Xaviers!

"No, it's... it's a joke. Anyway, forget I said anything, past is in the past, right?"

Nailah Weaver wrote:"No, it's... it's a joke. Anyway, forget I said anything, past is in the past, right?"

"That's usually how it works, though not a hard limit."

"Like, what, time travel?"

"It is at least theoretically possible, though normally only in one direction."

"Like a one way ticket to the past?"

"No, I mean forward. That's the normal way people go, right?"

Shari blinks once. Twice. "Okay fine, I guess that's technically correct."

"So, the key is just stopping that forward momentum, or re-directing it."

"And you think you could do something like that?"

"It's exceedingly simple, in principle."

That was a non-answer if Shari had ever heard one.

"So's flying, but I still haven't managed." she nods.

"Well, we can work on that, if you'd like."

"Sure! Uhm... you're not planning on strapping me to a rocket, are you?"

"It would be a very effective method of forward propulsion, though I can understand your concerns. Until we make you fireproof, at least."

"Let's stick to the less explody things." she nods.

"Hmm. Well, that limits options, but we can work with that."

"Good. I'm not entirely sure I can regrow bits and I'm not super keen on finding out." she chuckles.

"Well, that's boring. Why wouldn't you be keen on finding things out? It's always good to learn new things. If you don't learn two new things a day, the day's been wasted."

"I mean, you're not wrong. But there's plenty of stuff I don't know yet, so let's just put that somewhere at the bottom of the list."

"Pfft," Cam said, dismissively. "Fine, if you say so."

"Good. Now let's make a wifi!"

"Let's...make a wifi," he blinked. "I...that is to say...grammatically....


...alright, fine, let's make a wifi. First thing we need to figure out is what, precisely, counts as my attention for something to stay shrunk. If we don't know what to remotely set up, it's not particularly useful, would you agree?"

"Makes sense! So, like, some kinda monitor? Like a medical one maybe?"

"Talk me through that," he said, standing up and digging under his bed for something.

"Uh... okay. So just have like one of those beep-beep heartbeat monitors on you and then we'll have the spiky line thing in a different room with one of your other things aaand we'll see if it keeps working!"

"Very technical explanation.

Two flaws, which we'll have to overcome. One -- the monitor is just showing physical signs, and not actively replicating them in some way; we'd have to hook the monitors up to something else; something a bit more active.

Secondly, by definition, I can't be in the room to monitor when and if it stops working, so that's another hurdle. That one, at least, is easy enough to solve."

"I can carry around a thing. But how are you gonna get something more active than your heart?"

"Not on me, on the other end. I hardly think a computer monitor would count for presence, wouldn't you say?"

"If it's showing your heartbeat that's a kind of presence, right?"

"OK, you've got a poster of, say, Leonardo DiCaprio on your wall. Does that mean that Leo is present in your room?"

"I mean, kind of..." she says despite the fact that Cam is obviously going the other direction on this.

"'Kind of'? Please explain to me the sorts of actions that would be the same with both a poster representation of DiCaprio and having the actual man in your bedroom."

"Man I don't even... Okay, you can look at his face for starters. If I was one of your doodads and I was getting anxious I might look over and go 'Oh hey, it's Cam's face. Now I can keep working'."

"You're anthropomorphizing. Most shrunken things aren't conscious; they can't respond in that sort of manner. No, it's more likely to be some sort of reaction down on the atomic level, with the shrunken atomic nuclei interacting with my X-Gene's morphogenic field. Or it could be a biochemical reaction; some sort of biological signal I release which allows the laws of physics to continue to bend."

"Have you tried talking to things through a microphone?" Shari tries again.

"Again; talking TO things is a waste of time, but I suppose sound waves could be an integral part of the reaction."