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]

"I don't think it's ugly. I don't think I've ever heard a language and thought it was ugly. But some are so beautiful they're a joy to speak."

[warpfairy]

"I wonder what you'd think of Klingon. I only know how to say a couple sentences in it though."

[lintamande]

He looks at her expectantly.

[warpfairy]

She snorts, and says-and-translates that this is the Federation survey vessel Prometheus etc. in mediocre Klingon.

[lintamande]

"I have to learn so many languages."

[warpfairy]

"There's lots! Most people get by with one or two."

[lintamande]

"But aren't they just sad, all the time, that there are all the other ones they don't know?"

[warpfairy]

"Not so much. I only speak English and Vulcan and translations of that utterance in Klingon in a few more languages and that's it."

[lintamande]

"Bella do you think we can invent something like the necklace that makes us go even faster?"

[subtly_artistic]

"I'm not sure it would be a good idea..."

[lintamande]

"Why not?"

[subtly_artistic]

"When we came up with the necklace it was shielding us against an effect that Valinor was having; this would be different, trying to accelerate us as an effect of its own. Also at some point you'd run into problems where you couldn't move fast enough to keep up with your brain if you wanted to do anything other than sit and thing, so it seems like a good idea to focus on ways to be more efficient that don't have that problem first and then resort to that later if we really need it. T'Mir, ballpark how many languages are there in the galaxy here?"

[warpfairy]

"Um - with living speaking populations - counting uncontacted planets - certainly billions, possibly tens or hundreds of billions."

[subtly_artistic]

"...and I think you'd run into a problem if you decided you had to learn them all this week and the best way to do it was going faster. You might be able to invent a magic thing that helps with languages in particular? There's translation magic in Materia, you could try to come up with a kind that teaches instead of just translating."

[lintamande]

"I guess I can't learn all the languages before we fix everything else on this plane, then."

[subtly_artistic]

"Yep. And as long as you can't learn them all in anything resembling a timely manner however fast you go it seems more efficient to find a way to deal with not knowing them than to just try to go really really fast."

[lintamande]

"Like doing other interesting things. I can tolerate not doing all the interesting things if I'm doing some of them and they're really interesting and this is."

[subtly_artistic]

"Sure."

[lintamande]

"Should we work on the teleport? They might look over T'Mir's ship when they're looking for her if they notice we vanished her."

[subtly_artistic]

"They might. So we'll have to be able to leave behind people who might be in the ship... Would that maybe put them far enough off the ground to hurt them?"

[warpfairy]

"Uh, it might actually be docked and in vacuum. If there are people on the ship it's probably better to bring them along with it and then put them back somewhere with air."

[lintamande]

Everyone nods earnestly despite only having had a couple weeks to figure out what vacuum is.

[warpfairy]

"Or maybe send two people, one to clear the occupants off to a location with air and then go home, and one to bring the ship back."

[lintamande]

"What kind of reaction should we expect from the Federation, T'Mir?" asks Rúmil, frowning.

[warpfairy]

"They take the Prime Directive very seriously and will definitely want me in custody. I am almost positive they won't attack Davlia over it. Taking my ship back is only illegal as a direct result of my not being allowed to go places because I'm supposed to be in jail; they don't claim ownership of it per se. So they'd take the opportunity to perform a rearrest if possible but it wouldn't compound the crime of jailbreak. Or is that not what you mean?"