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Changeling falls on Arcbright
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Ice cream! Chocolate swirl for Hannah, and for Changeling?

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She rolls a mental die, which lands on lemon sorbet.

Also, a small bloodfruit, just to try it.

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The sorbet is quite good. The bloodfruit is an acquired taste; it's sticky-sweet and coppery and clings in your mouth. 

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After tasting both, she finishes the bloodfruit first, savoring it, then washes it away with the sorbet.

"Kind of literal, isn't it? Well, I'm glad I tried it. Are there vampires around?"

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"There are vampires! They're from down in Skanthivus, one of the Half-Tamed worlds. Has an effect that screws up magic. They've got some weird instincts and they need sun-charms but they're again mostly just people." 

She fishes in her interdimensional pocket for a couple seconds and comes up with a pyramidal beacon. She sets it down in a clear space, pushes a button, and there's a door. 

"After you," she says to Changeling.

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"Spiffy portal!" She prances walks in, ears twitching in a slightly different way (front-to-back for excitement, instead of the quick side-jig that pain causes).

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It's really cute how her ears broadcast her emotions. She follows Changeling and gets the beacon behind her.

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"Hello there Hannah!", says Eva from behind her paperwork-covered desk. "Who's this you've brought along with you?"

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"This is Changeling, she's from an uncontacted and shifts to be different people, naturally I thought of you."

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"Fascinating! Mind if I ask for a demonstration?"

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"Sure thing. One personality and body change coming right up. Takes a few minutes though. Hmm... D'you want someone chill or careful or confident?"

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"Let's go with confident, my own selves who get ambitious are - exciting, let's put it that way."

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"Sure thing, one dragon-girl coming up. Meanwhile, so, you're the Eva I've heard so much-" Ear-twitch "-A few things about. I think the way I said it was, the two components of my soul are casual omnivory and bucket lists, meaning I'll try everything once and many things repeatedly, as hobbies. And Hannah says you do something similar."

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"There's this organization I used to belong to, the Society of Sensation, that says that life is about getting out there and doing things and experiencing things. I took that credo to heart. One of the first things I did when I got this immortality was I threw myself into a sun. Just to experience dying like that. ...well, and other reasons too, like establishing that there's no "original" me anymore. I'm not one person, I'm a whole organization, and these days my activities can only be understood statistically, but - go everywhere, do everything. I have a very heavy presence in the OTC's exploratory arm."

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"Yeah I noticed that there seem to be a lot of you. Forking's nightmare fuel where I'm from because it fucks up in little or big ways so much, and illegal mostly. I've only gone sundiving the once, in a super special shielded spaceplane. Have you experienced being a spaceship? It's trippy, I couldn't take it for more than a couple hours."

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"I have not!" She taps her necklace, and far away a place is set aside in the Thousand Stars for precisely that memory. "Now I have to do it. Your world lets people be a lot of different things, then?"

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She grins and lets out a little subvocalized "Huh-hn" laugh, and ear-twitches. (The ears seem - slightly different, now)

"Yeah, you can map 'stack inputs lots of different ways. It's an art and a science. There's lots and lots of frames you can pick up - bodies, that is. Robotic ones and ones made of meat. Planes and submarines and spider walkers, or plain androids. Lots of different animal bodies - I was an octopus for a while. I'm a meathead - biological purist, I don't ever want to spend more than a few hours in a robot or get too much metal in one of my bodies." Shrug. "People think we're silly but it's a way to be."

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"It seems reasonable to want to - defend some part of what you were before all of this. It's conservative in a way I didn't expect but it makes sense."

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"That's a good way to put it actually. I'm not saying gynoids aren't alive, but - something's just missing if you're all circuits and no cells. Hannah, you still here?"

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"Yeah, just holding my peace to let the big girls talk. I know when I'm outgunned in a conversation."

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"I would definitely miss a lot of the pleasures of daily biological life if I got a robot body that wasn't capable of them. 'course that means a really good robot body should have them too, but even then - it feels more like a novelty to me than something I couod move into. But then again, maybe I'd learn to love it! Try everything once, and all."

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"There's also halfway options, cyborgs that still eat and breathe and have biology, just... Not much of it. The military uses high-end cyborg bodies for the best of both worlds, adaptability and power. The human form is flexible! But they're expensive. Like, decades-of-middle-mismanagement-wages expensive, and high maintenance too."

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"Makes sense," says Eva. "Whereas biology you can grow?"

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"Oh, my body's probably cost just as much over the years. It's really fancy and I've done a bunch of custom work to it. I could nerd out but I wanna be shaped like a nerd if I'm gonna do that." Thoughtful pause. "Actually, dragon-girl is a decent shape for nerding. Anyway, most people have to go to a clinic to change shape and get their brain adjusted."

(She definitely looks strange now, sort of halfway between her current form and another. Nubs of growth have raised the ears out of her hair on the base of what look like - horns? Parts of her skin are going black and shiny. Her hair is paler.)

"But yeah, you can grow it, there's big cloning plants that just need a few starter cells and feedstock and then some quick surgery five years later to make a valuable product from a nice optimized gene line."

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"Fascinating. So we're definitely kindred spirits then, not satisfied with what one life or one brain has to offer and willing to go a hell of a long way out of our ways for more."

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