do: read; don't: visit 214

[giftedandtalented]

Mehitabel reads a lot.

She starts calling herself "Tab", for short, not that anyone calls her anything apart from Kers. She writes suitably encrypted emails to Aelise about ideas for fixing the world - mostly she asks questions, to start, forming a picture of the exact problem she has to solve.

She misses her parents, but not very much. At least she got to say goodbye.

When her brain won't absorb new information, she bounces around in zero-g.

After six months, Aelise visits again.

Tab says, "Anybody you store up here must be important somehow. If I don't know about the other secret person, I won't know how to come up with ideas that work with them being important however they're important."

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"I could visit you a lot," says Tab anxiously, "if that would help. I don't want any babies to die."

[pythbox]

"Maybe," he says. "Aelise already visits me a bunch. But I think I need more people than this. This fucking place is just so empty, you know?" He hugs his pillow some more.

[alicornucopia]

"Maybe she could secret more people?" Tab says. "How many people?"

[pythbox]

"Enough people. I don't think she's gonna do it," he says. "Anyway, if she brought me twenty people who are all still all fuzzy over Chelsa, I'd probably launch myself into orbit. And there aren't twenty people who aren't."

[alicornucopia]

"I don't know if I can unfuzz a person," frowns Tab. "I think maybe I could keep them getting more fuzzed."

[pythbox]

"And if you could unfuzz a person—" Harley shakes his head. "Fuck it. I need to be on the ground, that's all. And if I can't be on the ground then I'll just - find somewhere else to be."

[alicornucopia]

"...with people in it?" asks Tab dubiously.

[pythbox]

"Somewhere with people in it would be good," he says. "But there's plenty of things that are worse than good but better than here."

[alicornucopia]

"Like what?" Tab asks, bewildered.

[pythbox]

"Like dead," he says. "Dead would be great compared to lonely all the fucking time."

[alicornucopia]

"I thought you were immortal?" Tab says, clearly confused.

[pythbox]

"Yes," he says, "and I wish I wasn't, did we not just cover that?"

[alicornucopia]

"But can you not be? Is that a thing you can do?"

[pythbox]

"Nope. Dying is not my actual plan," he says. "I'm not telling you my actual plan, because you'd tell Aelise, and then she'd find a way to stop me."

[alicornucopia]

"She didn't tell me I had to tell her any things, so I could promise not to," Tab says, "and then I wouldn't."

[pythbox]

"You sure?" he says. "Even though if I got away for long enough she'd go back to killing babies?"

[alicornucopia]

"...Do you want her to go back to killing babies?" frowns Tab.

[pythbox]

"No," he snorts. "And I'd stick around and let her drain me all day long if that was all it took. But this place, this universe, with Chelsa and everything, and being up here all alone - it fucks me up, I can't take it forever."

[alicornucopia]

"I thought you couldn't get home."

[pythbox]

"Yeah, that's kind of the root of all my problems," he says.

[alicornucopia]

"So... aren't you going to keep being in the universe with Chelsa and it sucking, here or someplace worse, whatever you do? Unless you help me think of something. You could do that. If I think of something good Aelise can get rid of Chelsa."

[pythbox]

"I thought we covered the part where I already have a bad solution and I'm not telling you what it is," he says.

[alicornucopia]

"Yes," says Tab. "But it's bad."

[pythbox]

"There aren't any good ones," he says, throwing up his hands. "I am past good solutions. My bad solutions are bad but at least they're mine."

[alicornucopia]

"How do you know there aren't any good ones?" Tab insists.