This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Elsewhere:
Maitimo wakes up.
The room is littered with forensic conjurations of people and notes and wands and books and planets. In the room is Ms. Chua, and a black-winged demon. Looks too straightforwardly Asian to be naturally occurring.
evening is forked
through-the-free-fall
"In one country it was eight percent of adults last year. Most of them aren't that bad, overall rate's just under three."
alicornucopia
"That - you don't need that many demons to feed people, or even angels, are they mostly fairies? How does that work?"
through-the-free-fall
"They're mostly fairies - ex-humans from here seem to be mostly fairies too, actually - and they're not all sharing - some areas are very fragmented along religious or tribal lines, some just don't yet have the infrastructure, people want to take care of their own family instead of counting on the goodwill of a neighbor, people want to be the provider - we're doing an analysis of which countries have the worst problems, see if we can identify which economic and cultural factors produce that outcome, see what we can tinker with to avoid it."
alicornucopia
Nod. "I have no idea how it's been more than a century and a half since Revelation and no one here knew."
through-the-free-fall
"I don't know how much of that was a consequence of your forensics demons's determination to keep it quiet and how much was a consequence of people saying it, not being believed, and deciding it was unwise to bring it up again. I'm glad it's known now, though, so fewer lives can be sundered by accidents and illness and so on."
alicornucopia
"Summoning's getting a lot more popular. We're hoping to be able to issue revised safety guidelines to account for magic before everybody makes sure to summon something at least once."
through-the-free-fall
"That sounds like a very sensible priority. I can have people on call to quickly answer any questions you might have while designing revised bindings."
alicornucopia
"We're working with the Pancelestial Safe Summoning Authority, since it's not really our area but they haven't been quite as involved with all the new wrinkles - have you talked to them at all -"
through-the-free-fall
"Please do introduce me, I think an associate attended a talk but it sounds like we should be on closer terms than that."
alicornucopia
"Yes, definitely. Their office is in Edinburgh, but I can email you and my contact there, break the ice?"
through-the-free-fall
"Perfect, thanks. I'll stop by. The persistent Milliways door to Earth opens to Forks, Washington, incidentally, we purchased the space and have offices there should you have the time free to drop by."
through-the-free-fall
"Thank you. - oh, Minor said that another way he'd used magic to cause trouble was shrinking his circle, so it appeared to be a foot or so smaller, and then people'd step too close -"
through-the-free-fall
"You'd have to ask him, he mentioned it in the context of 'ways magic daeva are dangerous' and I wasn't present, got an outline of the conversation afterwards."
alicornucopia
"...you understand I can't just send him an email asking why he did that, even a human that wouldn't be how it works -"
through-the-free-fall
"With humans you'd have a procedure for interviewing people prior to arresting them, yes?"
alicornucopia
"Prior to trying them. Not necessarily prior to arrest unless it was really trivial, the sort of thing where even if they obviously did it they'd probably get off with a warning."
through-the-free-fall
"I understand the importance of sticking to your procedures. It seems like the likeliest consequence of arresting him is that he gets off since the only evidence is his own word and then he doesn't tell us the next exploit he finds."