i'm almost sixteen

[autokinetic]

Aegis has her Sue back. Sort of.

She also has her Jane back, less sort of, and right now that's way less complicated and way less sad and Aegis doesn't, actually, have anything to do apart from reading to catch up, which she can only do so many hours in a row.

So she's dug up her old save file and she's playing with her animal-people. With Jane, although Jane says she's mostly running the original software, not inserting her mature personality. (She does commentate, for color.)

Clearing the jellyfish for the seahorses.

She remembers it like it was yesterday.

Her bird stopped playing before she did, so she doesn't even slightly expect him to show up all candleflame and join her, when she's doing this.

Comments

[mind_game]

[No, he logged into it. What, you want me to put him in his own sandbox?]

[autokinetic]

[No. This is fine.]

Her avatar waves at him, slow in the water.

[pythbox]

The fiery fish waves back and swims closer, trailing a long candleflame tail.

[autokinetic]

Aegis's birdperson, fishbowl airpocket on her head, looks at him for a moment longer, then goes back to exterminating the jellyfish.

[Hi.] No need to clumsily write in the sand.

[pythbox]

[Hi,] says Sue. [Having fun?]

[autokinetic]

[It's more fun when you're younger, I think,] she says, dryly self-deprecating. [I just needed a break from reading.]

[pythbox]

[Gotcha.] The fish does a barrel roll.

[This is weird.]

[autokinetic]

[Being back in the game?]

[pythbox]

[Yeah. Well, that and everything.] He sighs over brainphone. [I want to hug you, or tell you I love you, or - something, but I don't know if any of that would be a positive contribution.]

[autokinetic]

[I know you love me. We did some hugging. I mean, it was better than coming home and not having that, so that's one possible value of positive, yeah?]

[pythbox]

[Yeah. But 'positive' meaning 'an improvement on the current situation', not so much?]

[autokinetic]

[Yeah, I think I'm gonna be about like so until something else happens.]

[pythbox]

[I don't want you to keep being about like so,] says Sue. [I want you to be happy. I—]

He cuts himself off and goes silent.

[autokinetic]

[I'll grow up eventually. What?]

[pythbox]

[I just had an idea,] he says, and links her, and sends:

What he wants is to separately be both the person he is now, with all his age and experience and responsibilities, and the person he was when he was sixteen and still extremely keen on the idea of making out with Aegis.

Magic exists. He can do that. There is no reason Aegis has to wait some unspecified amount of time to get her boyfriend back, not when Sue can just pull him out of the past and hand him to her.

[autokinetic]

Whoa. This is clever. Sue is clever. It wouldn't cause some kind of problem for there to be two of you?

[pythbox]

Nope. Well, it might if we paraded him around in front of a bunch of cameras, but I think we can manage not to do that.

[autokinetic]

Would you go back to being one Sue later or what?

[pythbox]

Yeah. Probably. And if we didn't I'm sure we'd get in the habit of linking and catching up every little while, eventually. Or even stay linked permanently like I am with Ivy. With a mental laugh, You could end up with a two-for-one deal on boyfriends.

[autokinetic]

If I hit you with a rock, does that mean I get two birds with one stone? she snorts. Should ask Jane to poll the peal, see if anybody has input on forking and merging you should use before you start making wishes.

[pythbox]

Only if you hit both of us with the same rock, he says. Sure.

[Hey, kid, what can the peal tell me about forking and merging?]

[mind_game]

[I'll check, Venerable Father And/Or Holy Ghost,] says Jane sarcastically.

A moment later: [Juliet's done it to get access to memories about her sister but didn't stay separate for long. Shell Bell's done it and hopes you are not experiencing similar circumstances. Minus has advice that only applies to a subset of Sherlocks. Nathan says it's a perfectly elegant solution to a certain sort of problem he'd be surprised if you had. You wanna be more specific?]

[pythbox]

[Looks like I'll be the first person to do it, then - I'm forking and staying that way for a while, so Aegis can have her boyfriend back.]

[mind_game]

[Juliet says it worked out nicely for her to give her fork her own unadulterated memories of the past little while so she'd pop into existence knowing what was going on,] Jane relays.

[pythbox]

[Thanks.]

Sue is not going to do this; he has his own solution. The point is to fork a double who isn't up to date on his life in full depth, after all. But arbitrary amounts of linked rapid summarizing have yet to turn Sue into Aianon or Ghosty or Brilliance or Corona.

He thinks.

He decides to pull his copy from the exact moment that would make him the same age relative to Aegis that he was when Jane went down - the moment of discontinuity, plus the amount of subjective time Aegis spent out of the world, plus the amount of time it has been since she got back. He doesn't have an exact count of how long that is, but there is no time in that ballpark he could pull from that won't be a busy moment. So he leaves Ivy floating in space as an anchor - can't be too careful - and freecasts to the Gentle Cave in case Past Sue is startled.

'Sue' and 'Past Sue' is going to get confusing fast. The past version can keep 'Sue'; the older one decides he will be Admiral War.

He spends an evil.

It's not clear who links who first, and for a few seconds thoughts are roaring back and forth, but Sue stabilizes fast. He hugs War hard; his Ivy instantiates to join the cuddle. It's like she's wrapping her coils around two of Sue, appropriately enough.

Still linked, Sue does a brief freecasted tour of all known worlds just to make sure his skills there are as up-to-date as War's.

He ends this tour standing in front of Aegis with Ivy perched on his shoulder as a candleflame bird.