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]

In that case he will try learning Japanese! Would she like to speak it for the rest of the conversation? That's the fastest way he'll learn.

[warpfairy]

The linguist can do that!

(Now the Bellas are talking to each other telepathically, a little distracted from bamboozling the science officer and refusing to explain her tricorder readings.)

[lintamande]

Rúmil is not as oblivious as Fëanáro and will notice this, but not do anything, except step up the bamboozling to the degree this can be done. Fëanáro will startle the linguist slightly by using osanwë to pull Japanese vocabulary out of her head so he can speak faster.

[warpfairy]

The linguist is indeed startled! Are Quendi psionic? (The science officer is distracted by this question.)

[lintamande]

They are! They have decided not to reveal all of their range but do say that it can be up to a mile.

[warpfairy]

Gosh. That's competitive with Betazoids, says the science officer. They don't have a Betazoid handy.

[lintamande]

He hasn't met a Betazoid, what are they like?

[warpfairy]

So the science officer talks about Betazoids, who are very psionic indeed and casually read minds a lot. (T'Mir opines that this is very rude of them and they think she's rude when she goes around blocking scans in places with significant Betazoid populations.)

[lintamande]

Some cultures of the Quendi read minds a lot and some only do it to communicate but all Quendi learn how to keep thoughts private.

[warpfairy]

And how does one do that, the science officer would like to know? The Betazoids don't seem to abide by an equivalent distinction.

[lintamande]

So he patiently explains how Quendi can make their thoughts private to osanwë, it should work for humans but Bella's a subtle artist so he hasn't actually had the chance to try.

[warpfairy]

She's a what? says the science officer.

[lintamande]

"Her species has psi too."

[subtly_artistic]

It's convenient.

[warpfairy]

They'd been assuming she was a human. Huh.

[lintamande]

The people settling this planet look human but some have psi. Maybe there's a Betazoid ancestor. Is that how ancestry works?

[warpfairy]

Half-Betazoid half-humans have psi, but less than Betazoids, and usually only do emotions, not anything more complex on their own. Quarter-Betazoids have even less than that.

(T'Mir volunteers that she's got a below-average but still similar to a full Vulcan dose of her own variety.)

[lintamande]

Maybe the people here have Quendi ancestry, then. Fëanáro shrugs. There aren't any Quendi here yet because it's not pretty enough but eventually there might be.

[warpfairy]

The Starfleet anthropologist is curious about that!

[lintamande]

Quendi like beautiful things. He'll show her Valinor.

[warpfairy]

The Starfleet anthropologist is really impressed!

[lintamande]

"We are," he says rather pointedly, "very pre-warp, we just invented writing. But the gods help when they're not hindering and Bella's world was nearby and more advanced."

[warpfairy]

The Starfleet people are all politely curious about the "gods".

[lintamande]

They created the world and one of them was evil and kidnapped and tortured Quendi but the other ones were good and stopped him and invited the Quendi to come live in Valinor. And they were trying to teach all sorts of things, but panicked at Fëanáro and so he had to leave.

[warpfairy]

The Starfleet people are all very politely skeptical about these entities' godhood but move on when they have this explanation.