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scott_sanfordFriday again! By request, the Lord of Time's daughter goofing off in her room for a few hundred words. :-)
Definitely read Preludes & Knick-Knacks and The Doll’s Source first...
Sophie Everytime in
Treat Counting
by Scott Sanford; 20 October 2023
Sophie Everytime sat in her room, pondering.
It was rare for her, or her father, to be uncertain about the future. Knowing the past and the future was very much part of what they were, but some things were too close to see clearly, or too involved with other time manipulators, or just too tangled with fate and destiny to focus on.
She looked at the green and blue lollipops in her hand, wondering how long she would keep them. Sooner or later she’d give them to Eric, when he needed them. They didn’t show when; looking with her father’s sight the candies extended out orthogonal to the usual spacetime that the Cupids used, too loaded with platonic absolutes to see far into their past or future.
Later, she’d have to go out and get all three, these two and the one she’d already used. Then she could go back and give them to herself when she’d needed them. That would be the easy part, whenever she had the energy to slog all the way out to the Unknown, so no hurry.
Sophie sighed; it could be decades before he needed them, out in linear human time, where he was living and being an ordinary-ish human. She’d better stow them safely until then.
She stood up and tried to figure out where she should put them, where they’d be safe and also hidden so nobody else would see.
Most of the population of this universe was well meaning but eccentric robots; there was no telling what any random Cupid might do if they found something that looked like candy. Her mum would just eat them, and Sophie knew her mum could handle that.
She thought about turning on a light, but she could see well enough in the dim light of leftover infant cosmogenesis. Her dad had assured her every baby shapechild in the family did that in their sleep occasionally, and flung the expanding wave fronts out into the unspecified spacetime beyond the part of the room they used. The radiation was red-shifted enough that the gamma rays didn’t irradiate Mum and by the time they were a few light years away they shed a lovely glow over everything.
Sophie had plenty of places to lose something, but where could she keep it safe?
She couldn’t very well stick them in her dirty clothes, there were too many of them, all over the place; she wouldn’t remember where she’d hidden the lollipops in a week. People had told her she should “do” laundry but she didn’t see why. It was so much easier just to move clothes back to before they got dirty.
Her old power armor! That was an idea! She smiled, thinking that had promise – when she was smaller she’d loved running around in her Juliet-form power armor, though even then she’d known it wasn’t really an original creation but just a remodeled Draconic Exosuit. That had been a lot of fun and sometimes Cupids pretended not to recognize her. It didn’t get used any more; she’d outgrown it years ago. But if Eric ever came over, he’d go right to every technological wonder in sight...
Sophie giggled to herself, briefly distracted by the idea of inviting Eric over to see her. She’d like that. He would too.
But it had better not happen too soon. Not this early. Now that she thought about it there were many, many reasons not to invite an unsuspecting human over to her parents’ house.
“Ooh!”, she said to herself. Now there was an idea – she had a house!
Years ago her Aunt Spatium had folded her a playhouse in a manner close enough to how a human might do origami. A cube two meters on a side on the exterior, it had eight internal rooms in a tesseract arrangement; inside, one could pick any direction to travel and the room with the door to the outside would be every fourth room forever.
Hardly anyone but her would even think to look inside, and most of the ones who did would stay on the horizontals. She could hide the lollipops in there and they’d be safe until she needed them.
It wasn’t even far away.
She went in, climbed onto the playhouse furniture, and opened the trapdoor in the ceiling, then crawled up.
There was a bunch of random stuff up here, including some “educational” things from her whatever Psykha and the Electro-Cat plushie Laura had made her. (Laura had argued that every little girl needed a stuffed animal with a two million volt stun gun. Mum had been weirdly okay with that. They were made for each other.) This would be a great place to put something where nobody would get into it.
She found an empty box the right size and put the lollipops inside, then reinforced the walls to keep ambient time out. The box turned mirror-surfaced as the stasis effect settled in, keeping the contents safe for the next few billion years or until she or a Thymon opened the box.
Sophie stacked it high in one corner of the room where she’d be able to see it, then weighted it down with a hard bound copy of An Introduction to Recreational Metric Engineering, which Psykha had probably sent her because it was written by one of her mom. Sophie had thought the writing was way too stuffy and the physics pretty basic, but as a big heavy weight it was perfect.
Or at least, it was good enough for this Time Being.
Read other Jenny Everywhere stories
The character of Sophie Everytime, created by Aristide Twain, is available for use by anyone. All rights reversed.
Definitely read Preludes & Knick-Knacks and The Doll’s Source first...
Treat Counting
by Scott Sanford; 20 October 2023
Sophie Everytime sat in her room, pondering.
It was rare for her, or her father, to be uncertain about the future. Knowing the past and the future was very much part of what they were, but some things were too close to see clearly, or too involved with other time manipulators, or just too tangled with fate and destiny to focus on.
She looked at the green and blue lollipops in her hand, wondering how long she would keep them. Sooner or later she’d give them to Eric, when he needed them. They didn’t show when; looking with her father’s sight the candies extended out orthogonal to the usual spacetime that the Cupids used, too loaded with platonic absolutes to see far into their past or future.
Later, she’d have to go out and get all three, these two and the one she’d already used. Then she could go back and give them to herself when she’d needed them. That would be the easy part, whenever she had the energy to slog all the way out to the Unknown, so no hurry.
Sophie sighed; it could be decades before he needed them, out in linear human time, where he was living and being an ordinary-ish human. She’d better stow them safely until then.
She stood up and tried to figure out where she should put them, where they’d be safe and also hidden so nobody else would see.
Most of the population of this universe was well meaning but eccentric robots; there was no telling what any random Cupid might do if they found something that looked like candy. Her mum would just eat them, and Sophie knew her mum could handle that.
She thought about turning on a light, but she could see well enough in the dim light of leftover infant cosmogenesis. Her dad had assured her every baby shapechild in the family did that in their sleep occasionally, and flung the expanding wave fronts out into the unspecified spacetime beyond the part of the room they used. The radiation was red-shifted enough that the gamma rays didn’t irradiate Mum and by the time they were a few light years away they shed a lovely glow over everything.
Sophie had plenty of places to lose something, but where could she keep it safe?
She couldn’t very well stick them in her dirty clothes, there were too many of them, all over the place; she wouldn’t remember where she’d hidden the lollipops in a week. People had told her she should “do” laundry but she didn’t see why. It was so much easier just to move clothes back to before they got dirty.
Her old power armor! That was an idea! She smiled, thinking that had promise – when she was smaller she’d loved running around in her Juliet-form power armor, though even then she’d known it wasn’t really an original creation but just a remodeled Draconic Exosuit. That had been a lot of fun and sometimes Cupids pretended not to recognize her. It didn’t get used any more; she’d outgrown it years ago. But if Eric ever came over, he’d go right to every technological wonder in sight...
Sophie giggled to herself, briefly distracted by the idea of inviting Eric over to see her. She’d like that. He would too.
But it had better not happen too soon. Not this early. Now that she thought about it there were many, many reasons not to invite an unsuspecting human over to her parents’ house.
“Ooh!”, she said to herself. Now there was an idea – she had a house!
Years ago her Aunt Spatium had folded her a playhouse in a manner close enough to how a human might do origami. A cube two meters on a side on the exterior, it had eight internal rooms in a tesseract arrangement; inside, one could pick any direction to travel and the room with the door to the outside would be every fourth room forever.
Hardly anyone but her would even think to look inside, and most of the ones who did would stay on the horizontals. She could hide the lollipops in there and they’d be safe until she needed them.
It wasn’t even far away.
She went in, climbed onto the playhouse furniture, and opened the trapdoor in the ceiling, then crawled up.
There was a bunch of random stuff up here, including some “educational” things from her whatever Psykha and the Electro-Cat plushie Laura had made her. (Laura had argued that every little girl needed a stuffed animal with a two million volt stun gun. Mum had been weirdly okay with that. They were made for each other.) This would be a great place to put something where nobody would get into it.
She found an empty box the right size and put the lollipops inside, then reinforced the walls to keep ambient time out. The box turned mirror-surfaced as the stasis effect settled in, keeping the contents safe for the next few billion years or until she or a Thymon opened the box.
Sophie stacked it high in one corner of the room where she’d be able to see it, then weighted it down with a hard bound copy of An Introduction to Recreational Metric Engineering, which Psykha had probably sent her because it was written by one of her mom. Sophie had thought the writing was way too stuffy and the physics pretty basic, but as a big heavy weight it was perfect.
Or at least, it was good enough for this Time Being.
The Sophiad:
0) How Sophie Met Professor Awesome → 1) Preludes & Knick-Knacks → 2) The Doll’s Source → 3) Treat Counting → 4) Session of Mystics → 5) A Game of Two → omake
0) How Sophie Met Professor Awesome → 1) Preludes & Knick-Knacks → 2) The Doll’s Source → 3) Treat Counting → 4) Session of Mystics → 5) A Game of Two → omake
