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

[whatamithinking]

"Well, I added the latter qualifier for a reason! I imagine that world wouldn't have one of you in it, granted."

[point_b]

"No, I mean, even if everybody was pretty chill about it to begin with the vision of society it presents is intrinsically grotesque to me. Even if you assume that everyone is stably chill about it. Which I don't think is a safe assumption in any large population of humans you aren't mind-controlling, that they will always be okay with anyone within a few miles who has a whim to check out their brain in arbitrary detail."

[whatamithinking]

shrug. "I suppose. I'm not proposing instantiating such a world, in any case."

[point_b]

"Good."

[whatamithinking]

"I should probably mention, though--telepaths can keep other telepaths out, my kind at least. I was less thinking 'anyone can read anyone else's mind whenever' and more 'it happens if the police get a warrant.'"

[point_b]

"So: thoughtcrime. Or: a world populated entirely by saints who wouldn't dream of enforcing thoughtcrime even if it was really easy and nobody with nothing to hide would mind."

[whatamithinking]

"I also wasn't assuming a human-compatible psychology. And would be taking more than five minutes to consider problems with the system. And wouldn't actually seriously suggest this even if I was given a chance to instantiate a world."

[point_b]

"Oh, if we're not talking about humans maybe this works without being horrible in some way."

[whatamithinking]

"Yeah, Milliways finds humans most often but there are nonhuman sapient species out there."

[point_b]

"Doesn't surprise me, really. Are there aliens that everybody has or is it like Yellowstone, some places have them and some don't?"

[whatamithinking]

"Well, it's like Yellowstone, but also there are some nonhuman species that have never heard of Earth or humans before, so it's not just an accessory that some human worlds have."

[point_b]

"Mostly I wanted to know if there was someplace we ought to be looking."

[whatamithinking]

"Aha, no. I mean, statistically the universe is big enough that I suspect Earths aren't actually usually the only planet with life, but there's a difference between 'has life' and 'interesting sci-fi aliens.'"

[point_b]

"A bit, yes."

[whatamithinking]

"Given how Earthlike Milliways' outdoors is, I suspect its human-centricism has more to do with Milliways than with the nature of the multiverse."

[point_b]

"I haven't seen the outdoors yet. Is it interestingly Earthlike or meh Earthlike?"

[whatamithinking]

"It has a lake and a forest and a mountain in the distance. The lake's a bit cold, but otherwise good for swimming."

[point_b]

"Does it come to an abrupt stop with exploding stars in the distance after that?"

[whatamithinking]

"I would not consider that good for swimming!"

[point_b]

"Why not? They're certainly striking through the window and I assume if it was a functional vacuum it would slurp up the lake, so it would just be a view."

[whatamithinking]

"Okay, true, but the mental image you initially generated was one where you might go over the edge by accident."

[point_b]

"Wasn't what I had in mind. So what is past the lake and the mountain and the forest?"

[whatamithinking]

"If you go far enough you just sort of loop back around and end up in the general area again."

[point_b]

"...Okay, now I want to figure out how my sense-of-place reacts to it."

[whatamithinking]

"Knock yourself out. That door leads outside," she says, pointing.