[b]Eli:[/b]

“Oh fuck, what?” Eli checks her pamphlet for the event schedule. “Shit, fuck, that’s not even on here. Oh shit but it’d be like, twenty minutes from now right because that’s where this fucking gap is. Fuck yes, insider information, love this shit. Also I think it’s Beatriz, like, trizzzz, because- Okay okay, fuck, okay.” She takes a breath. “Honestly, we just need a few vignettes anyway. Cool, cool. Twenty minutes to kill.” 

“Okay so you’re fucking right is the thing, obviously. I don’t think you need to fully Oglaf this shit, just because that comic was bad longer than it was good for, the apprentice dies in like 2018 and that comic kept going until like 2028? Or something. But like- You got a guy daddy domming you, one on one it can be hot when you're both into it, but trying to sell that as a character to an audience it's like reading someone else's sexts, right? But you make that guy a polar bear named Santa Claws and suddenly if you think that’s hot that shit’s for you, but if you don’t then you’ve got to respect the commitment to the bit, right? It’s like… It’s like candy coating a pill. The drug hits the same if you swallow it, but you’re not going to flinch so hard getting it down in the first place.”

“Honestly if you want to see some of that possibility space, there used to be these huge text based furry games that went really hard on the fetish stuff and being as weird as possible, like, Fenoxo’s stuff was pretty famous like TiTS or CoC or CuM, but I think they were super starter pack honestly? Like even then? Like they were the famous one but a lot of the bigger wiki spinoff stuff was like… Like I think Flexible Survival was way better for this. It’s about like, a kind of gray goo scenario takes over 2008… some fuckin’ city, I dunno, and it’s run on this like, [i]real[/i] antique text game program that was arcane even then. Like the kind of system where you actually have to type everything you do. But like, it's about how nanobots just rewrite everything, making people into weird hybrids like incredibly horny griffon herms or panthertaurs and stuff like that, because the nanobots spread easiest as STDs so they rewire your brain to be horny so their strain wins. But it also like, just turns part of the city into Avelon and magic's real in that part, because it's the emotional logic. It’s just like, it’s a great case study in how extreme you can push stuff if you just treat it as normal, I guess, or just build the world from the ground up contextualizing it. Big thing of it is that it has so much stuff going on that it doesn’t expect everyone to be weird in the same way, it knows it’s not universal appeal. It’s so much [i]different[/i] niche stuff thrown at the wall that you only got to understand that someone [i]could[/i] be weird in that way. You do that, you can treat the weirdest shit you can imagine as anchored and real.”

Fair warning to… let’s say 'Green' about looking this up, everything here’s real and it is made of extreme content warnings. But that’s kind of the point here, to an extent. Eli doesn’t lower her eyes or her voice when she mentions this, goes into it, saying it where people can hear. It's a certain kind of indicting to even know about this stuff, and you might as well have asked her advice on which restaurant to hit up. 

“Also like, useful in that it’s good to remember you can go into way deeper possibility space than regular furry stuff. I think this stuff’s just the beginning?” She gestures at the exhibition. “Like, people can’t get really weird yet, even though the tech’s there in theory, because the tech’s still so complicated you can’t see anyone making new stuff with less than a 50 person company. But when stuff like this becomes normal enough you see 50 person companies made up entirely of our people, when those start actually making whatever the fuck they want?” 

“This stuff’s just the Polyhedron take on the community, is what I’m saying. You know this stuff is nascent-” she takes a moment to appreciate just how good ‘nascent’ is as a word, smiling before plowing through, “when you haven’t even seen the prehensile tentacles yet. It's why I kind of worried about Crystal's aim here, because the stuff that's still coming is going to be way harder to sell to normies.” 

She pauses, blinks. “Fuck, sorry, we were talking worldbuilding, and I made this my thing again. I just thought that was like, relevant to what you were saying.”

[b]Knightly:[/b]

“Well, I hate to drag her into this, but I can always buy Gabby a bigger candle.” Knightly stands up and rubs his chin. He leans back against one of his office walls - he must think like this a lot, some of the silver of his jacket is permanently scuffed into that part of the wall and he’s only been promoted for a few weeks now. “If you only want the calendars we just need to ask her nicely. If you really wanted to guarantee something, though, we can get Gabby to schedule an emergency meeting with a journalist to provide comments about suspicious things they’ve learned about the Goddard Pump? That would light a fire under their asses. Especially if they knew you’d already talked to me first.” He gives a meaningful look. 

Of course this is the kind of guy who’d try to weaponize [i]honesty[/i], even when running deception. 

[b]Thrones:[/b]

“Empty space, about a day’s flight from here if you get a good ship.” He pauses. “I don’t have one, no. He was bought by Orochi, because [i]apparently [/i]the company named after an eight headed dragon was ecstatic to buy a real eight headed dragon.” He gives a side-eyed look at Monk saying this. “You got this from your mother, didn’t you? The mythologizing thing.” Monk with her top four shoulders, and Singh shakes his head. “Goat says - Nepenthe told me Goat says - they sent him out there to make a microfusion drive, and he’s still out there. Which probably means he never finished it, because it’s impossible[1], and because it’s Dragon he’s never going to put it down to visit until it is. You’re going to have to go out there, if you want to see him.” 

“And yes, we tried to call him from here, and no he wouldn’t answer.” Singh shakes his head again, a combination of love and exhaustion. “Why would he? Why [i]would[/i] he, when he’s busy?”

Dragon would often become borderline mute when concentrating intensely, even when you could talk to his face. Dodging phone calls? Even Singh can’t take that as a bad sign, just a pain in the ass you have to go out to [i]him[/i]. 

“Little ego monster.” Monkey echoes. “I can catch up with Singh, and Goat, while you go find him? I promise not to go anywhere.” She pauses. Then, as Tranquility, she adds; “I do want to see him, too. Just not as much as you do, and you’ve already had your time with Dad. Tell Dragon I’ll be happy to talk to him as soon as you’ve brought him back.”

[1] Fusion’s obviously possible. Large scale fusion power exists, and existed even by the time November was building Aevum. You might notice that Aevum is powered by solar panels and not a fusion generator anyway. For all the research of sixty years, fusion never became cheaper or more effective than just printing off kilometers of perovskite solar cells. 

There’s only one real application for fusion power, and it’s the same reason to make it as condensed as possible: Interstellar travel. It’s the micro that Singh is saying is impossible, nobody’s been able to get a fusion generator dense enough that it’s worth a damn as an engine.