View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Cam is out flying. There's a decent cloud of atmosphere around the gold plane, now, millenia of demons making air around themselves for comfort and not sealing it up because why would you bother. There's a small forest, here - the effect is kind of ruined by the lamps it has to grow under, but it's still pretty.
He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -
Cam on Barrayar
+ Show First Post
from_scratch
from_scratch
"I will be happy to do that. Shall I wait until in the room with the aforementioned Simon Illyan or is 'us' somebody else?"
thisvorlunatic
"...Before I answer that question, I want to clarify: do you know who Simon Illyan is?"
from_scratch
"Please assume that I am a friendly alien who has landed on your planet fluent in your language and spent several weeks eavesdropping on public conversations and reading publicly available books."
thisvorlunatic
"This is going to be interesting," Miles concludes. "All right, friendly alien. Let's have a friendly chat. I'm sure I can find us a spare office in the building you just undesecrated."
thisvorlunatic
"Simon Illyan," he explains as he leads Cam towards the building, "is my boss. Chief of ImpSec. I have to say, among the hypotheses we generated, 'someone who had no idea what the building was for did it to affably stir up shit' did not appear."
thisvorlunatic
"Hm, 'hypotheses' might be overstating the point, really. It was more a list of questions. How could someone do that? Why would someone do that? What chain of causality could possibly lead to the result we observed? And then Captain Illyan observed that part of the result was some sketchy-looking fellow sitting on a bench watching the hive boil, and I was the poor sod tasked with investigating."
from_scratch
"Well, if you had had a little sign out front labeled 'friendly aliens form a line here please, ring bell for service' you could have saved the trouble, but you might not have the pretty mosaic."
Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow. Fall, splat, up again, follow.
Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow. Fall, splat, up again, follow.
thisvorlunatic
"Heaven forfend we be denied the pretty mosaic. Hello, there," he says, giving a salute-like gesture to the uniformed individual guarding the side door. "Lieutenant Vorkosigan and guest. Illyan wants us."
The uniformed individual gives them a suspicious once-over, aims a handheld scanning device at them, and frowns at its readouts. Then he ducks inside for a few seconds. Then he comes back out and waves them through.
"Thanks," Miles says cheerfully, and he conducts Cam into the building. "Follow me, don't get lost, don't commit any egregious acts of sabotage."
The uniformed individual gives them a suspicious once-over, aims a handheld scanning device at them, and frowns at its readouts. Then he ducks inside for a few seconds. Then he comes back out and waves them through.
"Thanks," Miles says cheerfully, and he conducts Cam into the building. "Follow me, don't get lost, don't commit any egregious acts of sabotage."
from_scratch
"What qualifies as 'egregious'?" wonders Cam airily, taking note of their route.
thisvorlunatic
"Probably all sabotage, I'm afraid. Sorry to ruin your friendly alien fun."
Their route takes them up a lift tube and along a hallway to an empty room containing a desk and some chairs.
"Right. We can talk here and not be overheard by anyone but ImpSec, who's allowed. D'you want to expand on that 'friendly alien' thing?"
Their route takes them up a lift tube and along a hallway to an empty room containing a desk and some chairs.
"Right. We can talk here and not be overheard by anyone but ImpSec, who's allowed. D'you want to expand on that 'friendly alien' thing?"
from_scratch
"I have no idea why I'm here. Normally when I am summoned I appear on Earth or Luna or Mars and it is, most recently, the year 2159, with a somewhat different technological tree than you seem to have gone through. Plus the thing where everybody knows that you can summon demons et cetera. But here I am, probably until my summoner dies of their own accord because I have no idea who it is and don't care to do elaborate detective work to make them send me home. I cannot tell you for sure if you can summon more demons, or our counterparts angels and fairies, because I don't know how I wound up in the wrong universe in the first place, although I could tell you how to try it if assured of your attention to safety procedures. Demons and angels and fairies have different kinds of magic per species; demons make stuff. I did the mosaic to get some kind of moderately friendly official attention because I've always wanted to terraform a planet and the nearest one that needs particularly demonic terraforming's five jump points away and I don't know how to get across a wormhole, since those are not a feature of where I'm from."
thisvorlunatic
"...That's... heartening..." he says slowly, not sounding all that heartened. "Um. To what specifications can you make stuff...? If I told you to make, oh, a Cetagandan Order of Merit, and you didn't know what that was?"
from_scratch
"That's probably specific enough. Books, as an example, are title and author, hit-or-miss on things like title and first few words. I can put 'em in arbitrary formats, though, if I can make them at all."
thisvorlunatic
"Let's have an Order of Merit, then. Not that I exactly doubt you, but we didn't catch your last supernatural feat on vid - none of our pickups are pointed at the building."
from_scratch
"I'm a little wary of making things I don't know what they are in case you are actually out to abuse my friendly nature. I haven't had lunch yet, though, want to see me make a grilled cheese sandwich? Or name me a book."
thisvorlunatic
"An Order of Merit is an award. I own one. The point of the exercise is that you have claimed to be able to make things even if you don't know anything about what they should look like, and I want to verify that. You're welcome to make yourself lunch too if you feel like lunch."
from_scratch
Cam makes a sandwich and bites it contemplatively. After three bites he hands Miles an Order of Merit.
thisvorlunatic
Miles looks at it. "Well, that answers that question," he says. "Now I have two of the things. God help me." He tucks the object in his pocket. "So. You're after a ride to Komarr? What do you plan to do when you get there, exactly?"
from_scratch
"Slip out of an arcology and make a whole lot of air. Possibly after consulting with people who are experts on things like 'what if there were suddenly a whole lot of air on Komarr', since you've got more relevant history of terraforming than I am acquainted with."