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Cam is dipping a grilled cheese sandwich into a bowl of tomato soup when he feels the summons. He goes ahead and grabs it. Doesn't even drop the sandwich.
Steel summons Demon Cam
sturdycoldsteel
"It could have gone better, but I managed." In Henta, "Hard work may not make an adult, but avoiding it makes a child. That's an old proverb, and one I took to heart. A compromise between grammar and most available work, would be nice."
from_scratch
"Okay... do you mind viciously terrible writing systems? Because Chinese is very popular, especially in writing where the dialects don't compete, and it's got deliciously simple grammar, and its characters look like this and there's thousands of them." He shows her a sample on his computer. And opens up his spaceship and motions her in.
sturdycoldsteel
Steel pauses to investigate the spaceship. "Does it use the Reaction Law to fly? Tlane is symbolic like that, but honestly Chinese doesn't really appeal if there's thousands of different characters to re-learn. I can tolerate grammar in exchange for a phonetic alphabet like Henta has."
from_scratch
"I don't know of a Reaction Law under that name. I can give you a physics lesson but it'd take a long time. How regular do you need your phonetics?"
sturdycoldsteel
"The reaction law states that anything exerting a force has an equal force exerted on it in the opposite direction. Moving things with the stream is thought to push against the entire planet, but this has not been proven. Two or three different pronunciations per letter would be fine, especially if grammar can help tell which to use. A dozen, no."
from_scratch
"The reaction law is involved but not the only thing going on here." He takes off, thinking about languages. "Maybe Italian. How pronounceable does this sound?" He speaks a couple sentences of Italian.
from_scratch
"This is sentence in Italian. It has a lot of interesting cadence but not that many vowels," translates Cam.
sturdycoldsteel
"Seems like a good choice, then."
She looks out the front of the spaceship. "...Wow. This thing is fast."
She looks out the front of the spaceship. "...Wow. This thing is fast."
from_scratch
"Yes it is."
Up up up.
"So, Italian's subject-verb-object. To say my name is... uh. What's your name, I'm Cam."
Up up up.
"So, Italian's subject-verb-object. To say my name is... uh. What's your name, I'm Cam."
sturdycoldsteel
"Ha, we haven't introduced ourselves yet. My name is Jean, but please call me Steel. It's traditional for skilled shapers to take a nickname. By subject-verb-object, do you mean..." She says 'you' 'fly' and 'ship,' which is not a correct sentence in Tlane.
from_scratch
"Yes, like that." He makes her a piece of paper with the Roman alphabet and a description of the corresponding sounds in her own and hands it over. "Alphabet, sample sentences on the bottom, sound 'em out."
sturdycoldsteel
She rolls through the alphabet a few times, singing the sounds to a little tune, and repeats the sentences with slightly varying pronunciation for a while.
from_scratch
Cam corrects her when it's more than just accent creeping in, and then tells her what the words mean - "my name is Jean", "I am a shaper" (Cam makes up an Italian approximation of the concept, etcetera. Then she gets a sheet of paper with basic verb conjugations and pronouns.
"...Aaaand here we are in medium orbit," he says.
"...Aaaand here we are in medium orbit," he says.
sturdycoldsteel
"My name is Steel," she repeats firmly in Italian, using her word for Steel.
She looks at the stream. "Interesting. There's only the tiniest haze of fog outside the ship, but inside has as much fog as ever. I wonder..." She droops a bit. "If I try to do something fifty feet off to the left of the ship, it flies away behind us. If I do something five feet outside it, it sort of... Shears. The more distant parts fall away faster than the closer parts. And if I do something inside the ship, it decays noticeably faster but continues to exist. Large vehicles or heavy loads can disrupt roads a little. Maybe the stream wants to be stationary relative to nearby matter."
She looks at the stream. "Interesting. There's only the tiniest haze of fog outside the ship, but inside has as much fog as ever. I wonder..." She droops a bit. "If I try to do something fifty feet off to the left of the ship, it flies away behind us. If I do something five feet outside it, it sort of... Shears. The more distant parts fall away faster than the closer parts. And if I do something inside the ship, it decays noticeably faster but continues to exist. Large vehicles or heavy loads can disrupt roads a little. Maybe the stream wants to be stationary relative to nearby matter."
sturdycoldsteel
"About one and a half, maybe one and three-quarters measures a minute, on a good road." (This is about forty-five miles an hour)
She pivots her head. "Oh, the pattern I made inside the ship is falling behind us after all, just much more slowly."
She pivots her head. "Oh, the pattern I made inside the ship is falling behind us after all, just much more slowly."
from_scratch
"This suggests that it still cares about the frame of reference of the planet. Mind going higher?"
sturdycoldsteel
"Not at all. But I need to be back in Opri three days from now, so no long journeys, please."
from_scratch
"Sure, I won't try that far, I just want to break orbit and see what that does."
Up up up until it's no longer "up" but "away". Italian, meanwhile.
Up up up until it's no longer "up" but "away". Italian, meanwhile.
sturdycoldsteel
Prepositions and conjugation give Steel some trouble. Vocabulary mostly does not.
When they're far away enough to be clear of any lingering fog, she stares at the closer of the two small moons. "I can tell where the planet is easily from here, it's a circle of bluestream-fog. But if the moons have any, it's incredibly thin."
She makes a few steam-things. "Anything too distant from the ship just... Collapses into fog that spreads out into nothingness immediately. If I go closer, it holds together a little longer. The lightball I made inside the ship is steadily wearing away at the edges, too, but it's not drifting around."
She walks a few feet. "...That completely destroyed the lightball. At home they can last for months before needing shoring up, even if you walk through them all the time."
When they're far away enough to be clear of any lingering fog, she stares at the closer of the two small moons. "I can tell where the planet is easily from here, it's a circle of bluestream-fog. But if the moons have any, it's incredibly thin."
She makes a few steam-things. "Anything too distant from the ship just... Collapses into fog that spreads out into nothingness immediately. If I go closer, it holds together a little longer. The lightball I made inside the ship is steadily wearing away at the edges, too, but it's not drifting around."
She walks a few feet. "...That completely destroyed the lightball. At home they can last for months before needing shoring up, even if you walk through them all the time."
from_scratch
"But it's not falling behind, like we're flying away from it and it can't keep up, it's just disintegrating?"
sturdycoldsteel
"Yeah, it's just disintegrating. And adding to the fog in the ship, which is seeping outside the ship. That stuff outside is really thin but it isn't falling behind either."
from_scratch
"Okay. So... close to the planet, magic wants to stay stationary relative to the planet. Farther away from the planet, it wants that harder. Far, far away from the planet, it doesn't realize there is anything to want and sees no reason to behave at all. To anthropomorphize."
sturdycoldsteel
"I think it more wants to be stationary relative to the largest or nearest-by clump of physical stuff. Like... It seemed like it was trying to be stationary relative to our ship, but that effect lost to the planet's bigness. Can we land on one of the moons?"