alicornutopia | trade my soul for a wish

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trade my soul for a wish

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)

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"All right. I think we may be set."

"Have fun. Please don't get assassinated."

And Cam goes off to sacrifice a room of the Gretchen to mysterious lab equipment.

Mark pilots them to Fell Station, requests and receives permission to dock, and requests a private meeting with Baron Fell.

This involves talking his way up a chain of increasingly prestigious flunkies. Finally he reaches one who just makes noncommittal noises instead of passing him up the chain.

"Look," he says, "I know at this point I'm supposed to offer you a bribe to demonstrate the magnitude of my consequence, but frankly I can't be bothered with such trivialities. Tell Baron Fell I have an offer he wants to hear, and I will discuss it with him privately or not at all."

"...I will pass on your message," says the over-underling.

"Thank you," says Mark, with a razor smile. The baron's man flinches. Mark ends the call and goes to see how the fake lab is coming along.

The fake lab looks, well, kind of like it was made by a guy from 2159 - there are nods to modern sensibilities that he's been able to absorb in his short time in the future but there's too much glass and metal, not enough plastic. It will probably pass at a glance to someone who isn't expecting it to be dated-looking. He has at least not put any paper anywhere. Cam is, possibly purely for his own entertainment, wearing a labcoat. Several of the pieces of equipment are so thoroughly sealed as to have no way to open them and get at the contents.

"This'll pass," Mark judges. "The aesthetic's weird but that makes it more plausible that you're some kind of crazed genius with unprecedented accomplishments."

"Oh, am I playing a crazed genius, as opposed to your techy lackey or something?"

"You're playing my lackey who doesn't get out much and is one of an undisclosed but extremely small number of people capable of doing this thing. Actually, I'd be pleased if we could find another demon or two as trustworthy as you to apply to the problem, just so it doesn't seem like you're the only one... but that's for the longer term, when you're zipping around terraforming things."

"I know some demons who are reasonably decent people - as trustworthy as me is a high bar but I know some I'd trust unbound if and only if they could go home regularly. Which we have yet to test."

"And will not be testing for a good long while, unless you know someone who annoys you enough that you'd risk stranding them here forever but not enough that you'd worry about them causing havoc that way."

"Nobody fits the bill, alas."

"A shame."

"Yeah. Unfortunately, most people, if you pull them from their homes and then do not, for whatever reason, send them back, they're going to think you weren't trying, and the next obvious thing to do is kill you and see if that helps."

"And I would of necessity not even be around to laugh at them when that didn't work either."

"Quite. Although I don't think I want to assume that you necessarily can't get rid of me through dying even if you can't get rid of me the usual way. Obviously some of the standard rules apply. I didn't appear for thirty seconds surrounded by inexplicable birdsong and only able to conjure objects in navy blue without having attempted to answer a summons while you were fixing scrambled eggs. You drew on the floor, I felt a summons, I took it, that part's all very bog-standard, the only weird thing we've verified so far is where I am."

"But being unable to get rid of you the usual way would at least suggest that other ways might also fail. Eh. No need to go testing it. No need to go testing either of 'em anytime soon, given that it might also be possible to send you home but not bring you back, in which case I would be in a little bit of trouble."

"Yes, I'd definitely like to stay for long enough to do the clones thing, learn to pilot a jumpship, and see if I can make a wormhole."

"That should be fun."

"I think so too!"

"So. I'd better have a clone ready to show off after I get my meeting with Fell. How easy to sustain are these things?"

"Not exactly hard, just potentially messy. If we have to keep it around long enough that I wind up feeding it, it will require a diaper or whatever the futuristic equivalent is. I can put it on a liquid diet and make do with a catheter, I suppose, that's a little lower-maintenance. I'm also inclined to restrain it so it doesn't wander around poking things. It's not likely to figure out how to walk per se but it might manage to move around some anyway."

"I'd been under the impression they wouldn't have enough higher brain functions to do even that. Eh well. Any problem with just putting it in a nice tidy coma?"

"If that won't interfere with the brain surgery, nah, that's easy, we can do that with all of them. I will want to know the coma-inducing state of the art."

"Try the ship's library. I notice you gave it one."

"Yeah, will do. Aaaand the other question is do you want it appeared in clothes."

"Clothes would be a little pointless. Maybe a hospital gown."

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from_scratch - 2015-01-07 17:27 (UTC) - Expand

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