As bearer of the silver key, Randolph Carter is a master of time and space. He can bend lightyears to his whim and leap across centuries. The whole universe is his to command.
Which is why, of course, he is presently floating in the middle of the void with no idea where he is.
[im not saying the MATH is any different im saying things work differently]
"On my home planet gravity doesn't cause telepathy in space either. I think."
[huh. weird.]
Through the... gravity? Whatever mechanism Carter is hearing this through, he gets a distinct sense of intellectual fascination. Like Saturn's found a REALLY cool puzzle and now she wants to poke it until it falls apart.
[what planet are you from anyway, here the only planet with people on it is earth]
[the ares-to-mars terraforming effort failed babe. anyway i was asking the wizard]
Randolph Carter is capable of feeling terror for as much as five minutes as a time before it's replaced by fascination, as it just has been.
"My home planet is also called Earth. I imagine this is a pretty common name for one's home planet. It looks like--" He's going to try to throw them a map of Earth through the telepathy.
[We can't read minds, that isn't how it works.] Pluto has the patient air of someone who has to explain this a lot.
[Earth here is blue and green, mostly water, with seven continents and four major oceans and one moon, which was called Luna before we terraformed it.] (A swell of pride under we.) [In order the planets are Hermes, Aphrodite, Earth, Ares, Zeus, Kronos-- that's the one Daphnis is orbiting around-- Ouranos, Poseidon, and the pseudoplanet Hades marks the edge of the solar system.]
"We have seven continents, four major oceans, one moon, nine planets. No pseudoplanets as far as I know. The names your planets have been given correspond to certain deities in Greek mythology-- Greece is an ancient civilization in our culture. Our planets are named after their equivalents from Rome, another civilization. Poseidon at minimum actually exists, I've met him, but the others might also be running around." Stealing his city.
[every planet here has its greek name until its terraformed and then we use the roman one]
[the exception is earth which is earth and its hypothetical humanless version would be terra, and the moon which was luna until it was colonized]
[so i think we're from the same earth or different versions of the same earth which is SO COOL YOU HAVE TO TELL ME EVERYTHING WHAT DO YOU MEAN GODS EXIST]
[........at the celestial mechanics base probably or mercuryll be so mad]
This is probably an alternate version of his earth. Unless gravity works much more weirdly than he expected, in which case it can be his earth's future. To be fair, lots of things work much more weirdly than he expected.
"Sure! You should probably take me to the base. --Uh, what's terraforming?"
[Oh, no, we're on different sides. I can't actually let Saturn do that. Sorry, I hope you'll understand <3.]
"Are you ladies going to fight over me or can we come to some kind of agreement?"
[We don't have to be. We both want to keep the dream of space alive.]
[It's only your boss I can't forgive.]
"I'm kind of worried about the fighting because some debris might land on me."
And above the buildings rises the Krun Macula.
It's enormous, and it feels even bigger than it looks. By volume it barely fits in the Daphnis complex. By tidal mass there are moons smaller than Pluto's ship-self. It's supermassive enough to warp local spacetime, and incredibly gentle-- or she would have destroyed Saturn and Carter and the whole complex without even trying.
The String of Pearls, by contrast, is still large for a human, but it's tiny for a ship. Quick and sharp. She moves like a liquid, like a cartoon, flitting away as soon as the Krun Macula realizes where she is. Or she would, if it weren't for the wrapper gauze still clinging to her limbs. As it is the Krun Macula's grip is on her before she can twitch.
"Cool, right? I've got poison now, too. Wanna see if you're still the top weirdo psychic mutant in space?"
"Sure!"
And the String of Pearls buckles and screeches as the dust ignites and a tiny fraction of Pluto's tidal forces slams into her. The noise is like Saturn got hit in the stomach with a brick, magnified by a thousand.
If there's any debris, it doesn't come near Carter.
"Had enough?"
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