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]

"This plane probably has some unoccupied planets too, we could put them there."

[warpfairy]

"Sure, plenty. If you want to go steal my ship out of impound we could all cram into it and go looking for one that isn't claimed, it's designed for survey."

[lintamande]

"Tomorrow," Fëanáro says, "when I have mana, we shall steal a starship."

[warpfairy]

"It's called the Prometheus but I don't know where they're keeping it."

[lintamande]

"Prometheus," he says. "That's not English. What language is it? What does it mean?"

[warpfairy]

"...Greek. It means 'forethought', but I named the ship that because there's a mythological figure called Prometheus who was said to have stolen fire from equally mythological gods and granted it to humans. And then the gods were irritated with him and chained him to a rock and had his liver eaten once daily by a bird, which is a lot worse than Federation political prison."

[lintamande]

"Where's he? Rúmil, you still have mana for two teleports, right?"

[warpfairy]

"Mythological," says T'Mir. "He did not exist, it's a story, it is not necessary to go rescue chained-up Titans."

[lintamande]

"It's sort of like what Manwë did to Bella, if Manwë were more gruesome and less callous."

[warpfairy]

"Less callous?"

[subtly_artistic]

"...no, you know what, I think getting sent to Materia is actually a clear win over being chained to a rock and having my liver eaten every day, Materia might well have killed me but I'd have had decent odds of it being quick and instead all that happened was I got my degree and my license and saw some patients."

[lintamande]

"Still," he says. "It wouldn't have taken me six years to rescue you from a rock."

[subtly_artistic]

"This is true but however long it took you I would probably have gotten my liver eaten and that just sounds irretrievably unpleasant."

[lintamande]

"I am pretty sure the Valar would have had a war on their hands," Rúmil says.

[subtly_artistic]

"- they couldn't possibly have known if I was dead or alive, under the circumstances, whether it was me or Manwë who was right about whether I'd die, and that didn't do it."

[lintamande]

"They trusted Manwë was right, he swore to it, you were well and happy and back in a mortal university. If he were torturing you - Melkor did that -"

[subtly_artistic]

"- how did he know I went back to school, was he watching? Can he do that?"

[lintamande]

"I have no idea."

[subtly_artistic]

"Well, I played my time there very conservatively because I didn't trust the Valar to have actually safeguarded me against all the hazards. Didn't cast spells in case all my arcana was too science-infested, or tickle sleeping dragons, or do science experiments. It makes a difference in the extent to which he was or was not torturing me that I thought I was in constant danger, even if I wasn't literally chained to a rock."

[lintamande]

Fëanáro hugs her. "I think it's just as bad."

[subtly_artistic]

Hug. "I don't, but it was still pretty bad."

[lintamande]

"Well. No gods here. No one to rescue, except T'Mir, and now we should probably go learn the language. Languages. There might be lots of them!"

[warpfairy]

"It's about fifty-fifty on planets that have a standard planetary language by the time they hit warp level tech," says T'mir, "but they're almost guaranteed to have speaking populations of others who just learn the standard for wider interactions. I don't remember off the top of my head how much my computer had to chew on before I could make forum posts with this planet in particular but the Prometheus would have the notes. Or we can, I suppose, just rely on psi and a small language sponge."

[lintamande]

"I'm older than you," he mutters.

[warpfairy]

"You mentioned. I apologize, I can refrain."