mortal is as mortal does

[imeanforever]

Promise is looking for dewdrops. She has just learned to candy them herself - it's not hard, if she does it in her own tree instead of in the field. So she's brushing the droplets into a little wooden cup. They blend together but she can separate them out again later.

Comments

[imeanforever]

"Oh. How?"

[ending_of]

"I did not principally design the system and do not pay attention to the details," she says. "If you would like to learn more, you can travel to my domain when I return."

[imeanforever]

"You don't pay attention? Why?"

[ending_of]

"The daily activities of residents in my domain do not interest me very much. Do they interest you?"

[imeanforever]

"Well, yes. They're going on forever, after all."

[ending_of]

"You may investigate them as much as you like."

[imeanforever]

"I might want to do this before you add more mortals than you may already have to it."

[ending_of]

"The inhabitants of your mortal world are unlikely to be woken and sorted very soon after I begin collecting them," she says. "The backlog is large."

[imeanforever]

"If I don't like how your dead mortals are being managed can I go to you with complaints?"

[ending_of]

"It has been a very long time since the current system was designed. I will not be annoyed if you propose alternatives."

[imeanforever]

"How likely are you to implement them?"

[ending_of]

"I will implement them if they seem like improvements. I will not implement them if they seem likely to annoy me."

[imeanforever]

"All right. I'll go start a second gate to your world, but I need a geographic feature to aim at."

[ending_of]

"My tower is the most distinctive feature of my domain. It is the tallest object on the plane by a wide margin."

[imeanforever]

"That will do."

Promise goes out again. Promise comes back again.

"That one settled right away, compatible harmonics," she says. "We could go there now and come back to check the other gate later."

[ending_of]

The administrator thinks about this, and then stands up. (Ugh. Walking.)

[imeanforever]

Promise shows her to the gate and leads her through. It goes to the ground at the base of the tower.

[ending_of]

Now they are not there anymore; they are instead standing in the room at the top of the tower, surrounded on all sides by a single curved glass window. There is an armchair off to one side. The administrator sits in it.

"What hazards are you subject to?" she wonders.

[imeanforever]

"What do you mean?"

[ending_of]

"Would it be inconvenient for you if a resident here learned your name, in the same way that it would have been inconvenient for me if a resident of your world gained access to mine in some way? I would not like you to be inconvenienced in that way while you are here."

[imeanforever]

"Yes. I can be envassaled if someone learns my name, or if a mortal feeds me mortal food without first being my vassal."

[ending_of]

"If I give you the ability to instantiate objects from the category 'food', will that protect you adequately against the second possibility?"

[imeanforever]

"Uh - maybe. I don't know. I don't count as my own vassal; a mortal could probably still command me even if I took their food of my own accord, and I don't know where - instantiated food would count as having come from."

[ending_of]

"It comes spontaneously into existence at your direction. I find it hard to imagine a way in which it might count as belonging to anyone else."

[imeanforever]

"It might make it very unlikely for whoever could possibly own it to find me and try telling me to do anything, anyway. I cannot guarantee that it will work perfectly, or that this power being from you won't make it count as your food."