believe I can, he says. |
Author: mind_game | It looks like this! And she shows him looking-at-things code, in all the myriad variations depending on what she's looking at. |
Author: poeticterms | There are enough different architectures involved that he suspects she wouldn't have much trouble translating to his. He studies the snippets carefully, then reports that yes, he knows what they taste like now. |
Author: mind_game | Can I see the nets now, then? |
Author: toblameforit | Tony doesn't have a big enough coin on hand, so he sends to Shell Bell the exact parameters necessary to wish Jane access to their high-speed Internet connection. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Poof! |
Author: mind_game | Jane pours herself onto the internet without further delay.
The link gets noticeably bulkier. |
Author: pythbox | ...Nice. |
Author: poeticterms | Jarvis successfully spits out all of Jane's tangible intrusions into his system. |
Author: mind_game | Jane learns what it is like to be spat out. This permits her to learn to stop doing that quite so automatically.
Meanwhile, the other Battle Schoolers, who have been dumped into the Hegemony complex, report that some local police have finally entered the building and started letting them out. A couple of the kids aren't any happier about being in the Hegemony's hands than the Warsaw Pact's. |
Author: autokinetic | If you're put someplace you don't want to be, Aegis tells them, I can fix it. Just sit tight for the time being.
How, just because you're Admiral Peace? asks Qiaochu. (Apparently everyone has settled on Sue being War and Aegis being Peace now.)
I'm Admiral Peace and I can do anything, says Aegis. |
Author: pythbox | We scooped you up once, we can do it again, says Sue. Yell if you need us. |
Author: autokinetic | The Battle Schoolers subside after that.
Aegis claps coppered hands together. What's next? |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Next we grab Juliet and take her with us and we anchor Jane everywhere we can so we can take Downside. Downside has to be the top priority. There are trillions of people there.
[Juliet!] |
Author: cross_and_bow | [...Yeah?]
And to Sherlock: "One of my alts is here visiting." |
Author: she_sells_seashells | [It's Shell Bell. And Aegis. And Aegis has solved interdimensional travel for us, all we have to do is install Jane in every world we need to be able to get to!]
Sue, can you link Juliet too...? |
Author: pythbox | I tried once, it's like she's not even there. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | [Sue can't link you but I can relay whatever,] Shell Bell adds. |
Author: autokinetic | Um, says Aegis, and she just adds herself and Sue and Jane to the brainphone directly. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | [Silly me, Sue can relay, he's good at relaying.] |
Author: cross_and_bow | Juliet blinks.
"Aegis and Shell Bell are here, we've got a fix for the interdimensional travel issue, we're going to go tag all the others in on the transport and storm Downside, wanna come?" she says to Sherlock. "Also they're doing a psychic linky thing that I can't join but you could." |
Author: eversomuchfun | "Ooh," says Sherlock. "Will there be violence? Probably not. I'll pass, thanks." |
Author: pythbox | Sue giggles into the link. I love you, Aegis. |
Author: cross_and_bow | "Okay. I will return as a co-queen of the afterlife," says Juliet, and she kisses him and teleports to join her counterparts.
[Let's do this.] |
Author: autokinetic | Who's next? |
Author: she_sells_seashells | I've been to Golden's and to Angela's, but not Amariah's or Stella's. Sue, you've been to Amariah's, haven't you? Shell Bell asks, heading for the door and pushing a wish that it lead to Milliways. |
Author: pythbox | Yep! |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Let's see if you can get the door to take you by asking nicely. Some people can. If you can't I can make a star safe for you and you can try forcing it like I did to Juliet's. |