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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
"Battery?" asks Tab, nonplussed.
"...Wait, you don't know that part?" he says. "Why do you think she's keeping me away from Chelsa in the first fucking place? Besides the fact that I cry and break things every time she comes near me, I mean, there's more than one reason, but the main thing is Aelise's Gift moves lifeforce around and mine is a renewable resource. I'm pretty sure that's why she stuck me up here and, like, let me have visitors, instead of just dropping me on the moon or something."
"I knew she could make people immortal, I didn't know how she did it," Tab says.
"Before I showed up, she used to kill babies," says Harley.
Tab isn't quite sure how to react to that.
He shrugs.
"And Chelsa cut them off, so nobody thought it was that fucked up, but I mean of course it's that fucked up."
"And Chelsa cut them off, so nobody thought it was that fucked up, but I mean of course it's that fucked up."
"Oh," says Tab. "...She didn't tell me that. I will have to ask her about it."
"Wonder why she didn't," says Harley.
"I don't know. Maybe because I'm seven."
"Probably," says Harley.
"She's not doing it any more, though?" Tab asks slowly.
"Nah. She uses me instead," says Harley. "Maybe not for long, though, I'm going nuts up here."
"I could visit you a lot," says Tab anxiously, "if that would help. I don't want any babies to die."
"Maybe," he says. "Aelise already visits me a bunch. But I think I need more people than this. This fucking place is just so empty, you know?" He hugs his pillow some more.
"Maybe she could secret more people?" Tab says. "How many people?"
"Enough people. I don't think she's gonna do it," he says. "Anyway, if she brought me twenty people who are all still all fuzzy over Chelsa, I'd probably launch myself into orbit. And there aren't twenty people who aren't."
"I don't know if I can unfuzz a person," frowns Tab. "I think maybe I could keep them getting more fuzzed."
"And if you could unfuzz a person—" Harley shakes his head. "Fuck it. I need to be on the ground, that's all. And if I can't be on the ground then I'll just - find somewhere else to be."
"...with people in it?" asks Tab dubiously.
"Somewhere with people in it would be good," he says. "But there's plenty of things that are worse than good but better than here."
"Like what?" Tab asks, bewildered.
"Like dead," he says. "Dead would be great compared to lonely all the fucking time."
"I thought you were immortal?" Tab says, clearly confused.
"Yes," he says, "and I wish I wasn't, did we not just cover that?"
"But can you not be? Is that a thing you can do?"