high-energy physics

[warpfairy]

Federation political prisons are not particularly uncomfortable. She's not going anywhere, but she can read, she's considering taking up an instrument, the only really awkward thing is that she doesn't particularly want to be supervised while she's sweating her way through her next pon farr one way or another but that's years off. That and she wishes she'd taken longer to get caught. But she was running out of the really low-hanging fruit anyway.

This is what she signed up for. She makes up imaginary profiles of people on the planets she got to, people who can live longer fuller lives with the stars in reach, one per day. One per day and she'll have loads of estimated impact left unused when she dies. Perfectly reasonable tradeoff and she can still read books.

Someone wants to interview her about Vulcan; they don't want to lose anything that anybody remembers; she gives the interview and then picks up some poetry.

Comments

[subtly_artistic]

"Patient confidentiality," sighs Bella. "Doesn't affect what they can say, just me."

[lintamande]

"Subtle arts lets you do all kinds of things," Fëanáro says, "like make it impossible for people to do a thing. And if it's impossible for my mom to kill me then the Oath lets her wait. Forever."

[warpfairy]

"That's, um."

[subtly_artistic]

"Nice for her but creepy that I can do that?"

[warpfairy]

"Yes, exactly."

[subtly_artistic]

"Well, I don't just go around doing subtle arts to people."

[lintamande]

"She gave the whole continent a lecture about therapeutic ethics," Rúmil says, "That provoked picketing of a major deity."

[warpfairy]

"...what was the major deity doing?"

[lintamande]

"He was responsible for bringing the dead back to life, and he was fixing them first. With consent, but Bella felt it wasn't very much consent if they had to work with him to stop be dead."

[warpfairy]

"...fixing... them?"

[lintamande]

"Those who have been under the correction of Mandos will not speak of it, and indeed, being healed, remember little of it; for they have returned to their natural courses, and the unnatural and perverted is no longer in the continuity of their lives." He says this steadily, as if speaking from memory.

[warpfairy]

[subtly_artistic]

"I first noticed there was a problem when I heard the reembodied were coming back with fuzzy memories - not even just of being dead, but of things before that. I could clear off the fuzz, but that wasn't quite - everything. Sooooo I gave a really passive aggressive lecture."

[lintamande]

"It worked at persuading the populace. Did not impress the Valar." Rúmil is beaming at her.

[subtly_artistic]

"Maybe they're fated to be - that."

[lintamande]

He frowns. "I did worry that - that somehow, things always end up happening in a manner close to how it's fated, that they can't have the information they'd need to actually change - but here we are. That's not in fate. I think we may have outrun it."

[subtly_artistic]

"I know I managed to give it a solid kick, I just don't know if I managed to knock it over and steal its toys. Valar fates might be harder to knock over. They might be stuck acting in ways that would make more sense if I weren't going around kicking things."

[lintamande]

"I've been debating whether it's worthwhile to negotiate with them. Get messaging up, observe that Fëanáro would go home sometimes to see his parents if he could be assured he wouldn't be trapped there, get their promise not to do that..."

[subtly_artistic]

"- I'm not optimistic they'd give it. I'm not sure they know how compromise works. They're not supposed to have to compromise, not with incarnates."

[lintamande]

"Finwë won't leave Valinor while his people desire to remain."

[subtly_artistic]

"Yeah. Although you said there'd been some attrition - how much?"

[lintamande]

"People were scouting for a relatively safe place to build a new city. Lots of interest in the city once it was built, but that'll take Years."

[subtly_artistic]

"Naturally."

[lintamande]

"I think my parents will have more children," Fëanáro says. "Normal children. Who are happy in Valinor. They'll be okay without me."

[subtly_artistic]

"Children are not a fungible resource."