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

[unmarred]

Just after they make the final jump into the Jackson's Whole system, Mark tracks down Cam.

"Now would be the time to make the ship you want to dock with Fell in," he says. "I have a suggested model. Small, luxurious, a little obscure, well-shielded, fast as hell. Plausibly towable by the Prospero."

[from_scratch]

"Sure. I'm not naming it for a Tempest reference, though. I think I'll call it the Gretchen." And once Cam has a name of the ship model, he produces a towing mechanism and an instance of the ship.

[unmarred]

"...I'm only guessing that's a Faust reference because I like old books and I have suspicions about your sense of humour," says Mark, "so it passes, but in general I don't want to encourage sly nods demonward. Takes all the fun out of it, I know."

[from_scratch]

"Maybe I'll make future references to demonic literature. Next ship can be the Atriama."

[unmarred]

"And who or what is Atriama?"

[from_scratch]

"Atriama is the eponymous protagonist from a - I think the nearest analogue is a ballet, but it's aerial."

[unmarred]

"Sounds pretty."

[from_scratch]

"It is. It's funny, summoners back home acknowledge that demons must value culture and media, since that's usually the first thing they try to pay us with, but I don't think a summoner has ever asked me for a recording of Atriama. Or any other demon-created anything."

[unmarred]

"I wouldn't mind one."

[from_scratch]

"What format d'you want?"

[unmarred]

He shrugs. "Can you convert it to a holovid I could watch on a standard comconsole...?"

[from_scratch]

"Eh - it's only been recorded in two dimensions, do holos work like that? If so then yes."

[unmarred]

"It'll display, yeah. It won't look as good as three, but oh well."

[from_scratch]

"Oh well." Cam hands him a holo.

[unmarred]

"Thanks. Might as well transfer to our new ship, now. I'm a competent enough manual pilot to dock at a station without hitting anything."

[from_scratch]

"I was hoping that was the case."

Off they go to the station. Goodbye borrowed pilot.

[unmarred]

"So," says Mark, "to start with, I think I'm going to claim a three-month lead time on a clone order. Short enough to hopelessly outmatch the competition, long enough to be vaguely plausible as something other than magic and to give me time to find you and drag you back here to fulfill unexpected orders if you're somewhere else when I get one. I will demand tissue samples or accurate gene sequences from customers, and we'd better actually use the provided material as the basis for growing the new body, even if you can do it another way. We should probably also whip up a convincing-looking medical lab somewhere on this ship, even though I fully intend never to let anyone access it. If someone does break in, and doesn't find any evidence of clone-growing facilities, we'll be facing some uncomfortable questions."

[from_scratch]

"By 'actually use' what do you mean? And where do you propose to get a template for a plausible-looking facility?"

[unmarred]

"I mean suppose that someone sends us a carefully edited gene sequence, and you conjure a direct clone of So-and-So that does not incorporate the changes. They'll be pissed off that we didn't follow spec and confused as to how that is even a possible error to make, if we never had access to an unedited gene sample of So-and-so. As for the facility, eh, can't be that hard to make something up. For our purposes all it really needs to be is a lot of funny-looking equipment and somewhere for you to conjure bodies."

[from_scratch]

"Okay. I should be able to grow an extrapolation from a supplied sequence and conjure up something incomprehensible-looking with tanks and tubes and funny-colored liquids and things that go beep."

[unmarred]

"You have the general idea," he says, smiling. "The biggest remaining question I have is whether or not I want to show up with a ready-made clone of Baron Fell. He might be more affronted at the implied theft of a genetic sample than impressed by the demonstration of our ability. But if we don't, that's a three-month lead time spent twiddling our thumbs without a demonstrated product. Maybe I'll show him a disposable clone-body of me. Hah, I think I will. So we show up, I make my pitch, I unveil the product, I offer him the chance to be our very first customer, and then if he bites - when he bites - House Holmes opens for business. Mm?"

[from_scratch]

"I see no obvious problems. Do you want yours to spec or just made naively?"

[unmarred]

"Naive genetic clone, please. It'll turn out taller than me, but I don't actually know by how much."

[from_scratch]

"Drank too much coffee and stunted your growth? All right. Say when. Do I need to put tanks of effervescent this-and-that in a room on the Gretchen or are we skipping that?"

[unmarred]

"Produce fake lab, then produce clone in fake lab, I think."