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

[dark_light]

Isabella hugs him.

[prodigal_miser]

Hug! "I love you," he manages between giggles.

[dark_light]

"I love you too. That's probably why I fell prey to your ever so unhelpful wiles."

[prodigal_miser]

He giggles some more. "Yup. That. Definitely that."

[dark_light]

Hugs!

Is that a library over there? It is! Swell.

[prodigal_miser]

Hugs!

Oooo, library! To the computers! And Wikipedia! He needs to learn about Feminism. Also programming.

[dark_light]

Isabella sees him set up on a computer and then finds a beanbag chair nearby to sit on while she asks the alethiometer things. Path hops off her head and flies to the desk on which Adarin's computer sits and hoots softly at Vern.

[prodigal_miser]

Vern trills back. She nudges Path a bit, then moves to snuggle, looking at Adarin with a bit of worry. "Are you going to ask him? I can, if you don't want to..."

[dark_light]

"So Adarin," says Path. "A few hours ago, sudden jolt of terror, took longer to wear off Vern than me - what happened that you forgot to tell us about when you came home? I kept expecting one of you to remember but you were distracted by adorable bantering. Which was admittedly fun."

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin blinks. He looks up from computer shenanigans and looks surprised, then really, really guilty. "Shit. I'd completely forgotten to - sorry, sorry. We're both fine, it turned out to not be a problem but it was scary at the time. Um." He glances at the public library. "... There was a thing we were not expecting there that I will expand on when we're not in public. At first it was really threatening and we were both terrified, but we handled it and um - now it works for us."

Vern gives him a look.

"I'm sorry?" he manages again.

[dark_light]

"Can we just come along next time?" asks Path.

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin nods. He kind of looks like a kicked puppy, now. He feels terrible, the poor daemons must have been worried sick. Vern gives an apologetic trill to Path, nuzzles him, and - plop, into Adarin's lap.

Pet, pet, pet.

[dark_light]

Path flies back to Isabella.

"Shit," Isabella says under her breath when he explains the problem to her. "I never forget when I'm going places alone..."

[prodigal_miser]

"Sorry," says Adarin quietly to Vern, again. "I promise I'll tell you everything, this - will be a very short library visit, I'm sorry..."

Vern trills. Snuggle, snuggle.

He looks up what he needs to find out in record time.

[dark_light]

Isabella pets her owl. Pet pet pet.

[prodigal_miser]

Right then, now that they have what they need - Adarin picks up Vern, and says to Isabella, "I uh - think we need to head home where we can explain things."

[dark_light]

"Okay. We can come back another time."

They won't be able to go back to the planet for a while anyway.

[prodigal_miser]

"Yeah. I can study it later, Vern and Path are more important."

Vern trills a little.

Pet, pet.

[dark_light]

"Sorry, Path."

"It's clear that whatever it was stopped frightening you hours ago. I just want to know," says Path.

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin nods. Out of the library, to the parking garage - so the daemons can be updated. Once they're safely away from the public, Adarin gets to explaining.

"So, there were - robots. On the planet."

[dark_light]

"Some of them still functional, and very concerned that we might represent the 'invader scum'."

[prodigal_miser]

"So we had weapons pointed at us, I - freaked out, got a shield around the both of us, we convinced them we weren't 'invader scum' and then we left."

Vern trills. Pet, pet, pet.

"... Sorry," he says again. "We went back after and exploited a hole in security."

[dark_light]

"Now I have a robot army!"

Path giggles.

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin smiles a little. "Yeah. Now Isabella's has a robot army."

Vern nuzzles Adarin. "And you were excited about it and going to...?"

"Uh, study programming so I could try to make a spell that would help with programming languages."

"Ahh, that makes sense," says Vern.

"I'm still sorry," he repeats. Again.

[dark_light]

"They'll obey verbal commands, and after a while it occurred to me to look at the available languages for one that's less tongue-ruining, but it'd be nice to be able to go into the code."