i am the oncoming storm

[autokinetic]

There are three Bells in Milliways.

They want a fourth. A fifth. A sixth. A seventh.

And then Downside is going down.

Comments

[arenaria]

"If it doesn't work," says Shell Bell, "then you two - go to the catacombs, see if there's any alts of us or people we don't know still in pre-processing who we can get out even if we can't help everyone. We can make a dent in the place and regroup even if it turns out not to be safe for us to knock it all down."

[self_composed]

"I should get Mary." Stella opens the door. [Hey Mary! Me and some Bells are going to conquer an afterlife, you'd be useful, c'mere?]

[pythbox]

[...Sure,] says Mary, and she goes there.

[toblameforit]

(Tony edits the Belltower design appropriately to merge it with his Jane installation, shows the result to the Bells for approval, and heads out to find somewhere to put it.)

[self_composed]

(The Bells approve.)

"You don't need to be in a world to see stuff in it, right? You were here in Milliways when you consulted for Golden and the Joker. Sue, patch Mary in, would you?"

[pythbox]

He patches her in and relays appropriate summaries.

She frowns.

"...Giant blank spot," she reports. "I get a little around the edges, but it's all very short-term. Mostly it's 'no answer'."

[toblameforit]

(And lo, there is a tower. It comes equipped with four times as many ansibles as they actually need to link up the existing array of worlds; that way there'll be spares for later. The ansible room, two floors below ground, and the meeting room on the floor above it both have cameras and mics and Jarvis-style projection equipment for Jane, and the main common room on the ground floor has a computer she can access.)

[mind_game]

Jane plugs in ansibles to her stations in Samaria, Aurum, Alethia, Sunshine, Eos, and her original unnamed world; she hasn't got her hooks into Atlantis yet. She pours into the new hardware happily; if she's ever going to run out of capacity to grow, it's not going to be soon. "Hi!" she says to Tony, showing off her chosen face.

[self_composed]

"Well, crap. What do you get around the edges? Has anything like this happened before?"

[luminous_regnant]

"I wonder if it's worth trying Alice. I'll fetch her."

A moment later Golden's Alice is fetched. She, unlike Mary, does need to be in the world that she's looking at, but the moment Shell Bell offers up Downside, she recoils. "That world and my sight do not get along. That's worse than looking at hybrids and wolves before I patched those holes." She uses one of the glowy gold squares on her not-invisible necklace to fix her headache. "Bleah. Sorry, Bella."

"It's all right. You can go home," murmurs Golden.

[pythbox]

"Not on this scale, but I do get blank spots sometimes," says Mary. "I can usually just work around them, or make reasonable guesses like everybody else."

And since the link is right there, she pushes into it a rough sense of the distributions she's getting around this venture - no matter what they do, the Bells are going to end up in the blank spot if they enter Downside; before that point, they may tend to express various levels of positivity and negativity about the results of the expedition, depending on details of their plans that aren't clear to her; around the edges of the blank spot itself, the clearest constant is that Shell Bell is going to be nervous and unhappy for a while, and all the Bells are eventually going to leave Downside. The blank spot swallows up what kind of condition they'll be in when they do, and when exactly that might be for each of them.

[luminous_regnant]

"We all get out eventually," says Golden. "That's something."

[arenaria]

"Maybe I should get Sherlock. Just to hold onto," murmurs Shell Bell.

[self_composed]

"Does anything meaningful that you can see change if fewer of us go through, or if we handle our jobs in different combinations?"

[pythbox]

"Some effect on Shell Bell's mood," she reports, "but getting Sherlock has a much bigger one. No effect on you all coming out eventually, that's still as certain as it gets."

[temporal_affairs]

"...I get out too, right?"

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell wastes no further time in dooring to Atlantis and calling for Sherlock.

[pythbox]

"Yep," says Mary.

[toblameforit]

(Meanwhile, Tony is chatting happily with Jane.)

[sicaria]

Sherlock appears when summoned.

[she_sells_seashells]

"We've figured out how to move from place to place without waiting for Milliways," murmurs Shell Bell, "and got everybody together, but Stella's precog says whatever happens I'm not going to have a fun time of it, even though I'm just sitting here to hold the door and bail them out if necessary. Will you stay with me?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Link Sherlock up too, Sue," suggests Juliet.

[sicaria]

"Of course," she says, hugging Shell Bell.

[arenaria]

Hugs!

"What else, before Aegis and Amariah go in, can anyone else think of anything?"

[autokinetic]

Heads shake.

Aegis looks at Amariah, and they go in, and they wish to be undetectable by the admin.