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

[salus_populi]

"All right," says Aelise. "And there's a small chance he might try to hurt you, but Kers can keep you safe."

[alicornucopia]

"Okay," says Tab, who has already noticed the benefits of Kers's power just by walking around for six months.

[salus_populi]

"I'll go see what he thinks about visitors," says Aelise, and that is the end of that visit.

Some time later, Tab gets an email that says she can visit section 214 whenever she wants, as long as she pretends she still lives on Earth, pointedly refuses to answer questions about how she got there, and makes sure not to imply she has ever met Kers.

And the name of the person living there is Harley.

[alicornucopia]

Tab emails back, asking if it's okay for Harley to know about her Gift.

[salus_populi]

It takes about a day for Aelise to answer.

She says yes.

[alicornucopia]

Tab then hops into a vehicle and drives herself to 214.

[pythbox]

All of the airlocked doors dividing section 214 from the rest of the ring show the red 'no unauthorized access' sign, but they'll open for her.

[alicornucopia]

Tab giggles as she lets herself through. "Harleeeeey?" she calls.

[pythbox]

"Who the fuck are you?" a voice yells back from the distance.

[alicornucopia]

"I'm Mehitabel! But you can call me Tab if you want!"

[pythbox]

No response.

[alicornucopia]

"Aelise says I can visit you whenever I want!" Tab adds, skipping forward towards the source of the voice.

[pythbox]

"Good for Aelise," says Harley, at a somewhat more normal volume; he's only just around the corner now, and then he isn't. He is in a room in the section's living quarters, with a book open on the computer, lying in bed rather than reading it, wearing a pair of rumpled pajama pants in sky-blue dotted with fluffy white sheeps. He is maybe sixteen or seventeen years old.

[alicornucopia]

"How come you're up here?" Tab asks.

[pythbox]

"Because I hate Chelsa," says Harley.

[alicornucopia]

"She's awful," agrees Tab solemnly.

[pythbox]

Harley squints at her.

"What's your name again?"

[alicornucopia]

"Tab."

[pythbox]

"Why are you up here?"

[alicornucopia]

"I'm here to visit you!"

[pythbox]

He rolls his eyes. "And why are you doing that? Why do you even know I exist?"

[alicornucopia]

"I'm trying to figure out a safe way to get rid of Chelsa, and if you're up here being secret, you must be important, so I want to know why, so my ideas can have you in them if you have to be in them."

[pythbox]

"And what, Aelise sent you to get it from me? Shit," says Harley. "Maybe she's halfway serious about it. So how much do you already know?"

[alicornucopia]

"About you? I know your name and where to find you and that you are secret for complicated reasons and what you told me and that Aelise doesn't think the whole story is okay to tell me while I am seven."

[pythbox]

Harley snorts.

"Yeah, that's probably because of all the sex," he says. "Fine. So for starters, I come from another universe."