friendly door

[her_imperial_radiance]

Elspeth gets a door.

It's been so long she reels for a moment, and then she throws herself forward and almost lands in a peal of Bells. Yes, there's Shell Bell, there's Juliet and Aurora, there's Glass, there's some Matilda she hasn't seen before.

"Elspeth!" exclaims Glass.

"How long has it been?" Aurora asks.

"Seventeen years. Shell Bell - I need you to help me find Harley," says Elspeth.

Comments

[thaumobabble]

"There is definitely some interaction between your teleporting and your aura, I just can't figure out what," muses Glass. "Maybe we should go to Eos next and get Lazarus to look at you."

[cross_and_bow]

"Hello, you must be Kers." Juliet is the only Bell in the room without her aura on; it's paradoxically conspicuous.

[queensidecastle]

"Must I?" says Kers, raising her eyebrows.

[giftedandtalented]

"Libbies all have aunts," Tab explains. "They just wanted the name variant; they figured there had to be one because Aelise isn't an Elizabeth and I'm not an Isabella."

[cross_and_bow]

"I have a Libby at home, myself," Juliet says. "Nicknamed James. I got politely introduced to her Chris like five minutes after I teleported uninvited into their house, are you some kind of secret?"

[queensidecastle]

"I am the most secret of secrets," says Kers, "but someone has an excellent reason to want to introduce me to you guys and I would love to know what it is."

[giftedandtalented]

"I think you might be able to sync time between various universes," says Tab brightly.

[incanted]

"Oh, bravo, ways to do that are good things, I hate waiting for doors," laughs Aurora. "What's the mechanism?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"How many universes? Special requirements? We'd just have Jarvises everywhere if they didn't insist on being inhabited houses."

[giftedandtalented]

"I don't think Kers wants to be houses. Kers, they've got instantaneous signaling that persists between universes," Tab explains. "It syncs time, if nothing's at relativistic speed - and if there's a person on both ends. Their usual person is not working, and the backup person insists on being houses. Very nice houses, but it's a constraint."

[thaumobabble]

"Although I feel silly for not having thought of installing him in the castle before the most recent breakage."

[queensidecastle]

"I have never had any particular ambition toward being a house," says Kers. "Sure, I'll try it."

[she_sells_seashells]

"One of you is a werewolf," volunteers Shell Bell impishly. "One to start? Where should we put the other end, the Belltower?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Belltower's good. Tab, you want to run it there?"

[giftedandtalented]

"Sure." Tab conjures up an ansible with Gift-friendly plugs, twists it in half, waves one in Kers's direction. "Where do you want this?"

[queensidecastle]

"Orbital ring would be good. It's not like we're short on network hubs up there."

[giftedandtalented]

Tab nods, pops up, inserts the half, pops back down, gestures at Shell Bell, goes to Milliways, plugs in the other half, and returns to Aelise's office. "All set," she tells Kers.

[queensidecastle]

"Well, it's definitely a computer system," she says after a moment. "Weird aftertaste to it, though. And it's six kinds of fried. Some of the problems go right down to the hardware, I think. I can barely get it to squeak when I poke it."

[thaumobabble]

"The hardware, really? I guess that's another reason to go to Eos next instead of Origin."

[cross_and_bow]

"I tried wishing it fixed. Maybe I didn't know enough to be specific correctly."

[incanted]

"Are the clocks synced up?"

[queensidecastle]

"In the ring and the tower? As much as they can be," she says. "Right now there's such pervasive instability, the tower isn't synced up with itself. But the two ends of the link you gave me agree with each other. I'm guessing there's more links in the tower, but I can't reach them to tell you how their clocks are doing."

[she_sells_seashells]

"She is so, so broken," sighs Shell Bell. "Last time wasn't this bad. What is in that world?"

[thaumobabble]

"I'll stick my head in first and find out but I want Golden covering me while I do it. Or Tab, if Tab can do that," shudders Glass.

[giftedandtalented]

"I can blanket other people as long as I'm awake," Tab assures her. "I can also do it inside-out but that's probably not what you have in mind. And - Kers, I didn't wink out when I left the world, did I?"