call me maybe [Connecticut Yankee] | Glowfic Constellation

connecticut_yankee

"Eh, probably. Decoration has never been a priority of mine either.
Anyway, shall we try for a changer?"

from_scratch

And lo, there is a sheet of paper, almost unmarked except for a rectangle of four dots in black near an edge. Cam hands him a pen. "The gap I left in the line is inscribed in the space of those dots."

connecticut_yankee

Hank spreads the sheet on the ground, and the gap gets filled in. It doesn't look like much, what with the ink being invisible, but its effect makes him jump in surprise. "Thought there'd be a warning, or something" he mutters to himself. Magic ought to come with at least a little bit of showmanship.
"Er, hello." he says to the winged person in the circle.

from_scratch

The woman in the circle is done up in elaborate blue and gold and piercings. She glances at Hank and at Cam. "How can I help you?" she asks in perfect late nineteenth century English.

"Remember, don't agree to anything I haven't vetted, the task is also a possible point of failure," Cam tells Hank. "Possibly nothing," he adds to the changer, "this is his first summon, although we may want to note your name for future use."

"Eyndiel," she says.

connecticut_yankee

"The task is more or less just vanishing obstructions so we can build things. Some of it is even color coded. And we can pay you in almost any nonliving thing you care to name.
The hard part is secrecy; daeva aren't common knowledge and should stay that way. Can you turn yourself into a bird or something for the occasion?"

from_scratch

"You have a demon somewhere?" asks Eyndiel.

"Yep," says Cam.

"You have a demon who objects to making houseplants?" she asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Nope, your summoner here described it a little over-constrained. Houseplants are doable. If you want a demon kitten there's no obvious reason you can't have a demon kitten, usual caveats about demon kittens apply."

"Anyway, I don't want to be a bird, but I could take off my wings and tone down the colors for the occasion," says Eyndiel.

connecticut_yankee

"The color-coded locations I mentioned are spread across the country. You'd probably be conspicuous for covering that much distance, if nothing else. Come to think of it, how long would it take you to turn things to air? And do you need to be close?"

from_scratch

"You could have your demon give me a scooter," says Eyndiel. "Er, do you know anything?"

"It's his first summon, be nice," says Cam. "Her range can be summarized loosely as line of sight within about fifty yards, close for detail work, farther for a few simple things. She's also slower than a demon for comparable amounts of matter influenced, but if we did give her a scooter she could clear trees and stuff in front of her at a sedate scootering pace as she traveled."

connecticut_yankee

"Thanks, Cam.
Hm, anyone who sees a scooter would just assume it's the next thing to come out of Camelot. It's not so far beyond a train as to be implausible.
What kind of pace counts as sedate?

Oh, and Eyndiel, you're in the year 536."

from_scratch

"Twenty miles an hour, maybe thirty if she's really good," says Cam. "So it'll take a while for her to cover the ground alone, but with enough caffeine she can work around the clock, and we can always summon more when we have a task description we solidly trust."

"Er," says Eyndiel, "come again?"

connecticut_yankee

"536. This castle belonged to King Arthur this time last month. I'm from 1895 and have been trying to improve Britain, and this got a lot easier as of yesterday.

Are you up for cross-country transformation? It could take, let's say ten hours to complete a line, or whatever fraction of that you're willing to do. A houseplant seems like kind of inadequate payment for that."

from_scratch

"No, wait, back up, explain the time travel," says Eyndiel.

"The time travel is unexplained to us too," says Cam. "Expect alternate universes."

"...riiiight," says Eyndiel. "Anyway, I can do path-clearing more or less indefinitely with an hour break every twelve hours, plenty of coffee, and my first payment, delivered in advance, being a decent music player and library to listen to while I do it. I don't actually want a houseplant or a demon kitten, I want new-model computer hardware, I can move whatever I don't keep back home, but if this is 536..."

"Demon's from the same year you are. And even if that were not the case you could still just name your models," Cam says.

"Right."

connecticut_yankee

"The vanishing is to make room for an elevated train system. Any place that's been painted yellow needs to have trees removed from above it, blue circles mean holes for supports to be appeared there, and red means the site of a future station. Cleared and dug out enough for a building's foundations, say three feet.
The northward line is the most important. We have maps of course."

from_scratch

"You're going to have to tell me how high you need the line cleared and how deep you want the holes," Eyndiel says.

connecticut_yankee

"This being 536, just get rid of any trees with encroaching branches. There aren't any telegraph wires or anything important crossing these routes that could get in the way.
The holes will need to hold piles, and since we don't have to have people physically dig it anymore...can you give it a good fifteen meters? If you have to pull over to get line of sight, slowing down is fine."

from_scratch

"Sure. And you want all this stuff turned into air, not water or raspberry seeds or anything?"

"If we need water or raspberry seeds or anything we've got that covered," Cam assures her.

She nods.

"You'd also have to avoid talking too much to anybody you meet on the way," he muses. "But refusing to speak at all might look weird. We might want to give you a script."

connecticut_yankee

"If anyone asks, you're on an errand from the Boss and it's part of building a new train line. You'll pass some people claiming to be on the same errand; just tell them you can do it faster and better by some means that's a trade secret but you've convinced me it works. Please don't under any circumstances reveal that your magic is useful for more than digging holes.

I don't expect anyone else will challenge you, but be prepared for bystanders to stare. If the disappearing earth weren't unusual enough, the scooter will be."

from_scratch

"I can do a script," says Eyndiel. "Write it out for me, though, if I have to wing it that's a recipe for something getting miscommunicated."

"Is she supposed to send whatever workers she runs into home or just go past them and do whatever they haven't gotten to?" asks Cam.

connecticut_yankee

"Send them home. It's a bit redundant, but nothing they can do is anywhere near as effective as magic."
Hank puts pencil to notepad and starts writing scripts. The result should satisfy (in increasing length of how hard it could get) the general bystander population, the set of emissaries who went on the now-redundant recruitment mission, and any workers with complaints about being outcompeted. This last gets a line saying that they'll still be paid for that day.

"One more thing. This is the sixth century, and you are going to look like an outsider pretty much everywhere. In the unlikely emergency that you get attacked and have to use magic, it's probably better to defend yourself by vanishing things rather than be revealed as invulnerable. And less unpleasant."

from_scratch

"She might not have the reaction time to do that if a lot of people shoot at her," Cam says.

"I might not," agrees Eyndiel. "One person's arrows, sure, a whole bunch of them isn't going to happen that fast."

"But preferentially vanish weapons rather than let them scratch you," says Cam.

"Sure."

connecticut_yankee

"Weapons, any nearby scenery, an attacker's pants. There are plenty of ways to stop people from attacking you if you pull off an impossible effect and act intimidating. It shouldn't come up, though.
Is there anything else we need to go over, or are you ready to start?"

from_scratch

"Watch the language that sounds like you're offering the task as-is without specs clearly defined," hisses Cam.

"It's his first day, I'm not that much of a jerk," says Eyndiel.

"I'll write it up for you," Cam says, and he produces his computer and starts fiddling with a template of task assignment.

"Oh, hey, you have the brain surgery model," whistles Eyndiel.

"It's fast," Cam says absently as he finishes laying out the task and then turns the display. "Hank, does this look like what you want?"

connecticut_yankee

"Wait, what? You aren't how much of a jerk?" Whatever this is sounds categorically more important than the display.

from_scratch

"She isn't enough of a jerk to smirk at you and step out of her circle on the strength of you asking her if she's ready to start. Which would give any summoner who knew what was going on a heart attack even if she didn't then exploit the fact that you never expressly told her not to turn your guts into bees."

connecticut_yankee