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

[sturdycoldsteel]

He has reports and sketches and binders full of notes on Opri's layout.

Mostly he wants to ensure that new buildings and parks and shopping districts and farms and workshop zones will be laid out in a sensible manner and not 'wherever Cam feels like it.'

[from_scratch]

"...If you object to living in a place that is significantly governed by whim, maybe we should turn around and put you back. But I have no desire to put things in places that make them inconvenient or give them disagreeable neighbors."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I'm not going to demand the city be perfectly symmetrical or anything like that, I was mostly worried about peoples' location relative to important services. I assume I can leave if I find it not to my liking? If not, I'll stay here."

[from_scratch]

"I'm not going to imprison you. There'll be a bridge, you can leave whenever you like."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Would you mind suggestions about the placement of various things?"

[from_scratch]

"Only if they become annoying in frequency or content."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I'll try not to do that. Here's a map of Opri as of four months ago. This is a general suggestion of the kind of architecture and city layout people from central Telra expect from their cities. And thank you." He hands over the map and joins the group boarding the Earthbus.

Steel says, "You're probably going to go get your shuttle, so I'll just follow it in the Earthbus when it takes off."

[from_scratch]

"Sounds like a plan."

Cam goes and gets in his shuttle and leads the bus to his island. He should name his island, hmmm.

[sturdycoldsteel]

The bus lands and people file out.

Two families and ten individuals want apartments. One family and two people each want little beach-houses. The doctor wants a clinic built for him, and one of the families suggests they could run a 'shop' that collects requests for things and distributes the created things as required so Cam doesn't need to bother with the busywork.

[from_scratch]

There is plenty of apartment in the apartment building Steel lives in to go around. Cam can do cute little beach houses, inspired by local architecture but with full complements of gadgetry (with signs) and in cheerful colors and summoning-age materials. The clinic takes some consultation of his notes to fully outfit; he puts it convenient to the apartment building. And he puts in the bridge, and puts the request-collection shop near the bridge, and tells this family he's willing to give them a try even though he doesn't know much about them personally, but if he doesn't like how they do their job he will go back to taking his own requests or try automating it somehow - customer service can be terrible but just because they are volunteers does not mean they can snap at people or anything.

[sturdycoldsteel]

The family nods and agrees. "I think we'll deliver, at first. What would be a convenient way to contact you?"

[from_scratch]

"Ideally you'd send me computer messages. I don't have anything set up to do voice recognition in this language and I won't for a while, but there's a way to write messages by pushing buttons with letters on them, and then I can show you how to send the complete message to me. If that's annoying I can handle the voice recognition part sooner rather than later and take un-textified voice recordings, though - typing's a useful skill but it takes a learning curve to be good at it."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I know Henta," the mother volunteers, "If you make it so I can press buttons with their alphabet on them, that will work."

[from_scratch]

"I'm not really fluent in Henta. ...I could probably make character recognition work in a short while. If you write with a particular pen on a particular surface. Yeah, let's go with that." He fiddles with his computer for a moment, then snaps his fingers and there is a surface and a pen in the shop. "Write whatever you want to send to me on the blue area, it'll slide the characters up and out of your way as you run out of room, tap the green thing on the right to send. Sound easy enough?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

She tries it out, writing the names of various objects on it. "This will work, thank you. But how can I erase a mistake?"

[from_scratch]

"Poke the characters you want to erase with the other end of the pen."

[sturdycoldsteel]

She does that to verify that it works.

"This is a very interesting... Thing. I'll try to collect nice big batches for you. I'll start with some things I expect people to want, since you're already here..." She names about two dozen items, including things such as '100 bars of soap' '40 sets of shaving razors' and 'a dozen 20 pound sacks of flour'.

[from_scratch]

"Oh, about a third of the way up on the apartment building is a residential warehouse thing stocked with reasonable quantities of nonperishables. If you want to keep an eye on the supply in there that would be nice but I don't think anything will be gone yet."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"You plan ahead. I'll keep inventory for you, sure. Have a nice day!"

[from_scratch]

"Will do."

[sturdycoldsteel]

The doctor solicits a phone capable of calling Cam, having heard of the things from Steel. "If there's anything I'm not totally sure how to treat, I'd rather talk to the source of my new medicine and knowledge."

[from_scratch]

"Of course. Let me give you a tour of the place, there's only so much the pictorial guide can do." Cam shows the doctor all the stuff and quizzes him on diagnostics to make sure they aren't laboring under any desperate misapprehensions about anatomy, infection, etcetera.

[sturdycoldsteel]

The doctor understands anatomy and the body's response to injuries very well. He knows about infections, and the distinction between bacteria and viruses, but his biochemistry is shaky and their antibiotics are not very effective. Usually, treatment for infectious diseases involve suppressing the symptoms and spraying disinfectant on everything rather than killing the microbes. This... Usually works.

[from_scratch]

...Cam points out the antivirals and the antibiotics, reminds him of the importance of making sure he's using the right one of those, mentions that some of the antibiotics will also handle worms and protozoans and fungi but there are more specialized medicines that will do better, and shows him the snazzy diagnostic gadgets.

[sturdycoldsteel]

The doctor takes lots of notes and reiterates that he's going to call Cam whenever something he's not absolutely positive on comes up.