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

[giftedandtalented]

"That is useful to know," says Tab. "I don't think Harley knew it."

[queensidecastle]

"Of course he didn't. He doesn't know I'm here, remember?"

[giftedandtalented]

"Right, but he didn't know anybody at all might be listening."

[queensidecastle]

"I'm sure he could have figured it out," says Kers.

[giftedandtalented]

"Really?"

[queensidecastle]

"I find it hard to believe he might not have."

[giftedandtalented]

"All right, I guess. Did you think of anything I should ask him if I go visit again?"

[queensidecastle]

She shakes her head.

[giftedandtalented]

"Will you tell me if you do?"

[queensidecastle]

"No," she says dryly, and then snorts and shakes her head. "Yes, I'll tell you."

[giftedandtalented]

"Thank you," says Tab, and she goes back to her reading. She is working on a great big map of dependencies between things so she will be able to trace it and see where everything unravels with each of her half-formed ideas for displacing Chelsa. She needs to know a lot of things to complete this map.

She isn't going to rule out a flash of insight that solves everything, but it isn't looking likely.

[queensidecastle]

A week later, Kers mentions offhandedly that section 214 is no longer inhabited. Harley asked to be moved, and Aelise found somewhere to put him.

[giftedandtalented]

"Is he safe from Chelsa and with people?" asks Tab.

[queensidecastle]

"He's safe from Chelsa. With people was a tall order, so he decided he'd rather be unconscious all the time. Aelise can drain him just the same."

[giftedandtalented]

"I guess that's okay-ish, then. He can wake up when I figure something out."

Tab is very dedicated to working something out. Chelsa is an ongoing, quietly humming, epic disaster. She is not less urgent just because things are not cinematically toppling into the sea and catching fire.

Tab is going to think of something.

She thinks of a lot of things, actually; but the first one to elicit more than a detailed, thoughtful rejection is:

I might be able to shield somebody else inside-out, so their powers couldn't get out. I don't know if I can do this and I shouldn't try on Kers, but if I can, it would make Chelsa think she was breaking if I flickered her off and back on again on whatever schedule you thought was safe, and then she would probably cooperate with helping to gentle everybody into not needing her anymore.

[salus_populi]

You could try it on me, says the return email.

[giftedandtalented]

Okay, Tab writes back, I will next time you visit. If I can do it may I?

[salus_populi]

I will think about it.

[giftedandtalented]

But you think it's worth trying out?

[salus_populi]

It's woth knowing if you can do it at all.

[giftedandtalented]

Okay.

And Tab waits for her to visit.

She doesn't know Chelsa personally, so she doesn't know how Chelsa will react to seeming like she's breaking; she has to rely on Aelise for that part of the plan assessment. But she pokes the idea through her map of the world's institutions. She thinks it might work, especially if she worked slowly.

[salus_populi]

Aelise arrives a few days later.

"It could work," she says. "If you can do it. But don't get excited just yet. I'd want to think about it very carefully first."

[giftedandtalented]

Tab nods. And she closes her eyes and concentrates.

Her Gift feels like a blanket, complete with the supernatural, unexplained ability to protect her from monsters under the bed. She didn't know that this wasn't something everyone felt until she asked, but once she picked it out as a magic thing and not as just part of the sensory background, she was able to start considering how to do things with it, and eventually figured out how to blanket Kers. She can keep Kers under the blanket without much attention, until she goes to sleep, at which time her Gift decides that it needs to wrap her up in one hundred percent of the blanket; sometimes if she's deep in thought about something unrelated she'll also lose it. She can put it on and take it off even if her and Kers are on opposite sides of the orbital ring.

Aelise is right there, and she just needs to turn the blanket inside-out...

She tries. She had a long list of things to try, full of invented words and exclamation points and little synaesthetic diagrams.

It doesn't work. Her blanket does not want to be inside-out.

[salus_populi]

Aelise lets her keep trying as long as she likes; then she shrugs and says, "So much for that. Maybe it'll grow in as you get older; that happens."

[giftedandtalented]

"Okay. I might as well try it whenever you're up here."