letter to cam #17

[thisvorlunatic]

You would not believe the month I've had.

I really did mean to get back to you within a few weeks of my last message, but circumstances intervened. On the other hand, it seems to have worked out all right this way, because there's an Ash and Stars tour coming up and I'm not dead yet. How would you like to attend a concert in addition to raiding the comm nets?

Comments

[from_scratch]

"Perhaps. I assume there's a reason your mother hasn't already symmetrized you, and I can't expect Atriama to be that much of a draw."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Magic doesn't officially exist, I am already pretty close to the limits of what modern medical technology can do, it would be very awkward to explain to anyone who knew me well enough to notice but was not cleared to hear about angels. So. As much of a draw as Atriama is, I might have to pass it up."

[from_scratch]

"Fair enough."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Maybe someday. Anyway, let's look at vehicles."

Miles has a few good ideas, and after some poking around on the comconsole these ideas bear vehicular fruit. Behold, several different varieties of small intrasystem craft mostly designed for short trips between a planet's surface and its orbital stations. Look how cute and low-emissions they are. Information about how easy it is to fly them is a little harder to come by, but Miles has some relevant experience and can make good guesses about how fast Cam will be able to figure out the controls.

[from_scratch]

Cool. Cam sips coffee and looks at the cute low-emissions shuttlethings.

[thisvorlunatic]

"And I think that's all I can get you without dropping several more hours into intensive research. Would you like to go to the taieli monument now?"

[from_scratch]

"Anything else I should know about it first?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"If you're secretly hiding a duplicate of yourself somewhere, all of you do in fact have to visit the monument at the same time or it won't acknowledge you. I'm not sure if it's actually possible to leave the monument during your nine days unless you outright quit. It does this thing where it shows you visions that feel like they took five minutes but actually take several hours. I think part of the reason it was making me wander around aimlessly at the beginning was because it hadn't yet figured out how to get proper two-way communication going, so if you go in amenable to having surreal telepathic conversations with a building, you might have better luck on that count."

[from_scratch]

"I am not hiding any duplicates of myself unless there's some weird and very secret thing where daeva have those. Surreal telepathic conversations with a building sound par for the course, I'm game."

[thisvorlunatic]

"All right. I'll see if Mother is around, she's better at interdimensional portals than I am. Oh - and the reason why there's nearly nothing visible out the windows is because the last star in that universe went out thousands of years ago. The monument is indestructible, it'll keep going forever no matter what condition the rest of its world is in."

[from_scratch]

"Okay."

[thisvorlunatic]

Off goes Miles in search of his mother.

[greatcomposure]

And his mother creates an interdimensional portal to... well, it's very dark there, wherever it is.

[from_scratch]

Will this flashlight that Cam has now help?

[pythbox]

Surprisingly little. The space he is in is very large.

And a few seconds after the portal closes behind him, it illuminates itself and renders his flashlight redundant.

Yep. Very large. Big enough to fly around in and then some. The windows in the ceiling show utter blackness, as promised. And whoever built this place was really, really into the number nine.

[from_scratch]

Cam clips the flashlight to a belt loop.

Well, it's big enough to fly around in.

He steps forward a bit at a half-run, and takes off to swoop around for a better look.

[pythbox]

The building's nine-way radial symmetry is perfect and precise. There is absolutely nothing in here that isn't part of the building itself: the maze of ramps that climb the walls, the central steps/platform in the shape of a nine-pointed star within a nine-pointed star within a nine-pointed star, the windows, the doors. It's sort of pretty in a very grey, austere way.

When he has been flying around for a good few minutes, the star formation in the middle of the floor begins to glow noticeably brighter than its gently illuminated surroundings.

[from_scratch]

Shiny.

Cam goes and has a look at it. "Hello, building. Are we going to have surreal telepathic conversations?"

[pythbox]

It turns out that they are indeed!

As soon as he steps onto the glowy part, his surroundings fade away. There is a sense that he is about to learn something, and then:

Void. Absence. Nothingness. Epru.

This is the aineli of cold and darkness, of slowing and stillness, of removal and emptiness. It can be used to make things less - less hot, less bright, less fast, by removing energy; less dense, less large, by removing mass; and to delete them from existence completely. It is a dangerous tool, but a useful one.

[from_scratch]

Nice. It's very... clean. Hazardous around anything he can't just make over again, certainly, but used like an eraser, a dab here and a scrub there, lovely.

[pythbox]

The next element seems to be exactly its opposite.

Creation. Energy. Starstuff. Ileyi.

This is the aineli of heat and light, of energy and motion, of creation and beginning. It represents itself to him as the experience of a star being born, a roaring rush of fire in sharp contrast to the sensory deprivation of epru. It can be used to impart heat or light or motion to what was cold or dark or still; it can be used to create something out of nothing, although the thing created strongly defaults to fire. It, too, is dangerous; but it, too, is useful.

[from_scratch]

Well, that's certainly. A lot of fire. Cam has nothing against a tasteful lake of fire, he likes stars, but this is a little more enthusiastic than he likes his combustion to be and he already has a serviceable way to create things that do not strongly default to fire. He does not like this one as much, although imparting motion has its likely uses.

[pythbox]

On to the next, then.

Life. Biology. Vitality. Poai.

The aineli of reproduction and evolution, of the body and its senses, of health and healing. It can be used to create life, or to alter it. To induce cancer (easy), or to remove it (hard). To give an object or process the lifelike properties of self-sustenance, self-repair, and self-replication. But along with those, if one is not careful, there tends to come the lifelike property of sometimes behaving in unexpected ways.

[from_scratch]

Cam generally doesn't prefer for things to behave in unexpected ways, and any idiot with demonic powers and knowledge of what "cancer" means beyond "scary disease" can cause it. Even with a good handle on poai he's not going to have anything on a well-trained medical angel. Might make him popular in Hell if he can produce less limited varieties of fauna with less lead time? This is not going to be his favorite. It's pretty, sure, he'll give it pretty.

[pythbox]

Here is one that is much more angelic than demonic.

Reflection. Innovation. Continuation. Rilte.

The aineli of copying and changing, of inspecting and tinkering, of history and potential. It can be used to create more of something given an example at hand - even, perhaps especially, magical things - or to make small alterations to an existing thing, or, combining the two, to make altered copies of an initial example. Its uses are less dramatic than the first few ainelin, but then so are its errors.