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 goes over to the bar much more slowly.

"Hi," he says. "What are my options if I want to stay here for a few weeks but don't necessarily want to pay for it out of my savings?"

[alicornucopia]

Kithabel's credit may extend that far. You can sleep on the couch without paying for a room. You can earn a room by taking a job cleaning or at security or the infirmary. You can run up a tab.

[first_and_final]

"...I think I'll go for cleaning," he says. "I'm better than nothing as a healer but I don't think I'm up to interplanar-bar-infirmary levels. Thanks. And can I borrow a book? Something in the 'sad but funny and with a hopeful ending' category of fiction."

[alicornucopia]

Bar provides, of course.

[first_and_final]

Milan spends the next two weeks pretty much entirely in his room, emerging only to get food, clean things, and exchange old books for new, during which time he strives not to interact with anyone except Bar, to whom he is unfailingly polite but very taciturn.

By week three he's starting to turn around. He ventures out the back door and fucks around with the landscape and makes some lake water do intricate tricks. He smiles at Kithabel next time he sees her.

[ertia]

Kithabel is in a hammock in the backyard eating something called an "ice cream bar" and reading a book. "Oh look, you found your personality."

[first_and_final]

He giggles.

[ertia]

"You good to go? I'm starting to actually get tired of reading, which I had not imagined possible."

[first_and_final]

He thinks about it.

"I need another half-day to wrench my sleep schedule back on track. And in case I drop my personality and it rolls under the bed for another week. After that I think I'm good."

[ertia]

Kithabel laughs. "All right, let me know."

[first_and_final]

"Will do."

He goes back to Bar and gets a short introductory engineering textbook from some world or other and reads it and sleeps for four hours and gives it back to Bar and finds Kithabel again.

[ertia]

Kithabel has been introducing herself to "movies". But she has a bunch to bring home with her and doesn't mind interrupting her current viewing. "All set?"

[first_and_final]

"All set!"

[ertia]

They go home and resume sorcering.

[first_and_final]

Milan does so much sorcering. He's pretty sure he has surpassed six times normal mental capacity and is trundling steadily toward seven. He is going to have the fastest-growing momentum in history.

When can he start helping Kithabel out on projects of meaningful size?

When can he start flying?

[ertia]

He can start helping now, if he wants!

...Flying, not yet.

Kithabel makes a habit of doing all her sleeping in Milliways, since she can get doors at will.

[first_and_final]

Milan thinks this is an extremely sensible habit and he picks it up as well. (Having Kithabel to manage the paying-attention-to-time part of maintaining a sleep schedule is extremely beneficial and he would not be doing nearly so well at the biphasic thing if he didn't have the external cue, so following her shifting schedule would be a good idea even if it didn't also let him effectively spend zero time sleeping.)

...

With zero effective time spent sleeping, and a maximum mental capacity climbing steadily from seven times normal, it is not going to take him all that long until he can fly, is it. (Although becoming effortless master of all he surveys is still a frustratingly long way off.)

[ertia]

He can set a record. (Kithabel approached the previous record but did not break it. She will try not to grumble.)

[first_and_final]

He has outrageously unfair advantages. Kithabel can be the best sorcerer in the world who isn't a flagrant cheater.

So, he does cooperative projects with Kithabel and manages an ever-increasingly complex entourage of assorted performing objects and pushes for flight and automation and more things more things more things. As many things as he can possibly do. More things than that.

[ertia]

Kithabel acquires a small entourage of things, but she can't pay attention to nearly as many as Milan. Oh well.

When Kithabel thinks Milan will be able to fly any day now, they go into Milliways for naps and there is someone there.

[taste_tester]

"Hello. And what're your life stories?"

[first_and_final]

"Complicated. You?"

[taste_tester]

"Also! You from an Earth or not an Earth, it's fifty-fifty so far."

[ertia]

"Not an Earth. I'm a sorceress, he's working on it, he moved to my world because his... was dangerous," she amends from something less polite.

[first_and_final]

"Sorcering is fun. I'm not from an Earth either. Can I ask, are you human? You don't quite look it."