trade my soul for a wish

[from_scratch]

This is a successor to "call me maybe", which is getting crowded.

Cam is dipping a grilled cheese sandwich into a bowl of tomato soup when he feels the summons. He goes ahead and grabs it. Doesn't even drop the sandwich.


with Mark (kappa)

with Adanya (Aestrix)

with Sable (kappa)

with Ari (andaisq)

with Metella (kappa)

with Miles (kappa)

with Isabella (Eva)

with Steel (Rockeye)

with Daphne (Maggie)

with Edie (Maggie)

Comments

[from_scratch]

"And of course I expect wordcount-conscious emphasis on the important parts. I'm immortal, not patient."

[unmarred]

"Don't jog my elbow," he suggests dryly.

"All right, let's see... sometime in the early twenty-third century, ballpark of 2230, humanity invented jumpships and immediately started colonizing every system they could find that was more than barely habitable. Emphasis on the ones that already supported some form of life, because clearly they could be made to support ours. I'm not sure exactly which planets were established in that first wave - Escobar and Tau Ceti, I think, and maybe Zoave Twilight and Illyrica. And Barrayar. But Barrayar suffered a mishap: a collapsed wormhole cut off their route home while the first bunch of colonists were still settling in. So while the rest of the wormhole nexus kept right on merrily exploring and colonizing and advancing, Barrayar descended into near-Bronze-Age near-anarchy and then started over from there. Some centuries went by. Plenty more planets were colonized. I'm going to deliver a shamelessly skewed perspective and mostly talk about the ones that feature in my or my family's history: Jackson's Whole, Beta Colony, Komarr, and the Cetagandan Empire."

He pauses, then asks, "I don't suppose you can conjure me up a map of the wormhole nexus? This will be a little easier with pictures. Holo, please; two dimensions never feel like enough."

[from_scratch]

"I need slightly more to go on than 'holo'. A brand name should do." But he does conjure up an instance of his own computer and start taking notes.

[unmarred]

"Let me see... I think the last decent map cube of the wormhole nexus I saw for sale was AstroCart. Now there's a company that is aware of its niche. Although they also offer system, planetary, and subplanetary maps."

[from_scratch]

Cam hands Mark a cube. "Please do not attempt to abuse my ignorance about what things there are to conjure, by the way."

[unmarred]

"Mm?"

[from_scratch]

"As in, if you ask me for a make and model of something and I hand you a mystery object shaped like a Platonic solid and then it turns out I didn't really want you to have that sort of object and only didn't recognize what it was supposed to be, I will not be best pleased."

[unmarred]

"It's a map cube," he says, setting it down on the table and twiddling its controls. "It projects maps. All right... here we are."

The holo flickers on, displaying a lot of planets - or perhaps the spheres are meant to represent entire solar systems - linked by straight or smoothly curved lines. Mark starts pointing out the relevant ones.

"This bunch all coloured lavender is Cetaganda." A nest of eight orbs curving up through one side of the diagram, some connected only to each other, but the outer ones have links to almost every part of the nexus.

"Over here in pale yellow is Escobar, our current location, not quite completely irrelevant to this story." It's very central, with links to many other systems.

"That one's Beta Colony, site of the invention of the uterine replicator sometime around 2750 and birthplace of my brother's mother." It's beige, and has several connections but not as many as Escobar. "They don't have much going for them other than technological advancement; the planet's a windswept sandy rock, all permanent habitation located underground to protect it from the heat and the wind."

"The bright red triplets over here are Komarr," he indicates the one with lots of lines coming out of it, "Sergyar," the one with lines to Komarr, Escobar, and Beta Colony, "and Barrayar," the one with only a single line connecting it to Komarr. "Original wormhole route to Barrayar not pictured."

Pointing to a more distant planet in pale blue-grey: "That's Jackson's Whole, where I was born. Oh, and that's Earth," in deep turquoise, almost on the opposite side of the map, "where I grew up."

[from_scratch]

Notetaking, notetaking. "Nice planet, Earth," he murmurs.

[unmarred]

"It's not bad. I liked London. Anyway. Jackson's Whole has an interesting founding story, maybe even more interesting than Barrayar's; it was settled by a group of loosely cooperative criminal syndicates who wanted a base of operations outside the jurisdiction of any existing legal system. After a few centuries, they developed something resembling a legal system of their own, but it's not much more sophisticated than 'whoever has the money makes the rules'. They do honour their deals almost all the time, but you can't rely on notions of common decency or interplanetary law there. Neither one has much sway."

[from_scratch]

"Interesting..."

[unmarred]

"So. Six hundred years after Barrayar lost touch with the rest of the galaxy, it was rediscovered at the end of a five-jump route from Komarr." He indicates that connection. "It was nnnot the happiest reunion. For one thing, just as the Barrayarans were starting to get used to their new situation, the Cetagandans decided to conquer them."

[from_scratch]

"The joys of human nature."

[unmarred]

"Right?" he agrees, grinning. "So they came in through Rho Ceta," he points out this route, "bribing the Komarrans with trade-related promises, I think. And of course it worked; all the Barrayarans had was swords and horses and primitive projectile weapons and the Cetagandans had atomics. But it didn't work nearly as well as they hoped. Through a combination of galactic aid, genius commanders, and raw bloody stubbornness, the Barrayarans threw them out after twenty years of occupation. And immediately conquered Komarr, because what else are you going to fucking do?"

[from_scratch]

"Naturally."

[unmarred]

"Family history time: my brother's father, Aral Vorkosigan, planned and commanded the invasion of Komarr. It was a beautiful job, to start with. The Komarrans started at a major disadvantage, because their planet doesn't have breathable atmosphere; they all live in sealed arcologies. So, credibly threaten to crack the domes, and they fold like a bad hand of cards. It was almost that simple, except, of course, politics. One of the Barrayarans decided that a bloodless conquest didn't sit well with him, and he rounded up and murdered two hundred high-ranking Komarrans. When Aral found out, he killed the man in a rage, unfortunately making it difficult for outside parties to verify whether or not he'd been acting on secret orders, and Aral's name was permanently smeared, particularly on Komarr itself. I'm personally pretty sure he had nothing to do with it, because he's not a shortsighted bloodthirsty fucking idiot."

[from_scratch]

"But the court of public opinion had another view on the subject?"

[unmarred]

"Yeah." He shrugs. "Anyway. Time passed. Barrayar discovered Sergyar, and the connection to Escobar through it, and decided to try this conquering thing again. I strongly suspect Aral wanted no part of that, although I don't have direct confirmation; what I do know is that he met his future wife on Sergyar, when she was part of a Betan Astronomical Survey expedition that happened to find the planet while the Barrayarans were setting up there. He took her prisoner. No one's quite sure how they ended up engaged. I'll ask, if I ever meet them. The invasion plans proceeded, Barrayar poured a fleet through Sergyar, and the Escobarans wiped the floor with them thanks to a timely delivery of cutting-edge Betan shielding technology that reflects plasma blasts instead of absorbing them. Sergyar got its name from the Barrayaran Crown Prince who died in that battle."

[from_scratch]

Notetaking, notetaking.

[unmarred]

"My favourite part of that whole episode is the Betan newsvid I dug up where Cordelia - my brother's mother - comes home from the war, looking like utter hell, and it's very, very obvious that nobody told her she'd be making a speech with the President of Beta Colony the second she stepped off the shuttle, and she has a minor breakdown and rips off the medal they give her and flings it into the gathered crowd, and when the President's bodyguards try to restrain her she ends up accidentally kicking him somewhere one is normally discouraged from kicking one's President."

[from_scratch]

"A very dramatic failure on the part of whoever was supposed to be handling her."

[unmarred]

"No kidding. Not long afterward, she left the planet pursued by unexplained criminal charges; reading between the lines a little, I think they tried to lock her up - well, put her in therapy, that's what Beta Colony does - and she took exception, made a moderately violent escape, and fled to Barrayar. The 'fled to Barrayar' part at least is established fact; she married Aral, settled in, and then the dying Emperor made Aral regent to his five-year-old grandson and promptly died. Aral held things together pretty amazingly well, considering what he had to work with." He smiles, then shakes his head.

"While Cordelia was pregnant with their first child, somebody lobbed a nasty gas grenade in their bedroom window, and as a result she had to transfer the kid to a uterine replicator and apply medical experts to the problem of his dissolving skeleton. That would be my brother Miles. His gestation was imperiled again when an attempted usurper kidnapped his replicator as part of a general drive for hostages. Cordelia took exception, mounted a rescue with a few loyal retainers, and came back with not only the replicator but also the pretender's head in a bag. Thus ended that short-lived civil war. They lead exciting lives, my family."

[from_scratch]

"It sounds it. Very narratively satisfying."

[unmarred]

"Yeah, that's a pattern. The stories I could tell you about Miles... anyway. Time went on. Aral remained Regent, and little Gregor remained Emperor. There was a revolt on Komarr in the late 2970s, when Miles was about six. One of the major revolutionaries was a man named David Galen, who'd lost a sister in the Solstice Massacre. The revolt was unsuccessful. Galen faked his own death - I'm not sure whether that part was planned in advance, or he just took advantage of a misperception - stole a tissue sample of Miles, available in abundance because of how often the kid was in the hospital for this or that problem related to his fucked-up bones, and took it to Jackson's Whole to create a clone."

Here Mark gives a little bow in his seat.

"I was aimed ultimately at a substitution plot; Galen made me study Miles's life, his correspondence, his mannerisms, everything. Even called me by his name. And put me through extensive surgery to correct my lack of Miles's fetal damage. The plan worked as far as that went; I'm a near-flawless physical copy of Miles, except I have normal bone density and not nearly so many old fractures, and I do a near-flawless impression of him. I even got as far as setting up the switch and impersonating him for a few days, when he showed up unexpectedly on Earth and Galen decided to activate me. But I liked Miles, I didn't want to steal his life and assassinate his family, and—"

He pauses momentarily.

"—mm, sorry, I need to backtrack a little. During the Time of Isolation, Barrayar had a serious problem with harmful mutations, and wasn't equipped to apply a more sophisticated solution than widespread infanticide. They haven't nearly had time to shake off the superstitions and social attitudes established in those days. Being visibly deformed or disabled or weird-looking on Barrayar is a good way to get spit on and beaten up in alleys. Even in the nicer and more forward-thinking parts of society, you get some friction. So I knew, when Galen told me he planned for me to become the next Emperor of Barrayar, he was setting me up. There's an argument to be made that Miles has a claim by blood, but if he actually tried to claim it, there would be riots and assassination attempts until somebody got him. Which is exactly what Galen was hoping for, of course. Throwing me to the wolves to keep them occupied ripping my carcass to bloody shreds while he organized another revolt on Komarr. That isn't nearly as figurative as it sounds, by the way; the last notable case of Barrayar getting rid of an emperor it objected to was the descriptively titled Dismemberment of Mad Emperor Yuri, within living memory. Aral was about eleven."

[from_scratch]

"What a storied history your relatives have."