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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."
giftedandtalented
giftedandtalented
"I guess that's okay-ish, then. He can wake up when I figure something out."
Tab is very dedicated to working something out. Chelsa is an ongoing, quietly humming, epic disaster. She is not less urgent just because things are not cinematically toppling into the sea and catching fire.
Tab is going to think of something.
She thinks of a lot of things, actually; but the first one to elicit more than a detailed, thoughtful rejection is:
I might be able to shield somebody else inside-out, so their powers couldn't get out. I don't know if I can do this and I shouldn't try on Kers, but if I can, it would make Chelsa think she was breaking if I flickered her off and back on again on whatever schedule you thought was safe, and then she would probably cooperate with helping to gentle everybody into not needing her anymore.
Tab is very dedicated to working something out. Chelsa is an ongoing, quietly humming, epic disaster. She is not less urgent just because things are not cinematically toppling into the sea and catching fire.
Tab is going to think of something.
She thinks of a lot of things, actually; but the first one to elicit more than a detailed, thoughtful rejection is:
I might be able to shield somebody else inside-out, so their powers couldn't get out. I don't know if I can do this and I shouldn't try on Kers, but if I can, it would make Chelsa think she was breaking if I flickered her off and back on again on whatever schedule you thought was safe, and then she would probably cooperate with helping to gentle everybody into not needing her anymore.
giftedandtalented
Okay.
And Tab waits for her to visit.
She doesn't know Chelsa personally, so she doesn't know how Chelsa will react to seeming like she's breaking; she has to rely on Aelise for that part of the plan assessment. But she pokes the idea through her map of the world's institutions. She thinks it might work, especially if she worked slowly.
And Tab waits for her to visit.
She doesn't know Chelsa personally, so she doesn't know how Chelsa will react to seeming like she's breaking; she has to rely on Aelise for that part of the plan assessment. But she pokes the idea through her map of the world's institutions. She thinks it might work, especially if she worked slowly.
salus-populi
Aelise arrives a few days later.
"It could work," she says. "If you can do it. But don't get excited just yet. I'd want to think about it very carefully first."
"It could work," she says. "If you can do it. But don't get excited just yet. I'd want to think about it very carefully first."
giftedandtalented
Tab nods. And she closes her eyes and concentrates.
Her Gift feels like a blanket, complete with the supernatural, unexplained ability to protect her from monsters under the bed. She didn't know that this wasn't something everyone felt until she asked, but once she picked it out as a magic thing and not as just part of the sensory background, she was able to start considering how to do things with it, and eventually figured out how to blanket Kers. She can keep Kers under the blanket without much attention, until she goes to sleep, at which time her Gift decides that it needs to wrap her up in one hundred percent of the blanket; sometimes if she's deep in thought about something unrelated she'll also lose it. She can put it on and take it off even if her and Kers are on opposite sides of the orbital ring.
Aelise is right there, and she just needs to turn the blanket inside-out...
She tries. She had a long list of things to try, full of invented words and exclamation points and little synaesthetic diagrams.
It doesn't work. Her blanket does not want to be inside-out.
Her Gift feels like a blanket, complete with the supernatural, unexplained ability to protect her from monsters under the bed. She didn't know that this wasn't something everyone felt until she asked, but once she picked it out as a magic thing and not as just part of the sensory background, she was able to start considering how to do things with it, and eventually figured out how to blanket Kers. She can keep Kers under the blanket without much attention, until she goes to sleep, at which time her Gift decides that it needs to wrap her up in one hundred percent of the blanket; sometimes if she's deep in thought about something unrelated she'll also lose it. She can put it on and take it off even if her and Kers are on opposite sides of the orbital ring.
Aelise is right there, and she just needs to turn the blanket inside-out...
She tries. She had a long list of things to try, full of invented words and exclamation points and little synaesthetic diagrams.
It doesn't work. Her blanket does not want to be inside-out.
salus-populi
Aelise lets her keep trying as long as she likes; then she shrugs and says, "So much for that. Maybe it'll grow in as you get older; that happens."
giftedandtalented
Tab does not manage it that year.
Or the next, or the next few.
But she doggedly tries every visit, because there are no better ideas going, everything has some dreadful flaw, everything makes her map fall to bits or Aelise thinks it's untenable per risk aversion. Aelise may not like using Chelsa - or says so, anyway - but she doesn't consider her quite as much of a disaster as Tab does, so she passes up a couple possibilities Tab would have jumped on.
And one day, a few weeks after she turns twelve -
"It - I think it - did it work?"
Or the next, or the next few.
But she doggedly tries every visit, because there are no better ideas going, everything has some dreadful flaw, everything makes her map fall to bits or Aelise thinks it's untenable per risk aversion. Aelise may not like using Chelsa - or says so, anyway - but she doesn't consider her quite as much of a disaster as Tab does, so she passes up a couple possibilities Tab would have jumped on.
And one day, a few weeks after she turns twelve -
"It - I think it - did it work?"
giftedandtalented
"So you can't sense my life force anymore but for this to really work you have to not be able to do things - so - I guess you should try immortaling Kers some?"
salus-populi
The experiment's results aren't much to look at.
"Of course, I can't properly see if it worked or not, but it doesn't feel like it did," she says. "I'm not any lower."
"Of course, I can't properly see if it worked or not, but it doesn't feel like it did," she says. "I'm not any lower."
salus-populi
"Yes. Wait until I'm on the ground again, in case something unexpected happens. I'll email you to tell you when."
warmfeelings
It's like dying.
The worst death, drowning in cold, like the world is made of frigid motionless hate, like there is nothing else but chill animosity.
Chelsa screams.
And then the world comes back, every pinpoint of warmth a lifeline in exquisite detailed liveliness - there's her pretty Tima and her devoted Amdon and her gentle Anneia and her warm sun -
Her warm sun.
And another very like.
The sensitivity is gone almost as soon as the cold is, but now she knows.
There were only two like that.
Harley is on the planet.
The worst death, drowning in cold, like the world is made of frigid motionless hate, like there is nothing else but chill animosity.
Chelsa screams.
And then the world comes back, every pinpoint of warmth a lifeline in exquisite detailed liveliness - there's her pretty Tima and her devoted Amdon and her gentle Anneia and her warm sun -
Her warm sun.
And another very like.
The sensitivity is gone almost as soon as the cold is, but now she knows.
There were only two like that.
Harley is on the planet.
