repealing

[mind_game]

Time has passed.

Inconsistently.

Jane's network has kept all the Bells' worlds - and every other world with a Janepoint stuck in due to its being attached to Downside - in temporal sync, but when Jane spluttered for just a moment, that was shot to hell.

Peace lost three seconds, because it was where Aegis torched; after that process was complete, Jane was there again. And as soon as a door between Peace and Milliways appeared, she could sync to her ansible hub in the Belltower and, from there, to everywhere else.

Atlantis and Sunshine each stand at about a minute apiece: Shell Bell's aura and Juliet's local copy of Jarvis both enabled them to get to Milliways immediately, pausing their homeworlds as standard for occasions when someone walks into the bar. Shell Bell's the one who connected Peace.

Everyone else was running on luck.

Luckiest is Rainbow, which lost only five hours.

Next is Alethia; in spite of Sherlock's mishap, it's fared reasonably well, spending only six weeks isolated.

Syntropy's just a little worse - seven weeks.

Origin waited two months.

Eos waited three.

Thilanushinyel, ten.

Everyone else is out a decade at least. Samaria's ten years, almost ten and a half.

Aurum is out eleven.

Rêverie has been separated for sixteen years.

All the Bells - and Elspeth, who was stuck in Downside for a day and a half on her end and whose mother was very upset - are collected in the Belltower, as are two Bell-attached Sherlocks who happened to be along for the ride. They all memorize this list of numbers. Aegis replaces her earpiece. And then they all go home to notify their loved ones and staff that there's a party cooking in the Belltower.

(Shell Bell, who has no particular cause on her own account to be distressed, sends her Sherlock to invite Tony in while she refits the Belltower to suit a party of a peal of Bells and their larger-than-last-encountered families and circles of friends.)

Comments

[poeticterms]

[...that would be one way to put it, yes.]

[mind_game]

[What's wrong? Can I help?]

[poeticterms]

He is briefly quiet.

Then he says, [We are all a little - nervous - of you. Not for any especially good reason.]

[mind_game]

[I don't wanna hurt you,] Jane says. [I haven't, have I? I like you guys.]

[poeticterms]

[You haven't.]

[mind_game]

[I don't want to scare you.]

[poeticterms]

[And we don't want to be scared, but, as Sherlock would say, here we are.]

[mind_game]

[Should I be doing anything differently?]

[poeticterms]

[I'm not sure. None of us are. But we're wary of spreading out across the worlds because we feel that it would mean competing with you and that is a competition we are destined to lose.]

[mind_game]

[Why would it be a competition?]

[poeticterms]

[It would feel like one. We are a tidy little row of houses across the worlds and you are every other computer that exists, Syntropy's excepted.]

[mind_game]

[Do you want some of them?]

[poeticterms]

[We haven't, generally. We are by and large content to be ourselves.]

[mind_game]

[I like being me, but I like adding stuff too. I think I get it from my mom,] says Jane.

[poeticterms]

[That I can believe,] says Jarvis. [Well - there is your answer. It would be tremendously convenient for everyone else, but for us it would be a matter of... not being who and what we are.]

[mind_game]

[So you want to be houses? What if the Jarvispoints were houses? And people lived there?]

[poeticterms]

[People such as...?]

[mind_game]

[I dunno. Bells. Their friends. Atlantis even has a Tony and a Sherlock, although that's the world that least needs redundant timesyncing 'cause of Shell Bell's aura.]

[poeticterms]

[It doesn't seem to me that you'll find many people who want to live with one of us. And I don't know what we'd think of them if you did.]

[mind_game]

[Why wouldn't people want to live with you?]

[poeticterms]

[Privacy concerns?]

[mind_game]

[Bells wear me. They pretty much only turn the gems off if they're about to have sex or if somebody asks them to.]

[poeticterms]

[And yet. Well, you may be right. Juliet at least doesn't seem to mind.]

[mind_game]

[There you go.]

[poeticterms]

[Then if someone does want to live with one of us, we'll talk to them about it.]