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]

"Tricolor Copperwing, eastern variety. They're local."

[from_scratch]

So Cam makes a tricolor copperwing, local as can be...

[sturdycoldsteel]

It's a butterfly. Its wings are very shiny, and a section of them does indeed look like copper.

She blinks. "Yep, that's it. The effect on the stream seemed exactly the same as your morpho."

[from_scratch]

"Okay, there goes one hypothesis on what the heck bluestream is. Well, partially, anyway, maybe the difference would be too small to see or I made the morpho incorrectly."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"What was the hypothesis, exactly?"

[from_scratch]

"The book mentions there's less bluestream at higher altitudes, and also that living things affect it. I don't have a good way to test the hypothesis 'there's a magic rock at the core of the planet' but I could give a whirl to 'life on this planet has something about it that generates bluestream'."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Try making some other life from your planet, and some from mine? I can kill things you make so they don't become invasive." She names half a dozen more insects, and a local species of rabbit.

"...What would be really interesting is if I could somehow get to orbit without, you know, dying. We could see if the stream is still anchored to the planet and rotating with it. If I try to make something, whether it flies away at high speed before I'm done because of the orbital velocity thing."

[from_scratch]

"Oh, I can make us a little spaceship. Trouble is, then there's a little spaceship, and I'm not confident I want to leave one lying around."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Of course you can make a spaceship, why wouldn't you be able to? You'd free up big chunk of the magical workforce with nonmagical water pumps, farming equipment, and elevators, by the way. Though trade school graduates are pretty inflexible and would likely need further education."

"Would a thoroughly hidden or possibly violently disassembled little spaceship be safer? You can bury it under a hill, possibly letting the hill fall a few feet onto it, when we're done."

[from_scratch]

"I mean, I could also slag it. Just trying to be thoughtful. Elevators, water pumps, and all manner of exciting agricultural devices are also available once I know how best to distribute them."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Hmm. I want to warn you, the balance of power needs upsetting, but if we do it hastily people will be hurt more than they need to. The Telra Senate likes to send in the army when any one city grows too powerful. They call themselves a republic, but... Each city gets one vote. Guess who casts the city's vote? Whoever's been appointed by the Senate to oversee the city. The current system is better than lawless anarchy, but by appearing things you have a good chance to undo it without the tremendously nasty 'civil war' parts in the middle. You'll want proof, of course."

[from_scratch]

"I do tend to like to know what's going on before I disrupt governments, however dodgy their systems of representation."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"You'll notice I'm not asking you for weapons or anything else government-disrupty. Do you want to try making a few more alive things now, see if I can find a difference, or start hiking back to town since you don't seem to want to make a ship?"

[from_scratch]

"If somebody sees a ship going up or down what will they think it is?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"As long as they see it from a fair distance they'll probably think it's someone's magic experiment. It's fairly well-known that abandoned wilderness is the place to do magic experiments. Small chance you'll set off rumors of disaster, unexplained flying objects are signs of calamity to the superstitious."

[from_scratch]

"That's not so bad. All right. Wanna go to space today?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"You're immortal, or claim to be. I'm not. It's safe and reliable?"

[from_scratch]

"Yeah, humans in the mortal world I'm accustomed to do space travel routinely. Some of them live on the moon and others have colonized a second planet."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"In that case, yes. I'd like to try to learn one of your languages at some point, even if there's no translation-dictionary. Seems like it'd be convenient."

[from_scratch]

"Sure. How do you best learn second languages?" asks Cam, picking a flattish spot to make a little two-seat shuttle.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I learned Henta by listening to a description of the grammar, learning the alphabet, memorizing a few basic nouns and verbs, then total immersion because I was in the Crownlands."

[from_scratch]

"And that seemed pretty straightforward to you? All right. So, I speak lots of languages, and my computer can translate serviceably between all of them. You want something similar in structure to one of yours? Something you'll find easy to pronounce? Language with the best vocabulary and most native work?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"It could have gone better, but I managed." In Henta, "Hard work may not make an adult, but avoiding it makes a child. That's an old proverb, and one I took to heart. A compromise between grammar and most available work, would be nice."

[from_scratch]

"Okay... do you mind viciously terrible writing systems? Because Chinese is very popular, especially in writing where the dialects don't compete, and it's got deliciously simple grammar, and its characters look like this and there's thousands of them." He shows her a sample on his computer. And opens up his spaceship and motions her in.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel pauses to investigate the spaceship. "Does it use the Reaction Law to fly? Tlane is symbolic like that, but honestly Chinese doesn't really appeal if there's thousands of different characters to re-learn. I can tolerate grammar in exchange for a phonetic alphabet like Henta has."