the place to be

[point_b]

Bella finds it.

"Alli!" she twines. "C'mere."

"You c'mere. Easier for you."

"No, you need to come look at this, seriously."

"Okay, fine, where are you?"

"Garage."

So Alli comes out to the garage. Their parents aren't home; Charlie's working, Renée is volunteering with some of the refugee kids at a shelter, trying to find which have parents who just wound up somewhere else, which need adopting, which are going to wind up coming of age adrift in the bursting-at-the-seams system. It's just them, not attending school, recovering.

"Whoa," says Alli. "So when you said you were at the garage, you meant that you were at the freakish restaurant that someone put in our garage."

"This isn't somebody's idea of remodeling," Bella says. "It's too big to be the garage."

"Do you think it's safe?"

"I think one of you should go in first, for sure."

"We don't actually know if I work that way," say two Alli voices, but Bella pushes one of them towards the door anyway.

Nothing happens.

The Allis converge, inside the bar. Bella follows.

Comments

[point_b]

"Thank you for that mental soundtrack."

[iamnotpolaris]

[whatamithinking]

"Sorry."

[thinkering]

"What color do you want your ashbot, and do you have a use for small unfaceted diamonds?" asks Lorica.

[point_b]

"...Blue, and, uh, not... really...? I think the De Beers cartel makes it pretty impossible to trade in them usefully? But that might change, or I might be wrong, and I don't know what the alternative is."

[thinkering]

"I could make it facet them but I'd need more parts than I originally budgeted. Eh, I'll just have the ash annihilated and then you won't have to plug it in." Lorica hops to her feet and collects some more objects from Bar.

[whatamithinking]

"Blue's a good color. I'm pretty sure you can pawn diamonds even if you can't set up a jewelry shop with them."

[point_b]

"Unfaceted ones?" says Flicker. "You think?"

[whatamithinking]

"Well, they're still diamonds. I'm pretty sure some kinds of gemstone get put into jewelry without facets."

[point_b]

"...Lorica, if I do have to plug it in how much electricity will it need?"

[thinkering]

"Mmm, if you run it all the time in an ashy area - oh, and it'll get dust and any dirt inside your house too, easier that way, but restrict itself to ash outside - maybe forty kilowatt-hours a day?"

[point_b]

"I don't know how much that is."

[thinkering]

"Prrrrobably a little more than powers everything else presently in your house. Do you want a diamonds mode and a power-saving annihilation mode?"

[point_b]

"That sounds great."

[whatamithinking]

"I feel like this is the kind of conversation a normal person would find surreal."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"I'm not a normal person and I find this surreal," Helen volunteers.

[point_b]

"I find it surreal too. Lorica, when it breaks down is it going to have antimatter and shit in it? Is it going to be hard to dispose of after its lifespan is over?"

[thinkering]

"No antimatter! I don't have time to build an antimatter generator and it's outside my specialty anyway and Bar probably doesn't sell it. It'll just stop working and you probably shouldn't open it up but it won't explode."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Technology that doesn't explode is my favorite."

[thinkering]

"...It might make an awful noise. But you can teleport, and better than my dad can even, so just drop it in the sea or something, it won't even poison the fish."

[point_b]

"Are you sure I shouldn't take it apart and try to find a secondary market for that exciting ceramic?"

[thinkering]

"Yyyyeah, don't do that."

[alli_oop]

"You don't call him Charlie."

[thinkering]

"Pardon?"

[point_b]

"When he's not around I often call our dad Charlie and our mom Renée."