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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.
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self_composed
guiltless
On Sunday at noon sharp, Sandy is in his apartment, which is small and poorly maintained and generally a mess. He's just pouring himself a glass of orange juice in his tiny kitchen.
self_composed
Bella returns to visibility once he's no longer pouring. "Hello," she says. "Ready to go? You can bring your juice if you like."
guiltless
"Bguk," splutters Sandy. "Whoa. Um. Hi! Yeah, I... guess...?" Purely on automatic, he picks up the glass.
self_composed
"Hi," says Bella, amused in spite of herself, and she teleports them and the orange juice to a suitable room for interviews in Marspire. "Welcome to Olympus."
guiltless
Sandy goes straight to the nearest window.
"Whoa," he says again, softer, more reverent.
"Whoa," he says again, softer, more reverent.
self_composed
"Isn't it nice?" Bella says, affecting a chatty tone. She has decided not to tell anyone that she is - was? - has been known to be dating the previous occupant of the job they're interviewing for, so acting bereft will not serve her. "I'm very pleased with the place. Now. The note you got and the interview you had with my personnel officer didn't tell you what this is all about, did they?"
guiltless
"Nope," he says, looking back at her and grinning a little. "It's all very mysterious."
self_composed
"Ideally, I'd like it to stay that way to the general public. So, should you agree to continue the interview, it will be under a non-disclosure agreement." Pause. "An enforced non-disclosure agreement. If you're not willing to be literally unable to discuss the rest of what we talk about today, then I'll teleport you - and your remaining orange juice - back home and that'll be that."
guiltless
"...Um..." he says, "...yeah, you're not gonna answer any of the like a million questions I suddenly have until I agree to your magic thingy, are you."
self_composed
"That's about the size of it," agrees Bella pleasantly.
self_composed
Bella notes the geas she empowered herself to set up before starting these interviews snap into place.
"Grand," she says. Unobtrusively, she digs the corner of one toenail into the neighboring toe, and a triangle appears in her palm. "This," she says, "is a wish coin."
"Grand," she says. Unobtrusively, she digs the corner of one toenail into the neighboring toe, and a triangle appears in her palm. "This," she says, "is a wish coin."
self_composed
"Wishcoins are extremely useful. This is just a little one, but they come in a variety of power levels. As the name implies, they let you make wishes. A triangle like this can, say - flip a lightswitch from across the room, or heat up lunch that's been left sitting on the counter for a few minutes. A square can conjure something - like my crown. Pentagons can grant someone a permanent nonmagical skill, like a language. Hexagons can do permanent magical superpowers, which is how I can teleport and fly and so on. Seven-pointed stars are what I used for terraforming this place. They're very convenient. The only inconvenient thing about them is how they have to be made." She sighs. "Wishcoins are made out of pain."
guiltless
His head rocks back a little and his eyebrows fly up.
But he doesn't actually say anything.
self_composed
"I can make triangles and squares. I could make pentagons if I had to. I have made one hexagon and I was not in that situation voluntarily," says Bella. "I had help, someone who could cheerfully make even the star kind for days on end if the situation called for it, and he has wandered off to another dimension and I don't know if he's coming back. I have a non-wish-based magical power that, for the most part, is very useful, but it will not let me edit myself to be able to comfortably make larger coins. Hence the... job posting."
guiltless
"So," he says slowly, "you... sent a magic note to everybody who could take over for the guy who quit?"
self_composed
"Filtered for some other criteria too, but yes."
(Quit. She decides not to react to that word. It's the obvious conclusion from what she told him and she doesn't know what the correct one is anyway.)
(Quit. She decides not to react to that word. It's the obvious conclusion from what she told him and she doesn't know what the correct one is anyway.)
self_composed
"The job is making coins. I have an -" She makes air quotes - "'agony beam', or you could arrange it on your own in some more usual way if you preferred. You'd get paid, yes, and you could keep some fraction of any coins you made for personal use - although there is a trick to stars and I must ask that you never try one of those."
self_composed
"Of course. I have a stash; I don't need to hire someone today, or even this month. You can email me when you'd like to talk again - I still have to be convinced that I want to hand you phenomenal cosmic power, after all," she says with a slight smile.
guiltless
"I'm not sure I'd want to hand me phenomenal cosmic power," he says. "How are you gonna tell if you do?"
self_composed
"There's..." She shrugs. "Options. Geases like the nondisclosure agreement, maybe. I could read the last guy's mind, but I don't think I'd better make that an employment requirement. Libby likes you enough to have put you on the shortlist. That counts for a fair bit."
