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]

Cool. Cam spends the night slurping coffee, nudging his computer repeatedly on-course and pronouncing words for it while it works on the corpus of local texts it has, setting up the bridge and its train, and finalizing designs for a communication satellite to allow easy communication between his unnamed island and Opri. He should name his island. Hmmmmmm.

[sturdycoldsteel]

The next morning, a message comes from the volunteer shopkeepers. It requests gardening supplies and seeds, a fishing pole and tackle, bolts of raw fabric, the construction of a park between the apartment building and the beach-houses, and a light-bulb that can be carried around.

At the end of the list is, Apologies if these requests seem greedy. Several people seem to desire setting up crafts of sorts- the fabric is for an aspiring tailor. I believe this should be encouraged. Will you be minting a currency unique to this island?

[from_scratch]

Cam swoops out of his house, scopes out the park area, lands, and strolls through it, making park things as he goes. He sends a reply: Park in progress, other stuff will be added to the storage floor in the apartment building after I'm done parking. Undecided on currency but if I do it'll be fiat paper or electronic; coins are unwieldy.

[sturdycoldsteel]

There's no response from the shopkeeper. Perhaps they're not entirely comfortable with their device.

Steel seems to have figured out texting in Italian on her phone, though. She asks Should I go look for more people in Opri?

[from_scratch]

At your leisure. I don't have a specific growth trajectory in mind. If you do go I'd like to know when and whether they'd like the dam hooked up to anything other than the water pump.

[sturdycoldsteel]

I'll visit Opri and Nel and a few other nearby cities. I don't think I'll get many takers, the rumors about you have only had two days to spread. I think I'll take out newspaper ads, I have enough silver and don't need it here. Preferences on what appears in them?

[from_scratch]

I still can't think of a name for the island I like, unfortunately. You know the audience, just don't tell any horrible lies.

[sturdycoldsteel]

A few minutes later the Earthbus takes off.


Around lunchtime, someone shows up on the train. After wandering around for a bit, he wants to move in. And that afternoon, Steel comes back with another dozen immigrants. One of them is a teacher. She wants a school to teach in. And Italian tutoring/textbooks.

[from_scratch]

She can have books, although none of them make reference to local languages because Cam's poor little computer is not done yet. She can have a one-floor school building designed for more to be added on top as there are more students.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel gives her some introductory lessons and cheat sheets. She sets up a single-class school session, with aim to split classes when more students show up.


Over the next two days, people continue to trickle in. A small fraction want beach-houses, but everyone else is content with an apartment in the tower. The doctor acquires an assistant. The tailor starts selling custom clothes out of his apartment. People start using the subway, once they realize it's there. Someone asks for a restaurant on the 10th floor of Cam's next tower. Someone else wants an elevated storefront for their miscellaneous decorative objects.

[from_scratch]

Cam makes a "business tower" and bridges at several levels between it and the apartment tower, and restaurant person can have a restaurant on the tenth floor and the other person can have a storefront as high up as they like therein too. This is fun, it's like playing a well-designed version of Sim City with all the cheats on.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Several people want the island hooked up to the postal system. Steel compromises by carrying mail to various places in the Earthbus. A few of the shaper population start building bluestream framework, levitation-stream in roads and stairwells mostly, on a volunteer basis.

Interest quickly picks up. After a week and a half, there are at least 300 people on the island. Another apartment tower is requested. A soccer field. A blank wall several stories tall to serve as public art space. A two-story farm to be expanded later. Some clever individual is an ecologist and presents him with guidelines for a coral reef that is likely to attract colorful fish.

[from_scratch]

Cam can get on board with all these plans, although the farm will need shaper maintenance to be up to local standards, is that in place sufficiently?

[sturdycoldsteel]

The requester is a shaper, and so are his five volunteers/employees. Speaking of which, a few people would like a stone circle behind the clinic, the sort of which people visit to try and become a shaper. They will handle the magic side of it, if Cam makes a specific sort of stone in a particular configuration. They swear up and down to abide by their long list of safety provisions with this enterprise.

[from_scratch]

Cam makes the farm. He reviews the safety protocols; he makes the stone circle.

He contemplates the stone circle. But not right now, he thinks.

[sturdycoldsteel]

The next day there is a very public shouting match between a couple in one of the apartment buildings. Eventually one woman is stabbed, the other drops her knife and flees towards the bridge. One of the shopkeepers who acquired a phone decides it counts as an emergency worth disturbing their benefactor. He calls Cam and reports the proceedings.

[from_scratch]

Cam is on the scene presently, adds general anaesthesia to her system, replaces her missing blood on an ongoing basis, scans her, turns her over so the bleeding can lavage out any dirt that entered the wound, and then patches all the holes with thin but perfectly well-attached cross-sections of tissue. He brings her to the doctor, tells him she'll wake up in an hour and might be chilly - and then chases the stabber.

[sturdycoldsteel]

The doctor was on his way up the elevator. He turns around immediately.

The stabber is on foot. She will not be hard to catch.

[from_scratch]

Now her ankles are manacled together.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She falls on her face. And starts crying. Between sobs she manages, "Go ahead and throw me in a dungeon. Or kill me. I deserve it."

[from_scratch]

"Well, I don't have a dungeon, but I'd like to know what happened," he says, landing next to her.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"We- thought we'd stop fighting if we came here. Since money is what we fought about most. But we didn't. And, and I just got so mad it wasn't working and- I stabbed her."

[from_scratch]

"Well, she's going to be fine."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I'm glad she's okay. I need to leave, one way or another. So I don't do it again."

[from_scratch]

"Sounds like it. Any ideas where you ought to go? I could make a prison island but it doesn't really appeal to me as an administrative project."