This isn't where Raafi went to sleep. He'd set his bedroll up on a comfy patch of moss under a tree, and now - he still has the bedroll, at least, and his pack, but the tree and moss are nowhere to be seen, replaced by a strange metal room with still, stuffy air and an implausibly clear night sky out the window.
"Hello?" he calls, getting to his feet.
Most people never get mail from daeva but you're not most people. I'm already getting extra help though.
All right. Don't hesitate to let me know if you need anything.
He signs up, has Dogwood add that to his contact page, and posts to the blog:
Nothing very interesting to report today, unfortunately, but I have a request for you. I'm trying to figure out what's needed to bring wizards here, and more people of other species, and I think the promise of chiplocked computers might be important for that; if anyone knows how to get in touch with the demon or demons who designed the ones you have now, I'd appreciate them helping me get in touch. I can get conjured mail, now, too; the mail label is with my email address.
She's very reclusive but this might actually interest her; she doesn't have a discoverable mail label but her boyfriend does.Cam provides.
Got it, thank you.
he adds to the blog post, and then writes a letter to the boyfriend.
Hello,
I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm one of the clerics from the newly-contacted world, and I understand you might be able to help me get in touch with the inventor of the chiplock; I'd like to ask for her help in adapting them for nonhuman species of people. I suspect that it's going to be fairly vital - if it's known that they can't use a chiplocked computer to call for help that leaves them vulnerable to assault, among other issues - and I'm willing to take whatever precautions she likes to preserve her privacy, including meeting her in hell if she'd rather not take a summons; I'll need a day's warning to prepare the spells I need for that and a picture of the place she'd like to meet. I can't personally summon yet, so if she'd rather meet here I'll need some time to work out the logistics of it and find someone suitably trustworthy. If you'd like to read more about me you can search online for the interviews I've done or look at my blog, at raaficlericoffharlanghn.pamphlet.com; my mailing label is there, too.
Thank you,
Raafi, cleric of Fharlanghn
He doesn't get a response in the next batch, though Dogwood says they'll keep an eye out.
That's enough time on the internet for one day anyway; he goes and wanders around - what does the United States have for tourist destinations - Washington DC, until it's time to get the Limbo questions.
Top Limbo questions:
Are people who were kings and stuff in olden times ruling parts of it?
How do I tell what my Limbo thing would be?
What did cavepeople get for Limbo things?
When you die do you appear naked?
How do you summon people from Limbo?
How do you find your dead family and friends?
Why didn't daeva tell us about Limbo before?
Do babies go to Limbo?
What do Limbo people eat?
What is Hitler doing?
What is Jesus doing?
What is Genghis Khan doing?
What about suicides?
Do animals go to Limbo?
Are people who died old old in Limbo?
Is Vincent Van Gogh okay?
Does everyone go to Limbo?
Do you lose your memories when you've been in Limbo for hundreds of years?
What language do they speak in Limbo?
Is God there?
He's curious about some of those, too.
He does some shopping to fill his portable hole up with things for his counterpart to distribute, picks up dinner, and heads over.
He lands in a city.
It's not a very tall city - the buildings are mostly one-story or in a few ambitious cases two-story mud brick things, interspersed with a very occasional normal building from some era or other that doesn't obey the grid insofar as there is one. It's pretty crowded. About half the people there are wearing clothes and most of them aren't wearing many. There is one person with a bicycle and a trailer attached to it; it's the only vehicle in sight. The streets are marked with carvings in the earth that forms them, filled with the same baked mud that forms the houses in some cases, in others just depressions; the markings are in dozens of languages when they're words at all. Over there someone is telling an audience a story; over there someone is distributing lentil fritters out of an apparently bottomless cart of lentil fritter batter and oil; over there is a well and a line of people drawing water out of it.
Huh! That's some luck. He'll look around a little before he moves on. He starts with the storyteller.
It's a soap opera style drama about an English king who married six times and executed two of the wives and schismed a religion to be allowed to divorce a couple of them and found them all very irritated with him once they met up in Limbo. It's unclear how much of it is true.
Sounds like something a king could get up to, if they were the kind of king to have bards telling stories about them a hundred years later and a world away. Well, more 'kick the old church out and invite in a new one' than schisming, but things are different here.
The next story doesn't seem to be as interesting, and he wanders off to see what else is around.
Somebody's neatening up the signs in the road; people over there are using an irrigation channel to make mud and a kiln to bake bricks out of it. There's a fruit tree; it grows dates. One person is eating raw dates but most of the fruit is being set out to dry. Singing and dancing over that way.
Bunch of people in concentric circles going this way and that, singer warbling about how their city is all around a tree, a tree of dates, a tree of dates which never dies, never dies, etc.
This gets attention from someone who is bringing the singer water. She drops off the water and swings back in Raafi's direction. "Do you speak Arabic?"
"You look........ old."
"Yes, I'm, ah, not dead. It's a bit of a long story. I'm all right, I have a way to get home."
"If you're not dead why are you here?"
"I'm here to visit a friend, but the magic that lets me cross between realms doesn't have very good aim, and I landed here - I have more magic to get me to him, once I'm done looking around. I have clothes and things I can give out, too, in magic storage."
"Clothes are nice but not really the most important thing. I know someone who got her hijab but it's not one of the good things."
"We always want news."
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