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

[lintamande]

"You're Bella in a universe that doesn't eat people," Fëanáro says, as if this explains everything.

[warpfairy]

"I suppose I am."

[subtly_artistic]

"Materia probably stunted my growth. I imagine typical specs for being one of us involve way more hubris than I have."

[lintamande]

"She invented so much stuff in Valinor," Fëanáro says. "So fast."

[warpfairy]

"I've never been the inventor type. Survey's not a very demanding occupation and people kept telling me I was wasted in it. But at last estimate giving out warp like I did had a lives saved count exceeding twenty billion so I think I made out okay."

[subtly_artistic]

...Bella makes a small envious noise.

[lintamande]

"...does that job still need doing?" Rúmil says.

[warpfairy]

"It won't work the same way anymore. The Federation caught me and now they've got a procedure to check for 'tampering' and delay or refuse membership for societies that didn't invent or acquire warp on their own and impose trade sanctions; having warp would still be better for some of these places than not having it but it's no longer a ticket to a seat at the galactic table and Federation post-scarcity plenty. There's also a sweet spot of high tech enough to make use of warp equations and not about to invent them next year anyway and I was actually having a harder time finding any that met the criteria by the time I got arrested."

[lintamande]

"And changing Federation policy so that warp equations aren't the only way for a society to have plenty and opportunity?"

[warpfairy]

"Long annoying political project difficult to achieve from political exile, although no harder than it would have been from jail. Worth doing, will not produce numbers like twenty billion in spans like five years."

[lintamande]

He nods. "Congratulations."

[warpfairy]

"Thanks."

[lintamande]

"The Arda refugee place could be that," Fëanáro says.

"I was thinking the same thing," he says, "a pre-warp society that obviously benefits from post-scarcity and galactic contact while retaining its own character."

[subtly_artistic]

"Teleportation's faster than warp anyway."

[lintamande]

"It'd be ridiculous to keep us out of the galactic community," Rúmil says, "but there we'll be, not having warp."

[warpfairy]

"...That will put the Federation in a really funny pickle."

[lintamande]

"And before they've decided what to do about us we can always go around to other pre-warp societies, let them know they're not alone out there."

[warpfairy]

"In which case they won't have to be on the cusp of developing the tech."

[lintamande]

"Twenty billion in five years sets up a pretty high bar. Maybe if we make contact with a few hundred far pre-contact planets, teach them arcane healing..."

[warpfairy]

"Ooh, that might have very different scaling prospects than medical tricorders and advanced drug synthesis and such."

[lintamande]

"In Valinor it caught on pretty quickly. I don't know what sorts of beings it works on, though."

[subtly_artistic]

"It's really all purpose on Materia but maybe not universal here."

[lintamande]

"We can test that," Fëanáro pipes up. "I'll go ask the locals as soon as I have some mana."

[warpfairy]

"Well, Davlians might be different from other species we could meet, there's tons of variety. - I wonder if your psi works on species that are conventionally immune to it, Ferengi and such."

[lintamande]

"We should write up a list of experiments," Rúmil says gently, when Fëanáro looks paralyzed with indecision.