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]

I can do pure intentional communication.

[lintamande]

We can do transmission. We shouldn't listen at all if the person we're speaking with doesn't know how to do intentional communitication, we'll catch everything.

[subtly_artistic]

I'll take point and find somebody for Fëanáro to sponge at and tell them how to aim thoughts at you two.

And eventually Bella has located them a family of Davlians who are very curious about them and the mom of whom definitely does not admit to being significant political shaker in Federation-related shenanigans. The small children will happily jabber at Fëanáro and think it's cool that he can tell what they mean without knowing Davlian yet.

[lintamande]

Fëanáro is going to know Davlian really really fast just you wait.

[subtly_artistic]

And meanwhile the definitely not a politician mom and the actually not a politician dad are happy to help their visitors sort out accommodations. Do they all four want to live together?

[warpfairy]

(T'Mir manages to pick up on the way in which Mom Davlian is definitely not a politician and gamely attempts to be definitely not the warp equation dispenser in the same way.)

[lintamande]

All together sounds nice, if that won't cause any political complications, Rúmil says to her privately.

[subtly_artistic]

Yes, all four together, but they're accustomed to private bedrooms if that's something Davlian architecture accommodates gracefully?

And it turns out Davlian architecture can do exactly that and here is an apartment in a building that looks very spiffy and has a sort of brook running constantly in a groove in some of the walls in lieu of more conventional plumbing and the beds dipped under and flush with the floor. Four bedrooms.

[lintamande]

Fëanáro is Not Tired and is not done learning the language.

[warpfairy]

The Davlian family will come up and show them the place and show them where to get food! They have the correct orientation of proteins and a Federation ambassador's attaché back when Davlia was still considering joining up cleared all the staples on a tox screen for both of T'Mir's parent species - which means Bella's safe which probably means the Quendi are safe too. Whether they'll like it is another matter. Here, have a bowl of priv.

[lintamande]

The Quendi are curious. The Quendi prefer Tirion's food. No gods here, though, and these are the tradeoffs one must make.

[warpfairy]

"The Federation will trade to some extent with nonmembers; once we're set up we can import Earth crops."

[subtly_artistic]

"Sounds great," says Bella, suffering through her bowl of priv.

[lintamande]

"We're trying to get the kind of trees that do whatever seems nicest," Fëanáro says, "but it seems like a hard problem."

[subtly_artistic]

"Yeah, directly copying Vala-exclusive tricks is very epic."

[lintamande]

"So how many Bellas and Fëanáros do we need to find?"

[subtly_artistic]

"Possibly as many as four."

[lintamande]

"This galaxy just might be big enough to hold them."

[warpfairy]

"There's more galaxies and you can apparently teleport, if it's really one-Bella-or-Fëanáro-to-a-quadrant."

[lintamande]

"I mean big enough we don't have to make ourselves small," he says.

[warpfairy]

"What do you mean?"

[subtly_artistic]

"Metaphor for - limiting our capacities and ambitions so that my universe doesn't eat you or the Valar don't get spooked or whatever."

[lintamande]

"Valinor didn't want us to grow too fast. Materia didn't want you to want to be grown at all. Here I think we can just - do things that matter, and learn, and invent, and it'll be okay."

[subtly_artistic]

"It looks that way. Or at least if something stops us it'll be regular people, like the Federation."

[lintamande]

"Why would they stop us?"