planetary

[dark_light]

Over the next week, Isabella gets the alethiometer to tell her that the planets they looked at don't contain microorganisms that know what to do with a human body (although the one with the giant bugs has some multicellular parasites that might be able to make do with the foreign macro-scale features of a human body if they got the chance). "The present", it includes in one of its answer phrasings, which is kind of worrying. But Adarin makes enough progress with his scry in little enough time that it's worth the double-check.

Isabella also hires ticket-takers, gives them little pots of ink to verify the authenticity of the passes she handed out, and opens the Los Angeles - New York route for the employees of her three companies of choice and anyone who shells out a cool fifteen thousand dollars per round trip (ten K for a one-way). This is steep, but it's within an order of magnitude of what people sometimes pay for short-notice first-class cross-country flights - with less novelty and more hassle. Albeit she doesn't supply inflight meals. She expects to have to raise the price when more people hear about it in response to volume and then be able to drop it again.

By the time the thing has been open for a few days she's fired and replaced one ticket-taker and the others have settled into a routine that she's willing to try out leaving unsupervised for awhile.

If Adarin's up for some up close and personal planet shopping and his results suggest it'll go well, anyway.

Comments

[prodigal_miser]

Getting a scry to work on microorganisms turns out to be pretty simple. He manages it fairly quickly, in fact. Understanding what he sees is another matter. It's completely foreign and most of what he sees he doesn't understand at all. A few days after that, and he manages to get the scrying to be comprehensible, through a jerry-rigged mix of some parts from his translation spell, and the object-based explanation that helps make up the thingamajigs. Once it's working properly, he tests it on things - he manages to detect the common cold on a doorknob and declares it a success.

Then he turns it to the planets they looked at. His results are the same as Isabella's - none of the current microorganisms on any of them can figure out what to do with the human body. With a bit of alarm, he does note that there is a virus on the toxic-crystal moon that could maybe manage it after a while, if given enough time and enough humans around. It's adaptable, and it switches species a lot. If they travel to the moon, they'll have to be careful of it.

He checks the mysteriously empty planet, and finds it completely safe of any murderous microscopic organisms that could harm humans.

With safeties in mind, he's up for travel. All required math for teleportation is completed beforehand, and Zeviana is given all notes for pulling Isabella and Adarin out in case something goes wrong. Grudgingly, she accepts - she'll scry them once every hour and if they look like they're in mortal peril, they will get yanked away.

[dark_light]

Isbaella packs lunch and dinner, tells the person she recently promoted to manager that she'll be gone for no longer than a day and to continue business as usual and raise the price by five K if they get swamped, and then just because she feels like being cute she links elbows with Adarin.

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin is perfectly fine with this development! His sister is informed that they're about to leave, he checks his notes and his math again, then he casts the spell.

It goes without a hitch. They arrive just outside of one of the cities, safe and sound.

"I believe," says Adarin smugly, "that we are the first humans to travel to another solar-system."

[dark_light]

"Is New Kystle not in a solar system, or does it somehow manage to be the same one?" wonders Isabella.

[prodigal_miser]

"Point. But within this plane, at least," he snickers.

[dark_light]

"Yes. Yes we are. Well, I'll fall over if I try to walk around in this mess, you want to fly with me or split up a little and explore?"

[prodigal_miser]

"Flying, please. Splitting up makes me nervous and if there turns out to be invisible giant spiders I'd like to face the menace together."

[dark_light]

"Oh dear, invisible giant spiders. I do hope there aren't any of those." Onto the cloud-pine he goes. Into the city she flies.

It's quiet, and pretty in a post-apocalyptic sort of way. "I think we could repurpose a lot of these buildings, wire in power and plumbing later - if there's plumbing it's probably not still functional and if there's power it won't link up to anything Earthlings currently know how to build."

[prodigal_miser]

"Hmm, yeah. If it holds up to investigations it's probably smart to use this planet. Even if we can't use the buildings, we can probably salvage them for materials to build our own."

[dark_light]

"Yeah."

She flies past a crumbled wall into a sixth-story room wherein there is one of those robots.

As soon as there's line of sight between them and it -

It rolls forward, halts at the edge of the building, bristles with threatening-looking objects, and says - something, too brief for the translation spell to catch.

[prodigal_miser]

"What the-" begins Adarin, staring.

Then he stops trying to figure out what the hell just happened and decides to do the obvious thing. He's practiced shields, and his slowest time was five seconds to think of a unique one.

It's so tempting for young mages to try and tell the air what to do, to tell it to protect them - but Adarin's learned that it's not worth the effort. As a rule, air does not like to stay still. At best it can redirect and slow things down, but it's not any good at stopping. He's not going to waste his time trying.

Instead, he works by location. In a perfect, razor-thin sphere around himself and Isabella, nothing will pass. He gives an exception to air, because suffocating them both is a bad plan. Light is a bit trickier, he doesn't want to give total exception to it - dangerous things can count as light, so he filters that a bit more carefully. Light can pass through and they can therefore see, but he puts it firmly in visual-only range. The result of this is that it tints the shield itself faintly indigo, since that was the most visible end point for what types of light could pass through and now indigo can only partially pass through. Some bounces off, instead, coloring the shield faintly indigo. There are other safeties he automatically adds. A contingency to prevent anything caught in the middle of the shield being injured or cut. The allowance of sound (he's less strict about sound protection than he is about light, but protections are there nonetheless) among other things. He has a list, he has it memorized, he is very thorough with his shields.

Reality, as it stands, does not like to have things that don't make sense. Magic, or at least, Adarin's type of magic, tricks reality into thinking things that normally don't make sense into making sense. With an object - that's easy enough. Tell it once, base it off of something it already knows, weave the spell correctly, and it'll do the equivalent of saying, 'Okay, that makes sense. Carry on.' The object then just exists, no problem, even if it does some things that break the rules. It does them subtly, not doing anything but the thing that made sense because mana told it to do that.

Shields are not based off of anything. There is nothing to blend in with the order of the rest of the cosmos. The existence of one is blatantly and obviously foreign. It did not exist a minute ago, and then it did. It stops things, absolutely, with no weight or mass or anything that would register as an object. It does not make sense. It does not exist.

His magic says otherwise. His magic wins.

But it continues to not exist. So he needs to keep telling reality that it does, using mana, over and over. His reserves aren't infinite, but if luck holds - he won't need to keep it up forever. Just long enough that they don't die from whatever it is that thing is pointing at them.

It takes him two seconds, in total.

[dark_light]

"- Can I fly away with this shield on," Isabella asks him, quickly, quietly, "will it move?"

The robot repeats itself, and the translation spell grabs ahold of it this time:

"IDENTIFY YOURSELF"

[prodigal_miser]

"I can make it move, but warn me first if you're going to fly away," he replies softly. He continues telling reality that the shield exists. It exists, it exists, it exists. "It's harder to keep this up if we move. Maybe we can try diplomacy?"

[dark_light]

Isabella tries the robot's language now there's something for the translation spell to use. "We are -" (she coughs; the language is barely short of unpronounceable) "peaceful visitors from another planet."

"REPEAT YOUR CLAIM FOR VOICE RECOGNITION"

"We are peaceful visitors from another planet," Isabella repeats, shaking a little.

"VERIFY YOUR CLAIM"

"We... look... like aliens," she offers weakly.

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin takes Isabella's hand, comfortingly. He is giving the robot the mother of all death glares.

"We hav-... Have no intention of hurting anyone," says Adarin, in the same awkward language. "We mean no harm. Please stop pointing weapons at us."

[dark_light]

"REPEAT YOUR CLAIM FOR VOICE RECOGNITION"

"We mean no harm," Isabella says, squeezing Adarin's hand.

"REPUDIATE ALLIANCE WITH THE INVADER C'THKBRRI SCUM"

"...I am not now and have never been allied with the... sthukbree... scum."

[prodigal_miser]

"We have never been allied with - er, them," he manages, dodging saying the near-unpronounceable name. "We continue to not mean any harm."

"Please lower your weapons," repeats Adarin, looking angry. He could probably just break the robot, but diplomacy first. That is the logical route. Diplomacy first.

He is really, really tempted to break it, though. It's threatening his girlfriend, he is not fucking pleased with this development.

[dark_light]

"REPEAT YOUR CLAIM FOR VOICE RECOGNITION"

"We have no affiliation with your enemies!" chokes out Isabella.



The robot folds up its scary parts and puts them away.

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin does not drop the shield. Isabella will be safe.

"What exactly made you think we were allied with your enemies?" he growls.

[dark_light]

"REPEAT YOUR QUESTION FOR VOICE RECOGNITION"

"Why did you expect enemies?" Isabella asks carefully.

"THIS SECTOR WAS EVACUATED BY NOBLE NNSARXPH"

"Will you attack if we fly away?"

"NO - YOU HAVE REPUDIATED ALLIANCE WITH THE INVADER C'THKBRRI SCUM - ALL UNITS HAVE BEEN UPDATED - YOU MAY PROCEED"

[prodigal_miser]

"... Think I should drop the shield?" asks Adarin, in English.

[dark_light]

"REPEAT YOUR CLAIM FOR VOICE RECOGNITION" suggests the robot.

"I'm going to fly out of the city - go ahead and drop it if nothing shoots at us on the way."

[prodigal_miser]

"All right," he replies, giving the robot a look that says, 'I won't break you. This time.'

[dark_light]

The robot does not react to his facial expression.

Isabella takes them briskly back the way they came, eyes peeled for more of the robots.

[prodigal_miser]

The shield is up the entire way. Don't mind him, reality, Adarin's just breaking your rules all over the place.

He watches for other robots as well, paranoid.