give it all you got, go

[alicornucopia]

At a booth in Milliways sits a woman in her thirties, stirring a cup of tea, watching the stars explode. There is a fat boring-looking lawbook under her elbow, and a barcode across the back of her right hand.

Mark (with kappa)

Ruth (with Maggie)

Comments

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"I...alter the universal gravitational constant of two objects with respect to one another."

[alicornucopia]

Lawbook lady shakes her head. "The people who show up here," she mutters. "Is that all you do?"

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"...Do you mean is that the extent of my powers or do I do anything with my life besides powers, because the answer to both of those questions as I have phrased them is yes. As far as I know, anyway."

[alicornucopia]

Snort. "I meant the first."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"Yeah. It amounts to something that looks a lot like a very idiosyncratic telekinesis. Or so I've been told, anyway."

[alicornucopia]

"Wasn't aware that was a thing with idiosyncrasy to it. My world doesn't have any magic."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"It is...technically not magic, actually."

[alicornucopia]

"Well, my world doesn't have science fiction in real life, either."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"Fair enough. Although what counts as science fiction depends heavily on things like when you are and where you stand relative to baseline early-twenty-first-century Earth, but since the X-Gene showed up while it was still the twentieth century it qualifies more comprehensively than many things."

[alicornucopia]

"I'm in 2015."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"I'm pretty sure that's earlier than normal for cloning technology to be developed, so kudos, you do have science fiction in real life. I'm from 2123."

[alicornucopia]

"Cloning's been around for longer than that. I'm thirty-two."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"Congratulations! You are from a sci-fi world. Probably not as sci-fi as mine, though, it's true, my older brother's a hundred and ninety-seven."

[alicornucopia]

"How is it decided whose worlds are sci-fi? Who gets to be normal?"

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"I'm mostly joking. Milliways tends to attract Earths more often than anything else, and twenty-first century Earths more than most, and there's a sort of cultural and technological standard that you'll probably come to understand if you come in to Milliways often enough. I'm characterizing sci-fi as anything significantly more advanced than standard."

[alicornucopia]

"Ah."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"But we're pretty exceptional even by that standard. Genetic super powers and rejuvenation tech and time travel oh my."

[alicornucopia]

"Sounds nice for you."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"Yeah, I got decanted well after the nasty shit went down."

[alicornucopia]

"Nice friendly wanted-a-kid cloning?"

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"...Bad guys wanted a kid they could brainwash who would hopefully have powers as strong as my brother's and fiddled with my DNA a bit to get it, so I'm arguably not a straight-up clone of my mom but whatever, but got caught before it was time to pop the lid."

[alicornucopia]

"Ah."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"I mean, Mom and Dad were awesome about it, no harm done, they didn't have the opportunity to psychologically scar me even a little bit."

[alicornucopia]

"That's good then."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"The actual nasty stuff I was referring to was...remember how I said my brother was a hundred and ninety seven? And it was 2123?"