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hot night, wind was blowing
Demon Cam in Frostpunk
Permalink Mark Unread

A woman is drawing pentagram after pentagram on the floor of a boarded up library. She's already going to Hell, and soon, since the food and firewood has run out and nobody's letting her in and she doesn't have a car or enough money for a bus ticket, and someone had a series of weird occultist books, so why not try? It's better than just sitting there shivering. She chants as she draws the outer part of the circle.

This person speaks a 19th century dialect of English in an American accent, and a bit of badly misunderstood Latin.

"-What, did it actually work?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...yes? Were you not exp- wow, okay, that's not safe, why are you doing that -" he says, glancing at the series of drawings.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I-"

She falls to her knees, laughing detachedly.

"Because I have no money, no food, and no firewood, and no job. But I didn't expect this occultist stuff to be real. But it's the last autumn and I'm damned, so why not, right-?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're n- the - what do you mean the last autumn?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm an adulterer. And my husband's dead now anyway even if I wasn't. So, damned. The- The world's freezing! It's been in the newspapers for months. This year there was barely a harvest, and next year they say the snow's just not going to melt. Maybe ever again."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- okay, uh, what were you hoping to accomplish with demon-summoning, what do your books say we do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Trying to distract myself from how I'm going to die and go to Hell, mostly? Um. There was stuff about extending your life, powers of persuasion, unholy bargains..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh-huh. Uh, what demons actually do is we make arbitrary material objects."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

"-Like, enough coal and food to feed New York City for a century, is that on the table, because if I'm going to make deals with a demon I want to save people."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wouldn't go with coal, bad for your lungs, but heat and food yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What else is there, wood? Oil burns, I think? Mirrors? Um. I'm honestly pretty confused right now and wondering if I'm dreaming or something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know, right, this is actually very weird for me too! I would probably default to electrical generators and assorted heating devices that charge off those?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Like the mad scientist Tesla? Well, if it works nobody would refuse them. God, the savages of the world probably need that even more than we do, at least we have faith."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm lacking, uh, sociological context?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...This is Wisconsin? The middle of nowhere in Wisconsin. But in places like Cuba and Mexico there's no way they know how to handle winter, and the savage tribes in Africa and Madagascar and Indonesia - there was this sickening op-ed in the Times with pictures of Zulus staring dumbfounded at snow, but they're all going to die-"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, sounds like I need to induce some global warming."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can do that? I don't think anybody understands why this is happening. There are supposed to be - compounds, colonies, where people can evacuate to. Not here, obviously. I think people in town are just praying for deliverance or planning on trying to survive by hunting."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No one knows why you're having a little ice age? Really?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They said it might be the sun is getting dimmer, it might be a big asteroid hit in Siberia or somewhere and put dust in the air, it might be something to do with magnetic fields and the atmosphere, it might be because of reflective chemicals put off by industry... I just read the newspapers, I don't know. Sorry."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...okay, well, for the immediate moment, can you show me out of this depressing little basement so I can get started?"

Permalink Mark Unread

She frowns and looks indecisive. "But... You're a demon."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yyyyes, but that doesn't stop me from running into dead ends on my way upstairs. Is this even a basement - oh, the windows are boarded up - I guess that puts an upper bound on how desperate for firewood people've gotten -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They'll be burning books soon enough. Um. Aren'tdemonsevil."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure quite what religious background you're working from here but rumors of our evil are greatly exaggerated. Also, like, there is not a functional binding on this circle from the looks of things, so if I wanted to do evil, I would not require much cooperation."

Permalink Mark Unread

"-I'm not going to cooperate with enabling evil and I don't know how you work, just, stupid occultism books I didn't expect to do anything- So just in case you're lying you should leave without my help or agreement or anything, if you want to leave. Uh! This doesn't constitute permission or anything."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I think you might be thinking of vampires but suit yourself." It's gonna be cold out, so he materializes himself a few layers. Including a snazzy leather coat to tuck the wings into. He looks for the exit.

Permalink Mark Unread

Wait shit she forgot to ask for, like, food.

...Doing good is its own reward? She doesn't say anything. She does follow him out in her thin dress and light coat. Suddenly Clothes sure supports the 'arbitrary material objects' thing though.

 

 

The exit is obvious enough, there are just a few rooms to the library and there's a door leading outside. It's not actually that cold out! There's snow on the ground, just not all that much of it. Feels like maybe 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a small town in late 19th century America. There's houses, and a church, and an empty market area with bare wooden stalls. No power poles and only a couple of very old-style trucks.

Permalink Mark Unread

He looks around thoughtfully. Peers back over his shoulder. "Do you want, like, an actual parka. And pants. And boots."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...It would be good if I had those things. And food. And firewood."

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"Setting wood on fire is also bad for your lungs," he says. The other items appear in a stack so she can put them on herself. (The top item in the pile of food is steaming hot ramen.)

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is freezing to death good for your lungs? Or, uh, electric stuff?"

Wow, that smells delicious. She carefully puts it aside onto the library's front porch and tugs on the pants, boots, and jacket first, so she maybe shivers a bit less.

...That's good food. There's meat and egg in it! She's now absorbed in eating ramen, trying not to let the wind spill any down the parka.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Electricity will not harm your lungs. I mean, I could give people lung transplants but they're not fun for anyone involved and it sounds like there are bigger problems." Where is a place he can put a nice li'l generator?

Permalink Mark Unread

She makes a 'hmm' noise and continues eating ramen. There's people's yards including space around the library and church, and open fields or woods beyond that, and the market square, and what is probably a nice little park when it's not covered in a foot of snow, leafless shrubbery and all.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam strolls - slipping only twice on ice - toward the nearest open field and appropriates a little corner of it to make a generator full of swappable battery packs in its charging slots. It sits under a gazebo and has plastic curtains around it for weatherproofing. He then produces his computer and composes an instructional sign.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure people will use this, or even leave it be, if there's no way to explain how it got here. The people who are making the colonies are either - rich industrialists, or the Federal Emergency Commission, F.E.C.? If you label it as an, an aid package or something..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can put the words 'aid package' on it, sure, other tips?"

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"Does it need maintenance? Will it run out of... Electricity? How do you use this to get heat? Um, maybe I should go over the phrasing so it doesn't sound... Tesla."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It doesn't need maintenance soon, this is very stopgap while I figure out how to warm up the whole planet or something. It will run out but I can keep refueling it, again, in the short term. What's wrong with Tesla, anyway?" He turns the computer and she can read: Aid Package: Take gray rectangles and slot into the bottom of one of the red heaters. Turn dial to adjust heat output. Ideal for indoor spaces. Automatically turns off if knocked over for safety reasons; twiddle dial to resume heating. One rectangle good for about 500 hours; expended rectangles may be placed back in the slots here to re-charge. There is a stack of red heaters in the gazebo.

Permalink Mark Unread

"That looks alright. I might call them 'packs' instead of 'rectangles', it sounds like it was written by an engineer. Which isn't bad actually. Tesla is a mad genius who treats his employees like dogs and whose devices keep accidentally killing people. He had steam dreadnoughts built to head to a shelter up north, but kicked off all the children and cripples when they left for his new city in the north. 'No room for weakness'. It was in the last ever Chicago Times."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yikes, I had not heard of this Tesla tendency." Instances of "rectangle" are replaced with "pack". "Any other edits?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think people will use it. I'm going to take one, certainly. Um... 'Delivered via airship'? To explain why nobody saw trucks bringing this in?"

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"That would be... false..."

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"I suppose it's not that important and if people don't use these wonder devices that's their own fault? Are you incapable of lying or something? Sure, it's a sin, but I thought you were a demon."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm a demon but not, like, in a sin-related way. I'm not incapable, I just don't like it. Do you think many will be put off by the lack of airdrop assertions?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably they will talk to Father Gunther about it and he'll praise the Lord for instilling charity in the hearts of man and people will mostly listen to him. I'm not sure I know these people as well as I thought I did, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No?" Cam instantiates the sign. Makes it look nice and rustic.

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"No. Outsider, see, only lived here a few years and- I feel myself trying to make excuses for my behavior, but no. I deserve the shunning, really."

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"...deserve it for... not having lived here long?" Cam creates some news and sticks it in his computer.

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"I'm an adulterer. I betrayed my husband."

Rockefeller dead of heart attack, steel mills still running under lower managers! Anti-Hoarding laws passed in the state of Georgia. Jay Gould accused of labor abuses & effective slavery. King Edward VII sells the Crown Jewels to fund the I.E.C. and shelter construction. New advances in Steam Cores allow fully independent automata. Belgian government announces plan to enclose entire polders in heated greenhouses. The Emperor of Japan has closed the country. Agricultural collapse in the Raj leads to mass uprisings!

Permalink Mark Unread

"...okay, well, that's unfortunate for him but I don't think you ought to freeze or starve over it. Can you tell me what a Steam Core is?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe we shouldn't talk about this, then. Something to do with Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, I think? Tesla had big factories that made them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh-huh. Okay, where's a good place to put a bunch of food? Ideally indoors, the generator you don't want in a house because it'll make a noise but the food will be very quiet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...In my house? Someone's barn? Or in the library, I suppose. Not the church, people are in there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Barn sounds ideal."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, the Harrisons went down to Green Bay to get their son, so their place is empty. It's that way. Does arbitrary material objects include a steam lorry? So you don't waste time walking."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I usually fly but if that would alarm people I can make a vehicle, though I would not default to a steam-powered one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It would alarm people. It doesn't actually have to be steam powered, I suppose - how did you know how to make the heaters? Are you an engineer demon?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm from an alternate universe wherein it is the year 2159 but I am also an engineer demon." He considers the road conditions and decides on a car instead of a motorcycle. "You wanna tell me how to get to the barn?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Alternate universe. Okay, this thing looks extremely fancy but not impossible." She gets in. Fails to notice the seatbelt. "Down that road, and the second right, first barn you see just barely outside of town."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You wanna grab that strap there and click the black part there into this," he says. "I don't expect to crash but you're not indestructible if I do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some sort of safety?"

She fumbles with it a bit, but click.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep!" And he drives according to her directions. "Do you have a name? I'm Cam."

Permalink Mark Unread

"V-" She makes a face. "Oh, stuff it. You seem nice and if you're a fey who gets power from my true name or something, you're a generous one and so be it. Verona Cooper, nice to meet you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's just so I have something to call you by, if you wanted to be known as Maisie Smith I would not have second-guessed you, but nice to meet you too, Verona."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh. Well. I'm glad I tried those occultism books. Even if I'm really, really confused it seems like you're going to help a whole lot. If you really can warm up the entire Earth- Deliverance? ...I wouldn't say no to a ride to Denver when you're done here, actually. That's where my father should be - since there's nothing for me here, really. Oh, there, turn there." The barn is visible from the road, quite close.

Permalink Mark Unread

Turn. "Deliverance?"

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"It means, rescued by a miracle."

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"Oh, I see. I don't particularly expect to have enough spare time to give you a ride to Denver once I'm oriented to the situation, since the entire planet is trying to turn into an iceball, so you might want to look into alternative transportation. I mean, I can give you a car, if you know how to drive."

Permalink Mark Unread

"-Yeah, that makes sense. I bet I would get stuck in the snow somewhere and freeze to death if I tried that. I'll stay here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cool. Anybody in town have a deathly allergy or weird dietary restriction you know about?" Cam asks, heading for the barn to assess the space available.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooh, I know this, Roger Fraiser's son can't have peanuts and two of the Clemsons are allergic to cats and the entire Wing family can't have milk or cheese, probably because they're half-Chinaman, and Isabella de Garcia can't have pennicillin. Is gossip useful for once, then?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes it is!" Cam makes a doodad with a laser measurer and takes the dimensions of the barn and starts making food. "No peanuts, can't have Fraiser Junior going into anaphylactic shock." Pestproof plastic boxes labeled things like FLOUR and SUGAR and ALMONDS and CANNED ARTICHOKES appear.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Whatever all these cases are made of looks very futuristic. Steel is the wonder-material of our age, is that stuff for yours?"

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"It's not all that recent but it's light and it'll keep rats and stuff out!" He dangles some space heaters from the ceiling so the artichokes don't explode.

Permalink Mark Unread

"-I have a lot of questions that are honestly probably just wastes of your time. If you make a big sign in his front yard pointing out the food, I can go tell people and this town should be alright for a while."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh good." He composes a sign similar to the one about the space heaters.

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Verona says, "I can try to orient you further but I'm not especially educated on world affairs."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I figured! I can conjure up my own reading material. Uh, since you're my summoner, if anything bad happens to you, I might go poof. I should make sure before I go anywhere else that you have a way to get ahold of me if all the food is stolen or anything."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you want me to be safe- Neither here nor Denver is really great, actually. Something could happen in either place. But if I can - telegram you or something, it'd probably be fine."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can write 'letter to Cam' on anything committed to written form and I will be able to conjure it, but I was thinking you might want something suitable for more emergent emergencies than that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Like a bear beating down my door? I have a Winchester 1887. Probably a good idea nonetheless. Oh, are the space heaters going to be any good for cooking?"

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"You know what, they're not, actually, I should add some little camp stove deals." He makes another gazebo outside the barn with battery operated camp stoves and another generator-charger.

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"Because people would definitely keep using their stoves without that. Maybe even with it." She halfsmiles. "I'm trying to think of anything helpful to you at all. I remember hearing that China and India have the most people and they don't even have real industry so you might want to go there if fixing the whole planet doesn't work, save the most people..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, probably, though I do really want to figure out why this is happening and how to fix it wholesale."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You could try to find Nansen and Scott? They supposedly went all the way into the arctic to take scientific readings, trying to figure it out."

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"Perhaps! I will steal their data from here and see if they're onto anything." Nansen and Scott's writings for the last six months?

Permalink Mark Unread

Nansen: Is travelling from place to place in the arctic. He writes mostly detailed observation logs, analyses, and reports on wind patterns. The data says it's going to get really, really, really cold. Probably. Also, giant megastorms maybe? He wants more data from more places. He's leaning towards the theory 'meteor strike or volcano = tons of atmospheric dust'.

Scott: Writes considerably less than Nansen. Apparently he's a ship captain and his job is supporting explorers looking for good generator construction sites.

Permalink Mark Unread

...meteorites over the past year, to scale.

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That's a really big rock! It hit somewhere in the deep Amazon.

"What's that?" Asks Verona.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Asteroid! Struck in South America. Definitely the sort of thing that will give you a problem. - How would you feel about summoning some more people?"

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"So a giant rock hit us? -Somewhat skeptical, being honest."

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"You ever see a shooting star?"

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"I'm familiar with the concept, I think. The 'somewhat skeptical' was in regards to the summoning more people, because a small part of me is screaming about hellfire and damnation, damn my reason."

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"Oh. Does it help that I want you to summon angels?"

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"...It really shouldn't, considering that by some lines of logic I shouldn't trust anything you say and also that Christianity doesn't make all men saints, but going into paroxysms of paranoia would be. Not helpful. So, yes it actually does."

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"Good. I can make stuff, but only make it. Angels can get rid of it. Enough of 'em might be able to make a meaningful dent in the atmospheric junk."

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"...Hmm. The planet is very big and it'd be all spread out, wouldn't it?"

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"Yes, but the crash site may still be emitting more and that won't be, and that's the long term worry more than what's already distributed. In the short term of course I'll want to patch food supplies and heating infrastructure."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Okay. I guess we're doing this. My responsibility as a human being to help others, especially with so much at stake."

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"Okay. Not right now, because I don't know if summoning is going to work totally normally here and want to cherry-pick the angels a bit, I'm going to do some remote correspondence with other demons and stuff."

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"Can I help. I'm getting the strangest feeling that everything I thought I knew was wrong with demons picking out angels and corresponding by magic. Either the priests are right and you're trying to take my soul or the atheists are right and you're not supposed exist at all, pick one, right, except actually neither-" She pinches herself. "I'm rambling. You could stay in my house while you correspond instead of standing out in the open. -If anyone notices you and asks, you delivered the aid supplies but have to leave again soon and unfortunately can't give anyone else a ride, that's simplest."

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"You can probably help some." He meanders back to the car. "Where's your house?"

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She provides directions. It's close to the library, and one of the smaller ones. One of the windows is broken and boarded up.

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"I can fix your window," he mentions as they emerge from the car.

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"If it doesn't delay you much, sure. Can I just list a few things, quick like as long as it doesn't slow you down- Box of nails, box of soap, the clothes I left in Denver, needle and thread-"

Permalink Mark Unread

These items accumulate on the hood of the car as she lists them. He makes his way to the window, the boards pop off, the glass reappears.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you. I'll take the boards off later." She bundles up the small items and the first box of the food he made earlier, unlocks the door one handed, waves him in.

Permalink Mark Unread

He comes in, plops himself on the nearest seat, and starts up his correspondence for angel-finding.

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She fusses around arranging food in pantry, heater and camp stove and other sundries. Figures there's no point cooking for him. De-boards the window, cleans up the broken glass.

After a while, "I'm going to go tell people I saw 'aid deliveries' now, if they haven't noticed already."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds good to me! I'd appreciate whatever you can tell me after about how folks are taking it."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

She's back after about an hour.

"Some of the neighbors are confused at how a whole gazebo was dropped off without them noticing, but people are taking stoves and heaters and the power packs, and food. There's enough for everyone. They like plastic and don't seem to find it especially strange. Someone tried to break one of the heaters open but couldn't. They'd like some news about the outside world. The car is a big deal apparently, I said they could use it all they wanted for the good of the community. Does it use those same electricity packs?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, bigger ones, but they can recharge off the same generators."

Permalink Mark Unread

"More cars, or trucks more like, wouldn't go amiss. Even if there's nowhere to go it's very reassuring to have the option. We could even make deliveries to folks in farmhouses out in the country with them. If they're stashed outside of town it wouldn't seem strange, hopefully."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, I can put a few of them somewhere next I have downtime."

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"Yeah, that's the thing, you've got to hurry. You can make mail addressed to you, that's what you're doing, right? I wonder if you shouldn't be flying somewhere to fill big stockpiles while you wait, honestly. If you can make a car you can make an airship."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm hoping to avoid having to explain summoning to many people so I want to have you handy for angels, but after that that's probably a good idea."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can follow you. Very little ties me here, if they're provided for I see no reason to stay, honestly? My husband's dead and buried, the town never really accepted me in the first place, and it's the modern age, so, not like being alone with a strange man matters at this point."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hurrah for modernity, I will tote you along in that case. Will people shoot at us if I fly around in a little shuttle, looks like this?" He offers her a model.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Probably not unless prop wash knocks over their house or something or they'd shoot you on foot anyway, it looks like something someone could invent, seems fine."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Delightful. A shotgun or something isn't going to take it down but it would be so annoying. I've got a tentative first angel picked out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uhuh... You'd think I'd feel more amazed and excited about all this. I mostly feel stupefied about it instead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe it'll sink in later. I'm going to give you a premade circle for the angel, okay? And you just have to fill it in where I indicate, and then not say anything till I tell you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can just follow instructions and be the human catalyst if that's best but I feel like I would benefit from more context."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, why not. Uh, angels, demons, and fairies are all summonable beings; you draw the correct sort of diagram on the floor - please don't do that yourself again, a lot of demons only answer summons because they like being jerks to humans, some angels and fairies are dangerous too - and the words in the diagram can limit the summons's behavior, and then you negotiate further out loud, which is easy to screw up if your summon is hostile. I don't expect these angels to be hostile but just on general principle. Since you're the summoner, if you don't say anything, it is impossible to screw up the negotiation step; you can just confirm what I work out with them, or dismiss them - by concentrating on wanting them gone for a minute - if they would prefer to go home. Uh, I'm not actually positive any of this will work. Something very unusual is going on because to my knowledge no one has ever been summoned to this planet before and there's another one where we get summonses all the time. But the angel I have picked out for the first try is - I'm not thrilled to be risking stranding them but I'd be less thrilled to let your planet be Ice Aged to death."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm getting the sense that demons, angels, fairies - Wow, what troublesome names - are just people, right? And this one, not exactly a John the Baptist type?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not up on my Bible studies, what's the comparison you're drawing? And yes, we're just people. With magical powers."

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"He's not as important as Jesus Christ, but very up there. Alright, I can finish a circle and watch you negotiate."

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Circle on giant paper on her floor. He offers her a pen.

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She finishes the circle and stands back, her best neutral smile on her face.

Permalink Mark Unread

"This might not work right away if she's busy," Cam warns. "I don't have to sleep, though, don't feel you need to stay up if it's hours."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll consider going to sleep when it's been hours, then. In the meantime might I have a copy of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure - actually, you know what, I'm curious if mine and yours are different -" Are they, the diff checking software on his computer wants to know.

Permalink Mark Unread

There are some fairly inconsequential differences, mostly in the exact technobabble used to justify Dr. Frankenstein's reanimating abilities. The tone of the doctor's moralizing when pondering his creation leans slightly more towards worrying about what a nonhuman mind might be thinking.

Permalink Mark Unread

Interesting! "Do you want an exotic version or the local, they're mostly the same."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooh, an exotic version! I've read ours once before."

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He tosses her a paperback. Reads some news while they wait for the angel.

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Verona reads the Frankenstein paperback quietly. At one point she gets up and paces in another room for a bit.

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The angel appears after about an hour and a half.

"Hi!" says Cam. "Please don't be racist, this is important."

"- what is important?" says the angel.

"I'm Cam, that's Verona, this is an alternate universe Earth, and an asteroid clonked into it and is causing global cooling."

"- the heck?" says the angel.

Permalink Mark Unread

(She jumps, then schools herself. She gives a little wave and doesn't say anything.)

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"Hello, Verona, I'm Chisan," says the angel, peering at her circle.

"Yes, it's very weird," says Cam. "I got your name from Sarauba?"

"Uh-huh."

"Since the situation's so irregular, I wanted to suggest that Verona send you back, and you ask around back in Heaven for anyone who wants to help fix the impact site up a bit, and I can conjure correspondence."

"...how many angels does this asteroid need?"

"It's yea big on a model of South America yea big."

"Oof."

"Climate's already in a bad way, but I'm hoping if ground zero is cleared it will stop getting worse, the ash can settle..."

Chisan nods. "I can ask around."

Permalink Mark Unread

"-Ash? Come to think of it, there was also a huge volcanic eruption, it was heard all the way in Australia and French Indochina. The scientific community just wasn't sure that could cause the Earth to cool this much. They thought it'd be a degree or two. I'm not a scientist, but with two major sources of ash perhaps it makes more sense?"

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"Oh, perhaps!" says Cam. "Though if you have anything else to say you should, like, wave me into the next room instead of saying it in front of Chisan."

"I'm not hoping to turn her into jello," says Chisan.

"I understand, but still."

"Anyway, I can ask, and write - what's your label -"

"Letter to Cam."

"Letter to Cam, got it."

"Verona, can you concentrate on wanting to send Chisan home now?"

Permalink Mark Unread

She's a little irritated. It's not like she was agreeing to anything. -Not helpful. Nod. She concentrates.

Permalink Mark Unread

After about a minute Chisan pops out of existence like she was never there. "That went well!" says Cam.

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"Yes. It wasn't a fluke of some sort. I'm quite sure someone would have tried the same thing before I, so why did you arrive now? But it's a mystery I'm not really equipped to make progress on. Though... I would rather not continue to be considered incompetent to speak for myself, if possible. That's rather what suffrage was about. Perhaps you have something more - systematic - than folk stories about not accepting food from fairies?"

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"Yes, there are entire university courses, and I'm even qualified to teach them, but they're time-consuming."

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"I suppose they would be. What now? Time to go while we wait for her to spread the word?"

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"Yeah, we can save her some travel time if we head to the impact site - do you know where the volcano is?"

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"Some place called Krakatoa, in that huge island chain north of Australia."

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"Practically the other side of the world. Awful coincidence. Or possibly meteor strikes cause enough tectonic nonsense to set off volcanoes sometimes, I'm not sure." He makes a little globe to try to figure out which is putting out more atmospheric junk.

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Krakatoa seems to have stopped spewing ash. The Amazon is still burning.

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"Okay, you wanna fly to the Amazon overnight?"

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"Very well, let's go try to fix the source."

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"I'll make the shuttle in your backyard, shall I?"

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"By all means crush my poor violets." She halfsmiles. "Is a shuttle much like an airship?"

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"Faster and comfier. I'll make it nice and roomy so you can hang out there reading science fiction classics, it'll be nasty outside of it but the shuttle'll filter the air for you." He makes a small-house-sized shuttle, crushing the poor violets, and escorts her into it.

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Into the shuttle she goes, after briefly stuffing clothes and such into a rolling case. "Other sorts of books are likely fine as well. I'm itching to - help plan for supply distribution or something, though."

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"Oh, cool, what do you see yourself doing in that department?" he asks, as the shuttle lifts into the air and picks up speed.

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"Well, I did inventory control for a furniture factory once upon a time, so perhaps collating up lists of population centers and what they might need and where one could deliver it, if I had source documents."

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"Sounds good! What kind of documents d'you want?"

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"I'll need - one of those," Gesture to computer, "I'm modeling it as the typeceiver of the future, because the 1890 census would be too big for this shuttle and also only covers America so I need to think of other documents that would list... Most people in the world."

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"Sure. This model requires brain surgery."

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"Urk. Perhaps not."

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"It won't hurt and poses no risk, I'd just make a chip in the correct place in your brain."

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"...No thank you, Dr. Frankenstein. Perhaps when I understand your technology better, but I'd like my brain to remain the way it is at the moment."

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"Sure. Here's one that you cannot control with your mind." He hands her one. "With a tutorial."

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She sets to work figuring out how to computer. Pauses to appreciate the view upon takeoff, though.

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It's a good view! They go up up up up above the clouds and then go real fast but it's harder to appreciate their speed from so high.

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They're really really high. And it's starting to sink in how absurd this all is.

She's being very still and quiet and not quite looking at her computer. And maybe having a little bit of a panic attack.

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"Verona? Are you okay?"

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"Mm? You've stopped feeling unreal and now I am above the atmosphere playing with this - computer that Babbage himself would sell his mother for. Hah. Hahahah."

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"Do... you want anti-anxiety medication."

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"By that do you mean booze. Or tobacco. Or opium. I've sworn off all three."

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"No, benzodiazepines."

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"Never heard of them, but it sounds very pharmaceutical. No particularly, ehm, sin-ish side effects?"

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"No."

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"Okay. Thank you. Sorry for being - unreliable."

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"Nah, it's legit. You want to swallow pills or have me administer direct?"

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"Pills would feel more grounding, I think?"

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He hands her a pill and a cup of water.

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"Thank you." And she takes the pill and breathes deeply. She's not sure how long this is supposed to take to kick in, but some time later once she feels fine again she says, "I think I have enough of a handle on the computer to start planning. Or at least plan to make a plan- Say, outlining what we need to figure out. How much of a library can you fit in the encoding or whatever these use?"

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"Lots."

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"And search is much better than a card catalog in many ways. P'raps then you should just get the- I should make a list of big libraries, I think I'll get most of them. Library of Congress, the British Library, Royal Society International Archives, that will cover most Western sources. All the IEC and FEC's documents, the Academe d'Imperial, anything Tesla and Edison ever published... Tim Bundy's Directory of Publishers and Booksellers would get you a list of companies and you could get everything they ever published... I don't know that this covers the whole world, though."

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"I can get you everything published in English in this world ever. And any other languages you read."

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"-Wow. I read French and a tiny bit of German. And English."

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Cam sticks a doodad into her computer.

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"That easy, huh? Hmm... So, I figure I'll start by seeing what the IEC's doing, I remember they seemed to have the best put together survival strategy, by which I mean one that was developed more than three months ago."

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"Sounds like a plan."

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She'll get to it! It involves a lot of reading.

Eventually, "Is there a bedroom aboard this flight?"

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"Yup! And a bathroom ensuite. That door." Point.

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"I've saved what I have so far to that shared drive thing if you want to take a look." Yawn. "Goodnight."

She grabs her packed bag and cleans up and sleeps.

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Cam investigates her work.

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Lots of stuff listing out the most useful bits of what the IEC has been doing. They designed a lot of equipment for cold-weather survival, some of it quite impressive given the tech level. Surprisingly good insulated suits, building-size robots that use Steam Cores, and a lot of prefab structures specifically designed for supporting people in extreme cold. There's a bit of analysis of the Generators, which are essentially giant steampunk combo geothermal and coal plants that pipe hot steam to all the buildings in a circle around them. She has noted presumably Cam can do better, but useful inspiration? 

She found a map of the IEC's shelter sites, as well as the French evacuation plan which seems to be giant trains for some reason, and the German one which seems to be deep bunkers and 'the newly discovered phenomenon of heat generated from atomic decay'. They all have 'estimated supportable populations' of something like a tenth that of the cities they are designated for.

And she searched around and created a report on the general mood in various parts of the world, as best as can be guessed from the most recent written sources. Everyone is very very worried, but only a few places are edging into panic and social breakdown. Greece and Spain and Madagascar are seeing snow, and wild storms are whipping around even the parts of the world that aren't freezing yet.

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What a useful person.

By the time Verona is awake they have landed in the Amazon basin and there is a circle waiting for her.

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She looks at the writing around it briefly. "Same person as before or different?"

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"Same one, but I'll make more circles for her friends after."

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"I'd appreciate that university course at some point." She completes the circle.

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"I can give you a book to start with?" Cam offers.

Chisan pops into place. Cam offers her conjured material objects in exchange for a term of service on clearing up the impact site and she accepts and he prompts Verona to do the same.

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"I accept. And I do want that book."

She won't ask annoying questions at the moment, like 'should I be looking over those terms for loopholes or do you trust her now', assuming the book will cover that.

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Cam hands her the book. Chisan goes out of the shuttle; it smells smoky outside. He makes another circle for another angel.

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Circle: Completed. She peers down and reads the binding after doing so. "I'm just going to accept without being thorough as long as you're doing the negotiating because you know what you're doing far more than I and doing this quickly is important but I'd appreciate - commentary, perspective..."

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"This is a standard angel circle from the Safe Summoning Authority - I'm qualified to roll my own but this isn't a circumstance that calls for it - and here is a copy in non-circular format if you'd like to read it." He hands her a packet. "It has various safeties and contingencies so the angels can't hurt you, do property damage, attack bystanders, that sort of thing, but can, like, transform tree stumps into chairs if they want to sit down. It requires a lot of fine print to get it so it's permissive enough and restrictive enough and it has been through a lot of refinement as people caught possible issues, for example as we learned more physics."

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"New discoveries in physics, indeed. I read some alarming things about what the Germans are doing last night, though much of it went over my head. I'm torn between asking more questions and just reading this book."

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"Up to you - hi!" He has a very similar negotiation with the second angel and sends him out.

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"I'll stick to- Should I be completing multiple circles to speed this up?"

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"If we were in slightly more of a hurry I'd say yes but we're not and it might make me flub something when I'm talking to them. Plus it'd keep them waiting." Next circle.

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Nod.

She fills circles and reads the summoning book. Reads the binding text too.

 

During a break between angels, "If you can take models of things from far away, we could investigate and put down crates of supplies in places where they're needed. I think some places are likely to panic and spiral into bad things soon but more supplies could - triage it while angels clean the air. I made a list."

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"The problem with that is that if I don't see where I'm putting something it might wind up inside something that already exists. I could do drone deliveries, but if people are suspicious of the drones and won't take the contents that doesn't help."

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"Drones - automata? And the places most likely to be suspicious of those are generally the less technological places, where they accordingly need the most help. Hmm. I think most people would know what an Albacore class airship looks like, they're a cheap mass produced model from a decade ago - you could have those lower crates to the ground?"

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He makes a mini one to have a look at it.

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-A skeletal blimpy thing with a gondola about a hundred feet long, apparently powered by natural gas.

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"I can make something that looks like that, or like a modified one of it, at any rate."

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"As long as it looks like an airship of that general design it should be fine, I think? Even if you don't bother communicating or showing any crew manning it people will recognize it as something manmade, delivering them supplies."

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"It'll be annoying to maneuver with the big balloon part and remote-pilotable mechanisms inside but I think it's doable." He fiddles with a program on his computer, sets it aside to talk to a new angel, resumes.

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She goes back to reading the summoning textbook. Takes a break when she suddenly notices how hungry she is to request 'something interesting'.

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Hmmm, she liked the ramen. Does she like malai kofta?

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"This one is even stranger than the soup. But quite delicious. Before yesterday I hadn't had meat in weeks!"

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"This one's vegetarian but if you like meat I can do meat, hundred percent humane and everything."

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"Really? I thought it tastes like it has meat. And I do, meat and tropical fruit and eggs and flavored sodas and ice cream, all - symbols of plenty."

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"It has cheese and nuts, for that proteiny flavor." He makes her a Coke and a bowl of mango ice cream for dessert.

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It's delicious!!

She takes a break from the summoning textbook and brainstorms what people would need. Shelter, clean water, and food most urgently, obviously, but she thinks it would help social order to give people tools and work to do, as well...

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Water purification devices, heaters, stoves, cold-weather tents, cold-weather clothes, air filtration - "What kind of work?"

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"Building things? You could supply factories with whatever they received before the frost, that seems low research-effort. Distributing the dropped goods? Growing things, the IEC developed a nice semi-automated hothouse that comes in twelve truck-sized crates, some assembly required. I think communities will organize and make work if they have hope, too."

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"Oh, yeah, greenhouses to assemble and plants to put in them is a great idea. Can you find me the plans for the IEC hothouse so I can see if it's obviously improvable-on?"

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"Just a moment, let's see-"

She found it yesterday, she looks in the history. There it is. Sends it with the chat program. There's one that uses a single Steam Core in its capacity as a 1940s-era computer-equivalent and some electric lights, limited to potatoes and two different cultivars of edible lichen, and a fancier one requiring more materials that can handle things like carrots and wheat and cabbage (specific cultivars, anyway). They're both very space-efficient and cleverly pre-fabbed, but there are many improvements from a 22nd century perspective.

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"- yeah I can do better than this. But I can send the airships out now, because they can transmit me their locations and then I'll be able to make stuff that they'll then unload. What are the closest couple dozen priority cities in all directions?"

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"Prioritizing proximity to the Amazon-" She pulls up her report. Athens, Casablanca, Dublin, Nashville, San Diego, Austin, Santiago (Chile), Cape Town, Lagos, and some others.

"But a lot of the more urgent ones are in Asia and India, the opposite side of the world from here. I think. My information is a lot sparser there."

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"Yeah, but they can stop, drop off some stuff, and then continue on, and drop off more stuff," he explains. "With that design they'll take a longish while to get anywhere, we'll have time to design their loadouts. Be right back." He steps outside and makes airships and sends them off in all those directions. Comes back, puts a map on the wall of the shuttle, sticks pins in it.

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She will work on logistics and scheduling!! It's actually very compelling, if kind of stressful.

"By god, I'm directing a miraculous fleet of airships from the Amazon, while it burns and angels quench the ash and smoke. When did my life turn into a novel?"

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"Yesterday!" chirps Cam, flipping through displays from miraculous airship fleet members to steer them along. When they pass over a small settlement he will drop a small parachuted care package.

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"Indeed. I think you can get away with bigger ones if you aim them for big clear areas. Nobody down there knows they're not the only ones the airship is delivering to."

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"Bigger, what, ships?"

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"No, those little care packages."

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"Bigger care packages it is." He designs more generous versions, though parachute limitations means he drops to each location in a few batches. He puts on some music.

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"Possibly we should have a response prepared if someone tries to communicate with them. Things that they would try, morse code lights, Naval flag signals, maybe someone has a radio, they're new to us..."

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"I don't know Naval flag signals, do you? Though I can look them up. If somebody flashes lights at me I can decode that. Radio I might not get, there's a receiver on the ships but I have no particular reason to expect it's tuned to whatever frequency they'd try."

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"No, but they're almost certainly in your library somewhere." She frowns. "I wonder if we should be getting more people, just you and I trying to help the whole world - feels overwhelming. We're going to miss things."

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"I'm not opposed, do you have anyone in mind? Or you could summon some more demons from the set I've been corresponding with."

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"Hmm. Some of the people I'm reading about seem competent and altruistic..."

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"Like who?"

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A city governor in Brazil (organized an emergency harvest and is accepting refugees), a Union boss in England (converted factories into greenhouses), an industrialist in America (built a whole insulated town and gave away his heating tech), and a university admin from Spain (got all his compatriots to work together in a think-tank).

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"I can send them letters with the drops, maybe?"

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"Or if your - demon friends want to do some of the tabulating work for us and have you make the results, that would probably help a lot too."

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"Yeah, good idea." He writes.

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She fusses. She suggests another few waves of airships, just so there are plenty of them out in the sky and they'll cover settlements faster even once spread out, if that's not overwhelming to Cam's attention. She reads the summoning book. She summons angels. She paces.

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"I'm more likely to miss villages on the cameras if there are that many of them but if you'll help me watch them and I route them so half of them are over ocean at any given time I can bulk out the fleet, yeah."

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"I can't go without sleep like you appear to be capable of, but certainly. Or we could... Map the entire world. No, that sounds more difficult, watching cameras it is."

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"Yeah, your Earth has a lot of similarities to mine but I don't think it's likely to be down to the locations of small towns."

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"Hmm. There's not some very dogged cartographer demon in - where you're from?"

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"Oh, in English it's normally called Hell. There are many dogged cartographers, actually, but the latency of conjuring messages back and forth I worry would make us miss stuff and if we're not actually looking we won't see if someplace is, say, on fire."

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Hell? Not helpful.

"Well, good point, but that just leads us back to the need to recruit more people. Clerks and bureaucrats of some sort. I'm doing my best but at this rate I'm going to need more benzo-whatevers."

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"You don't wanna overdo the benzos. Maybe some of the angels will stick around, but it'll probably take them a while to be done with the cleanup. - you know what I can do, I can send little drones small enough to be taken for birds ahead of the ships, and they can get video of what's going on, and then the dogged cartographers et al can compile action items based on the recordings they take in plenty of time for the airships -" He does that.

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"Good, good. I'm finding it terribly stressful, being responsible for helping save people. Not that I'm going to stop. But are there things I'm not thinking of... Ugh."

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"You're being really helpful and I appreciate you and I'm thinking of things too. We have a lot of help on deck back where I came from, and we can summon more when we have plans for them, and everything's gonna be fine."

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"-Alright. Yes. I think I need a break. Can you provide, oh, the future's motion pictures must be wonderful."

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"Sure, you want a Frankenstein or something else, I don't know much about your cinematic taste."

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"Neither do I! Hmm... Something hopeful? With fantastical technology?"

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He will set her up with a space-colonization-cum-romance called Proxima.

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The couch and popcorn and Coke is all nice too.

 

She loves it. She's silent for most of the film, and gasps at touching moments. The idea of going to another star-

She might babble excitedly about the movie some.

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Awww. He can check missives and screens and also engage with movie opinions.

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Eventually she will get back to checking screens and trying to plan things out.

It's been almost ten hours since the first angel was summoned, and the waves of airships flying out are starting to reach Central America, the Carribean, and the eastern coast of South America. One will reach Florida in another two hours.

"...The airships are slower than I realized, and the world larger. I wonder if maybe we should take a spaceship around the world and have you make more airships as we go. Not enough to overwhelm our monitoring. But just to reach some of these places and offer hope."

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"That's not a bad idea if the angels don't mind asking for dismissals by conjured letter instead of by knocking, and if I pay them now before we go." He heads for the door to do that.

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"And maybe we can turn some over to governments!" She says as he goes out the door.

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"Some what?"

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"Some airships! And trucks and such. And radios? Let other people do some of the work."

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"The airships just look like that model, I don't know that anyone here would be able to pilot them even if I turned over control."

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She shrugs. "The old versions, then? Getting other people to take on some of the work can only be a good thing, but I'll let you go talk to the angels now."

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Cam lets himself out, pays the angels, tells them they're going to fly elsewhere and can write for dismissals. Comes back and pilots the shuttle into the sky.

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She's less overawed and anxious this time. Or maybe it's just that she has work to do.

"I think creating large 'emergency stockpiles' somewhere slightly out of the way and pointing communities at them would be a good way to support the larger towns and cities, as most airships have a useful cargo capacity of something like twenty to fifty tons, and continually unloading them for hours would be suspicious."

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"That's not a bad idea, though I'm sure someone knows what's in any given slightly out of the way place."

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"When they compare notes they'll notice something's up with the sudden surge of supplies anyway, I think the goal with secrecy is mostly not to panic people about it?"

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"Yeah. We can get some apsels back home to design us appropriate caches in suitably accessible places." He writes.

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Nodnod. "-Apsels?"

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"It's a word in one of our languages for 'demon'. If that helps not be distracted by our demonishness."

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"I'm over it. Well, mostly. If you have another word for 'Hell' that will probably be enough for most everyone else."

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"'Void'? It's empty except for what we put there."

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"That still has some negative connotations, but not nearly as much as 'Hell', so I suppose it'll work. Anyway, I'd like to ask about progress on the hothouse design. You were redoing it to postmodern standards, no?"

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"Right! I don't want to make it run on electricity, part of the elegance of a greenhouse is that it doesn't, but it can be made of plastic and have double walls for insulation and stuff."

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"If electricity is cheap electric lights are cheap. The IEC's design had alternators and lights off the steam core... But that does sound lower maintenance."

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"We're not putting down a grid right now, so anything that runs on electricity needs battery swaps, and I don't know how much I'll be able to warm the planet back up so if I can require fewer trips that's good."

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"And you've made your objections to coal power known. Alright."

They go back to work.

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The situation develops fairly predictably after that. More airships, all over the world. A long series of planned drops with care packages designed by hundreds and hundreds of helpful demons in Hell- Or rather, apsels in the Void. They come across various bad situations and unrest, and try to resolve them by giving everyone lots of food and heaters and entirely harmless supplies. They distribute greenhouse kits, to give people something to do. Some desperate refugees-cum-pirates hijack a few of the airships, and can be bribed to stop that before it really goes anywhere with basic living supplies. The governments of the world mostly fail to collapse, though certainly the political situation is due to change a lot.

Angels gradually stop the entire massive wildfire burning up the Amazon Rainforest and do their best to clear out the absurd amounts of ash in the air. Lots of it is too spread out by now, but climate models running on computers a dozen orders of magnitude more sophisticated than anything the 19th century can dream up say that the worst of it has been averted - it's still going to stay unreasonably cold for a while, but the giant megastorms that were due to hit in another couple of months and kill almost everyone will never happen.

Now, though, more and more communities and governments would really like answers as to where all this stuff is coming from.

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Fortunately...

Cam has experience with unleashing summoning on a world.