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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."
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giftedandtalented
"How come you're up here?" Tab asks.
"Because I hate Chelsa," says Harley.
"She's awful," agrees Tab solemnly.
Harley squints at her.
"What's your name again?"
"What's your name again?"
"Tab."
"Why are you up here?"
"I'm here to visit you!"
He rolls his eyes. "And why are you doing that? Why do you even know I exist?"
"I'm trying to figure out a safe way to get rid of Chelsa, and if you're up here being secret, you must be important, so I want to know why, so my ideas can have you in them if you have to be in them."
"And what, Aelise sent you to get it from me? Shit," says Harley. "Maybe she's halfway serious about it. So how much do you already know?"
"About you? I know your name and where to find you and that you are secret for complicated reasons and what you told me and that Aelise doesn't think the whole story is okay to tell me while I am seven."
Harley snorts.
"Yeah, that's probably because of all the sex," he says. "Fine. So for starters, I come from another universe."
"Yeah, that's probably because of all the sex," he says. "Fine. So for starters, I come from another universe."
"Wow," says Tab, eyes going wide. "Really?"
"Yes, really," he says. "I got rescued out of one and grew up in another, and then I randomly disappeared out of that one and practically fell right into Chelsa's lap, and it turns out that she can make you like her but she can't make you not hate her, and I hate her a lot."
"She can't make me like her," says Tab.
"I figured as much," says Harley.
"How did you move around between all these universes?" Tab asks, pulling out her tablet to take notes.
"I mean 'randomly disappeared' pretty well literally," he says. "For the first move, though, I had help."
"How did that work?"
"I was like a year old," he says, "I don't actually remember it or anything."
"And they never told you how? Who was it anyway?"
He drags his pillow over his head.
"What? What'd I say?"
"I kind of fucking miss her," Harley growls from under his pillow.
"I'm sorry," says Tab. "I don't know how to send you home."