Helen makes a line of hexagons in a zigzag shape.

Which Lu shines, and can then waggle through the air quite freely. "The possibilities of these are huge. Especially if they support weight -" She pushes the cube down to see if it will do that.

It will absolutely do that! One of Peerless's most iconic uses of barriers was herself and the rest of Vanguard standing on a shimmering platform in midair.

"I want so many of these. I might have to turn around and bring them all home to avoid tromping around with a flock of them between a dozen city-states, but they're more important than checking any given Aydanci possibility right away given that I won't be able to make more without you."

"I'm half-tempted just to move to your world," Helen admits. "I'm not going to--Marie would never go for it, and I'd miss the technological infrastructure. But going our separate ways feels so inefficient. Well, I'll get started making them--I imagine you'll want some to specific specifications, but if you want as many as it is sane to want just generating a ton in a variety of different shapes can only be useful--and you can start teaching me programming."

"Why wouldn't she go for it?" Lu wonders. "Oh, and, Bar, can I get a Shines, Shades: Subtle Servants?" She receives a book.

"Despite maintaining a policy of misanthropy because I'm guaranteed to outlive just about everyone I interact with on a daily basis, I have managed to accumulate some loved ones other than Helen. And I would also miss the infrastructure," says Marie, who is still reading her book but not so deep into it that she doesn't notice when someone says her name.

"What about the infrastructure? Here, Helen, read the intro chapter, it's better at this than I am."

"Remember the global communications network I mentioned? Mostly that," Helen says. "It's very...pervasive. We probably could adjust to living without it but it would be an unpleasant adjustment period."

"And I suppose it would be really hard to build one even with books from Bar?"

"...Yeah. It's the result of more than a hundred years of development. And it's not just the technology itself. There's almost a hundred years of culture surrounding it and content posted to it and stuff like that. It would be a little like trying to replace a library by building bookshelves, even if you could do it."

That...sort of works. It's tricky. At least to start with she'll get a just plain ordinary shine at least two times out of three.

So now this hard shine has polka-dots, but that's interesting in its own right too. Shine shine - aha! She gets one to come free. Bops it around the room. It is nearly invisible unless it's on a surface, but it can go straight between any two points.

Helen can make shines to Lu's specifications fairly trivially while she reads. As she does she requests a pencil and paper to work on practice programs.

"They're not normally mobile. I can make them co-occupying a space with something, but that is...unpleasant on a sensory level that probably wouldn't make sense to you. And yes, it does harm the things."

"Do you mind if I try it with something?"

"...Do you mean you want me to make a light co-occupying a thing. Um. I appreciate that science is important here but it's really really unpleasant so please think about what level of discomfort you would be willing to deal with in order to perform this experiment and then tell whether I should still do it."

"I mean I want to get an apple from Bar and try to send a hard shine through it so I know what happens. How unpleasant would it be? I wouldn't want to, say, be crippled until the next time I die for this result, since I can experiment after I've gotten them home. But it matters for what kinds I want - if they're a disaster to touch at speed, I probably shouldn't use them as vehicles unless I'm manually piloting and never let anyone I don't trust puppet one for themselves, if they disintegrate if I run one into something then I don't have to be so careful about who I let handle them except insofar as I'd need to beware my supply, etcetera."

"Oh. If you just want to hit something really hard with one you've got then go for it."

The apple is bumped. It moves in response to the thing nudging at it.

Lu stabilizes the apple and rams the shine at it at visible but rapid speed.

The apple goes splat. A piece of apple lands on Helen's cheek and she wipes it off absentmindedly.