remote station

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis tel Jobont is not living up to her lantelis.

She had been en route to her usual position after a rest-and-resupply period. Instead of the expected uneventful trip, somehow she loses her anchors, falls through a bizarrely shaped storm, then finds herself impossibly over land instead of water and with her upper antennas chopped off like they were never there.

She was able to stabilize with only minor damage to the uninhabited land, but she cannot hear a single intelligible signal, and a hundred other things add up to this is no place anyone has ever seen before. Or rather, reported seeing before.

So here she sits in the sky, relaying nothing, thinking about everything.

Comments

[calescent]

"I'm going to have to train staff to use these things; if I'm going to wind up with a permanent design that's different or a permanent set of protocols that's different because there are more radios, the information might not be as useful."

[synchrosyntheses]

“As you wish, but in your place I wouldn't consider anything permanent until we have some experience with how the system works for the people operating it.”

[calescent]

"Yes, but there's 'revised' and then there's 'built on completely different underlying assumptions'."

[synchrosyntheses]

“I'm not sure what sort of assumptions there might be that would change plans to that degree, but that's rather your point.”

[calescent]

"Exactly. Also, I like looking like I know what I'm doing."

[synchrosyntheses]

“And that's always useful for convincing people to accept your help.”

[calescent]

"It really is."

[synchrosyntheses]

“Sometimes even when they asked for the help in the first place. But then — to put it dramatically — I'm supposed to be the voice of humanity's collected knowledge, not not know things.”

A particular slice of humanity's collected knowledge over on the table has gone beyond “pamphlet” and is working on losing some adjectives from “rather thin magazine”.

“Do you get that? People expecting you to not just be the person with the title, but to somehow perfectly embody your element?”

[calescent]

"A little. I'm generally read as very sweela, but I'm introverted, which is off-type, and that surprises people."

[synchrosyntheses]

“I didn't mean fitting the personality type so much as, like, speaking on behalf of Fire itself. —Maybe that's silly, I don't even know if that's a plausible thing; I don't have the benefit of even having heard of Welce two days ago, much less growing up here.”

[calescent]

"I don't think anyone expects Fire itself to speak, through me or otherwise."

[synchrosyntheses]

“So, merely human expectations to satisfy.”

[calescent]

"Yes. I find I occupy a very comfortable optimum between power and obligation, anyway."

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis seems to be out of small talk. The book continues to accumulate.