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]

"Wow," says Tab, eyes going wide. "Really?"

[pythbox]

"Yes, really," he says. "I got rescued out of one and grew up in another, and then I randomly disappeared out of that one and practically fell right into Chelsa's lap, and it turns out that she can make you like her but she can't make you not hate her, and I hate her a lot."

[alicornucopia]

"She can't make me like her," says Tab.

[pythbox]

"I figured as much," says Harley.

[alicornucopia]

"How did you move around between all these universes?" Tab asks, pulling out her tablet to take notes.

[pythbox]

"I mean 'randomly disappeared' pretty well literally," he says. "For the first move, though, I had help."

[alicornucopia]

"How did that work?"

[pythbox]

"I was like a year old," he says, "I don't actually remember it or anything."

[alicornucopia]

"And they never told you how? Who was it anyway?"

[pythbox]

He drags his pillow over his head.

[alicornucopia]

"What? What'd I say?"

[pythbox]

"I kind of fucking miss her," Harley growls from under his pillow.

[alicornucopia]

"I'm sorry," says Tab. "I don't know how to send you home."

[pythbox]

"Me neither," says the pillow.

[alicornucopia]

"Do you not want to talk about her?"

[pythbox]

"I really don't!"

[alicornucopia]

"Okay. I'm sorry."

[pythbox]

He sighs, removes the pillow from his face, and hugs it instead.

"Whatever."

[alicornucopia]

"What's the world you lived in like?" asks Tab after a respectful silence.

[pythbox]

"No Chelsa," he says.

And then, "They had one, but she died."

[alicornucopia]

"And everybody didn't start killing each other?" asks Tab, sitting up at attention.

[pythbox]

He snorts. "Nope."

[alicornucopia]

"Aelise thinks that if something happened to Chelsa here people would start having wars again. I'm supposed to think of a way for that to not happen, and then Chelsa can go away here too."

[pythbox]

"The other Chelsa wasn't doing her thing to the whole world," says Harley. "Just a little piece of it. It was the other you who killed her," he adds offhandedly.

[alicornucopia]

"There's another me?" Tab asks, sitting bolt upright and looking utterly fascinated.