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

[warmfeelings]

Chelsa pets him.

[pythbox]

He wriggles discontentedly and sighs.

[giftedandtalented]

Meanwhile, Tab wants updates about the results of the experiment.

[salus_populi]

Chelsa is... not as stable as Aelise was hoping. The thing with Harley is a complication, which she explains in as much detail as Tab requests.

Right now, she can't make good predictions about Chelsa's reaction if they continue to push. Better to sit on it for a while. Six months, maybe.

[giftedandtalented]

Tab is annoyed and impatient, but she waits.

[pythbox]

For a while, draining Harley for six to eight hours at a time works to keep him out of trouble. He's too exhausted by the end of it to go anywhere, and Aelise puts him under again too fast to let him.

But it's not a permanent solution.

Three months after he is installed in his little room, Aelise finishes a particularly lengthy session of draining him, and he takes a breath and shudders and disappears.

[salus_populi]

Aelise calls Demauri.

[alicornucopia]

"...Triangulation's not working," Demauri says, after a while of looking. "Or, I dunno, maybe it is, but I've walked four blocks now and if the direction's changed I don't have the sensitivity to tell. He'd have to be ridiculously far away. Not on Earth."

[salus_populi]

Aelise sighs.

"All right. Thank you."

At least all this draining has her supply higher than it's ever been. She won't have to worry about where to get her immortality for a long, long time.

[alicornucopia]

"Love and loyalty," says Demauri. "I can look in on him occasionally if you want, see if he moves?"

[salus_populi]

"Thanks."

[alicornucopia]

"Love and loyalty," repeats Demauri.

And a few days later he calls back.

"Er, you're not gonna believe this, but his direction matches the. The sun."

[salus_populi]

"...Of course it does," sighs Aelise. "Thank you, Demauri. Well, that's going to be a thorny problem."

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah, I wish I could help you."

[salus_populi]

"You found him. That's something."

[alicornucopia]

And it is, alas, the extent of Demauri's skills. He bids her goodbye and hangs up.

[salus_populi]

Well, she can leave Harley to sort himself out, then.

Meanwhile, how's Chelsa doing?

[warmfeelings]

She has calmed down some, since recovering from the... breakage.

[salus_populi]

That's good.

Aelise monitors her for a while, then okays another flicker.

[giftedandtalented]

Tab is more than happy to obey.

[warmfeelings]

Chelsa is not happy.

Chelsa is hysterical.

This means it's not a one-off, this means she didn't just break but that she is breaking. She gathers her friends in a pile around her and doesn't want any of them to leave her. She turns up the literal heat in the quarters until everyone's sweating. She wrings her hands and, when she can bear to drag herself away from the comfort of her beloveds (and she brings Jony with her, anyway) she asks Aelise if she's got any idea what could be going on, yet.

[salus_populi]

Aelise shakes her head.

Aelise finds a doctor.

The doctor pronounces that there is, as far as she can see, nothing wrong with Chelsa at all.

[warmfeelings]

Chelsa wants a second opinion.

Chelsa wants an arbitrary number of opinions, she wants someone to know what the matter is and fix it.

[salus_populi]

Aelise can find her, literally, all the opinions in the world.

They all come down to the same thing: her Gift may be flickering, but if it is, they can't tell that it is, and they certainly can't tell why.

[warmfeelings]

It's like being told she's dying, and she wasn't supposed to die, she was supposed to live forever, with her friends, with the warmth of the world on her, and instead she has nightmares about freezing to death.

She won't sleep alone; she needs to wake up warm.

One night she sleeps entangled in Corona's arms and half-wakes and says Harley's name.