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]

He considers this.

"...I suspect that there would be significant time spent in Milliways being gooey about it," he says. "I'm not sure about other plans. The basic trajectory of our lives doesn't seem like it would have to shift much if instead of going to Milliways to sleep we went to Milliways to indulge in magical vampire romance. Except I guess I would be strongly motivated to keep living in your world, or ask you to move to mine, after I go home and overthrow the gods. ...And if I go home and fail to overthrow the gods you might be very sad so it would be a good idea to wait until you can resurrect the dead to try that, but that was already going to be a good idea purely on practical grounds..."

[ertia]

"...Will your world let me get you back if it kills you or will it just... keep you? I have no idea how interdimensional resurrection works. Maybe we should test that first, go home until I'm resurrection-capable and then get somebody dead from your world."

[first_and_final]

"Sure. I have a handy grandfather," he snorts.

[ertia]

"This is potentially years off. Maybe less given one or the other method of cheating on sleeping. I do not want to be sad forever if your world kills you and won't let you go."

[first_and_final]

"...I think even if we didn't manage to resurrect my grandfather I'd still want to go home and overthrow the gods eventually, although I'd certainly prefer to have the reassurance first," he says. "So unfortunately you might be better off waiting, if you're very sure you don't want to take the risk."

[ertia]

"Which will give me more time to contemplate the possibility of the squishy feelings and see what I think of it."

[taste_tester]

"I should probably warn you that vampire/human relations are notoriously squishy in a bad way."

[first_and_final]

[taste_tester]

"Sorry."

[ertia]

"Thank you, Addy."

[first_and_final]

"...On a largely unrelated note, I wonder if it's possible to use sorcery to stop being a vampire, and whether that ability would be useful to us," says Milan.

[ertia]

"I'm going to guess that as usual the answer to the first is 'eventually' and the latter 'maybe'."

[first_and_final]

"Well, anyway, no rush."

[ertia]

"Yeah, I think I'll sit on this question for a while, try resurrecting your grandfather - you might get there first but the question is whether I can do it without the possible advantage of being from or having been to your world - and go from there."

[first_and_final]

"Yeah. ...You know what would be really convenient is if I could turn into a vampire another six or seven times, my peak capacity right now is only a little more than four times the new normal and it's going to be so hard to scale up under my own power."

[taste_tester]

"I will stick around to bite you one more time. But it's possible your witchcraft will stick even if you ditch your new species and that it won't like venom in your system."

[first_and_final]

"That would be inconvenient, admittedly..."

[taste_tester]

"Quite."

[first_and_final]

"Can it be persuaded, do you think?"

[taste_tester]

"I'm really not sure. You might be able to go around it and just sorcer yourself back into vampirehood, I don't think it'd object to that? But that's not the outcome you're looking for."

[first_and_final]

"It's a better outcome than quitting vampirism and then having to stay quit forever," he muses.

[taste_tester]

"Mm-hm. Might also, peripherally, screw around with your memory clarity."

[first_and_final]

"Yeah, it would be pretty weird all around and I'm not at all sure it's worth it just for the scaling when I can manage that myself slower," he says. "If we want to test turning vampires into no longer vampires, probably safer to hang around Milliways waiting for a better candidate."

[ertia]

"Sounds like a plan, although I don't know how reliably the place will comply."

[first_and_final]

"Well, we're not in a hurry, are we?"