The grownups are all very busy, but the children are all bored.
Bored or having nightmares. But Tasárinon was not on a ship and did not see the people dying and has only heard it thirdhand and can't exactly have nightmares about the look in his mother's eyes - well, he probably could, but he hasn't - so he's bored, and he is drawing on the floor. It is an absurdly intricate drawing. He has been embellishing it for three days.
"There would need to be a recording device recording the oath as it was spoken, and my attempt to make a copy of the recording should fail if it's not in the right 'medium'. But I need to test it."
"Can you come pick up some people to go speak to Melian?"
"Yeah, sure. I'm stopping at Mithrim first in case they'd like to volunteer as live subjects for the suicide triggers."
"I very much hope those work."
Mithrim's walls are still holding.
Oh good.
He lands. He asks who wants to try his kind of cyborg implant and once they've trained it on their mental signature a chip melter. He is frank about the state of testing on these - works on daeva and humans and doesn't kill mindless Elf bodies at least not fast but that's all he knows and Elves are weird.
Most people are not thrilled with those conditions, especially now that the city's rigged to explode so they're safe enough anyway.
But he has one or two volunteers.
He'll start with one, just in case. Cyborg implant first. Chip in; if the subject does not immediately keel over they get a little computer with a training program and they're supposed to do things like "will this dot across the projection" and "try to write a copy of this sentence with your mind" until the program goes ding.
This is extremely weird and the test subject grumbles a lot about how maybe all these advanced societies with their nifty gadgets should instead stop the Enemy or something, but after a while he gets it working.
"Hell gadget, not Valinor," says Cam. "Hell didn't know he existed." And when the program goes ding - it doesn't take that long - he installs the melty thing.
"Oh, well, that's all right, then. How do I activate it if I need to?"
"You will it the same way you willed the dot across the screen; it's got a transponder keyed to you."
A deep breath. "Thanks."
"You're welcome."
Okay, on the strength of nothing having happened immediately to this guy does anybody else want one, Cam cannot guarantee it will not have weird longer-term effects but it's not having any short-term ones?
,,,maybe if he comes back in a few days? If he's sufficiently sure the city will explode violently enough to destroy them all anyway.
Are the kids doing okay?
...these people should all have phones. Here, have phones. Call your children.
Well, that'll thoroughly occupy them.
Should've thought of that before. He goes and gives the other city phones too. And then he heads to Brithombar.
Where the President has assembled a diplomatic mission for him, and also the Valinor Elves have offered to help with medical things and have been a good deal of help but if he wants to do blood for transfusions and copy lots of local drugs it'd be much appreciated.
He will happily top off their medical supplies before he ushers his diplomatic escort into the shuttle and flies to Doriath!
Forcefield is still up! They can still approach the tall concrete wall that must be mostly for show because forcefield.
On the way Cam gives them the transcript of his last conversation with Doriath. Do they have advice?
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post