MISC: The Girl Who Saved The World 39

[Drew Perron]

On 4/19/2016 11:48 PM, George Phillies wrote:
<snip>
> “I’m not at all bothered that you thought I might not be up to coaching
> your children, since you had no idea who I am. To finish off the grades,
> Brian has a first rate set of screens, not to mention several plasma
> attacks that did a fine job on Lord Roxbury’s robots. If he were a
> grownup, he’d be welcome on the Sons of Boston, though that would be a
> waste of his time. I think his model building is a gift, but a very rare
> one. He’ll probably develop other gifts as he goes on, but he’s the type
> that develops a few things deeply rather than many things broadly, at
> least at first. Janie is an absolutely first-rate mentalist. Besides
> telepathy and screening, she is one of the few persona I know who can
> read machine minds. Very recently, she developed a mentalic attack,
> something extremely effective at killing things. I emphasize that she
> has a very well developed sense of gifttruth, so she is safe with the
> gift in question, but if she is driven to the point that she decides
> that she has to kill someone, they will almost certainly be very dead
> very quickly.

This should probably be broken up into a paragraph for each of Brian and Janie - 
and maybe that first sentence should be moved back. Breaking text up into 
paragraphs when the subject changes is a good way of making things more readable.

(Also, the concept of "gifttruth" is fascinating, and I hope we get more 
information about that soon.)

> “Brian and Janie between them have an additional gift, perhaps because
> they’re almost identical twins,  because the random sort of chromosomes
> for fraternal twins managed to give them almost the same set of
> chromosomes, though obviously not quite the same, namely they can trade
> their gifts.

This sentence probably also needs to break apart into two - one about their 
genetic relationship, one about the ability it gives them.

> “We were going to discuss this, because she had this really neat
> photograph she wants to show you, admittedly taken with one of my
> cameras, of the Milky Way galaxy.  The picture was taken from well to
> the Galactic South, so that you can see all of the spiral arms. That’s
> about 200,000 light years out from the Galactic center, which she
> covered in under half an hour, notwithstanding the need for acceleration
> and deceleration and being careful not to fly through anything large and
> solid along the way.

um WOW. :o That's A LITTLE. VERY POWERFUL!? @.@;;;

> For reasons I do not know and
> am not about to fly to Mars to ask, the Wizard of Mars has been inviting
> Trisha and Janie and sometimes Brian for tea. He asked them that they
> not tell everyone, because it would be dangerous to the whole world but
> not them, and they fortunately had the wisdom to honor his wishes.

Man. There are all these weird powerful people around making their own rules. 
Fascinating.

> Far before you reach my actual age, you realize that
> you want to live in Athens.  The most civilized, cultured, sensible
> place there is. In the tenth Century, that was Heian-kyo. At another
> time, Byzantium, Baghdad, and Cordoba were perhaps more civilized, but
> less welcoming to women. Once upon a time, it was the Leviorkianu
> Domain, and others it was Marik-on-the-Sea or Gaia Atlanticea. And now
> it is Cambridge, the American Athens.

Interesting.

> “Joe. Janie mentioned she had a regular playing partner of that name,
> which is perfectly reasonable at her age. It’s a very common name. I
> didn’t connect with the persona who saved her a few years ago.

Hmmmmmmm. :o Innnnnteresting.

Drew "interested but not detailed, apparently" Perron