Next Post »
+ Show First Post
Total: 212
Posts Per Page:
Permalink
"We are much maligned in the press," he sighs. "Okay, here we are."

He parks the shuttle in orbit around the Earth in her choice of spot. He picks up the blueprints and peers at them. He makes the shuttle bay, complete with shuttles, around them, and when it's made and sealed and full of air he pops the cockpit and hops out and walks down a hall that comes to exist in front of him. It leaks air, but he's faster than the vacuum and it looks dramatic and it's fun to walk down a corridor towards empty star-spangled space that's filled with more hallway just slightly before he steps into it every moment.

The summoner's welcome to follow him if she likes.
Permalink

She will follow him! Because she is curious, and this will be her space station, so she might as well be there for its creation. Besides, it is quite dramatic and she is trying not to make an 'eeeee' sound at it.

Permalink
The main corridor around the ring of the station takes about fifteen minutes. He makes another circuit after that, opening doors to the left and right to add details like the 'ponics bay and air filters. And tasteful wallpaper.

"Is mini-gravity good enough for you or do you want me to put a mini black hole in the middle?"
Permalink

"... Is that particularly safe? If it is - gravity would be excellent."

Permalink

"I have one under my house," he says. "I mean, it can't exactly kill me, but it hasn't even tried very hard. I can give you the fancy setup with the magnets and you can use it for garbage disposal."

Permalink

"Okay," she agrees. "Safe for regular very mortal people, please, I like living."

Permalink

"Believe me," says Cam, "I understand. You want Luna gravity or Earth or something else?"

Permalink

"Luna gravity, please - though if you can vary it, I might want to try and make recreational areas for both. People will be living here, after all. It should be a nice place to live."

Permalink

"Not via black hole, I can't, it's going to be one mass fits all - I guess I could nudge it a little closer to part of the ring, but not by much and not by enough to make the severalfold difference. Somebody who knows more engineering than I currently do would have to invent properly science-fictional artificial gravity first, then I could copy it."

Permalink

"Then Luna gravity, it's what we're used to. It's been years since I've been in Earth gravity, I think I would have trouble just walking in it."

Permalink
"Ah, it's not so bad, that's what my little black hole does for my house is one gee. You'd get used to it. But Luna it is." And he lets himself out an airlock, replacing whooshed-away air, and makes a magnet setup and places a very tiny black hole in the middle.

And lo, there was gravity.

He flies on rapidly conjured air back to the airlock and lets himself back in.
Permalink
She grins at him, happy to have gravity back. "Thank you! Now I feel at home to prance and twirl."

She demonstrates. It is both prancy, and twirly. Also adorable.
Permalink
Cam laughs.

"You want plants in your 'ponics? Swimming pool in the rec room? Carpeting?" he inquires.
Permalink

"Yes to all of those! As long as the carpeting is not tacky."

Permalink

"I have excellent taste." He strolls with bouncy Luna-gravity steps towards the 'ponics, laying down soft navy-blue pile with subtle green vine patterns down behind him.

Permalink
This was the best 'stupid selfless' (as her brother would put it) idea that she has ever had. The best. Really stupid and partially suicidal and it maybe almost got her raped, but still. It counts.

"... I realize now that I haven't told you my name! I'm terribly sorry, I'm Adana. Adana Sanders! Thank you for being wonderfully helpful!"
Permalink

"Pleased to meet you," he says with a little wing-sweepy bow as he starts to stalk up and down the rows in the 'ponics with sprouts of various things following in his wake. "I'm Cam, I believe I mentioned."

Permalink

"You have! Nice to meet you, too."

Permalink

"Remember me for all of your demonic needs."

Permalink
She giggles.

Then she realizes what is happening and wonders if there was another reason that demons are typically confined to two phrases. That's a bit of a terrifying thought. He could be lying and trying to persuade her to take off the summon's constraints.

Adana quietly decides that she will not do that. Even if he is being really helpful and is cute and shirtless and everything, he still gets to keep the constraints. They're not unfair, he can still talk.

Her face doesn't flicker in the slightest while she comes to this conclusion.

"Sure!" she agrees.
Permalink

"I don't get summoned often enough, there's not much to do in Hell besides socialize and fly around and read and throw parts of my house into my black hole so I can replace 'em. All of these are fine activities but they aren't the sort of meaningful I like best." Plants plants plants plants. Many kinds. Labels accompany them: potatoes wheat tomatoes broccoli kale corn zucchini rosemary arugula -

Permalink

"Entire parts of your house? Just pick up a living room and throw it into a black hole?"

Permalink

"I can't, actually, pick up a whole living room. Some demons go in for enough body modification to be able to do that kind of thing but in my case it's more chainsaw it to bits a wall at a time and feed the bits to the pinhole and sweep up the debris and then I get to make a new one. I usually have a few layers of different sorts of wall treatment on a room before I get that bored with it, though. When my black hole gets inconveniently big I'm going to chuck the whole house at it and start again from a higher orbit."

Permalink

"That sounds kind of strange, but also fun! Though it must be a pain to constantly destroy things you make."

Permalink

"Yeah, the angels have one up on us for recycling. Hell rejoiced when the black hole was discovered. Incineration was the previous state of the art for decluttering. We're not pyromaniacs, we just don't want to have to abandon cities under heap of used crap every few decades. Although it's not like we have to wreck stuff, we could in theory even use human reclamation methods for the relatively garden-variety creations, just - it doesn't stay useful indefinitely and who wants to bother with a compost heap when you can just make perfect plants without the fertilizer step?"

Total: 212
Posts Per Page: