The Beach, Monday Evening

[endsthegame]

It had been a long time since Ender had come here on his own, but Memorial Day seemed like the perfect time to do so. He'd given Ben a vague explanation about needing to go out and be alone-- and so that was what he was doing.

Here, on this patch of sand, where he'd first built his raft; where he and Karal had shared long conversations in the early morning hours; where he had come when times were rough or times were distant.

It was a perfect place just to sit, in perfect quiet, thinking about Bonzo, the many IF pilots who had given their lives in the last Formic War, the millions of Formic drones who had died, the Formic Queens who had perished in one large swoop by his unthinking order. He curled his legs up further beneath him and watched the sun set - forcing his mind to stay on topic, never drifting, until the grief lit up bright in his heart.

[[ open, though. ]]

Comments

[kenselvren]

Jalian had no idea it even was Memorial Day, or what that meant; she just liked the uninhabited places like the beach and the preserve sometimes.

When she saw Ender there, she nearly turned around and left, but then she decided that no male was going to change her plans for the day. And he seemed quiet, so she could easily ignore him.

She found someplace with firm enough sand and sat. So far, working the math of her diversion here in her head hadn't worked, and she was hoping that setting it down physically might, so she pulled out her smallest dagger and started.

[endsthegame]

Ender's gaze was drawn to her for reasons that were, by and large, tactical: his instincts wanted to know what she was doing here.

Nothing to be worried about, as it appeared. He watched her for a moment.

[kenselvren]

Jalian started with the math for the doorway's travel - standard Corvichi technology, and she'd been the primary builder on it. The computations for neg-entropy timelines were trickier, and she wasn't even sure she could put in figures what she'd attempted and (mostly) succeeded at. But if that went there, then the island's pull could've intercepted her here... no, that didn't work, either.

She made a disgusted noise, wiped out the last part, and started again. If she knew the exact entry ratio....

Pardon her, Ender; she was just going to stay here scrawling equations on a large stretch of sand.

[endsthegame]

That was fine, honestly, and for a time Ender would even let her be. Eventually, though, curiosity took hold - as Jane murmured in his ear, she'd already predicted - and he climbed onto his feet so he could at least survey what she was writing in the sand.

[kenselvren]

Jalian noted him as soon as he started to move, and a part of her attention didn't leave him, but she did her best to ignore his presence and focus on her equations. It wasn't like he was going to understand any of it, so he was welcome to watch as long as he didn't plan on disrupting or attacking her.

Which didn't mean she wasn't ready to reverse the knife she was writing with as quickly as possible if needed. They all had their instincts.

[endsthegame]

"Inter-temporal physics," Ender observed, after a time. "Interesting."

Admittedly, he had an artificial intelligence whispering in his ear to clear some things up for him.

[kenselvren]

Jalian spun to face him, so startled she brought her knife up in defense. Then flushed and dropped it back to her side; really, there was no excuse for that. "How do you know that?"

[endsthegame]

"Physics was designed to be an international language," Ender said wryly. He didn't react to her knife at all - he knew better than to kneejerk when there was no need to. "Legible to anyone who speaks it."

[kenselvren]

"Corvichi physics shouldn't be known to anyone in this time," Jalian pointed out a touch warily. "Especially a male." She caught herself and sighed; she'd been trying to be so good about the males in power!

[endsthegame]

"I'm not from this time," Ender pointed out lightly. (Plus, again: artificial intelligence whispering in his ear. Jane could cheat. Not enough for him to figure out exactly what she was doing, but enough to place it in the right ballpark of physics.) "And my gender has little to do with what I can or can't understand-- at least, in the field of physics."

[kenselvren]

Jalian snorted. "Ken Selvren males can't read at all." She frowned at him. "You are also from another time? How did you arrive here? Have you run the math? What is the entropy ratio here?" Did he have proper equipment, or at least the things to build it with? That would help...

[endsthegame]

"I come from several centuries into the future, in comparison to this planet at its current point in time," Ender said. "All I did was take a portal, however. Come to think, Portalocity might have the exact, specific readings you need."

"She's charming, isn't she?" Jane muttered in his ear.

"But I do have a means to calculate quickly."

[kenselvren]

Jalian made a cutting motion with her hand. "I have spoken to them. They could send me back to where I came from, if I had enough money," that concept still really amused her, "but they could not tell me how." She stabbed her dagger into the sand in frustration.

"You have one of those computers? I haven't been able to show them the equations I need." Jalian frowned. "They only show me pictures of cats and persons having sex."

"Not together," she added belatedly.

[endsthegame]

"I have a very smart computer at my disposal," Ender said, tapping the Bluetooth earpiece he wore.

"Careful," Jane murmured.

I'm not telling her you're a person, he subvocalized. "I can try and see if I can help you. Keeping in mind that our universes might be subtly different."

[kenselvren]

"All timelines - universes," she used his term, "are." She eyed him warily a moment longer, but it wasn't as if he could do anything with the knowledge; it was useless to anybody but her. Or possibly the Corvichi or other ken Selvren, but they would never survive the same trip.

"I programmed the doorway," she waved at that part of her sand-drawn equations, "to find a neg-entropy timeline at a high enough ratio to allow for short-term survival for the duration of its capabilities. When it overloaded, it should have ended and I would have emerged at a correspondingly earlier point on the same timeline from which I left. Hopefully not dead," she added.

"But instead, this island seems to have acted as a...well, or hole, or..." she made a disgusted noise. "Until I know how, I can't know how to overcome it, even if I could build another doorway."

[endsthegame]

"A nexus, is the word we use for it," Ender said. "A convergence, if you will, with some markers of sentience, reaching into timelines and universes and plucking some people at its leisure."

He looked thoughtful. "My universe doesn't take kindly to timeline-jumping within itself," he said. "I've managed to traverse time in a non-linear way only once within my universe, and it nearly wrecked Portalocity's systems."

[kenselvren]

"The strain of connecting with a timeline of negative entropy overloads the circuits of the equipment," Jalian explained. "Travel through one reverses a being's chemical and biological processes. That is why I had to find a high enough entry ratio."

She scowled in frustration. In this respect, this male was no worse than any person; she couldn't have explained it to ghess'Rith, even. "Like..." She picked up a rock and threw it into the water, where it sank. "You can't go right in." She picked up another and skipped it as well as she could across the waves. "You have to last long enough until it ejects you."