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]

"Sure. The island won't be that interesting to look at to start with, though. I'd want to talk to people who wanted to live on it before I made anything on it besides a house for myself and basic infrastructure stuff.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"You'll have more luck finding immigrants among non-shapers. They are underprivileged and will not lament the lack of established bluestream."

[from_scratch]

"Well, nothing I make will require shaping to use, which I imagine would also help. I'd find this city kind of uninviting if I couldn't fly."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"That's why there are elevators, you see."

[from_scratch]

"I didn't say unusable, I said uninviting."

[sturdycoldsteel]

Shrug. "Shall we fly to your hidden shuttle?"

[from_scratch]

"Sounds like a plan."

[sturdycoldsteel]

So they fly. It takes a few hours, and it drizzles along the way.

The shuttle is undisturbed. Steel asks, "Can I get a quick drying?"

[from_scratch]

She is fluffed with hot dry air.

When the shuttle is unburied, Cam rinses it off, and then hops in.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel follows. "I might want one of these. It would be awfully convenient in some ways, I think."

[from_scratch]

"The shuttle? They're a little harder to pilot than I'm making it look, if you want to do anything more than point-to-point, but maybe that'd do it for you. I could make something less complicated that would handle that though."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Point to point would do it. For visiting cities and advertising your shiny new island. We might want regular trips to the various existing places and back, if we find any cooperative municipalities."

[from_scratch]

"I was thinking bridge with an automatic train."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Bridges can be destroyed by someone sufficiently determined, and cannot reroute as easily. If you find a relatively unclaimed spot and claim the far side it might work, though."

[from_scratch]

"What is the state of the bridge-destroying art?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Pyre-fire burns hot enough to melt most metals. Sugar-oxygen bombs are unstable but powerful. You can make a nick and repeatedly freeze and melt water inside it to force something apart. If they were really determined they would start flinging boulders the size of buildings and slugs of metal the size of people at it."

[from_scratch]

"Okay," shrugs Cam, "I'll get exotic with my bridge materials and be ready to make ferries if someone gets past them."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"If you think that'll take care of it. Time to fly over the sea looking for convenient islands?"

[from_scratch]

"After I designed one? It'd have to be a hell of a natural island to grab me."

But he lifts off and flies out towards the sea.

[sturdycoldsteel]

The sea is past several hundred miles of land.



There are no amazing, perfectly positioned natural islands.

[from_scratch]

Well, now there is an amazing, perfectly positioned unnatural island.

Cam lands on it; the land meets the ship just as much as the ship meets the land.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"The things you can do continue to be slightly unnerving. I'm tempted to never draw circles again, in case I get someone like Durant."

[from_scratch]

"Durant?" Cam hops out of his ship.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"He's the richest man in Opri, thanks to his buddy-buddy relationship with Kell, tax exemptions, protection rackets, and monopolies on certain services."

[from_scratch]

"I mean, that would be an unfortunate daeva to summon, but the ones you'd really have to worry about would be more overtly destructive than - I mean, accumulating capital is not a thing in Hell or Heaven, it's probably a thing in Fairyland but then you'd just have a fairy participating in your economy, that's not such a disaster."