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]

"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.

[dark_light]

No other robots trouble them.

She lands back where they teleported in, because staying on a flying tree branch is a little much effort after a scare like that.

"Fuck that was terrifying," she says, letting go of her cloud-pine to hug him hard.

[prodigal_miser]

When they're out of the city and safe, the shield is grudgingly dropped.

He hugs her back, obviously worried. "You're okay, right? No funky robotic mind control or invisible weaponry or - something? Because I will go back and break them all if they managed that."

[dark_light]

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she says. "Just scared. Geez, Path's probably freaking out at home and has no idea why..."

[prodigal_miser]

Hugs. All of the hugs. "It's okay," he says soothingly. "I said I'd keep you safe and I damn well meant it."

Now that Isabella's confirmed as both A. Safe and B. Completely fine, he can relax. A little.

(He's shaking.)

[dark_light]

Isabella is still hugging him.

"I was really spooked but - it bothered to ask questions, and answer them," she says. "I'm sort of inclined to believe the things it said. Feel free to check me over for alien robot mind control if you have a way to do that, I just can't think of a good reason for a robot to be designed to conversationally evaluate potential threats and then not shoot at, yet lie to, some of them."

[prodigal_miser]

"I... Do not have a way to do that, I'm just being really paranoid. I can't think of a good reason that it would do that either, but I was not expecting them to come to life and ask us questions, so obviously I missed something."

[dark_light]

"Well, the coming to life and asking questions I can explain, they were some alien faction's side during a war when all the aliens died and they have really good batteries. They ignore wildlife, I guess, but we don't look like wildlife, and they expect a decent chance we're invaders. And I guess the unpronounceable invader scum have a thing about not verbally denying their allegiance."

[prodigal_miser]

"I suppose so. I mean, it makes sense, but I'm annoyed at myself for not thinking of the possibility beforehand."

He sighs. "So, what should we do?"

[dark_light]

"Come back when you have a full tank of mana?" she asks. "In case you need the shield again. "And - talk to the robots and see what they have to say when I'm not thirty percent adrenaline."

[prodigal_miser]

"Yeah. I can do another shield now if we need to, it's not expensive, it just keeps draining as I hold it. And of course, the more I use the shield, the longer we have to be here until I can teleport us home, or wait for Ana to do it."