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Mars has more people on it now. Bella has conjured herself a crown of seamless moissanite and star sapphire, and wears it around most of the time. She does something nice for Earth every Cygnus and makes routine public appearances, with the PR guy Libby found for her on the brainphone steering her away from missteps. (Most missteps. Occasionally she just disagrees with him.) Life is good.
It happens one day that she attempts to read Alice, thinking it about time to top off her supply of coins - and besides, even if it weren't, she does like to spend time with her boyfriend - and - he's not there.
Her first reaction is panic. She has known from the beginning that a contest between them would come down to reaction time. Did she screw up by introducing him to Ghosty - did something else happen - does some switch trip in the relevant template at a certain age, is hers decent only because he's young - has he blocked her off with his considerable power and begun to wreak havoc?
But of course there's a much more reasonable explanation. He's in Milliways, that's all, he found a door and wandered off without thinking to notify her.
Because visits to Milliways take only moments worldside. This has been true even when they've been into other's worlds: the door is at a very narrow slice of time except when held open.
But she checks again a minute later.
And he's still not there.
Is he dead? Did he think of - stumble across - cook up some way to die that would be so fascinating that he had to try it right then, without consulting her, without thinking of her and how it would hurt her at all, without knowing if stars can revive the dead -
Or did he, somehow, in spite of what is now magically bolstered love for her -
Decide not to come back at all?
She's getting ahead of herself. She can find out if he went to Milliways or not. She -
Stops before completing her wish.
If he's gone - if he's not coming back soon, or at all - then she has to work at least for a while with the coins she already has.
She will not spend a pentagon to see this one snippet of the past. She will spend a hex to gain past-viewing as a stable power she can use whenever she wants. If she chooses the right powers to make with her current supply of hexes, she may be able to coast for many years with almost no individual wishes larger than a square. Now that she has the template of Olympus to draw on she's sure she could find a way to compress wishes for more cities - maybe even planetsful of cities - into single stars, and she has a lot of stars from the days Alice spent turning.
And there have got to be other masochists in the world. Some might be comparable, or people like Shell Bell's Sherlock who'll willingly be made so.
Her empire will go on just fine.
Bella's just not sure - when she's finished designing and installing the power, when she's finished watching Alice casually walk through the kitchen door in his lair to Milliways instead and not come out - whether she will.
self_composed
self_composed
Teleportation!
Bella explains the non-disclosure agreement just the same way as she did for Sandy.
Bella explains the non-disclosure agreement just the same way as she did for Sandy.
self_composed
"Wish with. Wanna try? This one will only do itty-bitty things, like finishing up your braid for you," Bella says, sliding the triangle across the table.
"Okay," says Anna.
She takes the coin. She wishes.
She brings her braid over her shoulder to inspect it: it is now a different kind entirely.
"Cool," she declares.
She takes the coin. She wishes.
She brings her braid over her shoulder to inspect it: it is now a different kind entirely.
"Cool," she declares.
self_composed
"Nicely chosen experiment. Now, the reason that one only does little bitty things is because it's a triangle. There are also squares, pentagons, hexagons, seven-pointed stars, and I have exactly one eight-pointed three-dimensional thing that isn't particularly coinlike. Wishcoins are very convenient; the more points they've got, the more they can do. The inconvenient thing about them is where they come from." Pause, breath, eye contact. "Wishcoins are made of pain."
self_composed
"Yeah, I know, my original assessment was along the lines of 'these are fucked-up magic powers,'" Bella agrees. "It's not something I can edit, not even with a star. I cannot make it so that wishcoins are made out of sunshine. They're just made of pain. More pain, pointier coin. I can make triangles and squares. I can make pentagons if I have to. I made a hexagon once, and I wasn't in that situation on purpose. And I used to have help, who could manufacture stars for days on end if the situation called for it, but he has wandered into another dimension and I don't know whether to expect him back - but I have to assume he's gone. Hence, job posting."
"Job posting for... people who like pain?" she hazards. "Wow, okay, not something I ever thought would land me a job."
self_composed
"I filtered for some other criteria too, but, yeah, that's the big one," says Bella. "I'd do it myself, but I have a native magic power - and native trumps wished and mine does not like the idea of my being adjusted that way."
self_composed
"You don't have a job that you like - I don't know whether you have none at all or just don't like the one you have. You aren't, at least in principle, anti-Empire-of-the-Stars or weirded out by magic. And according to a naive, loose, magically-handled definition of the terms, you are reasonably bright and decent."
self_composed
"Depends on the coin," says Bella, spreading her hands. "I'm not going to sugar-coat it - for the big ones it's a lot. When I made the only hexagon I have ever made, I was hit by a van, broke most of the bones in my body, and might never have woken, let alone walked again, if my previous coinmaking helper hadn't patched me up. Stars are worse. It goes up exponentially per coin type in a unit I call 'triangles' because it's the minimum amount of pain to make one triangle - just a pinprick will do. So a square is what you get for anything in the range of ten to ninety-nine triangles."
"...What happens if I can't churn these things out like you need me to? Or are you that sure your magic note was on the ball?"
self_composed
"Magic is pretty good about this sort of thing," Bella says. "And while I can't make myself the right amount of masochist, it is an achievable edit for brains that aren't walled in like mine. And if you don't work out for some other reason, no big deal, I send you your last paycheck and you can go home or live on Mars like a regular Martian or whatever, although any coins you do make would still have to be dealt with appropriately."
self_composed
"I don't really care if there are triangles floating around, as long as I don't have to deal with the PR issue of people knowing what constitutes them," says Bella, waving a hand. "Triangles aren't a big deal. Squares and up, though, can be, especially stars, which are mean and which you should not ever try to use. Martian ground rules prevent people from doing nasty things to each other, but there is a magic door to Earth right in the middle of this city. So I'd want to have the coins, or I'd want to be sure that you weren't giving them out like party favors and were using them responsibly. The last occupant of this position invited me to read his mind. I don't want to make that a condition of employment, but I do want to take the fact that I'm giving out phenomenal cosmic power very seriously."
"I am not super keen on you reading my mind," says Anna. "But I'm almost hesitant to ask what else you'd do to make sure I'm not, I don't know, handing out... pentagons?... on the sly."
self_composed
"Geases like the nondisclosure agreement are an option," Bella says. "I'm open to suggestions."