whoops?

[andaisq]

Morty knows he shouldn't be screwing around with multidimensional shit. It's dangerous, it's impractical, it's blah blah blah. But it's a potential key to unlimited energy, how does nobody see that? He's built a dimensional siphon (it kind of looks like a cardboard box with a funnel and a TI-84 taped to it, but it damn well works), keyed in the dimensional coordinates to a random plane, and by God he's going to use it.

He flips the switch and waits for the energy bar to fill up.

It does! It fills up very rapidly. Then it explodes, along with the box. There's rather more smoke than there should be, and once the smoke clears someone is standing there.

"Whoops?" Morty says faintly.

Comments

[andaisq]

Not very, but if you want more than a few hours to decide, then I am going to want to put you in quarantine while you do it so that you don't either die or infect someone with space flu. We've got some very nice quarantine facilities, though. Considering.

[subtly_artistic]

I don't know that I need hours per se but I do need to know what my options are with respect to contacting my parents, maybe getting some subtle arts textbooks, and generally continuing to exist here if I'm going to do that.

[andaisq]

We can arrange that. Long-term parental contact is proportionally less of a problem than short-term; the textbooks we can probably manage using you as a dimensional anchor, or if we're very lucky we might find them in the Great Library; and generally continuing to exist is quite feasible and would be generously subsidized by the Academy by way of apology for putting you in this position in the first place.

[subtly_artistic]

That's very kind of the Academy. As long as my parents can be convinced that I have not been vivisected by demons or run afoul of fey or savaged by ogres or something I don't feel the need to contact them on a particularly frequent basis.

[andaisq]

That much can certainly be arranged.

[subtly_artistic]

What's the Great Library?

[andaisq]

...Difficult to explain. A few decades back an unusually unhinged Devisor created a building which... structurally resembles a library, is apparently infinite in volume, and contains, to all appearances, all of the books that have ever been written in any universe. The only problem is that every book is placed completely at random, scrying is very difficult in the stacks, and going too deep can lead through pockets of badly distorted time. There are people with the talent or skill to reliably check books out of the Library, but their services are expensive and always in high demand. Our main hope is that the books you need would crop up in the front thousand shelves or so, which occasionally rearrange their contents and can be scried.

[subtly_artistic]

That seems like a fairly thin hope. Maybe my parents could get together a decent curriculum's worth for me and you can just bring that in?

[andaisq]

Also an option. Probably a better one, but it costs very little to keep track of the Library entrance, so we may as well see.

[subtly_artistic]

Okay. Depending on how dramatic my vanishment looked on the other end I might not be missed for a day or two, and then the school will probably put a token effort into finding me again before bothering my parents, so there's no need to have a message to them ready to go particularly soon.

[andaisq]

Carson suppresses a snort at "token effort". This universe sounds like more fun than a barrel of lemures. Well, you're welcome to write such a message whenever you think best. Have you decided whether you want to stay and be vaccinated, was that a decision?

[subtly_artistic]

It's probably not worth the risk to go back and pursue a career path I was mostly picking as a default anyway, given this nice science fantasy universe to live in and a way to write my parents a letter. I am going to ask them to empty their savings accounts to get me books if your library doesn't have them, though, since it sounds like you will want them all in one batch.

[andaisq]

I'd say that we could help them out by sending them appropriate payment, but I suspect your belligerent universe would object. It being belligerent, and all.

[subtly_artistic]

I mean... yeah, pretty much. If there is any stuff you haven't gotten your science all over and which the universe doesn't consider inherently valuable and therefore inappropriate to conjure, I'm all ears, but they'll probably just have to take it out of not having to pay what of my tuition wasn't covered by scholarship, anymore.

[andaisq]

Gemstones, semiprecious stones, oysters containing pearls? Gold, silver, platinum, copper? Some of our universe's slightly more accurate science fiction?

[subtly_artistic]

Inherently valuable and therefore not the sort of thing you want suddenly appearing in your house... the fiction might actually work.

[andaisq]

I was mostly being facetious, but we can actually send over a cartload of out-of-copyright sci-fi, so if that works then it works.

[subtly_artistic]

It was not made with nonfictional science in any way?

[andaisq]

Does the printing press count? If so, we can get someone to write it out by hand. Other than that... The science is sometimes based on real principles, and it builds off of existing technology, although it's not exactly a how-to.

[subtly_artistic]

Just... be really thorough. The story is almost certainly safe, but no science paper, no science ink, etcetera. And don't send too many. The universe doesn't have a known opposition to plagiarism per se but it doesn't like too much cheating. They can probably get away with like... one author apiece.

[andaisq]

We'll be sure to use thoroughly nonscientific paper, ink, and methods of reproduction. Would it be best to choose two very prolific authors, or does that defeat the point?

[subtly_artistic]

Prolific is fine, I'm erring on the side of caution.

[andaisq]

Good to know. We'll go with Verne and... mm, Asimov, he's mostly out of copyright and robots are nothing if not innovative. And the man wrote like someone'd set him on fire.

[subtly_artistic]

I'll take your recommendation there.

[andaisq]

They're quite good. Does that settle everything? Does anything remain unsettled, beyond the process of putting plans into action?