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]

"How did she get them to work for her if she just killed a person they liked?"

[pythbox]

"Oh, that. Um, her daughter could un-Chelsea people," he says. "Wipe out what she put on, I mean, not grow back what she cut off."

[giftedandtalented]

"Wow," says Tab. "Do you think she would work on Chelsa too?"

[pythbox]

"Yeah," he says. "She couldn't do a whole planet in one shot, though, and if she did there'd be riots. Even just the fifty-some people she got for her mom's takeover, some shit went down - I mean, suddenly everybody didn't automatically like each other, you know?"

[giftedandtalented]

"I don't know," says Tab. "I'm safe but that's just me."

[pythbox]

"Ask Aelise, then, I bet she remembers," he says.

[giftedandtalented]

"She remembers what it's like to have never liked everybody. I don't think she remembers what it's like to stop."

[pythbox]

"I don't either. I wasn't there."

[giftedandtalented]

"This is a really hard problem," sighs Tab, looking at her notes.

[pythbox]

"No shit," says Harley.

[giftedandtalented]

Tab stays a while longer, since Harley is lonely, but it doesn't take her long to agree with him that she's not making much difference on her own. And he has nothing else of much use to tell her. She goes back to Kers, after.

[queensidecastle]

"Well that was interesting," says Kers.

[giftedandtalented]

"Were you listening?" Tab inquires. This doesn't surprise her, although she would have liked to be told.

[queensidecastle]

"I usually am."

[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.