Mortal and Promise in fairyland
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"...oh. Right." Slight disappointment? Surely not. "Can I try it on you, then?"

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"You may type an order to unroll my wings."

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Unroll your wings.

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Typing doesn't work; her wings stay rolled up.

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He sighs. "Well, was worth a try."

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"The other two might still work. I think mortal language might be more consistently legible in stamped or assembled form."

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"Yeah. I don't have a stamp on me, but—" He grabs a phone, dials a number. "I want stamps, those kinds you can change letters around, and ink. Yes. Yeah. No, no—yes. I also want five stamps saying stop, yell, your, name, say—yes, five of each. One second—" He looks at Promise. "Any other good words?"

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"Maybe 'order them to stop'."

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"Order, them, to, don't, no, not, do—make it ten of each, yes, and twenty of the kind that you can change. Yes, as soon as possible. Thank you." He puts down his phone. "We'll get stamps in about an hour."

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"Okay."

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"Sorcery and mortal scarcity combine so well."

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"Because you have so much money now?"

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"Yep. I mean, the final utopic plan is moving humanity to a post-scarce society and fairyland to a post-vassalisation society and I'm not above cheating my way there."

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"Sounds good to me."

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"Yup. Anyway, let's see, any other obvious ways to fiddle with writing or signs or transmitting orders visually?"

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"Nothing springs to mind."

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"...mortal language is just like speaking in code to fairies, isn't it."

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"Yep."

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"So what exactly counts as code? Like, say, what if I invented code that meant a dash is a certain word or something? What would it take for it to... work?"

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"...I can't decide that a sound 'means stop' or some longer sentence. You probably can't either but it's maybe worth a try."

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"I mean, something decides that a sound humans use means stop. There are languages with only a handful of speakers alive on Earth, there are languages with no native speakers, whose real pronunciation isn't even certain, and I'm wondering where the boundary is."

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"Making something up and agreeing on it with your employee is worth testing."

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"My thoughts exactly." He opens an image editor and draws a slash, then starts composing an email to his employee with it attached.

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He sends a couple more images with meanings such as 'order' and 'them' and 'to' (even though that's quite anglocentric), and then a little star thing is supposed to mean "unfold your wings." After a little bit of back-and-forth, he turns back to Promise. "Let's see if this was enough to take?"

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