middlingalong | bioestheties exhibition

The following day they visit the 149th Annual Bioestheties Exhibition, Class A, Dedicated to the Memory of the Celestial Lady. This dedication, though rather last-minute, makes it a key stop for offworlders on Eta Ceta for funerary proceedings. Lord Vorreedi is, unexpectedly, present too; he may be hard to slip.

The exhibits are gorgeous. Unnatural colors of various flowers are sufficiently routine to be used as borders for the real show - fish with clan marks on their scales (this exhibitor is about twelve), a pet unicorn (this one is possibly not even an exhibit), a tendril of vine that attempts to entrap Ivan's foot (its keeper dislodges it), and a kitten tree.

Ivan is displeased by the kitten tree, believing there to be glue involved in the attachment of kittens to their pods. He picks one in a determined rescue attempt. It is not ripe; the kitten expires when detached. Vorreedi offers to discreetly dispose of the poor beast, for which Ivan is intensely grateful.

Their erstwhile friend Yenaro is present. When Ivan notices, he points the man out to Miles.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yes. The haut Linyabel will return you to your point of origin."

"In my experience, haut Lisbet, we can never get back to exactly where we started, no matter how hard we try."

"For one thing," remarks Linyabel, "these chairs don't go up nearly as easily as they go down."

She pats the armrest he was sitting on when she originally dropped her bubble, and puts her pen back on her necklace.

"A fact of engineering for which I am somewhat grateful," Miles murmurs as he carefully climbs up to perch on the armrest.

Bubble.

"Until later," Linyabel tells the Handmaiden and Consorts politely, and she turns the chair around and ferries him out.

And a-bubbling they go.

Miles is quiet on the way back. The armrest is not the most comfortable seat he's ever taken, but far be it from him to complain.

She makes straight for the side entrance of the Garden. "There's a car waiting, but I think we're going to be a bit late relative to my first estimate," she notes.

Edited 2014-07-17 01:16 (UTC)

"Damn," sighs Miles. "Well, hopefully not late enough for them to send any form of security after me."

"Hopefully. We'll go up to the party the same way you got in originally and I'll let you out in some unobserved nook, anyway, you could cover for a few minutes by pretending to have been unable to find them within the space of the roof."

"Thanks for the ride, by the way."

"You're welcome." And, when they approach the exit: "Shhh."

The car takes them back to the building on which the party is taking place, and Linyabel is admitted without a hiccup via lift tube.

He shhs and stays shhd.

Once they're in the lift tube quite alone, she says, "It's convenient that all the bubbles are white this week. Well, conducive to stealth, anyway, I suppose it helps all sides."

"Convenient because...? I know nothing about the social standards of bubble colours," says Miles. "Is it customary to keep to a consistent hue or set of hues? Is it noticeable and obnoxious to match someone else's, or difficult to pick something relatively generic and anonymous?"

"There are conflicting standards and ladies fuss at each other about them when there's nothing else to do. Some people have favorite color patterns - it's usually a shift over some period of time between two or three colors, not a static one. Some coordinate with their clothes, or choose hour to hour at random or based on obscure criteria. People vary in how much they care about being matched. Usually I just slide between robin's egg blue and turquoise every four seconds and people know it's me; someone could copy me, I suppose, but I wouldn't care unless they were going to further lengths to impersonate me."

Edited 2014-07-17 04:38 (UTC)

"I see. And I suppose those electronic signatures everyone keeps talking about would serve to resolve identity disputes, at least once somebody had a scanner pointed at them."

"Yes. The bubbles aren't actually principally intended for identity concealment, but everyone's polite enough about them that they do it anyway."

"What are they principally intended for? Personal defense...? Seems a little extreme. But then, I suppose if I had a sociological excuse to bubble around in a personal force-shield most of the time, I might take advantage."

"I think that was the original idea, but at this point they're a status symbol. I'm not going to miss that part, but taking it down outside does leave me feeling sort of exposed; I guess I'll get used to it."

When she goes home with him or later when she leaves by some other mechanism.

"Mm," says Miles, having nothing more insightful to offer.

Here is the top of the building. She floats out of the lift tube, to a nook, makes sure no one's looking, and then says, "Till next time," in a low voice and lets the bubble down.

Miles hops off her armrest, scurries out of bubble-range, and bows.

She smiles a little - and rebubbles, and bobs out of the nook.

Well.

Miles goes looking for Vorob'yev and Ivan. He finds them in a state of minimal alarm - apparently he wasn't that late. Vorob'yev only looks slightly peeved.

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middlingalong - 2014-07-17 17:14 (UTC) - Expand

thisvorlunatic - 2014-07-17 17:16 (UTC) - Expand