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At the End of All Things Elves in Revelation
Permalink Mark Unread

For three months after Revelation he ignores his father's calls.

 

Yes. It should be possible to summon a demon and, depending how their powers work, either get a Silmaril from them or get the location of the patch of ground closest to the Silmaril from them or at worst do binary search over conjured models of parts of the planet to find the Silmarils. Yes, it should be possible to summon an angel to then dig the thing out of bedrock. And then they won't live life walking against the currents of fading, they will be whole again, they can summon some more for spaceship plans and head away from Earth much sooner, and much more powerful, than they imagined.

 

Also, the curious demon might go back to Hell and conjure some more Silmarils, if their powers happen to shake out that way, and might start handing out Silmarils to anyone on Earth who wants one, because why not, and the oath might still be in force, the risk is unimaginable - 

 

- they can of course get a Silmaril and then, if it turns out they can be conjured, not let the demon go home, that is merely incredibly rude and might strand someone a dimension away from their family for centuries. It at least does not risk unleashing the oath on this innocent world that has, at last, left the scars of the last time that happened beyond the reach of living memory.

 

For three months after Revelation he ignores his father's calls because he is childishly frightened, because his well-polished coping skills are fraying, because if he feels the tug of that oath on him again it will be too late to kill himself and therefore he wants, very badly, to do it now. For three months he wavers.

 

And then he answers the calls, and takes some vacation, and goes home for a Fëanorian planning session. He doesn't remember what loving them felt like but he remembers that he loved them, that it was once very important to him, and he knows he would do this for someone he loved. They plan and they read and they learn and they practice - without summoning, because daeva get the languages you speak when you summon them and so the first daeva they summon will know, if observant enough, they're not of this society - 

- he gets two weeks vacation a year, they plan very very slowly - 

 

- and six years after Revelation they have a binding and a few possible options for payment and a plan for the case where Silmarils turn out to be trivially conjurable and conjurable ones oath-relevant. Maedhros is terrified, and miserable, but no one can tell. He prides himself on that. 

 

Curufin doesn't want to do it because he speaks Khuzdul and the Dwarves who taught him it in confidence did not give him permission to share it. (They did give him permission, when it came up one optimistic night, to share it with his father should his father ever return to life, and so Fëanor speaks Khuzdul too.) Maglor's pretending to be a currently-dead pop star and that invites its own host of complications. 

Maedhros does not speak Khuzdul. He speaks the Black Speech in addition to a few human languages and Thindarin and Quenya, but the language won't scare daeva in itself (if they get his exact vocabulary, they might be frightened.) Maedhros picks a place in the castle in Canada that could be a room in an unusually wealthy human's house, unremarkable, and he painstakingly copies all but one bit of the circle they decided on together, and he calls in everyone to look and make sure he did it right, and he dismisses them all - one Elf alone is not obviously inhuman, two or more together raises suspicions -

- and he completes the circle.

 

Permalink Mark Unread

Here is a demon. Dark blue wings, looks like a shirtless white guy in blue jeans apart from that.

Permalink Mark Unread

Here is a man of carefully indeterminate age - greying, but if you ignored that he could be in his early twenties, surreally pretty, wearing a suit. His ears are not pointy; he got cosmetic surgery fifty years earlier. "Hello," he says in English, which is not one of the six or seven languages the demon just learned from him. "I'm Matthew."

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"Hello, what can I do for you?" These are interesting languages, what the heck language family - English isn't new, the dialect is weird though, kind of all over the place - just wants one phone call -

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"Forensics, might be a bit complicated. I'm looking for something. I want to know if you can make it and if you can't, I want to know where the extant ones are."

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"What is it?" He is not going to make nukes for a chance to call his dad, that would just be impressively bad priorities.

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"They're called Silmarils." He gestures. "About this big, sparkly, my father made them, I don't know what you need to go off." Call his dad -

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"Are they for anything, or...?" He's pretty sure nukes don't get cute trademark names but bioweapons or something might, due diligence, this would be really frustrating if he were gagged like the last few times, he'd just have to turn the guy down.

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He's a very good liar. "Sentimental. My father died a long time ago."

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"I will try making one for you for one phone call and track down the extant for two." Renée's not really responsible enough to be guaranteed to have a way to write down his instructions handy or keep a message on the answering machine but if he can get a second call it's not like she wouldn't appreciate hearing from him instead of from Charlie. Awkward if he gets Phil on the phone though. Hi Phil it's your dead stepson...

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"Deal."

Humans were supposed to have an afterlife but this is entirely the wrong style.

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"Can't make one."

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"Okay. There are three. Can you go for their surroundings, figure out where they are-"

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"Mm-hm -" Conjure conjure conjure.

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Rock, rock, and rock.

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Zooming out...

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Underwater rock. Under land rock. Under highly sulfuric rock.

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"Ow -" He stops conjuring them in his bare hands. More surroundings.

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The 'ow' one is on Venus. The other two are on Earth. Under North Dakota and under the Baltic Sea respectively.

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"Apparently a fairy fucked off with one of them to Venus. Is this precise enough or do you need larger models?"

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"That's precise enough. Thank you. There's a phone." Gesture.

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"Thanks!" Dude had better not stiff him and cut him off before he can tell Charlie anything, should've thought of that, should've said he needed at least a couple minutes. Oh well, seems like a nice enough guy, doesn't call him 'hellspawn' or anything. He goes over to the phone and dials from memory.

Permalink Mark Unread

He is not cut off at all. Have scale models of the locations, he tells everyone else. Also apparently humans can become daeva when they die, don't know why that part hasn't gotten out yet. Our demon is calling his father. I intend to ask him the second question afterwards.

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He gets an answering machine. Charlie's probably at work.

"This is not a prank, it's me, I need you to write a summoning circle for a demon with my full name in it," he says, "there's instructions how to do it the complicated way in my notes," or, like, the revelation book, same difference, "but you can also just write I summon the demon insert name around most of a circle with enough room for me to stand in it, then finish the circle. On the floor. Tell Renée please, I'm going to call her too but in case she, uh, Renées it. Leave the circle for a bit in case I get held up somehow, okay?"

Permalink Mark Unread

He still hasn't said his name. It's very annoying. 

 

Also. 

- or, like, the revelation book, same difference -

 

He looks very bored.

He is not very bored.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, he expects the call recipients to recognize his voice. "I'm gonna call Renée now. See you soon."

Deep breath. Hang up. Dial a new number.

Man's voice: "Hello?"

"- hello, can I speak to Renée Dwyer?"

"She can't come to the phone right now, can I take a message?"

Jesus Christ Phil. He has nothing against Phil per se but right now he is in the way and he doesn't know how to handle him the way he can handle his parents. "It's a little delicate, are you sure she's not available?" He glances at his summoner, doesn't look impatient - "I can wait." She should be home by now. Could be out with friends but "can't come to the phone" is more likely to be "in the bathroom" or something.

"Delicate?"

"It's about her son."

"Lemme put you on hold."

"That's fine, thank you."

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Summoner, being thirty four thousand years old, continues not to look impatient. 

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Cam waits. And then his mom picks up. "Hello?"

"Hi, don't freak out, it's me -"

"Cam?!"

"- it's me. I'm okay -"

"How, how are - oh my baby -"

"I called Charlie first, you can corroborate with him, I'm a demon -"

"Oh my God!"

"- it's okay, it's okay, it's nice there -" Tacky as hell - heh heh - but nice. "I'm fine. I'm hoping for you or Charlie to summon me though. I got his answering machine. I won't be able to answer till I'm back from the summons I'm on now though."

"I, okay, I don't know the first thing about - I'm sorry I never took an interest -"

"It's fine, it wasn't your thing." She would've been all over it if he'd been teaching comparative literature or something but summoning, nah. "It's not hard, it's only complicated if you're getting a random person. I think Charlie still has my notes if you want to just let him do it but the simple version is 'I summon the demon' insert name, around a circle you don't finish till you've written in all the words, then you finish the circle. Needs to have enough room for me."

"I - all right - I can move the car out of the garage and - okay - how -"

"You have nearly as much information as I do now but I'll see you soon, okay? I shouldn't tie up the line forever."

"Okay - I love you -"

"You too."

Permalink Mark Unread

HIs summoner still looks pretty blandly disinterested. "Everybody, or are you special?"

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"Most people aren't daeva. There's an unsummonable sort of person they turn into instead, without the magic powers besides indestructibility. I'm not sure why I'm a demon."

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"Sell your soul?"

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"I didn't, and if I had I'd be recommending it, being a demon's a better deal than going to Limbo." He is like 99% sure the souls thing is bullshit but he hasn't been a demon long enough to be positive there isn't some obscure soul-handling mechanism that he or some fraction of demons has that he just hasn't figured out yet. Probably bullshit though.

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"That was the other thing I was going to ask about."

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"I do not know how to collect a soul. I have never tried, but I think nobody can actually do that."

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"And there are not lots of people in eternal torment in Hell, so far as you know?"

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"There are lakes of fire but they're for garbage disposal. I haven't seen any humans."

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Nod. "How about the people trapped beneath the Pelóri, are they a myth too?"

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"Trapped where?"

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"Where I'm from there's a myth that when God collapsed the world he trapped the army of Ar-Pharazôn beneath the mountains of Valinor, and he made them immortal so they would be awake and encased in stone forever."

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"I have not heard this myth. It's depressing."

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"Is it true, though."

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"I could conjure for it but nobody's ever managed to conjure an inherently magical thing and immortal people might be that."

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"Surroundings? Like with the Silmarils?"

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Come to think of it it's weird he can't make Silmarils. Maybe they're... made of angel feathers? He hasn't happened to try making angel feathers, maybe they still count as magic. That or Silmarils're AIs, that would be exciting. Though wouldn't he just get basement dweller hardware... "I can't make extraneous things under this binding, so if you want me to try with the mountains we have to renegotiate."

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"I know some very lovely music that has never been recorded and I will sing you some if you check whether there are immortal people encased in stone beneath the mountains."

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"Deal."

He checks. No mountains.

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"The Pelóri don't exist."

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"Or I can't make them for some reason - what's the deal with Silmarils?"

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"Presumably that they're magic. Out of curiosity, can you make me?"

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"Can't make minds. I could make your body, sometimes people have demons do that for transplants."

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"I see. Thank you. Have a lovely reunion with your parents."

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That obvious, huh. Well, nothing was riding on it being a private matter. "Thank you."

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He leans back, closes his eyes, and sings. It's stunning, and also for some reason desperately sad. It's in one of the other languages; the lyrics are about little children playing by a brook. 

 

When he's done without comment he sends Cam home.

Permalink Mark Unread

Demon has his reunion with his parents!

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He is probably too distracted to pick over those languages or that weird series of questions for quite some time! But probably not forever. Probably before extraction begins, even; he's not an Elf.

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For one thing, his parents sleep, and he, instead, drinks coffee.

Pick pick pick.

Permalink Mark Unread

Languages: five in which he is fluent, two in the same language family and two in a different language family and one related to none of the others, none of them related to any spoken on Earth. Two more in which he is conversant, not counting English, which came with some very weird turns of phrase and vocabulary. Those two are unfamiliar to everything else also. 

Permalink Mark Unread

His laptop does not have an input method for the alphabets, Wikipedia's list of languages doesn't have them...

...the heck?

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Conjuring for the complete works written in them gets only a handful of texts, for most, and none at all, for some, and entire libraries for Thindarin. 

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Well. He will read the handsful, first, then start rummaging through Thindarin.

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Nothing in particular seems to distinguish the handful; they're mostly notes. Some mention unfamiliar names and titles. Maybe Matthew was really into conlanging in his youth.

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Yeah no.

 

Can he make a Matthew.

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Nope.

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What the fuck.

 

Further digging reveals that Matthew's father did... die a long time ago... and has produced a lot of "posthumous" work. That there was a whole Thindarin-speaking civilization nobody knows about. That he can produce irregular, frustrating bits of stuff related to the places and things Matthew mentioned.

He can't make Matthew but he can make his cellphone and find out what its number is and call it.

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"Matthew Carter, how can I help you?"

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"Hi, this is the demon you summoned a few weeks ago, is this a good time?"

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"Hell has cell service now? It's not, especially. I'm at work."

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"I can call back later."

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"Thank you. I plan to retire in ten years." Click.

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...Cam was thinking like "later that day". He calls back a few hours later.

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"Matthew Carter, how can I help you?"

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"Are you off work yet?"

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"No, I told you, I'm working until I'm sixty. It's the best pension plan."

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"I suppose literally never leaving work has an advantage commutewise, but seriously."

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He switches to Quenya. "Not a good conversation to conduct over the phone and did you check where I work. Call my brother -" and he gives another number.

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"Didn't check, sorry." He hangs up. He calls the other number.

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He picks up. "Hello?" he says in English.

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"Hi, Matthew said I should call you instead of him with my stack of questions about all the everything? I'm the demon he summoned the other week."

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"Yes, he said to expect you. He works for the NSA, they listen to weird calls he gets at work."

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"Gotcha. Should've checked, didn't occur to me. Is he going to be in trouble for consorting with demons or anything?"

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"I don't know what NSA policies on summoning are but possibly. It's okay, he can retire early."

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"Okay. Do you want me to present my questions as they precipitated out of bewildered forensic conjuration and have to correct my context six times a minute or do you just want to start from the beginning?"

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"I am not necessarily planning on answering your questions, honestly."

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"Why not?"

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"I have a lot of demands on my time."

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"Look, I understand you have no strong reason to be interested in resolving the confusion a random demon your brother summoned is experiencing but I am capable of making positive sum trades even when I am not standing in a circle, you can probably think of some way I could save you some time."

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"I expect you've noticed by now that we're very old and not in much of a hurry."

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Sigh. "So, you're not necessarily planning on answering my questions, but you might?"

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"That sounds like about the only stance it would be reasonable to take on the information you've given me so far."

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"What do you wanna know?"

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"How likely you are to go on a righteous crusade of vengeance on behalf of people thirty thousand years dead, honestly."

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"That sounds very unlike me."

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"Fine. I'm an undergrad at MIT, if you want to stop by we can chat. But only because taking summoning public was a really great thing to do."

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"Beg pardon?"

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"My brother doesn't actually work at the NSA for the pension plan, he just says that because he thinks it's cute."

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"Am I supposed to believe the NSA identified me?"

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"I am very sure Matthew hasn't let anyone else notice. He wouldn't do that. Presuming you had a reason to do it this way in the first place, and all."

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"I did but it didn't work."

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"Why don't you come up to Boston and we can spare him the work of making sure he's the only person listening in."

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"Sure. Be there soon. How do I find you once I show up?"

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He gives an address.

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"See you."

And Cam tells his parents he's going on a road trip, call him if they need anything or just want to confirm he is still okay, and he hops on a motorcycle and heads over. His wings are already off; he doesn't attract attention.

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In Boston it's icy and he gets skeptical stares for being helmetless on his motorcycle.

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Helmetless? Who, him?

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Never mind! 

 

Aricin's address is a dorm on the MIT campus.

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Cam parks outside of it and calls.

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Goes to voicemail.

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"Hey, I'm here but it's freezing out, I'm going to find the library and wait there."

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The library is findable; you have to have a student pass to get in.

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Like this one?

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Yep! 

 

 

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A little while later an astonishingly pretty person walks in, glances around, heads towards Cam.

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Cam waves.

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"Hi," he says. "We're not supposed to speak in here, want to go for a walk?"

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"Sure."

Cam follows him out, slips on ice, sighs and gets up again, finds his path mysteriously salted.

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He's very graceful. "So. Questions?"

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"Why does your brother speak languages where every word has a spelling and there are no conjurable written works or only a handful? Why doesn't anybody know about the civilization that spoke Thindarin, since it has loads of conjurable written works? Why can't I make even a basement dweller of him? How did your dad write posthumously for hundreds of years without being in Limbo or any daeva realm? What, in general, the fuck?"

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"At a guess, most of the written works count as magic for some reason, Eru, magic, resurrected, and good question."

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"Eru?"

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"- there're gods. Or, at least, there used to be, I don't know what they're up to these days and this -" gesture at Cam - "isn't their style. One comes to recognize it. Eru is the god who destroyed the civilization with Thindarin works - had the whole continent swallowed by the sea, moved the continents, cut Valinor off - and I don't know why nobody knows - especially not in Hell - but he's omnipotent or was so the likeliest explanation is that he wanted them forgotten, it suited the narrative he was going for."

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"And the fossil record and whatnot?"

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"Dinosaurs are more recent than that - well, in Valinor. Maybe in Endorë they really did die out sixty five million years ago. There was a war among the gods that lasted two billion, a meteor to mess up someone's delightfully vibrant ecosystem wouldn't be inexplicable."

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"...okay. How's resurrection work?"

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"When we die our god can collect our souls and give us new bodies for them. They only do that if they approve of us; it took my father thirty thousand years to get reembodied, and being disembodied is deeply unpleasant, so it sounds like humans have it better."

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"Who's we?"

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"We call ourselves the Quendi. I think 'Elves' caught on in the vernacular."

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Cam glances at his ears.

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"Used to be pointy, we got plastic surgery. There's enough unusual without giving people extra hints."

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"Okay. What are the Silmarils?"

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"Quendi are - dependent on background magic in the universe. There's less and less of it over time. We - fade away, if we're not careful, we lose the capacity to affect the world around us. As a result we're all supposed to leave the world and go live in the paradise of the gods. But we have some - theological disagreements - with our gods, so my father found a way to capture and preserve the magic so we could set up an independent Elven kingdom outside Valinor. Then they were stolen."

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"By Venusian fairies, or is that later?"

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"I don't think there was a fairy involved, actually, I think that was Eru. By a lot of people. They were very desirable prizes."

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"Just for being bottled magic?"

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"Bottled magic is really useful."

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"It sounds it, but besides being ambiently magical you haven't said what it's useful for."

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"Given enough time we could have killed the gods. Not that we were planning to do that, most of them are just hapless. There's one who needed to die. We could've used it for heat and light and power while setting up a civilization on some distant star - we are going to do that - they make other magic effects more powerful - eventually we'll become gods, and the Silmarils won't do that in themselves but it'd be hard to achieve without them."

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"And you're planning to improve on previous divine examples, I hope."

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"Won't be hard. Why are you wandering around, aren't people supposed to be careful with demons?"

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"Who, me, I don't have wings, can't be a demon."

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"I see. Have I answered your questions?"

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"I mean, yes, but not in a way that makes me eager to go away."

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"If you would like to help us found a civilization on a distant star and restore magic to the world and become gods you're quite welcome."

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"It sounds more interesting than continuing to teach myself the violin and making pipe dream plans to terraform Mars!"

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"You could terraform Mars for practice? We're not leaving for a couple decades, we need people."

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Heh. "Oh, and I'll want to commute by summon, unless you break lightspeed with magic."

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"Doubt it. I can't summon you but Matthew probably won't mind doing it regularly."

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"Awesome. ...So what's your name? I'm Cam."

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"Aricin. How'd you learn about summoning?"

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"Found a book on it in an abandoned house."

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"How'd you end up dead?"

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"Guy walked into my classroom and shot me in the head."

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"Uh, why?"

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"I think a daeva I'd spoken to identified me as Revelation and he objected for economic reasons."

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"Openly committing murder seems unlikely to be to someone's economic advantage."

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"I don't think he was a hit man, I think he wanted revenge on me for making summoning less of an edge."

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"My condolences."

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"Thanks."

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"So, uh, before we leave this star system far behind us, it would be nice to find a way to smuggle information about summoning to Valinor, if it even works there. People are traditionally not allowed to leave, and I would be entertained by having an opening to change that. You wouldn't happen to have any ideas -"

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"I haven't been able to conjure anything of or pertaining to Valinor. Where is it, how does it work...?"

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"It used to be a continent that could be found by sailing west of here. Then Eru intervened and now I have no idea. Nothing? You can't conjure Elves but can you conjure, say, plastic scale models of what Elves look like..."

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"I can only do materials substitutions if I know what I'm substituting for what else, are you made of water and protein and stuff?"

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"Yes."

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Cam thinks about it for a while and then tries for a plastic model.

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That is a small plastic Elf. 

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"Okay..." If he tries for a model of Valinor with all of its bits replaced with appropriately colored glass?

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There are a lot of holes in the thing that comes through but something comes through. It does in fact look like a continent ringed by unfriendly tall mountains.

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"Okay, so I can do material replacement models of magic things, with exceptions..." He pokes a hole. "Do you happen to have a guess what might be supposed to go in the gaps?"

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"That's where Lórien should be - it's probably just too magic -"

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"Material replacement conjurations of mildly magical things."

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"Things that have a consistent shape and appearance, maybe."

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"What's Lórien and why doesn't it have that?"

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"Forest, and it takes whatever form - within constraints, but pretty broad constraints, I've gotten it to have different gravities - the people in it will find most restful and soothing."

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"That sounds nice."

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"It's not the worst thing a Vala has ever done."

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"Anyway, so here's a model of Valinor, let's see if I can get surroundings -" Likewise in glass, out and out -

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Valinor appears to be floating in empty space except for this very narrow patch of the Atlantic Ocean.

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What does the narrow Atlantic Ocean attach to on the other end?

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It sort of meanders, a couple thousand miles, taking weird twists and turns. It's literally about a sailboat wide. 

 

Then it reaches England.

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Cam looks at the weird glass thing in his hand.

"I should probably have thought this through before I made it while on a walk."

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"Can't help you there, sorry. You could take it back to my room but I think my roommate hates me."

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He breaks it up and puts it in a paper grocery bag. "I'll chuck it when we pass a trash can."

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"Does Hell have very full landfills?"

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"Yes. And lakes of fire."

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"Cute. I wonder if it's - some kind of emergent consequence of something about humans, it's not Eru's style at all."

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"Couldn't tell you."

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"You don't get anywhere by conjuring demonic history?"

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"I haven't read the whole library of Hell but things are murky before writing."

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"My father invented writing."

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"That's very cool but what I meant was the introduction of writing to Hell."

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"That I can't help you with." They're back at his dorm. "You don't need sleep, right?"

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"I do not." He chucks the glass path to Valinor.

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"Elves need sleep but way less often than humans. This is among the reasons my roommate hates me. The other one - you should see it, actually -" In they go!

 

His room has been very illegally remodelled; it looks like a very expensive apartment, with fancy wood panelling and a fountain with a little creek that meanders (under glass) around the room. There are bookcases full of leather-bound old books lining the walls, and a ridiculously nice computer desk setup. 

 

And a human teenager. "Oh, hi, Aricin," he says, rolling his eyes. 

"I wanted to show Cam how I'd set up my place."

       "He was fucking nuts about it. Refused to summon anyone, did it all by hand, slept outside until it was done. Nice to meet you, I'm Will."

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"Nice to meet you too. Wow, this must have taken forever and your RA probably hates you too."

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"I bribed him with homework help."

       "Yeah, he also already knows everything, I don't even know why the fuck he's in college."

"I taught here in the 70s," Aricin says complacently, sitting down at his desk and pulling up some kind of modeling program, into which he inputs the ocean path to Valinor.

       His roommate ignores this; apparently it is not an unusually weird thing to say.

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"Cool. I taught at U Dub for a bit."

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"Oh? What'd you teach?"

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"Summoning."

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"I wanted to take that as an elective but it didn't fit my schedule. Want to go flying."

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"Bit chilly, no thanks, but have fun."

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"Oh, not now, I mean that's why I'd want to learn, so I could try it. Should I leave you two -"

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"Oh," said Aricin, "no, sorry - no, I just needed to get this into my computer before I forgot."

      "What is it?"

"Magic route to a lost mythological paradise."

    "D&D game or something?"

"Or something," he agrees, completing the route. "I'm going to be out of town all next week, family reunion in North Dakota."

    "Uh, okay."

"Sorry."

    "You're not actually even the weirdest person on our floor, dude, just weird in more of a could-stab-you-in-your-sleep way."

"I promise I wouldn't do that," Aricin says solemnly. 

    "Did you get through the 8 pset -"

"Yes," he says, his mood suddenly improved, and he turns the computer off and animatedly talks his roommate through it. 

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"Should I go?"

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"If you wanna get yourself a snack or something there's stuff in the mini-fridge, I'll be done with this in a bit."

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Cam peers into the minifridge.

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It is empty.

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Cam pulls out an apple anyway.

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Aricin is entertained for some reason. And soon the homework is straightened out. "Thought of any other questions?" he asks Cam.

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"Nothing desperately urgent, but you may assume I remain curious till further notice."

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"Up for a late night run to New York City to meet another brother of mine?"

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"Sounds good."

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So off they go. He sings in Quenya.

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"You wanna sit in back of the motorcycle till I'm unwitnessed enough for a sidecar?"

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"Sure. Are you not planning to go public about returning from the dead ever, or just until you learn why you?"

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"Second thing. I mean, I'm considering pretending that I was not as dead as I looked, it was recent enough that I think I can pull that off, but until I know how to predict whether somebody'll be a daeva or a Limboite I'd rather not tell one and all. Daeva ex-humans are really uncommon, most demons I talked to had never heard of it."

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Nod. "What was it like -"

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"It was quick, one moment I had the worst headache of all time, next I was in perfect health in downtown Dite. Stark naked."

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"Does making stuff take time to learn or is it intuitive?"

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"Like a few seconds to get the hang of doing it at all, complicated stuff like interpolation takes a little practice."

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Nod. "Your parents summoned you here?"

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"Yup."

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"Binding, or..."

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"My dad summoned me under a binding, was convinced I was myself, sent me back, my mom summoned me unbound and I'm still on that one."

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"Good gig if you can get it."

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"It is!"

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"So there are eight of us. Moryo's in New York City, he makes money for miscellaneous projects of ours. Matthew you met, he's in DC, Cáno is currently dead but he does runs as pop musicians, Tyelcormo wanders, everyone else is in Canada."

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"I can definitely see the musician thing working out if you're all that good at singing."

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"Cáno was the best in the world, once upon a time. Elves're better than humans at - most things. Stronger, faster, prettier, much better vision, that kind of thing."

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"Sounds like a good deal."

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"I would trade you in a heartbeat, if you get an afterlife. Elves are - scripted. There were prophecies thirty thousand years ago about what would happen, and no matter what we choose they always come true."

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"...uh, how does that work?"

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"Prophecies only come to light under conditions such that nothing anyone will do in response to them disrupts them. Like, sometimes it's 'the prophecy isn't believed' and sometimes it's 'everyone who learns of it wants it to happen' and sometimes it's 'people try to avoid it but it happens anyway' and sometimes it's just straight-up railroading, but it always happens."

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"But this doesn't work on humans?"

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"Nope. You can springboard off them - and we have tried it - but it usually doesn't work as well as it should. The Enemy tried having minor decisions all made by random humans, it didn't change anything large-stream."

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"Didn't try having large decisions made by nonrandom humans?"

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"Attempted by both sides of the war under some circumstances but since humans die so young and the war took five hundred years it was hard to get them equipped to be making major strategic decisions and then have any kind of continuity of strategic objectives."

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"...if you say so."

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"Humans live longer now, this was before anyone'd invented germ theory and so on. They had like fifty years and their teeth were falling out by twenty-five."

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"So you need robust organizational continuity, but it doesn't sound insoluble..."

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"Probably was not insoluble. Did not get solved in time."

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"Yeah, okay."

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"We lost. Everyone died."

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"And you got resurrected."

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"Thirty thousand years later, yeah."

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"That's a hell of a turnaround time."

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"They modify people to not have - theological disagreements - with them before reembodiment. You can decline modification but then no new body. We declined. Eventually they got sick of us."

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"Long time to wait them out, congratulations."

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"It was hardly a choice, but thanks. I wish we'd arrived sooner."

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"Have other people been resurrected?"

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"I think all of the Elves who died are now back alive. I think orcs the gods intend to keep dead forever - they're in a bit of a bind on that, admittedly, but only a bit of a bind..."

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"Orcs?"

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"So the Enemy's first bright idea to get around the fate thing was to breed a new race of sapients. Elves have - pretty fine direct control over our bodies, we mostly look the way we want to look and our hair and fingernails grow only up to the length we want them and so on. And so the Enemy's idea was that if you selectively bred Elves and tortured the children from birth, could you get something else? You can. You get orcs. There were millions of them. And all of them in constant pain, because that's how he got them to - not be Elves."

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"Holy fuck."

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"I mentioned that he needed to be dead? That's - not even the primary reason. But. Yeah. Sufficient."

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"What was the primary reason?"

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"It's related. So Elves - related to the being scripted - can make binding promises about our future actions. If we swear to do something, we do it, there's no changing your mind, there's no space for error. I swore a long time ago to stop Melkor and now even if I learned that stopping him somehow destroyed the whole world I would be stuck. - worth it, because he can do mind control and if I found myself in the position of believing I shouldn't stop Melkor it was much likelier to be mind control - but still, it's terrifyingly powerful. And it can be used for mind control. You can swear to believe something, you can swear to hate someone. You can swear to trust and obey Melkor and pursue his goals your whole life. And all orcs did, as soon as they were old enough to talk."

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"What a horrorshow."

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"You can see why we want to get the magic and go somewhere without these people in charge."

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"If you can't beat 'em run the fuck away to Alpha Centauri, yep."

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"And then become gods and then get a rematch. But yeah. We tried fighting, and we lost, and a fight today would be more destructive but not any better fated, I don't think."

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Nod.

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"The continent crumbled, during the war. And even if we didn't have to worry about collateral damage - I'm pretty sure nukes wouldn't kill him. I wouldn't want to test daeva indestructibility."

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"Holds up to black holes and other daeva but yeah."

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"Black holes? What about the time dilation -"

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"It just sort of acts Newtonian relative to us."

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"That's convenient. Wait, though, wouldn't you still be stuck?"

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"We can add parts to ourselves and accordingly to the indestructibility."

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" - huh. Can you add other people that way -"

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"No, but I could encase one."

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Nod. "Elves, should it ever come up, can't handle being imprisoned."

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"I was not planning to encase anybody, let alone an Elf, I don't really want to drag people around by my toenail."

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"I wasn't worried per se but it would be a shame for you to think you were doing something mildly upsetting to someone to prevent a fight or shield them or whatever and then it turns out you were doing something lethal."

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"Lethal amounts of can't handle? That's... okay, what counts and how fast?"

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"Constraints on where we can go, full generality. How fast depends on a bunch of things but mostly how pretty the surrounding environment is, how generally distressing the situation is, how much space we have and how, uh, hostile the barrier - snowed in in a cabin would take longer to become a problem than locked into the cabin - more than a week in something like a prison cell would be very hard to survive. We stay out of trouble with the law."

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"These are locked-in problems, not locked-out problems, it's not an issue that people lock their homes or can't get into Fairyland?"

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"Yeah, that's not a problem. Unless, like, all territory in the world was privately owned and you didn't have permission to go there except a house-sized space."

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"How in the world does this actually kill you?"

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"Uh, starts with decreased capacity to maintain volitional control over our heartrate and blood pressure and so on, and then waves and waves of intense adrenaline spikes, getting steadily worse over time until something gives out."

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"Yeesh."

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"Enemy had a way to keep prisoners alive."

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"Eugh."

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"Matthew got captured. For, well, fifty years objective time, Enemy can also do time dilation."

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"This just keeps getting more and more charming of a story, doesn't it."

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"Not too late to decide you want nothing to do with it."

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"The last time I poked my nose into interesting magic and shit I got literally murdered yet here I am."

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"You can't get literally murdered again! And maybe time dilation wouldn't work on you, since the black holes don't. And the Enemy is currently imprisoned by his colleagues."

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"Colleagues."

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"The other gods have not made enough effort at stopping him for me to characterize them as his opponents in any respect, but they are not quite as bad themselves."

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"Gotcha. Should I know more about this cast of colorful characters?"

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"Uh, there're fifteen, Melkor's the bad one, Mandos is the one who holds, adjusts, and reembodies the dead, Irmo runs Lórien which I told you about, Ulmo is the god of the seas and notable for occasionally being actually helpful, once upon a time my family got along with Aulë and Oromë, the rest are not notable."

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"What form does occasional helpfulness take?"

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"During the war he shielded a civilian city so the Enemy couldn't find it except by treason of the inhabitants. He used to be occasionally accessible for consultation. He's not anymore but he probably can't be, what with magic mostly not working."

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"How mostly is mostly?"

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"My brother used to be able to alter the landscape over a space of a hundred miles by singing at it - magic songs, they take decades to compose, it's not at all a spontaneous thing, but still. Now he can give the effect that the environment is swimming, and that's about it. He finds it very annoying. Used to be there were magic artifacts that would make you near to a Vala. My father's been trying to reconstruct them but I doubt they'd be a fraction as powerful."

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"Is there some relatively mechanistic explanation? Like does magic run on a finite fuel source or something."

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"If so it was not known to us back when we had the time to study those things. My guess would be that magic tapers because Eru wants it to. The Silmarils should help."

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"Eru won't want them to fail at that?"

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"Wrong - kind of thing - he's not actually an interventionist god, the one time aside, he just put in starting conditions he liked, like 'evil god and incompetent good ones' and 'oaths' and 'the fading of the Elves'."

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"Do oaths have less force now?"

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"Don't think so. Haven't tested."

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"Why not?"

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"It is as a general rule a bad idea to toy around with oaths."

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"I guess I could see that turning out to be a reasonable heuristic."

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"We weren't paranoid enough, growing up, because Valinor was very peaceful. No scarcity, Elves are very - well-behaved..."

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"Well-behaved like...?"

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"The first person ever murdered in Valinor was the King when Melkor was paroled and then murdered him. Elves had at that point been living in Valinor more than three thousand years."

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"Wow."

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"So then we decided to leave Valinor and pursue Melkor to - the rest of the world - warn people, help with evacuation, fight him if we could, we didn't know at the time how overmatched we were. There's no way out of Valinor. There were Elves who had boats. They said we should give ourselves a century to think about it, we could get killed, it was silly to leave. We tried to steal the boats. No one had ever tried that before, we didn't know - they opened fire on the boats, more people got drawn in - 

- before that day no Elf had ever committed a murder and by the end of the day ten thousand people were dead."

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"Jesus Christ.

...A century?"

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"Elves are really slow. Not my family, but as a species -

 - when we got there there were civilian cities penned in and we freed them, there were cities running out of supplies and we supplied them, we took back the continent, the fighting lasted twelve days and we held the line for the next four hundred years."

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"Dang. Did you go in with some overwhelming advantage...?"

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"We had a serious technological edge but in hindsight - 

- by serious technological edge I mean 'really good longbows and enchanted swords and armor', there's no way the Enemy couldn't have equipped orcs to overmatch us if he'd wanted -"

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"Why didn't he want?"

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"Damned if I know." Bitter laugh. "That's not a very good expression, I am in fact damned. After the fight over the boats the Valar got really angry and cursed us and all our descendants."

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"I am pretty sure Hell doesn't contain any Elf war veterans. What is the upshot of you being damned."

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"Uh -" he switches to Quenya - "Tears unnumbered ye shall shed; and the Valar will fence Valinor against you, and shut you out, so that not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains. On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West unto the uttermost East, and upon all that will follow them it shall be laid also. Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass. The Dispossessed shall they be for ever."

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"So hypothetically if somebody sailed that wonky route to Valinor and climbed a mountain and yelled 'fuck you all' in a way causally entangled with your lamentations, that would disprove the prophecy?"

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He laughs. "Might. It's also one of the reasons I want the Silmarils back so badly, because the prophecy says we won't get them."

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"Snatching away the very treasures? Why did you swear about that, incidentally, your explanation about swearing to oppose the Enemy made some sense but..."

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"We swore to fight the Enemy and anyone else who might try to deprive us of them. Because we really wanted to found a society outside the reach of the gods and we knew they were tempting to everyone and we thought if people knew we'd go to war over them then they wouldn't try it in the first place."

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"Did that work?"

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"It did not."

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"Ah-huh."

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"Predictable in hindsight."

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"How bad was it?"

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"Very bad. We were - allowed to drop it if they'd just give the damn things back. No one ever would."

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"Did they know that was how it worked?"

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"Yes."

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"Wow."

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"Yeah." Sigh.

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"...so how much of a disaster is it if the Silmarils are on private property or something."

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"We buy it. If we can't buy it we steal them. The problem would arise if someone claimed them and refused to transfer them for any amount of money and we couldn't steal it from that person."

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"What would've happened if I'd made one."

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"Then we would have checked whether the oath thought it applied to demon-made Silmarils, and if it did we would try to convince you not to make any more, and if you were unconvinceable on that point we wouldn't have sent you home."

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"Whether the oath thought it applied?"

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"It's - not totally a matter of whether we think it applies, though sometimes our beliefs can tug it."

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"I think the terms of my binding would have continued to find making Silmarils task-relevant for a few after the first if I'd felt like getting on your nerves about it."

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"We weren't imagining it'd be a mutually satisfactory solution. We'd have felt horrible about it, even knowing daeva don't have the Elf thing about imprisonment. But if we're bound to go after all of them, we have an obligation not to make sure they're just out there, more all the time..."

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"Yeah, no, I mean I could've made them in highly inconvenient places."

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"What's your range?"

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"I would have given you loads of warning before putting one in the sun."

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Laugh. "That would oblige us to try to kill you, not to go get it. But it would be a very upsetting thing to be magically bound into."

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"Would you be allowed to stop trying when it didn't work?"

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"Nope. It was badly phrased. And once we were gods it might work." Shiver.

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"Well. Fortunately it did not come to that."

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"You're really not someone I'd want as an enemy."

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"Shall I take that as a compliment?"

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"It was meant as one. I did not so enjoy my stay in Mandos that I would lob insults at unbound demons while riding on the back of their motorcycles, and you mentioned noticing the languages."

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"I wouldn't attack you for insults. The languages were obvious."

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"Most people are weirdly incurious about languages. Maybe daeva aren't."

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"I wouldn't have found it remarkable if he'd had high school French. Or Finnish as a second language! Buncha things I never heard of though..."

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"Should be Quenya, our native tongue, Thindarin, which the Elves of Beleriand spoke, Taliska and Sechwar, which were early human ones..."

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"Yup."

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"The reason I can't summon is because Dwarves held their language in confidence, and taught it only to people they trusted, and they entrusted me with it."

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"Dwarves too? Crowded history. Where'd they go?"

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"Don't know. Hopefully safe somewhere."

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"I could check."

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"While we're on a motorcycle?"

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"No! When we get there!"

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"Sure, go ahead and check when we get there. They might be magic too, though."

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"What could they do?"

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"They were immune to all mind-affecting magic and could do magic artifact-y stuff."

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"How's the artifacty stuff work?"

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"Uh, you draw it out in advance - they're a little like computer programs? Really long detailed instructions about whatever you're trying to do, things like 'for each occasion when an object meeting the description in the preceding section enters the range of this artifact' - and then you break it down from there, 'for each' is a series of tones in the language we have for magic metalworking - and then you think the tones at the metal, so they'll leave the right impressions in it, and when you're done you've got a magic artifact. They can take decades to design and years to manufacture even once you have a design."

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"Dang."

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"Yeah. Your magic's nicer."

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"I like it! But it can't do magic items."

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"Which is a good thing because it means we are here instead of having terse negotiations over potential Silmarils in the Sun."

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"There is that!"

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"Matthew might've come up with a better solution, he's good at that. But still. I am glad demons can't make Silmarils.

 

Do you mind if I sing?"

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"Be my guest."

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He sings! Elves are really great at that.

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They are! It is nice.

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New York City is snowy.

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"I may want to abandon this in favor of a car in this much snow," Cam says.

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"I can have my brother send a car if you don't want to make one."

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"I can make one but it'd be a pain to get rid of. I mean, so's the motorcycle, but slightly less so."

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"If you just leave it on the side of the road with the keys in it'll get stolen, probably. Moryo's sending a car."

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"Hooray for vehicle theft. Er, how does he know to do that?"

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"I just told him to. We're telepathic."

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"Gosh, what a fully featured species of magical elves you are."

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"Humans were kinda disappointing when we met them."

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"They have many drawbacks!"

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"But the power at least in principle to overcome them. That's something."

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"Mm-hm. Although I hope if we invent telepathy we invent really polite telepathy, otherwise I will have to become a hermit."

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"Oh?"

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"Oh, I don't know how much speculative fiction you read but I get the impression some people think that if mindreading were a thing it'd just be no big deal, whatever, read people's minds for fun and profit and continue to be the protagonist? And other people acknowledge it would be a big deal but only because you might get the details of someone's sex life, which really is not my complaint."

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"I can't say I've been following speculative fiction. Elven societies vary in how much it's courteous to make public, some of them it's pretty much everything and they seem to get along all right."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm sure it's possible to run cultures on this hardware but I would have to go be a hermit."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I doubt humans'll sprout telepathy any time soon. Are daeva ahead, technologically? Since you can make things as much as you want..."

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"I think so, but unfortunately this also removes a lot of our physicists' incentives to collaborate. Maybe somebody has solved physics off in deep void and hasn't told anybody."

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"That would be very cruel. Maybe someone should summon every single demon to ask them."

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"We don't have to answer summonses."

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"It'd be kind of horrible otherwise. But maybe the physicist in the void would."

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"Maybe. You'd need to specify them, though, I can't think of a way to specify a void physicist."

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"There's no list of names somewhere?"

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"Of everyone's? No."

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"How many demons are there?"

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"Hard to keep a very good census but like a couple billion."

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"Is it coincidence that's near the human population?"

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"I'm not sure."

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A sleek black car arrives; the driver is human, and waves them in, and has warm drinks in thermoses in a minibar inside.

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"Classy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We've been debating whether we should give more to charity or something but it'd be a full time job just figuring out where it'd do any good."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Any good is a low bar. The Make A Wish Foundation does any good."

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"Hot drinks in the car do any good."

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"This is true."

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They're tasty. They pull up to a skyscraper and head inside and take the elevator up to - of course - a stunningly pretty penthouse.

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"Do you have some sort of architecture compulsion as a species."

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"Oh - yes, actually. If things aren't pretty enough we die."

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"It usually doesn't come to that," another person says, walking in. "I don't think I've heard of anyone actually dying of insufficient pretty. Does make us miserable, though. Like grinding loud background noise."

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"How pretty is sufficiently?"

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"Nature's pretty enough. Human cities mostly aren't but unusually pretty human buildings are."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What, arbitrary nature? Slugs? Bogs? Corpse flowers?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, no, but - if we're away from civilization we are very unlikely to be nagged by the prettiness thing, it really mostly only comes up in human cities."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And human suburbs. Ewww. So what's the deal here, are you just along because magic is exciting - did Curvo mention we're the bad guys -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, not in those words. The badly worded oath thing sounds ugly and I'm very glad it didn't turn out you had to try to kidnap me though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Us too. We, uh, weren't expecting the formerly-human thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...would that have made a difference in your interest in kidnapping me?"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - yes? We were assuming the average daeva was thirty thousand years old like we were and would be annoyed but not meaningfully - impacted - by being stuck for a hundred years until we came up with something better. You're in your twenties."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ah. Uh, even the naturally occurring daeva are mostly not that old, you could have gotten somebody who appeared a week ago and was taking a summon because it's easier than learning a first language the long way."

Permalink Mark Unread

They both wince. "That's good to know."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Also I think the really old daeva take summons less often, there may be an uptick now that they're easier to get but it does kind of require arranging your life so you can drop everything for indeterminate amounts of time on short notice."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. "I couldn't - what if you got trapped -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I wouldn't die of it. Were you going to keep me in the circle or did I have a wider radius? And would I have found this out before I took my phone calls?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, we had it set up so you could go a hundred miles any direction, but the castle's in the middle of nowhere. And yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It'd depend on exact wording - I did not actually read the binding, since everything was perfectly friendly - but if I didn't take my phone calls that might have counted as you failing to pay me and that would've shredded my binding and I could have just flipped you off and gone to see my parents the long way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, as long as you weren't making Silmarils that'd be pretty much an acceptable outcome."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But how would you know I wasn't dropping them everywhere? I guess you could have summoned another demon for forensics..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, no. We'd follow you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I can fly. Well, not right now, I wanted to go out in public without having to wear a snazzy leather coat everywhere, but at the time, I could fly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"One of my brothers went in on the fading thing and is now mostly immaterial and can hoverboard."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...being immaterial does not fully explain the, uh, hoverboard -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, it just turns out that hoverboard is an easy engineering challenge once you only weigh twenty pounds."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Does it actually go fast enough to chase me across a continent at fifty miles an hour?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think it gets up to faster than fifty. Elves need to sleep once a week or so, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do not miss needing to sleep at all. I had to develop a taste for coffee though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Tea won't do it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I experimented with tea but coffee's easier to jazz up with add-ins, I eased my way into it with mochas. I also tried caffeine pills but the thing where I can nope a drug reaction is all or nothing and I really hate having taken too much to the point where I didn't want to futz around with figuring out my dose, coffee I can just keep drinking it till I'm done."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are there, like, guides to all this in Hell?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"To - what, coffee beverages?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Stuff you can do, the fact that caffeine fixes tiredness, is there something similar for fatigue from exertion..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Exertion fatigue just heals. Caffeine I knew before I died, a fairy wanted Starbucks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How long were you summoning before Revelation -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Couple years. I knew I wanted to do it but I wanted anonymity and simultaneity and believability, needed to abridge and annotate the book and learn more about daeva."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you know why no one ever -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...beat me to it? The number of summoners was tiny and it would have probably been prohibitively difficult to publicize worldwide in times of lower literacy rates. Plus it just got a lot harder to monopolize commodities markets by secretly trading demons the URLs of obscure fanfiction sites."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Now that you're indestructible do you plan to go public about having done it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess I could, but I'm not sure why I would?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fifteen minutes of fame and a platform?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe if I think of a really good use of a platform that I definitely want to spend my fifteen minutes on."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Makes sense. So, we are currently retrieving all the Silmarils and once we've done that and we know how much magic they restore, we'll have a more detailed plan on where to go from there. Also now that it's possible to get to Valinor we might want to try to sneak a note in or something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is not technically impossible that given information about where it is even for a frankly bizarre definition of 'where' I could appear notes directly above it to rain down on the population."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That would be significantly less risky than trying to visit."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd imagine. What do you even want to say? 'Come to Earth, we have tacos'?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, probably I'd write it in an old military code that only a few trustworthy people know, tell them how to do summoning and get out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You think summoning would work normally there?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I bet the Valar could break it but it might work until they did, and they're a little slow-moving."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would this get out everyone who needs out?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably not. There are lots of people who need out who wouldn't trust us. But I can't think of a better option."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What's the advantage of the military code thing anyway if you're betting on the Valar being too slow to react?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some people'd read it and take it to the Valar; the code would only be readable by people who wouldn't do that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So they'd be slow to react to things that were mysterious but would react faster if they knew what the thing said?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mystery notes aren't worth reacting to, tons of petitioners on your mountain going 'are we allowed to do this? is it safe?' are hard not to react to. If it's a select few they definitely won't do anything until the first daeva actually appear, which lets those people make plans first."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You could screen some individual demon, give instructions on how to summon them, and have two-way correspondence."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That'd help. Know anyone?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know demons who I would trust not to hurt anybody and who'd do the correspondence gig but if you were hoping to keep the existence of Valinor secret or something then no."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can't think of a single reason I'd want to keep Valinor secret."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Eru."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - okay, yes, it is slightly possible that ruining the quiet loss of Valinor from the world would upset Eru. But it's honestly hard to predict what upsets Eru, and he seems to like plot, so it's also possible not doing that would upset him. And he hasn't intervened in twenty-eight thousand years."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can write some people in Hell, then, might take a while for them to decide to check their mail if they're busy though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elves are notoriously never in a hurry."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That explains why you thought it might mildly irk someone to be stuck for a hundred years while you thought of something better. I don't think that's just a factor of age."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We figured we'd discover whether it was an innate difference or an age thing once we figured out how to make humans immortal, but I guess if they are immortal after all you're positioned to say."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I've never been to Limbo and Limbo is annoying to be in for unrelated reasons."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can probably cure aging with the Silmarils, at least eventually."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nice. I'm sure some people would rather be in Limbo with their previously deceased loved ones but it's not very nice by itself. Unless your number one priority is never having bugs in your kitchen, or something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What's wrong with it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Limbo is an infinite flat plane of nutrient-bare dirt with a day cycle, and air. That's... it. When people die, they get one thing, not a person or anything like 'Internet access' that implicitly requires people but maybe their favorite dog or a popcorn machine or something, something they'd like to have at least if they were asked without knowing what Limbo's like. The things are indestructible in almost the way daeva and Limboites are, so the popcorn machine will continue supplying popcorn at a normal popcorn machine rate forever, but this is not a recipe for a wide variety of consumer goods or people having any privacy or anything like that. As of a few hundred years ago someone's thing was an ocean, so now they can do saltwater irrigation and make mud bricks, but..."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - wow. That seems - poorly planned."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is not how I would design an afterlife."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Better than the Halls of Mandos but that's really not saying much."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What are the Halls like besides short on popcorn?" Cam makes some popcorn, eats a handful.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Being disembodied is - trying to focus on motion or follow things that are happening in the incarnate world is really really hard. The Halls are just - big, and empty, and neutral, so they're not exhausting to focus on, but they also have no particular features. You can interact with other disembodied people but it's painfully intimate and you can't quite do words. So you just - exist."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...painfully intimate?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can't just say hello, you just kind of - blur into them a little bit, they get more than you intended..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Eugh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, Limbo is nicer and gets better whenever new people and stuff appear. Plus they get care packages from daeva."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Awww. Demons probably send the best care packages."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We do, but we can't do it at arbitrary times, so the angels and fairies chip in."

Permalink Mark Unread

"When can you do it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's things called concordances where specified parts of two daeva realms, or one daeva realm and Limbo, overlap. They come on a regular schedule and there's trade during all of them except Hell/Heaven, during which there is instead a tiny stupid war."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - why -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Racism! And probably lack of trade incentives or something. We can trade with Heaven through Fairyland."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What do demons trade?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't need to be physically sent stuff - well, animals, but that's a narrow enough use case that all our concordance trains are outgoing. But we commission art and stuff."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elves would be really good at paying demons if the Valar didn't disable summoning. But I bet they will. They really really hate risk."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah if you let people take risks you might wind up with an evil god on the loose or something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"One of their justifications for not paroling us for thirty thousand years was 'paroling Melkor went really badly!' Which - I mean, they rarely learn from their mistakes, so in a way it was commendable?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...wait, they paroled him? I was joking."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They paroled him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The fuck."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yuuup. They also didn't tell us the details of his crimes in the first place, so no one knew if the parole was for some hidden good reasons or just sheer incompetence."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Who put these people in ch- no, don't answer that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I bet you can put it together. Anyway, one of the crimes for which we are currently paroled is rebelling against the just authority of the gods, and that one I don't regret in the slightest."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fuck the authority of the gods, frankly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Manwë was giving us a lecture on disobedience while we were trying to find our way out of Valinor, and he said 'I am the lord of all of Arda' - so, like, we wouldn't escape his jurisdiction by going anywhere else. And then we watched man walk on the Moon and thought 'okay, lord of all of Arda, we're out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Arda doesn't include the moon?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Arda includes the moon. Arda doesn't include Alpha Centauri."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Gotcha."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And it looks like one of the biggest challenges, a spaceship big enough Elves won't feel imprisoned on it, is now tractable."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...right, that hadn't occurred to me as an implication but I guess your standard issue rockets are kinda cramped."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wouldn't work at all, not for that length of a trip. Now - rockets, who needs rockets..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I did not test this myself but I have heard that somebody got a fairy to take them into space and tried summoning there, did not work - Lunar gravity's enough, floating in space is not - so unless the hoverboard decomposes into an artificial gravity solution you won't be able to replace daeva who bail on you mid-trip, or summon one for course corrections or decel if you just get a fairy to fling you real hard in the right direction."

Permalink Mark Unread

"In that case we will probably just get a fairy to fling us in the right direction and then have rockets for decel on entry, you've said daeva consider a century a really long time so it doesn't sound like any'll want to come along. Daeva also half-solve the population problem."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Half? I suppose if you want a reproducing population, yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We'd planned on one. It's not an essential element, but new people seem important to lots of things about how societies function. Elves don't have children in wartime so you can really measure the effect on - social shifts, liberalism, new ideas, all that stuff."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seems like wartime might be a confounding factor."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Didn't affect every place the same - we were on the front lines but not everyone was. But yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Who do you expect to vacate Valinor on your say-so?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not sure. Depends a lot on conditions there and we don't have a way to check that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's possible things like the material replacement trick could let us spy on them."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. "I could hazard some guesses and Matthew could hazard some better guesses but people change a fair bit over thirty thousand years."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose it would be creepy if they didn't."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do daeva?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, they drift between hobbies and pick up traits from people they meet? I obviously haven't known any of them for thousands of years on a personal level."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you, like, have in mind a role in project Alpha-Centauri-or-maybe-farther, Cam, or are you mostly just curious -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Demonic assistance and prophecy-immune consultation? I haven't designed the business cards."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And what do you want? We're mostly doing it out of spite but you have less to be spiteful about."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, space colonies are awesome?"

Permalink Mark Unread

He laughs. "I like him, Curvo."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Me too. Okay. We're getting the one in North Dakota first, it was easiest to buy the land rights."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, it's hard to imagine owners of random bits of North Dakota jealously guarding it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They wanted a lot of money. I have a lot of money. We're planning to have an angel dig it up."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Angels won't want money but I can pay one for you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That would be useful. What will angels want -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Media, things too complicated to transmute, maybe plants or animals."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We can do those. I'm probably flying out there night after tomorrow, if that works for you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have nothing else scheduled. Are you getting me a plane ticket?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"For sure, unless you're going to set off the x-ray machines or something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I shouldn't, no. I'd pass a patdown, anyway, the wings came off entire."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you get wings when you wake up in Hell or did you add 'em?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Naturally occurings come with 'em, I picked mine out of a catalog."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And then you can just cut them off?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Made them without nerves in the joints. In case I got sick of them. Or this happened."

Permalink Mark Unread

Two plane tickets to Fargo are booked! Aricin goes back to school.

Permalink Mark Unread

The economy has not totally figured out how to deal with demons existing yet but people are now pretty strict about signatures to go with credit card payments. Signatures that they actually watch you write out. Can Cam crash here or get money for a hotel, or should he go hang out in a 24-hour someplaceorother?

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam is entirely welcome to crash here; there's even a bed if he happens to want it. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll stay up all night reading miscellaneous Thindarin stuff, probably, but might as well be warm while I do it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wonder why that comes through but not Quenya."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I dunno, is Quenya inherently magical?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No. At least, I really doubt it - I could check -" he writes something on a napkin. "Can you get that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"- yep."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So the language isn't magic - the paper might be?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why would the paper be magic?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"In Valinor things don't deteriorate. Well, unless they're supposed to, effectively. You could leave out a sandwich for a decade and it'd be fresh and tasty. When we left Valinor decay was a nasty surprise. We came up with songs for it - magic songs, I mean - sing them while producing the paper and it'd last a lot longer -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...huh. Can you get that song to work if I make some paper, see if that obstructs me?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can try - magic songs are so hard to get anything out of these days -"

 

And he starts singing. It's a complicated intricate melody with some serious range, and he looks annoyed. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Piece of paper...

Permalink Mark Unread

Is a normal piece of paper.

Permalink Mark Unread

"That probably doesn't count as paper manufacture, because it's instantaneous?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can make it more piecemeal..." Paper a little at a time.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Think that might have taken? It felt closer."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can feel the results?" Cam writes test paper A on it and tries to copy it.

Permalink Mark Unread

No go.

"You can write magic songs without a feedback mechanism but if it's boring routine work you usually write in a feedback mechanism, so people don't get careless and not even notice it's not working anymore."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, it worked enough that I can't copy the paper now. Let's see if I can get fancy or something." Can he copy the text if he thinks very carefully about that and not about the paper it's on? He's format converting to post-it note anyway, right, totally different -

Permalink Mark Unread

Yep that counts.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cool, I can get around the paper problem."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can you get all our old works that way? That'd be lovely."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, what format d'you want yours in?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"USB drive?"

Permalink Mark Unread

USB drive! He makes it in a pretty lapis lazuli casing.

Permalink Mark Unread

That's thoughtful. "When he sacked Valinor and killed the King and ran for it Melkor destroyed our family library. There was plenty else to hate him for but - still. Nice to have it back."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, that sucks. I would've been really annoyed if I'd been an angel or a fairy and couldn't just remake all my notes after I died. Although I guess it would've been quicker to find a summoner who'd let me make phone calls."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That was a hard sell?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nobody let me try to sell it, all my previous summoners gagged me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wow. - see, this is a thing that I find upsetting about people, the only acceptable response to holding the belief demons can steal your soul seriously enough to gag demons is coming up with a plan to save all the souls in Hell."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nobody tried using me as part of an attempt to do that, either."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am not at all surprised but I do find it upsetting that I'm not at all surprised. We were gonna trade you all kinds of powerful magic items for souls, if souls were really a problem."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why would you want someone who stole souls to have powerful magic items?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would want them not to have souls. We wouldn't give out stuff that'd let someone slip a binding or whatever, though. Matthew used to have, like, necklaces that enhance your memory and attention and reflexes -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That would make it easier to find holes in a binding, or talk people into stupid trades. Like, I get not wanting evil demons to have people's souls but the priority should probably be preventing more from being collected, first."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elves didn't even think humans had souls."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My sole evidence for anything of the kind existing is having woken up in Hell after I died and left a body."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, that's pretty decent evidence - I wonder if humans we knew from way back are in Limbo."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm pretty sure I would have heard of all these lost civilizations if they had representatives in Limbo. At least in some mangled form. Like, there's Babylonians in there."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. "Also Eru wouldn't have wanted them to have, like, a nice afterlife - even an okay afterlife - disrupts the narrative -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"What?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Eru. Is an asshole. And crafted lots of tragic love stories between Elves and mortals in which they either die together or are separated forever by the death of the mortal, it wouldn't be his style for the mortals to still be right there..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right there but neither summonable nor visitable."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - I guess could be his style."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sigh. He looks at spaceship models and sings, quietly; in the morning he makes pancakes.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam sticks his head out the door when he smells pancakes. "I would've made breakfast."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Didn't want to interrupt you. You are welcome to preempt my pancakes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They smell great though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Modernity is great at food."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Global economy yay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am so excited about the global economy," he squeals like someone who is not thirty thousand years old.

Permalink Mark Unread

...hee. "It's pretty great!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You have no idea. Valinor didn't have currency - gift economy - it worked in the sense that no one starved and that if you didn't care about speed you could eventually get most things which people were willing to produce in exchange for other things but it was so blindingly maddeningly inefficient and no one cared!!!! When we came to Endorë we met Dwarves and they were like 'that's dumb' and I was like 'you don't fucking say' - Dwarves were brilliant, by far the best people I've ever known -"

- and so on -

Permalink Mark Unread

This is a fascinating monologue.

Permalink Mark Unread

That's good because he seems very willing to keep at it for as long as Cam wants to hear about trade relations between long-dead primitive civilizations. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam took econ on purpose, this is fun.

Permalink Mark Unread

" - which was just a disguised tariff, if you think about it, but taxes to maintain the roads really were important so we came up with a different scheme for it," he concludes. "I really hope Dwarves are still alive somewhere."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I can try conjuring for recent works of theirs now I know to go for text specifically."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Please!!!"

Permalink Mark Unread

Works of Dwarven civilization this year?

Permalink Mark Unread

Lots of them!!!

Permalink Mark Unread

"There are totally still Dwarves!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are there - do they have an afterlife, are there posthumous works of Dwarves -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"- yep!"

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

...now Cam is holding a ball. "Planet!"

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

"The trade delegate from Tumunzahar I mentioned in that last story - I married her - we had children -"

Permalink Mark Unread

...he puts down the planet and his hands are full of USB drives. "...three of them?"

Permalink Mark Unread

...nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam hands him the drive. "Published works last hundred years wife and kids."

Permalink Mark Unread

He breaks down crying.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can get you the rest I just didn't know how voluminous it'll be it's been a long time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thirty-one thousand years," he whispers. "Where - where's the afterlife -"

Permalink Mark Unread

The planet appears as a pinhead in glass surrounded by clear glass vacuum and -

Permalink Mark Unread

Valinor, if he zooms out enough.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"...so it's in space as seen from Valinor, but - not far per se."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. "I take back sixty percent of the nasty things I said about Aulë," he says hoarsely after a minute.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aulë being -?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Vala who designed the Dwarves. And that - place - presumably -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seems like it'd follow."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The other forty percent totally stand," he says after a moment. "Could've fought the Enemy himself or, like, taught us what to do." He puts the drives in his computer. "If you'll excuse me a bit -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah of course."

Permalink Mark Unread

Crying. Reading. The pancakes sizzle forlornly.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam rescues them. ...and eats them.

Permalink Mark Unread

They taste fine. 

 

He'll kind of be at this a while.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam is fine to fend for himself until it's probably time to leave for the airport.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah. He takes his laptop. He's called them a car.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lemme know if you need my spare battery," says Cam, who left the apartment with a backpack to pull objects from at need.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No problem."

Permalink Mark Unread

Security at the airport totally fails to notice that the demon is a demon. They sit on the runway awhile; Caranthir asks for the spare battery. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Here is the spare battery.

Permalink Mark Unread

And here is Fargo, North Dakota.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was going to rent a car," he says distractedly.

Permalink Mark Unread

"What a silly thing to do. ...Where did I park, do you think."

Permalink Mark Unread

He laughs. He - "uh if you were an Elf I'd send you feeling utterly delighted, but you're not supposed to send humans emotions without warning them lest they get confused and think they're experiencing them -" 

- and then, warm relief and delight and amusement -

Permalink Mark Unread

"...your telepathy thing isn't Elf-only?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, no? I'm not reading you, I'm not an asshole, but it's everyone except Dwarves, that's what 'immunity to mind-affecting magic' - I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's fine, reading's what I was worried about, a little added color to your expressions of delight is fine, just, spooked."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think Matthew checked whether you were telling the truth about the souls thing. But - I realize it's a horrible thing to just be doing, I wouldn't."

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"He - ugh."

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"I'm sorry."

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"If it won't happen again I can write it off."

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"Won't." He clutches the USB drives.

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"...So where is a good place to appear a car do you suppose."

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"The parking lot a mile that way's mostly empty and no humans within human vision range."

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"Cool. That is, uh, wow, do you just do telescopic or can you also see everybody's individual skin cells."

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"Could do that, mostly don't because it makes people really unpretty."

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"Ah yes, that thing."

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"If there were a very pretty car in that parking lot we could head over to the Silmaril."

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"I don't know enough about cars to design one that works, can you name a model or something."

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He can name a car model. It's very sleek and pretty.

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And Cam walks towards that parking lot till he can see it well enough to aim a car's existence at a space. Voilà, viridian green car.

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It's also very fast. Off towards the Silmaril they go.

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If he wants Cam to drive so he can read Cam can drive.

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That would be great. 

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So Cam gets directions and follows the speed limit except on very open highway.

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The location of the ancient magic rock over which terrible wars were fought is muddy. There's one tree, off in the distance a bit. Caranthir finds the spot and paces. "I suppose there's nothing we're waiting for, is there -"

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"I don't know if your brothers want to be here or anything."

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"I mean, yes, but they also want it as soon as possible - how long'll it take an angel, do you think -"

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"Not long. They can make themselves a ladder and go down at climbing pace. Or go a little slower to descend comfortably elevator style."

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Nod. "We'll wait. May I have another battery -"

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'Nother battery. Finer-grained forensics and a flag in the spot. ...Fried chicken. Chomp.

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The next person to arrive isn't in a car; he's just running, at a sprint but as if he's been doing it a while. He and Caranthir do not acknowledge each other, or perhaps they did it telepathically as soon as they came within telepathy range. "Hi," he says to Cam.

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"Hi, pleased to meet you, I'm Cam. I think it's customary to bring water when you run marathons can I get you anything."

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"Water would be great."

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Water!

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He drinks. He looks around. He sits down next to his brother and leans into him; Caranthir leans back. "Tyelcormo. Uh, or Connor, these days."

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"Which do you prefer?"

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"I think all of us but Matthew prefer our real names. Possibly not Aricin but that's because he picks such self-indulgent aliases..."

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"What's self-indulgent about it?"

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"It's - I forget what language -"

"Swedish," Caranthir interjects absently -

"- yeah - for 'son of the King'. The succession was, uh, disputed. He is making a political point thirty-two thousand years out of date."

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"Pfft."

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"We were supposed to have unremarkable names. Matthew glared at him but not very much."

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"Matthew's birth name is a political point about the succession."

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"This is true. - did you get everybody's names when you got languages from Matthew or does it not work that way."

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"I don't even have an identical vocabulary, let alone names."

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"That makes sense, it'd probably be really weird to suddenly have three hundred thousand names -"

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"Three hundred thousand?"

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"Yeah, it's Matthew, he knows everyone he's every spoken to and he spent three thousand years running countries."

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"D'you guys also have much better than human memories?"

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"Not, like, 'will retain more of a book we just read', I don't think - we used to but humans used to be malnourished and shit - but we remember our lives fine no matter how long they are."

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"Including an avalanche of names, okay."

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"That's just Matthew."

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"I shall take your word for it."

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Another car, another Elf. Caranthir puts his laptop away. "All right, let's go."

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"Not waiting for the whole family? Okay." He makes most of a random angel circle. "Who wants to do the honors, and do you know how to do negotiations or should I?"

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"Matthew's got work and Curvo's got class and the twins are, like, transparent, and my father will derail everything for three weeks while he learns every language spoken in Heaven. We read up on how to do this properly but if your experience has been that even most people who think they can do it properly don't then I'll defer to that."

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"I had to flunk some people," Cam says. "Plus if you have the luxury it can be safer to have a nonsummoner do the talking so there isn't accidental agreement anyway." He lays out the circle.

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He finishes it.

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Angel! "Hi," she says, rustling green feathers, "what can I do for you?"

"Dig up buried treasure!" says Cam. "Under that flag a really excessive ways down is a shiny. While you're down we can get a demon to make whatever you want, give us a list?"

"You're sure of your demon?"

"Oh yeah, we have an arrangement."

"Uh, okay, complete discography of Freddie Mercury and a lotta little potted succulents with care tabs in the pots for resale?"

"Sounds good to me..." He nods at Caranthir.

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"Deal. Thank you."

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The angel goes over to the flag and starts "digging".

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"Is there any chance she could accidentally change the Silmaril -"

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"It doesn't look like a regular rock, right?"

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"Not at all."

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"Then it shouldn't be a problem."

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Elves wait nervously.

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By the time the angel has come up Cam has made a lot of trays of little potted succulents, assorted, colorful, and the complete discography of Freddie Mercury. She is holding a shiny.

"This is the shiniest fuckin' shiny!" she exclaims. "Is it too late to tell your demon I want one?"

"You just missed the window, sorry," says Cam.

"Drat. Well, here you go." She tosses it to him. He misses.

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The Elves all breathe in sharply at the sight of it but for some reason make no move to go pick it up. "Thank you," he says, and sends her home.

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"One down," says Cam. "Uh, is the idea to just leave it on the ground?"

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"The Valar, ah, blessed the Silmarils to repel evil. They'll burn through our hands if we touch them. If you could do gloves or something -"

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"...evil?"

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" - yes?"

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"Defined how? Should I be having second thoughts about contributing to this project?"

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"Defined by the Valar, we don't have the exact parameters. I guess we could go hand them around to people and try to get a feel for it? The project is not secretly evil in any way unless one regards rebellion against the gods as inherently so."

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"Not particularly, no, especially not if they're as unfit to be gods as they sound." Pause. Sigh. Gloves for all.

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He picks it up, cradles it. 

 

They all start singing. 

 

Macalaure is really really fantastic at singing.

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Holy shit. Cam sits down and listens.

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After a while he raises his arms and starts singing the rock into a castle. Cam could do it instantly, a fairy could do it much faster, but it's still kind of cool to watch, and he looks utterly gleeful about it.

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Very neat. Cam doesn't interrupt.

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The song is pretty in addition to assembling castles. It takes most of the night; the Silmaril adjusts its radiance for the sunset and then for the darkness. Tyelcormo doesn't stop cradling it; neither of his brothers ask for it. 

 

The castle would look pretty cool even if it didn't have a magic lighting system seemingly designed to bring out all the best angles on it.

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Cam drinks coffee and eventually makes a chair and watches the show. He claps when it's over.

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"Thank you. That was testing how much we got back, if you were wondering. Artifacts'd be slower to test. We should take it to my father now. He's trying to find a workaround for being unable to touch them."

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"Would touching them be more useful or just less inconvenient?"

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"More useful for some of the detail work he wants to do with them. The - restoring what faded - they seem to be doing already at full force."

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"So the days of hoverboarding are over?"

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"We'll have to see! Maybe Telvo'll just get the ability to decide how physically instantiated he is at will, that'd be convenient."

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"Sounds it!"

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"You wouldn't happen to know how to fly a plane?"

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"Fraid not."

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"Then it's about fourteen hours' drive from here to Canada."

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"All right, everybody in the car, I guess. Anybody wanna drive or shall I?"

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"I don't know how, Moryo's all distracted, and Cáno is legally dead right now so it's all yours."

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"Condolences," Cam says to the legally deceased, and he gets behind the wheel.

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"He's also legally dead," Macalaurë points out, getting in the car. 

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"I imagine you'd have to cycle identities a lot and the dead ones would have more freedom of movement, yes. Are you guys providing the role of car tunes or should I put something on?"

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"I'll sing."

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"If you ever want to really annoy him you can put on imperfectly recorded music."

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"I asked my father to invent higher-fidelity recordings but he thought immortality was more urgent. - to be clear I'm not just obsessed with music at the expense of human lives, there's a genuine tradeoff, because I could probably do a song for immortality and broadcast it if the technology were good enough -"

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"Well, immortality is less urgent than previously expected but Limbo's still a bummer."

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"Also no one knows about it, I don't think. Is there a reason the daeva don't say -"

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"Demons it's because people don't let us talk. I think lots of people may just not actually know, concordances are sort of a niche interest and Limbo doesn't send things out."

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"And if the thing that happened to you is pretty much unheard of there aren't many people who'd even know what humans do and don't know..."

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"Eh, demons are obsessive curators, but we're also the ones nobody lets talk."

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"Seems kind of suboptimal, that, is it a good idea to ask Matthew to change peoples' minds on it -"

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"I'm hoping it'll fall out of fashion on its own but if he has an angle maybe."

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"I do not know of an angle that he has but in general asking him for things like that is a fairly reliable way to make them happen."

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"Anything in his track record I'd have heard of?"

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"We were not involved in human affairs early enough to claim any credit for ending slavery or anything, no."

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"Pity, I'd have been real impressed."

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"And maybe the magic rocks'd get over themselves."

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"They work by net effect?"

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"We don't know. I doubt it - I think we're probably still in the black, if they did, all of us, for the five hundred years of peace - but that doesn't mean there are no actions which are in principle sufficiently redemptive."

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"Well, you didn't actually try poking it."

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"I have in the past held them and they burned me."

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"Ah."

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He sings the rest of the way.

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It's gorgeous. Cam will distribute car food to anyone who wants and drive straight through, pausing only once to identify the location of the gas tank.

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Elves will have food. 

Their place in Canada is a stunning ancient castle.

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"It's going to get redundant if I just keep remarking on how pretty all your belongings are."

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"Moryo built this when we first got released. We mostly didn't remember how to - exist -"

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"...yeah."

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"Really wish we'd gotten it together faster, but - it'd been such a long time - breathing was painful -"

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"This seems like... not a logically necessary side effect..."

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"I don't think Mandos is very good at his job."

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"I get that impression."

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"He's in good company. Melkor was by far the most competent Vala and the thing he decided to be competent at was torture."

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"Interesting priority."

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"I regrettably never had the chance to ask him why. Maybe Matthew did."

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"I think I might not ask him. Is this where he summoned me?"

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"Yes. We had a room retrofitted to be not obviously the work of ancient aliens."

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"Wouldn't've stopped me if I'd thought to conjure up the whole place."

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"I mean, someone sufficiently curious was hard to stop from getting to 'ancient aliens' and had no real avenue to get farther than that, or so we thought assuming you would, like, be back in Hell."

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"I mean, asking you things is faster but not necessarily the only way I could've learned things."

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"Oh?" 

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"I can do stuff-at-times, might've figured out how to get around stuff being magic on my own, I could've just read a lot of Thindarin..."

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"I bet we're mentioned in some Thindarin history books. Probably not very kindly."

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"I'd expect so."

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"if you have questions about things you can ask anyone except Matthew, don't bring it up with him unless actually necessary."

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"Noted."

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They go inside. The architecture is of course astonishing; a man who looks a great deal like Aricin rushes up to his sons, takes the Silmaril barehanded despite the sizzling sound that results, sets it on his lap and asks Cam "so what languages do they speak in Hell?"

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"Do you want gloves!"

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"It'll heal," he says distractedly. "I died of burns, first time round, they were much worse than I'd get even if I dropped it down my robes -"

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"Do you maybe want gloves anyway!"

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"Well apparently it's distracting from the languages so yes!"

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Gloves. "There are some human languages spoken, more in recent years, but where I landed the usual language is Lagalann and I'm like almost fluent in it now but I'm told my accent is awful."

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"Tyelcormo can summon me people to practice, if we're not worried about ensuring daeva don't find out about us. Do daeva start out as adults not knowing any languages - that sounds hard -"

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"They do, yeah, if they're not ex humans, and it does seem hard - most demon languages seem like they'd be relatively easy to teach someone primarily by demo, simple grammar and so on."

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"Oooooooohh. - sorry, the only thing more interesting than new languages is new languages with different constraints on their development - what is Hell like -"

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"Tacky!"

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"Elves would not be happy demons!"

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"Elf demons could go off somewhere and make pretty castles, but population centers bear the burden of a lot of conflicting design aesthetics held by people who can make whatever they want as soon as they think of it."

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"Say that in Lagalann."

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"...hang on, I need a dictionary to say things that complicated -" He gets a dictionary and looks up enough words to triangulate 'aesthetics', then says it.

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He echoes him delightedly. "Elf castles could go off somewhere and make pretty demons? Elf population centers could make whatever they want as soon as they think of it?"

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"...what do you want me to do with these sentences?"

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"Correct the syntax, if it's bad."

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"The syntax is fine."

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"You don't need to worry about my logic. The castles made by people who can make whatever they want? The people can make whatever they want? The Elves can make people?"

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"First one is an incomplete sentence. I think. Sometimes people who are better at Lagalann than me speak in incomplete sentences but I get laughed at if I try."

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"Say that in Lagalann?"

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He does.

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And he starts delightedly playing with the words, occasionally petting his Silmaril with a gloved hand.

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Cam wonders vaguely if it's soft or something. He continues correcting syntax and supplying vocabulary. He can teach him the alphabet too.

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He'd like that! "I invented Quenya's alphabet."

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"I heard you invented writing outright, which is very impressive."

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"Well, someone had to. The Valar had lots of genuinely useful advanced science and math for us but they didn't have writing and didn't see the need, I think their memories are perfect? And they can all talk to each other instantaneously."

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"I imagine that would obviate most of the usefulness, yes."

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He has more language questions!

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Cam can answer most of them. If he speaks English he can have Cam's language learning notes?

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He speaks English! He's been picking up one Earth language a year since the Internet was developed, it's so useful not having to travel for them.

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How in the world do they have internet out here.

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Does he want to see the setup it took Fëanáro ages. 

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"I don't think I have the engineering background to appreciate it. Elaborate DIY is about the level of complexity I was looking for."

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"Then yes, that."

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Anyway here are Cam's notes on Lagalann, exquisitely tidy and well-organized if a bit limited in intended audience.

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He is appreciative! "There're guest rooms," he says, waving distractedly, "and the computers have tengwar keyboards but you can fix that if you want to access the internet and write in English."

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"I do like the Internet."

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"It's such a good idea," he agrees, and switches to Lagalann - "it's emphasis a good concept?"

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Cam corrects him.

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And eventually he wants to get back to work. "I need the other two," he calls at his children as he leaves. They smile at him fondly.

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"The other two Silmarils?"

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"Yeah, lots of the stuff you can do with them you need all three for."

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"Just clarifying, could have been something else."

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"Do you need anything? Besides internet?"

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"Internet should do me!"

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He has internet! If he wants to check how evil the people who want to found a space colony and become gods are, he will not be interrupted.

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He does want.

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The histories in the Thindarin libraries are very unkind. They sacked this city, they sacked that refugee camp, they waded into the victorious host of the Valar after the war and killed everyone in their path, they tried to forcibly marry and when that failed to assassinate the princess of this country, they killed the twin seven-year-old princes of same country a while later, they kidnapped some other princes and held them hostage for a decade, there were rumors of personal misconduct which the book is too delicate to discuss...

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Well, he can get Quenya stuff now too.

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Quenya histories hit most of the same points (and also scrupulously avoid discussing personal misconduct while making a point of noting that some was rumored). All of the massacres were occasioned by people having a Silmaril and not giving it back, and some of the books do mention that exhaustive efforts to convince the people to give them back preceded the massacring.

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He will probably want more credible explanations of how they will not fuck up the being gods thing before he helps with that but clearly they gotta have their shinies.

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Unless he asks for explanations none are volunteered; the Elves spend all their time singing renewedly-magic songs and commenting on Caranthir's family's work.

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More of the family's work is available. What's the Dwarf planet like more generally, Cam can't read the language but he can peer at city models and ask Caranthir.

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The Dwarf planet is mostly underground, has around three billion people, spacefaring - they'd sent probes to Valinor, looks like - no governments, they've got some kind of anarchocapitalism arrangement that seems satisfactory to all parties - Dwarves don't really do genders, they've improved on magical artifacts to heights which the Fëanorians are now eagerly reverse-engineering, pressing social issues seem to all be over accessibility of arbitration hearings.

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Huh, what happened to the probes?

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Eagerly received on Valinor, which was interested in sending a return one and nearly at the tech level for it, but the Valar forbade that because last time they let people leave Valinor it was the Fëanorians and everyone remembers how that turned out.

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Helluva gilded cage setup they've got there.

Uh, does anyone besides Caranthir want writings of people?

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Searchable published works of Valinor would be great. 

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Can do.

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These are very happy Elves! The singing is so happy. On the weekend Aricin and Matthew come to visit. Aricin looks deliriously happy. 

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Matthew looks like he is watching a straight-to-TV movie that's not all that bad for the genre. 

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"Hello again."

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"Hi! I apologize for being abrupt with you on the phone, I'm going to be under a lot of scrutiny if I try to do anything interesting and I might need to do interesting things to get the government to handle summoning gracefully."

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"Nah, it's okay. How was your trip, can I get you anything?"

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"It was a lovely trip! I always book with a different airline so I can be pleasantly surprised when this one has little televisions or that one gives you pretzels. This one gave me cookies."

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"One time my mom got us upgraded to first class and we got tiny cheesecakes, it was amazing."

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"I expect there are other people planning space colonies who'd be delighted to have a demon onboard, what are our qualifications?"

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"Cool magic shit. I'm still doing research on whether I want to disqualify you for other reasons."

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"Most of the cool magic shit should be sharable, Macalaurë must've checked by now if the songs work recorded -"

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"They do! I'm working on something for aging but less urgently since it turns out humans don't die after all, at least not anymore."

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"They don't die, they just mostly go to a depressingly boring place where they can't receive guests or be summoned out. Not as bad as yours, but still."

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"There might be better ways to help 'em than making them not go there, though - like, I should in principle be able to create matter and if the songs work in Limbo..."

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"Then yeah, demons could send them recordings, if magic songs work normally there - it was fading from here to the point where nobody noticed -"

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"Yeah. ...might work only if we smuggled a Silmaril into Limbo, there'd be a lovely dilemma -"

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"You would have a hard time getting it back, yes."

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"We couldn't kill anyone to get it back, though, so that'd be fine, the question is whether having all three of them together lets Father do more -"

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"You can't think of ways to kill people to get something out of Limbo? I can."

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"We're not obliged to take all courses of action that get them back, we're obliged to kill the people who are withholding them."

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"Who worded this thing."

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"My father in a paranoid manic fit while trying to collect enough pieces of his father to bury him. Was the wording not in the books - I assume you looked us up -"

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"Yes, but I'm skimming."

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"Questions?"

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"What vague misconduct are people too delicate to mention in the same book as child-murder?"

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He blinks. 

 

Then he snorts.

"Oh, homosexuality. Elves are really sticklers about that."

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"Seriously? Okay.

...also, uh, were the kids withholding a Silmaril, or..."

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" - which ones -"

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Cam finds the reference.

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"There was hand-to-hand fighting in the cave system, it was a nightmare, the Silmaril was in fact with their three-year-old daughter but we didn't know that, some of our soldiers found the twins and dragged them outside where they'd be away from the fighting and they ran off into the woods. In the middle of winter. We looked for months. They're presumed to have frozen - I guess you could do better than 'presumed'-"

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Tiny chilly kids?

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Yeah.

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"Yup."

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Nod.

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Sigh. "I would feel better about this entire thing if you weren't all still under the influence of I Swear Never To Lose At Chicken."

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"Trust me, we would too. You can at least just kill us if it comes up again."

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"I've never killed anybody! I don't really want to! I would like to manage to never have a compelling reason for it!"

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"Good luck with that! Not getting involved in our affairs at all does seem like the best course to minimize your odds of having a reason to kill someone."

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Sigh.

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This sure is a marginally-more-interesting-than-the-commercial-breaks television show.

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Matt is unspecifiedly fragile in some way and Cam has no reason to bother him in particular. Uh, except -

"Incidentally, the mindreading thing, you've cut it out now, right?"

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"Of course. I am sorry. I presume some of the books have exercises on keeping your thoughts private? It takes years to pick up but you seem like the kind of person who might want to anyway, even trusting we've stopped."

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"I haven't run into that. I keep having to scroll through sheet music. Do tell?"

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"Osanwë's - friendly, or at least intended that way. In societies where everyone has it we learn to keep some thoughts mentally public, and others mentally private, and you can't read thoughts someone else has designated private. It's a lot of meditation exercises to get in the habit of keeping your thoughts private, essentially. People usually have an orienting metaphor - imagining public thoughts above water and private below, for example..."

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...private ones in the cipher he picked up when he learned how demons worked? "Have I got it?"

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"Probably not, it takes a while? I can check if you want."

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"If it takes a while hold off. Thanks."

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"Of course. We taught all our humans, way back when."

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"Your very own humans, gosh."

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"The other ones were Thauron's. Is that not in the histories you're reading -"

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"I'm skimming! If you took the complete contents of an American public library and looked through everything in alphabetical order by title and sixty percent of it was sheet music you would take a while to have a high school understanding of the Revolutionary War!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do apologize! You could ask someone for an account, some of my brothers wouldn't mind telling it - I get it all mixed up myself -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, probably a good idea, who should I try first?"

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"Cáno's the only one who was there for it all."

Permalink Mark Unread

"All right."

So he goes and asks him for a summary.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, how long of one?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"What are my options, or can you fill arbitrary amounts of time by varying whether or not Hera is cow-eyed this stanza?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I could do that but I was thinking based on species you probably wanted either the five-minute version or the thirty-minute version or maybe the two-hour version and definitely not the forty-eight hour version or the six-year version."

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"Two hours sounds good."

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Nod. "So Melkor was pardoned in 1400. We lived in Valinor, then, which due to divine incompetence was lit by two giant glowing Trees..." and so on and so on and so on and so on through - "Matthew threw himself and his Silmaril into a fiery chasm. I threw mine into the ocean and walked away."

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"Wow."

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"Eru has interesting taste, if it's true he planned the fate of the world all out in the beginning."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's a way to put it."

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"Can swear I didn't leave anything out for - PR reasons, if that would be reassuring."

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"...I mean, word it really carefully but yeah, that'd save me some corroborating."

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"We are careful about words, these days. I swear that everything I told you was the truth and that there were no omissions which I think you'd find misleading if you learned of them."

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"Thank you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Melkor's still imprisoned, first thing I checked off Valinor's recent published works."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good."

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"Yeah. Maybe they actually learned their lesson on that one. I don't - think he's imprisoned in a way such that learning summoning would enable him to get out but I wouldn't want to count on it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If he's not in material form I do not think a fairy could move him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And he probably couldn't draw anything."

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"The drawings don't have to be physical, light or shadows will do it, but yeah."

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" - might be light and shadows where they're holding him. Not sure."

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"Can't really check that."

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Headshake. "Might be safer to not tell Valinor but I - want them to know -"

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"My primary motivation was ending material scarcity, which... they do already have sorted..."

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"Yeah. It'd just be so they could leave, and - that might just not be worth the risk -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe sail to Valinor, bounce off immediately and head to Dwarf planet, send probes with instructions on how to send conjurable mail? Then nobody in Valinor needs to know how to summon but we can still talk to them, find out more about the situation there."

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" - sounds good. If they let us leave, of course."

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"What's the actual mechanism by which they prevent leaving?"

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"Uh, back then it was just that the route was impassable and they told us the ocean was no good either and people mostly believed them. Now they might try harder, I'm not sure."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's no reason to touch the actual continent. Just get through the windy - thing - and up."

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"Ulmo'd notice. Don't know that he'd arrest us but it would not escape his attention."

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"Even if we didn't touch the ocean? Could make a little plane."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That maybe not but if anyone'd notice Manwë would and he'd be less likely to let it pass."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Drat."

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"Could wait until we're powerful enough to take 'em but it'll be a while."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elaborate shenanigans with the shinies?"

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"And with things we can build off the Dwarves' notes - off Celebrimbor's -"

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Nod. "Well - they've been waiting this long."

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"They have."

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"Oh my god," he says suddenly.

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"Hm?"

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"Uh, we just - saved ourselves a digging project? Only, what are the fucking odds -"

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Matt starts laughing.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...huh?"

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"Drilling rig off Denmark just fucking dug up a Silmaril and put pictures on Twitter."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh. Uh, some fairies I summoned while alive might remember me still and take my word for it that they should go steal it for you? So you don't have to go stab Danes?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounds super preferable to stabbing Danes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, I think so too. I will pick out a likely fairy." Notes notes notes.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Moryo, can you buy out -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Looking into it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Should I wait on the fairy till you see if you can just purchase it?"

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"I really doubt they're going to immediately put it up for sale, I'm trying to buy the company. Fairy's a lot faster, if fairy'll do it -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Purchase it by transitivity, whatever. Do you know where it actually is?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep. Need a map -"

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Atlas.

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Oil rig containing Silmaril!

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Fairy circle.

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He finishes it.

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"Miler!"

"Cam!"

"Hello!"

"Hi! I was expecting to show up for the midterm six years ago, what happened?"

"I am no longer at U Dub for reasons I would rather not explain right now! Listen, how do you feel about hypothetically going and taking a shiny rock somebody who wasn't even looking for shiny rocks found."

"Uh, what's in it for me?"

"That's what I hoped you'd say. Pick your wishlist, I'll get a demon to fill it, my friends here are ridiculous singers and I just have to find one who likes music or something."

"Sweet. Do I get a concert too?"

"Probably. Does he get a concert too?"

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"He can totally get a concert too, Cáno loves showing off."

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"Cool, cool. Where's the shiny rock?"

Cam indicates the map.

"Ah-huh, and where are we?"

"Central Canada."

"And what's the rock look like?"

"It's the shiniest of shiny rocks, if you see a rock and it looks like there could theoretically exist a shinier rock that's not it."

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...he giggles.

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"Yeah, 'kay," says Miler. "Just bring it back here?"

"Maybe take a weird route and drop it here without stopping. If you don't want anything bulky we could pay you in advance, dismiss you while you're laying false trail over Antarctica."

"You know I hate the cold."

"Japan. Whatever."

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"Deal?"

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"Deal," says Miler.

"Gimme a list, I'll go fill it for you while you are being serenaded."

Miler rattles off some things and Cam writes them down.

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And then he will sing.

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Miler is absolutely enchanted; his wings flutter softly at the nicest passages. Cam is back with a cartful of objects after a short while.

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Handy, that demon Cam knows. He finishes singing.

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"Pleasure doing business with you," says Miler, and he scoops up all the objects and takes the map and zooms out the window.

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Elves wait nervously.

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Miler is gone for twenty minutes, and then the Silmaril comes careening unaccompanied through the window and hits Cam in the face. He says "ow", but presumably for impact reasons, it doesn't sizzle. "All right, get him gone, I suppose."

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It presumably doesn't sizzle because Cam's not evil. He sends the fairy home.

Permalink Mark Unread

"And there you have it. No stabbed Danes. I feel even more smug than I usually do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That was very fast."

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"Fairies! They're fast!"

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"Do you want, like, a hug, because fuck it is nice to not be terrified of what could happen -"

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"I will accept a hug!"

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Hug! He's very strong. "Best demon. Okay. Let's get the one on Venus before someone else does."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That doesn't imply much time frame, even with daeva Venus is way less appealing than Mars."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Unless someone wants a shiny and goes looking. Also the odds of this one being dug up specifically right now are - very low, it's weird -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Were they using daeva in some way that would've made the area accessible where it wasn't previously or anything?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Worth checking."

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Circles in Danish last month -

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There are lots. They start investigating.

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Cam conjures by other parameters as needed.

Permalink Mark Unread

It doesn't look like the drilling operation was affected by daeva except possibly by some indirect mechanism such as the rather disastrous effect of demons and angels on natural gas markets.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...okay, weird coincidence is weird. It will only be officially inexplicable if someone announces a journey to Venus, though."

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Elves nod tightly. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is that Eru's style?"

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Elves nod again.

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"Greaaaat."

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"We probably have time. Plots usually move slowly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How slowly?"

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"Years, maybe decades?"

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"Okay, good."

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"Yeah. Let's - let's make a plan to go get to the Dwarves."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is downright bizarre that they are only in space from Valinor."

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"It really is. Otherwise we'd have found them sooner, though."

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"Have they been probing anything other than Valinor or are they just in a sort of void?"

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"There are stars, they sent something you could consider analogous to Voyager, but Valinor's the only place close enough they could identify it as habitable -"

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Nod. "And - do they just have totally different stars from Earth or could they be reached through space somehow?"

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"Can't tell off their star charts. Even if they're in space if they're more than a couple hundred lightyears away Valinor's the only viable avenue, and if they're closer than that I'd think we'd have noticed their radio and so on..."

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"And they do use normal nonmagical radio?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Plus, not my area of expertise but haven't we mapped the stars that close -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"A hundred lightyears pretty much, two hundred plausible we'd have missed it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And by now someone from NASA has probably summoned a demon and got models of all their favorite stars' planets, right. Okay, so they're real far away. This is not commuting distance."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Unless there's FTL, no. And the Dwarves are ahead of us a couple centuries and haven't got it, so there's at least not straightforward FTL."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Except summoning and conjuration, but still have to tell them how to do that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is it likely they'd never have stumbled on it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's possible if they don't draw on the floor much or have summoning things as a concept."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can you check for circles they've drawn -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Should be able to." Valid circles drawn by Dwarves?

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Nope. 

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"They have not drawn any valid circles."

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"Well, that's vaguely encouraging for summoning working there, at least."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How fast could we get there by fairy from Valinor -"

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"Couple years if they don't stop or misnavigate, I think, which will be a tough sell."

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Nod. "So give us a shove and have rockets for the decel, that's fine, we were planning on that anyway and we don't know a ship big enough for a whole colony - and we don't need supplies for along the way, I guess -"

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"I mean, you'd want to be real sure I or whoever your supply demon is doesn't get sick of you in case acceleration-based fake grav doesn't permit midflight summoning, but yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, please don't come if you haven't decided whether you're going to get sick of us. With the Silmarils we could probably make it anyway, but it would be unpleasant."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I will make sure I like y'all well enough to handle the trip before takeoff."

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Nod. "Who do we need to design a spaceship - in terms of engineering expertise, not design -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"NASA's become a very exciting place to work, I could probably either give their agenda a shove in a productive direction or point you to people to hire away -"

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"Are there any downsides to telling humans 'there're aliens, they just didn't have an immediately conjurable kind of magic, we're going to meet 'em -"

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"They conjure everything and try to bring us up in the Hague or something? I don't want to indefinitely keep Dwarves cut off from people who'll trade with them, they'd feel betrayed, but if we can recruit people without fully informing that's cleaner."

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"Do war crimes have a statute of limitations?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They do not. Thus why they keep dragging elderly Nazis out of Argentina and all..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Inconvenient. There's probably a jurisdiction case to be made but making it would be a problem."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And inconveniently we can't just sit in prison for a couple centuries until everyone's satisfied, because I don't think Mandos would reembody us again."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cruel and unusual punishment? But I'm not sure how you'd prove it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Take our word for it, being confined at all will cause us to die of misery! If you can't trust people on trial for war crimes, who can you trust?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah exactly. What do Elf populations do instead?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, exile. And the Doom. I think were the only attempts the Valar ever made at law enforcement."

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"...uh."

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"Elves are a very law-abiding people, it didn't come up much."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's not much and there's what the heck."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No scarcity, everyone's immortal and has to get along with everyone else forever, population with I think higher-than-human average intelligence -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lower variance, though. There are more human geniuses."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was not insulting humans. Higher average, lower variance, there might actually not be any Elf sociopaths - we turned out entirely capable of horrifying things, but in peacetime we really didn't get up to any. The first murder in Valinor was Melkor killing the King."

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"I wasn't going to take it as an insult to humans."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Human-Elf relations suffered, early on, from the thing where humans are kind of just inferior to Elves in every respect except the free will. People try to be conscientious about observing true things with that implication."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, we get the better afterlife, nyah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You do! By far! To be fair I envied you the afterlife even when I thought you didn't get one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Halls do sound like they'd get very old very fast."

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"Little bit."

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"So try not to die. Or need killing."

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"We'll do our best."

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"Thanks!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Limbo sounds like it'd be a disappointing surprise if you killed yourself on purpose."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, there are people who have this problem. There are daeva with this problem too, there's some people who keep them drugged but the Limboites don't have that option."

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"Should definitely nicen up Limbo somehow."

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"I'm all in favor."

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"I'm thinking about it," he says distractedly, and goes back to presumably doing that, now with two Silmarils.

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Matthew goes back to work and Curufin back to school; everyone else starts designing a spaceship unconstrained by building costs.

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Cam lightly corroborates Macalaurë's account of events, then asks if they're really serious about the Dwarf language thing because he'd like to be able to read stuff from there?

Permalink Mark Unread

"I could translate for you. Something in particular?"

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"I can't really identify anything in particular. Since I don't know the language at all."

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"Could be looking for histories or newspapers or something. My guess is that they no longer have the preference about the language, but they did when they taught us and I didn't say 'I promise to keep this secret for as long as I think you'd still care' -"

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"I just wanted to get a better overview of the place. I guess you could translate things that seem representative."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd be happy to."

 

Records of an academic back-and-forth over how to handle climate change, statelessly! Stuff on the space program! Popular novel! (The plot is that someone learns the arbitration company they're part of is provoking fights to get payouts from a rival arbitration company which is eating into their market share). 

Permalink Mark Unread

...Cam reads a David Friedman book for dessert. He would like more space program stuff if that's okay?

Permalink Mark Unread

He'd be happy to!

Permalink Mark Unread

Yay. Space.

 

News breaks of a daeva zoo where people can go see real live fairies and angels and demons! Wow! What the fuck!

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, what the fuck - that's illegal, right, you can't just cage people -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're still figuring out how laws apply to daeva and some yahoos decided to test it out, I guess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well. I'm kind of inclined to go convince them not to do that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Will this involve stabbing, I'm less familiar with the other parts of your repertoire."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have spent a very small fraction of my lifespan stabbing. I'd at least start by offering them lots of money, it's astonishing how many problems you can solve that way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think I want anyone to learn the lesson 'kidnap daeva, receive bribes'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The law'll catch up, but in the meantime there are people in cages."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, no, part of the attraction is that daeva can be kept in place with no fences or locks and people can go up and pat them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can just go straight for - not stabbing, but cornering and smiling at people like I'm very good at stabbing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know if that will have an effect other than to get people after you for an involuntary psych hold, which I assume is just as bad as an arrest?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If they got me, yeah, but I am not okay with this thing continuing to exist so the level of acceptable risk isn't zero."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I still think you can improve on slasher smiles. Even if you have a good slasher smile."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It would surprise me a lot if we hit on the best idea in five minutes of voicing them, yes. Okay. Short of murder, they have to want to dismiss the daeva, right - could influence them to want that but that's shitty -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"With telepathy? Yeah."

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"Or songs. You don't want to bribe them in case there'll be more - what about bribing one to snap a carefully selected daeva's binding and then the daeva causes nonlethal havoc and people get scared off zoos?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You'd have to carefully select the daeva, and they're not letting them talk. I suppose perhaps you could telepath them, does that get more telephone-like if they know it's happening?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah but listening just to what people want to send varies by person how easy it is - I could tell them how it works and they could signal if they agree to communicate like that. But we should probably get Matt if we're doing things that depend on snap character judgments with lots of lives at stake."

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"Noted." Cam notes it. "Are any of you a lawyer or is that not one of your collected occupations?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"None of us are a lawyer. We should probably pay some, if they aren't all over this already."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose the telepathy would let you ask the exhibits what they would like in the way of help."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah but if they say 'get us the fuck home right now' I am going to be kinda reluctant to wait five years for a Super Court case."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Supreme Court."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That either."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I sympathize." Sigh.

Permalink Mark Unread

And they book a flight.

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The powers that be have not shut the zoo down yet. It is attended but not thronged, and people are mostly not petting the daeva except for one angel who is supposedly really soft.

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Hello, he says to all of the daeva including Cam once he's seen them all, and no one else. I am a telepathic alien. I have been pretending to be human but don't want to be associated with them any more. I am here to ask what you would like me to do about this horrible fucking place. 

Permalink Mark Unread

I want to coordinate a thing, says one of the demons, all of us take our wings off and look really boring, can you relay that -

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah for sure - and he bounces that to everyone -

Permalink Mark Unread

Soft angel turns her wings to air immediately. The others follow suit; the fairies wince more but still do it.

Permalink Mark Unread

If it helps I can summon you later with a demon on hand and put 'em back for you. If that's faster than - whatever you normally do - and to Cam - can the fairies even get them back -

Permalink Mark Unread

They can heal them back if they want, or there's a plant that'll roll the dice on new ones back in Fairyland.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh good. Anybody need anything else -

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Gigantic thermos of green tea please, says a fairy.

"You wanna go deliver it? The strike thing they're doing might work by itself, I don't think we should introduce rogue daeva elements yet."

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah. He delivers the fairy a gigantic thermos of green tea.

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You're the alien? You just look like a runway model, says the fairy, downing the thermos.

Permalink Mark Unread

It wouldn't be very much fun to pose as an ugly human, he says, taking the thermos back. I am thirty thousand years old and did not look like this for most of it. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Thanks for the tea. Can't float in my sleep, can't lie down, can't float another fairy and get them to return the favor...

Permalink Mark Unread

Fucking assholes. I can bring it by every day, at least for a while.

Permalink Mark Unread

Thanks, runway alien.

Permalink Mark Unread

Any time.

Anyone else want anything -

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The fairies, mostly. All the daeva have been allowed some limited magic use (they're more interesting to watch that way) so the demons and the angels have been conjuring and precipitating out of the air anything that could make being confined to a circle more comfortable. (I'd ask for a chair says soft angel but I put one together and they took it away so I just softened the ground, it's not bad.)

Permalink Mark Unread

He can get the fairies stuff. He can scowl on soft angel's behalf. 

Wow, daeva are way nicer than me, I'd definitely have said 'you can fucking kill my summoner', he says to Cam.

Permalink Mark Unread

They haven't been here very long yet and might not actually expect strange aliens to be willing to commit murder for them.

Permalink Mark Unread

How long do you think it'll take the strike to work?

Permalink Mark Unread

Depends how it affects attendance. People're already complaining and I heard one demand a refund.

Permalink Mark Unread

Good. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Yep. Maybe make sure all the daeva know to tell the news when they get home so this is standard operating procedure if one is needed.

Permalink Mark Unread

He suggests that to them.

Permalink Mark Unread

They're pretty agreeable on this point.

Permalink Mark Unread

I'm going to go sing, he tells Cam, should I do it in human hearing range of here or not, you think -

Permalink Mark Unread

Across the street, divert anyone who was going to come gawk?

Permalink Mark Unread

Ooooh.

 

He will go across the street and sing. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Some people are diverted!

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, fucking good for them, they shouldn't have come at all. He doesn't say this and sings very prettily.

Permalink Mark Unread

The zoo closes early.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well isn't that a fucking shame.

Permalink Mark Unread

So shameful.

Permalink Mark Unread

He climbs a tree near the zoo and complains to the birds.

Permalink Mark Unread

Birds agree it is very bad that some people could fly and were not allowed.

Permalink Mark Unread

Birds are right about everything.

Permalink Mark Unread

They are. And Tyelcormo should give them food.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, he happens to know a guy. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes, Cam will make birdseed or whatever it is these birds eat.

Permalink Mark Unread

Then the birds will adore him! Tyelcormo can send them to perch on him and twitter adoringly, if Cam wants that.

Permalink Mark Unread

That is hilarious yes please.

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Then Cam will be surrounded by an army of adoring bird admirers.

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He snaps a picture to send to Renée.

Permalink Mark Unread

I have the best one-off Elf superpower.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh, most Elves are not Disney princesses?

Permalink Mark Unread

I am the only Elf Disney princess! I tried teaching other people and they never quite got the hang of it, somehow. It makes factory farming super fucking upsetting, congratulations on probably obviating that.

Permalink Mark Unread

You're welcome!

Permalink Mark Unread

Angels could all look like Elves if they wanted, right?

Permalink Mark Unread

To the limits of their design expertise. So could demons and fairies, it's just more laborious. A lot of people are going for a different aesthetic or just like how they pop.

Permalink Mark Unread

They look nice, mind, it's just interesting to see what people end up like when they have infinite customization ability.

Permalink Mark Unread

Angels are aiming for, well, 'angelic', most of them. Sometimes you get one that's doing something weird like all black everything or nine fox tails or whatever.

Permalink Mark Unread

They look very angelic. Heaven must be pretty.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's full of glowy white fluff and they live in caves of it!

Permalink Mark Unread

Is the glowy fluff magic?

Permalink Mark Unread

No! Do you want some?

Permalink Mark Unread

I would love some nonmagical glowing fluff, sounds very useful.

Permalink Mark Unread

Here is a baseball sized bit of fluff.

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He holds it up, sniffs it, squints at it, giggles. Could this be synthesized artificially, do you know -

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I have no idea, haven't looked into it.

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He sings; he chats with some nocturnal animals; eventually it's morning again. Does the zoo open.

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No, it's Saturday.

"You know, I don't think any of them liked being crowded around and poked but solitary isn't that much better."

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"Could jump the fence and go chat."

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"We could! Well, you can jump the fence, I can pretty much not do that."

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"I can carry you over the fence?"

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"Sure why not."

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Over they go.

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Whee!

Cam can produce slightly improbable numbers of things for the exhibits from his bag.

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And he can bounce conversations and if people would like bird conversation translated as well he can do that too.

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The exhibits are curious about what birds have to say!

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In that case he can play bird-translator all day or until someone notices there are trespassers.

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The place is not actually guarded. As startup tourist attractions go this one was cheap.

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Then he can translate for birds and squirrels and so on all day.

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And Cam can feed the fairies.

After they've been there a while one of the demons vanishes.

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That's promising.

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It is! An angel next, and then another demon, and then they're all gone.

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He gives Cam a high-five. "Look how few felonies were involved!"

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"Yay!"

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"Law against it's still a good idea. Or, like, some checks on summoning someone and keeping them gagged in your house for fun, if current laws don't cover that - and gagged daeva can't testify to anything having happened -"

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"Yeah."

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"I'll bug Matthew."

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"Thanks. I'd really like to have done unalloyed good and unalloyed anything is hard turns out."

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"Unalloyed evil's pretty straightforward!"

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"Moreso, at any rate."

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"I really seriously think Melkor straight-up managed it." 

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"I have no contradictory evidence."

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The U.S. government is on the brink of announcing a new department for handling of daeva concerns. If it has a demon on staff, and he's working on that, daeva can write with concern for friends who've been gone a while on a summons and they can follow up from there. Also zoo summons should and will be illegal. Does Cam have concerns or suggestions in that vein -

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"I'm inconveniently an introvert, I know demons who are nice but I'm not sure I know ones who are qualified. Letting people write in about missing friends is a great idea though."

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"Oh, I'll wrangle doing interviews, it'll be so much fun." He sounds not precisely sincere. "I mean if there are other sorts of problem we might miss -"

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"I covered all the safety concerns I know about in the edits to the book, where they weren't there when I found it. In terms of being pleasant to daeva - gags and zoos and zoo-type problems, I guess. Also I know someone who was summoned by somebody who insisted on calling her 'it', she was annoyed, but that's probably not a matter for the legal system."

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"For the legal system no, for me possibly. We want daeva to want to take summons, seems like that makes for a much better-selected pool of them."

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Nod. "Uh, the sort of classic thing one pays demons in should one be disinclined to offer souls or sexual favors is media recommendations, but commissions and live performances stack up better versus what you can get in Hell - demon curators are fine at organizing stuff you might want to read, they are not themselves the Original Broadway Cast. If you normalize conjuration based communication enough then daeva could line that sort of thing up in advance instead of hoping someone suggests it, or lets them talk and happens to have access to theater tickets."

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"That sounds useful. How many daeva speak an Earth language?"

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"More all the time - that's another thing you could do with advance setup, pay people in languages, requires more trust than the standard task deal but probably anyone really keen on languages will want more than one summoner's worth if they can get it so they'll have some incentive."

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"And do we have any more information on the thing that happened to you and how to replicate it, do you need to die violently before age 25 while having recently summoned a demon or something..."

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"I do not know. Nobody I talked to knew. I would be all over it if I knew how to replicate the event. Assuming it didn't require murder with malice aforethought or something."

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"You're the only one? Is that checkable with conjuring?"

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"I'm not the only one but we're really, really rare. I haven't met any demons who know any others."

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"Thank you. That's all I wanted to ask about."

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"Good luck!"

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"I have historically been possessed with a great deal of it!"

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"I think the technical term here is 'you're due'?"

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He laughs. It's almost lighthearted. 

 

 

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"Did Cáno explain -"

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"...explain what?"

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"Matthew?"

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"He mentioned. Should I be behaving differently somehow, it seemed patronizing to try to do that for somebody I don't know that well without being asked?"

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"No not at all I just thought you might notice and wonder, if no one'd said anything."

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"I honestly might not have, some people just do that with their face."

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"He's usually pretty convincing but obviously this whole situation is - designed badly for him -"

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"...and he got me on a random, wow, yeah."

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"Exactly. Once you're in the right frame of mind it does all look very contrived - and, I mean, we've been on Earth eight hundred years, something this contrived happening at some point is not weird, but -"

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Nod nod.

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"It's too bad, I think once upon thirty thousand years he would actually sincerely have really liked summoning." 

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"Like, recreationally?"

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"Like, it's his whole thing, right? He found people and he found what they were good at and he handed it to them. Either everything he does is done recreationally or none of it is, I'm not really sure, but - it would have been among his favorite activities."

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"Aw."

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They get back to planning a spaceship.

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He wrangles a position interviewing demons for interworld communications handling.

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When he summons demons, demons appear! This one has five scaly tails in various colors.

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He can't really think why you'd have scaly tails even given the ability to self-modify as often as you'd like. "Hello! I'm Matt Carter, I'm with the U.S. Department of Summoning and Interworld Security, we're looking for someone interested in a long-term job here handling interworld communications -"

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"Ooh?"

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"We want daeva to be able to write us if, say, a friend's been gone much longer than planned and they're worried they're being held against their will, we'd like to let people plan out summons by talking to Hell in advance..."

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"Hey, that's a good idea, you wouldn't wind up with people who want to go to Paris summoned in Florida by some dude who only has concert tickets on offer."

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"That's the idea. And if someone really wants to see a concert they can let us know, make sure they get a summons for it."

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"So the job is for basically a postal worker."

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"We're hoping to find someone who'd like to hang out in the D.C. area, make us a hard drive with our messages four times a day. Do you know anyone who might enjoy that?"

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"Eh, what are you paying?"

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"Government guidelines are very firm at the moment that we can only offer demons money. I think they threw that rule out the window when they were first frantically spying on all our neighbors but now they're very settled on it. Enough money you can arrange most things you might want, though."

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"I've never, like interacted with money, how is it not redundant with being a demon..."

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"You can buy concert tickets, you can buy animals, you can commission art, you can pay people to meet you or perform for you, you can hire sex workers - in jurisdictions where that's legal, at least -"

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"Is D.C. one of 'em?"

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"It is not. Fairies rather make it a short commute, though."

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"Are fairies included in the job?"

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"Sufficient money is included in the job that you could hire an assistant to summon fairies and angels for you at need, sure."

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"Arright. I'm not feeling it but I might know somebody."

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"I can take names."

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He rattles off a handful - "Kazul might not answer fast, like, within a day -"

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"Thank you for the heads-up."

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"Yeah-huh."

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He sends him home and summons one of his acquaintances. 

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Vie answers pretty quick. "Hiya! Wow, you know so many languages."

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"Most of them aren't even real languages, sorry, I had a conlanging passion in college." And he describes the job.

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"Huh, would this be like, dismiss and resummon a lot, or like, live on Earth for ages."

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"Could arrange either way, what's convenient?"

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"Oh I'm not interested either way, I have a commitment at home. But if it's the second thing there's people who, like, really want kids? And might wanna throw money at adoption agencies or surrogates or something."

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"I cannot think of any reason we'd object to that - there'd be some legal precedent to set but that's not my area - know anyone who'd be interested for that?"

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"Yeah Mrindeh would be all over it."

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He clarifies spelling, writes it down.

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"Yeah she wants a kid real bad."

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"And would be a good parent, I hope?"

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"How should I know?"

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"Do you know her personally?"

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"Yeah."

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"Good people usually make good parents."

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"She's nice? I dunno, I don't know anything about kids, the idea kind of freaks me out."

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"I was never very tempted.  Anyway, thank you. Anything I can do for you while you're here?"

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"Dunno, how attached are you to your soul?"

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"Last guy I talked to claimed that wasn't really a thing!"

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"So not very?" grins the demon.

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"Oh, it'd be terribly unprofessional even with nothing at stake." 

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"I don't know why people assume I'm going to do something bad with their souls."

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"Religion, I assume. What were you going to do with the souls?"

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"I don't, mostly, they're just so nice to have."

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"Before I talked to any demons my hypothesis was that souls let you make people who were - actually people -"

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"If they did that I'd just give them to Mrindeh. Seriously, get her a baby, she's depressing sometimes."

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"Noted. Have a nice day."

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"You too."

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He summons Mrindeh.

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She appears!

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She gets the job description!

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"Oh... well, that sounds pretty easy but I'm not sure what I'd do with money... there's some people with really specific tastes in art who'd probably use it to get their fursonas drawn or something but I like lots of stuff that's easy to get..."

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"Someone suggested you might hire some lawyers and do a precedent-setting adoption case."

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- squeak.

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"I cannot guarantee that'd work or work quickly but I don't have a reason to expect it wouldn't."

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Nod nod nod.

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"Are you interested? I have a contract -"

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"Yesplease."

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Contract!

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She reads through it.

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She'll make three hundred thousand dollars a year and arrangements can be made so she can use magic for non-task-related things in a home once she rents or buys one and four times a day she can forward the government everything written since the last chip with a specific address label, and occasionally in emergencies they may ask for other things for a monetary bonus, and there are arbitration procedures and she has to pay taxes and is eligible for social securtiy and so on and so forth.

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"...isn't social security age based, I'm three hundred something. How much do lawyers cost? Will I not be able to make things out of the house, what if I get a baby and need to take the baby to the doctor and the baby needs something -"

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"Have your summoner come along? Or renegotiate once you're set to adopt the baby. Lawyers cost less than three hundred thousand dollars but possibly not much less if you encounter a lot of opposition for some reason."

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"How much do homes cost?"

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"In this area more than three hundred thousand dollars but other people will front you most of the money if you credibly promise you'll pay it back."

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Nod. "Is this one of those places where homeschooling is illegal -"

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"I don't know. You could live in Virginia, it's definitely legal there."

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Nod. Nod nod nod.

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"I can set up an orientation and training Monday, does that work for you?"

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"- what day of the week is it now?"

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"Wednesday. Five Earth days. Unless you get a lot of specific circles you can just get the one when I draw it."

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"Oh, I don't, this was the first one, I just wanted to know if I'd have time to tell everybody I'm going away."

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"Is five days enough?"

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"Yes!"

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"Then I will see you then." And he sends her home and does rather a mountain of paperwork.

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Elsewhere:

"- uh, Elves're in Hell news."

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"Oh? I guess if you telepath at enough demons that happens -"

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"No, somebody Matt summoned went to a linguist."

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"Does this create any problems -"

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"Not so far but they found Elves living on Earth, today, besides you."

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"- wow. Who -"

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"I'm pretty sure these are Earthly aliases, didn't publish original names if they found them."

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"They might not like us much."

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"Crossed my mind. Maybe avoid Chicago and Vienna."

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"I'll tell people."

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"I'll keep an eye out for further Elf-related publications. They're gonna discover Valinor, haven't yet but won't take long."

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"I would love for intrigued daeva to swarm Valinor."

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"They will have a hard time getting there but maybe somebody will manage to negotiate for travel privileges and boat the twisty."

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"Long as it doesn't get 'em killed or trapped or whatever."

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"I can submit a warning to the publication and then someone who's willing to see what happens if Valar and dismissal get in a fight can try it."

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"Sounds good to me."

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So Cam does that.

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Other Elves in Chicago and Vienna do not seem to have summoned, to everyone's disappointment, because the text corpus is really not large enough to get anywhere on some of these languages.

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Cam is pestered with letters about how he knows enough to announce that asshole gods may be monitoring attempts to closely investigate certain Elf-Related Things. He declines to answer.

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And he fetches their communications demon back and gives her orientation and training and shortly humans will also probably know about Elves, that might be a bigger problem.

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If Mrindeh reads news publications that are aflutter about Elves she doesn't let on; must have been one of the others who went to the linguist. She starts looking up adoption lawyers and houses with big yards in Virginia.

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Awwww. They do a pilot program letting people communicate with demons to arrange summonses and letting daeva inform them about missing friends.

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It is not that hard under this protocol to find demons who want to go to Broadway or the Moon, or shake hands with Nobel prizewinners or actresses, or get human attention on this project or that problem.

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Which is all for the good until 'find Valinor' is a problem they want human help on. 

...he could just discreetly filter the mail. He writes home asking for thoughts on the merits of doing this.

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Seems hard to do inconspicuously-to-employers.

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Have they learned about Valinor yet?

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No but they've noticed the patchy records.

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I am concerned it would be a very bad idea for humans to find out about Valinor. Last time went poorly, after all.

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Might be too late to control the investigation.

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It might.

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Why did you do the summonses yourself? You could have had a summoner-and-negotiator setup.

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Would've been another few months while they hired and cleared someone for that.

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It's possible they'll hit a dead end before they find Valinor, I guess.

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Or at least before they realize there's a way to get there.

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Yeah. That took a little more cluing in for me but there's only one of me.

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Maybe the Valar have matured. I just wouldn't count on it.

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Any ideas for things I could conjure to read from there that'd give an idea?

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Could check if everyone's back alive, and how much modifying was involved in the process.

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What should I conjure for specifically?

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He replies with a list of a few hundred names. Published works.

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And Cam checks.

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With the workarounds for the magicness there are some. All kinds of topics. 

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Cam sends 'em to Matt.

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Yeah, I don't want humans trying to go to Valinor. 

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What is it?

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About what I expected. Valinor's not a horrifying dystopia, it's just - not at all equipped to have constructive contact with humanity.

 

 

They seem to have made everyone who took part in the Kinslayings forget them.

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That's one way to... I don't even know what that is a way to do.

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Reduce conflict, probably. No point in confronting someone for a crime they don't remember committing, no awkward trauma to ineffectually deal with...

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So this for the victims too?

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Didn't ask you for their writing, don't know them as well, wouldn't have been able to guess. It was done to some people who switched sides at Sirion, at least.

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Ugh.

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They all seem happy.

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I guess that's technically superior to hamfisted brainwashing that left its targets miserable!

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It is. I'm glad they were permitted to return at all.

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Small mercies.

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Couldn't find evidence on whether they still change peoples' orientations for them.

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And not in a fun 'met my boyfriend at pray the gay away camp' way?

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I mean, if you're going to do it at all it seems kinder to have it actually work. But yeah, that's another reason not to let humans find Valinor.

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But they're between us and the Dwarves and the Dwarves seem great.

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And it'd be very hard to keep quiet forever.

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Yeah.

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Do you know if the other remaining Elves are all ones who never went to Valinor at all -

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Got a better idea than timeslicing it or going to Chicago and saying hi?

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Not really. I could guess ethnicity off models but that still wouldn't answer it with any certainty.

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I could just go to Chicago and say hi, I guess.

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I don't recommend mentioning us.

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Yeah I was thinking 'some demons noticed you, thought I'd visit'.

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Might be worth it.

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Failure modes?

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They notice your Thindarin's ours - no one else even calls it Thindarin, actually. They panic at the information, they panic at the unbound demon, they panic at something I'm not anticipating, and they have more powerful artifacts than we're anticipating - they have had an awfully long time for it -

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I was gonna talk to them in English, they live in Chicago. And not let on about being, personally, a demon.

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People can tell if they think to look, right?

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If they know the parlor trick. ...And I'm actually not sure what an unbound daeva looks like, it might be different from a snapped binding.

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Unlikely they've picked it up this quickly.

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That was my thinking too.

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Have fun, be safe.

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Will do.

Cam roadtrips to Chicago.

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The Elves run a small company that does artwork for video games; they have an office building downtown and a hundred acres of land bordering a wildlife preserve upstate.

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Cam tries the office building. Seems politer than bugging them at home.

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He could guess which building; it's the prettiest one. There's a receptionist. "Hi, I'm Emily, do you have an appointment?"

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"No, sorry, I'm not here for business reasons at all. Did you know demons know about Elves now?"

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"I'm a former summoning teacher," he explains. "How much do you know about daeva -?"

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"Uh, I read the news..."

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"Some Elf must've summoned a demon who talked to a linguist and now all the demons are excited."

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"They didn't know already?"

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"No."

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"- uh. Okay. Do you want to talk to Aaron -"

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"- sorry, I don't know who any of you are individually, just that you're Elves and make arty video games."

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"Do you have questions? Or just want to meet people, or..."

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"I wanna know why there's a pocket of Elves in Chicago! And Vienna, do you know the ones there?"

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"Yeah. They never moved, might ask Vienna why it decided to grow up around Imladris. We came here when people started returning to Europe saying there was another continent west of here - there shouldn't have been, see - and then we stayed because it's less dense."

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"Shouldn't have been?"

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"...used to be going west would take you to Valinor."

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"I don't think the demons know about Valinor yet."

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"..are you sure? Uh, Valinor's where practically all of us are, it's slower paced and prettier. They'll find out as soon as they wonder where someone they've heard of is, more or less."

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"This might be what's in the gaps in the conjuration, they were getting spotty results. Demons can't make magic things? They can't make Elves either."

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"Huh. Do you get updates from demons about this?"

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"If you summon them it's not hard to get their newspapers."

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"Don't you have to pay them?"

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"Quote, 'I wanna go to a real mall and buy a coffee with money!'"

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"...I will keep that in mind, thank you."

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"That's if you try a few and let them talk," he advises. "How come you aren't in Valinor with the rest of you?"

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"I didn't think it would suit me."

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"Why not?"

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"How long are you here?"

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"I'm not in a hurry. ...by the standards of a twentysomething, you may have come to find that days are eyeblinks."

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She smiles. "Little bit. All right. A while ago even as we count it the Valar, who made Valinor and keep it peaceful, extended to the Elves an invitation to join them there. Ordinarily it wouldn't have appealed to anyone - they were eccentric and alien and their world even moreso, no place to see the stars. But one of their number had spent the previous few centuries stalking and kidnapping our people, and breeding and releasing horrible monsters that made it unsafe for us to travel or live or have children, and so some peoples were tempted by the Valar's offer. They'd captured him by then, but declined to do anything about the monsters. My people were not charmed. We remained behind. And that worked out all right until they released him again, and he returned to the world in full force to carry on his campaign of destruction, and by the time they followed to stop him many of our people were dead at his hands and many more dead at the hands of the Elves from Valinor, who had learned weaponry but not wisdom there."

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Nod.

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"You still go there if you die. Some people, resurrected, pleaded with them to be permitted to leave, and after a long time they permitted a one-time emigration on the condition we as intended by fate withdraw from the world, have no children, do no, ah, steering..."

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"Will they let you go home again if you get hit by a cement truck?"

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"I don't expect so, no. We have better-than-human reflexes."

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"I guess it's worked this long. Did you die or did you - not die?"

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"I have not, personally, died. Just stayed."

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"- sorry if that was a personal question. If they wouldn't let the people they let leave do so again what's the enforcement mechanism for not steering? Will they show up to complain if you run for President?"

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"I don't' think they're paying any attention, but Eru might be, and things might go badly accordingly."

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"If more humans find out what the demons already know - might take a while, depending, but if nothing else it'll get through Fairyland and Heaven sooner or later - you will get attention; will that get you in trouble?"

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"We will probably just close up shop here and wait until people forget about it."

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"I'm not sure that will work."

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"Oh? Why not?"

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"I mean, it might work fine, I don't know, but I'd expect people to be pretty excited about hidey magical Elves and if they summon demons they can find you even if you don't have an accessible street address."

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"Aren't there laws about that?"

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"Yes, but if people were very excited they might break the law."

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"I mean, 'magical Elves living in forest are occasionally harassed by trespassing humans, ask local authorities to please escort the trespassing humans home' doesn't seem especially the kind of problem that'd bring gods down on us."

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"Yeah, you might be fine."

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"We'll pick a big forest in which it's inconvenient to find us even with a demon, they'll stomp around - or have a fairy fly them around - in twenty years they'll have forgotten all about it. You said they found out about this because someone summoned? Do you know who, have they been warned -"

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"The paper didn't say."

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"Aaron says no one's summoned anybody yet."

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"Who's that?"

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"Our CEO. He'd know - there aren't very many of us - and he called Imladris to confirm -"

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"That's Vienna?"

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"Yes."

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"The Hell paper's called the Achaari Impario - uh, I'm not sure how to translate that concisely - if you want to corroborate."

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"We'll look into hiring someone, yes. Do you do summoning professionally?"

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"No, I used to teach it but I eventually found the commute prohibitive."

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"Hmm?"

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"I'm not gonna summon a fairy to take me to and from school every day. Good circles take a long time to write out and double-check and even fairies could get expensive on a professor salary." Shrug.

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"Can you recommend us someone who does summoning professionally?"

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"Nah, I've never been in the market. Sorry."

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"Well. Thank you for making us aware of this."

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"You're welcome."

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She takes a phone call.

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He goes away. He emails the Fëanorians what the conversation was like.

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Lying low until the drama peters out is plausibly a good idea.

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Possible. I don't think they'll be up in arms about it if they learn that you, like, exist, she seemed pretty sold on the not doing much thing.

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I bet someone'll take it on themselves to be up in arms about our existence, though.

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It is not impossible.

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Nelyo, can we sit a couple decades out?

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Sure, but I expect the government to do a much worse job of handling the transition to summoning. I suppose I can try to get a lot of good people hired before I leave. 

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Are they likely to be less up in arms if you happen to be unemployed at the time?

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'government summoning authority run by ancient alien war criminal' seems like a very bad headline.

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I will grant you that.

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I can retire.

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I can recommend students of mine who were good when they were in college?

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By all means! Maybe one of our foundations can repay student loans for summoners who go into government work, functionally increase the salary and so forth.

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Sure. Thea Fisher - He has a list.

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He will wrangle a role in hiring and have one of their foundations reach out to listed persons and put a competent summoning department together.

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There is a Hell-Fairyland concordance.

Six weeks later a fairy and a map zip weirdly over the Atlantic Ocean.

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And there it is. An impossibly tall mountain range, and a continent past that.

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Wow!

Up and over! Wheeeeee!

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It's pretty! Stunningly so! Landscaping concept art come to life, thousands and thousands of miles of it. There are occasional cities. This one's in white stone and glittering.

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Oooo. The fairy goes to the white stone city.

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The fairy attracts hella stares.

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That's reasonable! She is a round-eared five foot two person with monarch butterfly wings and flyaway-fine black hair that only comes to her shoulders, they might need a moment to familiarize themselves.

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They take more than a moment.

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She floats about a foot off the ground and drifts through the city, looking at the pretty. She keeps to a sedate walking pace.

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Do you need something to tie up your hair? a particularly daring Elf offers helpfully.

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Oh, it won't stay in things. It's okay, it doesn't tangle much even when I fly real fast. Thank you though!

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You really need to put up your hair if you're going to be around people.

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Is that the local custom or something? Her hair twists into a bun. I can do that but I have to hold it, is it really important?

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It's really important, the Elf says emphatically.

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Gosh. Okay. I guess I can just do that then but it really won't stay in things. Maybe a scarf. I don't have a scarf.

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I can get you a scarf! 

She comes back with one a couple minutes later. It's very pretty.

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The scarf is pulled gently from her hands and wrapped around the fairy's head and tied neatly. Awesome, thanks!

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Sure! Uh, how do you do that?

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It's a triangle twist! I can do it again slower if you want to see.

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...I meant the making things fly, not the tie.

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Oh, sorry, I can't teach you.

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That's okay, how do you do it?

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I just sort of do! There aren't steps, things just move when I want them to.

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Huh. Well, welcome to Tirion. Are you looking for somebody?

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I don't know anybody here! It's so nice though.

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Thank you!

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I should've asked for more than a day to look around! Maybe I can come back sometime.

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Where did you come from?

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I had to come this really windy way across the ocean!

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Oh, you came from the human world? Weird, it's not really supposed to be possible to get here from there unless you're an Elf.

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Well I came through it but I'm not from it! I'm a fairy.

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I've never heard of fairies. Maybe they can come here, I'm not sure. You could make sure it's all right with the Valar.

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There wasn't a sign. Hey, do you want to know how to summon fairies? Then we wouldn't have to come through the human world to get here.

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Sure!

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Cool! I brought my Kindle! It is a book reader. It has a summoning textbook on it, although it takes the fairy a few minutes to find it.

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How does that work?

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I have no idea. It's not even compatible with most of the electronics at home, I should've asked for something else. But it's pretty neat! Summoning textbook.

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...I can't read that alphabet and I doubt I know that language. I doubt anyone does.

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Oh right! Yeah that's a thing! I can translate it for you if you summon me? I can copy out a circle for you and it'll still work and then once you've done it I'll know your language. I can do that, see, that's why I forgot.

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Oh, neat! How do I summon you?

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I need a big piece of paper or some floor I can write on!

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...okay! My sister's house is near here.

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Which way?

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She starts walking. I don't know if summoning will be allowed but if it is then it sounds lovely!

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Well, if your sister doesn't want you to do it in her house I can just draw the circle for you outside.

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I mean it might not be allowed in Valinor at all.

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I think it would probably also work on a boat!

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I don't really have a good way of getting across the mountains and that would be kind of antisocial behavior.

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I could bring you over the mountains if you wanted to go. I don't know very much about boating, I've never gone, but I feel like it could be sociable if you brought people.

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...no, I mean, if there were a rule against summoning, evading it by going technically outside Valinor would be antisocial, because it would be treating the rule as something to get around instead of - a civic principle in addition to a legal one -

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It's illegal to set off fireworks in Elfame so people who want to set off fireworks go to Alar Tara or the sticks or something and do it there! Then Elfame doesn't have any fireworks in it. Works fine.

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...but if they pointed the fireworks at Elfame that'd be antisocial behavior, right? And if people you summon just immediately cross the mountains then it's sort of like that.

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Oh, Alar Tara is real far away, I don't think there are fireworks that go that far. Anyway I think if fairies weren't allowed here there would be a sign.

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I don't really see why there would be a sign.

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So I'd know! It wouldn't be fair if I wasn't allowed in and didn't even know.

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Oh, I'm sure they won't be mad you're here since you didn't know, but I don't think they knew there were fairies so they might not have put up a sign about it.

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Everyone found out about fairies six years ago! It was so exciting!

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Well, I don't think anyone here did that.

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I guess maybe you don't get the news here.

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Not news about humans, no. Which is good, human news is not very suited to Valinor.

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Well, that's the point of news about faraway places, you find out what happened to faraway people!

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But if the news is upsetting or horrible or too fast-paced or would inspire antisocial behavior then we shouldn't get it. They reach the sister's house. Pen and paper are found.

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I don't understand. Draw draw draw.

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I don't either, really, because it'd probably involve studying the upsetting things and I haven't done that. But...humans sometimes kill each other for no reason. If we got a news story about how one set of humans was going to try to kill another set for no reason, people would be really sad and worried and maybe want to try to do something, and that'd be disruptive to Valinor and traumatic for people who are old enough to remember the wars, and it'd be very disrespectful to do that.

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But if you would want to do things why don't you want to do things?

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Well, we couldn't do things. We'd just want to and then not be able to.

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Why couldn't you?

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Oh, you can't leave Valinor and go interfere in the human world.

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Why?

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Complicated historical reasons I'm not very informed about.

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Oh. Well, if they didn't know about fairies there can't be a rule. Here you go, a textbook circle with my name in it, you can just fill it in later.

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Thank you! There isn't a rule right now but they might make a rule.

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If they haven't so far why would they do it tomorrow?

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Well, because now they know fairies exist?

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They do?

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...yes, because you came here and thousands of people saw you.

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If the Valar saw me and decided I wasn't allowed they should have said!

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I don't think they've decided yet! It hasn't been very long and there are probably lots of things to consider. 

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Fairies are useful! Humans summon us to do things for them.

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They might be totally okay with it! They're really reasonable and they just want everyone to be happy. But they might want no fairies while they think about it, or no fairies bringing humans or human news, or only fairies who know the laws here and follow them, or something like that.

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It doesn't sound like they want fairies and humans to be happy.

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They tried making humans happy and it was a horrible disaster and ended with the humans they gave nice stuff enslaving all the other humans and invading Valinor. So after that they decided the best way to make humans happy was to not get involved at all. Maybe they can make fairies happy, I don't know what fairies want.

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We like stuff! Everything here is really pretty.

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Then maybe they'll look into it and decide giving fairies lots and lots of pretty stuff is not very likely to lead to the fairies with nice stuff enslaving other fairies and invading, and then it'll probably be okay.

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It'd be really hard for fairies to enslave each other! We can move faster than we can see so if we don't wanna be someplace we can just take off and whoever we're flying away from doesn't even know which way we went.

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That does sound like it'd solve it. 

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Yeah. It's pretty great. Do you wanna fly around?

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Sure! We could go see my cousins down in Vinyamar.

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The fairy smooths out the paper circle and floats out of the house. She picks up the Elf gently. Which way?

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Southwest. She giggles.

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The fairy goes up and then southwest!

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And after a lot of pretty Elven countryside there's totally another city, built into a mountain in an asymmetrical spiral. That's the one.

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There's someone waiting for them on the ground who is not an Elf. The air pressure does something funny as they get closer.

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The fairy stops getting closer when she notices that and goes around and puts the Elf down.

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Hello. Welcome to Valinor. How are you doing that?

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Oh, there's some kind of air pressure thing around you, I just went around it.

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How are you floating through the air?

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That's actually easier than bringing the air along! Air is invisible so moving it takes practice.

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Please stop it.

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Stop what?

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Employing unfamiliar magic.

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It's okay, I know what I'm doing, I've been doing it for decades, I'm not going to crash into anybody.

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You were not invited here, you have not explained your capabilities, and while we may well find these reassurances satisfactory, we do not at this time. Please stop employing your unfamiliar magic.

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I asked before I flew her anywhere!

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Who did you ask?

The fairy is no longer telekinetic.

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The fairy collapses to the ground and shrieks.

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Please calm down, we're not going to hurt you. You have magical invulnerability to harm which will remain in place, it's a very good idea. We may offer it to everybody. 

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I fell I fell I can't get up ow -

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Do you require healing?

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I can't get up what did you do to me?!

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I suppressed your unfamiliar magic after you ignored two requests to cease employing it until we'd discussed the matter further. 

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I can't get up!

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As far as I can determine you are physically uninjured. Do you require some kind of assistive mobility device?

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I don't know what you're talking about!

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She materializes and offers a pair of crutches.

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The fairy looks at them in bewilderment and starts crying.

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The Elf timidly steps forward and says something in a language the fairy doesn't speak. The Vala responds.

 

They talk for a long time. Hours and hours.

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The fairy doesn't move. She fumbles with her Kindle, after it's been a couple hours, dropping it seventeen times before she manages to prop it up on her knee and poke the buttons without sending it flying.

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After a few hours she is asked if she would like food or water or anything.

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I want to get up.

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...Varda offers her a hand.

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Don't touch me don't touch me don't touch me! I can't move you can't just try to touch people who can't move!

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All right. She drops the hand and goes back to talking with the Elf.

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Eventually the fairy vanishes.

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The conversation continues! Whether to permit summoning is an important topic that merits probably a Year's deliberation; interested parties are invited to Taniquetil for the discussion.

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The next time a fairy is summoned in Matt's department he says to his summoner, "Did you know there are fairy-hating monsters on a hidden Elf continent?"

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"...hidden Elf continent?"

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Nod nod. "Some demons discovered it by conjuration a while ago and this sweet little baker girl from Elfame who takes summonses now and again went to go have a look while she was on summon and she met an Elf and was perfectly friendly and then a monster told her to stop moving and when she didn't land and drop everything - who asks somebody to stop moving? - the monster made her magic stop working. She never learned to walk and her roommates have to help her do everything now and it's all over the papers."

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"...humans didn't know there was a secret Elf continent. It has monsters who can...make magic stop working? Hidden where -"

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"The demons have a map, I don't have a copy with me but any demon could make it for you."

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"Uh. Well, thank you for telling me."

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He writes Cam. Read the news in Fairyland?

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I don't read a word of any fairy languages. Why?

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Apparently someone went to Valinor, freaked the Valar, they disabled her magic, everyone's terrified and furious...

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Well. That is sort of terrifying and infuriating. And we have officially lost control of the situation.

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I don't blame them for being terrified and furious, no. At least the way it came out should deter anybody else from trying to go visit - in a way it'd be worse if they'd been friendly and then the first time there was an incident disabled all the daeva everywhere and murdered the one responsible -

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I just did quick-and-dirty timeslicing on what she was up to while she was there and among the answers is 'writing herself a circle'. I bet she won't answer it, who'd wanna go back after that, but it now exists in Valinor as an example.

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Well, if they just disabled daeva magic I don't expect they're about to allow summoning. 

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Allow as a matter of policy or a matter of magic?

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Both? I don't know - it's been more than thirty thousand years, I really cannot emphasize how out-of-date my information about the Valar and their capabilities is.

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It might be that nobody tries visiting again soon, but I don't think people will settle for not knowing much about the secret continent with the magic-disabling powers.

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Doesn't seem likely. Magic-disabling monsters, the fairies are saying. I - can you think of any safe way to get a message to some people in Valinor now -

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...would the magic-disabling stop at the border, or -

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Well, magic continues to work here, but I wouldn't count on it working everywhere on windy sea-route...

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"Ask a Chicago Elf very, very nicely".

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Be my guest.

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I'm not averse to trying but I'd want a real clear idea of what to say.

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Like I said, I'm thirty thousand years worth of misinformed, I don't know if they've gotten better or worse, I don't actually know how I'd want to steer this even given any steering power and it's not going to be that much longer I have any.

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You could try summoning somebody who knows the sad fairy and get more up to date information? Or at least a translation of the paper.

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Might do that this evening, we're following up on the information for security reasons.

 

 

You could come forward as Revelation, explain the existence of an afterlife, explain the existence of Valinor, be credible by being more informed than anyone...

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Yeah. I guess I could do that. I will... start thinking about how to do that, I'd want the full story on the fairy first.

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Working on it.

 

They file an incident report and get authorization to work on the secret Elf continent thing immediately for national security reasons. Does Mrindeh want to come in immediately for a bonus and do some conjuration related to the existence of a secret Elf continent?

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Mrindeh is up for that!

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When standard conjurations fail he proposes the substitutions thing that let Cam get it. They're very meticulous. They don't touch on questions that would lead one to have information about Elves living on Earth. 

 

But that's really not going to hold very long.

 

Matt takes six glass models to his superiors and describes the series of conjurations - "but in any event I can confirm it. I was born there."

The President is pulled away from vacation for an urgent briefing. The Internet is buzzing with questions, other fairies having complained of the same thing. 

 

And later that evening he writes that he doesn't anticipate having time to talk to the fairy's friends, can someone else do it?

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"Cam you wanna give us circles?"

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Cam digs up the fairy's lease and finds her roommates' names and gives them circles.

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He'll finish one.

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Doesn't show up right away.

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"If I were them I'd be wary of summonses." But he finishes another one.

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There is a five minute delay, and then the first fairy shows up.

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"Hi. We're trying to figure out what happened in Valinor, are you interested in helping us out?"

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"- this isn't Valinor? You've got the language."

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"I grew up there and got kicked out for delinquency."

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"Good for you. What happened is Shipka went sightseeing and made a friend and then ran into a monster that crippled her and left her crying on the ground trying to figure out how to use her hands until she was dismissed."

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"Did she describe the monster."

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"Giant Elf lady with glitter all over her and personal space enforced by fucking with the air pressure."

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Nod. "And she still doesn't have her magic back?"

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"Still doesn't. The only thing she knows how to do with her muscles are twitch her wings, blink, breathe, talk, and chew. Some fairies don't bother learning to move without magic, why would we."

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"Did anyone tell them that? Not that I'm blaming her but it affects whether there might be anything to be gained by telling them that."

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"She told the monster she couldn't get up. The monster tried to give her some kind of sticks, I don't know what that was about."

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"Might've been magic? They have a lot of magic." Sigh. "Did the monster say why -"

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"It kept telling her to stop using her 'unfamiliar magic' - what kind of description is that, 'unfamiliar magic', how's she supposed to know what's familiar? - and she was explaining that she knew what she was doing, asked permission before taking the Elf for a ride, etcetera. She couldn't stop, stopping is 'being collapsed in a heap on the ground' -"

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Nod. "Is anyone else likely to try visiting Valinor?"

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"We're thinking of trying to fling a letter over the mountains at them, see if that does anything. If they can even fix her."

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"I'm sure they can fix it. Would you be willing to consider flinging a letter not for them over the mountains - or maybe a couple thousand of them, make sure one reaches the right set of eyes -"

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"It'd be hard to aim for a smaller target than the giant mountain from over the mountains, but might as well be struck motionless for a thousand letters as for one."

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Shiver. "I wouldn't ask anyone to risk it. But if you're going to anyway, I have a cousin, and she'd know how to badger the Valar about it most effectively - likelier to convince them, see -"

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"Not me, we were gonna send somebody who could do okay without magic if he really had to."

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"Well. I can give you a note to take that person and I bet Nelyo'd want one too while we're at it."

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"He's not going to actually go over the mountains. He can send them paper airplanes."

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"Sure. I don't even know where they are - though I guess, uh, Cam -"

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"If we assume they're home, yeah."

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"I bet they're in a place where they'd get a message meant for them, anyway. Uh, Irissë, and the person Nelyo'll want to write is Findekáno -"

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"Are these going to be unique names?"

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"I have no idea but I don't expect to have other cousins with those names."

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"I can work with that." Little carefully demagicked models -

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They both exist! Their surroundings are pretty Elf architecture.

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Of course they are. Scaled up?

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Southeastern part of the continent, looks like.

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Cam copies the map that got sent to Fairyland and marks spots, and takes pictures of the architecture-and-surroundings and attaches them gently to the map near there.

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And he writes a note in a very ancient military cipher.

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"You want me to make a bunch of copies, leaflet the place to be sure they get where they're going?"

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"Wait for Nelyo. But then yes."

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"Who is it who was thinking of going?" Cam asks the fairy.

"Nosso, probably, he thinks it'd be very heroic. Also he's a marriage counselor, won't lose his job or anything if he gets crippled."

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"They might be able to do worse than that. I don't think it's likely but he should be informed."

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"Worse like -?"

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"They can read minds, they can tamper with memories -make a couple hours feel like decades -"

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"My word, somebody's got to save the Elves."

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"It's been attempted."

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"They're all trapped there with the monsters!"

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"They are used to it and have really low standards and wouldn't like human society any better."

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"I'm not so much saying 'evacuate them' as 'get rid of the monsters' - the Elves can have the place -"

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"It has been tried. The war lasted six hundred years and killed more than half the people who existed at the time and continents sank and we lost."

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"Well, you didn't have daeva then!"

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"I like you. It's still a bad idea."

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"We'll try letters first but Shipka needs her magic back."

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Sigh. "Yeah."

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"She's very photogenic, you could probably summon ten randoms and seven of them would help with random monster-fighting plans for free, if you ever thought of something."

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"We'll think of something, it just might take longer than I bet y'all'll be okay with."

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Sigh.

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"Anyway that's all the questions I had. You can write me if anything else comes up we should know."

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"I'll conjure for it, address it 'care of Cam'," Cam says when the fairy looks confused.

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"Anything we can get you for your time?"

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"Shipka likes these little candies -" He describes the candies. Cam gives him a supply and fills out the rest of his shopping list. "- and take down the circle for Rora, if you wanna talk again just grab me."

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"Okay." He rolls it up. " - yeah Nelyo wants to send a letter, lemme write it out for you -" And he does that.

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Cam makes a bunch of copies for the fairy. The fairy takes them along with everything else.

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And he sends the fairy home.

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"Poor Shipka."

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"Yeah. Maybe we should've gotten out in front of it and warned everyone not to try it." Sigh.

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"Somebody might've anyway. Maybe not Shipka, I guess."

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"Yeah, someone who was at least informed about the risk."

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He comes downstairs. "Fairies are upset?"

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"Fairies wanna kill the Valar."

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"Did you tell them that that's a catastrophically bad idea which probably ends with billions of people dead."

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"Yeah, of course. They want to go for it anyway. ...might be demons can do reembodiments, might be nuking a Vala kills them -"

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"Nuking Valinor after they demagicked one fairy is hella escalation."

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"Nuking Valinor before they demagic all the fairies, is I think the idea, though nukes were not actually mentioned and it's possible that observing that's a lower bound on the necessary amount of collateral damage might get them to chill."

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"Did Nelyo -"

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"Want to rain letters down on Fingon's head? Yeah. And I wrote Irissë. It's been thirty thousand years, though, it's kind of hard to guess - Nelyo opened his letter with 'dear cousin, I'm not sure if you'll remember me, but...' - and I don't think he was joking -"

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"If nukes would do it - and if demons can do reembodiments -"

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"I wouldn't shed any tears."

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"I second the 'hella escalation' observation, although it must look like an obvious next step to the fairies."

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"Yeah, societies full of invulnerable immortal people who basically don't have violent crime tend to - never develop a concept of 'wrongs not worth escalating over', or a history to learn caution from."

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"I don't think it's that. Well, maybe it's partially that. More they got exactly the wrong first impression - 'hostile imprisoners of duped friendlies, who make us vulnerable in new ways' -"

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Sigh.

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"Well, the Hell-Fairyland concordance just happened so they will at minimum have a really really hard time getting their hands on any nukes until the next one."

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"I mean. They could always conventionally manufacture one or, given the chance, steal them from humans."

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" - we could just say 'fuck it', get out now, go live with the Dwarves -"

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"I am inclined to take this mess as evidence we're still Doomed and so, yes, do that."

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"You still don't know how to bounce off Valinor. Do you even have a spaceship design?"

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"I think it's close. We could go hang out on Alpha Centauri in the meantime, if we haven't got a way to get to Dwarves."

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"Four and a bit light years each way is a hike for 'in the meantime'."

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Elves blink at him confusedly.

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"For human psychology, a long trip must ideally be justified by a longer stay."

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"Yes, I think we'd probably spend at least a couple decades there."

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"I wouldn't, I'd want to be dismissed as soon as you were in summoning-quality gravity again, I already did the thing where I missed my parents for multiple years. I mean, go for it if you can find another demon to keep you in stuff that long."

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"Or get a space station spinny enough you can summon in it. I think they're working on that too."

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"Yeah, that'd solve it."

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"I wouldn't expect it to be that hard, not assuming acceleration that isn't gravity works."

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"I do not know if it does."

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"I have a test scheduled for next year."

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"Anything the fairies do might move faster than that if they get opportunities."

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Sigh. "Well, if one steals a nuke we'll hear about it and I don't expect they could make them very fast if they don't have reactors already - do they -"

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"Fairies have other power generation solutions, so no."

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"Then even if they all decided to go right for nukes it would really surprise me if they had them before next year. And if they try things short of that it just won't work - 

 

- if they convinced some angel or some demon to make a black hole, though -"

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"That would require more coordination than opportunism, but, yeah."

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"Think there're people who'd do it?"

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"Probably some."

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"That either ends with everyone in Valinor dead or with Eru intervening and if Eru intervenes we're megafucked."

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"I'm thinking but my reveal-I'm-Revelation trick only gets attention not obedience!"

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"Not blaming you. We should get the third Silmaril before someone else does, though."

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"Could try Miler again."

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"Yeah. Circle?"

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Circle.

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He finishes it.

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Miler takes a while to show up.

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Elves watch the news and sing.

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Miler appears after about an hour. "Hey, did you know -"

"- fairy-hating monsters, yeah."

"Oh. Well, that."

"I know, it's terrible, the poor girl."

"Yeah. So what do you need?"

"Some asshole thought it'd be funny to leave a shiny on Venus."

"Uh. I guess if I wait till you can literally see Venus from Earth I could get there but I dunno how to fly back. You want me to go pick it up and then dismiss me and summon me back for it?"

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"Would keeping hold of it be any kind of problem, it's a big deal if it gets lost..."

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"I don't see why that'd come up? I don't have to put it down. You can just draw another circle while I'm still here - that works, right?"

"That works," Cam confirms.

"And then soon as I'm dismissed I can grab it?"

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"Sounds great. Thank you. So we can pay you up front for this leg, and then pay you again for the delivery?"

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"Yeah, sing pretty," says Miler, grinning and bobbing up and down in the air.

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Elves sing so pretty.

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Soooo pretty!

And then Cam gets ahold of a guide to the night sky and identifies Venus for Miler and gives him plenty of little models to help him triangulate the shiny and loads him up on coffee. Off the fairy goes.

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Elves go back to watching the news.

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Cam checks on Miler now and then, and - "He's there," and, "- he's got it."

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He can go home.

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He comes back. With the shiny. "Yo."

"Yo!"

"This thing makes my house look awesome."

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"It does that. What do you want for it?"

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"Eh, I'm fresh out of material goods needs, I'll just take some more singing pretty. You guys should go pro."

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"One of my brothers sometimes does." More singing pretty.

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Miler bobs around to the music and then hands over the shiny.

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They wear gloves to take it.

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"Is this thing radioactive or something, do I need to warn my neighbor, she has pets."

"Nah, fingerprints," lies Cam.

"I poked it, izzat a problem?"

"Occupational hazard, don't worry about it."

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"Thank you so much."

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"No problem," says Miler. "Venus is pretty, I'm gonna paint it."

"Neat," says Cam.

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And home he goes. Celegorm takes the third Silmaril to his father. 

 

 

The existence of a hidden Elf continent is now breaking news on all channels.

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And Nosso manages to get a cooperative summoner and he and a whole lotta notes go zipping through the windy path to Valinor.

He flings the notes over the mountains first, then grabs his binoculars and zips forward to make sure they land where they belong -

- goes a little too far and can't arrest his momentum and goes careening through the sky hollering "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" until he crashes into a triceratops. The triceratops does not survive the experience.

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Its neighbors stampede away in terror. 

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This fairy knows how to walk.

He grimly picks himself up and pats out the friction fires in his clothes and looks around for a direction in which to walk.

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There's a very pretty city built into a cliff a while thataway! It actually looks like some people from it are coming towards him.

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I just came here to drop some letters. Didn't mean to come in over the mountains, he tells them sourly.

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Are you a fairy?  I think right now fairies are prohibited while their divine graces figure out what to do about them. There's a sign, the girl who met the last fairy said it was important that there be a sign if fairies were going to be not allowed.

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I didn't see the sign, but anyway I didn't want to be here, I just flung some letters over and then my magic cut out while I had forward momentum.

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Oh. Well, we can get a carriage and take you back out to the edge.

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Unlike the last fairy your monsters crippled I know how to walk. I can't get over the mountains like this. I'll be dismissed in a week.

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...monsters?

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Our only interaction with the Valar has been them crippling and traumatizing peaceful visitors and we don't feel inspired to call them their divine graces.

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...calling them the Valar works fine. I didn't know they'd been crippling and traumatizing people, are you guys maybe traumatizable by things that wouldn't bother Elves?

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I'm not traumatized, Shipka is. She can't do anything without her magic.

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That sounds very hard. Were you coming to petition the Valar to fix it?

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I wasn't going to personally come over the mountains, since that worked out really badly for Shipka. I threw a letter at them. I crashed because my magic cut out while I was moving forward, explains the fairy patiently.

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Oh. Do you need anything?

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I would like my and Shipka's magic back immediately.

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We can send a messenger to go petition the Valar about that, I don't expect it'll be any trouble as long as you stay away from Valinor. Anything else?

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If I'm going to be stuck here until I'm dismissed I could use things like food and shelter but I don't strictly require them. And I'd like to be able to verify the letters got where they were supposed to.

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Where were they supposed to get to?

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One of them was supposed to get to Taniquetil and a couple others were addressed to some Elves. I had a map but it caught fire when I was uncontrollably hurled through the air by the monsters' idiot border protections.

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I understand that you just had an upsetting experience but please don't call people monsters.

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They can prove they're not when my friend isn't crying on the floor having to be fed all her meals by other people and then I'll cut it out. If they act like monsters I'm going to call them monsters.

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I don't have very much information about the situation.

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I heard it all firsthand from Shipka.

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The Valar have been protecting us for forty thousand years and it's not at all absurd they'd have hurt someone accidentally while suddenly confronted with new powerful magic, but that doesn't make them monsters. We don't bother anybody. We just want to be left alone. We put up giant mountains and made Valinor nearly impossible to find so we'd be left alone.

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I might buy that if they'd fixed it after she started crying and telling them she couldn't get up.

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How should they have fixed it, returning to her the capability to murder thousands of people at will?

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She was under a binding and hadn't hurt anybody.

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What's a binding?

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Sigh. When somebody summons a daeva they can add bits to the circle to make sure we aren't dangerous, if they don't trust us. She had one and couldn't have hurt anybody even if she'd wanted to, which she didn't. If the Valar don't want everybody in Fairyland calling them monsters they should be more careful about crippling harmless peaceful visitors and then leaving them that way.

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I'm sure they will be more careful! I don't actually know that they'd care what everyone in Fairyland says, I just find it upsetting. Here 'monsters' is reserved for 'spent thousands of years horrifically torturing everyone they could reach', not 'hurt someone by suppressing their magic in a panic', so if you say the Valar are monsters people are just going to think you mean something different than what you actually mean.

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Separately a lot of people have issues with how they're trapping you all here but I'm starting to think you like it that way.

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Yes, we used to go to the other worlds and it caused horrible suffering for everyone involved and then we tried intervening remotely and that did too and so now we just like to be left alone.

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He sighs. He picks triceratops out of his hair.

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Elves ride out to meet him! They have snacks and a change of clothes.

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He changes into the clothes. He has a snack.

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They are curious about fairies! What are fairies like, what do they do, what kind of stories do they tell, what are their cities like...

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I'd love to tell you all about fairies but I thought everyone was agreed that I shouldn't even be here? he remarks.

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...everyone never agrees on anything. The temporary decision while they debate more permanent things was that fairies shouldn't be here but that was mostly because the last one was really upset and we weren't sure how to not upset additional ones. And also we were worried someone would come who did want to hurt people.

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They need to figure out a different way of keeping us out, I sure wasn't trying to come in, just send letters. The last one, as she explained at the time, was upset because she could not get up. She didn't know how to walk. Or move in general.

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And as of right now I don't think anyone has a solution for that besides 'give you the power to rip the continent in half' and we are not sure if we would prefer to have neighbors who can do that. I don't think they knew about the bindings thing, maybe that will be an acceptable solution.

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Might be more convincing if she weren't still crippled when she got home.

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Um, okay?

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Look, I have nothing against you personally but nothing about what the monster did to her was reasonable.

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This is why we try so hard to get people to leave us alone.

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You're protecting us from the monsters? Very noble of you.

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...no? Whenever there's contact with other societies they end up very angry and unhappy and usually violent as a result. And the only real way to fix it is to avoid them.

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Well, the fairy population is angry and unhappy because a monster hurt Shipka, yep. We decided to send you letters about it. I want her whole again.

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Yes, you said. I don't think that'll be a problem at all, as long as she leaves us alone.

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I don't think she'll take another summon for a hundred years.

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The Elves nod like this is very reasonable. Back they go towards their city. It's very pretty.

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Is he supposed to follow them?

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Uh, I assume you'd rather be in a city while everything gets straightened out? You aren't obliged...

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I guess it's better than waiting for the triceratopses to come back. He follows.

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They're herbivores, but not all of the dinosaurs around here are.

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There's unfriendly herbivores, and I can't keep them off me like this. Walk walk. Occasional flinchy reactions to noticing over and over in a hundred ways that his powers are gone.

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They remain curious what Fairyland is like.

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Fairyland is colorful and flat and vast. You can fly fast as you please in any direction forever and there are more and more mountains and rivers and oceans and valleys and forests and deserts and plants and creatures to see. Fairies who do that sort of thing learn to navigate by the stars - they have stars, even though they're not a planet - so they can find their way back to civilization, if they like, should they get turned around. Civilization is a sprawl of everybody with a culture setting up to live it someplace nobody else was using. The biggest city is called Elfame and he lives there with his roommates, friends he fell in with a few decades ago when he met Shipka at the architecture museum.

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The Elves think that sounds really lovely.

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Yes, Fairyland is very nice. And a few years ago summoning got way more popular, so now if you want you can try to catch summonses to Earth and talk to humans, who are also nice and will trade for moving things around.

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What sort of things do they trade? What does their world look like?

(They're also a bit confused humans are nice but maybe they got nicer recently.)

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Well, he hasn't met many humans but the one he met was nice and he hears that most of them are and they have good TV if you don't mind subtitles or have their language. - he just got a pun in his favorite show he'd missed the first time through. Humans can also summon demons and angels, so they can trade fairies nice things it would be annoying to make the long way, or just let them visit Earth (or space) locations which are different and interesting.

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Demons and angels?

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They're like fairies but with different powers. They send fairies nice things (well, and fairies also send angels nice things; that concordance has a two-way train setup) and are also summoned by humans, to make stuff or change stuff.

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What do fairy cities look like, do all fairies have the kind of wings he has, how did fairies find Valinor...

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Fairies who haven't met up with a demon or an angel on Earth and gotten weird cosmetic alterations done have wings loosely like his with different shapes and designs and colors, but the bug wing theme is a constant. Fairy cities are more vertical than Elf cities and often extend underground because digging is easy. They like glass and wood and steel and big public murals. They don't so much have, um, streets. They are really not designed for people with Shipka's problem or, now, his own problem, but at least he knows how to walk and will be able to get around in his own apartment.

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....oh, that makes sense, if everything's built assuming everyone has powerful magic then not having powerful magic would make it hard just to get around. Do most fairies know how to walk?

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Most of them are better at it than Shipka, but plenty never pick it up. The most common prompt for developing the skill of nonmagically moving around, other than "it seemed worth knowing and you finally get around to it" is sex, and she's ace.

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(That is translated to the rest of their audience as 'unmarried'.) What are the prettiest places in Fairyland? Does it really go on forever, how do they know?

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It really does. The fairies were already pretty sure but some demons checked for them at teeny tiny scale and they got bored way before they found any edges. He likes this set of waterfalls near Elfame.

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And they're back at the cliffside city! It has stone stairs. Does he need help navigating the stone stairs.

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He can figure it out. He'll be okay if he falls down them.

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People blink at him curiously but mostly don't gawk. Someone finds him a room; it looks out on a valley where there's now a whole herd of dinosaurs grazing. Someone else brings dinner.

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Dinner's nice. Spice profile is weird but that's not unexpected.

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He is encouraged to let them know if he needs anything.

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Do they happen to know if the letters got where they were going.

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They sent someone to check but without knowing where they were supposed to be going it'll be a bit.

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How long, his summoner'll dismiss him after a while.

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Hard to predict; if they happen to run into the people who got the messages, then any hour now, but if they have to scour the whole continent for them it could be weeks.

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Well, he's reasonably sure he at least started lobbing them at the places they were supposed to go, which he could find on a map if they have a map.

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They have a map!

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Point.

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That'll save time in finding people!

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Good. It would suck if he were crippled to deliver letters that didn't arrive.

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A few days later a letter recipient arrives. Hi, she says. Uh, how'd you get this message?

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My roommate got summoned by some guy who wanted to add to the letter packet as long as we were going to send one.

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Okay. We sent petitioners to Taniquetil to explain things in terms the Valar will understand. They'll fix it but they might not - are you like humans -

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Uh, except for the magic, indestructibility, wings, looking a bit different, home and culture, and entire history of everything, sure?

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The relevant thing would be whether something taking a month is swift and reasonable or excruciatingly long.

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I can wait that long. Shipka could use a fix faster than that, she can't do her job or go anywhere and she can only feed herself if the things have straws and someone brings them near her face.

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We're trying.

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Thanks.

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How did we, uh, not know about you before now? And how'd you find Valinor in the first place?

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Demons found it. They sent us a map, they're nice and send us copies of everything interesting. I guess you were out of range of Revelation, that's when summoning became widely known to humans.

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Yeah, we're not allowed to pay the humans close attention.

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Then it really shouldn't be surprising when they know things you don't.

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...we lived there for thousands of years. It's weird that we wouldn't have found out then.

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Maybe we didn't exist yet? Demons think daeva are old but not THAT old.

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It was a long time ago but not that long, thirty thousand years?

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That is super long, I don't know of any daeva that old.

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Really? Huh. Then maybe that's all there is to it. Are people from Fairyland going to keep trying to come here?

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There's billions of fairies, I can't speak for all of them. Up to your monsters if they show up angry about Shipka or just wanting to check out the architecture.

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You do realize that if someone picks a fight with the Valar -

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Then we as a society have to figure out how to handle more cripples? Yeah, I'm not advocating that, I showed up with letters, remember? But contrary to human pop culture there is not a Faerie Queene you can have issue a binding resolution over all fairies, we're several billion different people.

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No, it's worse than that. The reason for the isolationism - the real one, not whatever they tell kids these days - is that a long time ago a bunch of angry humans decided to try to invade Valinor. The Valar appealed to Eru for help, and Eru sank the continent they were from, no survivors, and collapsed the mountains on top of the army that landed in Valinor. They are all still there, twenty-eight thousand years later, immortal and stuck forever.

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...well, I'd dig them out, but, crippled.

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Some people've tried. Not allowed. 

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Yeah another reason fairies might come here is to get you lot out from under the monsters.

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I understand the temptation but it would not work.

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How do you know, you didn't even know we existed.

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The Valar can cancel your magic. They did it awkwardly the first time but I bet they'll learn. And when Valinor is attacked they grossly, grossly overreact.

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Evacuating you wouldn't be an attack, that's stupid.

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No one would be tempted to go tell the 'monsters' to fuck off? No one would try pulling the mountains apart to get at the buried people and maybe not be attentive enough about the rockslides this caused a thousand miles off?

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Telling monsters to fuck off, also not an attack. Probably anybody going after the mountains would know how to disassemble and reassemble mountains.

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I don't know the customs where you're from, but here seeking out and confronting someone to threaten them is in fact a crime. 

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'Fuck off' isn't a threat.

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...look, if people do this it will be a disaster that very probably ends with lots of people permanently trapped or dead and maybe ends much, much worse than that. There is no audience to whom you can argue 'oh, tracking someone down with terrifyingly powerful magic in order to demand they flee from their own home is technically not a threat'. Winning the argument gets you absolutely nothing. It is wrong and it is a horrible idea and if someone does it an absolute disaster will result. 

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...you misunderstood me somewhere.

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I'm trying to explain why this is a catastrophe in the making and you're going 'technically, 'threat' is the wrong word for the behavior which will incite this catastrophe!'

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I mean, okay, but also I don't think anyone's going to kidnap you? You're not allowed to leave, if you wanted to leave anyway some fairy might try to help you.

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And that's very admirable of them but on the whole it really, really sounds like fairies should just not come to Valinor at all ever.

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We continue to be billions of different people who don't all answer to anybody in particular let alone me.

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The Valar can maybe just change up the path to get here. How did you learn it in the first place?

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The demons found it.

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Nod. So the demons would just find it again if we changed it?

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Yeah probably.

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I know it's not your fault but it's kind of upsetting to learn that we can expect to be under continual assault for the rest of forever by 'rescuers' who have no interest in even pretending to respect the way things work here or the reasons one might want to move slowly in changing them, and there's nothing at all we can do to protect ourselves.

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If you want me to bring more letters back to Fairyland I can do that.

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If it might help. Saying - look, there are a lot of problems here, and external force will exacerbate all of them and help with absolutely nothing, please please leave us alone...

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Yeah, write it up, one of our other roommates got some Elf languages and he can translate it probably.

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She does that. 

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The fairy pockets it.

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Thank you.

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You're welcome.

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You okay?

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I can put up with being crippled or I wouldn't have volunteered to courier but I still don't like it.

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I can imagine. Being a fairy sounds really lovely. We'll get it fixed as fast as we can.

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In like a month?

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We're trying for faster, but - that's pretty fast, as far as people here go. 

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...it's weird that you can hold a normal conversation if you're like that.

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That's not really how it works. We talk and work as quickly as humans, it's just that - making decisions in a month is regarded maybe the way humans would feel about being obliged to make them within five minutes? Even if it's not a very hard decision it's stressful if someone marches in and says 'you have five minutes to fix this' because you're just in the habit of - maybe asking other people for advice, maybe looking up relevant precedent, maybe trying to come up with in this case a way of restructuring the magic so we're safe here but fairies are fine when they go home, maybe you were asleep and they've woken you up in the middle of the night...

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Okay, so like, maybe a couple days? Not a month.

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Well, the people whose help you'd need for magic restructuring aren't all on-call to get there immediately - we are finding them and telling them to get to Taniquetil as fast as they possibly can but that's a deeply unusual thing to do, ordinarily you should not assume that you can get anyone anywhere to drop everything to do work for you within a couple of weeks. And we know absolutely nothing about you or the other new alien societies and would like to learn enough about them to guess if an angry fairy is likely to attempt to murder us all and what that'd look like and how we could protect ourselves. And as it stands the only people who will get any input will be the ones who happen to be standing around Taniquetil when we get there with the petition because we're in too much of a rush to let the public comment, or even be informed about what's going on.

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I mean, I can tell you common knowledge type stuff about angels and demons, I don't know that much about them. And I live in Fairyland.

Permalink Mark Unread

I'd appreciate that. But the point is more - we are rushing as much as we can in this instance but we are not as a society set up for making decisions quickly, and we fuck them up when we do, which is another reason we shouldn't have visitors from other places who expect good decisions made quickly.

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Then why did Shipka get told, like, twice over the course of a minute in confusing phrasing to stop moving? Shouldn't the monster have taken a few hours to go through phrasings like 'could you land' or 'why is it you don't want to stop using magic' or whatever?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes, she should have. Varda panicked.

Permalink Mark Unread

Shipka didn't hurt anybody. She didn't even do anything scary, the one she took for a ride was having fun.

Permalink Mark Unread

I know. We're getting it fixed.

Permalink Mark Unread

Thanks.

Permalink Mark Unread

Thanks for coming to tell us.

Permalink Mark Unread

You're welcome.

Permalink Mark Unread

On Earth the announcement that there's a hidden continent with fairy-hating monsters has invited quite a lot of attention and fearmongering and doomsaying and hoarding of canned food and guns.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"So I could just put a video on Youtube, but I have no idea what causes people to watch Youtube videos."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooooh, want marketing help?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes please."

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He looks gleeful. "I'd make a series, actually - starting with something walking people through the conjurations you have to do in order to see Valinor, same thing for the Dwarf planet because there's really no harm in that one. Most people will probably be wary of summoning a demon for it, they'd much sooner watch someone else do it. Are you going to pretend you're still human? If so you'd need somebody else to play demon for it. Nice cameras, nice microphones, professional video editing, release the whole uncut versions as well so people can't plausibly accuse you of faking anything. Call up a bunch of journalists who are desperate for an angle on this story no one else has covered, and then you've got lots of articles linking to it. If you want you can invite the serious journalists over to watch a round two so they can stick a 'verified in person' on their stories about it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was planning to start by proving I'm Revelation, actually - I can prove it, just nobody can find me working backwards. And identify myself and then since I was very publicly murdered a few years back explain that I am dead now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can start with that, just then you're battling the current headlines instead of riding them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I might be recognized. I taught hundreds of people before I died."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think you should hold the reveal very long, just 'person who's in the news anyway is Revelation' is going to be a bigger splash than 'person I never heard of is Revelation'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. I don't mind revealing that I'm a demon for this, I just wish I knew why so I could explain."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Might be worth a little bit more spying, see if we can figure it out with a day's work - is 'ex-humans in Hell' something you can conjure by -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, we don't seem to be different in a conjurable-parameter way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can you get peoples' birth certificates?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, although there's few enough of us that I might miss a meaningful fraction by skipping people who didn't have them because they were from New Guinea or something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Or the 1400s, yeah. Still, that'd be a partial list, better than none, maybe one of them'd answer a circle..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooh -" He gets a stack of birth certificates. "...this is more than I was expecting having looked into this when I first died."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. Did you check birth certificates at that time?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, but I didn't expect the estimate I got to be an order of magnitude off."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What was the estimate you got -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Like maybe fifty ex-human demons."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - huh. Can I see those -"

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam shoves birth certificates at him.

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Flip flip - "these are all fairly recent but I guess maybe most people before that didn't have birth certificates at all - should we draw some up and say hello -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, sure." He peels one off and finds the name and makes a circle for her.

Permalink Mark Unread

He finishes it.

Permalink Mark Unread

 


A demon shows up. "Uh, hi?"

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"Hello! Sorry to bother you, we're trying to figure out why some people become daeva instead of going to Limbo when they die."

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"Oh. Sorry, I have no idea."

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"How long have you been a demon -"

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"Couple years. Got hit by a car."

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"Had you interacted with any demons before that -"

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"Nah, that always seemed more dangerous than it was worth, just fairies - I started this fairy shuttle company, my sister's running it now, would it be okay with you if I called her -"

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"Yeah, of course." He hands her his cell phone.

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Dial dial.

"Fairy Ring transit, how can I help you?"

"Nora, it's me -"

"- what -"

The demon and her sister catch up.

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"Another one?" he asks Cam.

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Cam picks up another birth certificate. "- I recognize this name. Could be a coincidence." Circle.

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Finished circle.

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"...Cam?"

"...yep. Hi, Todd."

"You, uh, died."

"Apparently so did you."

"Oh."

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"We're trying to figure out why some people apparently become daeva when they die."

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"I dunno, everybody I landed near said it happens if you sell your soul and I didn't."

"Me either," says Cam.

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" - and it can't be that there's a non-selling way of losing your soul because the other girl didn't even summon demons - I take it Todd also died in the last couple of years?"

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"Last month," says Todd.

"Phone's in use but you can have it when she's done."

"Oh is there a line?" asks the other demon. "It's okay, Nora can resummon me -" She offers the phone.

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Todd can have a phone too. "Can you check if maybe the 'fifty' estimate was correct when you were given it - all of them having been born recently could be a question of birth certificates and population growth but that doesn't explain all of them having died recently as well -"

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam checks. He gets seventy-one birth certificates.

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"- so it's accelerating -"

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"Getting some more timeslices -"

There is a jump when birth certificates get popular. There's a much bigger jump post-Revelation.

Permalink Mark Unread

" - summoners who die young enough? That'd be an awkward dilemma -"

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Cam flips through the certificates and looks at dates. "No, some of the people post-jump were older."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are they all summoners -"

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Flip flip flip - "Ex-student - ex-student - that guy who got killed summoning a badly bound fairy - this one was in the news - everybody I've heard of was yes -"

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"And that's the best explanation of the increase post-Revelation, that it's some subset of summoners - that could even produce the rumor it's people who've sold their soul, since presumably all of those would be summoners -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, they all would." ...He gets stacks for angels and fairies. They exhibit similar patterns, though fairies jump more.

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" - next step's probably trying to get a list of summoners who have died, check if any of them ended up in Limbo anyway -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...valid circles drawn by Limboites -"

 


There's a handful, but a tiny handful. "This is like about how many I'd expect to see that drew them and changed their minds and didn't retry, or, like, died before the circle was answered."

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"Well. You have lots of exciting things to tell YouTube."

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"So exciting!"

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"Let me know if you want help with the video and sound editing part!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I will want that! Do you have equipment recommendations?"

Permalink Mark Unread

He totally does!

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The other demons want to be dismissed.

Cam writes himself a script.

Permalink Mark Unread

The other demons can go home. Cam's script looks good.

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Cam gets himself nicely lit. He points cameras at himself.

He explains how to conjure for Valinor, step by step. He has everything premade so it isn't obvious till the end of the video, when he says, "Next installment on this channel will be about how I died and went to Hell!" and resprouts his wings.

Permalink Mark Unread

It gets a lot of attention.

The comments are mostly calling bullshit on that part; you could do that with a demon behind the scenes. Someone wants to know why you can't see Valinor from space; someone else wants to know why it's not messing with Earth's gravity; someone else thinks the ocean currents should show signs of a secret path to a hidden continent, thank you very much. Is it true there are Elves on Earth, are they scouts or spies or something? Is Elvis an Elf who faked his death, is Jesus an Elf who faked his death, is Hitler an Elf who faked his death? If he really died and went to Hell he wouldn't have internet access. What's the population of Valinor, what's the tech level of Valinor, could Superman take the Valar in a fight, could a battalion of Marines take the Valar in a fight...

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Cam preps his next video in response to these remarks. All he knows is "it's magic; I don't know how it works exactly" for the space/gravity/ocean things. The Elves on Earth just sort of stuck around; Valinor used to be more attached and never had 100% adoption among the species. They will not bother you. He dutifully performs checks - Jesus is in Limbo, Hitler is in Limbo, Elvis is -

"Uh." He pauses recording.

Permalink Mark Unread

Hanging out on the couch!

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"Elvis, huh."

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"And several other people, I kill them off every fifteen years or so - the lack of aging gets obvious -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Who else?"

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"Freddie Mercury, Jeff Buckley, Kevin Holmes. I was about to start a new one when all this excitement started."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Were you even paying attention when that one angel who dug up the Silmaril asked for Freddie Mercury's discography?"

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"It's not even especially flattering, I have to tone it down a lot to avoid suspicion."

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"Do you want to do a little outtro, I can rearrange the video so that part is at the end."

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"Awww, but I'd have to do that appalling thing to my hair again - it'd be so dramatic, though - can you put my hair back afterwards?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure can."

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"Then I will totally cameo."

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Awesome. Cam rearranges the video. He died and went to hell and is now on summon, which is how he has internet access. Valinor is lower-tech than developed Earth countries. Whether Superman could take the Valar is a matter of who's writing Superman these days but the Marines would be out of luck. There are just shy of forty million Elves in Valinor. Nothing doing on explaining the magic hideyness of Valinor, unfortunately. (The historical) Jesus is in Limbo, so's Hitler, but yeah Elvis was totally an Elf and he found him here he is!

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"Hello! I might cover all my old songs now that I needn't pretend to be human but I'll launch my own channel for that."

Permalink Mark Unread

And the next installment will explain how you can prove that Cam is Revelation.

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What the fuck, says the top comment. 

This is all bullshit, this is some kind of bullshit publicity stunt for a new movie or maybe just to see how credulous you morons are -

(an eight hundred comment debate over how many people were fooled by the radio broadcast War of the Worlds) -

ELVIS LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The guy actually did die, though, made local headlines, I found the story and the picture -

(a five hundred comment debate over whether it's the same guy, with digressions into discussion of what should happen to the guy who shot him) -

Permalink Mark Unread

Ah, the Internet.

Cam's next installment explains his anonymity procedure. Multi-piece stencil over a flashlight so no conjurable physical object was the circle used to summon the distribution daeva, and so on. But you can timeslice it if you start by knowing where he was and who he is. He demonstrates.

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Guys I summoned a demon and confirmed it, it's true!

   (view all 376 replies)

   It's not your fault your mother dropped you on your head as a child but the fact of the matter is the brontosaurus isn't even a real fucking dinosaur.

Guys I supposed a demon and checked and it's a lie!

   (view all 1113 replies)

   No i don't know why the demons are covering for the Jews but all the people the Allies claim died don't even fit in the gas chambers.

If you like Elvis you should check out my channel @elfgirl14!

Permalink Mark Unread

They're welcome.

And his next installment will be about the Dwarf planet!

Permalink Mark Unread

The next day he starts getting emails and messages requesting interviews. And his parents start getting phone calls.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sorry Renée and Charlie. (Charlie takes the phone off the hook. Renée's school gets security and her husband answers the phone and won't talk about Cam.) Cam isn't super enthusiastic about losing editorial control, do they have veto options on the final release for interviewees.

Permalink Mark Unread

Some outlets will definitely agree to that.

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And can they point out any past cases where they have been vetoed and made redactions or did not run the feature accordingly?

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Can he find anyone complaining that their words were used after a promise they wouldn't be?

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That sounds like a challenging search. See, he doesn't want this to actually come to that because then they'd probably have to have a drawn out legal battle over whether demons can expect enforcement of contracts or something.

Permalink Mark Unread

They have journalistic integrity, thank you.

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Well, they can tell him what to look for because he's irrationally suspicious, or they can not do that.

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They can't think of anything he could look for, because if they don't run a story for confidentiality reasons they also don't go handing that story to a demon.

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He supposes that is good enough for a written interview.

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Why did he decide to take the information public? Why did he do so secretly, was he worried about being liable for daeva incidents? Has he taken anyone's soul? How'd he learn about Elves?

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Nobody ought to starve to death while demons exist. He was worried that all the other summoners would take exception; in fact, one did, that's how he died. He does not know how to take souls and suspects it is not, in fact, a thing. An Elf summoned him.

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How did he learn about summoning in the first place? Can he put this reporter in touch with some Elves? How did he end up a demon?

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Found a book on it in an abandoned house. Elvis is not available. Happened when he died. (His next video will be about that.)

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Why is he coming forward now? What is Hell like? Are there lakes of fire and brimstone? Is there a devil? Is he religious? What inspires him in life? Is he single?

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Valinor could be grievously mishandled and he needed the platform. Hell is tacky; here are pictures. Fire, yes, they're for garbage disposal. No. No. Flourishing for all sapient beings. ........yes, but he suspects people who form crushes based off magazine interviews are not his type.

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What does he think about animal rights? What does he think about Israel and Palestine? How could Valinor be grievously mishandled and how should it be handled?

Permalink Mark Unread

He hasn't eaten meat that used to be an animal since he died but animals are not a big priority in his life. He would need to do a lot of research to come to a well-reasoned opinion on Israel and Palestine. The trouble with Valinor is that it has profoundly isolationist gods in it; while he acknowledges the enormous temptation to go poke them, they can't be handled like a foreign country, who have human psychology and vulnerabilities, or even like daeva, who have human psychology and can be bound. He would like to find a way to get to the Dwarf planet, but messing with Valinor is best done on Ridiculously Slow Time Scales By Extremely Even-Tempered People If At All, Probably Not At All.

Permalink Mark Unread

It sort of sounds like there's sketchy stuff going on in Valinor, though, are they expected to just ignore that?

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam would be the first to champion any sketchy-stuff-fixing plan that seemed like it would work! But it hasn't become more urgent since being discovered and it was noodling along being Valinor for tens of thousands of years before that, and the humans who usually problem-solve on sketchy stuff don't have any practice at dealing with Valar. It could get much worse very fast if people bothered them for very little chance of benefit.

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It sort of sounded like the fairies might do something about Valinor, does Cam advise against that?

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam has spoken to the fairy who was deputized to attempt contact with Valinor. The fairy was advised of the risks and Cam's still kind of nervous about it. He doesn't think they should escalate if that doesn't work.

Permalink Mark Unread

They appreciate his time and send him what they want to publish, slightly edited for brevity.

Permalink Mark Unread

Is it horrible, easily quoted misleadingly, stupidly commentated, etc.?

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No, it's just the interview transcript with some of the boring questions and answers omitted.

Permalink Mark Unread

That's fine then.

Permalink Mark Unread

It gets published. The videos stack up views. YouTube asks if Cam wants to monetize his channel. 

Permalink Mark Unread

No thanks.

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And the Valar come by to talk to the crashed fairy. Hello. We would like to discuss with you relations between your world and ours, would that be possible at this time?

Permalink Mark Unread

Uh, says Nosso. I'm not busy but I'm also not actually a representative of Fairyland.

Permalink Mark Unread

It was explained that there really aren't any such representatives, is that right?

Permalink Mark Unread

That's true but there's degrees of not-representativeness. I'm literally just Shipka's roommate who thought I could tolerate being crippled if and when you did it to me too. No significant numbers of fairies will think I have the power to agree to anything.

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All right. We apologize. We didn't understand your magic well enough to do better. We still don't, but we understand it to be urgent that we do less harm. When you magically vanish back to your world the suppression should not accompany you; likewise if you leave Valinor and return to the human realm. We can't seem to reach into Fairyland to do the same for Shipka remotely; we might be able to figure it out but concerns were raised that our action in Fairyland would cause fairies additional distress. Would Shipka be willing to come back here so we can fix it?

Permalink Mark Unread

She's pretty terrified of you but if I tell her it's safe probably.

Permalink Mark Unread

We would not do anything except make sure that the magic suppression does not follow her back to Fairyland. We could do it remotely if that helps?

Permalink Mark Unread

It'd probably help if she didn't have to get near you. Somebody'll have to summon her after I've gone to tell her it's all right.

Permalink Mark Unread

We have a circle that purportedly can be used for that.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah.

Permalink Mark Unread

Do you have questions?

Permalink Mark Unread

Why did you do that to her in the first place and not back off when she was crumpled on the ground crying about how she couldn't get up?

Permalink Mark Unread

As far as we could determine she could destroy the whole nearby city at any time and while she did not seem maliciously inclined she seemed sufficiently difficult to communicate with that we were worried she might do it by accident, or be angered and become malicious, or take hostages. I take it the humans handle this with 'bindings', but we were not aware of those; how would the humans react to someone with the relevant powers going around without any bindings, if they had the capacity to respond as we did?

Permalink Mark Unread

I don't know what your capacity to respond is like besides the things I've known you to actually do. Humans'd've found her summoner and gotten her dismissed if possible.

Permalink Mark Unread

We did not have that option. We are experimenting with developing ways to partially suppress magic so you can use it but it is less dangerous, but that might take years to develop effectually.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, you seem more powerful than I'm really comfortable with, too, so I sent you a letter from what was supposed to be a polite distance, even though unlike Shipka you actually used it to hurt somebody, but if you fix it I can overlook that.

Permalink Mark Unread

We weren't expecting her to vanish and have no reason to desire that her magic be suppressed even in Fairyland. If she comes back here we'll fix it.

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I'll tell her.

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Responsible word gradually circulates that Cam's claim to being Revelation is accurate. The prison where his murderer is held hosts a protest or maybe a rally or maybe just a big exuberant slightly drunken expression of anger.

The video about the Dwarf planet generates considerable excitement, too. Cam is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Would Cam like to be TIME Magazine's Person of the Year.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam is probably ineligible for a Nobel Peace Prize. Since he's dead. He does not have this objection to TIME.

Permalink Mark Unread

Nobel prizes are on special occasions awarded posthumously and this seems like a very noncentral kind of posthumous award anyway. Who's Cam's summoner, what binding is he under that he can just casually make stuff like his wings? TIME wants to do a photo shoot. Cam has eighty-seven marriage proposals and two-thousand forty one to forward to Elvis.

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"If I weren't already married I'd go for it, honestly."

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He would love the Nobel Peace Prize.

Cam does not wish to disclose his summoner's identity. (He considers getting his mom to resummon him under a responsible binding with exceptions for things she lets him do and having her tell him he can do as he likes. He checks: there are 409 other circles out for him. He sticks with the one he's got.) He will show up for his photo shoot. He does not want to marry anyone who opens with a proposal.

"I didn't know you were married."

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"It was a very long time ago."

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"That didn't seem to matter to Caranthir."

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"I mean, he thought she was dead and gone forever and it transpired she was instead tantalizingly close. I thought she was in Valinor and she is in Valinor."

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"You didn't send her a letter with the fairy."

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"It is vanishingly unlikely she is on terms with the Valar that would enable any kind of emergency petitioning."

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"Suit yourself."

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"Oh, I do!"

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"I have actually no idea how to find out whether any of these eighty-seven people would be nice if I got to know them and merely differ from me on willingness to propose to celebrities without having to meet all eighty-seven of them."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - are you looking for somebody? Because I would be absolutely delighted to filter your admirers for compatible ones!"

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"...I mean, not actively, but I don't have explicit plans to stay single forever and now I'm concerned that my celebrity status will contaminate my theoretical love life forever..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Back when my brother was sane people just told him 'introduce me to the right person', gets around things like that rather neatly. You could date in Hell? It's presumably less of a big deal there."

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"Revelation is actually a kind of a big deal there. Suddenly people can get summonses if they want them. I haven't received demonic proposals of marriage mostly because marriage is much less of an institution there but I did get a few asking about my sexual preferences and some others assuming they'd probably match and making suggestions."

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Giggle. "Well, if you want a social secretary - or someone to finish circles, I guess - let me know."

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"If there's anything in there more useful than an invitation to find out whether dead people have the right to marry I guess I'd at least read it."

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"I'll take a look!"

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The government, once they finish checking that Matt really hasn't been to Valinor in nearly a thousand years and hasn't been there and alive in thirty-two thousand and hasn't spent his long career secretly sabotaging them, is very grateful for his service but thinks he should probably retire now. He gracefully agrees. The summoning department is well-staffed and will handle new surprises responsibly. 

 

He comes home. 

Permalink Mark Unread

He gestures for 'I'd hug you if you didn't hate that'. "Help me sort Cam's suitors?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Colony project'll work better if a participant is a girl, I suppose."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Now, now, that's not very romantic of you. And I'm not so closed-minded as to disqualify the boys, here."

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"Did the 'averting a war' plotline just get dropped?"

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"Haven't heard back from the fairy that threw the letters but he should get dismissed any day now."

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The fairy suggests to the Valar that they find one demon they can tolerate having under friendly-like but safe bindings in Valinor so that this demon can do correspondence for them. This will make Valinor way less a Tempting Mystery With Maybe Monsters And Captive Elves And Stuff In It, if there's a way to get information in and out without showing up on daring courier missions.

Permalink Mark Unread

The Valar think this is a good suggestion and they will take it into account as soon as they know enough about bindings to figure out what's friendly-like but safe.

Permalink Mark Unread

He can have Shipka bring her Kindle with its textbook when they summon her to fix her. But it's in some human language.

Permalink Mark Unread

And she probably won't want to stay to do translation work. They can arrange for a different tutor, maybe.

Permalink Mark Unread

Shipka's not going to want to stick around, or delay getting fixed to find a volunteer, but he's willing to come back.

Permalink Mark Unread

Great! The circle for Shipka is fetched, what would one for him be like?

Permalink Mark Unread

That's her name. His name is Nosso which is spelled like this.

Permalink Mark Unread

Okay! 

Permalink Mark Unread

And soon enough he vanishes.

Shipka appears, shaking and barely sitting up, in her circle.

Permalink Mark Unread

And they change the way the magic suppression is targeted and then she can go home.

Permalink Mark Unread

She disappears again.

Permalink Mark Unread

Humans think Valinor sounds kinda dystopian. Humans want Cam's thoughts on sending drones? Humans want Cam's thought on sending stealthy stealth drones the Valar would never see coming?

Permalink Mark Unread

Valinor is dystopian in the sense that there are in fact obvious people running it and responsible for things that are wrong there. This is actually fewer things than in most human societies - he credits the Elves much more than the Valar, for that, but it's still true - so just because there are people obviously in charge does not mean that it is an emergency. It is not an emergency. No one is dying. Literally no one is dying. The Valar probably sense matter directly or some shit like that and the state of the art in stealth is not going to help.

Permalink Mark Unread

The CIA put robots in a cat once. They could build birds around the drones?

Permalink Mark Unread

It is a terrible idea.

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Maybe he's just saying that because he's literally a demon. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Being literally a demon did not affect his psychology, it just gave him magic powers.

Permalink Mark Unread

Why are demons disproportionately kinda weird, then?

Permalink Mark Unread

Why are the people at dentistry conventions disproportionately dentists? Most demons don't answer summonses. This is way more true of demons than of angels or fairies, a wider variety of whom are getting something out of the experience than the experience itself or the humanitarian opportunities. You can meaningfully affect a fairy's economic situation. Demons don't have economic situations. They're there because they hope you might be interesting. Or because they want to see Nightwish in concert, but realistically that's very unlikely - especially with gags, maybe cut it out with the gags.

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Then they talk you out of their soul.

Permalink Mark Unread

Bring headphones and if you feel tempted to do things you don't want to do put on loud music and dismiss the demon.

Permalink Mark Unread

The news breaks in Fairyland that the monsters, upon being confronted, fixed Shipka.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh thank fuck. Cam publicizes this with appropriately festooned exhortations to not fucking go to Valinor.

Permalink Mark Unread

Most people take these exhortations seriously! Most of them.

Permalink Mark Unread

...would the Elves like to summon fairies to put them on guard duty at the entrance to the windy spot.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Can one fairy actually stop another fairy?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have not held fairy jousting competitions but they can sure stop anyone who isn't a fairy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's at least something." He starts interviewing fairies for that.

Permalink Mark Unread

Some fairies are interested in shifts on this job in exchange for a steady supply of demon-produced goods.

Permalink Mark Unread

As long as they seem like they'd be very hard to talk into just letting someone go past anyway.

Permalink Mark Unread

Some of them also have that characteristic!

Permalink Mark Unread

They're hired.

Permalink Mark Unread

He forwards Cam three of his marriage proposals. 

I hope it is not terribly forward to say thank you for Revelation. I was disgusted reading the comments on your video that people didn't seem to realize. My grandparents worked themselves to death so my parents could get an education and work themselves to death at a higher salary so their children could maybe sometimes not go to bed hungry. And no one anywhere will ever ever have to do that again. I hear you are now mixed up with Elves and Dwarves and gods. In your place I should think I would have retired to found a moon colony by now but I'm glad whoever's entangled with these strange times understands what it means to have done what you did. I will not even bother hoping that the following is not terribly forward, but I very much expect I would like to marry you.

                                                                    - Rivka Gershel

 

 

When I was ten I told my mother I was going to marry the best person in the world. She said that was subjective. I suppose it might have seemed that way at the time. It doesn't anymore, so will you marry me?

                                                                    - Sheila Sharr

 

Nicely done. Are you finished? If so, never mind this. If not, I want a part in whatever's next. And I should hope you're not done, the galaxy does not consist mostly of strange and wonderful paradises yet. If you happen to be in the market for a life partner ('life' not applicable in all areas, see store for details), hit me up. 

                                                                   - Claire Ye

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Okay, you know what you're doing as a social calendar keeper."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you! Your population of would-be spouses was quite impressive, makes my job easy."

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam contemplates a response.

Finally he emails all three. I told the interviewer that I didn't think people who formed crushes based on magazine interviews were my type, but they cut it for length and on reflection if everybody I could ever possibly meet is going to know who I am it would probably be ridiculous to explicitly filter out people who find it overwhelmingly appealing. That having been said it would be premature to book a venue. What are your constraints on travel for some lower-commitment meeting?

Permalink Mark Unread

Claire writes back first. I could summon a fairy, so, wherever. Unless you're on the creepy Elf continent, I don't think I'm willing to visit that place.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hey Elvis, should I take dates somewhere else?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe do cursory screening to make sure they're starry-eyed twenty-somethings and not clever infiltrations or somehow literally Sauron? But presuming them to be normal humans here's fine."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...name me a Maia who usually occupied physical form I can try to conjure."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huan?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"- okay, naive conjuration for him does not get anything, good." He tries the starry-eyed twentysomethings.

Permalink Mark Unread

He gets little models of his suitors.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Are they cute?

Permalink Mark Unread

All three of them are reasonably attractive young women, unless being around Elves has impacted his taste.

Permalink Mark Unread

Nah, Elves are like beautifully drawn cartoons or something, not unattractive but not having much impact on his interest in regular people. "Humans," he diagnoses.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am relieved to hear it!"

Permalink Mark Unread

He actually feels sort of weird about inviting these people - and fairies - to the actual castle, so he goes and makes a gazebo a half-hour's flight away and gives Claire the latitude and longitude and some possible times next week.

Permalink Mark Unread

And the other people have written back and can also fairy places (if you don't mind if the fairy hangs around, Sheila says. Not because you're a demon, for the record.)

Permalink Mark Unread

They get a different array of times. I don't mind being chaperoned by a fairy. Is it somebody you know?

Permalink Mark Unread

I really wanted to go walk on the Moon so I saved up to take someone on an expensive shopping trip and then to the Moon and then I got Ziria, who also wanted to go to the Moon, it was great.

Permalink Mark Unread

Convenient! Ziria is welcome to join us. Was the Moon everything you'd hoped?

Permalink Mark Unread

It was awesome. Ziria did not find the gravity half as fascinating as I did. Have you been?

Permalink Mark Unread

Nah, I didn't know I'd be a daeva when I died and didn't want to chance leaving Earth's atmosphere. I got one to take me to Salar de Uyuni once though.

Permalink Mark Unread

Is it as pretty in person? Anyway, Friday works.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's better! See you then.

Permalink Mark Unread

Soon he has three dates scheduled. The Elves find this amusing. 

Permalink Mark Unread

It's not that weird, is it?

Permalink Mark Unread

It's eminently reasonable! 

Permalink Mark Unread

"And super cute. Elves mostly wouldn't but look how many happy marriages our way produces." He gestures vaguely in the direction of his family. "Have fun."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elves don't... go on dates?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, we're just very one-at-a-time about it. Or were, who knows, maybe in the last thirty thousand years Valinor had the sexual revolution, at least the bits of it that are compatible with the species."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I haven't run across that spying on their writing, but maybe. I'll narrow them down soon as I have anything more to go on."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Have fun."

Permalink Mark Unread

And Cam is at the gazebo for the first date.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sheila and fairy arrive. "Hi!" she says. "Gosh. I assume you go around shirtless because of the wings but it's hard not to imagine you finding books in abandoned houses, shirtless, drawing secret circles, shirtless, redacting the book, shirtless..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hi to the both of you too! I typically wore shirts then but far be it from me to constrain anyone's imagination. I've just never found a way to combine shirts and wings that I like."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do fairies do it? This is really pretty - why rural Canada -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I've been hanging out near here. I can't personally summon fairies anymore, and I'd rather have less personal or more urgent reasons to get somebody else to do it for me. Anything backless that fastens behind the neck works - buttons or Velcro or snaps or just tying it on - I just can't get used to it and lack the anatomy that makes shirtlessness unacceptable in my culture."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How'd you pick the wings?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Out of a catalog. There are catalogs, it's really cute. You hungry?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure. Allergic to cashews."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What d'you like?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Does Hell have its own unique cuisine traditions involving things you could not possibly make by conventional means, it seems like it might."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It does! It gets really weird, honestly, considering I grew up on tuna casserole and Chinese takeout, but some of it's not bad."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I will try something that is not really weird. Or at all horrifying, please let's not eat people even if technically I will acknowledge there's no ethical complaint to be had."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That I haven't wanted to try either. There's a thing where, you know how fish is composed of flakes, they put sauce in between the flakes, that's neither horrifying nor really weird." He produces some of that, and perfectly ordinary mashed potatoes and roasted zucchini.

Permalink Mark Unread

She pronounces it delicious. "Do you know how some people end up demons as opposed to angels or fairies -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have a guess, but it's only that - something to do with personality affinity with the magic. Somebody I've been working with summoned a few ex-human demons at approximate random and one of them was an entrepreneur and one of them was an ex-student of mine who minored in sculpture, which combined with my aggregate impression of what the demons in Hell are like leads me to suspect demons are people who make things - and accordingly angels are people who change things and fairies are some combination of people who move stuff around and leftovers, more ex-humans seem to be fairies. What d'you think you'd be?"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - hmmm. I haven't started any businesses or made sculptures once I got past the cereal-box-apartment-blocks-with-playdough-people stage - is, like, lobbying and advocacy the relevant kind of changing things or would it be more concrete than that -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure enough to put a quiz on the internet, let alone make pronouncements about it, but it might be the relevant kind, or a relevant kind."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then maybe I'd be an angel. Will be an angel. There being an afterlife kind of changes a lot of things about how you plan your life."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh?"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - well, like - I'm from Kentucky and I was really active in an anti-death-penalty group there - and last week one of our staunchest opponents took the floor in the House to say that obviously now violent criminals should be kept alive as long as possible, considering -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"- oh joy. I'm going to guess this wasn't from the 'someone might summon them inadequately bound if they were a summoner' angle but the 'they might not suffer enough in Limbo' angle."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - yeah, the latter. They'd be free, can't have that - and I don't know where we're going to go from here, we're obviously not going to switch to trying to get the state to execute people but I think right-to-suicide for prisoners might be the wrong angle to start on that - might just work on humane conditions, do you know the kinds of shit they're doing to make sure people can't summon in jail?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I bet it's not good. Went on the 'con' side."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - I didn't mean to - it was obviously the right call, it was a brilliant call, just - we're not done -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"- don't worry about it, I'm not trying to, like, avoid the concept that sometimes people do bad things in response to good things. I did think of it in advance - they might have come up with stuff I didn't. It'd probably be conceptually simplest to just put prisoners in zero g, you need a floor to summon and then you don't have to worry about what counts as a writing material, or keeping them all under constant watch."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you built them floating prisons I bet they'd take them but there are health effects of extended exposure to zero gravity. Kentucky's presently just installed lots of walls so there aren't any sufficiently large spaces - what kind of slanted is slanted enough, that might also suffice -"

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam has to look it up and reads her the figure. "- not untenable, and you could still have the beds level if they weren't very wide, or give people hammocks maybe."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's less catchy than 'the state shouldn't be in the business of murder' but that's promising, maybe we can hire some architects to submit drafts to the state at the same time as they get sued for inhumane conditions and they'll pick the path of least resistance."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Let me know if it seems like having a demon to put up the architecture is looking like the deciding factor."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You'll definitely hear about it! Much better than having people on staff endeavor to demon themselves, and they would."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Being a daeva is nice but I wouldn't have died young to accomplish it on purpose."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are there drawbacks?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"My default location is Hell and my method of transit is indistinguishable circles. I'm hoping people cut it out with the gags now in spite of that asshat with the six-book deal, but I took a few gagged summons trying to get a chance to get ahold of my parents, before I got the Elf one, and that wasn't fun - that being a thing people can do to you isn't fun, and it's not impossible to gag or excessively bind fairies or angels either. There was briefly a zoo with some of all three, bound gagged and untasked, until they all dropped their wings and were boring-looking so the proprietor dismissed them. The last time somebody had it in for me they took it out on me; if that happens again my summoner is for unalterable metaphysical reasons in harm's way. I wouldn't have personally benefited from the option to go to Limbo instead but some people might prefer the relatives they could find that way to the smaller populations of the daeva realms."

Permalink Mark Unread

...nod. "There'll probably some 'daeva are people' cases in the near future and once those wind their way through the courts making gags illegal really shouldn't be hard, for what that's worth - just fuss at Congress a lot about how the inability of some summoners to take responsibility is making it harder for decent folk because the demons can't tell us apart -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That'll probably help. Panopticon enforcement is possible in theory, 'valid circles' is a conjurable parameter, but it'd be less politically palatable to actually track down everybody drawing a gagged circle in their garage..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I heard there's a thing now where daeva can complain to the government, as long as they're willing to do that it's enforceable without breaking into anyone's garage."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They can do that if anyone will miss them at home or they can do it from the garage," Cam says. "But yeah, Matt set that up."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Matt?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know the guy who set it up, and his name is Matt. He found a demon who wants a baby, that's one thing you really can't get in Hell, and she's doing correspondence, maybe there are more of them by now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, clever. Someone you taught?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nah, met him recently on summon."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"So," she says, "I did not really expect this to work - I mean, I meant what I said, but I mostly expected that you got hundreds of those and I figured when someone asked me 'what happened to marrying the best person in the world' I could at least say 'I asked him! He was busy with more stealth saving-the-world!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I got way fewer proposals than Elvis. Who sorted mine for me for vicarious enjoyment - he's married already, see - and gave me three of them to actually read. I'm reserving judgment on what happens after I've met querents two and three as well as you, but if you'd rather say 'he introduced me to sauce-infused sea bass and we parted ways' then even if I objected I would surely bow out under the wrathful glare of our fairy chaperone."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elvis is married? And I wasn't planning to say anything, I do get the sense you're involved in vaguely mysterious stuff for good reasons and even if your reasons weren't good someone who literally got murdered over people finding out who he was is entitled to be as mysterious as he pleases. I told my roommates I was going on a date but they probably assumed it was not literally with Revelation."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elvis is married and Elves are super monogamous even though he hasn't seen his wife in thirty thousand years, yeah. You can tell people you went on a date with me if you like, I don't mind."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe if it's the absolutely perfect moment for it. Thirty thousand years? Are they, like, psychologically different from humans - or demons - are there daeva that old and would they even remember someone they knew that long ago?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There are not daeva that old and we probably wouldn't. He spent most of the intervening period dead, and, yes, Elves are very different about time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. Anyway, I have no desire to, having extracted lunch, ask my fairy to whisk me away. You are in addition to being the vaguely mysterious best person in the world really hot and I probably have, like, a civic responsibility to run policy problems by you, you got a head start on everybody at thinking about them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you. - I should publish a version of my notes on that, actually, spread the head start around."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooooooh. You should definitely do that."

Permalink Mark Unread

He writes that down. "I shall! Feel free to run policy things by me, but it's possible I will wind up trying to steer things larger than Kentucky, fair warning."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I will not have any hard feelings if you become emperor of Saturn. A good prison solution is exportable, that's the thing, a good daeva-rights arrangement probably is too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooh, emperor of Saturn. Might be a little gassy. I'd have a great time terraforming Mars though. And yeah, that's true, and Kentucky-sized experiments of things are potentially useful precedent."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I really don't want any of our approaches to result in Kentucky-sized disasters but I guess it's a lot better than Mars sized disasters. What would you do with the place after you terraformed it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Declare myself emperor? I'm not sure, I don't even have enough relevant science yet to know how to keep an atmosphere on it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Have you just been spending the last couple years taking summonses, pretty much -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"And teaching myself violin and trying to learn Lagalann, but yeah, when I knew my parents would both be awake I was trying to grab summonses."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's tricky?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's not hard so much as it requires very fast reflexes. There's more demons who want summonses than there are circles at any given time - that's why if you draw a random up you get one right away. So you have to pay attention to catch one before it's gone. Kind of like whack-a-mole but you only need to whack one mole."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What kinds of summonses have you gotten?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Food bank, putting up an apartment building, laying subway track and infrastructure while an angel dug the tunnel ahead of me, one I have no idea what it was about because they panicked and dismissed me before they said anything."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you have to learn how to make stuff or is it obvious -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's a little like doing a parlor trick, just infinitely easier. Copying things is trivial, I have to think about it a little more to get anything I'm designing custom that doesn't look like somebody's first ceramics project blowing up in the kiln."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cool."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why, want some material objects?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"My roommate would probably be over the moon if I came home with something about what her brother's up to now - he died in Iraq -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"- oh, wow. Okay, name?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sam Mueller -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay - this is going to wind up with lots of tiny models of him, I can't aim very well yet, if you don't wanna watch I can just tell you my conclusions -"

And he investigates what Sam Mueller, recently dead in Iraq, is up to.

Permalink Mark Unread

She watches. 

 

He's in Limbo. With a big black lab and a bunch of other people, including a ten-year-old girl who is presently petting the lab.

Permalink Mark Unread

"That a dog he had?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"His unit, yeah. She's not dead, she was at - at his funeral -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, that can happen. Or two Limboites get the same dog."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. Anyway, thank you. I'll tell her."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No problem. Space on the train for text data is pretty easily come by now that we have nice compact digital formats, too, if she wants to send him a letter."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do they get distributed in Limbo? But yeah, I bet she'd like that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Slowly. It might take him a couple years after the concordance to get it, depending on where he lives. But it'll get there eventually."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you.

...can people who aren't Elves have Elf kids, do you happen to know -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, hybrids are a thing. Elf/Dwarf comes out Dwarfy, Elf/human comes out - boosted but not to Elf par, not immortal but longer lived, and skip most of the Elf drawbacks, unless they're descended from this one lady in which case they are allowed to decide between that and being Elves, and Elf/Maia - that being the one lady, only happened once - comes out extra magic Elf. Info on what happens to them when they die predates the existence of Limbo and daeva realms. Why?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, just - death sucks. Even with Limbo. Lot of people might want to ask demons for babies who wouldn't get old and die, if that were possible."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elves can die in accidents or violence and then they are stuck in Valinor with the god of the dead who is bad at his job. Elves get perks but being a daeva is probably a better deal. And if you think demons are an information security problem - Elves are legit telepaths. Also Elves take fifty years to reach adulthood."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - that's a convincing set of drawbacks, yeah. Half-elves too?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Again, information on what happens when they die is out of date, but the ones who didn't get to pick one or the other die like Elves and have not been reembodied. They grow up on humanish timescales and would ceteris paribus be an improvement if and only if the updated human afterlife situation applied to them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But there's no real way to check." Nod. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not without having one, yeah. Also Elves have strong feelings about kids and it would be... fraught... to find a gene donor."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Demons can't do, like, 'this person as an Elf', or things like that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nah. Well, not without convenient genetics discoveries that no one has made yet, I guess it could be as simple as adding a chromosome or replacing one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If they're magic it's probably more complicated than that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seems likely. It's also the approximate sort of thing that would maybe prompt attention from the Valar's, like, boss, who is somehow even worse at his job than most of them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I kind of liked it when religion was more abstract."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think of it as a matter of religion so much as amounts of magic for which English has a convenient monosyllable. Them being very magic doesn't carry moral force. They suck."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, I got an earful from Ziria."

Permalink Mark Unread

"About Shipka? Yeah. She got fixed."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's good. It sounds like it was otherwise going to work out really badly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ohhh yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

She sighs. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's honestly really sweet how all of Fairyland was rallying but..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But being the good guys doesn't make war prettier. Let alone make it achieve its objectives."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. So. At least they tried sending letters first and that worked."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Brave of whoever sent the letters."

Permalink Mark Unread

"One of her roommates brought them. And crashed in Valinor when he couldn't arrest his own momentum all of a sudden. But it worked out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Could the whole thing have been avoided if we'd, like, had the State Department send people in the first place, or was it pretty much going to be a disaster no matter what -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think that would probably have been worse. More posturing, the Valar already have opinions on humans as a group and the opinions are basically 'no' but fairies are new..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hard to imagine handling them even worse. But, yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Humans invaded Valinor once. If I tell you what happened to them do you promise not to do anything reckless?"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - would I be tempted? Um. Promise."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Eru destroyed the entire continent they came from and made the invaders immortal - that's what they wanted from Valinor, see - and buried them alive under some mountains."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - immortal like indestructible the way daeva are or -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"My understanding is that no. However, they have already been there for tens of thousands of years, so they are not urgent on a scale of days or even decades and it's very much an 'optimize chances' and not an 'act now' situation."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. "But if it's widely known someone'll do something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Shipka's roommate suggested the Valar find a demon they'd tolerate having in Valinor to allow correspondence and I desperately hope they will do that, soon, so people can do something in the form of letter writing campaigns and not more invasions or things the Valar would interpret that way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do letter writing campaigns stand a chance?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Better than showing up and blundering around. I have not, you understand, personally met the Valar, and the people I know who have haven't met them recently and have very colored impressions."

Permalink Mark Unread

She frowns thoughtfully. "Okay. I promise not to go ill-advisedly vigilante."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I want to figure out how to either bounce off of, or go around, Valinor unmolested to visit Dwarves," he says. "Dwarves are by all accounts great and have none of the complications involved with visiting Valinor, plus they can do non-daeva magic. If the Valar freak out enough to cut off their twisty little passage, or worse, Eru sticks a wrench into things, that's a resource multiplier we can't get at."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why haven't they cut off their twisty little passage, if they're so opposed to visitors -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's supposed to be possible for the Earthly Elves who either never left or got permission to leave to get there if they want. So I suppose if we upset those Elves enough that they all pack up and head to Valinor we're in trouble too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is that likely? I know some people were trying to track them down online..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I talked to some and they say if people bug them they'll just go live in the woods and call the cops on people who harass them, so not very, but if, like, the government decided to be dystopian about it..."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - yeah, I guess that'd do it. Does the government know about the telepaths thing, I feel like that makes them more likely to overreact."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't tell them but if they hunt up a demon and translate enough Elvish literature it may come up."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How many Elves are there -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Total population is a few hundred million plus however many are cooling their heels being dead because the god of the dead does not do his job."

Permalink Mark Unread

"On Earth for people to be tempted to poke, I mean."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Two batches of a few dozen each plus Elvis and his folks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The internet has already eagerly identified way more people than that as definitely Elves."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, one Elf can be several people, like, Elvis is also Freddie Mercury, but also what do you expect from the Internet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Very little, but I feel for all the poor people being accused of Elfhood because they have pronounced cheekbones and genetic fortune."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. I'm not actually sure how they could prove they're not Elves. There are distinguishing features but not quick tests."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess there are worse things to be falsely accused of."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. If you have a demon handy we can check easy but most casual accusations lack this resource."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most people are still nervous about letting demons talk."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know, you do that and we might start Youtube channels or something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Did you check for souls when you got to Hell?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"By stipulation they're unconjurable. I asked around. I am like ninety-eight percent sure it's bullshit."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Even if the souls thing were true, not letting demons talk means you can't find ones who want nice not-soul things."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's terrible! Matt's setup will help a lot, match people to demons who just want to go diving in the Marianas Trench or something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wouldn't that be unpleasant? I know it doesn't kill you, but -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wouldn't like it, but it wouldn't be intolerable and people who have been indestructible longer than I get so they just - don't have all the psychological baggage around discomfort that live humans need. It's not dangerous, it's not going to get worse than yea bad - they can ignore it and go bother weird fish."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wouldn't dream of stopping them."

Permalink Mark Unread

Giggle.

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"But if you pop up on YouTube next week to urge them not to go poke the horrors that dwell in the wreckage of Atlantis I also wouldn't be that surprised."

Permalink Mark Unread

"As far as I am presently aware, no horrors dwell in Atlantean wreckage."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, if anyone knew I expect you would."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I haven't checked specifically! Maybe someone else is being summoned by an Atlantean and getting the inside scoop as we speak."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would summoning work at the bottom of the sea? Does it work in water at all?"

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"This is not actually an experiment I ran and I don't know off the top of my head if anyone else has."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would not put it past the great state of Kentucky to flood all their prisons, maybe it's a good thing no one's checked."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure if an inch of water everywhere would be worse than tilted floors."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You'd get mosquitos! It would be terrible!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Chlorinate it? It'd smell like a swimming pool, but so do swimming pools."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess we could try both and see what sucks more."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you can do little slants you could maybe make it not too intrusive - you just need them often enough there's no circle-sized flat -"

 

A fairy zips by overhead, towards the Elves' castle. 

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"- yeah - did you see that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The fairy?"

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"This is a weird place for a fairy to be sightseeing."

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"Could've been just passing through - no, then they'd have been going faster and we wouldn't have seen it -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. And Elvis is thataway."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Paparazzi?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"On the low end of possible maliciousness, sure, do you think Ziria would mind -"

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"Can we go check on Cam's friends -"

"Sure -" and they're in the air and headed in roughly the direction the other fairy was headed - "what am I looking for exactly -"

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"There's a huge pretty castle, can't miss it."

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Huge pretty castle! Other fairy and passenger appear to have landed at the front gate. "Ooooh," Ziria says. "Gosh it's pretty - over where they are, or -"

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Cam coughs and says at a normal volume, "Hey Elves, you have a visitor with a fairy who may be just transit or other, was this expected." He checks his mail.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sheila blinks at him confusedly.

 

He has no mail. 

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Yeah, we noticed, that's an Elf and not somebody we know. We haven't answered the door.

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"Do you want any help with that," Cam says. To Sheila, "Telepaths. I was checking for notes but this works too."

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We'd be delighted. 

 

"Uh," ZIria says, "I can't move anybody who doesn't want to be -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sheila, you want a looser circle to finish in a pinch? Or I can just go talk to them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose I should have a circle in case other fairy grabs you and heads for deep space -"

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"Yeah. Here is a circle for Ziria -" paper, "here's a random fairy, here's a pen. I will fly down and say hi."

He flies down.

"Hi."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello. Lovely place, is it yours?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No." So is this a multi-level-marketing thing, or - He doesn't say that. "What brings you here?"

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"I'd like to talk to them. They didn't have contact information publicly available, and it might be time-sensitive."

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"I can take a message."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You seem like a lovely person with good judgment and good priorities and I think that would be a spectacularly bad idea."

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"I can take a coded message."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I regrettably don't have the cryptography expertise to propose a code interested parties couldn't trivially decode if they pleased. I suppose you could ask Fëanáro."

Permalink Mark Unread

Testing testing is this thing on.

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I can hear you, yes. You could just say that you already know about the massacres and the shiny rocks, that being presumably what he thinks it'd be ill-advised to have you carry messages about.

Permalink Mark Unread

"He says to tell you I already know about the massacres and the shiny rocks."

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- blink. "Okay. Can demons make Silmarils -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nope."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do they know if they are still Doomed and are they doing anything about that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't see how they'd tell, do you know? Does having me heavily involved in decisionmaking count as doing anything?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"- well, it's about all the mitigating there is, though I'm not certain it's sufficient. Valinor's not at war with Fairyland, that's at least some evidence they're not Doomed - things would happen like that, back before -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"These guys were barely even involved with the fairy thing. Like, they summoned somebody to ask about it and piggyback on the preexisting send-a-letter plan."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - they're also the reason daeva found out about us in the first place, I checked."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Possible Matt should have gotten somebody else to perform the workplace summonings."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Matt?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Matt."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What are they planning on doing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There have been vague intimations of fleeing into space? Nothing concrete right now."

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"Why aren't they saying hi?"

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"They don't know you and I'm here to run interference?" suggests Cam.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You also don't know me. There'll be translations of Elven history published in Hell, and here not all that much longer after that, and I am sure there are people curious already about all the other identities of Elvis, what's their plan for when it's public?"

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"I have no reason to be concerned that random visitors might wish to stab me. They seem to be giving 'don't answer the door' a solid try. That and fleeing into space later I guess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"'Don't answer the door' successfully filters out all visitors respectful enough of one's preferences not to force the door."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Possible they should get a security fairy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That prevents a wider range of potential problems but possibly not ones like 'Canada would like to arrest or evict them'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know if they have contingencies for that. Do you have suggestions or just anxieties?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We could potentially take them in but would want to meet them first."

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Cam looks expectantly at the door in case it is about to open.

Permalink Mark Unread

Nope. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can leave an email."

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam produces a notebook and pen.

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He writes it down. He sighs. "Nice meeting you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't catch your name -"

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"Elladan. They know my father - adopted him, actually, it's a bit of a long story - but he's not here anymore, went west."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh, that wasn't in the summary I got. Nice to meet you, Elladan, I assume you know I'm Cam."

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"I do. Congratulations."

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"Thanks."

Permalink Mark Unread

He nods at his fairy and off they zoom.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Bye!"

Permalink Mark Unread

Sheila and Ziria approach after a moment, a bit warily. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's okay, no big deal, just a relative they didn't wanna see concerned about them."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - okay. Gosh, if I were visiting estranged family I would suggest Ziria not stick around, makes it kind of unfriendly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Really, really estranged. Thanks for standing by as backup. We could go back to the gazebo and have dessert now, if you like?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds good!"

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Cam makes interesting demonic desserts and chats further about Kentucky and other polities and tells her that he will get back to her about his medium-term dating plans on Tuesday.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lovely meeting you. Ziria, do you want something for the extra excursion -"

" - if he wouldn't mind -" she lists a Fairyland computer model.

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"I don't mind at all." Computer.

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"Thanks!" Off they go.

Permalink Mark Unread

And Cam flaps back to the castle.

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They're hiring a security fairy.

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He will pay them if they like.

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"Thank you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're welcome. Which of you adopted his dad, he didn't say."

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"Mostly Macalaurë."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It was both of us but admittedly Nelyo wasn't sane. Was - less sane than now. Or worse at pretending."

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"I was dreadful at pretending," he says cheerfully.

Permalink Mark Unread

"What an interesting family that must have been."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't actually know until just now that 'adopted' was the word he chose to use with his children. As opposed to 'abducted', which was the public one - associations with Fëanorians were politically damaging, see - not that it was at all false - merely a question of emphasis -"

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"Apparently you were fondly remembered?"

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"Or at least succeeded in imparting a political sense which he then saw fit to pass on to his children - who'd refuse anything to the stranger who says 'you adopted my father' -"

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"Lots of people."

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"Not many Elves."

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"Well, you, apparently."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We'll write him."

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Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"How was your date?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"She's nice! I was not overwhelmed with chemistry but if the other two are less interesting I'll see her again."

Permalink Mark Unread

Elves seem to be in a singing mood.

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Ooh.

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If he's following closely it's about the adopted/abducted kids.

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Is it informative?

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It's not written to be, especially, but it contains information. They both founded wildly successful thriving kingdoms; he is clearly very proud of that.

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Cam listens. Elves are so good at singing.

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The next day Cam has a date with Claire! She is very excited to see him and bounces up and down; her fairy glances at her alarmedly as if unsure if she needs stabilizing.

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Cam laughs. "Hi, it's nice to meet you!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nice to meet you too. You can go, Xia, I am not going to fall over unless he secretly coated the gazebo with something slippery and in that case it'd be a very informative fall." Fairy zooms.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd be likelier than you to trip, the wings help a little but I have really lousy balance."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Becoming a daeva doesn't fix, like, health problem stuff? Are there nearsighted daeva?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It fixes some things but not my thing. Nearsightedness is sort of a 'not very' - daeva don't all have 20/20 as a floor, but I've never seen one who needed glasses."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What happens to people who die at like eighty, do we know yet -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We do! There were some summoners pre-Revelation, and anyway the same thing happens to Limboites, you show up somewhere in like your twenties or thirties, high rate of self-reported satisfaction with the age."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. That's convenient. A lot of things about all the afterlives are convenient, really."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Limbo's disappointing, but in an impoverished way, not a mean way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And now that people know, most of them'll probably summon, Limbo's population won't grow too much, eventually all the imports will really make a difference."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The care packages also go a lot farther as tech improves. Used to have to balance data and stuff, now it can be nearly all stuff."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How long are concordances open?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Couple days."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, then you can move an obscene amount of cargo. Send through the stuff to set up, like, high speed rail lines, those go five hundred kilometers an hour - say a four square meter cross section of a freight car and you have room for, what, a hundred trains? - that's two hundred million cubic meters of stuff per hour, roughly twenty billion per concordance, I think there are only like a hundred billion people who have ever lived so that's - like a hundred gallons of stuff for everybody? Yeah, Limbo just needs the fastest trains you can send them parts for."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They have 'em. Distribution within Limbo is still an issue, and while their stuff is indestructible what we send them isn't. And they want a lot of things that don't last."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I'm trying to think what I'd get if I got a hundred gallons of stuff every ten years. Do they have electricity -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The buildings that are a person's thing do if they're recent enough, and nearby buildings that can splice off that. Not most of them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You could send 'em a nuclear power plant."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Plans are in the works!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"How did it take this long for someone to mention there's an afterlife?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Limbo is sort of a - special interest? Among daeva. Ex-human daeva are way less common even now than naturally occurring ones and Limbo is an importer, not an exporter, except via conjuration of media - do you know where the people who write episodes of your favorite TV shows are from? Getting a daeva who can tell you that Limbo exists isn't trivial in the first place and then you have to let them talk and they have to believe telling would be a good idea."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I think if I were a daeva and there were a world where people just died 'what? that's it? and then they stop existing?' would be, like, my first question."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, but this is the same basic psychology that goes 'what? people some places have no running water? but did the Packers win?', so I'm not that surprised that lots of them didn't follow up."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But there've been daeva who've killed people - did they know they weren't really dead, it feels like that's kind of a different picture -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some of them probably knew, some maybe didn't. Word about Limbo's getting all around now, though, soon enough all of them will know if they're interested enough in human stuff to take summonses in the first place."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What does it feel like, getting a summons -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Specific it's like having a bit of thread on your sleeve you can pull. Random it's really easy to ignore, like - it's windy and the leaves are coming down and you can go try to be the first person to grab a fallen leaf if you want."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wonder if it's easier for angels and fairies, since they get summoned more."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Higher interested population."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess that makes sense."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Not just economics, also the gags."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Did you gag the demons you summoned before Revelation -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nope."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Were serious attempts made on your soul?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"A few times, yeah. I wound up narrowing it down to some I got along with."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think I could get along with someone who was trying to talk me out of my soul but they'd have to make a really impressive case for it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"None of them did, alas."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Think the gags make people any safer?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fuck no. Souls aside, a pissed off daeva is way likelier to take chances to hurt you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you think Bainbridge's exceptionally otherwise-careful or just got outrageously lucky -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think he has summoned maybe two demons ever in his life."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - wait, really? Oh, I guess you can check - you should point that out, I bet that'd end gags in a hurry -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I haven't actually checked -" Check. "I'm wrong! Three!"

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Snort. "I wish I could have two book deals for every demon I'd ever interacted with."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What would you write about?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not sure. There's an online challenge to rewrite all the classics post-Revelation - so the characters can't have any problems they could just summon someone to solve - but, you know, Romeo and Juliet is still set in the 1500s, no asking a demon for a cell phone or abandoning the whole mess to rule the Moon together -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not positive you couldn't run to the moon in the 1500s if you had sympathetic daeva on hand. You'd need a couple of them and they would not get many breaks, but it doesn't seem impossible."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Just make air fast enough it doesn't matter it's getting continuously sucked into vacuum?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yup! We can do that. And fairies can keep it from getting sucked away, although it's not one of their easier tricks. Plus I bet a motivated demon could have figured out an airtight container with some trial and error."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounds like a recipe for tragedy if they hadn't figured out that people can't breathe the same air forever. I suppose it's supposed to be a tragedy -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They'd notice it was getting stuffy, I'm sure the 1500s had the concept of suffocation..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"if they were awake when it got bad, sure."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, then you get to write the part where they meet in a daeva realm, having been summoners? Or I guess they might be different kinds."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They'd better, otherwise it's not a terribly tragic tragedy. They only see each other at concordances - though I suppose if one were a demon they'd have one-way communication..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And they try to get summoned together."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Suitably heart-rending. I need seven more books."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, what other demons have you interacted with?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wanted to verify your videos, had to go through a couple people."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wonder what fraction of the audience checked up on me. What do you pay them, the Elves keep singing to fairies -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's why I had to go through a couple, didn't really have anything on hand and I'm not Elvis so no one's gonna be that excited to hear me sing. Found someone after a while who wanted to go restore limbs to amputee dogs - I said I'd take her to all the shelters in the area but I couldn't promise there'd be any -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aw, that's a cute one. Did you find any?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We did! Two, and one of the shelters talked her into restocking their meds and food too and was so delighted and got her name so I imagine future amputee dogs'll be okay as well."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Awwww."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would probably have gone for one of the ones who wanted sex eventually if I couldn't find anyone who was excited about, well, amputee dogs or the L.A. theatre scene, but they'd have to have been like eighty percent less skeevy about it than the first guy I talked to."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I got a couple of those, one more and one less sketchy!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There was a 'so you know, I only show up to these things because I kink on humans' and there was a - I didn't talk to her long, didn't like how she looked at me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Does Hell, like, have the concept of consent, if everybody is indestructible and has sufficient capacity to make other people fuck off I can sort of see it not really ever coming up."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Everybody is indestructible and mostly has the capacity to make other people fuck off, or at least inconvenienced. There is a sort of concept of - enthusiasm versus agreeableness versus annoyance versus willingness to violently fend one off and it's antisocial to go around annoying people or causing violent confrontations, will get you kicked out of the nice neighborhoods? It has the usual amount of, like, 'if you want a part in this movie you sleep with the director', maybe more, but at least nobody has to wait tables while waiting for their break."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Soon they won't here, either."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mmhm."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You did good."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you. What do you do, besides check up on outlandish claims on Youtube?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Grunt work for one of the producers on Law and Order. I used to want to write a show, use the money to patch things that money can patch, and then suddenly there were a lot less of those but also the industry latched on fast to summoning and it seemed like as good a place as any to hang out while it became more obvious what was still going to need patches."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What is the TV industry doing with summoning?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, gosh, everything. Half the stuff coming out this year is 'ADAPTED STRAIGHT FROM HEAVEN' - or Fairyland, Heaven's more popular, better aesthetics - you can shoot absolutely anything on-site now and why wouldn't you, the best way to get an authentic 14th century castle is now to find a demon who will be very annoyed by historical inaccuracy, there are three post-apocalyptic series in which someone holes Earth and the handful of people who were out playing around in space try to start up civilization anew, there was a heated debate over whether it was cultural appropriation to cast humans to play daeva but mostly it's cheaper to cast daeva anyway, so there they are -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounds like tremendous fun."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No one's bored, that's for certain. If it were convenient to any of your schemes to show up on television or cameo as yourself in something that could be very easily arranged. But - it's merely really fun, it doesn't matter, that's why I wrote asking what you were doing next -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wanna bounce off Valinor and go to the Dwarf planet! Or find a way for this not to require bouncing off Valinor. I am not yet sure how to accomplish this but I haven't been thinking about it very long."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why's the Dwarf planet behind the magic maze anyway -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"One of the Valar - same one who invented Dwarves - presumably made it, so it might have been easier for some reason, magic range or whatever. Or Eru located it there or told Aulë to do so expressly to make our lives difficult. Or something I haven't thought of. There may be an alternate route, but it'd be longer."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How long is it if you can bounce off Valinor?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"About a lightyear. They sent Valinor a probe, a while back, the Elves are forbidden to send one back."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - is there a nominal justification, or -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"General conservatism, I think. I have very little sense of how the Valar reach consensus and have vague hopes that talking to Aulë in particular would be better."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But it's risky what with demonstrated tendency to pull the magic-disabling trick?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. I really really really hope they do the demon correspondence thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Have you checked if they're summoning?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not yet, although I'll probably look once a week or so. I'd be astonished if they were doing it yet. They are slow as fuck."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Except when overreacting, apparently."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That they can do real fast."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What when you get to the Dwarves? Teach them summoning?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Naturally. Then we have faster than light communication and trade of small objects."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I really, really like the way you think."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is it all set to go if only it were safe to navigate Valinor?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Don't have a ship design. Elves are not necessarily the only people who would want to go on a trip that long, but they're the most obvious and I think they'd rather live there anyway; the wrinkle is Elves can't tolerate confined spaces, or ugly ones, so ship design is really important. It will have to be a big ship. Lacking artificial gravity, we'd need to check if acceleration suffices to summon - so that they can summon and dismiss en route - or if they'll need to do with a fairy to push and rockets to decel. Maybe someone has checked that and I just didn't hear about it. And if anyone else does want to come along for the ride they'd have to be screened and whatever their needs are would need accommodating."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Have no Elves ever been arrested for anything or is that different, too short to matter?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elves have a ridiculously low crime rate and handle the crime rate they have via non-prison methods, those methods admittedly including 'stupid bloody wars'. They can literally die of being locked up in a week. Or so I'm told, and I have no reason to believe the Elves of my acquaintance were trying to deter me from something that specific."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And when they're living secretly in human societies, like they were apparently doing until recently?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They stay out of trouble. Possibly they abuse their telepathy and general superhumanity but I have no direct evidence of that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I haven't asked them to check if I've got the private thoughts thing down yet, but I'm sufficiently confident they've cut it out with me to be in range."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Were they doing it to start out?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Little bit, when they first summoned me, made sure I wasn't fucking with them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seems kind of like the gags. Maybe you prevent one avenue of being fucked with but also you now have a pissed-off daeva."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Didn't find out till they were too interesting to tell to fuck off, probably fortunately in the long run."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What are they like?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Old. Singy. Excellent cheekbones. They don't have pointy ears any more, they got surgery. They still think about their stupid bloody wars a lot, since they spent most of the intervening time being dead and Elves do everything including recover very slowly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And you live with them? I feel like that would get depressing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's a big castle. And some of them are lots of fun, honestly, just sort of in fits and starts and each in a different way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I hope they find their way to the Dwarves. - military's considering daevafying soldiers, did you hear that? All this, just to get really good at pointless wars."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I heard. If we're very lucky this turns warfare into a long-term-harmless combat LARP instead of spilling into civilian populations."

Permalink Mark Unread

Snort. "That'd be lovely. Somebody somewhere who wants to blow cities up is going to use it for that, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

Sigh. "We managed to cool it with the nukes. But yeah, it's not impossible I did more harm than good there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, you didn't know about the turning-into-daeva part. Maybe people'll - grow up in time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, I don't mean Revelation mark one, I mean telling everybody they can turn into daeva."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It wouldn't have stayed a secret very long."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That and if people all find out at the same time maybe they can get in ahead of any subsequent collapse."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, everybody's summoning now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We need at least some humans to allow any nonconcordant meetings." Sigh.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, I don't think most people are in a rush? But I guess it only really takes two." Sigh.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Two who know each other and go through with it, but yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's really kind of a shame the Valar are horrible, could come in handy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The wasted potential is enormous! It's so frustrating!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"And there's not even any way to talk them around, sounds like."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's possible there's something the Elves did not find in thirty thousand years - I have nonzero hopes about the 'talk to some of them individually' plan - but yeah they are not budging sorts."

Permalink Mark Unread

Sigh.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Or maybe some enterprising Valian Elves have an exciting Vala-fixing plan that will come to fruition any millennium now."

Permalink Mark Unread

Snort. "I suppose they wouldn't have known there was a reason to hurry."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They do now, but Elves hurry slow."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't remember hearing that Elvis was notoriously patient and willing to wait decades for things, is he an unusual Elf or just a good actor?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good actor and I'm also not sure when it would have come up?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"'That's a great idea, I'll get back to you about it before the turn of the century'?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, like that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I feel like somebody would've said if Elvis was like that. Or maybe they thought he was just being a bit of a dick about saying 'no'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He was in character! I feel like if I had to spend a trivial-to-me amount of time in character as an Elf with nothing I cared about more than doing the bit on the line I could pull it off."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fair enough. But if they know how to do it then you'd think - with the fate of the world on the line -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think they're - by nature more worried about being sloppy than about being too late -"

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Also they may have a dim view of how good humans are at solving problems cleanly such that pretending to think like a human to accomplish something important would be like pretending to think like a dog to do something important? I don't think being molasseslike is the whole story behind the negligible crime rate but it can't hurt."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess it makes sense for aliens to be alien and we're just thrown off by the fact they look human at all."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. They're not nearly as psychologically alien as they could be, honestly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Dwarves either?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Haven't met any. They're maybe a little weirder but in a very charming way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Could they turn into daeva too, do we know -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am assuming not because the ones on their planet are already all technically dead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- they might not be able to summon at all, then."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Doesn't follow; Elves can summon even if they have previously died."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But they're not presently dead, I feel like that's different."

Permalink Mark Unread

"True. Might have to send some people to summon for them. The Elves want to go anyway and live forever by default, but sending humans wouldn't be crazy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I bet you could find people who want to go live on an alien planet no problem, yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Long trip, but yeah. I was thinking of going to do supplies en-route if acceleration doesn't allow a 'floor' enough for summoning."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Assuming there's some kind of plan for if the Dwarves are less friendly than expected I'd totally go."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Plan like what?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, would this be noticed before they shot at the ship, do we then turn around and go home or go elsewhere or what..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They have radio, so we can say hi from out of shooting range. The only place they've identified as interesting is Valinor but with a demon along we can make our own planet if they don't want us on theirs."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds good."

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's too bad there aren't thousands of planets of aliens, you could go around being Revelation at all of them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It'd probably get old."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would it? Different societies, differently-shaped problems - I guess thousands might get old -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, also I wouldn't have any special advantage at doing rollout correctly in a completely unfamiliar society. I'm not even very good at learning languages the long way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Someone from outside has to tell them, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. I think I'd rather do that by finding one person and telling them and getting lots of guidance from there, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How would you pick 'em?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Don't know, but it's a smaller problem than figuring out how to tell everybody at once."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How long did it take you to decide -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Two years. From when I found the book."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Was most of that learning things or deciding what to do with what you knew -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I did them in parallel. One of them was better suited than the other to doing covertly in math class though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I forgot you were in high school. My god."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My grades that year were terrible! My teachers thought I had a psychiatric problem!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't suppose telling them 'no, I was just summoning demons instead of doing my homework' would have reassured them in the slightest!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not even a little. I told them I didn't want to talk about it and one of them called my dad and he told me there would be no hard feelings if I moved back in with my mom, it was so awkward."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Did they know, afterwards -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That I was Revelation, no, that I had been summoning demons yes. I went and taught summoning at U Dub."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, there was a biography of you in the New York Times and it had lecture notes and so on."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh, they didn't call my folks about it that they mentioned."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think the article said they couldn't get through, but don't hold me to that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Possible they couldn't. My mom's a kindergarten teacher, the school had to hire security. I feel kinda bad about that. At least they haven't fired her."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They won't, that'd be a PR nightmare. I'm sure that's not the most reassuring reason, but -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Neither she nor I would make a huge fuss about it but she loves her kindergarteners."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And is appropriately careful to keep them away from chalk, I bet! There was a scary story out of Poland a couple weeks ago -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah I heard that, I follow that sort of thing. I mean, I tried to summon named daeva too - 'Gabriel' is redundant, 'Titania' isn't turns out but she didn't answer, etcetera - but I used bindings."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And you're not seven - even with bindings I wouldn't necessarily expect that to go well -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not well, but it'll contain the damage better."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you suppose there's anything to be done about daeva who do take a chance to break things -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Prevention, deterrence, or damage control?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was mostly thinking about the first two."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Easily accessible well-bound preprints with negotiation instructions included? Advice hotlines for would-be summoners? Lists of friendly daeva to summon individually? Deterrence is hard, answering summonses is voluntary..."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - so if there were any sort of legal process someone who thought they might be in trouble would just not take specifics, that makes sense."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Unless they expected a friendly to put out a circle, then maybe they'd try, but they don't have to."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's good, on the whole, it'd be a mess if you could grab people against their will, but I bet it contributes a lot to nervousness that, like, any fairy you get could be that one who killed a guy -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Fairies in particular have some trouble with cosmetic alterations but angels don't at all and demons don't have that much trouble messing with our faces if we want either so putting out mug shots doesn't help much even if you can get them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Plus, what would you even do if you did realize that this guy you grabbed for a trip across the country was a wanted murderer -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Summon a different one for the ride home, s'pose. I do think the naturally occurring daeva - modulo the incentives demons have by default and moreso with gags - are less likely to be dangerous than the ex-humans just because they're less likely to have lead poisoning or traumatic backstories."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Or reason to want specific people or categories of people dead, yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't have to talk summoning politics I just don't know what else you're into. Gone sightseeing in Hell?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Did you know that most demons live on an enormous solid gold rectangle?"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - I did not. Wow. Uh, why?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's under all three concordances, has Earthlike gravity but more surface area 'cause you can use both sides, and it has cultural baggage now. People put less stupid substances on top of the gold."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And no one's ever fed the gold into a black hole? That seems like something a mean person would be tempted to do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nobody has! There's planets, and sometimes those get holed, and sometimes individuals get holed if they're away from everything important, but nobody's ever even had a serious black hole related miscalculation near the rectangle."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's good of them. Isn't gold...soft?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes. There is a considerable amount of less stupid material on top."

Permalink Mark Unread

Snort. "Demon cities must be amazing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Tacky," says Cam. "Whimsical, in a way, but the way is tacky."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Too much gold?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not gold specifically. Too much instant gratification? Make a house festooned with pearls the size of your head, it falls down because you're not an architect, bury it all under diamond, put a new house on top with pearls only half the size of your head and live butterflies in the glass walls, set all the butterflies on fire when they die and replace them with fish and replace the entire house again when the fish die, it gets... stupid."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The poor fish! The poor buildings! Someone should fund architecture educations for demons!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There are neighborhoods where you are not welcome to live if you're going to do your own architecture and don't have a credential! No need to be sorry for the fish, though, they come out stupid, anything more complicated than a bug does."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They could do normal eggs, right? I guess that implies more foresight than is consistent with putting fish in your walls in the first place."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes and yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you have a place?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. I crashed with the first person I met who spoke English for a while and then I got an apartment, which some people also do. The place came with garbage disposal services, which is slightly more important than it sounds."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How does Hell handle garbage disposal?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lakes of fire are traditional."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's weird how much - matches - do you think the human mythology around demons is based off stories from actual demons?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It seems likeliest."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What advantage does a lake of fire have over just lighting things on fire?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Centralizes the smoke and particulates and prevents it from burning other people's stuff down while it would be inconvenient."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Where do new people appear -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Near existing people - there do not seem to be multiple pockets of demons bajillions of parsecs away from each other. I showed up in Dite, one of the big cities."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Was it terrifying to die and wake up in Hell, I feel like it might be."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Very disorienting. One minute, crazed gunman, the next minute, stark naked on a busy pedestrian street staring at something made of malachite where all the stripes spell things in Arabic."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hey, at least you didn't land in a lake of fire."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would've been uncomfy! And worrying! Although the limited nature of the uncomfy would mitigate the worrying."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Eternal moderate discomfort! Have you gone to talk to the guy who murdered you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thought about it, haven't. I don't really think there's anything to be gained. I might have done it if I'd gotten a chance sooner after the incident mostly to deliver subtext about how he didn't murder me very hard, ha ha, but at this point I'm less interested."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"What do you think you'd be if you were a daeva?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"What goes into it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"My theory - it's only that, but still - is that it's personal affinity with the magic -" He repeats the evidence about the ex-human demons.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. Making stuff suits me best. I hope that is how it works, demons clearly have the most convenient powerset."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We do! I mean, you could make a case for the others, but we've got the infosec-hazard thing going on, I have fun with that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, sure, takes all kinds and everything, but - exploring things, changing things, that really only appeals to the extent the good stuff is already out there somewhere. And - it's just not. Most of everywhere's just empty. Most things that would be nice to have don't exist at all yet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most people seem to be fairies. I'm not sure if they're a catchall or if it's something broader than 'exploring'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Really? I feel like - no, wait, I guess 'most L.A. screenwriters are not the fairy type at all' doesn't disprove anything. Are naturally-occurring daeva evenly distributed?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's inexact but all three appear at similar rates and seem to have been doing so for a similar length of time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The rate has stayed the same?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"More or less. It's not 'so many annually', it's more 'within this range over a decade'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But it's not tied to human populations or anything." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nor to daeva populations, no."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So likely enough there'll be more ex-humans eventually-"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. I'm not sure how the naturally occurrings will feel about that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe people will prefer to mostly live here anyway."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hell has little to recommend it that couldn't be replicated, Heaven almost as little, but Fairyland might be more popular. I suppose if the naturally occurrings wind up wanting to be a separate culture the ex-humans can just go real far away."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, people might freak out if demons who weren't literally Revelation were going around unbound, so one thing to recommend it is that you don't have to deal with that -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I like not having bindings on and am glad no one has decided to make an issue of it, but they're not literally uncomfortable. But yes, point in favor of living at home, as it were."

Permalink Mark Unread

"People might make an issue if you announced it. But yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not announcing it but if I had to be in a public place where people might squint at me I wouldn't go around in a mascot uniform to avoid it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Just tell your summoner to stay outta Texas."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If it looks like a likely vacation destination I will weigh in against."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Gags aren't uncomfortable? I feel like that'd really fuck with me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't mean them in particular, but they're actually fine if you're not trying to talk. You couldn't if you didn't know any better distinguish sitting around reading a book with a gag on from sitting around reading a book without. I guess I meant that they're not obtrusive."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can you do the parlor trick on yourself - say, if the circle was in light and is gone and you're not sure -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No - same is actually true for summoners, can't squint at yourself to double-check if you don't have your circle visible."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I thought it was clever how you did the stencils for Revelation so if you dropped any piece it wouldn't be a valid circle at all."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My anonymity did not, like, actually do its job, but thank you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. But hey, if it had, you would be teaching summoning instead of being a demon and handling Elf relations and having Elvis sort your mail, so."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wish to make it clear that I did not go 'hey Elvis, sort my mail'. He said 'are you looking, I would be delighted to filter your admirers'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was not imagining Elvis a particularly easy person to push around. I was kind of imagining him more the sort of person to entertain his own admirers, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He's married. He's not, like, very married, he is in fact the least married married person I know unless one of his brothers is also married and never mentioned which come to think of it is totally possible, but Elves are very monogamous."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't actually realize there were degrees of married!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"She's in Valinor, he hasn't seen her in thirty thousand years, and when the fairies were sending letters he didn't include one for her because he doubts she's in a position to be practically useful with any projecty stuff."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Oh nooooo.  If you're going to be very serious about monogamy you have a very serious obligation to endeavor to see your spouse more often than once every thirty thousand years!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"He was dead for all but the last few hundred years," acknowledges Cam.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

"Still. What if she's terribly lonely."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I probably wouldn't want to be her. Although I don't know the circumstances under which they got married, maybe she doesn't miss him a bit and is enjoying herself fine."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe she doesn't remember him. Or do Elves have seriously supernatural memories."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They have better than human memory. It's not eidetic but it doesn't seem to deteriorate very much over time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Daeva's no different than human, though? It'd be weird to be five thousand with a normal human memory, most of your life just - vague guesses -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, daeva are humanlike there. I think you can keep anything you really want, but it has to be kind of a short list if you're not going to write stuff down. You wouldn't forget your name, or a memorized story you told everybody you met - might have to translate it into new languages over time, though, lose a little detail in every translation - demons in particular get kind of obsessive about making sure things are recorded because then we can always get it back, I felt very at home with that."

Permalink Mark Unread

She nods fervently. "Do demons have much better recording devices than ours -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"A little better on the high end but we never have any reason to use cheap stuff. Do sometimes have reason to go mini, and demon minis are gonna be better than human minis."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You'd think you could be well ahead, what with none of the constraints human engineers work under."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's less incentive to collaborate, I think that holds us back? And every single demon who would rather be playing Civilization all day long can just do that."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - yeah, I guess that'd do it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm looking forward to demons and humans getting to bounce off each other more. Demons have been copying humans forever, of course, but creating the feedback loop'll be awesome."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's going to be amazing."

Permalink Mark Unread

Wingrustling. "And getting different kinds of daeva in the same room, because there are certainly brilliant angel and fairy engineers too and the latency period without human help is a decade long."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It'd surprise me if engineering companies weren't already on that, television's all over it and with less incentive - though maybe we don't have less incentive, come to think of it -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Your incentive is more immediate, I think? 'Throw together some engineers' is more of a moonshot than 'get daeva on screen next week for the ratings'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So maybe they're not there yet. Someone else can sneak in and disrupt the whole industry." She looks thoughtful.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm sure every decent-sized business with any risk tolerance has summoned a demon and asked what demons have that might be relevant, and maybe angels and fairies too. Not just engineering, drugs work on us if we want them to and we've been doing our own parallel domestication of carrots and inventing separate musical instruments and everything. The invention step takes longer than the plagiarism step."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Parallel domestication of carrots? Do yours taste different?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not very, but they come in different colors. Our spinach tastes different?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do demons domesticate foods, do you even bother letting them grow or do you just do it all really fast from seeds -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Depends on the hobbyist!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"What a hobby. Anyway I'm sure every industry has summoned a demon to ask what they can learn, but I get the sense a random demon might not have the vaguest idea, really -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. They might know who to ask, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I couldn't name the best human to talk to about hardware engineering. I don't think most people could."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Could you give them somebody who'd know who to ask if you could conjure up the Fortune 500 list?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe? I don't actually know which companies do hardware but maybe it's in the name."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe it'd take more steps. But it helps that demon hobbyists are hobbyists, if you are friends with someone who domesticates carrots they probably nerd about it at you, same with hardware."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm sure I'd know if I had friends who worked in the industry, I just don't. Maybe demons cluster less."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think so. Like, it's not an industry, you don't need help to do anything other than maybe the performing arts - also demons have had the equivalent of internet forums since the invention of writing."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - oh, nice."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep. Just conjure up everything since last time you checked in marked with the label 'carrot domestication enthusiasts unite!' and you're all set."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Did demons invent writing ahead of humans, seems like they'd have more incentive -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We actually think daeva may have started existing when the first valid circle was written, so, no."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - that implies - no, I don't know what that implies, but it's weird."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Limbo is about as old."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- so are people from before that just gone?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seems like. There was, in theory, an Eru-mediated human afterlife before that, but not in any - useful way, you know -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can't find them or read their letters?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So there's Heaven and Hell and God but God's got nothing to do with either and is kind of horrible?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, that last isn't a surprise. And it's not impossible that he set up Heaven and Hell - and Fairyland - but the Elves don't seem to think it's his style."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because they don't suck?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"And insofar as they have sucky elements they have them in the wrong way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Weird times we're living in."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No kidding. Metaphysics by way of psychoanalyzing evil gods."

Permalink Mark Unread

And they talk a while longer and eventually she has to get home.

Permalink Mark Unread

"D'you want me to pay your fairy?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If it's no trouble - which I suppose it isn't -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Unless your fairy wants something that needs research to specify, it is no trouble at all."

Permalink Mark Unread

The fairy does not want that, he wants a couple of albums.

Permalink Mark Unread

Easily done.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks!" Off they go.

Permalink Mark Unread

And Cam goes back to the castle.

Permalink Mark Unread

Elves are singing and watching the news and composing a letter to their sort-of grandson.

Permalink Mark Unread

Anything interesting on the news?

Permalink Mark Unread

The U.S. government killed forty people in Pakistan in a drone strike, claiming one of them was a terrorist who had just summoned an unbound demon; local authorities are claiming he was not a terrorist and the demon was his brother-in-law. Denmark's high court just ruled inmates have the right to summon; no one has used this to fly away from jail yet but it is presumed to be only a matter of time. Google has English-Thindarin translation up -

Permalink Mark Unread

" - it's appallingly bad, I've been thinking about calling them -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Bad like machine translation is bad in general or -?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, just like that, but that's more than enough to be very annoying when it's peoples' only source of exposure to the language -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You could publish a tutorial."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Someone had better."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wouldn't know how to construct a tutorial and I'm given to understand I have a nonstandard dialect."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So do we. Perhaps I can ask Elladan for a summary of the relevant changes over time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Perhaps. What are you gonna tell him?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...that my Thindarin is out of date and since I'm going to publish a guide I should be apprised of later linguistic drift?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You collectively and besides that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think we have quite decided yet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Anything I can help with or should I leave you alone on that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"How much did you pick up about the whole thing -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...it was not begun well, and could therefore end decently?" attempts Cam.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Their mother had the Silmaril. We wrote her. She said 'come and get it'. A - combination of inexperience, bad advisors, and the conviction that the righteous always triumph, I think, she was in her twenties and running a refugee camp and perhaps could not have been the sort of person who did that without also being the sort of person who believed against all evidence that things would end well if you were the good side. We attacked the city - some of our own people defected, fought with Sirion's defenders, or it would have been over inside an hour, they had no idea what they were doing. As it stood we lost a few thousand people, it took most of the day...she threw herself out of her tower into the ocean. To keep the Silmaril out of our hands. I don't know if the children witnessed it, they never said. And we could have left them there, hoped their allies arrived before Morgoth sent some orcs in to pick over the remains of the carnage, but we took them with us instead. They were terrified. Took them months to talk. We were waiting to die, and that's not a good environment in which to raise children. But - we certainly did have things to teach them. So we taught them. And when the Valar at last announced with their trumpets that they'd come to war with Melkor and invited the peoples of Beleriand to join their host, they both wanted to go, and we - did not regard ourselves as having the authority to refuse them that, though they were only fourteen. 

So we taught them how to stay alive, and we sent them off. And we'd taught them well, I suppose, because Elros became first king of Men, king of Númenor, and chose the fate of Men and lived five hundred years and built a thriving and prosperous kingdom which remained so for nearly three thousand years. And Elrond became advisor to Gil-Galad, the last King of the Noldor in Middle-earth, and he build Imladris, which apparently still stands, and fought Thauron for seven thousand years and was remembered well long after. They were great men. I think they were also happy ones. I - didn't know they remembered us kindly. I wouldn't have."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...what in the hell did the Valar need random peoples of Beleriand to accompany them in their war against another Vala for?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They had them marching in formation? - and, to be fair, handling the freed slaves, which the Valar would've been very bad at -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay, handling freed slaves does seem like a logistics problem best handed off."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There were lots of them - Elves he'd torture but humans he'd just hand off to different, loyal groups of humans as prizes -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ah, humanity."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We're ill-positioned to be judgmental."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, all right, you can be as judgmental as you please. During the Nirnaeth we were attacked from behind by some of our human forces who'd decided to side with Melkor, he'd promised them a continent for it. He lied, astonishingly. He did reward them by having them enslave Dor-Lómin's human population."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Did they find that a satisfactory bait and switch?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They were terribly disappointed and of course took it out on their new slaves."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ah-huh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You did, as a species, grow up. Took a while, but..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't like that framing very much. This wasn't an evolutionary problem. The sociopath to culture victim ratio can't be that high even among slaveowners."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, but how do you accrue a better culture except by trial and error -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Even if that's the only way to do it, saying humanity 'grew up' makes it sound like the ones who were or are doing appalling things have some kind of developmental problem instead of an inadequate context."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- I mean, I also don't think it's a coincidence that short lifespans correlate with awfulness."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe everybody will suddenly improve now that they know they will go on forever, then."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wouldn't surprise me. I think part of what keeps Elf societies peaceful is the anticipation you're going to have to live with everybody forever."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Limbo's a lot more populous than Valinor."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Limbo's got other things going on but I do expect that absent the horrible scarcity they'd be much nicer than mortal humans."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The scarcity is at least not genuinely physically dangerous."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Humans are very psychologically resilient. But still."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are they? We, I guess, since this is a psychology claim -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If there were Elves in Limbo they would probably blind themselves and then curl up and sing as loudly as possible and it would never really become feasible for them to do things other than that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure that's 'psychologically resilient' so much as 'don't have the specific prettiness thing'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can function much better with much fewer needs met, if you like."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Live humans fall apart under sleep deprivation that as far as I can tell you all undertake for convenience alone," Cam points out.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm really not clear on what Eru was going for with humans."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The death -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's his style. And the vulnerability to disease, and the societally determined ethics. But the needing a lot of sleep and the lousy memories and the mediocrity at singing don't seem grand and tragic, just - pointless."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe he gets something out of the comparison between how humans work and what they accomplish and how Elves work and what they accomplish."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elves left to their own devices mostly independent of starting conditions get to high-trust communities with most resources devoted to making pretty things, literacy optional, industry almost certainly no. Humans have more variance, but at least sometimes you get farther than that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Dwarves get industry and suck less along the way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Better incentives - the way to get rich as a Dwarf is to be really good at trading, even if you were an amoral Dwarf you wouldn't end up starting wars -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, but where are the better incentives coming from if not the species difference -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The starting conditions - I bet if you started humans with seven underground cities that were trivial to defend and absurdly hard to attack from you wouldn't get many wars -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not certain of that but it'd be an interesting experiment."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We could make a planet somewhere and do it!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Where are you going to get pristine unconfounded humans?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I gave some thought to artificial wombs for humans before Revelation - it'd make the colony project easier - but now it seems better not to do research down that avenue at all. Perhaps we could find volunteers."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The volunteers will not be pristine and unconfounded. For that matter, artificially wombed babies would still have to be brought up by somebody, although I guess you could get close to starting from scratch if you corralled some brand new daeva and summoned them for an experimental language and gave them basic parenting instructions and nothing else."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - if only there were a way to only give them a specific language," he says excitedly.

Permalink Mark Unread

"The PR-cost to real-value ratio seems very low here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're such a spoilsport, Nelyo. What's the point of being evil if you can't even do dubious psych experiments on babies?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It wouldn't be that nice to the brand new daeva, either, some people are wild about babies but not all of 'em."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wouldn't imprison people," he says, sounding horrified. "If they didn't want to raise babies for science they wouldn't have to."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ah, of course, my mistake. Brand-news usually don't know what they're into yet though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If they're adult humans with no prior exposure to language it's bizarre they can learn it at all, adult humans don't have the brain plasticity to be brand new."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Getting summoned for a first language is easier but didn't use to be feasible and someone has to communicate with them enough to get them to try it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But it's possible without getting summoned? With an adult non-daeva human it wouldn't be."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is this data from studies on deaf kids or something? How do you otherwise get adults with no language without confounding neglect?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Deaf kids, yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But even if they weren't neglected per se they'd presumably have some accumulated home signs, plus years of noticing everybody else could talk and they were missing something..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And yet if not exposed to a signed language by age ten or so they can't pick one up at all later, and if they get implants they can't pick up a spoken one either."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But a new daeva isn't ten. They're adults in the sense that they have adult impulse control and motor skills and sexual maturity and attention spans and bodies and so on but they're new. - Do deaf kids not exposed to sign ever manage to learn to read -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The question is whether a new daeva has the brain plasticity of an adult. And the populations where this occurred were illiterate ones."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, new daeva can learn languages."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So then maybe they do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe. Inconveniently there is no way for you to talk to one who hasn't done so yet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Could have a baby summon one!!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I thought you were anti-imprisoning-people-for-science."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am not sure why you're imagining that summoning people involves keeping them if they want to go home."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If a baby summons them you can't send them back promptly. Unless you want to kill the baby."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You could get a baby who was dying anyway?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do we have a ship design?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Almost, almost. If Cam's taking a girl we can't leave immediately anyway."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know if I'm taking a girl."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, if you are we can't leave immediately."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can't be planning on leaving very immediately if you're even waiting for me to decide that, I would need a while to determine if I wanted to bring somebody on a multi-year space voyage for personal reasons."

Permalink Mark Unread

"More than a few years?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"How many is a few?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I expect we'll want to leave in less than five years but I wouldn't object to ten if there's reason to wait."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That is long enough."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thought so. We can do some acceleration tests in the interim."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"How'd this date go?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I like her."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Awwwww."

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

Elves get back to planning.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam is early to the gazebo for date three.

Permalink Mark Unread

Girl! Fairy!

"Is that him is that Revelation?" says the fairy excitedly.

"Well, I certainly hope so," Rivka says. "I suppose perhaps he has an evil twin."

"Really?"

" - no."

"I know humans sometimes have twins -"

"Oh, yes, but they're not especially likely to be evil and also it'd be all over the news if Revelation had one."

"So humans definitely know if they have a twin? How, if they haven't met all the other humans -"

"Oh, twins are born at the same time, that's what makes them twins, it'd be terribly hard to miss."

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam giggles. "I don't think I have a twin, my parents would have mentioned."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's really nice to meet you!" squeals the fairy excitedly. "There are enough summonses now and humans are great and you are great!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks. I'm glad you're enjoying summonses."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're amazing! I've been to space!" 

"You could probably go again if you care to, we have a few hours," Rivka says. 

"Oooooh!" Off fairy zips.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...is he going to be able to find you again?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would be disinclined to count on it but I needn't, he wanted to meet you for payment so if he gets lost I will just send him home. I assume fairies do not frequently end up all turned around in Fairyland and unable to find civilization again, so probably his navigational skills put mine to shame even if they don't quite match his enthusiasm."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fairyland's approximately two-D."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That'd only help so much, though, you could still easily end up turned around."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They can navigate by the stars, but he won't be familiar with these ones. Maybe it'll be fine or he'll stay in sight of Earth though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"As long as he's enjoying himself. Delighted to meet you, by the way, you really did do such a marvelous thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you! It's nice to meet you too. So what do you do?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, I went back to school now that history's a cutting-edge field - I always wanted to, couldn't really justify it, but now that I can contribute more than a reaanalysis of something a hundred people have already written dissertations on -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooh. So you're studying Elves-and-stuff or you're taking advantage of an academic vacuum in something else?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would love to study Elves but I've nowhere to start - I'm nowhere near gifted enough with languages to pick them up off nothing but reading material - but there's new material in everything, now that we don't have to rely on surviving documents. So I've been doing very careful tedious reanalyses of ancient Roman ethnographic work in order to be respectable enough I can break it to my family that there were never any Jews in Egypt and get taken seriously."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There weren't? I never checked."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I checked first thing. I was curious if any historically reported miracles were actually daeva interference - it wasn't impossible a random fairy irritated about slavery could make it rain frogs and then part a sea - but it does not appear to have been the case."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. And your family isn't going to like this information?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They probably won't believe me. I am not as a general principle very invested in what other people believe but if I could, by virtue of being studious enough, ensure there exists a respectable source of the information, then I feel better about leaving it up to them at that point."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Makes sense. Does the ethnography make you respectable to your family or to a university or what?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I should get a doctorate out of it and my family will be very pleased about that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good luck."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you! What have you been doing recently, the videos look very professional but I doubt they take up all your time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And they're not my professionalism, either, that's all Elvis. Talking to the Elves about Elf history and space colonization and how to deal with Valar and stuff, keeping up with the news - there's a lot of news and if I want to use my platform to steer I have to know what I'm steering."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There is a lot of news. Towards what are you steering?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"'Not horribly fucking everything up'."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - is that the best we can do, because that is not the most encouraging of goals."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Horrible fuckups are more accessible than usual right now. Like, I'm also excited about the space colony thing but I don't need the attention of a few billion people for that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. And I guess if you try to use your pulpit to preach for world peace you might have less anti-disaster leverage."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Don't get me wrong, I'm all for world peace, but whenever I don't have specific and reasonably unambiguous solutions to the object level conflicts in question I feel like my advice is not the thing the situation needs."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, I don't think you could accomplish anything meaningful on the world peace front. Are there impending disasters aside from the Elf continent -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Unsafe daeva use does not exactly impend, but it threatens."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - yes, that it might. Does a platform fix that, though -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"People download my recommended bindings. I don't know exactly how much effect I'm having."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you think an accident is the likeliest source of trouble, there?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's the likeliest opportunity for trouble."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you'd had more control over how the Elf things came to light, how would you have arranged it, do you think?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would have wanted there to be a demon emplaced in Valinor for correspondence before people found out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That'd be really lovely. Or at least an Elf willing to answer questions, I think that'd help tremendously."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I still have hopes for the demon correspondence thing but it may take Elf or Vala lengths of time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How long is that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Too long."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you suppose some of the Elves could be persuaded to answer questions in the meantime?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably. Especially Elvis."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose one probably wouldn't be Elvis if they weren't fond of attention."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, exactly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He can't be meeting girls, though, I am certain that would have made headlines. Even with all the important things in the headlines these days."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He got more proposals than I did but it turns out he's married."

Permalink Mark Unread

"To someone equally fond of attention, I should hope?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"She's in Valinor and he hasn't seen her in thirty thousand years. Elves are really monogamous."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose if you were of a society in which everyone knew they had all of eternity that would not seem quite so absurd."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I should dearly hope it would still seem absurd but probably a little less so."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I'm immortal and I still think it's ridiculous."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think if I very much loved someone for ten thousand years it might take a while to get over them, were we tragically separated. But, uh, at some point it would just be unhealthy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think they were even together that long to begin with but I'd have to consult my notes on the timeline."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Should people start digging into Elven history or should that wait until the correspondence with Valinor is all set?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd like it to wait even longer than that. There are some long moot conflicts that people might find interesting if they looked them up and they might try to un-moot them and that would suck."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Noted. I will be a responsible historian and keep anything I notice confined to astonishingly dry academic journals. Which have nonetheless been significantly livened lately by debates over whether peer review should include demon-summoning."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hardly peers. Unless you summon history-nerd demons."

Permalink Mark Unread

"For content-verification reasons, mostly. The history nerd demons will have to earn their degrees like everyone else if they want to be taken seriously."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Will you accept credentials from demon institutions?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I imagine so but I personally have no influence whatsoever."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, generic you. The structures of the places aren't much like universities, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can imagine. How do they do it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They don't physically congregate, most of them. There's no schedule, no tuition. Somebody goes 'hey everybody watch this I'm gonna replicate the entire city of Pompeii the moment before its destruction and catalogue everything in it, does anyone wanna come through and take pictures of all the basement dwellers with me so I don't have to do it six times to find them all before they rot' and then everybody on the team doing that gets, like, the equivalent of a boy scout badge, and if you have lots of those people take you more seriously."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...that sounds amazing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The first demon I ever summoned was so excited to tell me all about life in Hell and it sounded so - everyone was always doing whatever would make them happy, whatever was interesting, however they liked, and you don't need everybody to individually be a demon to support that, one demon can make a ton of stuff really fast. That was when I was pretty sure that I had to find a way to get everyone the information even if it was really risky and complicated, I wanted everybody to be as happy as demons are."

Permalink Mark Unread

She beams at him. "I - yes. Yes. Thank you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're welcome."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's it, that's exactly it, and people are worrying about how they'll keep immigrants out now or whether Hitler's happy when he shouldn't be or how to re-finagle copyright and I know the details matter, I know the details matter tremendously, but - but that's it, that has to be it, the point has to be that everybody does what what they want, all the time, free of fear, you can't lose sight of that -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I liked that about your letter, that you got that part."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose it's possible to dream too big but I think practically everyone's making the opposite mistake, thinking how to get an edge in yesterday's wars when we could just declare that the wars are all over."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can I hug you -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure." Hug! With wings!

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ohgoshwings."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wings are great!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hell sounds amazing! Thank you for - for noticing the right things about it - and to think people don't let demons talk, it's exactly demons they need to hear..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think fairies and angels have something similar to a lesser extent - they've always been able to focus on things above and beyond survival - but yeah, demons are the ones I had in mind as a vision of civilization-for-thriving-individuals."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe that's why you are one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My guess is actually personality affinity with the magic, based on admittedly scant evidence -" He repeats it for her. "- what do you think you'd be?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Gosh, I don't know. I'd want to be a demon - but so I could know things, if I endeavor to be honest with myself, not so I could build things necessarily -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, we have a lot of peripheral use cases. There isn't a 'know things' kind of daeva, alas. Fairy seems to be the catchall, lots more ex-human fairies."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That'd be all right. Fairyland sounds nice too, just - it isn't a spectacular utopia in which nothing could conceivably be scarce. Well, not yet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not yet!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elves have magic, right?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes. Magic songs and magic artifacts."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And Dwarves?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Artifacts. Slower than how Elves do it but they've had a while."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Two magic systems and all the time in the world."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes!"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - can the Valar listen in on people or anything -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They are as telepathic as Elves are, but obey the same private thoughts thing I outlined. And are unlikely to mindread outside Valinor since that would require caring about things outside Valinor."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What would it take to not have to worry about them anymore -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...they're probably trustworthy if they agree to something. They won't bother us if we don't bother them. Neither is as good a deal as it sounds because I think they are unlikely to understand things like 'China and America are different entities', let alone 'individuals acting alone', but they're something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And the unpowering, is it likely that could be replicated with magic eventually -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, possibly but it'd certainly take a long time, getting magic to do new stuff is slow."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you have specific applications in mind, or...?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am trying to anticipate - eventual stability of the happy paradises of indestructible people."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...if nothing else there is currently no reason to expect the Valar can travel to daeva realms or Limbo."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That is reassuring."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Though a way to get to Limbo would be nice if it didn't destabilize everything else."

Permalink Mark Unread

"This I do not contest."

Permalink Mark Unread

She's chewing her lip thoughtfully. "Was Hell as lovely as described?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's not perfect. And it's really tacky, everybody makes stuff without thinking about it too hard and doesn't have a good way to get rid of it, I bet Heaven's tidier. But everything that one demon told me was true."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - what'd make it perfect -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Hell is anarchy. Not, like, fancy anarchocapitalism like the Dwarves have, it's just anarchy. The closest thing to a law is a neighborhood association. Most people don't want to bug other people, and they can't hurt you very much. But if something happens there's nothing to be done about it, you just sort of move on with your life, and while this may be healthier in some ways than having drawn-out legal battles or imprisoning people for decades because juries think five years is too lenient or whatever, it does mean there are people who have been harmed and don't have anything that seems-to-them like a recourse."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...and that'll probably get worse as there are more people who did hurt other people very much, and are now happily in Hell -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That doesn't apply directly to life in Hell, but yeah, if people feel like they need punishment for their attackers or a surefire way to keep somebody away from them they're out of luck."

Permalink Mark Unread


"I see that a lot and mostly just wish people'd get over it but I guess when you have lots and lots of magic conditions might be easier to change than peoples' ability to get over grievances."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I feel like exporting any Earthly feud wholesale to the afterlife would be a poor choice."

Permalink Mark Unread

 "You don't say!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have not gone to visit the guy who murdered me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I think I'd have been terribly tempted to observe the trial with my feet up while reading a paperback and occasionally winking at the defendant. But that's very admirably - the right kind of indifferent - of you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, also I was not able to attend the trial, I only acquired freedom of movement recently."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Before that I took random summonses until finally somebody let me talk and make a phone call."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It took several years to find someone who'd let you talk? I had not realized people took the gags so seriously."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some demons had better luck than me, but yeah, that one asshat with the book deal made a splash."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think you can now safely be said to have made a bigger one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"To the benefit of demons who wish to phone their loved ones everywhere."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Or wish to tell people what they'd like as payment. Good lord."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That one was being partly addressed by that government thing, but yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Government thing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They have a correspondence demon and are taking information about what daeva want and what expertise they have."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, that sounds useful. Maybe we'll copy them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's a pretty straightforward win, although it turns out the easiest way to find a demon who wants to be on Earth all the time is to find one who wants a kid."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- that sounds like it could occasion interesting legal debates."

Permalink Mark Unread

"As I understand it most of her salary pays lawyers."

Permalink Mark Unread

Giggle. "Interesting times we live in."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"And all of it your fault!!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Personally, I blame some of it on the Elves."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know, they seem to have been Elfing along very sneakily until Revelation, and from what you've said of them they might have taken another few centuries to do anything more interesting than that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay, it's my fault that the interestingness is concentrated now in particular."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I hope you feel suitably sorry.

 

The suitable amount of sorry is 'not at all', of course."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I twinge a little when someone has a summoning problem."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fairies are much safer than automobiles."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure. But they're also cheaper than planes and some people are taking trips they would have skipped."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think they're taking those trips uninformed about the risks - if anything I think incidents are covered enough one would think them thrice as common as they are -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, I'm in the black, just, I keep track of those and do feel a little responsible when they happen."

Permalink Mark Unread

Squeeze. "Do the troublemakers usually keep taking summons or are they usually not happy with what happened either -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Depends on the person."

Permalink Mark Unread

Sigh. "We'll get there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Here's hoping."

Permalink Mark Unread

Her fairy does not come back; she resummons him eventually and he reports delightedly that space is so big, gosh, you could learn to navigate by these stars but it'd be terribly tricky. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Do Rivka or her fairy want any material objects?

Permalink Mark Unread

She would be delighted to have something he saw in Hell, if that's not far too broad. The fairy's good.

Permalink Mark Unread

Here is a cute little battery powered desktop fountain?

Permalink Mark Unread

"Awwww. Thank you very much, it's lovely."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're welcome."

Permalink Mark Unread

And off they go.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Cam flies back to the castle.

He writes Sheila and tells her he had a lovely time and she should let him know if she needs anything he is well-placed to supply but at this time he is not inclined to schedule a second date.

And then he spends a while trying to pick between the other two and doesn't get much of anywhere.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Have fun?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I like this one too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Awww. You should take them to the Moon for the second date, I bet girls are very impressed by that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're the ones who can actually summon fairies," Cam points out.

Permalink Mark Unread

"We could arrange you a fairy in advance if you want fairy-involving dates."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess. It's still probably less impressive since they can go to the Moon whenever they want by themselves. Also I should actually pick one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...uh, I guess I could attempt to convert status into plural girlfriends but since both remaining candidates opened with a marriage proposal I was assuming implicit monogamy and it seems kind of like an asshole thing to do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It doesn't seem like a particularly asshole thing to ask. If they find it very offensive to be asked questions that's something you'd want to know about them!"

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"I mean, I guess, but there's 'find it offensive to be asked questions' and, like, 'would settle for sharing without overtly complaining but wouldn't prefer it' and if one or both of them is the second thing I don't want to screw them over if instead they could meet some nice not-me person and wind up with more of what would make them happy in the long run?"

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"Sure but I think that's on them to, uh, notice? And it's not like if later they realize they do not prefer sharing they couldn't then be like 'oh, I'll go do that', unless you were planning to get married on the second date?"

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"Of course I'm not but I don't want to assume that people who sent me marriage proposals because I am Revelation are immune to silly short-term thinking that could eventually add up into longer-term regrettable patterns of behavior however otherwise observant they seem."

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"Well, I shouldn't read their minds for you and Elves can't date several people at all anyway but it seems like most people who send Revelation a marriage proposal'd probably rather be dating him than not."

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"- wait, can't? Not just don't?"

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" - nah, can't. If Elves have sex they are married and marriage is a permanent irrevocable state of affairs and marrying more than one person prompts divine intervention, it's the worst."

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"...wow. Shit. Okay. Uh, I will consider your suggestion."

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"Have fun."

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"That is in theory the idea."

...So he writes to each of Rivka and Claire that he likes them, that in case it wasn't obvious Elvis passed him up more than one letter and it turns out a date apiece wasn't sufficient to narrow the field to one person, that he would like to see them again and if they have suggestions or constraints on his handling the twoness of the people receiving this email he's open to fielding those, also Elvis's brother recommends the moon as a second date site does that appeal or would they rather do something else.

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Elvis has brothers who are also giving romantic advice? writes Claire. I'd be happy to go to the Moon. There is probably a number of people receiving this email that'd be weird but two doesn't bother me at all.

 

Moon sounds great, when? I'm a firm believer that people should not have more than one girlfriend per billion people they have lifted out of poverty, so you get three. So far. writes Rivka.

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Elvis has six brothers! Would you rather meet your counterpart or not hear about her again or what? When's good?

When works for you? My schedule is low on things I can't arbitrarily shuffle around. If you and the other party have comparable availability do you want to maybe share a trip to the Moon?

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They would like to meet each other and have some overlapping availability even with the ten hour time zone difference.

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...aaaaah

Okay! Overlapping time selected. The moon is short on landmarks so maybe they should meet at the gazebo and then fairy moonwards together rather than try to find the exact spot on the twilight band on the Copernicus side of the Copernicus-Ptolmaeus line or anything.

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(Elves think that Cam's dating adventures are adorable.)

 

 

At the arranged time there are two girls and two fairies. "Hello!" says Rivka. "You must be Claire - I love your shirt, that's a really pretty color on you -"

"- thank you, it was actually a different color and then I ran across a very opinionated angel on set and she demanded permission to fix it. If I see her again I will tell her I met someone who shares her tastes but I don't think she'll come back, she found humans distractingly unattractive."

"Humans in Hollywood? My impression was that that was the place where the attractive ones congregated!"

"I did not break it to her that there are parts of the world where people can't even afford plastic surgery. Though maybe she'd have been inspired to do it for free."

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"The color is nice. Maybe the angel in question would get along better with Elves, they have a different central aesthetic from angels but still."

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"Would they react badly to someone offering to alter their nose right on the spot, because if so it might be an ill-advised introduction," says Claire. "Hi! How're you?"

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"I'm pretty good! I don't know how Elves would feel about offers of immediate nosejobs. I think they like the noses they have. They did get their ears altered to pass, at least Elvis and company did, maybe not all of the ones remaining on Earth."

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"Are they naturally pointy?"

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"Yeah, some of Elvis's brothers weren't out and about enough to bother with the surgery and they're pointy."

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"I am very entertained by imagining trying to tell me-as-a-college-freshman about this date," Claire says.

Rivka giggles. "Me-in-seminary would be horrified."

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"You went to seminary? Would you be horrified by the plurality or the demonicness?"

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"After the army. Most people do, in America I take it it would be a much more unusual course? I really really liked it aside from the not-being-true but that turned out to be a sticking point. I think I could look past both the plurality and the demonicness if only you were a Jew." 

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"I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."

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Giggle. "I do not regret having decided to have different dating priorities."

"You were in the army?" says Claire.

"Oh, that's everybody. You'd think they'd have cut it out now that there's no conceivable scenario where a war is settled with teenagers who have machine guns, but they haven't."

"- gosh, way to make the very recent past sound utterly horrifying -"

"The very recent past was utterly horrifying! Then Cam fixed it."

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"Other people have to do the followthrough! For example, they haven't stopped drafting teenagers and giving them machine guns. - Which fairy wants to actually ferry us to the Moon -"

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Claire's fairy is a little more experienced at navigation. Off they go. 

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Cam recommends the twilight band so that the humans do not get sunburned.

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Zoom. Here they are. 

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He makes air for a good long moonjump distance around. And hops.

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The Moon: has lunar gravity! He is very good at hopping! His girlfriends giggle, and try it also, a little more warily on account of not being indestructible.

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Cam is indestructible but still completely fails to stick the landing even when he flares his wings out. He gets moondust all over himself. "I have never been to the moon before, or anyplace with similar gravity - zero g, yes, lunar no -"

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"Where'd you go with zero-g?" Claire asks, bouncing over. She does stick her landing; the dust flares up very dramatically.

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"Out past the golden rectangle's gravity well. If you give it a while you can just fly that far on wing power, making air to flap in." He gets up and brushes himself off.

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"Are there zero-gravity sports, there should absolutely be zero-gravity sports -"

 

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"There are! And zero-g dancing."

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"Ooooooh. - if I try to jump as high as I can will I accidentally leave the air -"

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"If I keep an eye on you I will keep up even if you go higher than I expect."

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"Okay -" jump -

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Air is waiting for her every foot of the jump.

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Jumping around on the Moon is terrifically entertaining and after a little while everybody is dusty and everybody who can get very tired is very tired.

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This seems like a lemonade occasion.

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Demons are really convenient! Lemonade is really appreciated! Dusty tired girlfriends flop on Cam to drink their lemonade.

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...giggle. One wing per girlfriend.

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"Wings're really cozy," Claire says comfortably.

"They are. Fairies get seriously shortchanged on the wings front."

 

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"I met one with these really fuzzy moth wings once," says Cam. "One of my students asked if she could pet them and he let her and presently there was a line. They were soft."

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"And I suppose they don't need to go for performance. Still, though. Did you summon randoms for class or did you have people on call -"

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"I had regulars for some stuff but you want slightly different bindings on randoms so there were some of those; that was a random."

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"Are the lectures available online?" asks Rivka. "I expect there'd be a lot of interest -"

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"Yeah, one of the students compiled everything."

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"Oh good." Lemonade-slurping.

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"Either of you want anything else?"

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"I hear the Moon is made of cheese," Claire offers. "You could make the Moon out of cheese and then we could eat it."

"Not to scale, please," Rivka says.

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"Yeah, to scale would take days. What kinda cheese?"

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Cheeses are listed!

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And Cam makes cute li'l moons of them.

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Moons are munched. 

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Chocolate moons?

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Oh gosh they could go for some chocolate moons.

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Chocolate moons full of impossible chocolate emulsion.

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The thing where you toss food up in the air and catch it with your mouth is laughably easy on the moon!  - well, maybe a few chocolate moons are missed. But they are not exactly in short supply.

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They are not. Girls are wingsnuggled and Cam wonders how one is supposed to maneuver kissing on a vee date.

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That one they can't solve for him! They snuggle. They compare where-were-you-on-Revelation stories - "I ruined the pan I was making omelettes in -" " - I jumped the balcony to watch the neighbors' television and I scared them half to death -"

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"I read a poll saying most people thought it was a hoax at first."

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"I mean, that made more sense - or a really aggressive promotion for something -"

"I knew it wasn't a promotion for something," Claire says, "but - yeah, a hoax seemed to make more sense than magic."

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"You have some sort of insider knowledge on what things are and are not promotions for things?" Cam asks Claire.

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"I would have heard about something that big. Or if I hadn't, my father would have, and he would have been looking smug or jealous instead of looking as shocked as everyone else."

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"Did the news just add up, or did you do your own parlor tricks or summoning or what?"

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"Someone tried it, in the middle of the street,' Rivka says. "Everyone crowded around and she copied a circle from the book - an angel - and, well, what do you know - people were screaming and crying -"

"A local newscaster did it live, and then I saw someone flying around with a fairy."

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"I wonder what the angel thought of all the screaming and crying."

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"I think she was a little unpleasantly surprised by the crowd? But she was a good sport about it, she turned peoples' things colors for them and was really pleased about summoning being widely known, once it had all been explained..."

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"Yeah, summoning shortage was always a problem."

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Lean. "Why only improve one world when you can improve four?"

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"Seems inefficient."

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"Did you pretend to be surprised?" Claire says. "That must have been fun."

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"I didn't have to pretend to be floored, since I was admitting to having summoned before. Just news, not crazy metaphysics. I was like, oh, I guess I can say where I've been on weekends."

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"When did you first learn the crazy metaphysics - why did you even draw out a circle, if you thought the book was probably a joke -"

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"I was really bored."

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"Good thing you didn't take shortcuts!"

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"It wasn't a great binding but it was safe and I got a nice angel."

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"I really want to see your face," Claire says, "but I do not want a lifesized bust of your face."

 

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"I could scale it down?"

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"You could make it in ice cream," Rivka says. "And then we could eat it."

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"What flavor do you suppose would best represent the moment?"

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"Praline!"

"Chocolate bombshell!"

"That's an ice cream flavor?" asks Rivka. 

"Yes. What about the situation calls for praline -"

"Oh, I just really like praline ice cream."

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They can each have a small amazed Cam in their preferred flavor.

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They each munch small amazed Cam.

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"I didn't know my eyebrows could go that high. I've never done it in the mirror."

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"It might be kind of hard to do on purpose."

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"Probably. I remember thinking 'that changes everything' -"

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"It really really does," Rivka says, and snuggles him.

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"I should have figured out in advance how to negotiate kissing on a three person date but somehow I did not."

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His girlfriends glance at each other. 

 

Rivka kisses him.

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Ee!

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Yes!!!!

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Mmmmmwah. Wingsqueeze.

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"I like you tremendously," she says after a moment.

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"I like you too!"

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Claire finishes her ice cream and watches them, smiling.

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Cam looks at her. "Acceptable chocolate bombshell?"

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"Amazing." Kiss?

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Kiss!

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Snuggle.

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"This was a good idea. I will have to thank the one of Elvis's brothers who recommended it."

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"If you keep dropping hints about this mysterious family of Elf siblings I will eventually demand to meet them," Claire says.

"I should very dearly like to meet some Elves," Rivka agrees. "You should introduce us."

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"I will ask them if I may have you over."

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"Sounds good!"

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"Are we all done being on the moon?"

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"Think so." 


The fairy flies them home.

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Cam pays the fairy and kisses the girls goodbye and flies back to the castle.

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"Hey! How'd it go?"

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"Great! Thank you for the advice."

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"Delighted."

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"They would like to come meet Elves and see the castle sometime."

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"Yeah, of course."

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"How is that an of course?"

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"- you're maybe founding a planet with us, it matters if we get along with your harem."

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"Please don't call them that."

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"Okay. Anyway, we ought to meet them and Cáno says they have been screened for not being Thauron."

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"They are not Maiar at all."

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"So if they wanna visit, all theirs."

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"Cool." He emails them to say so.

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They want to visit!

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Up to them if they want to do so separately or together.

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Arranging times is hard; they end up picking separate dates.

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And Cam will be ready to meet whichever arrives first.

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Claire! "Hey!"

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"Hi! Welcome chez the house of Fëanor. That being Elvis's dad."

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"It's - wow. Did they have a demon put it up -"

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"They did not! They built it seven hundred years ago by hand."

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" ...wow."

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"Elves." He holds the door for her.

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Matt and Macalaurë are playing chess; Connor is watching them and eating a pizza from the crust inwards. Matt stands up. "Claire, I take it?"

             "- yeah. Hi. Uh. Wow. You guys go all in on the architecture -"

"I'll tell Moryo you liked it! He designed it and harassed the rest of us into doing our part of the construction. It was the first building on this continent to have indoor plumbing! I suppose these days people don't find that very groundbreaking."

            "Not really. This was in, like, 1300?"

"I will confess we paid human calenders not the vaguest bit of attention, and even if we had they wouldn't have been counting from Christ-related milestones, but around then, yes."

            "- how do you not rule the world by now?"

"Elves are, as a rule, either reluctant to wield power or already infamous for having erred in the wielding."

           "And you are?"

"The latter."

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Cam peers at the chessboard.

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Unless he's very good at chess it wouldn't be immediately apparent who has the stronger position. 

      "You're Elvis," says Claire.

"I performed under that name for a little while, yes."

      "And you two are brothers?"

"This is our family castle. It's the seven of us and our father."

      "And Cam."

"He gravitates towards magic and leverage, you see, and we are possessed with both."

      "I don't know what I imagined Elves would be like but you have the combining-normal-stuff-with-fortune-cookie-level-vague-ominousness thing down pat."

"Thank you!"

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"They can be convinced to get less vague, it just takes a little doing."

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"Should I be apprised of specific ominousness?"

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"It takes a couple hours to get much detail on the whole - arc."

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"Then I think I'll just trust your judgment. Elves with a vaguely ominous arc and a super pretty castle in the middle of nowhere, great. - uh, it is nice to meet you, don't get me wrong -"

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"We didn't," he says, moving a chess piece. 

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"Are you their brother too?" she asks Connor. "Do Elves not inherit hair color -"

      "Oh, I dye it."

"- that's a really excellent dye job, do you have some Elf remedy for it I can recommend my friend who's a stylist -"

      " - so that was an oversimplification. I used my direct control over my body to change the behavior of my hair follicles so that I would be blonde, I did not wash chemicals into the hair."

" - okay."

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"Elves: they have a lot of cool biology perks."

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"Yeah, I know someone who's looking to have kids and who asked a demon for an Elf for that reason."

       

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"...did they get one? Or an attempt, anyway -"

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"Not as of when they mentioned it - I really doubt they're the only people to think of it, if it's a bad idea for some reason -"

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"It's the sort of thing that might provoke divine intervention. Half-Elves are probably less of a bad idea but the afterlife for them is a big question mark and they too might provoke divine intervention, plus feelings from the obligate absentee Elf parent if you don't expressly have the demon make one up who does not really exist. I will... issue a public service announcement." He writes that down.

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"The sort of thing that might provoke divine intervention." She shakes her head. "There's only a handful of demon-aided fertility clinics, they should all be easy to convince not to offer that service. Might be a little harder if people are trying it at home, but most people don't summon demons at home..."

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"I'll call the clinics first then, try to get an idea of how much interest there is."

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"Should you do that right away -"

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"Are we talking three of them or twenty."

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"In the whole world? Probably like twenty, thirty -"

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"Then it had better be able to wait a few hours since if I called them in the wrong order it would anyway, and I may as well use the time to have a better prepared remark than 'please don't have people trying to conceive Elves it might make Eru do things and we hate it when that happens'."

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"All right. Can I see more of the castle, or -"

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"Yeah, sure. It's all really pretty, otherwise the Elves would collapse in aesthetic agony." He shows her around.

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It is really pretty! It is appropriately admired. There's a room with a gorgeous view and she kisses him. "Sorry to give you more work."

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Kiss! "I like to be busy. Besides, you weren't soliciting an Elf kid, were you? So you are not the one generating the work."

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"I have a boyfriend now, I hear it's conventional to consult those before getting pregnant. I could've written you right after she mentioned it if I knew it was a pending catastrophe, though."

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"It might be fine. Maybe half-Elves are just souped-up humans and they get the same afterlife options as everybody else nowadays and maybe the clinics wouldn't dream of letting everybody request Elvis's child in particular just because he's the only Elf they've got certainly identified. But the worst case scenarios are ugly."

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"The divine intervention bit I gather. Elvis would freak out?"

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"Elves have a thing about kids. Elves have things about a lot of things and that is one of them. I mean, I'd be upset if random strangers wound up getting themselves pregnant with my offspring - hell, that's probably going to happen at least once, isn't it, just because I don't have genes any more doesn't mean they didn't exist in the past - but Elves would freak out."

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"What other things do Elves have things about, just so I know -"

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"Prettiness, being imprisoned - that one can get fatal - oaths - they are literally unbreakably binding - also the extreme monogamy is metaphysically enforced turns out - hair, don't touch it - I think that's the things."

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"Metaphysically enforced extreme monogamy. Gosh. What with not dying after all we definitely have the better end of the deal."

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"I'm sure some people wouldn't mind it but yeah."

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"I don't mind monogamy but I can't think of a magic enforcement mechanism I'd really endorse."

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"The enforcement mechanism is 'they have magic marriage that kicks in if they have sex'."

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" - and that's an especially bad one, yikes. Uh - as described that does not imply consent -"

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"Yeah I didn't actually ask that question - they have a very low crime rate, maybe it actually literally never came up, but as described it did not metaphysically discriminate."

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"I think people will be sold on not doing that to their kids."

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"Hopefully."

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More sightseeing! It's such a pretty castle.

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And when she has had her fill of castle and Elves he will look up demon-assisted fertility clinics.

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There are twenty-three of them! Four are in L.A.; they're also popular in China and Korea.

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He doesn't have Korean. He starts with the ones he can talk to first.

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"By law we're not allowed to use DNA from a living person without their written and notorized consent," says the receptionist at the first clinic, "and we were advised by our legal office to stop using DNA from dead persons as well, once the whole afterlives thing came out."

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"Great, that's very good to hear. In the unlikely event you get ahold of an Elf willing to notarize consent please be exquisitely clear about what parental rights they can expect, they will expect more than a comparable human by default."

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"I'll make a note. Thank you for calling Miracle!"

Next four places have the same policy. The one after that says "our clinic provides a safe environment for new families to arrange for fertility assistance. The arrangements are between the families and the daeva involved."

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"There are potentially serious negative externalities associated with the possibility of Elf children or Elf hybrids," Cam says.

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"I'm sorry?"

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"If somebody wants Elf kids that has more serious ramifications than if someone wants Einstein's kids."

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"There are a lot of people concerned about the implications of letting people have Einstein's kids, too."

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"I would be very sympathetic if Mr. Einstein chose to complain. But that's not what I'm calling about. Elves have different afterlife outcomes from humans; if humans can have Elf children at all that will be part of the result. Half-elves have special cased characteristics selected by divine intervention. Inviting divine intervention is a bad idea. And any specific Elf whose genes are used will find this much more violating than a comparable human."

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"...do you want to speak to my manager?"

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"I would love to speak to your manager."

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There's a pause. "Uh, Bob? Revelation's on the phone and he's talking about Elves and inviting divine intervention and -"

"Revelation?"

"I mean, I suppose anyone could say that. Bit more coherent than most of the eugenics doomsday callers, though."

Sigh. "Hello? This is Robert with Love and Life Family."

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"Hello, Robert, I'm Cam, if it would help in any way for us to work out a way for me to prove that I'm happy to do so, I'm calling to advise that you write into your demons' bindings that they are not to make Elf DNA."

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"I was not aware that Elves even have DNA."

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"It's possible they don't! There are so many reasons not to try finding out that I have avoided doing so, and while I understand that there are also lots of reasons to find Elfhood tempting for one's offspring it is a very bad idea to let people go for that."

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"What sort of problems might arise for the families doing that?"

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"If they get full Elves, well, for one thing they take fifty years to grow up, but apart from that if they die - still possible for them to die of accident or violence - then instead of going to a daeva afterlife or Limbo they will float around as a disembodied soul until they find the Vala of the dead, who might choose to leave them disembodied indefinitely or reembody them and forbid them from leaving Valinor at his unchecked discretion. Additionally, Elves whose genes are used will take even more exception than nonconsenting human genetic relatives. Half-Elves have existed in the past but many of their characteristics are inconsistent and seem chosen through divine intervention, which it is deeply unwise to invite."

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"...I can tell people that we don't think attempting that will produce healthy babies?"

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"I don't think you should give anyone the idea if they didn't already have it, I think you should write it into your demons' bindings. I have taken the liberty of writing up a variant on your circle template which I would be more than happy to send to you."

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" - all right."

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"What's your email address?"

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He provides it.

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Cam sends the edited binding. "Sent."

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"Uh, thank you."

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"Thank you! If you switch to this circle you can save me a call back, I'd appreciate that."

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"Uh huh. Have a nice day."

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"You too." And he moves on.

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Next couple places have a consent-of-prospective parents policy. The Against Medical Advice Clinic For YOUR CHOICE is less accommodating.

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"Look, I'm not calling to have an argument about whether people can clone Hitler," Cam says. "I have a very narrow interest here and I feel like I'm not successfully communicating it, can you explain why you want to enable attempts at Elf kids?"

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"If people want an Elf kid then that is their God-given right as Americans."

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...

Does this clinic have a regular demon or are they working with randoms -

"The risks involved aren't just to the families or the kids, though."

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They have a regular! Two, actually.

"Every person born into an interconnected society like ours is a 'risk' to everyone else! That's not sufficient cause to prevent risky-looking people from coming into existence! If it were, you know, that would have some very racist implications."

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"I don't mean that the Elf kids would be dangerous in themselves, on the contrary -" Names? "- but that they might provoke the Valar or Eru by their existence."

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Xiria and Vol.

"Well, if Eru didn't mean us to exercise our Constitutional rights he wouldn't have written the Constitution, that's how I see it."

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You fucking moron. "Which article of the Constitution is this?"

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"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people!" he says triumphantly. If Cam's spying, it's on his office wall.

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"I see. I might call back later. Thank you for your time."

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"God bless."

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Cam hangs up, says, "Fucking moron," loudly out the window, and then says, "Who wants to summon this clinic's regulars and end-run around the idiot employing them."

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"We're not imprisoning them, presumably?"

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"No, they probably just want to help people have babies and are perfectly nice, we're going to advise them that they shouldn't give anybody Elf fetuses and see if they want a live concert for their time."

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"Sure, can do."

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Cam provides the circle for whichever one is not on duty right now.

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He finishes it. Xiria appears, blinks, looks confused.

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"Hi there! I'm Cam. Can I have a word with you about your regular summons?"

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Now she looks more concerned. " - yep -"

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"I just wanted to advise you that it would be a really bad idea to give anybody Elf or half-Elf kids. It might not work anyway, since Elves are magic, and it would probably be best if your employer thought that was what was going on. I tried talking to him directly, but I didn't get much of anywhere."

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"He's a funny kind of guy. Why a bad idea?"

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"Might provoke the Valar - did you hear about that mess with that poor fairy -"

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" - yeah - that'd provoke them too? You know, some people were thinking if they're so easy to provoke something is guaranteed to do it sooner or later and -"

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"I can see the argument, I'm hoping they wind up accepting a correspondence demon so that they can be talked to nonprovocatively and I'm just trying to keep things from exploding until they get around to doing that on their glacial timescale. I don't know that Elf kids would actually upset them - honestly, it's their boss I'm more worried about here - but right now we can't even ask. I can make a note to get back to you whenever there's better information on that, if you like?"

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"I'm not in a big hurry to give someone magic Elf kids but I don't want to lie to them, if the real explanation is 'we're tiptoeing around the fucking Elf gods here -"

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"Yeah, that's why I called your boss first but, uh..."

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"Weird fucking guy. Like, he talks about how people should just do whatever they want with no one telling them what's what, and I'm like, yeah, okay, I'm with you, and then he's upset that a couple of chicks are together and it's like, uh -"

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"Yep. It's a type, actually, but he may be an unusually pure example. Look, if you straight up tell him you won't make Elf kids he can replace you - what's he paying -"

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"Cash - I want one of my own, and apparently you have to accumulate a bunch before they'll let you have one? He's the first gig that's let me talk, I don't wanna try finding another one again."

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"Yeah, I hear you. By all means keep the job, just - not Elf kids."

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Sigh. "Yeah, okay."

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"Thanks. Do you know Vol at all -"

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"Yeah, we overlap on busy days, he's cool. Really into humans, he really likes talking to them about their options and shit."

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"Do you think it'll be hard to convince him of the same thing?"

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"I mean, not to put too find a point on it, you summon people to give them a talk and sound really invested in it, they'd have to be kind of a dumbass not to say 'yep, whatever you say, summoner'."

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"Yeah, if you wanna just tell me his mail label I will be happy to go with that instead. We're not gonna keep you here, promise."

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She rattles off the mail label. "He'll probably work with you."

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Cam writes down the mail label. "Thanks. Anything for the inconvenience and/or spooking - Elvis is handy -"

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"Well isn't that something. Nah, I'm okay."

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"Cool. Good luck with kid-getting, and I'm 'letter to Cam, yellow' if you need anything - don't try guessing other colors, the others aren't colors."

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"All right."

 

And she goes home.

"Uh, I'm sure this is awkward given present human politics," Celegorm says, "but I would actually expect gay couples can't carry an Elf to term, on top of everything else. Single people either."

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"Why's that?"

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"Well, an Elf who was separated from her partner during pregnancy would have a hell  of a time keeping the baby alive and they can do things humans can't."

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"I'm not following."

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"You're pretty much supposed to have sex the whole time."

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"...well, that sounds exhausting. This is actually important for biological reasons of some kind?"

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"Yeah. I don't know the precise mechanism or I could hazard a guess about whether the lesbians would be okay."

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"Okay. What happens if this is neglected exactly?"

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"Baby dies."

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"Well, that might at least be discouraging to future attempts."

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"And goes to Mandos, probably."

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"- that early? Shit. Uh, is he any better at his job in those cases -"

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"I mean, usually he just restores the pregnancy, that's what an Elf would want."

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"...I'll call the rest of the clinics, shall I."

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"Yeah."

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Cam does that. When he gets to the ones that speak Korean he asks if any Elves speak it.

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Cam must be terribly surprised to learn that he speaks it!

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So surprised! Here are the points that he's had to go over with the other clinics, it might be easier to have him directly talking to the clinic instead of translating as they go.

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The Korean clinics are cooperative, though one of them already had a client in who requested an Elf child.

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Did they get one?

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They can't actually tell for a couple weeks.

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But they got an attempt? What demon tried it?

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The clinic has one demon on staff.

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Can they have the demon's mail label? What else does the demon speak?

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They have no idea what languages the demon speaks but they can get her mail label.

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Cam will try in Lagalann and see if that works. And write Vol too while he's at it.

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Korean clinic demon writes back first. Yeah, I tried it. Checking now, it doesn't look like it worked but it could be that it becomes magic at some developmental stage.

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Thanks for checking.

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Sure.

 

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Did you clone somebody or what?

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The Chicago batch look like the right human ethnicity, roughly, they wanted one of those. I aimed for, like, one of that type but not anyone in particular.

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Okay, that's better than the alternative. Thanks for working with me on this.

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Yeah, don't want to get people kids who they can't take care of.

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And that's that. He checks his mail for any reply from Vol.

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Still at work. A while later - I can't conjure any Elf shit, it's all magic.

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Yeah, I'm just asking that you not try to get around that because it'd suck if you could somehow.

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I'll mess around when I'm not at work.

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...does that mean you'll try to make Elves off the clock? That's not really a good idea either.

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Even if I got it they wouldn't come out as people, don't worry, demons can't make people.

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Right, but if you came up with a way to make embryos that turned into Elves, problems ensue.

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I'm perfectly happy to tell people that we can't do Elves because they're magic but I'm not going to avoid making things in my own house out of fear of offending those assholes in Valinor.

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Yeah, experiment in Hell all you want, I just misunderstood. Thanks.

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No problem.

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Phew.

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"Some people still might try at home. Though I guess if it doesn't work naively -"

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"Doesn't work naively and I don't want to give anyone ideas."

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Nod.

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"That one guy is a piece of work." Cam sighs and adds calendar events to check up on the place he sent a revised circle and make sure no new clinics have opened.

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"Humans are far more contrarian than Elves. I find it kind of charming."

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"Charming, really?"

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"He doesn't seem like the type who'd sack a refugee camp because his king told him to!"

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"Guys like that are usually pretty pro-military and the record on disobeying illegal orders is spotty."

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"Then the problem is that he's insufficiently contrarian, not that the contrarianness isn't charming."

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"Fair enough."

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"And were the circumstances a little different I think I would mostly endorse the principle that people can choose the children they want."

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"I don't expect to end the century uncloned and that bothers me and my understanding is it would bother Elvis more."

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"If the parents were competent I actually think he'd be all right with that - with a clone, that is, having a child is a different matter. The parents wouldn't be competent, human parents aren't very competent to raise an Elf and most people in general aren't competent to raise a Fëanorian. That's the real problem."

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"It is not substantially less likely that someone will want his kid, or mine."

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"And then we have to go and get them, yeah."

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"Hopefully I have dissuaded attempts at half-Elves."

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Nod. "Macalaurë's wife would be very disconcerted. Thank you."

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"You're welcome."

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"She'd do all right."

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"Oh, I know, but what a way to start out."

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"Start out?"

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"We weren't actually romantically involved before she died. So it'd be a rather demanding way to open that chapter of a relationship."

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"Uh?"

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"I'm planning to give myself another couple centuries to think about it. But obviously if there were a child it would be very unfair to her to do that."

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"I'm confused."

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"I gathered. I thought you were confused about what we'd do if there were a baby but apparently that is not what you were confused about."

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"I am confused about why you were married to someone with whom you were not romantically involved and why, if you were doing that in the first place, you'd anticipate it changing."

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"Ah. We married for political reasons: she was gay, and romantically involved with a staffer of mine."

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"And died. Right. Okay."

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"Little awkward. That is why I am going to think about it for a few centuries."

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"Gotcha. That makes more sense than my previous model of the situation."

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"It's rude to say things like that about someone, so I don't generally volunteer it."

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"This is twenty-first century Canada. I suppose she's not here."

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"She is not! And I cannot say that we really keep up with the times, norms-wise."

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"Gotcha."

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"We'll work it out eventually, but we have forever, it's important to get it right."

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Nod.

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Cam resumes checking on various things that need monitoring, including the presence of demons in Valinor (please, please let there be one demon in Valinor).

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There are not demons in Valinor.

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Then when Rivka arrives for her tour he will not be particularly elated or upset.

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"Hello! This building is spectacular."

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"Isn't it? Elves: architecture snobs."

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"I like the kind of snob who just makes things extraordinarily suited to their very specific tastes! That's the best kind!"

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"I'm not sure it's specific tastes so much as exacting standards. I have yet to disagree with them on what things are pretty, just on how much that matters."

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"I mean, now that there are demons there's not very much reason not to make things spectacularly pretty even if it only matters a little bit. If cities were designed like this I bet people'd be a little bit happier every day, and that's something."

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"Like the opposite of brutalist architecture."

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"Yes. Things that lift your spirit just to see them. Are the Elves in?"

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"They're in but I cannot guarantee that any particular subset of them will feel like saying hi today. They can probably hear us from here unless they're deliberately behind closed doors though. Hi Elves."

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"Hello, Rivka! Once the spaceship's all designed I bet we'd be happy to imagine out a city block for you, if you've somewhere to put it."

"Oooooohh. I imagine I could find somewhere to put it. Nice to meet you."

"Likewise!"

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"This is Caranthir, who is referred to in my notes as 'the economics one'."

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"Being a periodically dead pop star is a very irregular source of income so I run a couple of hedge funds for us."

        "My impression was that the economy is very confused lately!"

"The markets are confused lately - uncertainty is bad for them and governments sent out annoyingly mixed signals about how they were going to handle the sudden reproducibility of all forms of physical currency - not the U.S. government because I told Nelyo to fix that, but we don't have people anywhere else and markets are global, these days. Anyway, the amount of value being created is doing just fine - better than ever, really - there've just been a lot of bumps in the road to having a decent financial system backing it - and I don't mean to diminish that, it's a big deal, spikes in inflation in Latin America are peoples' savings and incentive to save being threatened, the Dow behaving like a terrified kangaroo on a Lunar trampoline reflects real value being lost - but the economy is way less confused than all of the metrics we use to talk about it."

     Rivka giggles. 

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"I really didn't expect it to take this long for currency to get figured out. I was thinking something like 'credit cards only more proactive about requiring identity checks if it's an uncharacteristic purchase'."

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"I think the biggest problem is that underground and informal economies all used cash and there were a lot of underground and informal economies, especially in countries where the formal and legal ones had excessive barriers to entry. The credit cards with the eight-digit PINs more-or-less solve the counterfeiting problem but you'll still see lots of wobbling on the transition away from cash. We should've taken over the world and legalized most of the things that contribute to informal economies in the first place - sex work, drugs, illegal immigration -"

      "Was that seriously considered?"

"No, we're Doomed and we'd need Nelyo for it. If we'd found out between 1500 and 1900 that the Imladris lot were alive and friendly we might've gone over there and encouraged them to do it, but after that it would have caused more harm than it could have prevented - Elves aren't very good at ruling humans -"

    "Oh? Why not?"

"Too slow, too trusting, too much - Nelyo -"

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"Too much deception required to maintain the requisite level of public buy-in, of public perception that their government is guided by people who have their interests in mind or at least an ideal to which their interests are rightly subordinate. It could be done but you'd need me."

        "...and you're otherwise occupied?" Rivka says.

"I don't want to do it."

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"He, uh, has the mother of all PTSD."

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"Are there things I should be careful of?" asks Rivka.

         "Don't suddenly touch the Silmarils."

"I'm not sure I've even seen those. Silmarils?"

          "If you aren't sure if you have seen them you haven't."

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"They're shiny. Under absolutely no circumstances should you steal them."

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" - are they magically tempting to steal or something, because I really cannot imagine doing that."

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"Maybe to Elves. I didn't find them that interesting. They're really shiny but that's all."

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They're also very powerfully magic, or are we not mentioning that? he offers from his study on a different floor.

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I don't remember that ever featuring as anybody's motive to steal them.

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Most people are blindingly stupid. I do think that was Melkor's motive, though.

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"They're also magic but not in a way random people can use efficiently for anything but lighting."

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"I promise not to touch the Silmarils."

       "Oh, you can touch them, just not - unexpectedly?"

"This seems like a thing to play very safe, honestly. I guess if there's a really good reason I can revisit the question."

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"There's probably not going to be a really good reason."

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"It's a little hard to think of one. Anyway," she says to Caranthir, "I suppose if you'd have been good at taking over the world I wish you had but I think it's usually harder than people expect."

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"Oh, much so, but 'better than 1700s governments' is a fairly low bar."

        "Sure, but the 1700s governments gave way to steadily more modern ones, if we'd have otherwise been stuck -"

"You might have otherwise been stuck. Elves aren't very progress-minded."

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"Although if you'd have figured out 'legalize sex work' despite the untenability of the industry among Elves maybe it would have been better than that makes it sound."

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"I tend to strongly assume that banning voluntary transactions doesn't solve problems. I could see us setting the age of consent at forty or something, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How long would it take you to notice that was stupid?"

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"An Elf-sized short time?"

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"Fast enough to avoid entire generations in which all the law-abiding citizens have kids with parental age related birth defects, or not that fast?"

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" - possibly not that fast."

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"Yeah this would have been a problem if you had functional enforcement."

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"When we were actually presented with humans to govern we just gave them a lot of land and periodic supply shipments and told them to govern themselves. It - sort of worked."

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"Sort of?"

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"It avoided the failure modes associated with imposing Elf values on human populations. Their lives were not very good but in some ways that would have been hard to improve on - we didn't know anything about human disease - and the humans who accepted the more direct rule of my cousins had mixed feelings about that, later."

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"Oh?"

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"There's a famous text you should read, actually, now that it's been un-lost to history, it's called the Athrabeth - it's a sort of Socratic dialogue between my cousin Finrod and one of his human vassals. They debate whether humans are really meant to die, whether Elf hypermonogamy is stupid, whether there's a human afterlife, that kind of thing."

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"Oh, that sounds fun."

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"You'd have liked Andreth. Relentlessly sarcastic and very opinionated about death. It's really too bad Limbo didn't catch her."

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"Yeah, I was considerably more delighted about Limbo when I thought it had caught, like, everybody with a civilization."

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"Maybe someday we'll figure something out."

       "For resurrection?" Rivka says. "That can be done?"

"Eventually everything is possible with our magic system. Just - very very slowly."

       "Well, if Elves think it's slow it must be really bad."

"Indeed."

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"But we have forever, we'll just be more annoyed than the Elves are about using it."

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Giggle. Kiss.

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Kiss!

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They tour the rest of the palace and then home she goes. Matt has emailed Cam enough details to conjure up the Athrabeth by.

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And he conjures it up!

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(an account of a Conversation between Finrod, son of Arafinwë, son of Finwë, and Andreth, sister of Bregor father of Barahir)

"I was," Finrod said, "grieved to hear of your uncle's death, and to be so reminded of the swift passing of your people. I know he lived a long time as Men count it, but I had known him too briefly; to me it was as yesterday that Bëor came over the mountains, and now he is dead, and his sons and their sons."

      "More than a hundred years, it's been," said Andreth, "and they all three lived past ninety. Death came even faster before we found these lands."

"Are you content, then?"

      "Content? We still die. But it's something, to have a little longer, to know that the shadow can lift a little."

"What do you mean by that?"

      "You know very well! When you were still in paradise the shadow we now beseige to the North encompassed the whole world -"

"I wasn't asking what shadow you spoke of, but what you meant when you said it could lift a little, and what the short lives of Men had to do with it. We hold, you know, that you are children of Eru, and your fate and nature are from him."

     "Yes," Andreth said, "that is the stance of the Elves, all we've met, that Men are meant to die. That we are brittle and brief while you are strong and lasting. 'Children of Eru', you say, but we are children to you, also: to be loved a little, maybe, and yet creatures of less worth, upon whom you may look down from the height of your power and knowledge and wisdom and bestow a smile, or pity, or a shaking of your pretty heads-"

"You speak truly enough of some, but not of me," Finrod said. "But when we call you children of Eru we name you kindred, closer kindred than all the birds and beasts of the world, and while we grieve their swift passing how much more we grieve yours! But if their short lives are natural, then so of course are yours - and all this we have been taught in the bliss and beauty of Valinor, where we could learn it from the Valar themselves. Yet I take it you think we err."

    "Yes, you err, and everyone who agrees with you errs," Andreth says, "and maybe the Enemy started it. And Men say all kinds of things, and most don't think of it much at all, but I say that Men are not born to die, and that our deaths are the work of evil in the world, and if the Enemy is the source of all evil then death is from him - being, you see, evil."

"I can believe that your bodies and fates have been Marred by Melkor," Finrod says, "as have ours - we find ourselves weaker in these lands than we should have been, though this may not clearly be revealed for many long years. And that's why your lives are longer here, in Beleriand, where the Enemy did not dwell for long -"

     "That's not what I'm talking about. You are ever of one mind, my lord: the Elves are the Elves, and Men are Men, and though they have a common Enemy, by whom both are injured, still the ordained interval remains between the lords and the humble, the firstcomers high and enduring, the followers lowly and of brief service. Nay, lord, the Wise among Men say: "We were not made for death, nor born ever to die. Death was imposed upon us, and is an evil in itself, perhaps the greatest."

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Well, her logic is good, it's just the assumption that Eru isn't a huge asshole making the conversation sort of weird.

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"These words are strange and terrible," Finrod reprimanded her, "And you speak with the bitterness of one whose pride has been humiliated, and seeks therefore to wound another. I can believe that you have suffered some great hurt. But not by my people, Andreth, nor by any of the Quendi. If we are as we are, and you are as we find you, that is not by any deed of ours, nor of our desire; and your sorrow does not rejoice us nor feed our pride. One only would say otherwise: that Enemy whom you do not name. And perhaps he spreads this lie to tempt you, to inspire Men to envy of Elves. But it is a lie, it has to be, because you speak of death and the Shadow as if they are one and the same, as if in escaping Melkor you would escape death. But death is Eru's invention, not Melkor's, and it seems evil because it is tainted, but untainted it would be good."

       "Says the Elf," said Andreth. "Who doesn't die."

"We die!" Finrod said. "My father's father was brutally murdered, and more after him, in the exile, on the Ice, on these plains. We have seen it and we risk it - to destroy the Shadow, Andreth, and we do not that to protect all the Children of Eru."

      "Oh," Andreth said, "I had heard it was over the family jewelry - but perhaps the son of Arafinwë is not of like mind with the house of Fëanor in that. But anyway, I say again - you don't die. For you it's temporary, it may be pain, it may be bitter, it may be a loss, but you know in dying that you do not leave the world, and that you'll return. Not for us. Dying we die, and we go out to no return. Death is an uttermost end, a loss irremediable. And it is abominable; for it is also a wrong that is done to us."

"By Melkor, you think."

     "Yes!"

"But if that were so, then our war would be hopeless indeed, and the power of the Enemy beyond what we could fathom - to twist the fate of a whole people in such a way - all the power of the Noldor is but presumption and folly - no, Valinor itself is built upon a foundation of sand!"

     "Elves!" Andreth said. "I told you that you didn't know death. Even glancing at it sideways you collapse at once into poetic despair. We see it face on, you know, and we know that the Shadow is the Lord of the World, and that war is fruitless -"

"No!" Finrod says, "No, no, you're coming close to saying something horrendous, you speak of the Shadow when speaking of Eru's designs, you confuse the One Above with Melkor, which is exactly what Melkor would like. Eru is Lord of this world, and Manwë his regent within it, and Melkor could not have done this, could not have imposed death upon your people. No one could have but Eru. So tell me, then, what Men did to anger Eru, if you think that it is a punishment -"

      "The legends of Men vary, my lord."

"But you have some."

       "I have some, which I will not share."

"Do you think that none know but Men? Don't you think the Valar know?"

      "The Valar!" said Andreth. "How should I know, or any Man? Your Valar do not trouble us with care or with instructions."

"What do you know of them?" said Finrod. "I have seen them and dwelt among them, and in the presence of Manwë and Varda, I have stood in the Light. Speak not of them so, nor of anything that is high above you. The Enemy planted these resentments. Have you ever considered, Andreth, that perhaps you placed yourselves beyond the reach of their help? Or even that you were not a matter that they could govern? For you were too great. Yes, I mean that: too great. Sole masters of yourselves within Arda, under the hand of the One. Perhaps for that reason they can offer you nothing, and yet you speak of them with resentment for it!"

       Andreth did not answer. 

"- but let's discuss this legend of yours, instead. It says that before death was imposed you were like Elves?"

      "Elves do not feature in our legends, my lord, for we hadn't met any yet. We considered only dying and not-dying, and not halls of Mandos and lives tied to the fate of the world."

" - oh. I'd been assuming that it was meeting Elves that inspired you to jealousy, and you told yourselves you'd been better - but you believed this before you met any Elves?"

      "Yes. We knew long before that. We should have been born to life everlasting, with no shadow of any end."

"A strange claim."

      "Is it."

"You are made of the matter of Arda, and yet imagine that you will live beyond it."

      "Imagine that we ought to, at least."

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Yep, he would have liked Andreth.

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It goes on a while longer, gets to the promised part where Andreth complains about Elf hypermonogamy. 

"...but to you I suppose that's little comfort," Finrod said.

                "I did not ask to be comforted."

"I know, you know - he is my brother, Aegnor, Aikanáro - and he loved you, not long ago, though then you were a young woman -"

               "And now my hair is gray. My lord, don't speak of this. Why should we love you, and why should you love us (if you do), and yet insist that the difference is momentous, is insurmountable -"

"We did not make the difference," Finrod said, "And we do not hold it over you, we pity you - I know you'll hate the word, but listen, there are two kinds of pity: one of kinship recognized, and near to love, and one of the difference in fortune perceived, and near to pride, and I speak of the first -"

            "Speak of neither!' said Andreth. "I want neither. I was young and I looked on his flame, and now I am old and lost. He was young and his flame leaped towards me, but he turned away, and he is young still. Do candles pity moths?"

"Or moths candles, when the wind blows them out?" said Finrod. "Andreth, I tell you, Aikanár the Sharp-flame loved you. For your sake now he will never take the hand of any bride of his own kindred, but live alone to the end, remembering the morning in the hills of Dorthonion."

           "I asked you not to talk about this," Andreth said. "That's - stupid -"

"He will die, soon. Elves have foresight in some things, though rarely in pleasant ones. He will die and he will not wish to return -"

           "Then," she said. "why didn't he go for it."

"I do not think the answer will satisfy you. Elves do not marry in wartime. If his heart had ruled him he would have wanted to take you far away from this danger, from this war, but he has duties here, and duty triumphed."

           "For one year," she said, "for one day, I would have risked it -"

"That he knew," Finrod said, "and thought that you would be bartering unwisely, and so he turned away. It would have been a cruel end."

           "The end is always cruel for Men. He could have left, you know, when I got old, and not pretty -"

"He wouldn't have left. But Andreth, the life and love of the Eldar dwells much in memory; and we would rather have a memory that is fair but unfinished than one that goes on to a grievous end. This way he will remember in the sun of morning, and that last evening by the water of Aeluin in which he saw your face mirrored with a star caught in thy hair —forever, until the end of Arda -"

          "And I, being dead, will remember nothing."

Finrod sighed and stood up. "I have no words to heal such thoughts," he said, "but do not believe yourself scorned, at least."

          "Ah huh."

"Do you wish that Elves and Men had never met?"

         "We could have met, and Elves been a little less - yourselves."

"We cannot be. But know that we love you."

         "Are you heading north to see him?"

"Yes."

         "Tell him not to be reckless."

"I'll tell him," Finrod said, "but it won't help. Maybe - maybe there's something for you, beyond the end of the world. Await us there - my brother, and me -"

         Andreth did not answer him.

 

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It's such a pity Limbo didn't -

Maybe it did in some frustratingly magic way. Costs nothing to check.

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Andreth is a sixty-year-old woman living in New York City.

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What.

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Tiny model Andreth is watering the plants on her windowsill. Overlooks Central Park. Very pretty.

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What.

"Hey, if Andreth is a little old lady living in New York City I assume that's shenanigans, should I like, not go say hi, or is that not a useful shenanigan handling protocol."

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"Well.

 

 

Something is definitely fucking with us but I suspect ignoring it wouldn't help much."

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"Something. Gosh, I wonder what."

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"I'm assuming Eru, but if not saying hi won't help anything I totally wanna go say hi."

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"Not saying hi won't help anything. Want a fairy?"

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"Yeah - there's a Fairyland-compiled list of who wants what, lemme find someone who wants material goods or to go to New York -" Check. Circle.

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He finishes it.

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"Hi! I wanna go to New York City, do you also wanna go to New York City?"

"You know it!" chirps the fairy.

"Awesome -" Detail work later, he and a wing-concealing snazzy leather coat and winter hat that covers his ears and forehead and hair for a reasonable amount of disguise are knocking on Andreth's door.

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She opens it. "Uh, hello?"

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"Hello. Uh, my name is Cam and I have a really weird question."

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"These are weird times."

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"Yes." He hands her the Athrabeth. "Do you recognize this?"

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Blink.

 

 

"- I - might. Where'd you get this?"

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"It was recommended to me by an Elf. I made it. I'm a demon."

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" - well. 

 

 

 

 

Which Elf -"

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"He's going by Matt lately. One of the Fëanorians."

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"And recommending demons my writings?"

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"Yes. And then I idly wished Limbo had had a chance to get people from that long ago and it cost nothing to check and for some reason you appear to be living in New York City."

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"So I am. - I don't know the why either. It's - my whole family but if it's anybody else we haven't found them -"

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"Your whole family out to how far?"

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"My parents - probably their parents, though they never said anything - people vary a great deal in how much they notice it, it's mostly - vague intuitions you can write off as nonsense if you're aware of how confirmation bias works, a slight presumed-genetic tendency towards psychotic breaks - and then one day the news said there were Elves and everyone knew that of course there were Elves -"

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"...you're welcome?" he says uncertainly.

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"That was you?"

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"Indirectly."

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"Well, it was nice to know we weren't crazy. But, ah, they aren't our Elves - Beren checked for his girl - so we didn't - the Fëanorians had a formidable reputation, back then, tracking them down and bothering them seemed very likely to end badly -"

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"I like them but I acknowledge they are not universally popular for good reasons. ...Did Beren check demonically or -"

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"Yes. You can try again if you think you might have ideas the other demon didn't, he was devastated, but as I understand it they were thorough. Everyone else found their spouses by apparent coincidence - went to the same college, things like that - before Revelation."

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"That is weird. I will do my best - Elves don't work naively, Maiar extra don't -" Checking checking come out Lúthien wherever you're hiding -

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Nothing for Lúthien-in-conjurable-substrate, nothing for her surroundings.

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"- nothing, sorry."

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"It's all right. There's - clearly some plan at work, and it doesn't look finished, so -"

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"Oh yeah, everything has shenanigans written all over it, maybe she enters stage right in six months, I don't know. Can't find her now."

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Nod. "I can ask people if they'd like to be introduced, they, ah, might not. Particularly not by Fëanorians. But we're all here - we all remember the old languages -"

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"Elladan is also around, I don't remember if you were contemporaries, I'd have to look it up -"

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"The name isn't familiar. Descended from who, do you know -"

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"One of Elrond's kids."

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Headshake. "Not familiar, sorry."

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"That's okay. The Elf you are talking to in this book and your ex and so on are presumably in Valinor, which still has not employed a correspondence demon, much to my annoyance, but they were thinking about it last I heard."

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"Yes, I've been following Valinor news."

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"Okay. So you're mysteriously reincarnated and so is practically your entire extended family. ...Weird."

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"Yes. Very. And then there was a Silmaril found in Denmark - something's coming."

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"Yeah. The Fëanorians are in possession of all their shinies with no stabbing involved, at least."

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"Should I be impressed by that, on its face it's not especially remarkable."

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"It wasn't hard, I just paid a fairy for them, but they were really nervous about it until they got them."

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" - and were prepared to resort to stabbing if it'd gone badly?"

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"It's not a matter of being prepared for it, it's those pesky binding oaths some idiot decided went well with pointy ears." He looks vaguely ceilingward.

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"Elves. I suppose you saw my complaints. We don't know any history past the year 500 or so, no one born yet lived past that. What happened?"

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Cam looks up his notes and reads through them.

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Beren died shortly after participating in the retaliatory murder of all the Dwarves in Menegroth, and before the Fëanorians came in looking for their Silmaril. Everyone else predeceased him. (Beren's son was holding the Silmaril when they came.)

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"...yeesh."

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"Hmmm?"

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"Uh, most everybody in your family died, Beren helped commit genocide and then also died, his son who I assume has not managed to reincarnate sans mom had a Silmaril when the Fëanorians showed up..."

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"- Beren's telling of that story was very different than what I take it was the Fëanorian version. They murdered his son?"

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"Yeah. Grandkids ran off and froze to death - I checked that one. I have Elvis's oath that - sorry, I've been calling him Elvis for my personal amusement and it's not really appropriate in context - I have Maglor's oath that he wasn't adjusting the story to look good."

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"That doesn't mean they got accurate information."

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"Yes. But I did check the grandkids, apparently there were competing rumors."

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"I might like to talk to some non-Fëanorian Elves."

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"I can email Elladan if you like. I think the ones in Chicago don't want to be bothered."

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"Sure. Thank you."

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"You're welcome." He pulls out his phone and emails Elladan. Andreth and extended family mysteriously reincarnated and would like to talk to some non-Fëanorian Elves, may I refer them to you?

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...Beren and Lúthien, too?

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Him yes her no.

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Of course. Should we send someone for them? Where?

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Cam shows Andreth this exchange.

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"I wish the name was familiar. Uh, yes, they can come here, I'll message everybody who might like to come -"

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"I probably have the family tree somewhere." He gives Elladan the address and looks it up. "- oh, Elladan is Beren's daughter's son's son."

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" - huh." She writes the messages. "- Beren says he'll come by, and Morwen and her family -"

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"How far off do they live? I got here by fairy and he probably wouldn't be hard to talk into an extra couple trips."

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"Morwen and her family are in Dallas, Beren's in Florida."

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"I will call the fairy." He calls the number of the phone he gave the fairy for this purpose and agrees to exchange some material objects for people fetching trips. Would Elladan also like to be fetched from Vienna?

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It'd be lovely if they all dropped by.

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And fairies are fast. Everybody can be there in an hour.

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imladris

Imladris is built into the Alps. It's pretty. 

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"Yep, that'd be a place where Elves live."

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He ushers them all in. "My father built it in the middle of the Second Age, after the fall of Eregion - does anyone here know the history, I don't want to bore you -"

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"We certainly don't," Morwen says. "Perhaps Revelation might -"

"Not if he's getting it from the Fëanorians," Beren says. 

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"That is where I am getting my information, yes."

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" - so in the mid-Second Age a Maia came to Eregion, which was the place where the Noldor had coalesced after the war, and said he wanted to help invent ways for the Noldor to be independent of Valinor. My father turned him down, had a bad feeling about the whole thing. So did Galadriel - Finrod and Aegnor's sister, the only survivor of the Age in that family. But Celebrimbor - Curufin's son - accepted the help, and the two of them worked and invented together for three hundred fabulously productive years, towards the end of which Celebrimbor became concerned about the Maia's motives. He spent the subsequent century working in secret on the continuance of that project - three rings for Elves, which would make the bearer all but a Vala - and smuggled the results out once he achieved them, which was fortunate because shortly afterwards the Maia revealed himself as Sauron, with an army, and sacked the whole city - the rings took time to leverage effectively -"

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"Sauron tortured Celebrimbor to death - maybe wanted the locations of the rings, by reputation he may also have just enjoyed that kind of thing - and with his body mounted on a pole as their banner they stormed the continent. My father built and concealed a stronghold in the mountains, evacuated people there, harried the Enemy as much as they dared, and after five years of war the Men of Númenor came to our aid and routed the Enemy, though the Enemy had done his damage and grass would not grow anywhere on the continent for the next three thousand years. Imladris was completed, made safe, and then protected with the aid of the rings, and it endured in safety until Sauron's destruction."

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"It's nice here."

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"Thank you."

       "Andreth said the Fëanorians killed Dior and Nimloth and Elúrin and Elúred -"

He sighs. "Yes, they did."

      "It's been thirty thousand years," says Morwen.

      "I wasn't planning to go yell at them over it," Beren says. "But - I remember it like it was yesterday and I found out about it today, give me a little time - they were only children -"

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Cam is politely silent.

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"What happened?" asks Andreth. 

       "Are you asking me or Elladan, you know what I know -"

"Yes, him -"

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"I wasn't there at the time either, mind. Beren'll have a better picture than me of how Dior ended up ruling Doriath -"

       "The Dwarves killed Elu," Beren says, "over the Silmaril, and then they sacked the city and took it and were marching northeast with it - I think Melkor intended them to bring it back to him - and we ambushed them and took it back -"

        "Christ." one of Morwen's kids says.

        "You should have seen Menegroth after they'd sacked it, children chopped up into pieces -"

        "So the magic rock and they deserved each other, sounds like."

        "We didn't want it in Melkor's hands, Lúthien could keep our people safe with it, do what her mother had done -"

        "Did that work?"

        "Yes. For the rest of her life, but then we died - it burned her out, she hadn't been expecting that, she was mortal now and using herself like that burned right through her, and it was up to Dior, and -"

"And the Fëanorians sacked the city, killed nearly everyone who was left," Elladan says. "Your granddaughter was smuggled out with the Silmaril, she was three -"

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(Cam is following along in his ciphered notes.)

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"She grew up in Sirion. The survivors of the fall of Gondolin and Nargothrond gathered there too. They voyaged west, as often as they could, planning to get a petition to the Valar somehow and get help. The ships rarely made it back. She got married. She had children. Her husband was out trying to reach Valinor. The Fëanorians learned where the Silmaril was, attacked again, killed almost everybody, again - adopted my father and his twin brother, raised them in their last remaining fortress -"

        "Why?" Morwen's other daughter asks.

"I really don't know. Possibly they thought adopting children would improve morale - possibly wanted hostages - they were insane, by then, you know -"

       "Yes, that much I'd gathered."

"My father loved them."

       "Kids do that," Beren says. 

"Yes. So when Sirion was sacked Elwing threw herself into the sea with the Silmaril around her neck, meaning to keep it from them, and Ulmo pitied her and turned her into a seagull, and the winds swept her into Eärendil's ship, where she returned to human form. And with the Silmaril to guide them they did find Valinor, and Elwing walked among the Teleri and inspired them to help, and Eärendil brought his petition to the Valar and was heeded, and then they came to help."

       "So if we hadn't had a Silmaril -"

"I don't know. I really don't."

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Cam really does not think his input here would be valued. If anybody wants to ask what Elvis had to say about it they can ask.

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They don't ask. "So the Valar won, and then -"

     "And then the Fëanorians attacked the victorious host for their Silmarils back, slaughtered their way through the camp in the dead of night, prepared to die fighting their way out, only Eönwë, the leader of the host of the Valar, Manwë's herald, a Maia - he was so tired of the whole bloody thing, he told them to just take them. And they did, and ran off with them, and that's the last anyone saw of them though the reasonably-accurate rumor, as I understand it, is that Maedhros took a Silmaril and threw himself into a fiery chasm and that Maglor threw his into the sea and then wandered it singing for the rest of time."

      "Except now they're back," Andreth says.

"They are. I checked in on them, we've been emailing."

     "If demons can make Silmarils -"

"Then I was going to kill them all," Elladan says. "Demons can't."

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"Which is good, because I would have been in a pickle."

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"Oh?" Beren asks.

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"They summoned a random demon, to check. It was me. I agreed to see if I could make Silmarils, and locate the extant ones, for a couple phone calls. If I could make them they were either going to convince me to not do that any more or keep me. There was mindreading involved, about which I was not best pleased when I found out. Fortunately I could not make Silmarils. Later I investigated the languages and once on my current summon I hassled them for an explanation."

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"Reputation back in the day was intense, oddly sincere, charming when it suited them, and utterly ruthless."

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"Sounds about right. I get along with them."

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"It's been thirty thousand years," Morwen says again, quite firmly. "I'm sympathetic to the back-and-forth over Hitler and Stalin and Mao being free and clear but I've yet to see any calls to bring Leopold II to justice and I think that speaks well of humans -"

       "It says we sleep through our history classes," one of her daughters mutter.

"Better that than mistake them for the present."

      "Dior and the babies aren't coming back," Beren says. "It's thirty thousand years they could have been alive."

      Andreth hugs him. "I can't imagine finding out like this how your children died. I'm so sorry."

 

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This is probably not the time to break out the "speaking as a murder victim" line.

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"My father wrote about the War of Wrath, if any of you would like to read it. It's mostly not personal details but it has some." 

        "I'd like that," Beren says. "He's in Valinor?"

"He is."

       "Is he happy?"

"I think he has a lot of regrets and lives with them comfortably enough."

       "Do the rings that make you like a Vala still work?" asks Morwen's daughter.

Elladan looks at his hand consideringly. "They do very little. I suppose I could ask permission to wave a Silmaril at this one."

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"They work fast," agrees Cam.

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Several people present shudder. "It's never worth it," Beren says.

      "They might feel they have some claim on the ring," Andreth says.

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"They haven't brought it up, if they do."

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He gets a couple exasperated glances that are probably best parsed as 'yep, charming when it suits them, that sure is the people who stabbed the kids'.

 

"If I had it I could make it impossible for outsiders to find Imladris," Elladan says. "And if they had it they could do the same for their castle, which means everyone can sleep free of nightmares about Silmaril thieves - any day now someone's going to publish an English translation of the whole history and some idiot teenager is going to have a run at it -"

       "I resemble that remark," Beren says.

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"If you have a way to let them safely bounce off Valinor and fly away to the Dwarf afterlife, please, share away, it's just there's all those Valar in the way."

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"By reputation those are dense, reactive, and well-intentioned only to the extent that good results need hardly ever flow from those good intentions."

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"Yes, that is my impression also. I'm paying a rotation of security fairies to make sure no random idiots go splashing their way into the twisty to go hassle them lest they mistake random idiots for Humans In General."

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Sigh. "Thank you for looking into that."

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"You're welcome."

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He gets books for people who are interested in books.

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Cam can make copies if people want copies.

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They'd be delighted.

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Cam does not want to hang out in Imladris forever. Everybody here can have his mail label. Does he need to, like, refrain from telling the Fëanorians anything, they already know he went to New York to find Andreth because they had to summon the fairy for him but he can omit other details.

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"I can't think why."

       

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"Well, me either but it seemed polite to ask."

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"War with Melkor really doesn't bring out the virtue in anybody. I hope they're well. Thank you for finding us."

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"My pleasure. Do you want a fairy circle or several of them for the ride home -? Or I can ask mine if he minds being called back here."

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"That would be great. Thank you."

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Cam talks to the fairy - the fairy just wants to hang out in New York some more, he'll take Cam home but no more extras - he gives them a few fairy circles and advises that Elf singing is likely to go over well - he goes home.

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"How'd it go?"

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"Andreth is neat. Beren does not like you guys. They are all hanging out in Imladris now."

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"It's mutual. They don't know why they're alive?"

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"They have no idea. They all managed to find their correct spouses in for example college - except Beren, I double-checked but nothing doing - and they sort of remember things as they were reminded, public info on Elves helped jog their memories a lot."

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"Weird."

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"Extremely."

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"There's a prophecy."

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"...I don't love the sound of that."

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"I am not inclined to be delighted."

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"What is the prophecy."

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"When the world is very old and the watchers at the gates grow weary, Melkor will break loose, and rip the Moon from the sky and blot out the Sun, and on the plains of Valinor Túrin Turambar will fight him, and the griefs of the world settled for ever."

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"...watchers at the gates?"

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"Of the Void. Where they're holding Melkor."

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"Is that the one which also has the bit about the Silmarils -"

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"Yes."

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"What's that bit say."

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"That Father will break them and restore the light of Arda Unmarred to the world."

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"I'm not very inclined to do that," he says, walking in.

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"Yeah, we have a sun now. Uh, does Elladan know about this or should I tell him to have Turin summon somebody in case he is interrupted mid-fight by dying."

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"Hard to guess - it's an obscure one, and from before his time, but one you might make a point of knowing if you were staying on Earth until the end. And if Túrin can become a daeva that means the prophecy isn't particularly likely to occur in the next few decades while he's still alive - and yet -"

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"Eru," he says, "should die."

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"Hear, hear, lemme know if you figure that one out. Repeat me the prophecy, I'll write it down this time."

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"When the world is very old and the watchers at the gates grow weary, Melkor will break loose, and rip the Moon from the sky and blot out the Sun, and on the plains of Valinor Túrin Turambar will fight him, and the griefs of the world settled for ever. And Fëanor will come forth from exile and break the Silmarils and restore to the world the light of Arda Unmarred."

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And Cam emails that to Elladan.

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Who writes back well, fantastic. I want to give the humans a week or so to come to terms with all of the history, then I'd like everyone to meet if that's possible. There is some precedent for the Enemy being advantaged by poor communication and old resentments.

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Cam reads that out to the Fëanorians.

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"That's reasonable. Is a week long enough - I know they're humans -"

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"I'm sort of worried about waiting even that long and am going to recommend Elladan get Turin to finish the fairy circle to go home if he can. If someone needs longer they can probably ask for it."

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Nod. 

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So Cam tells Elladan that. And asks where they'd be meeting.

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If possible I would like to see how my ring likes the Silmarils.

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"Elladan has a magic ring and would like to wave it at the Silmarils, does that sit okay with you and if so does it impose meeting location constraints?"

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"I'd sooner not travel with them - what does the magic ring do -"

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"I have negligible detail but the five word summary was 'make you like a Vala'."

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"Well, we could certainly use that. They're all welcome here, then, I suppose."

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Cam writes back that Fëanor is agreeable but does not wish to travel with the shinies.

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If it's all right with them we'll come visit.

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Yup, that seems to be fine.

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Next Saturday?

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Cam checks and confirms.

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He leans back and starts singing, unhappily.

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Sigh.

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He has been present for the whole conversation but has not moved or spoken; he is staring at the wall.

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- oh right, telepaths. He asks Elvis Should I just ignore Matt or what.

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I could snap him out of it but it's not actually an emergency, as far as I can tell.

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It is not.

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So yeah. When we need him he'll act normally.

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Okay. So Cam ignores him and reads things instead.

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And two hours later he says, quite casually, "Cam, can I have a fairy circle -"

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"Sure, what for?"

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"I'm going to head back to D.C. and talk to some people, make sure that if we need to reach the President in a hurry we can, that everyone's at least loosely apprised of things -"

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"Sure." Generic fairy circle.

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Off he goes.

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Cam informs his girlfriends that his Saturday is blocked off for weird shenanigans-related stuff and he might wind up with other things constraining his time similarly and also please let him know at once if anything terrible should happen to the moon in case he isn't looking.

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That is more ominous than anything the Elves managed, Claire says. Will do. You okay?

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Yeah, I'm fine, just fussing about things that might not be fine later. Actually if anything terrible happens to the moon maybe tell some fairies before you tell me.

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Should some fairies be on hand to prevent terrible things from happening to the Moon?

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Maybe but not definitely. I am not exactly sure by what mechanism terrible things might happen to the moon and certainly by default prefer that fairies not trigger-happily perturb its orbit.

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Well, I'll keep an eye on the Moon.

 

 

On Saturday reincarnated humans and several dozen Elves show up at the door of the castle.

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"Well, this should be fun."

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"It should! All these people!"

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Cam goes out to say hello.

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Elladan's twin is along this time. "Cam! Hello."

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"Hello! How are you? ...How do I tell you apart?"

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"Different braids is the traditional way."

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"Thank you all so much for coming. Please come in."

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The receptionist from the graphic design studio in Chicago waves at Cam as they go inside. 

 

 

Elves start singing.

Humans stand to the side, looking somewhere between amused and annoyed.

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Cam waves back. He stands with the humans and produces a little baton and pretends to conduct the Elves.

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Very funny. "Are we all here so that if anyone has an inclination to have a fistfight we get it out of the way before the war, or are there things to talk about -"

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"Elladan's going to wave his ring at the Silmarils, also the fistfight thing, also spooky prophecies."

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"Spooky prophecies."

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"Yep. Moon being torn from the sky and shit."

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"Well. That wasn't mentioned before because?"

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"Elvis told me when I got back, Elladan wanted to provide some acclimation time."

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"If I punched an Elf I'd just break my hand, it wouldn't be very satisfying at all."

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"I'm not sure how it's supposed to be satisfying even in the standard case."

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"Maybe get back to people on that once you've had kids, if you ever do."

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"I called a bunch of demon assisted fertility clinics the other day and was successful in not using any of my ability to get what I wanted to ask that they not give me any."

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"That's a - of course that'd be a thing."

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"Yeah. They or in one case their demons have all been convinced not to try Elf or half-Elf kids or in one case not to try it again."

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"- so there might be one out there? Elves are fanatical about that -"

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"Not a particular one, at least, the demon aimed at an ethnicity but no individual. So if that has fallout it'll be a general consequence of it being possible at all."

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Nod. "Anyway, I think it's pretty natural to wish ill on the people who murdered your children, just - unconstructive in this case especially."

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"My parents aren't the type to punch the guy who murdered me either."

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"Even when they thought you were really gone?"

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"My father would have helped arrest him, for sure, if he hadn't been apprehended swiftly as it was. But punching I don't think so."

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"Oh, I think arresting would satisfy the impulse, but that's inconveniently also infeasible."

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Nod.

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"It'll be all right."

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"I hope so."

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"I haven't the faintest idea if the world will be all right, but I'm quite confident the people in the room can cooperate civilly."

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"Good." Conduct conduct conduct.

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Elves stop singing, after a while. 

"We'd like some context on the prophecy."

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"Yeah. I don't have much. The story of Túrin's adventures was told among humans long after he died, and at some point the telling picked up the prophecy. I thought nothing of it until learning Túrin was -" he nods at him.

         "So the version you know might not be accurate."

"The version I know might be wildly inaccurate."

         "Was there an attribution -"

"No."

        "Is it even possible for Melkor to break out?"

"He's had thirty thousand years. It is not inconceivable he figured out how to leverage them, and dragging the Moon out of the sky is the sort of thing he'd do."

        "We have fairies."

"We do. Humanity is much better prepared for this fight than they were last time."

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"But keep in mind that last time, the Enemy spent a thousand years keeping his head down and playing politics before he showed his hand. If he arrived on Earth today, I'd expect him to go look up some people who want to destroy the world, and talk them into it, not to build a big obviously evil fortress and invite us to come fight him in it."

       "And the Valar can cancel daeva abilities."

"Yes. Without much advance notice of daeva existing, even."

       "We need the Valar."

"I think we should formulate plans on the assumption we don't have them."

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(- any chance they have a correspondence demon yet.)

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They do not.

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(Damn.) "How's their range? We're limited by what we can see by default but Elves are telepaths."

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"I think we can assume they'd notice something happening to the Moon."

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"And get to it within a decade or two?"

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"Or five, yeah."

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"I asked in the hope of extrapolating whether daeva powers might work from farther away than Melkor's ability to suppress them. In case he can do the crippling a specific daeva version - that's what they tried first - and not the area effect kind. Angels have short range but fairies wouldn't need to go far to reach the moon and demons have astronomical range."

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"It wouldn't surprise me if demons had better range than Melkor but I'm not sure what you could do about him - fairies either, he needn't have a physical form if he'd rather not -"

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"If he doesn't have a physical form then yeah we have a problem."

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"There is no known way to kill a Vala."

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"I can probably do it, though."

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"What do you need?"

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"The Silmarils. Time. Maybe Celebrimbor's notes on the rings, those are clever."

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"I can get you those."

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"How much time -"

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"If I knew how to do it I'd be doing it. Fifteen years, maybe twenty -"

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"That might be fast enough."

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"It also might not. Have we considered getting a group of humans out of the star system, right now, just in case -"

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"That's not a bad idea. I can get all the volunteers we could ever want if I make a video about it but have no good way to sort them."

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"Smart, young, healthy, make the application process require some diligence and attention to detail, we can do interviews from there. Do we already have ship plans adequate for humans -"

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"You can summon in an accelerating ship, if the acceleration's appropriately constant, so yes."

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"Somebody tested that? Brilliant. Elvis, you want to help with the recruitment video - where are we going, how many people -"

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"Yeah, we paid for a test a couple weeks ago. Proxima Centauri B is habitable."

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"If the aim here is to ensure that some humans survive the possible destruction of Earth and neighbors, so they can summon the rest back, then I don't think you'd want more than forty or fifty, you'd just be inviting complications."

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"That's millions of circles per person, bit much. And every time one of them died everyone they summoned would go home and have to be resummoned."

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"The problem with sending a couple hundred thousand people is that every supply summons runs some risk of a mistake destroying the ship, and with enough people over the course of five years that's practically guaranteed to happen."

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"Is Proxima Centauri the only habitable planet we know about, could we do a few of these separately?"

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"We know of lots but you're looking at a decade and a half of travel for the rest of them - Father, is FTL possible -"

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"I don't know. Probably. Not inside a century."

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"Yes if uploading works and gets around the demon mind limit let's not go there though."

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"Still have to get somebody out there in the first place, too."

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"Is there a reason not to send Elves on the longer trips -"

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"Spaceships are too small."

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"We're working on bigger ones. But yes. Right now we can't accelerate something tolerably-sized for Elves fast enough for summoning to work aboard it. You could have a collection of smaller ships, I guess, and fairy between them, but you'd need a fairy on-call for that pretty much all the time -"

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"And we're not very numerous, and haven't enough unmarried people to start a self-sustaining society anew somewhere -"

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"And for humans you can solve the genetic diversity bottleneck with demons implanting the pregnancies, can't do that for Elves."

(Elves present shudder.)

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"Probably. One person did get as far as trying."

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"We can't check whether it's possible?"

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"Not without trying it. Even if the one attempt didn't work it could just have been done wrong."

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Elves shiver. 

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"Sorry."

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"Not your fault."

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"We could send lots of different ships on different routes to Proxima Centauri B, even if we're not sending them farther than that."

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"That's a good idea."

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"A hundred ships of fifty isn't that much harder than one. The trajectories aren't even a problem as long as they can summon on the way."

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Nod. "This isn't an intractable amount of interviewing?"

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"Hourlong interviews?"

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"Probably."

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"So a thousand'll take Nelyo two months if we make him do it all himself."

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"Skype okay or are we requiring in person?"

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"I think I'd sooner meet people."

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"Here or not telling the Internet where you live?"

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"We'll get an office somewhere."

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"Okay. I will write myself a script post-houseguests."

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"Is the ring happier -"

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"I think so. You don't have any rivers around I could reverse to test it, do you?"

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"There's a river north of here. It's particularly good at rivers?"

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"This is Nenya, its focus is water. The other two are fire and air."

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"Was an Earth ring scheduled but cut for budget reasons?" asks Túrin.

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"Our father thought it was - three for the resting places of the Silmarils. Water, fire, air -"

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"Yep that'd be Tyelpe."

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"I'd like to look at one, see if I can pick apart what he was trying to do -"

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"The other two are in Valinor. There's a case to be made it's more important to protect here than Imladris, but -"

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"It's obviously more important to protect here than Imladris, you already tried fighting Melkor with me dead and it didn't work at all."

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"Why are the other two in Valinor? Who brings a magic object the purpose of which is to grant one Vala-like powers to Valinor?"

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"Well, they'd stopped working after Sauron's defeat, they were mostly just - historical artifacts -"

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"Okay, fair."

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"Maybe we can make more of them. Maybe Celebrimbor's been working on more of them, he's had Ages and I assume he did not get all the intelligence corrected out of him. But - something to kill a Vala with the Silmarils first."

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"Yes."

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No argument from Cam.

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"There were rings for Men, too. With them the Enemy could command their minds."

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"Does that work on daeva?"

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"I don't know."

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"Are those rings still around?"

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"As far as anyone knows they have all been destroyed."

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...Cam checks to see if he can get Nenya and/or Nenya's surroundings by usual workarounds.

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Nenya's surroundings work fine.

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"Name me the other rings?"

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"Elven ones were Narya and Vilya, I don't think the rings for Men had names."

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"How many were there?"

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"Nine."

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"Okay, I'm naming them myself then for conjuration purposes. Calliope..." Surroundings?

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Rock.

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Does this rock have a suspicious torus shaped gap in it.

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Yeah.

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And Clio through Urania?

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Looks like four rings still exist and the other ones do not or do not have conjurable surroundings at any scale.

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"Does this call for a destructive treasure hunt?"

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" - yes, probably. I wouldn't assume we're safe once they're gone, though -"

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"What else?"

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"I mean, he made them once, it should be presumed he can make them again."

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"In a hurry?"

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"I don't know. With the time dilation, maybe."

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"...great. Well. Destructive treasure hunt anyway. They don't do any mind control before one puts them on?"

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"They take a while even once one puts them on."

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"Good."

...he pauses and looks for physical forms belonging to either Melkor or Sauron.

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Nope.

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Good. Surroundings?

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Nothing comes up for that either.

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Good.

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"So four drilling jobs, and then what's the plan from there -"

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"Find a thousand Proxima Centauri B colonists, including at least a couple people adequately informed about the situation and prepared to act on various contingency plans if Melkor comes back - that might not mean helping, it might mean fleeing farther. People with expertise in magical engineering work on destroying the Enemy; the ring stays here to shield them and the Silmarils; human governments are encouraged to alter their protocols for use of nuclear weapons and of daeva for more resilience against infiltration and mind control. American intelligence services are presently running checks for summons of inadequately bound daeva worldwide as an anti-terrorism measure which could perhaps be modified should the Enemy become active in the world. We do some modelling work on things that could happen to the Moon and how best to react to them, persons not banned from Valinor might contemplate travelling there, though you shouldn't expect to be allowed to leave. Some sufficiently trustworthy daeva should be summoned by the people headed to the Alpha Centauri system so the daeva are still here to fight if everything else is destroyed. We can launch the colonists as we finish screening, training, and equipping them - can maybe train them along the way, if we have daeva doing it who can go home once they're done. There should be multiple circles out for Túrin so if he dies he needn't wait on anyone knowing he died to be back."

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"You summoned yet?" Cam asks Túrin.

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"Yeah," says Túrin, blinking at that to-do list. "Before any of the Elf stuff came out, actually. Do we know for sure that we daevafy normally when we die, what with all the divine intervention stuff -"

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"We do not have this information."

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"What strategic decisions does that influence?"

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"How cautious we need to be about keeping Túrin alive, mostly. And everyone else who dies for good - might not be just your family - we should have a demon get old records of Atani kingdoms and compare the names to the NSA's notes on everyone in the world - are your parents in Limbo, Andreth -"

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"I haven't checked."

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Cam checks.

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They are. 

"So then I'd very strongly expect we daevafy just like anybody else," she says.

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"It's a nice deal if you can get it. We should do all three kinds of circles anyway but my guess is that it has to do with personality affinity with the magic, any guesses, Túrin -"

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"Fairy. I am still not clear on how I'm supposed to kill Melkor, daeva or no -"

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"Yeah I'm totally in the dark on that too."

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"You can touch a Silmaril, see if the Valar consider you relevantly evil. I don't see how I'd teach you to use them but they're how it'd be done and we can't touch them."

         "I'm not going anywhere near those fucking things."

"They don't do mind control," he says impatiently. "If you're not a thief you will continue not to be a thief. Everyone who stole them was perfectly comfortable with theft and with starting a war before they ever saw them."

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"Father -"

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"Not that there's anything wrong with being a thief willing to start wars," he says agreeably. "Why, I myself, back in the day -"

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Sigh. "Can confirm they do not inspire supernatural impulses to make off with them, they are just really shiny."

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"I guess if we don't have a better plan," Túrin says, sounding extremely doubtful.

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"Even if we have six better plans it would suck to find yourself in need of Plan G."

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"Where are they?"

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"I'll bring one to my study."

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"Okay."

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Off they go. 

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"What an interesting person," she says mildly.

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Cam does treasure hunt forensics.

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Two are really deep beneath the ocean and one is really deep beneath Algeria and one is really deep beneath Turkmenistan.

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Quelle surprise. Cam notes these locations. "Our last treasure hunt angel wanted the discography of Freddie Mercury, should probably just resummon that one."

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"I'll do it."

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"Thank you Freddie."

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Circle?

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Circle.

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He summons the angel!

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Here she is! "Oh, it's you guys. Hi."

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"Hi! We have more treasure hunts."

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"I'm game but my shopping list is shorter now..."

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"Yeah, Cam suggested we summon you because last time you wanted a Freddie Mercury discography."

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"...yeah but now I have it."

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"And I'm Freddie Mercury."

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"But he died."

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"Faked it. I did actually die once but it was a long time ago."

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The angel squints at him.

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"If I'm lying doesn't something about the deal fail to work?"

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"Maybe you're a crazy person who thinks he's Freddie Mercury, I think that would still work."

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"I can sing something."

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"Okay," says the angel.

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He does that.

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The angel is rapt. "Damn, even if you're a crazy person you're a crazy person who can sing. I'll dig stuff up for you, sure."

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"Thank you." And they can go ring-digging.

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She would like fairy help with the ocean ones, she doesn't like getting her feathers wet.

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He doesn't know any fairies who like singing but he bets he can find one.

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It does not take many tries.

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Oh good. "This treasure I'd just like you to turn into air, actually," he tells the angel when they've got one.

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"...why bother digging it up just to do that?"

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"So other people don't dig it up and do something else."

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"You're weird." But she poofs the ring.

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"Eccentric I will grant you." Next ring.

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Poof!

Poof!

Poof!

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He will sing them as many songs as they'd like!

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They are so appreciative and the angel wants six of Bohemian Rhapsody.

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Yeah, all right.

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Happy daeva!

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Singing is great.

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Yaaaaaay!

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And then if the fairy could drop him off back home he was going to help Cam with an announcement.

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Yeah no problem.

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How's Cam coming along on the announcement?

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Pretty good - "Reincarnated is not a conjurable parameter, I could try something cute with chronological order and 'living' and 'human' but that won't turn up anybody who just didn't write things. I am thinking of including a plausible joke tucked in some patter - 'if discovering the existence of Elves has caused you to recover memories of a past life in which you dwelt upon lost Beleriand you may be entitled to compensation' -"

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"You'll get lots of liars but I guess maybe also the non-liars." 

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"I'm hoping if it seems like a joke I get fewer liars. I can pad it, add in a few other things that are not real conditions, send in six box tops to win a toaster."

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"Might work, yeah."

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Cam adds things. He makes a video about the expeditions, patters the patter at the end.

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And they design a website to apply to be a Centauri colonist if healthy, smart, under 25, and willing to fill out a very long and comprehensive application.

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And Cam watches his mail.

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Hi. Uh, the thing where you remember a past life in Beleriand, that's not actually a thing, right?

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Why, do you want to be in the class action suit?

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Who's getting sued?

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Eru, I guess. Writings of this person from way long ago -

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Not very much. His name, a couple other words.

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Don't go shouting from rooftops but it is a real thing.

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You mentioned it in a video with two and a half billion views.

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Yes, but surrounded by things that are not real. You may shout it if you also assert that the sugarplum fairy stole your kneecaps or something like that. What do you remember?

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Elves. The way they moved. They'd come through every once in a while in armor that was so shiny, so pretty, so magic - really really magic - my sister would go up to meet them, come back with food or presents or jewelry - I haven't asked her if she remembers - she asked one once if he saw someone drowning but he was wearing all the magic armor and it'd get ruined if he went to the rescue, what would he do, and he said of course he wouldn't risk the armor, humans die anyway.

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If you remember your sister likely does too, the other case I've found is a large extended family.

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Yeah, dunno how to say it without sounding crazy. I showed her the video and she said she didn't think she wanted to go to space.

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Are your parents the same or do you have different ones this time?

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I don't remember them. I think they might've died when we were little, first time. 

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Okay. There is not actually a lawsuit but you're not crazy and thanks for telling me.

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No reply.

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Cam mentions this to the Elves.

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"So there are more out there."

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"Even presuming you valued human and Elven lives the same the number of drowning humans for which you should lose a full set of enchanted plate mail is way more than one."

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"What kind of crappy magic armor can't tolerate a stomp in the lake."

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"It'd do fine, but the hypothetical specified you lose it."

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"Yeah, I know. Anyway, I don't know according to what protocol these people can have been picked, this guy seems like a rando."

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"That'd probably good. If it's all of them then we can read less into Túrin being one of them. Though he could be someone important's grandfather."

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"That implies a different timescale, I guess."

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"Yeah, if it's that we're all set."

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Kids of that guy?

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He had some. Elves don't recognize them.

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Grandkids?

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Yep, humans before birth control do a lot of that.

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Yes but are they recognizable.

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Nope. "Though I'm not the person to ask, we didn't take mortal vassals until the very end."

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He can email photos of his little models to Elladan.

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He doesn't recognize them either - but I was born in the Third Age.

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Andreth and company?

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Nope.

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...great grandkids? Spouse? Sister or descendants?

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You can tell when everything went to hell because there are twenty-two grandkids and only six great-grandkids, none of whom made it past age seven, looks like. No one recognizes them.

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Any of them write anything?

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Some, yes. Not very much - accounting, mostly.

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Can anybody else think of anything.

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"There are other possible explanations but the likeliest is that random people are just being reborn for no good reason."

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"I'd like that explanation better if there were thirty like him."

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"Could be variance in how easily the memories are triggered, or they could mostly be clustered somewhere non-English-speaking - is he American -"

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"American."

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I can't patch your plot holes for you, he doesn't say. "Hmmm."

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Shrug. He goes and tries the conjuring-for-writing version.

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Yeah, there are others.

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Are they also randos?

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Fëanorians continue to not recognize them.

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Are they American?

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Mostly no; this bunch is all in India and this bunch is all in Iran with a few expats.

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He relays this information but he doesn't really expect anything to come of it at this point.

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He gets a few more inquiries.

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He handles them similarly to the first. Randos all?

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Looks like it.

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Sigh.

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He interviews people who might care to go settle Proxima Centauri B.

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Many people might care to do this! Some of them are science PhDs with potentially functional uteri, some of them are unremarkable people who vaguely think space is neat and they'd never have to deal with their mother in law again!

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The actual trait they're screening for is mostly 'if Earth gets holed or gets into a horrible war with an evil god while they're on the way there, will they panic or keep going'. But science PhDs are a plus.

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Yup, there are some people with that trait too.

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A ship's worth, soon enough.

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Awesome. There are fun logistics tasks to do to get the ship ready to go.

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It transpires that Cam's roommates are really diligent at logistics tasks. They sing while they work.

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But do they whistle.

(Do Cam's girlfriends want to help with logistics tasks?)

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With a colony ship to Proxima Centauri??? Yes they super want to help with that.

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Awesome! He wants the ship to have regular daeva on call who are willing to work for predictably available payments, in particularly ideally there will always be at least one fairy aboard who can shove them if something happens to their trajectory and they can't summon a new one, and they need a floor plan and a legal system sufficient for in-flight and a prototype constitution for once they get there that the citizens can tweak from the template as needed and lots of stuff.

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"Why'd you suddenly decide to go for this right now?" Claire asks him while they're working on that.

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"In case something awful happens to the moon. It'll still be great if nothing does, mind."

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"Yikes. Mars wouldn't do?"

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"It might not."

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"Are you staying?"

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"I'm not going on this ship. I can travel faster than light if it comes up and want to be around should anything befall the moon."

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Nod. "Everyone will have summoned before they leave, right?"

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"That is the plan."

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A legal system! A constitution! Safety rules for summonees present at all times! Training in handling emergency situations!

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Cam still tracks daeva incidents. Including unexpected positive externalities - demonic mosquitoes eradicate malaria! - but mostly mistakes. Fairy didn't bring enough air into space. Angel made a medical error. Somebody didn't pay their demon in advance and couldn't change their mind about paying with sex and wrote a sad blog post. And some malicious events - fairy maroons summoner on a tiny rocky island in the middle of nowhere. Angel starts a cosmetic procedure, stops halfway through, cannot be compelled to continue. Inadequately bound demon doesn't care that there was never an agreement to sex in the first place.

Fairy tortures her summoner for kicks and the summoner screams at the SWAT team not to shoot her, please, she's four months pregnant -

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CNN interrupts the news to have four camera angles on that story, live!!! FAIRY HOSTAGE SITUATION - ANN ARBOR - BREAKING NEWS -

 

Elves watch.

 

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So does Cam.

"- if she were any farther along another fairy could do a C-section," he mutters.

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"That doesn't kill them both?"

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"Fetus isn't going to be viable even with a good angel at four months. If she were at seven months the baby might be fine - she might rather be shot at that point -"

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"Was this this fairy's first opening -"

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Checking - "- There's a subtler hole in this one but she might've missed it."

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Nod.

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"Why -"

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"Just curious - whether it was opportunistic or personal or -"

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"Fuck, I don't know."

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CNN is undeterred from their breathless coverage by the fact all you can really see is a suburban house with police tape and sirens. They eventually get a demon to do live models of the situation for them, and cut to that. 

 

Everyone winces. "Baby might not make it anyway."

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"- a good angel could still salvage it but it'd have to be a really good angel."

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"Could ask if an angel can go in and heal her, fairy might not object -"

      "Humans don't have a good way to communicate in hostage situations," Matt says.

"Right."

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"Did this use to come up a lot?" Cam wonders vaguely.

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" I mean - yes, but specifically to fuck with us, that makes it different. Can't negotiate under those conditions."

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"- can't really justify having an Elf anywhere near an evil fairy, you can't just be summoned back if something happens -"

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"Turn off the television, Tyelcormo."

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He does. 

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Elves sing.

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It helps a little.

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Twelve hours into the nonstop coverage the woman dies. She's an angel.

 

The baby's gone.

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"Least she's not a fairy, that'd be - awkward."

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He glances at Matt. " - Cam, can we have - publication history, anything to guess whether -" He glances back at Matt.

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"Whether she targeted a pregnant person in particular, for strategic reasons - though you could also just run for deep space, no one could catch up, if you were a fairy and preferred not to be stopped - whether she had reasons, whether it'll happen again -"

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"You'd run out of oxygen if you just ran for it -" writings of evil fairy.

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He gestures for Maglor to take it.

 

 

A lot of reporters want to know if Revelation has any comment on last night's tragic daeva incident!

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oh geez

Permalink Mark Unread

"You need anything?"

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"A media-palatable opinion on the incident, apparently."

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"You summoned the fairy responsible and encased him in concrete and he's at the bottom of the ocean."

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"There was probably an implicit constraint that it also be actually palatable. And true."

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"I don't have to comment, I don't comment most times I'm asked to."

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"I mean, up to you, but I'd say something."

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"My opinion on the incident is a very small numerical ratio frosted with miserable guilt, it's not a sound bite."

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"Sure, but 'my heart goes out to the grieving family' beats 'declined to comment' any day."

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"...yeah. Can you get any more canned, though..."

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"I know. You could go bother Nelyo, he might have something."

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"I had been planning to never bring it up around him?"

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"He's not fragile. Not because he's whole, mind, but - the pieces are not especially breakable ones?"

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"Okay."

So he goes and asks Matt.

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"I do think you should say something. Someone introduced a bill to prohibit summoning while pregnant - and it'll fuel the whole you're-immortal-but-this-is-your-baby's-only-shot anti-abortion movement, too -"

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"...do we disagree with that -"

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"Murder's not as bad as being pregnant by accident - anyway. Is there anything we can do about the fairy, that'd be the best focus for a statement -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Get in touch with Fairyland governments, they have more of that than Hell - maybe she'd show up if summoned specifically, if she's risk-friendly -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe try that and if it fails, say that Fairyland authorities have been notified and that you hope Earth and local authorities will work together to bring people like her to justice. You could set up a foundation to help victims of daeva incidents, if you want, pay a surrogate - 

 

- you know the fairy Titania -"

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"Of her, she doesn't answer circles. Foundation's a good idea although I do not actually have a lot of money."

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"We have a lot of money. She wrote in to Mrindeh complaining that she sometimes has forty circles open at a time and it's really annoying and there should be a law against leaving unanswered circles indefinitely -"

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"You think we could annoy this one into taking a circle? - Might work, I guess the sensation might be irritating if there were a lot of it -"

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"Might be worth a shot, at least."

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"...okay. I'll design a binding for that."

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"Not restricting their movements, please -"

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"...Can you settle for within some number of miles of the circle or other designated anchor point, I don't think people want the eleven o'clock news strafing the maternity ward even if she can't do anything."

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"Yeah. Maybe eventually we can set up a planet for them."

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"Maybe. Do any of you want to do the honors or should I go suggest this to the cops or what."

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"Human summoners imposes a bit of a cap on the sentences. It should probably interact with a legal system at some point but we'll do the circles."

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"Okay. How many miles for you to be comfortable with it and where do you want the circles..."

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"Are you going to let them fly?"

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"Yeah. Just not too far. Or too high up, don't want her knocking down satellites." His binding is taking shape in his word processor.

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"Could do it here but then if they get visitors everyone's nearby - I could make some phone calls and ask about turning part of Montana into a daeva prison, there's a lot of Montana -"

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"There's a lot of Montana," agrees Cam.

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He makes some phone calls. The U.S. government is delighted about a daeva prison how are they going to arrest the daeva exactly. He hops a few phones and - "fifty miles. Fifty miles is all right, they should be okay, there can be nice buildings for them and open spaces -"

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"I'll set it all up nice."

Cam finishes the design. He makes sure the evil fairy is at home, and he lays incomplete circles.

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He finishes them. 

Ten of them.

Twenty of them. 

Forty of them. 

Eighty of them.

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It takes two hundred and seventeen before the fairy shows up in one of the earlier ones, confused and upset.

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"Hi," he says with satisfaction. "You're under arrest."

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"...you can't arrest me. I'm a fairy."

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"You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer questions now without an attorney present, you will still have the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to an attorney."

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"Afford an -? I'm a fairy, you lunatic."

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"You are the lucky fairy who inspired the U.S. criminal justice system to figure out how to arrest fairies. Do you understand your rights?"

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"No."

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"I'm going to make some more phone calls," he says to Cam. "Have a statement for the papers now?"

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"I have the makings of one. Thank you."

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"Mmmhmmm."

 

Phone calls. 

They will not cooperate in enforcing U.S. drug law this way. They will not cooperate in enforcing U.S. immigration law this way. If this becomes too complicated they'll just do it on Mars as their own polity. 

 

Fairy is appointed a public defender.

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(the existence of angels and demons should have killed drug laws dead and driven a stake through their heart, the fuck, USA, get with the program)

Revelation makes a subdued video in which he expresses his deepest sympathies with the victim of the attack and says that with some assistance he's got a daeva arrest procedure and the fairy in question will not be able to hurt anyone else. He would be eager to compensate a surrogate to retry the lost pregnancy from an earlier stage.

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People are so so glad the fairy has been arrested what's the procedure how does that work. Are they arresting those rapist demons also, are they arresting that angel who left a woman with half her face?

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Cam is not personally operating the prison and can't perform the summonses, he just designed the binding. Further questions should be referred to - Matt who should further questions be referred to - this toll-free number, apparently.

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Matt recruits some people to answer the phone. "My old boss made such a face - I didn't see him, but I could hear him over the phone. 'I thought you retired,' he said. I looked at the binding, it's - everyone will be safe and the daeva won't be more miserable than necessary to keep them safe -"

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Nod.

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"Thank you."

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"- you're welcome?"

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" - I, uh, rather don't do things unless asked, and I probably should do more things."

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"...asking you for help with a response was Elvis's idea."

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"Well. We got something. Hopefully word can spread quickly and daeva be deterred."

 

 

The fairy's public defender explains what is going on several more times.

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The fairy's position is that she cannot be arrested, she is a fairy and you can't arrest fairies.

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"...okay. You have been summoned for a jail summons, does that work?"

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"I didn't mean to answer!"

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"Uh huh. The jail summons might be for a few hundred years."

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"That's like forever!"

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"Torture and murder are very serious crimes."

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"I'm a fairy, if you don't want fairies to do whatever we want you're supposed to use bindings not jail this is fucked up!"

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(The dead woman reaches out to Cam to say that they might take him up on the surrogate later.)

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Of course, whenever she feels ready. He's so sorry that happened to her.

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My own fault, I missed a line of the binding.

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He wasn't going to say that part. I wish you'd gotten a better fairy, all the same.

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You stopped her, she'll never hurt anyone again.

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The credit for the idea really belongs to one of my Elf friends but I'm glad I could contribute something. And he lets the conversation peter out.

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"You didn't mention your arrest procedure. Don't want other people doing it over stupider stuff?" Rivka asks him while they're working on colony-planning later that week.

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"It'd be pretty laborious to do without a demon but probably not hard to find a demon who'd help and there's no process for dealing with wrongly arrested daeva yet. And I also don't want to be the face of law enforcement."

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Nod. "It's good that there is one but it'd probably disrupt things a lot in the daeva realms if, like, you could get arrested for minor stuff - or mistakes -"

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"Yeah, I'll have to start throwing my weight around again if idiots involve themselves and do successful idioting but for the moment I want to see if Matt found good people for it."

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Nod. Hug. "Someday everyone'll be safe and free."

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Hug. "I hope so."

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The new division of the Justice Department handling daeva crimes reaches out to Revelation to let him know that they've settled on a list of things which will be prosecuted, so it can be publicized in the daeva realms. It is a list mercifully free of 'possession and distribution of cocaine' and so on; violent crimes, plus the distribution of biological and chemical weapons and nukes and so on.

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It's nice of them to keep him in the loop, he appreciates that, he'll see about getting the information publicized clearly in the daeva realms. He puts a link to their website up on his (the videos are Youtube; the circle downloads and so on are not).

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And they've screened a colony-ship-sized number of people.

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Good. Plans planned, prototype testing time...

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He can go make ships in space and make sure they are resilient to various potential catastrophes and make sure they can accelerate to allow for summoning and so on!

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Whee!

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(There are a bunch of tabloid headlines to the effect of 'Revelation thinks the world is doomed!' but most news coverage of sudden-Proxima-Centauri-colony-expedition is very positive.)

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Revelation thinks he would not insure the moon against catastrophe, but he doesn't say that. Anybody who suspects doomedness of the world can summon a daeva and sign up to be interviewed for the next ship.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, if they're under 25. What if they're older than 25 and think the world is doomed, what then?

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Skip step 2, he supposes. Summoning still works.

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Someone in Berlin has their newborn summon an angel as soon as he's old enough to flip a switch. The angel is stuck and upset about it. 

Permalink Mark Unread

...concentration per se is not babies' forte but maybe the angel could give the baby its vaccinations or something, or yell at it.

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After a couple hours, upsetting the baby as much as possible works to send her home.

 

"Other people are gonna try that."

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"Yeah I'm gonna design a binding for long term untasked residency and try to hook daeva who want that up with people with at-risk kids."

Permalink Mark Unread

"All human kids are, like, at-risk enough that parents would be tempted to chance it -"

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"Rates'll be different. If there's a process they can apply for it might get some of them to wait in line instead of kidnap somebody. If there's a good binding for it at least they'll do that instead of leaving a daeva standing in their backyard for a couple years." Sigh.

Permalink Mark Unread

Shiver. "Yeah."

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Cam designs the binding, publishes it, hunts up daeva who would be willing to live on Earth for a while thereunder if annoying babies doesn't work.

Permalink Mark Unread

He can find some takers. The waitlist gets really long really fast. 

 

 

A man in jail for shooting his wife and their child dies. He was a summoner. The victim's family wants him rearrested to finish out the rest of his sentence.

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(Cam also publishes a binding suitable for summoning small children so they can lead mostly human childhoods without accidentally killing anyone.)

...He isn't going to register an object level opinion but he does mention that he thinks the possibility needs to be accompanied by more goal-oriented and thoughtful sentencing than an attempt to name the largest possible numbers. That posturing could only do so much harm when the maximum duration sentence was, in fact, life.

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Everyone's feeling broadminded about sentencing reform, what with prisons having recently become so much harder to maintain. This guy's only got twenty years left, though.

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So, no object level opinion.

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The fairy's case goes to trial. She's convicted. Her attorney files a bunch of appeals to the effect that there should be daeva jurors at daeva trials, and an appeals court agrees to review that. 

 

An English translation of the history of the First Age is published, to general interest; no one immediately notices that Elvis is one of the featured Elves.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah that's probably good.

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Some people do look for the Silmarils. The castle is no longer findable by random fairy. "These are very clever, I'll have to congratulate Tyelperinquar when I see him."

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"They seem neat." Valinor still not doing correspondence demon?

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Valinor has summoned a demon! And dismissed the demon about an hour later, and has not apparently done it again.

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...Cam digs up the demon's mail label. Hey, can I ask you what happened in Valinor?

Permalink Mark Unread

Uh, not much. They weren't offering what I was looking for and the binding was really restrictive and they wanted someone long-term. I told them good luck with that.

Permalink Mark Unread

Did you suggest them anybody to try or will they just have to keep on with randoms?

Permalink Mark Unread

I don't know anyone who'd want the job.

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Sigh. Cam looks at the binding they used.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's not actually that restrictive. 

Permalink Mark Unread

He puts out feelers to music enthusiasts and architect types. Anybody who's interested he can try to make their name broadly known so Valinor's next random can make a referral.

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People are kind of skittish about Valinor after the whole 'take your magic' thing but there are a few interested.

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Cam makes an episode of his channel that will show up to demons in search of his works without being technically actually on the internet in which these demons are named and their names spelled and he'd really appreciate it if whoever gets the next Valian summons could recommend them to shorten that already interminably slow search.

Permalink Mark Unread

Valinor does not seem to have summoned anyone else.

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Yeah they might take another year or two but hopefully the next demon they get will remember at least one of these names or have a chance to conjure up the episode's transcript.

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Claire eventually tells her family that the guy she'd dating is Revelation. They are very excited and would like to meet him.

Permalink Mark Unread

Uh, sure, does this Tuesday work.

Permalink Mark Unread

It does! Does he want to come visit L.A., given the new castle security stuff.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah that would probably be best. Can nonrandom fairies still find the place or does he need to fly for a while to get out of the zone of no.

Permalink Mark Unread

He can wave fairies in if he'd like to let them.

Permalink Mark Unread

Okay good. He turns up on Tuesday.

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Claire's family has a nice place on the water and is delighted to meet him. Claire has a three-year-old niece who really wants to touch the wings.

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Cam does not mind!

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Toddler tugs on wings. "Woah," she declares. "Your best demon."

"He really is," Claire agrees. "The best person, even."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aww."

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Claire's father is curious about the Proxima Centauri project and what prompted it - "we haven't even settled Mars yet -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The advantage of Mars is mostly that it's nearby. Summoning allows instant exchange of everything except people, so once the cost of getting people to Proxima is paid for it's just as good for all non-commuting purpose, and it's the sort of thing humanity's going to want to do eventually anyway. Also, Proxima Centauri B might actually be easier to terraform than Mars - hobbyists in Hell have done both projects but their results are confounded a little by not being able to do all the orbital mechanics and the stars just right on a blank slate, but that's the guess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can't make a solar system to play with in Hell?"

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"You can, if you get far enough away from everything and do some tricks with frame of reference. Most people aren't patient enough to get far enough away from everything just to play with terraforming, and we've only had the propulsion systems to allow the frame of reference tricks for a little while."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That makes sense. Do you have someone lined up for the terraforming?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, there's a small team who're really excited about it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's pretty exciting!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mm-hm! One thing I really like as a side consequence of the turning into a daeva thing is that it means traveling somewhere from which travel is impractical doesn't mean permanent cutoff - sure, if you settle Proxima you might not leave till you die but after that you can go wherever -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"And you can hop over there and watch colony setup, if you want -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I in particular have the problem that there are hundreds of circles out for me, but maybe that will die down by the time they get there, in which case I'm absolutely going to do that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, you can't distinguish them?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Randoms can be distinguished from specifics. No way to tell them apart beyond that except by timing - recent timing, then they fall into the mess with the others - and I have enough that I might take one by accident before a timed one was completed."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose that problem wouldn't have come up before you. Well, five years is a long time, it might well die down."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's the hope. I would really love to be there."

Permalink Mark Unread

There's another ship launch. The ship launches are not as cinematic as would be optimal; the colony ships themselves are assembled in orbit, and the passengers fairied up to them, so there's no event to film. They still get a lot of play. 

 

Nothing happens to the Moon. 

 

The appeals court rules that daeva are not entitled to daeva jurors, but that daeva who are permanent U.S. residents are eligible for jury duty. Elsewhere a different appeals court rules that Mrindeh can adopt a baby.

 

Valinor summons another demon. They've changed up the binding, and this one's obnoxious, but the demon does manage to tell them there're, like, a few specific interested parties they should talk to, and get them a list.

 

They summon one. 

This binding does not let the daeva go within ten feet of anybody, or yell things at them, or go outside with loose hair, and is otherwise a pretty standard careful demon binding.

Permalink Mark Unread

Mrindeh gets on an agency's waiting list only to be privately offered a baby by somebody following the case. She adopts that one; open adoption.

 

An architecture nerd demon appears. "Oh - hi - this is a different circle than before -"

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"Hi! We're looking for someone to handle correspondence with the daeva worlds, and someone recommended you."

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"Yeah - Revelation sent my architecture club a note since he thought architecture people might like it here - but he sent us a copy of the circle you used before too and it was different. I can't go near people? What's this about my hair?" She currently has no hair.

Permalink Mark Unread

"We, uh, had problems, so we had to revise the rules we were using. You shouldn't have to worry about that, you, uh, don't have any..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sometimes I do, I change it a lot. Not going near anybody at all would be really hard. Do Elves not like hugs or something?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There were problems, so we had to change what we were doing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm a really cuddly person... I guess it would be okay if I went home sometimes... what happened?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Um, the first demon we summoned agreed to stay but - had some kind of misunderstanding about what that involved, and kept touching his summoner even though she was uncomfortable with that, and then he touched her hair and she kicked him and the Valar were really worried that this whole enterprise was making people contagiously violent so they stopped for a while."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't understand the hair thing. I should maybe have read up more but I didn't think I'd actually get an interview really... not that I'm not glad about it or anything..."

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"Touching peoples' hair is a horrible thing to do to them," she says earnestly. 

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"...why?"

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" - I don't really know how to explain if you don't already know. If you really wanted to touch someone's hair you would marry them and then you could - but still only if they were all right with it -"

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"I was at a hair braiding party last week. Everybody had fun."

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Elf squawks unhappily.

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"I don't mean to upset you. I'll be really sad if I have to be far away from everybody all the time but I could just go home sometimes or you could summon my friends so I don't get touch-starved? - oh, I guess if you use the same binding to summon my friends we wouldn't even be able to touch each other -"

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"- I don't think it would be a problem to change it so you can't touch Elves, if demons wouldn't mind touching each other?"

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"I don't mind at all, not if we're friends."

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"Then probably we can do that. And you can go home whenever you want."

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"Okay. And it's a correspondence job? How many times a day do you think you want messages checked for on a normal day?"

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" - every day sounds a bit often. If we could check messages every month that would be good."

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"Oh, then you barely need me here at all - I thought it was a long term thing -"

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"If you'd rather go back and forth I can't see why not do that, really. We're only doing this because a couple people were really really insistent."

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"Revelation says he wants you to have a correspondence demon because that will mean fewer people want to go here in person."

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"Well, they can't get in, the Valar made it so fairies stop working much sooner. But yeah, humans are really really not supposed to come to Valinor and it's better if they don't want to even if they'd fail."

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Nod. "I'm not sure getting letters through once a month will do as much to help as getting them through a few times a day."

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"Why not?"

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"There are humans and daeva who really want to talk to people here and more letters in less time feels more like talking."

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"I don't know if people here really want to talk to humans and daeva. But we could do more often if you think it's a good idea."

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"Maybe you could interview somebody else on the list and - or am I the last one -"

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"Uh, no, you're the first one."

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"Oh, so you could have a couple of us and even if we go home a lot there could always be one around and then nobody back on Earth or the daeva realms would feel ignored."

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"They won't feel ignored if people take months to write back?"

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"I guess they will but at least they'd notice that was happening and that it was their pen pal and not me delaying it and they could try writing to someone else. That's a long time, why would it take that long?"

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" - that's not a long time. Humans just die ridiculously fast and so they're always in a hurry."

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"I'm not a human and it still seems like a long time to write a letter."

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"Well, I guess if people get mad over not getting letters more often and try to visit Valinor then we can stop doing the letters experiment."

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"...that doesn't seem like it would help."

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"Humans also have really short attention spans, they'd forget all about us."

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"I don't think so. Besides, even if they decided they didn't care about you any more they really want to go to the Dwarf planet, and you're in the way."

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"How are we in the way of another planet?"

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"I think it's in space from here, but not from Earth."

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"We don't care if humans meet Dwarves, I don't think."

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"But they'd have to come through here to do that."

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"Well, maybe we can set up a way that doesn't mean coming through here."

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"They would probably like that a lot especially if it didn't take a long time. Then the Dwarves could distract them from you."

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"That'd be good."

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"I think that sort of thing is why Revelation wanted there to be a demon here so much. He wrote to me a lot about it. He forgot to mention the hair thing though. Maybe it was just that we didn't have any languages he knew really well in common then. I think he knows Quenya."

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"Revelation?"

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"He's the person who told all the humans that there were demons, and angels and fairies. So now humans don't starve to death or anything any more, because they can summon us and we can make them food, things like that."

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Nod. "Well, I don't think any Elves have met him so probably he didn't know about the hair."

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"No, he knows some Elves. There are a few of them on Earth. That's how he knows Quenya. I think he probably just didn't know how to say about the hair in any languages I knew at the time."

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"The Elves on Earth don't speak Quenya, I don't think. Quenya's a Valian language."

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"He knows Sindarin too."

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"Maybe he knows Sindarin and Silvan, or one of the Avarin languages? That'd make more sense."

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"Well, I didn't know it was Quenya when he sent me a list of what he spoke but now I have Quenya so I'm pretty sure it was that."

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"Hmmm - oh, maybe he knows the Fëanorians. They might not have mentioned the hair thing because of being the Fëanorians."

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"I guess I could write him and ask, if it matters."

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"Oh, it doesn't. I mean, if he's getting all his information from them that would be no good but now that there are people here he won't have to do that, and that should fix it."

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"Okay."

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"Did you want to see the city?"

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"Yes! I like pretty buildings. I have copies of a few of the ones here at home, little models. They're so nice."

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"Valimar's really pretty!!" And outside they go. People courteously give the demon way way way more space than the binding requires.

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It's kind of depressing but she distracts herself with the buildings. A few blocks along she copies somebody's hair; it appears braids and all in a slightly silverier color and with different ornaments.

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This produces a muffled eep but it's braided so that's all right.

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"- is it rude to copy or something -"

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" - no? It's - just weird to see someone just suddenly have hair but it's not rude, it looks very nice..."

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"That's why I copied it, I like it so much I might keep it all week."

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Eep.

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"- I really don't understand."

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"It's just really unusual to go around changing out your hair for different hair. It'd be - not a good thing - for Elves. It's sort of vaguely unpleasant to think about."

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"I can't keep it very long, when I get bored of it it doesn't feel like me any more and stops being indestructible and won't stay."

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" - the Valar could maybe help with that?"

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"...I don't think I want the Valar to do magic to make me get bored less often."

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"No, I mean magic so your hair doesn't fall off!"

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"...I don't think I want them to change how my indestructibility works either."

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"...okay. Whatever makes you happy."

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"Trying lots of hair makes me happy. And pretty buildings. How does that one stay up?"

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"Oh, magic. That one's really old, from before we knew what we were doing with architecture, so we had to ask the Valar for help making buildings how we liked them."

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"I think you might be able to do it with nanomaterials but I'm not sure how."

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"There's a lot of very implausible stuff in the new parts of the city that're done with technology and not magic, but around here it's probably magic. Not always the Valar, sometimes ours, but they didn't have complicated engineering techniques back then."

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Nod. "That one over there I know how I'd do it but I'd have to start in vacuum or get an angel to help."

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"You could make your own Valinor and then curious people could go there instead of trying to come here."

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"I couldn't do the magic parts, or the people."

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"Some people might choose to live in a Valinor that was accessible to the mortal worlds if Eru said it wasn't bound to be a disaster."

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"I don't know what he'd say."

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"Well, me neither, but I bet a lot of people would want that if it weren't bound to be a disaster. Even people who don't want humans and daeva here."

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"I wouldn't mind making a Valinor if there was a place to put it and it wouldn't fall apart without the magic, I guess."

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"I don't know about whether it would fall apart without the magic, I can ask the Valar."

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"Okay."

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"How're the people who want to write us letters going to learn that now they can do that?"

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"Oh, I can write to Revelation about it and he'll tell everybody."

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"Well. That's good, then."

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"Before I do that we should figure out how you want to do your mail labels."

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"How is that normally done?"

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"Most people just have one but this is a whole country so you might want more to make it easier to sort, and secret ones for important letters."

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"I don't think there'll be any secrets. All the demons would know the secrets anyway, right? I suppose we could have them by city."

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"Well, there's billions of people who might want to write to you and most demons are polite enough not to use secret labels. You change them if people start using them when they shouldn't. By city is a good idea."

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There are eight major cities; she lists them.

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The demon writes them down by conjuring ink into paper directly. She suggests the format 'open letter to [city]' since there's not yet a way to address individuals. If people wind up with specific pen pals or wanting to talk to all the mathematicians in particular or something they can set that up later.

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They have a few houses set up for her or some places where she can make her own if she's like.

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She will pick one of these houses while she thinks about what she would like in her new house now that she has all this inspiration.

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Great! They're really relieved about how nothing horrible has happened.

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Most demons are perfectly nice people, she's sorry they had a problem with the first one.

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"The point of Valinor is that no one is bad, here, it's really important."

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"...what if there was a bad Elf?"

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"There were, I told you, the Fëanorians. They got exiled."

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"Oh, I thought none of you were allowed to leave. If you want to leave you have to do bad things?"

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" - no! If you want to leave, then you ask, and if the answer is that horrible things would result, then unless you're a bad person you'd stop wanting to leave, because you don't want horrible things! But if you're a bad person then maybe you'd still want to leave even knowing that it'll cause horrible harm to the humans and to you, and then you could leave I suppose, that hasn't come up since the Exile."

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"Why would horrible things happen if you left?"

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"They always do. If we understood why well enough then maybe we wouldn't. And it's not really 'if we leave', it's 'if we go to the human world'. Leaving for the stars is allowed, leaving to live on the ocean not in the human world is allowed..."

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"Oh. Are there Elves on the Dwarf planet?"

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"No. It's a long journey and it's through space so you'd need a really really big really really magic ship. And it might be a bad idea for the same reason as humans - Dwarves are not as bad as humans, but still -"

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"I like humans. They were so excited when they found out about us."

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"I haven't met any, it's all stories. Maybe they've gotten better."

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"I got summoned to Earth one time and I got to make an awesome vertical garden."

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"Oooohhh."

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"It was great! And they let me have dinner with the architect to talk about the design. There's this thing now where if you want summonses you say what things would be nice to be paid with, and what things you're good at, it's much better than randoms."

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"Maybe that was our problem, with the demon who upset Tannelë so badly."

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"Maybe. But you can only find out what people in daeva realms want if you have a demon around in the first place. That's why Revelation tried to find some who would be good for this job."

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"Is he like the Valar but for Earth?"

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"I don't think they have anything like that. People just pay attention to him because now we can all get summonses if we want them and the humans aren't starving any more and stuff."

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"That's really good. People here aren't starving so I don't think we'll do much summoning but maybe there'll be a way to make it work."

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"Oh, that's not the only thing that people want daeva for, but it always bothered me, demons have all the food we want and we don't even need it and humans didn't."

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Nodnod. "That made people here really sad too. It's good it's fixed."

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"Yeah. So now he makes videos about important things and people watch them, and he wrote my architecture club and some music people because he thought people who like those things would like it here."

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"We do have lots of buildings and music."

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"Exactly."

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"Is there anything else you'd like to see?"

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"Oh, I want to see all the buildings eventually but I don't need to see them all today."

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"Whatever's convenient, really, I don't mind."

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"I should probably write Revelation and then everybody back home to tell them where I am. Where do I find you if I need to be dismissed?"

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"Oh, we're right near where I live -" and she points it out.

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"Okay. Thank you! Let me know if you want to interview another demon and want to write to them first so they don't surprise you with their hair or anything, I can find their mail labels."

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"I'll ask the King how he feels about there being more of them."

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"Okay. Should I meet the King or not or what?"

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"If you'd like to!"

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"Well, I don't know if he'd like to. If he doesn't want there to be more correspondence demons does that mean he also doesn't want my friends summoned here? I usually like to sleep every few days and I've never been able to do that on my own."

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" - I really expect he'll be all right with both but things that you need to be comfortable are more important than more correspondence things. Demons sleep in big heaps like sheep?"

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"I've never met a sheep. I don't need more than one friend with me but definitely at least one and it's just me who's like that, not most of us."

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"Well I expect it'll be fine."

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"Okay. They'll want to know when they need to be ready to visit, unless you just want to leave a live circle in the house for them to take whenever."

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"I should check with the King before I do that but then I can probably do that."

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"...how long does that take?"

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"Depends on how many other things are going on, but not very long at all."

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"I think we think different lengths of time are long so I would like to know about how many hours, in numbers."

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"...thirty?"

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"Okay. I won't be upset about not sleeping till then and then if he doesn't want my friends here I can just go home for a bit."

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"That sounds good!" And off she goes.

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And Zota the new Valian correspondence demon sits in her temporary house and looks at its wall paneling and writes some letters.

"Thank fucking God," says Cam, the next time he checks his mail.

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"Hmmm?"

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"They have a correspondence demon! They were alarmed about her hairstyling habits - I think my attempt to translate that tidbit into Thoiga did not come out well, fucking machine translation - and they are trying to figure out a workaround for her not liking to have to be ten feet away from everybody all the time but she is otherwise pretty okay there!"

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"Oh good. Are we telling the Valar the world might end or no."

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"I don't know, would they listen and if they listened would they have a more productive response than amping up the isolationism?"

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"My guess on that would not be any more informed than yours."

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"My uninformed guess is that there should be at least a little example of non-doomy communication before we start in on the doom."

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"Sounds good."

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"They're doing the mail labels by city at first, what subdivisions by topic does that suggest -"

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"What are humans going to be asking about -"

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"State of the art on all kinds of research, some of them will be futilely hoping to establish normalish political relations, why don't the Elves like us and want to be friends, do you need help escaping the Valar, why did they do that thing to that fairy, you have to watch my favorite anime, etc. etc."

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"This should be fun."

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"Sure. Which city gets the anime recommendations, please."

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"When I lived there there were only three. Us, the people we murdered, and the Vanyar."

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"...I'll encourage writers who are looking for specific things in pen pals to go through me and the correspondence demon to come up with new mail labels instead of directly writing 'an open letter to Alqualondë', and everybody else can guess a city, I suppose."

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"Valimar was the most conservative, back then. Media featuring inappropriate behavior will probably get censored."

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"In Valimar or everywhere?"

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"Everywhere, back then. Nelyo might've been pretty indifferent about enforcement but he wouldn't not ban them and he was wildly progressive. But it's been a long time."

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"And I assume inappropriate behavior means anything with a plot."

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" - anything in which the protagonists behave in a way that would not be wisely adopted as a universal maxim?"

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"...so Mary Sues versus villains are okay? No protagonists with flaws they then learn to stop having or is that okay?"

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"Are we talking, like, 'prideful' or 'auto thief' or 'homosexual' -"

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"I was thinking more like the first one."

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"That would probably be all right."

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"Is Zota going to be in trouble if she makes stuff they then decide they have to censor?"

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"No idea. Probably not. They're legitimately not that punitive."

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"Okay."

He writes to Zota.

 

A couple hours later Zota goes looking for her guide.

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The guide is not at the house.

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Oh. Do the nearest passerby know where she is?

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They osanwë her and she shows up promptly. "Everything all right?"

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"Oh, yes, I'm fine. I've been writing to Revelation. He has some questions."

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"Oh?"

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"Do you want to just read the conversation? We had it in Quenya."

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"Sure, if that'd be all right with him."

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"Oh, yes, he said it would be all right." She sets it down and backs away so the Elf can take it.

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" - I didn't think about that, sorry -" She picks it up.

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- Letter to Cam priority azalea: Hi this is Zota I'm in Valinor. It's all right here. They have a thing about hair and they don't want me to be near anyone but it's so pretty. You wanted whoever got this job to write to you? Let's name this conversation Azalea One.

Yes! Thank you and congratulations. I'm sorry about the hair thing, I was attempting machine translation into Thoiga and we're probably lucky nothing else got too badly garbled in the process. Did they actually explain it or just

- They did not actually explain it.

It's a sex thing and the braids are like wearing clothes for humans, if you know how humans are about clothes.

- Oh! Okay. Well, I don't mind having braids when I go outside. She made faces when I put a new head of hair on but she said it was okay. The binding won't let me within ten feet of people but they might summon my friends to snuggle me sometimes or send me home now and then. Will it be okay if I show my summoner this conversation later? She suggested per city mail labels.

Yes, that's fine. All the information I have access to about the cities is out of date. I'm not sure that's the best mail label system; people might just write all eight of them if they don't know which one is the best for their subject matter and it seems like it would make it hard to set up more specialized channels. Also, some people are probably going to want to talk about things that will bother the Elves; I can warn them that Elves are very conservative, but the Elves should also be warned that not everybody will understand exactly how to filter for that.

- Oh. I'll go tell my summoner.

What's her name?

- I don't know, she didn't say.

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"Almáriel," says her summoner. "What things are people going to want to talk about?"

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"Hi, Almáriel. - I'm Zota, I guess just because you had to spell my name doesn't mean you can pronounce it. I guess he might mean that there are movies where people have their hair down or something like that? I'm not sure what else would bother you, maybe he knows. I can ask. Or you could write into the conversation and I can still add his replies."

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"Oh, gosh, yeah, people would be upset to see a movie like that." 

What sort of things are you thinking might bother us? 

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Is this Zota's summoner? Hi! I'm Cam. So there's several broad categories of thing. One is things like the hair thing, where it won't even occur to humans or daeva until they're told that there might be a problem and it won't be obvious them how to classify edge cases. We might also be more likely to want to talk about the taboos on a meta level than Elves are. Another is things that humans and daeva know are bad in real life, but like to have in our fiction a lot, and even if it's explained to them that Elves don't like to have that in their fiction they might think that was silly and hope there could be exceptions for fiction they think is really well done.

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Oh. It's not that you can't tell a really compelling story about horrible things - you can - it's just that we don't think evoking horrible things is a good idea even when it's a very technically sophisticated work. And in some ways telling a compelling story about good things and good people is harder. I don't think I know what you mean by want to talk about the taboos on a meta level.

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I think you might wind up with people who were really curious about the hair thing and want to talk about it in more depth than was comfortable for Elves, but I could be miscalibrated. Most of my information about Valinor proper is out of date and skewed.

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I'm not married so I can't be very helpful but I expect you could find somebody who wouldn't mind discussing it in detail or something. You're with the Fëanorians, right? They are not very representative.

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I've met most of the Elves who are on Earth, the Fëanorians among them. I've also read a lot of things from Valinor but without context they don't tell me as much as I'd like.

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Things are nice here. There are all kinds of societies for all kinds of people. We would mostly have wanted to go to the human world because you are all starving and murdering each other but Zota said that's better now, so people really won't want to go at all.

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That's much improved now, yes. Another thing that I want to have clear before correspondence starts up is that humans and daeva - or even just humans or just any one kind of daeva - are not unified. There is no person who is in charge of all of us the way the Valar are in charge of the Elves. It's very important that when people tell Elves things you understand they only have their experience to draw on and might be confused or lying and might have few to no people who agree with them. I'm really worried that some person who is just weird and not representative will write in to the mail labels and the Elves or Valar will get upset and assume it represents a general problem and overreact. That would be really bad, like somebody assuming every Elf was like the Fëanorians.

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That makes sense. I can talk to people about how to make sure of that.

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Humans and daeva also have very different ideas about how long it should take to discuss, decide, and do things than Elves tend to. I don't want you to be rushed unnecessarily, but it will help reassure people that they and the things they care about are not being ignored if they get a lot of interim reports about what steps are being taken.

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Yes, we understand that, we've been rushing to get a correspondence demon for that reason.

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I really appreciate that! I've been looking forward to having a way to correspond with Valinor for what feels like a long time to me now. I just wanted to emphasize it. How did you wind up being Zota's summoner?

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I was apprenticed to the first person we had doing summoning and she's under observation in Lórien now because she kicked somebody so I was the natural person to step up.

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Can you explain more about why she's in Lórien for that and why she kicked somebody?

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The first demon we summoned kept touching her even though she didn't like it and he petted her hair and she kicked him. Now obviously there is a philosophical argument to be made that under those circumstances the use of force could be justified but we were still all very worried that influences from other worlds would make us more inclined to solve problems violently. So she's in Lórien and the demons aren't allowed to touch people anymore and we'll see if I find myself inclined to hurt people whenever it might abstractly be defensible.

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I'm sorry that happened to her. He wouldn't have known about the hair thing any more than Zota did at first so he probably didn't think he was being as hurtful as he actually was. I tried to publicize the names of demons who would be compatible with Valinor when it didn't look like that was getting navigated smoothly on its own and I'm glad Zota is working out so far. I think you will find yourself no more inclined to violence than you would normally be.

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That's good. Zota is very nice and I think even if there wasn't a binding she probably wouldn't touch my hair now that she knows not to. But the Valar kind of want the bindings at least until they figure out how to make all of Valinor indestructible, they want to do that eventually. Indestructibility is a good idea.

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Indestructibility is great. It sounds like you're going to work something out with Zota so the bindings don't stop her from ever getting hugs, so it shouldn't be a big deal if it helps you feel safer.

The city by city mail labels aren't a bad idea in principle but people who might send you letters don't know enough about the cities to know which one to use. The point of separate mail labels is so Zota can conjure up the mail in several piles and nobody has to read all the piles. If people don't know whether they should talk to Tirion or Valimar, the same stuff will be in both piles. It would probably be better to have labels for institutions and clubs and interest groups, sort of like the architecture club through which I found Zota.

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Okay. We could do, say, media recommendations and political questions and cultural questions and mathematics questions and science questions?

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That sounds like a great first pass. Maybe also language questions; humans can't instantly learn languages and daeva can only do that if someone who knows the language summons us. That will slow things down at first while translation is bottlenecked but not in the longer term.

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If it's all right with the King we could summon lots of daeva so you all know the languages.

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I can get you a list of daeva who'd like that!

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What sort of things do humans know how to do? I don't know who will have more math and science questions.

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We just started a colony expedition to the nearest star; it's daeva-supplemented but would not have been actually impossible without. We have computers and consumer models lately can hold four gigabytes of stuff if conventionally manufactured; demon-produced models are better. I'm not sure what the state of the art in math is.

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Oooooh. The Dwarves sent us a hello but people didn't think contact would be a good idea. They don't think it is now, either, but it seems like we don't have much choice about it.

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I'd love a way for humans and Dwarves to communicate without having to go through Valinor but that seems not to be physically possible right now.

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Zota said. That might be possible.

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That will definitely help distract people who just really want to meet magical aliens!

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I hope so! They haven't met the ones on Earth?

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They're mostly hiding. And it's not quite the same as an entire civilization.

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They can come back if they want, right? Hiding sounds terrible.

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They seem to prefer it to going to Valinor.

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They might not be very well informed about Valinor, they've been gone a very long time.

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I will be happy to conjure them any documents they ask for, and people from Valinor can write them letters, too.

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Oh good. Thank you.

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You're welcome! Is there anything else I can do for you or the other Valian Elves?

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I don't think so. I wish this weren't necessary but we'll make sure to do it right.

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You wish what weren't necessary?

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All this contact with other worlds. There are people in Valinor for whom it's really important to not have - plot - happen, and we kept it that way for a long time, and it would have been better if we could have kept it that way forever. This is a bad thing for our society which we're doing because we were told otherwise even worse things would happen, and that's not a very good situation to be in even if it's not anybody's fault.

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I encourage you to let everyone who would rather avoid plot do so.

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We are, as far as we possibly can. But that's not anywhere near as far as 'everything is an ocean away and we are categorically not getting involved', does that make sense? It's a lot closer now even if someone decides to personally avoid human letters. There are people who will quit the mathematics forums they've been in for ten thousand years and go live farther away in the mountains, and they'll be okay, but it would have been nicer if you'd just left us alone.

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I'm genuinely sorry that their comfort is a casualty of all this.

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She sets the paper back down on the ground for Zota. "Do you need anything else?"

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"Me? I don't think so..."

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"Okay! I'm going to go back to the palace. If you want me you can think at me -" like this - "and then I can come find you."

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"Okay. Is it okay if I read what you and him said to each other?"

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 "Yeah of course. We were planning the mail labels and then I tried to explain why Valinor is the way it is but I don't know if I explained it well, I've never had to before."

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"Okay." She picks up the conversation and reads through it on her way home.

And Cam announces that there will soon be monitored Valian mail labels.

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His roommates are pretty indifferent but the Internet is really excited.

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They will have the following categories! Suggest others in the comments if you feel they are inadequate!

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Religion! Art and literature! Music! Summoning! Personal ads!

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Preaching to Elves: bad plan, real bad plan. Art and literature and music are a good idea! Summoning probably doesn't need its own mail label but if miscellaneous has a high volume he'll consider it! Absolutely not!

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People can send personal ads in miscellaneous but if there's a personal ads section then they'll go there, it's clearly superior.

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The absolutely not is more about the idea than the mail label, yeah. Sigh.

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And what's wrong with the idea? Does he object to interracial marriage, too? It's the 21st century! People can fuck Elves if they please!

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The Elves are extremely unlikely to so please and the distance issue is irresolvable. They might be offended.

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Because humans aren't pretty enough? There are angels for that these days!

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No because they are prudes.

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What, literally all of them?

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Overwhelmingly. If people want to fling their personals ads into the abyss of Valinor they can have a mail label.

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They are very happy about it.

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"The, ah, history will come out now."

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"Probably. Who cares? - there might be people who'd go for a human, just for the 'won't end up married', there were during the war -"

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"Don't."

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"I promise if I get the impulse I'll go for a boy."

 

Everyone winces.

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Eyeroll. "Should I sort you some personals ads. What is your type."

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"This isn't funny."

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"I'm very busy doing important things, calm down."

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" - that reminds me, it's not very likely but if anyone cares to go volunteer at a lot of soup kitchens and see if it affects the Silmaril's opinion of you -"

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"Our annual donation budget does a lot more good than that."

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"Obviously if the Silmarils used sensible criteria we would all be fine! They don't, so, soup kitchen."

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"Make-a-Wish foundation for kids who wanna meet an Elf," suggests Cam.

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Groan. "I'll set it up." 

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"I assume the Valar wouldn't be likely to answer a letter asking what the criteria are."

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"I would kind of sooner prefer they not know we have the Silmarils back, actually, I'm not totally sure we were supposed to do that."

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"Were random Danes supposed to have one?" Sigh.

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"And we have 'em by the time it's prophetically relevant."

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"Hm?"

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"Because the prophecy says Father breaks them to restore light to the world. Therefore we have to get them eventually."

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"Didn't imply very long-term possession."

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"True."

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"I'm not doing it. If something horrible happens to the Sun we can make a new one."

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"Suns: they light worlds. Trademark symbol."

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"And the prophecy doesn't account for humans and by extension doesn't account for summoning, so -"

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"Are there circumstances under which you would have broken them to light the world?" wonders Cam.

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" - they don't come to mind, but if the Sun quite literally went out and we didn't have daeva and there weren't a way to light the world adequately without breaking them - and Melkor was taken care of - I'm not sure I'd survive breaking them, so it would at least be a hell of a way to go."

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"...why wouldn't you survive it, and do you mean you'd just die again in the manner of Elves in general or -"

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"No, that I wouldn't do again to save the whole world, that was horribly unpleasant. I mean, they are unspeakably powerful and I know more than anybody about how to use them safely but part of that is not using them at all, for some things -"

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" - they could do that?"

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"Give me a couple centuries, will you? You're so impatient. And I don't mean to break them, I need them. But once Melkor's dead we can talk."

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"Not for the whole world, huh, thanks."

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"We'd fix it some other way."

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"One may hope. Anyway, yeah, sun replacement, totally a thing we can do. I guess we'd have a problem if the sun were replaced by a black hole of similar mass, then putting a sun where a sun needs to be wouldn't really work."

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"Angels couldn't do it? I know it'd be slower, but -"

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"Maybe they could, but I think they aren't fast enough, it'd collapse before it caught fire properly - can't really do a test in Heaven, either, too much fluff."

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"They could at least clean up the black hole for later demonic replacement, then."

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"I guess you could have fairies keeping the planets from suffering the lack of sun too badly in the meantime, yeah."

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"I'll break them if I need to but I'd really really much sooner not."

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"I understand."

He names all the mail labels and sends them to Zota for review. They are:

Attn Valinor: Media Recommendations
Attn Valinor: Politics
Attn Valinor: Culture
Attn Valinor: Math
Attn Valinor: Science
Attn Valinor: Language
Attn Valinor: Art and literature
Attn Valinor: Miscellaneous
Attn Valinor: Ill-Advised Attempts At Personal Ads

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"What's a personal ad?" Almáriel asks Zota when apprised of this.

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"Oh, that's if you want a boyfriend or a girlfriend but meeting people is hard so you narrow it down by saying what you're looking for and what you're like. Revelation seems to think it's a bad idea but he said otherwise people were threatening to clutter Miscellaneous, so at least this way nobody has to read them if they don't want."

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"There are a few Elves married to humans, it's unwise but it's not disallowed. If they write really lovely poetry maybe some people will write them back."

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"Should I tell him that?"

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"I suppose?"

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"He says he can advertise that but if it got far enough the humans would be really upset about not being able to see whoever they were writing to."

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"Well, yes, they'd be doomed romances. Why would you write someone who lived on a hidden continent if you didn't want a doomed romance?"

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"Because Elves are pretty and people are silly and there are a lot of people. Do some people want doomed romances on purpose?"

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"Yes. Humans don't?"

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"Well, there are a lot of people."

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"So, the personal ads are for doomed romances."

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"I'll tell him." Pause. "He says somebody who was a little cleverer but still silly might be hoping their romances would summon them, after they die."

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" - oh. Well, if it's allowed, maybe. I suppose perhaps we should decide if it's allowed before everyone gets entangled."

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"I have been talking to Revelation enough that I think I can predict that he would agree with that!"

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"I'll ask the King. That one won't be decided in less than thirty hours."

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"Okay. I guess dead humans might be okay to have here because they aren't humans any more and you can bind them?"

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"Yeah. The last time humans came they had guns and wanted to take over Valinor and enslave everybody and horrible things happened when we tried to stop them, that's the thing we want to avoid. If we could send them home any time and there were bindings, horrible things couldn't happen. I guess they could marry someone and then get bored and abandon them? That'd be cruel but maybe not the kind Valinor should protect against."

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"What are you supposed to do if you get bored with whoever you marry?" wonders Zota.

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"Move to a new place? Try new, ah, things - I don't know the details, I'm not married - take a little time away from each other - there're magic items, too -"

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"What do the magic items do?"

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"I don't know, I'm not married."

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"They're secret until you get married?"

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" - no, but the descriptions of what they do wouldn't make sense to me..."

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Blink. Headtilt.

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"I don't think humans do marriage the same way. Maybe daeva don't either."

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"It's a humany kind of thing to do, most daeva don't bother with it I think."

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"Oh, that makes sense."

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"I think daeva who get married do it about like humans except we can't have children, though, what's different for Elves?"

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"I don't actually know what humans do, aside from that it's different."

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"Oh. I went to a wedding once, a demon wedding, it was basically a party is all."

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" - I mean, we have wedding parties but that's not the actual wedding part. I guess if daeva mostly don't have any urge to get married you might not even realize."

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"I've never heard somebody having an urge to be married in particular. What's the actual wedding part?"

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"Uh, it's private, and just the man and woman getting married, and they - I don't even know if daeva work the same way -"

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"I can't tell you if you don't know what you mean," says Zota reasonably.

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"They have different parts and they fit them together and then they're married."

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"Oh, we just call that having sex. Or, like, there's a specific word for that kind of sex in Thoiga but you don't know Thoiga."

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Nod. "Well, most Elves want that and so most Elves get married eventually."

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"Most daeva want to have sex. I don't, I used to but it turns out I don't like it."

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"But you just said not many daeva marry."

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"Maybe that's the thing that's different? We don't - be married - just because we had sex, or a specific kind of it, or anything."

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" - that would be different. With Elves if you have sex then you're married. For ever."

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"Oh. I don't even talk to those people any more."

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Shiver. "That's one of the things that goes wrong when Elves live with other people, I think, maybe."

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"Well, it turned out I didn't like sex so it won't be a problem with me, I guess?"

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Nod. "Unless you changed your mind someday. I don't know if that's usually a permanent thing."

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"Some people have exceptions, I think. I haven't noticed any and I'm two hundred years old."

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"Oh! That's younger than me!"

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"How old are you?"

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"Almost three hundred - I suppose our years mightn't be the same length, though -"

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"Hell mostly borrows Earth years. They're three hundred and sixty-five twenty-four hour days."

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"I think Earth years are like a tenth of ours, let me ask -" pause - "yep, nine and three-quarters."

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"Oh, so I guess I'm about twenty in Valinor years."

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Blink blink blink. "If you were an Elf you'd be this big." Gesture.

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"I was never that little, I was this tall already when I appeared. Daeva aren't kids. Except very rarely some of the ones who used to be humans, if they die young."

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"Huh. Well. Elves take fifty of our years to be considered adults and a hundred to be actually done growing."

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"We take a year or two to learn our first language, so I guess that's sort of like being a kid."

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"Maybe. Do you miss having families?"

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"Some daeva want babies. I don't think I've heard of anybody wanting parents."

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"Parents are nice. But I guess different species need different things."

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"I guess. I just learned things from some people who were near where I appeared and felt like teaching me."

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"How did you decide you wanted to specialize in architecture?"

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"The place I appeared didn't have any buildings! Everybody there lived out in the open. When I was four I made myself a little hut, and I decorated it until it fell down, and then I made one that didn't fall down, and the people there told me that if I liked that sort of thing I should go to a city."

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"That makes sense. Hell sounds nice."

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"It is!"

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"Strange, but it's for a different kind of people so that's all right."

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Nod.

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She talks to the King; the King is all right with a few more correspondence demons, and with demons being allowed to touch other demons if they're all right with it. Bindings are revised accordingly. Zota can have friends over.

 

The tentative judgment of the parties responsible for such decisions is that Elves should not marry daeva because the daeva are likely to eventually get bored and leave their Elf heartbroken. No personal advertisements allowed.

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Zota is so glad she can have friends over. Nobody has to read the personal ads, the label is so they don't use one of the others.

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Makes sense. "So should I send you home so we can do a circle that lets you cuddle demons?"

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"Yes please."

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Home and back! And she summons her some friends.

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Zota is promptly engulfed in snuggly wings. She giggles. (Her friends have all hastily braided their hair except for the one with an unbraidably short hairstyle.)

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Demons are nice! The whole mess the first time was probably just a misunderstanding. She tells them all how to reach her if they need her and then leaves.