Oh Hello Again

[iamnotpolaris]

This isn't Emily's dorm room.
This is Milliways! Awesome.
"Hi, Bar," she says cheerfully. "Looks like I'm the first one in at the moment, huh?" she says, looking around at the otherwise-empty room.

Comments

[middlingalong]

"I mean, I'm pretty sure that if you could get plasma eye beams - for that matter, if you could get magnet powers, although that's less of a stretch - from fiddling with genes, the haut or some wildly unethical experimenter on Jackson's Whole would have figured it by now and I would have had to sit through a training course on How The Barrayaran Military Expects Officers To Handle People With Plasma Eye Beams."

[iamnotpolaris]

She cracks up.
"I'm sorry, I"m sorry, I know that's not funny to you, it's just, the mental image..."

[middlingalong]

"I mean, it would be like plasma arcs, mostly, I imagine? I bet it would be like plasma arcs except you can't stop them from aiming at you by interfering with their arms, so."

[iamnotpolaris]

"In all seriousness, it's not the magnetists or the plasma-people you need to watch out for, it's the telepaths. We are very, very lucky that the three strongest telepaths alive are fantastically ethical people."

[middlingalong]

"...Lucky you, yes. God, ImpSec wouldn't sleep for a month, by the end of figuring out how to deal with that they'd be hallucinating that their building is beautiful and well-architected..."

[iamnotpolaris]

"It's not, I'm guessing."

[middlingalong]

"Oh, no."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I'm a lot more casual about this than most people, one of them is my father, one is my best friend, and we're still-good-but-not-as-good friends with the third."

[middlingalong]

"That sounds convenient."

[iamnotpolaris]

"It really is! It is not, in fact, a coincidence that all three are so moral--except inasmuch as it is a coincidence that the adult one managed to be a major figure in the lives of the other two growing up. Telepathic Ethics Are Not A Joke, that's Papa."

[middlingalong]

"Good for your papa."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Yeah. I am very, very aware of what a lucky person I am."

[middlingalong]

"Do you have anything that - anything except the magnet powers, or can I basically just imagine you are a storybook wizard?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Me personally?"

[middlingalong]

"You personally, being the one I'm talking to. ...I do not think I am ready to meet someone with plasma eye beams today."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I do not have plasma eye beams. My internal organs are a little bit weird, but not in a way that's ever likely to become relevant unless I make fantastically improbable life choices."

[middlingalong]

"...Okay."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Most of the actual visible changes are pretty awesome. I know multiple people with fully-functioning wings, and my aunt looks like she was carved from lapis lazuli."

[middlingalong]

"These people should not ever consider visiting Barrayar."

[iamnotpolaris]

"They don't find Milliways, so it was already pretty unlikely. But noted."

[middlingalong]

"Oh, is 'finding Milliways' a - trait?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Eh--sort of? If it's never happened to you, it might or it might not ever, some people find it once, some people find it pretty regularly. If it happens to you reasonably often it probably won't just stop, but there's no guarantee."

[middlingalong]

"Huh." He sips his pink thing.

[iamnotpolaris]

"I only get Milliways when I'm opening a door with magnetism, for some reason. No idea why."

[middlingalong]

"Huh. I couldn't begin to guess why that would be."