Author: warpfairy | Isabella doesn't really like being surrounded by Betazoids. She can ward off the scans - it's barely an effort - but they look at her like she's terribly unfriendly for doing it. Still, she almost never gets verbal complaints for it. She can conduct her shopping while Lalita hires a ship to go get the Harlequin from where he left her, and then they have a week to kill on the planet and its immediate environs while the tugboat goes out and fetches her.
Shopping isn't going to take that long. They should do tourist things! |
Author: dream_me_up | They should do tourist things. Lalita hasn't been to this planet in a while, and he didn't do very many tourist things while he was here. They should go look at famous landmarks and kiss in front of them! |
Author: warpfairy | And thus it was so.
There are shuttle tours available - circle the planet a few times, land at neat spots on the way, have the run thereof till takeoff. They can just sign up for one that takes a week and be back at the port before Harlequin is. But not by much! Hello again, Harlequin. |
Author: dream_me_up | Hello, Harlequin. How Lalita missed you.
He finds a buyer - a museum on Earth who is willing to cover shipping in order to get their hands on one of humanity's first homegrown warp-capable ships. (The Harlequin continues to stubbornly refuse to fire up its own warp drive, so it'll need to be transported as cargo.)
He methodically goes through the ship taking out all the things that are his and packing them onto the Prometheus, since he has the chance. This mostly amounts to more clothes, and some other odds and ends. Then he says goodbye and sends it on.
Also, as he is cleaning it out, the Harlequin suffers another system failure and all its computer systems are completely scrambled; he has to format them back to factory settings. Oh, well, the museum wasn't buying it for the data. |
Author: warpfairy | Those poor, poor computer systems. What a terrible pity. What a dreadful accident. (Har, har.)
And now Prometheus is ready to go.
Time to steal more fire from the gods. |
Author: dream_me_up | Whee! |
Author: warpfairy | PN-115 is a more intricate civilization than most Isabella attempts to bring into the fold. It only has one species on it, but it's nearly as fragmented as Earth was when Lalita was a child - still, everyone is at peace, at the moment. The computer starts humming away at figuring out things about the situation on the ground while Isabella takes her sweet time surveying the objects in the solar system. And being distracted by Lalita.
Eventually the computer spits back confident reports on how to translate warp equations into local tongues, and on who fails to be above plagiarism, but Isabella has yet to decide whether to seed the plans among several of the planet's nations or just one. She doesn't want them to start fighting over it on the eve of post-scarcity.
"I'm tempted to distribute plans to three scientists from this northern country here," she says, pointing at a map of the planet. "It has the most currently Federation-friendly culture, and it could self-support building the drive. But there are candidates from here, and here," she points at two more. "And if I give it out to more than one political unit, they're having a race, whether they know it right away or not, and races can get heated." |
Author: dream_me_up | "You could end up with a race even if you didn't mean to," he points out. "Once somebody knows it can be done, if they're smart enough to figure out how, they will. Whoever you drop it on, they're probably going to publish about it, and not everybody who reads them is going to be from the same culture." |
Author: warpfairy | "That's true. I'm not sure what that implies about where I should drop the plans, though." |
Author: dream_me_up | "Hmmmm... the first one and the last one," he says. "You're right about those guys being Federation-friendly, and the last bunch has that 'historical neutrality' thing going for them; if there's going to be a race, having them in it might keep it low-key." |
Author: warpfairy | Isabella considers this suggestion, then nods, and narrows her scan to get an idea of the layout of the offices of the best candidate from the northern country. "Do you want to make one of the drops?" |
Author: dream_me_up | "Sure!" |
Author: warpfairy | "D'you have a preference for which?" |
Author: dream_me_up | "Nah," he says cheerfully. |
Author: warpfairy | "Okay, I'll take north, you take south."
The species on this planet is nocturnal, so she sets a timer for the earlier sunrise of the two time zones to remind her to start scanning for life signs in the narrow area in question so she can beam down unsupervised.
That leaves a couple hours to draw up the plans in that language, if she wants to get it done today. Out comes the paper and the pens. Blank paper costs, but not all that much - it's compact and easy to make and nonperishable. |
Author: dream_me_up | Ooh ooh, Lalita can help with that too! |
Author: warpfairy | He can! He is welcome to. They will get it done faster that way. This will leave time for distraction. Especially since the scientists at that particular physics lab like to put in a late morning, apparently. |
Author: dream_me_up | Excellent. Time for distraction is one of his favourite kinds of time. |
Author: warpfairy | Eventually the life signs from the lab are not.
Isabella has a procedure here. She doesn't want to be caught on security cameras. She could just beam the plans down, but it would be hard to get them precisely targeted. She has a nice concealing outfit and a mini-EMP to disable surveillance devices long enough to find someone's desk and plunk down her gifts. |
Author: dream_me_up | "Oh, don't you just - I guess you can't target the beam that precisely," he says. "I can target the beam that precisely!" |
Author: warpfairy | "You can? You can land this," she says, holding up the plans, "on somebody's desk and we don't have to go down?" |
Author: dream_me_up | "Sure," he shrugs. |
Author: warpfairy | "Well," blinks Isabella. "All right then, that's much safer." |
Author: dream_me_up | He grins brightly. |
Author: warpfairy | She hands over the plans and gestures at the transporter pad, smiling back. |
Author: dream_me_up | First set of plans onto the transporter pad - he operates the transporter, with care and some math - the plans vanish. He repeats with the next set.
"And done," he says cheerfully. "Do we wait around to see what happens, or take off?" |
Author: warpfairy | "We get out of here and falsify the logs to suggest that we left yesterday," says Isabella, plopping into the pilot's chair and punching up impulse power. |
Author: dream_me_up | "Sounds good to me," says Lalita. He leans over her chair and kisses the top of her head. |
Author: warpfairy | Awww!
"And now we go survey some uninhabited systems and a pretty nebula." |
Author: dream_me_up | "Ooh, pretty nebulas. They're pretty," he says sagely. |
Author: warpfairy | "Why yes, they are! We can take some pictures and use them as PADD wallpaper," laughs Isabella. |
Author: dream_me_up | He giggles and leans over the back of her chair again to hug her. |
Author: warpfairy | Hugs! Isabella likes hugs. She likes having company. This was a good idea. |
Author: dream_me_up | It was.
He kisses the top of her head again. Mwah. |
Author: warpfairy | They are presently out of the system and warping along to the next. Isabella falsifies her records. "...Say, do you want to double-check my track-covering? No one's actually dug suspiciously around in my travel logs so I don't know if I'm doing a competent job at making it look like I wasn't around when 'warp was discovered' in the relevant systems." |
Author: dream_me_up | "Sure," he says, and plops down in the copilot's chair and starts nosing around on the computer system. |
Author: warpfairy | Isabella's logs show - at least to casual inspection - that while she has visited all the systems that have mysteriously acquired warp (except for El'el Prime, which acquired warp while she was active but is not listed at all), it was never at the right time (except once when it was; it would not do to always be slightly off). Sometimes she finishes her surveys of those systems a week before, sometimes a month later. |
Author: dream_me_up | "You should probably arrange to not have visited more of them," he comments. "Even with shifting the timing, it's a pattern, and it's not like there's a crowd of other ships visiting these systems that you can get lost in. There's the problem of refueling history, but I'm sure we can figure out a way around that if we try." |
Author: warpfairy | "All right," says Isabella. "I'll turn off logging for more places. Money would be tighter, if I turned in fewer logs - but I have you along to mitigate that, now, don't I." |
Author: dream_me_up | "Yes you do!" he says, grinning. |
Author: warpfairy | "Aren't you convenient!" |
Author: dream_me_up | "I'm so convenient," he agrees. "And now I think I'm going to go make convenient dinner." |
Author: warpfairy | "Mmm, dinner. What's for dinner?" |
Author: dream_me_up | "I don't know yet!" he says serenely. "I'll think of something. Any preferences?" |
Author: warpfairy | "It's a special occasion," she says, referring to the warp drop. "Let's un-vacuum-seal a steak. I'm sure you'll do something marvelous with it." |
Author: dream_me_up | "I absolutely will," he says, and kisses her, and wanders off to the kitchen. |
Author: warpfairy | Isabella puts on a Klingon opera soundtrack and reads along in the libretto as best she can. She's getting better! |
Author: dream_me_up | From the kitchen, Lalita is singing along. |
Author: warpfairy | This is cute and he is cute! |
Author: dream_me_up | And soon he is also bringing her steak! |
Author: warpfairy | Mmmmm steak. "Oh my. What did you do to it, this is really good - did you break into the bayleaves...? Mmmm." |
Author: dream_me_up | "Magic," he says whimsically, and kisses her forehead, and sits down to eat. |
Author: warpfairy | She laughs. "Oh, would that it existed." |
Author: dream_me_up | "I've been a magician!" he says. |
Author: warpfairy | "I just bet you have!" she laughs. "I'll be polite and not ask you the tricks of your trade." |
Author: dream_me_up | "Good for you," he giggles. |
Author: warpfairy | "Did you have any particularly interesting tricks, though?" |
Author: dream_me_up | "Lots!" he says, nodding. "I was a stage pickpocket for a while - that was lots of fun. And when I quit that, I tried card tricks next. Came in handy for cheating at poker." |
Author: warpfairy | "Why would you need to cheat at poker when you could just steal large amounts of money from yourself?" |
Author: dream_me_up | He shrugs. "I had to get the large amounts of money from somewhere, didn't I?" |
Author: warpfairy | "You've had all those careers. They didn't suffice?" |
Author: dream_me_up | "I've had all those careers and... that was one of them?" he says, puzzled. |
Author: warpfairy | "There's playing poker professionally, but you said cheating." |
Author: dream_me_up | "Yes...? I can tell that this is a problem, I just can't tell why," he says. |
Author: warpfairy | "Because it's unfair for people who agreed to stake their money only on a game with certain rules." |
Author: dream_me_up | "Well, I guess I'm unfair, then," he says mildly. |
Author: warpfairy | "Ah." |
Author: dream_me_up | He shrugs. |
Author: warpfairy | "Anything else I might find an unpleasant surprise? I violate the Prime Directive as my life's work, I don't care about legality per se - but if I didn't care about ethics I wouldn't be violating the Prime Directive as my life's work." |
Author: dream_me_up | "I've also killed some people," he says. "Some of them might have deserved it. I don't know, I wasn't really thinking about it at the time." |
Author: warpfairy | |
Author: dream_me_up | He shrugs.
"But that was all a long time ago. It's easier to get by without that kind of thing now." |
Author: warpfairy | "I would expect it would be - easier, yes." |
Author: dream_me_up |
He shrugs again. |
Author: warpfairy | "Please don't kill anyone else unless it's defensively necessary." |
Author: dream_me_up | "...As opposed to what?" he says, blinking. "I wasn't doing it for kicks before." |
Author: warpfairy | "You did not specify. You said some of them might have deserved it, that you weren't thinking about it." |
Author: dream_me_up | "No, I was thinking about why I needed them to be dead and how I could get them that way without getting in worse trouble," he says. "Usually because they were about to hurt me somehow." |
Author: warpfairy | "Perhaps you can lead with that information if you ever have cause to admit to it again to someone who places immense value on sapient life." |
Author: dream_me_up | "I don't know you well enough to know exactly which things you get worried about," he sighs. "You might think they're obvious, but they're not obvious to me." |
Author: warpfairy | "I am worried about - people," says Isabella. "Living. In conditions that are suited to thriving. Being lied to is a relatively minor harm, but I don't like it, and I don't like it happening to others, when there's not some overwhelming reason." |
Author: dream_me_up | "Well, I'm worried about me living," he says. "And if I have to lie or kill or steal to keep doing that, I will." |
Author: warpfairy | "I have a self-preservation instinct of my own. It is very healthy. I avoid situations where successfully obeying it would mean silencing someone else's." |
Author: dream_me_up | He gives her a look, somewhere between quizzical and annoyed.
"You know," he says, "I could probably lead a less risky life if I tried really hard, but I don't actually set out to be captured by Klingons or robbed at gunpoint or almost raped or whatever. These things happen by accident. They're not so common in the world we live in now - well, Klingons are a special case - but I was born in a very different world. How much do you even know about prewarp Earth?" |
Author: warpfairy | "I - not very much," murmurs Isabella. |
Author: dream_me_up | "Imagine you're completely alone," he says softly. "If anyone you meet finds out anything true about who you are or where you came from, and gets to the authorities with it, you'll probably be killed. But you have to get money from somewhere, because nothing's free, and you're not sure if you can starve to death but you don't want to find out by trying it. You speak a dozen languages and you're familiar with thousands of years of cultural and political and military history from all over the planet, but nobody ever taught you how to get a job, cook, wash the dishes, do laundry, buy something from a store... you have to figure all that out by yourself, and hope nobody gets suspicious if you do it wrong. That's the world I grew up in. With crime rates hundreds of times what you're used to. 'I avoid situations where I might have to kill somebody' is the kind of thing you only say when you've never had to choose between the street where you'll probably get mugged and the street where you'll probably get arrested." |
Author: warpfairy | |
Author: dream_me_up | |
Author: warpfairy | "I am sorry. I spoke without thinking." |
Author: dream_me_up | "It's okay," he says wryly. "You didn't know." |
Author: warpfairy | "I should have. I turned over my entire life to providing more people the civilization I'm accustomed to, but don't often think about the details of what it means to lack it." |
Author: dream_me_up | "Sometimes I forget that other people don't remember history as personally as I do," he murmurs. |
Author: warpfairy | She nods once. "I'm sorry," she repeats. |
Author: dream_me_up | He smiles.
"It's okay." |
Author: warpfairy | Isabella smiles weakly. |
Author: dream_me_up | Lalita hugs her. |
Author: warpfairy | Hugs! Hugs are a good end to misunderstandings. |
Author: dream_me_up | They are, it's true! |