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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
"Nope. Dying is not my actual plan," he says. "I'm not telling you my actual plan, because you'd tell Aelise, and then she'd find a way to stop me."
"She didn't tell me I had to tell her any things, so I could promise not to," Tab says, "and then I wouldn't."
"You sure?" he says. "Even though if I got away for long enough she'd go back to killing babies?"
"...Do you want her to go back to killing babies?" frowns Tab.
"No," he snorts. "And I'd stick around and let her drain me all day long if that was all it took. But this place, this universe, with Chelsa and everything, and being up here all alone - it fucks me up, I can't take it forever."
"I thought you couldn't get home."
"Yeah, that's kind of the root of all my problems," he says.
"So... aren't you going to keep being in the universe with Chelsa and it sucking, here or someplace worse, whatever you do? Unless you help me think of something. You could do that. If I think of something good Aelise can get rid of Chelsa."
"I thought we covered the part where I already have a bad solution and I'm not telling you what it is," he says.
"Yes," says Tab. "But it's bad."
"There aren't any good ones," he says, throwing up his hands. "I am past good solutions. My bad solutions are bad but at least they're mine."
"How do you know there aren't any good ones?" Tab insists.
"Because I need things I cannot possibly get," he says. "I need to be home, I need to be somewhere Chelsa isn't, I need to be around people who don't care about her - there aren't enough people who don't care about her in the fucking world, and there aren't going to be, there's no way she's going to let go, do you get me? If you get rid of her everyone is going to be devastated about it, and I will want to set them on fire, I hate her so much—"
He starts crying into his pillow.
He starts crying into his pillow.
"If you got here randomly maybe someone else could too, or you could randomly co somewhere else. Maybe I'll think of something good enough and Aelise will get rid of Chelsa. Maybe it turns out Chelsa doesn't work perfect over broadcast and blind people or something don't like her but they keep it quiet 'cause they know what's going on better than I did and they could come live up here, I don't know because I only found out about this problem a couple of minutes ago and haven't asked yet. Help me think of stuff! I hate her too, we could get rid of her if we could think of something!"
Right this second, he is too busy crying.
Eventually:
"Look, trying to solve the problem makes it worse, okay? Because it means I have to think about Chelsa and the entire planet fully of people she's got wrapped up in her snuggly mind control blankets, and I can't even get my head around that, and when I try I just want to hurt myself until I can't think about it anymore. At least when I'm thinking about something else, I go nuts slower."
"Look, trying to solve the problem makes it worse, okay? Because it means I have to think about Chelsa and the entire planet fully of people she's got wrapped up in her snuggly mind control blankets, and I can't even get my head around that, and when I try I just want to hurt myself until I can't think about it anymore. At least when I'm thinking about something else, I go nuts slower."
giftedandtalented
Tab thinks about that.
"So," she concludes slowly, "you can't help me and I can't help you?"
"So," she concludes slowly, "you can't help me and I can't help you?"
"Pretty fucking much," says Harley.
giftedandtalented
Tab hugs her knees, then picks up her tablet again and thinks on it.
"I wish the vampire empress me was here," she sighs after a minute.
"I wish the vampire empress me was here," she sighs after a minute.
Harley snorts.
"Yeah, me too."
"Yeah, me too."
giftedandtalented
Tab opens her mouth to ask him something else, but then decides against it.
He hugs his pillow and sighs.
giftedandtalented
Think, think, write, write, think.
"You do want me to do what I'm trying to do, though, so before you go do a terrible plan and maybe depending what it is I can't talk to you again, can you tell me stuff? Even if it sucks to talk about?"
"You do want me to do what I'm trying to do, though, so before you go do a terrible plan and maybe depending what it is I can't talk to you again, can you tell me stuff? Even if it sucks to talk about?"
He sighs again.
"Yeah, okay."
"Yeah, okay."