middlingalong | singing open the great gates

The following day, very little happens, except for Vorreedi mentioning that Yenaro has been arrested (by the civil police, for theft, on charges from a ghem-lord Miles has never heard of, as opposed to by Cetagandan security for treason).

Also, Ivan gets bored - with all the bodyguards Vorreedi now requires for them after the incident at the bioestheties exhibition, the possible spontaneity of going out with his ghem girlfriends is much reduced.

But the next day they get to attend the Singing Open of the Great Gates.

And oh, is there ever singing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

thisvorlunatic

"Oh good."

From:

isthisart

"Mm-hm." She peers at the bed. "I have never tried to sleep in a bed with another person before. I don't think I toss and turn, but I have no way of knowing - you aren't, I hope, fragile enough that it's a safety concern?"

From:

thisvorlunatic

"Um... I also haven't tried to sleep in a bed with another person before," Miles confesses. "You could certainly break my bones if you tried - I have no idea if you're likely to do it in your sleep by accident."

From:

isthisart

"I'm not going to try, I'm just wondering what constitutes reasonable precautions. I probably need a lot less sleep than you do, so if necessary I suppose there could be shifts, but that seems inconvenient."

From:

thisvorlunatic

"Yes, it does, doesn't it? Um. I really don't know," he says. "I suspect 'try it and see what happens' is the best information-gathering method we're going to come up with. I at least don't think you're going to break anything that can't be fixed."

From:

isthisart

"Okay."

Pen-woggle pen-woggle.

"Monogamy is customary on Barrayar, isn't it?" she asks.

From:

thisvorlunatic

"...Yes," he says.

From:

isthisart

"Okay. That will be fine, then."

From:

thisvorlunatic

From:

isthisart

"Are you okay?"

From:

thisvorlunatic

"Um? Yes," he says. "Fine. I'm fine."

From:

isthisart

"Okay." Woggle woggle. "Do you want a pen? I'm going to see about making a consumer version and they probably shouldn't be exact copies of mine."

From:

thisvorlunatic

"Ooh. Yes," he says.

From:

isthisart

"Any requests for what you want it to do?"

From:

thisvorlunatic

"Well, I don't know, what does yours do?"

From:

isthisart

"Comconsole functions, it can patch into most standard networks, that's how I'm accessing the library now. It's DNA locked, the consumer version probably won't do that, there are shortcuts I could take locking it to myself because I borrowed from the way the chairs only react to specific haut-ladies. It can pick up sound, but not project it - there wasn't a good way to get any reasonable acoustic quality without making it bulkier. It can take pictures as well as display them, though. It can do flat midair screens like this, or three-dimensional projections, although I don't have any way for it to project around corners so if I cover up both of its ends," she demonstrates, the projection winks out, "it's no good - that makes the three-d option less useful than it otherwise might be. It'll draw freehand, or recognize a library of gestures - alphabets and software shortcuts. It's got okay data capacity on its own, but its charger and external storage unit is where I keep anything I don't expect to need in the next week or so - again, didn't want it too bulky. And the white projection you've seen is another feature the consumer version probably won't have because most people aren't tetrachromats, but I find it a useful privacy screen."

From:

thisvorlunatic

"...Tetrachromat?"

From:

isthisart

"I can see more colors than you can. The white screen looks the equivalent of greyscale to me. It's only been standard for haut designed within the last couple of decades - anyone my own age could still read over my shoulder, but if it was only people older than me, they wouldn't be able to."

From:

thisvorlunatic

"Weird," he says. "But - in a good way."

From:

isthisart

"I tend not to watch a lot of holos because everything in them looks sort of - flat and unreal and sad," she says. "I mean, the pen takes pictures in all colors, but most media isn't designed for it. I suppose if I weren't a tetrachromat everything would look like that all the time and I just wouldn't know the difference."

From:

thisvorlunatic

"'All' meaning all the ones you see - I assume there's still more that you can't?" he says. "You should make my pen take tetrachromat pictures too, even if I can't tell the difference."

From:

isthisart

"In theory there could be pentachromats, but as far as I know none have been made, so - all the colors that anyone can see. And sure, I can make the cameras the same - are you thinking you'll be taking pictures of things to show me?"