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

[kaolinandbone]

"Any chance of me being able to come to your world if and when you leave? It seems to have a number of advantages."

[from_scratch]

"Doubt it. Unless you can magic it with local tools. Or unless you turn into a daeva upon death, in which case you'll be confined to the world of whichever species you get until and unless you catch a summons."

[kaolinandbone]

"Alas, the proper sort of tranportation magic is unvailable to me or my world, so it appears I'm stuck here. Unless I care to commit suicide and hope. Which I don't."

She pours herself some more tea.

"In any case, I believe we were talking about the 'net.' Apparently it's the best thing since fire."

[from_scratch]

"Mmm, if you go back as far as fire there's competition like 'literacy' and 'inoculations' and 'physics', but yeah, the internet's pretty marvelous."

[kaolinandbone]

Lioncourt frowns. "'Inoculations', plural? A vaccine for smallpox was derived from cows about thirty or so years ago, but I haven't heard of any major advancements on that front for some time now."

[from_scratch]

"...Do you still have smallpox?"

[kaolinandbone]

"It's been eradicated in most civilized societies, but persists in some places in Ulvenwald and Lupinia."

[from_scratch]

"We got rid of it altogether, and can vaccinate against almost everything else and have gotten rid of some of those too. Polio, malaria - we still have the flu but we can vaccinate against each year's new strain - etcetera."

[kaolinandbone]

"We have no other vaccines of note yet. I would love to see how your medical technology has progressed beyond ours."

[from_scratch]

"I am a fully qualified medical demon, you're in luck. Although a lot of stuff is done with angels, who can bypass the need for a lot of the intermediate technological stuff, so we haven't advanced as far as we might have done without. Better outcomes, worse process documentation and exportability."

[kaolinandbone]

"That's somewhat unfortunate, considering the lack of angels on this planet. However, whatever you have is still years ahead of the current state of the art, so I hardly have reason to complain."

[from_scratch]

"I mean, you summoned me. Maybe if summonings work normally here I will teach you to summon angels."

[kaolinandbone]

"That is a very good point." She smiles. "Let's hope that summonings do work normally here."

[from_scratch]

"I will want to be a little careful about it. There's major downside potential to summoning too. For example, an improperly contained and malicious demon could destroy your entire planet."

[kaolinandbone]

"I think you might be putting it a little strongly, but conjuring arbitrary matter will do that, yes. There is a reason why there have been wars over conjurors."

[from_scratch]

"I'm not putting it strongly. Unless there's some local magic stopping me, I could destroy the planet. You might not know what a black hole is, but imagine I just made an entire sun, right here."

[kaolinandbone]

Isabella is already too pale to lose color, but she pauses significantly before responding.

"Please do not make an entire sun right here."

She shakes her head.

"Gods. Do you really not have any upper bound on size?"

[from_scratch]

"I promise not to make an entire sun right here. I probably have some upper bound, but it is definitely astronomical in scale. Demons can and have made stars. Oh, also, if you die I vanish - assuming normal rules are in effect - so if I did want to destroy the planet I'd have to put you off it first or I'd only wind up destroying however much of it sufficed to take you with it. Not that I expect this to be very comforting."

[kaolinandbone]

"Given that I would possibly wake up afterwards, that is somewhat comforting, yes."

She breathes out.

"Alright. So. I think I've more or less exhausted myself on questions for the moment. I have a lot to think about. Do you have anything more you'd like to ask about my world?"

[from_scratch]

"Well, you're a vampire. Back where I'm from there are daeva and humans, plus non-sapient animals, and that's it. What else have you got?"

[kaolinandbone]

"So far as I know, only humans. Victorian propaganda says that there are vicious were-creatures that live in Lupinia and occasionally take the forms of humans, but I am understandably suspicious of this considering that they are trying to colonize Lupinia. Ulvenwald definitely has strange things living in it, but if any of them are sentient and nonhuman we haven't found them yet. There are also rumors that Oceania is awake-in-itself - stones talking to people, hurricanes demanding tolls, that sort of thing - but it's so far away and so few explorers have been there that such stories are likely to be more myth and tall tale than fact."

[from_scratch]

"Are days here twenty-four hours?"

[kaolinandbone]

"Yes, if you live in Grand Victoria. Mori recently moved to a twenty-hour day with 100-minute hours as part of a general crusade against nonstandardized units."

[from_scratch]

"Okay, that and the gravity suggest the place is Earth-sized... and you have one moon..." He picks up his computer again and does nothing obvious to manipulate it. It flickers between various displays and settles on a picture of the Earth, spinning languidly. "Does this look familiar?"

[kaolinandbone]

"Why is it backwards?"