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]

Cam produces samples of German and English and Mandarin and Spanish and French and Finnish.

[kaolinandbone]

Isabella identifies the cluster of Romance languages as all sounding vaguely like various dialects of Moritic. Mandarin gets a raised eyebrow and a 'That sounds sort of like the Church language.' Finnish appears to exist in roughly the same location as in Cam's world.

[from_scratch]

Arabic? Tagalog? Hindi? Cantonese?

[kaolinandbone]

Arabic is similar to New Lupinian. Cantonese and Tagalog get shakes of Isabella's head after a few minutes' listening. Hindi is recognizably similar to something Isabella's heard before, but she can't place where she's heard it.

[from_scratch]

"Very hit and miss. So you've got airships but they don't go that far, there's unmapped portions of the planet?"

[kaolinandbone]

"There are unmapped portions of the planet. Victorian airships are fast and have a maximum operating range of roughly four thousand kilometers, but have the unfortunate limitation of requiring mooring masts to anchor safely. Most colonies are set up first by the navy and then kept supplied by air. Also, Mori is in a state of cold war with Victoria and is between them and the continent's interior. They may have a better idea of what exactly is in Oceania."

[from_scratch]

"I'm tempted to just make a tiny spaceship and circumnavigate the globe real quick."

[kaolinandbone]

"If you could do that with a modicum of stealth, it might well give us some useful information. Would that be possible?"

[from_scratch]

"I'm not sure what kind of detection I'm trying to operate around, here. It can be quiet, it can't be invisible but it can be small, it can be immune to a bunch of sensors I bet you don't have, and I got absolutely nothing on any magical divination that may be flying around."

[kaolinandbone]

"If you can evade curious people with telescopes, you've defeated our most advanced detection technology and magic."

[from_scratch]

"Like I said, can't be invisible. If somebody aims a telescope right at me... Well, I guess I could make myself cloud cover as I go, if spontaneous clouds won't alarm anybody."

[kaolinandbone]

"That would probably alarm people less than an unknown flying object, yes. Strange meterological phenomena are less interesting than hyper-advanced rockets."

[from_scratch]

"All right. But this castle does some kind of weird multiple presence thing?" He gestures at the window.

[kaolinandbone]

"Yes. I'll give you a door to the least-inhabited locale it exists in, which is Ulvenwald."

She pushes back her chair, takes a moment to finish her tea, and then opens the door she came in from out onto a stone front porch, where gaslights flicker in the almost-starless night.

[from_scratch]

"And this door will still be here in, say, an hour?"

[kaolinandbone]

"The door has been here for a decade and will continue to be here unless I tell it not to continue. I would very much like it to continue existing, therefore it will be here when you return."

[from_scratch]

"Neat trick." And he steps out and - a little one-seater spaceship appears.

When it's done, he opens the door, hops in, salutes at her through the front pane, generates dense fog cover - and takes off.

[kaolinandbone]

The trip is about as uneventful as covert space reconnissance of an unknown planet can be. As expected, the planet is a mirrored earth - except for China and Australia, which appear to have become an enormous volcanic archipelago with highly unusual weather-patterns.

[from_scratch]

Weird.

Cam records his entire trip, then lands whence he came.

[kaolinandbone]

Isabella is sitting on the stoop, nibbling on a piece of eclair. She looks up as he approaches.

"Welcome back, casual circumnavigator. Did you discover anything interesting?

[from_scratch]

"Yeah, China - whence the language you thought sounded churchy and one of the ones you couldn't identify - and also Australia - have both been replaced with a lot of volcanic islands."

[kaolinandbone]

Isabella hums.

"That is rather interesting, considering that that area is what I would call Oceania, whence of the unusual rumors."

[from_scratch]

"Where did the church language come from?"

[kaolinandbone]

"It's hundreds of years old. Quite possibly as old as the Imperial Line. I would say 'Victoria' but that would be unhelpful."

[from_scratch]

"In my world Chinese in all its dialects is extremely old, but I'm not sure we're going to get anything much out of this kind of spotty view of history - no offense, I'm sure I wouldn't know much world history either in a world with no Internet and no casual intercontinental travel."