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Bella has watched a simple, managed Martian ecosystem and a glitteringly colorful first city pour procedurally out from assorted points of origin on her computer with a variety of rand seeds, and picked the prettiest result.
She's standing on that ideal origin spot now - the top of Olympus Mons, under a blue-dyed sky and a breathable layer of atmosphere - holding her laptop which holds this specification under her left arm. All present to witness this moment are Alice, Libby, Lazarus, and Bridget.
She defangs a trio of stars: one for the terrain, one for the wildlife, one for the city of Olympus. To be dramatic, she squares them off her bandolier and holds them high in the air between the fingers of her right hand.
"Welcome to Mars," she says.
Wishwishwish.
Moss ripples out from under her feet and carpets the landscape, giving way to forest further downhill and, further away, to freshwater ocean. Birds, startled by their existence, take off. An instant later they're all standing at the foot of her crystalline tower that sits at the center, watching skyscrapers riddled with magical appliances sprout from the ground, and streets pave themselves with smooth tiles.
Bella defangs more stars and lays down what she's taken to calling Ground Rules with another gesture. Mars is going to be peaceful. Mars is going to be safe. Mars is going to watch its people and report to her.
Mars is going to be the seat of the Empire of the Stars.
(There's a flag, on the spire of her tower. It's sky blue, and there are half a dozen seven-pointed stars spangling it. It ripples in the breeze that's begun to waft in from the sea.)
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self_composed
self_composed
[It hasn't come up, no. Cool. How am I supposed to tell when his power's on, then?]
self_composed
[All right. I'll ignore him when his power's on as long as he's not doing anything staggeringly inappropriate,] Bella says. [I have no idea if he's likely to or not, but it seems an important caveat.]
nonbird
[Okay.]
There is a brief pause, as of this information being relayed.
[In that case, we'd like to move to Mars.]
There is a brief pause, as of this information being relayed.
[In that case, we'd like to move to Mars.]
self_composed
[Cool. You're still there, right? Kolya can walk there if he likes. The magic door in your building permits him now, and it goes to the moon palace and the moon palace has one to my tower.]
self_composed
[No problem!] says Bella merrily.
And she starts flying around over the Bay Area, looking for a highway that could handle the extra load of people trying to drive to Mars, and designing a door that won't overly disrupt the existing highway system by scooping up people who are lost or trying to go somewhere else.
And she starts flying around over the Bay Area, looking for a highway that could handle the extra load of people trying to drive to Mars, and designing a door that won't overly disrupt the existing highway system by scooping up people who are lost or trying to go somewhere else.
edgeofyourseat
Some time later, she gets a brainphone call from Alice.
[Your science friend wants to know if Mars has a calendar yet.]
[Your science friend wants to know if Mars has a calendar yet.]
self_composed
[It does not! Are you still on Mars, that she found you and asked you?] Bella says. [Does she want to be on the brainphone?] Bella perfects the design and goes to fetch Tegu and drive it to Mars by way of testing.
self_composed
Bella burns a hex to make the brainphone network modifiable by her without expending any further coins, and adds Bridget to the list. [Hullo,] she says to Bridget. She lands on her motorcycle to the bewilderment of onlookers and drives away.
self_composed
[Nope! Unless NASA or whoever has one cooked up. Want the job?]
regularsized
[Sure,] she says. [You know, I bet they have. I'll look it up and see if it's any good.]
self_composed
[Has to be usable by people who live on the planet,] Bella reminds her. [And who may commute to or visit Earth.]
regularsized
[Well, yeah, that's the idea. Luckily the day's not too far off,] she says. [Apparently the favourite scheme is to use hours, minutes, and seconds scaled up by 2.7%. Sound good?]
self_composed
[Sounds fine to me. What're the terms for when you want to actually time something, like, I don't know, boiling pasta? Ignore it? 'Mars minutes' and 'Earth minutes'?]
regularsized
[I think we can call them 'Mars minutes' and let casual usage figure itself out. Oh, and a Martian day is a sol.]
self_composed
[Cool. I obviously had to magic up the temperature some, but I let exact temperature variation throughout seasons within livable ranges figure itself out, so those should correspond to the relevant astronomical phenomena.]
self_composed
[Have fun!]
Bella drives from planet to planet. Yep, magic door works; she comes out of the tunnel into her new city. Cool.
She adds her parents and stepfather and some extended family and Janine and Angela to the whitelist; they may go either way whenever they please, bringing surrounding vehicles with them, though they will simply pass through the door's space and still be on Earth if they attempt to bring unauthorized passengers. Then she parks Tegu in her tower's garage and flies back to find some nearby land to buy and put up an immigration office on. [Libby, do you happen to have special real estate related advantages?]
Bella drives from planet to planet. Yep, magic door works; she comes out of the tunnel into her new city. Cool.
She adds her parents and stepfather and some extended family and Janine and Angela to the whitelist; they may go either way whenever they please, bringing surrounding vehicles with them, though they will simply pass through the door's space and still be on Earth if they attempt to bring unauthorized passengers. Then she parks Tegu in her tower's garage and flies back to find some nearby land to buy and put up an immigration office on. [Libby, do you happen to have special real estate related advantages?]
self_composed
[Nice big lot nearish -] She gives the address of a Starbucks within a stone's throw of the magic door. [On which zoning would be friendly to an office space of the sort relevant to processing applications to live on or do stuff on Mars. Possible I should have done this the other way around. I will when I make more. But there's random land around, I assume some of it's for sale.]
prima-sequentem
[Give me half an hour to make some calls,] she says agreeably. [Do you have the money to put into it, or should I cover that too?]