delta v over delta t when there is no t

[ertia]

In a bar, there is a girl.

She looks like she has saved up all of her decadent and slothful impulses for a solid decade and is indulging them all at once. She is sprawled on a couch with a book she's only half-reading, and an ice cream sundae, and smiiiiiiling.

Comments

[first_and_final]

Milan resolves to nap the next time Kithabel does, because he should probably sleep eventually; in the meantime, he has flying objects to direct and fruits to create and assorted cosmetic alterations to overhaul yet again and cumulative small pains to add to his total and perhaps he should just be followed by quiet pleasant music wherever he goes, can he do that, let's find out.

[ertia]

That is somewhat beyond him unless he wants to personally conduct it note by note and settle for it being really quiet.

[first_and_final]

He can do that to start out with. It pushes the limits of his concentration but that's a good thing, if he's not pushing the limits of his concentration that is wasted concentration.

[ertia]

Kithabel comes back for another nap eventually. "Have you just been awake this entire time? If you crash for twelve hours that'll do more harm than staying up will gain you. ...Well, normally it would, you seem to cram more into an hour, but it'll still wind up being hell on your nerves."

[first_and_final]

"I've been awake this entire time, this is not the worst I've ever done to my sleep schedule, I'm probably going to try to match yours from now on but I wanted to get as much done as I could in the first rush. How'm I doing?" His lights and water and pebbles swirl through the air.

[ertia]

"I'm not sure how much of that is attentional capacity and how much is momentum but either way it's a very promising start."

[first_and_final]

"A lot of it is attentional capacity," he admits. "Anyway, naptime?"

[ertia]

"Sure. Take your pick of guest rooms, I'll make you an alarm of your own, what do you want it to sound like?"

[first_and_final]

"Oh, whatever you like."

To a guest room! He's been through them all multiple times by now. He has a favourite; it's where he left his backpack. There it is.

[ertia]

She hands him a rock shaped like a turtle. "Pat it and tell it a number of hours and it'll yell at you until you solemnly swear to its satisfaction that you're awake," she tells him. And then she slips into her own room.

[first_and_final]

He puts down his pebbles, extinguishes his lights, disperses the water-spheres into little clouds of mist, tells the alarm rock to give him four hours, flops into bed, turns his blessing down to normal, and falls asleep almost instantly.

[ertia]

Four hours later the alarm rock is singing loud cheerful choir music.

[first_and_final]

Milan wakes up, appeases the alarm rock, reassembles his orbiting arcs of pebbles and lights, and goes to fetch more water to fill out the ranks and some fruit for breakfast and that floor could be smoother and the corners of these steps could be more rounded and...

[ertia]

Kithabel has left him breakfast in her dining room by the time he gets there. It is keeping itself warm.

[first_and_final]

How kind of it. He scarfs down the breakfast and makes the rounds. Any alteration to his surroundings that it occurs to him to try, he does; if it didn't work yesterday maybe it'll work now. He constantly makes his assorted objects fly around and change colour. Perhaps the rocks and water should glow, yes, let's have them do that.

He hasn't ever turned up this high for this long before - technically speaking, he hasn't turned up this high before at all, because he is periodically pushing the total up as far as he can. It might not be sustainable; he has no idea. But if he collapses at some point, well, he can start thinking about moderation then.

[ertia]

Whether he collapses or not is up to him. Kithabel remembers to leave him lunch before she takes her next nap. (It seems like she has drastically reduced food needs.)

[first_and_final]

Since the goal was to match her sleep schedule, he requests another four hours from the alarm rock after he has his lunch. Then it's up again and around again, push push push, will this be the hour that he starts being able to make objects move around without constant personal attention? No? How about now? Also, he should have those drastically reduced food needs. And these plants should produce fruit on command faster.

[ertia]

Well, whether it's expanded attentional capacity or actual momentum improvement, things will happen a little faster today, but he will still be hungry for dinner by the time she makes him dinner and his objects will still fall to the ground if he ignores them.

[first_and_final]

Unacceptable. Clearly he needs to try harder. He can expand his attentional capacity faster if he puts his mind to it. It hurts a lot but he can always cope, that was the fairy's blessing. Fairy curses ought not be messed with but by the same token fairy blessings are very reliable.

[ertia]

The attentional capacity means he can do more things at once, and that does mean he acquires momentum faster, but you have to be approaching sorcerer level to do without food, and he is not there yet.

[first_and_final]

But if he keeps pushing the extent to which he can directly inflict pain on himself with sorcery, maybe he will get there acceptably fast.

He can keep going at this accelerating schedule for quite a while. He's pretty sure he's approaching six times normal mental capacity, so that's one entire Milan to continually hurt himself, between two and four to manage his assorted ongoing effects, and between one and three to focus on whatever else he's trying at the moment.

Can he conjure water or other things out of thin air? Can he plant a new plant and grow it to adulthood? Can he get a butterfly to land on him? Can he alter the taste of his food? Can he detach a strand of one of those lovely climbing vines, beautify it further, and have it fly around with his other orbiting objects, and of course can he strictly forbid it from wilting while it does so? Can he make his music louder, can he get it to automate itself at all, can he likewise automate the flight or colour-changes of his orbiting objects, can he make the orbiting objects perfume themselves prettily and can he automate that, can he stick his pebbles together and unstick them and re-stick different ones in their choreographed flight, can he alter the opacity of Kithabel's windows and if so can he do the same thing to his water-spheres on an ongoing basis, and of course for any effect he has ever successfully accomplished can he do it again, faster, prettier, more ambitiously, in a comprehensive wide-ranging rotation.

[ertia]

Automation is still beyond him. He's not cheating that hard. Conjuration is also not happening. Everything else: yes.

[first_and_final]

Well, then, he can check back on conjuration periodically and keep working on the everything else.

Perhaps he can coax flowers out of his orbiting vine. Perhaps he can go back and get a branch of one of the fruiting plants and coax flowers and subsequently fruits out of that, and go around with a constant source of more food to eat and play with. Perhaps he can make his pebbles transparent in addition to making his water opaque. Perhaps he can make his pebbles larger or smaller. If he can make them bigger and then split them into more pebbles and then rejoin them to other ones and make them smaller again, that's yet another thing he can go around constantly doing. And the colour changes on all these objects can be intricately patterned instead of simple. And they can cycle through colours and patterns and opacities and scents and musical notes and - densities, can he do densities - and so forth all the time. While also constantly orbiting him.

Indulging his hubristic and meddlesome nature is fun.

[ertia]

He makes an entertaining picture like that.

Would he like to accompany Kithabel on her tasks this waking-period? She can fly him along with herself and he can see if anything she gets up to is inspiring.

[first_and_final]

Absolutely.