space oddity

[rockeye_stonetoe]

One day in fairyland, there is an immensely bright flash of light a about a mile above the ground. Something like a metal house is suddenly flying through as if it came through a portal, faster than all but the fastest fairies.

It's flying, not directly down, but still very much towards the ground. It does not take long for it to stop flying and start carving through earth and trees. Eventually it runs out of momentum near a certain lake. The thing seems to still be in one piece, which is rather miraculous considering the two miles of destroyed trees behind it.

After a few minutes, a mortal covered in unusually bulky clothes emerges from the thing. All that is visible is his face. He starts inspecting the outside of his space oddity.

Comments

[imeanforever]

It will take me a few days to grow my tree quite that large. ...And I'd like the tablet too in case it doesn't break and I have to move again.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Do you have enough paper and ink for all those physical books? Just getting the tablet is easier, and I build things tough. The noisemaker didn't break once in nearly a century, did it? Neither did the communicator. That's enough time to copy it all out if you really want to. And I'll probably be trying to find you again in another 70 years.

[imeanforever]

I don't have it all now, but I can make it. My method of copying is probably slower than yours.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Yes, it probably is. Would you mind if I read your sorcery books now? I'll print mine as quickly as you can deliver paper and ink. I'll send a remote-controlled cargo trolly to that clearing near your house, easier to move things that way.

[imeanforever]

Sounds good to me.

Promise delivers sorcery books and paper and ink, and she coaxes her tree taller and roomier.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Nick reads sorcery books.

After just half an hour of this, he makes frustrated gestures at one of the books and fairy-lights at Promise, Fairies really don't do organization at all do they? There's useful information here and there, but no table of contents, no indices, no cross-referencing, no editing of any kind. I'm going to have to write a parsing program just to process these into usability!

[imeanforever]

Some of them are better than others, but there's no systematic sorcery-teaching book-editing arrangement.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

And if everyone's a self-taught expert in their field, it's too much to hope that there's been any kind of systematic investigation into what sorcery is truly capable of, isn't it? That's the reason I'm able to have so many devices, you know, someone figured out the deep rules far beyond the obvious ones by looking at ordinary, naturally occurring mortal things like fire and rocks and growing plants and thinking very carefully about what it all means. And I've just convinced myself to do science to magic. What a preposterously stupid idea, since it means I'll have to stay in fairyland where sorcery actually works.

[imeanforever]

Well, with all these books on how science goes - which to go by your reaction are better organized and better written than sorcery books - perhaps I'll just do it myself.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

This area isn't very crowded, and I have armor and weapons and a ship. I think I'll come back and stay for a few years after you de-age me and I leave to drop off my apellodyne and anyone else who doesn't want to risk being vasallized or be stuck in a ship for years on end back at their homes. I'd understand if you wanted me to be somewhere else. That big old cruiser would probably attract the wrong kind of attention eventually.

[imeanforever]

That, and I'm getting sick of being deaf all the time.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

I don't really want to inconvenience you, but you quite reasonably won't tolerate any risk of me putting you under orders. Unfortunately for you, the reverse is also true and I am not about to volunteer to eat some of your berries. I'll leave you alone for a good twenty years at least once I'm young again. Incidentally, a few members of my ship's crew say they would like to be de-aged as well. I don't know if you'd be willing to get them on top of me, and I told them as much.

[imeanforever]

If you ate my berries it wouldn't help. Are you still unclear on how this works?

[rockeye_stonetoe]

...Yes, apparently. I didn't have much chance to ask while staying as far away as possible from all fairies other than you, while searching for you. Please elucidate.

[imeanforever]

First thing, you fed me. You cannot unfeed me. I am your vassal as long as you live, which I don't think you've acknowledged as a factor regarding the trust involved in even learning to de-age you. Then you took my name, and then you gave me your name. But I'm still your vassal, I was even before you changed your name, I will be until you die. Food from a vassal is safe. You could gorge yourself on berries from my tree until you made yourself sick and nothing would change.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

The line about how much trust is involved in learning to de-age him at all makes him wince.

That... Is a different perspective. I thought we were both potentially vulnurable to each other, me simply a fair bit less than you. I thought we were equals in careful paranoia. I've been keeping diligent watch against attempts to sneak food to me that were never a danger to begin with. I thought all fairy interactions inevitably ended in mutual vasallization by food, that the hierarchy was maintained by careful gardening, paranoia, and ordering one's vassals not to order oneself. I should go home and think.

[imeanforever]

I would maybe have given you my name instead of taking food at all, but while Yellow wasn't smart enough to prevent all the avenues of getting it to you, my previous master was, and I was still under many of his orders at the time.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Both times I've visited this place, the longer I stay the more certain I am that I should leave and never come back.

The problem is, if I'm vasallized by someone with visions of conquest I could be made to construct a jump drive, hop to one of the core worlds, and destroy the free will of all the billions of other humans in the universe. But I don't want to die. I can't find it in myself to willingly lay down before the black void to stop a mere risk, and a slim one at that, considering all my cautions.

[imeanforever]

I'm not going to argue that you should linger here, certainly.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Exactly.

He sighs deeply. He heads back to his ship. I'll send the tablet over with that cargo trolly in an hour or two.

[imeanforever]

Thanks.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

The next day, Nick seems to be deliberately avoiding his melancholy. He very specifically doesn't bring up death or de-aging or vassals, and instead explains the scientific method and asks questions about sorcery.

I'm not sure how useful you will find science as a way of thinking, but it can't hurt.

[imeanforever]

Sorcery doesn't seem like the kind of thing the method was designed to tackle, but it's at least interesting.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Devices and tools are the kind of thing science is especially good at. What if there is a way to make a tool that lets you map harmonics more easily? What if devices could do sorcery? Can you learn change the harmonics by changing your mindset? Tools, methods, and new perspectives like that are exactly the kind of thing science is best at. You know much more about sorcery than me, obviously, but even if it seems impossible I expect there are some ideas worth a little investigating in case there is something that's obvious if only you think about it a little differently, but you missed it and wasted 50 years of effort.

[imeanforever]

A harmonic mapping tool sounds great. I really don't think a device could do sorcery, though, and I've never heard of anyone managing to deliberately change harmonics directly instead of waiting for them to adjust on their own or in response to local plants and geography.