hell of a party

[middlingalong]

Ivan must be drunker than he thought he was. He could have sworn he knew his way around Vivienne's parents' house, since she wanted to introduce him last week and showed him the place, but maybe they have a... secret... upstairs... bar? where Vivienne's room is supposed to be? And most certainly was last time he checked? He's never going to find the sweater she sent him up looking for here, anyway. Why is there a secret upstairs bar in Vivienne's parents' house?

Comments

[dream_me_up]

...Lalita giggles.

[middlingalong]

"There's context for that, I'm not just assuming that he's going to grow up and terrorize things."

[thisvorlunatic]

"He's going to be my son," Miles points out. "I think 'terror of two planets' might not be giving him enough credit. Although, yes, some planets will be more terrified than others."

[middlingalong]

"Two planets will be terrified of him before he accidentally acquires a small army as part of his coming-of-age story."

[warpfairy]

"I'm very curious about this context you speak of."

[isthisart]

"Miles's family, whence both the name 'Aral' and 'Vorkosigan', has a bad reputation on the planet Komarr, for historical reasons undeserved by the original name holder and still more undeserved by his descendants; genetic engineering generally and Cetagandans generally, and most especially the intersection of the haut, have a bad reputation for reasons aforementioned on Barrayar, which sits sovereign over Komarr and a more recent colony. I go around with a bodyguard when I'm in public on Barrayar and sometimes omit my married name on Komarr."

[dream_me_up]

"Anyway," says Lalita, "yes, you can take a gene sample. Far be it from me to get in the way of terrorizing planets."

[isthisart]

Linya asks the bar for a suitable extraction and preservation mechanism - then thinks better of the preservation option and just gets a small sequencer. "Let me see your hand?"

[dream_me_up]

He gives her his hand.

[isthisart]

"This'll sting just a little bit -"

It stings just a little bit.

The sequencer hums. She plucks her pen from her necklace and waves it at the sequencer until it's eating up the data.

[warpfairy]

"What is that?"

[isthisart]

"Sequencer - expensive, but - oh, you mean the pen? The pen is why I can get expensive things from the bar. I invented it." She dismisses the sequencer-data-eating to the pen's background processes and does her light-drawing demo.

[dream_me_up]

"Pretty," says Lalita.

[isthisart]

"They're pretty great. I can give you guys a set of plans to take home and 'invent' - I suppose you might have to do a lot of work to integrate them with a different underlying network and software environment, hm -"

[warpfairy]

"You're a geneticist and an engineer?"

[isthisart]

"Among other things. What do you do?"

[warpfairy]

"Well, I used to be a deep space surveyor as cover for delivering warp equations to plagiarists so that more planets could be admitted to the Federation and benefit from the post-scarcity, but then I spent several years as a political refugee and now I make speeches."

[dream_me_up]

"And get shot. But hopefully that was a one-off."

[warpfairy]

"Yes. I'm actually in the hospital right now, ostensibly still recovering."

[isthisart]

"Ooh, post-scarcity. We don't have that. Economy's not flat enough and too much capital's in the hands of people with countervailing agendas. Why are the warp equations important for participating in it?"

[warpfairy]

"The Federation won't admit any societies which can't break the warp speed barrier, but will invite any society it catches producing a warp signature. I got caught, but it was very efficient before that. Although I'm glad not all the planets I visited decided to join the Federation, because then when Lalita broke me out of prison we had somewhere to go that was kindly disposed towards us and disinclined to extradite me. I miss priv..."

[isthisart]

"I have no idea what priv is, but Bar can probably get it for you. How efficient?"

[warpfairy]

"At last estimate, I'm a contributor to saving - well, prolonging, given that immortality isn't yet a solved problem - twenty-six point four billion or so lives, I'd have to consult my program to get more significant figures."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Can you explain warp, please?"

[middlingalong]

"Holy shit," says Ivan.