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Unfortunately, when Sue comes back from Alethia, Peace is still empty of Aegis. Jane is still down.
autokinetic
New Bell has a shitty world that made Glass puke when she got a look at it - has a kind of anti-causal thing, it doesn't play fair basically, science - like, the concepts of induction and empiricism - do not work - fried Jane but good - we didn't dare make wishes or use half our magic, there was this weird lady - Picture of Callahan! - who seemed to know something but wouldn't tell us shit, eventually I found a door, we were only there a couple days but it was way long enough. Problem is her Joker's not portable, he's a field that doesn't transplant in addition to the part that looks like you. And goes around naked all the time, which amused Cam 'n Ama okay but I just missed you.
I love you, says Sue, in full emotional depth. ...And you're still fifteen, wow, I might have some weird feelings about that?
Yeah, I think Sarion kinds of wins that contest, but I'm still gonna have weird feelings. You fifteen and me sixteen is okay; you fifteen and me twenty is - less okay than that.
I'm definitely not going to dwell on the idea of welcome-home kisses while I'm talking to reporters, he says fondly. We can talk about it in a bit, okay?
autokinetic
Love you too. And we're going to make Jane a body - a Devicey one like Brilliance's - to live in the Belltower nice and safe so this never happens again and I don't have to, like, be under house arrest for her protection.
autokinetic
We should've, yeah. In fairness if we'd expected that shithole world we wouldn't've gone into it.
Yeah, but it's always the thing you don't expect that bites you in the ass, he sighs. Anyway. Here's what I've been up to...
He gives her a condensed summary of three years of campaign and one year of being Hegemon. The existence of magic is now classified information; the circle of people in the know is small, but steadily expanding, and he freely makes use of coins to help things along wherever it wouldn't be obvious to anyone who doesn't know. He has long-term plans for dropping the secrecy eventually, any of a number of ways depending on how things go.
The Hegemony is not what he would have chosen to do with his life, but he is really, really good at it.
He gives her a condensed summary of three years of campaign and one year of being Hegemon. The existence of magic is now classified information; the circle of people in the know is small, but steadily expanding, and he freely makes use of coins to help things along wherever it wouldn't be obvious to anyone who doesn't know. He has long-term plans for dropping the secrecy eventually, any of a number of ways depending on how things go.
The Hegemony is not what he would have chosen to do with his life, but he is really, really good at it.
I wasn't gonna just leave your campaign hanging, he says. Anyway. Now I can hand it off to you, but probably not in the next few years. And we'll have to cook up a story to explain your disappearance. If Jane's stable enough, though, we can unveil resurrection and maybe say you were dead - that'd be a good next step, I think, we could get that station you were talking about up and running. It'll hit pretty hard but I think people can take it. Bet it'll kick up the numbers in the colonization program; you think Earth's crowded now, wait'll it's full of dead people, right?
autokinetic
No kidding. If I'm being resurrected does that mean I should not magic myself to look nineteen so it looks like I've been aging the last four years?
...goooood question, says Sue. I would maybe have fewer weird feelings if you looked nineteen. Which is silly and shallow, but there it is.
I love you too. See, the problem is, I don't actually want you to spend four years growing up without me but I want the results of you spending four years growing up without me. Whatever. I'll live with what I've got; I'm good at that.
autokinetic
Idly, Aegis looks in on the press conference with pastwatching, delayed by only a fraction of a second.
It's just wrapping up; Sue is concluding his response to a question about a proposed rewrite of the Hegemony constitution, reminding everyone that the date of the first international conference to discuss it is a month and a half away, and throwing one last charming smile at the cameras.