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Margaret is exploring the tunnels under Whateley again, because everyone else is in the cafeteria and that's only so interesting when you can't eat or drink. There's some pretty interesting stuff down here! For instance, this room has a bar in it, and despite the entrance being underground the window has a view of exploding stars.
She admires the view for a bit, then wanders up to the bar.
"Yes ma'am." Bar can provide a test kit, too; DZ has to read the directions, but it's not hard to use once she has. "2153. That's a normal reading."
"Huh. I wonder why nobody in my world discovered the Force, then. Maybe we have fewer Force-sensitive people. Or some people have discovered it and everyone just assumed they were mutants."
"How many people are there on your planet? Unless it's very densely populated I wouldn't expect there to be more than one Force-sensitive alive there at a time; they're very rare."
"A few billion, which sounds like it doesn't hold a candle to even some of the individual planets in your universe, so yeah."
"Does your universe have an Earth, or did humans evolve somewhere else?"
"We don't know where humans evolved; the species has been spacegoing for long enough to have lost that information."
"I don't know whether to be impressed that you've been in space that long, or disappointed that you haven't reached an incomprehensibly high tech level. Well, anyway, if you have an Earth, that might be where humans evolved." She shrugs.
It quickly becomes obvious that Deskyl and DZ are getting time-dilated again; the medical droids, and occasionally DZ, come down for food quite often. And before too long, one of them requests another replacement arm from the bar.
The medical droids tend to be in and out with little time to chat, so Upload spends most of her time chatting with Bar or other patrons and absorbing the technical knowledge of the multiverse.
When one of them asks for an arm for DZ, and DZ isn't here, she's rather alarmed. "Excuse me", she says softly to the medical droid, "Is DZ alright? I mean, could she have come down for her own arm if she wanted?"
"Okay . . . Can you tell her that if she ever wants me to visit her upstairs instead of her coming down, I'd be happy to?" She really doubts DZ will understand the subtext there, but she's kind of short on better ideas. "Oh, that reminds me," she adds casually, "what's your room number?"
"Okay, thank you." She can't exactly decide to go looking if DZ doesn't show up in a certain amount of time, both because of the time dilation and because the various droids don't strictly take turns doing the grocery run, but she can sketch blueprints for miniaturized cameras and/or communicators and she can definitely fret.
DZ comes down shortly, anyway. She heads to the bar to ask for a datapad, but stops by Margaret's table rather than heading straight back upstairs. "Hello; is everything all right?"
"I'm fine, but I've been worried about you. I keep thinking you might get hurt worse than just needing another arm. Or you might, how to put this, you might feel like you need to stay with Deskyl even if you're having a bad time, and I know you care about her a lot but I don't want you to have a bad time. So I'm fretting about it."
"Yes ma'am. I'm fine, but Deskyl is worried about that too; she sent me down for books to read to help me think about it."
"That's good to hear. May I see what the books are called?" If DZ accepts, Margaret scans the list of titles on the datapad upside down.
It's a relatively short list, just ten books: five on recognizing and leaving abusive relationships, two on self-care for people in service roles, one titled "Self-Ownership and You", and two with titles too abstract to guess their contents from.
Unless that's a very misleading set of titles, it sounds like Deskyl and DZ have their hearts in the right place. So to speak.
"Thanks. Good luck up there; I hope Deskyl will feel better and be ready to fight again soon. And that the next fight won't hurt her so badly."
DZ nods. "I think she might go soon - it's still not a good idea, but she's improving, if she's careful it won't be catastrophic."
"Yeah. Even with Milliways pausing time, I can understand wanting to go sooner rather than later." Left unspoken is the thought that Deskyl is the hardest to kill of the three of them, but also the only one who ages. "I know I've already said it, but if there's anything else I can do to help her chances, let me know."
"I will, ma'am, thank you."
The next couple days pass uneventfully; DZ comes down regularly for food, and doesn't need any more replacement limbs. Eventually, though, she comes looking for Upload, carrying Deskyl's extra arm rig.
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