infiltrating the court

[msmortal]

The plan is refined and strengthened, contingencies are set to deal with various ways Thorn could've strengthened his defences, Mortal receives a very interesting email concerning one of their mother's contingency plans - namely that her assets have all been either frozen or transferred to Mortal themself, so Thorn doesn't have access to them -, and when Mortal and Promise judge there's nothing more to be gained from further planning they (eat dinner, sleep again, have breakfast, go over the plan once more when it's not completely fresh in their minds so they see if they come up with anything new, purchase Promise a mobile phone and a power generator to charge its battery in fairyland, eat lunch while Mortal teaches Promise how to use that, and) part ways.

On this side of the veil, Mortal gets to work. The first step: getting at least two safe houses, one for their HQ and the other for contact with the place near Thorn's court. They end up getting five, for redundancy's sake. The main HQ is near Seattle, the other four safe houses are in Greece, Russia, Japan, and Argentina. That, and getting the necessary existing equipment, is the easy part - you end up with contacts of the relevant sort when the bulk of your wealth comes from the kind of thing you can get with sorcery. The hard part is getting the various specific bits of technology that don't exist yet, including the the many types of trap and ammunition they'll need. Processing fairy voices with software turns out to be a dead end - apparently they're weird magical superpositions of sounds that make software go ?!?!?!?!? - but everything else, as agreed upon, can be made to spec nicely enough.

It'll take a couple of weeks beyond the one month for everything to be ready. Mortal hires someone who talks very fast.

And after the ball's going, there's not actually much for them to do with their time. They fret about details of the plan, order more redundant pieces of stuff (especially the to-spec stuff, not being mass-produced means they'd better have a lot of it to start with in case anything goes wrong), and have various antsy and anxious and calm and relaxed and terrified and panicked moods. A month is a long time...

At one point it occurs to Mortal that Promise might've decided to run away and not help, and then they'd never see her again and that would be terrible, and why would it be terrible anyway? It's just some fairy, fairies are evil, one must remember that. Even though she wasn't, of course, she was smart and resourceful and moral and ridiculously hot, and if they never see her again she'll never order them again and the tingly feelings won't ever happen again. Except what the heck, what are they even thinking? The answer, of course, is that they want to see Promise again. Why? To save their mother, of course. The only reason being ordered like that felt good was because Science. Of course. Of course.

The month passes-

Comments

[mrmortal]

"Minimise? Kind of a mouthful. Reduce? Evade? Avoid? Depending on how she's ordered I could just say 'lie'..."

[imeanforever]

"Don't say 'lie', she can say any false thing she wants if she gets 'lie', it wouldn't even have to respond to the question. We could say 'I belay that', and have her revert to our orders in lieu of following theirs."

[mrmortal]

He presses the button: "What's the phrasing of the order about anything having happened during the trip likely to be?"

[alicornucopia]

"I don't know, they change it," says the fairy.

[mrmortal]

"Can you give me a few examples?"

[alicornucopia]

"Yes."

[mrmortal]

"Do your sincere best to cooperate with me and obey what you believe to be the spirit of all orders I have given or may give you according to your sincere best up-to-date model of me and what you expect me to have meant." He tries again, seeing just how far that order can get him: "Can you give me a few examples of phrasings of the order to tell about anything that may have happened on your trip?"

[alicornucopia]

"'Describe your trip here, omitting no salient detail'. 'Tell me what I want to know.' 'Answer honestly, did anything happen?' 'When I order you "talk" tell me if you have anything of interest to me to share. Talk.' 'I renew your court orders.'"

[mrmortal]

"So we order her right now to pretend to obey this kind of order in a way that won't bring attention to us, and then when we belay the order she'll revert to that?" he asks Promise.

[imeanforever]

"That's the idea. It's very timing-delicate but not as much as a longer sentence."

[mrmortal]

"Yeah. Very good phrasing, I like it." He presses the button again. "Unless otherwise specified by me, do your sincere best to ensure no one you do not know to be my vassal will have any reason to suspect any details of my plans including the fact that they exist."

And if there are any loopholes in that...

[alicornucopia]

The fairy doesn't say anything.

[mrmortal]

"I'm kinda worried that she hasn't pointed out any loopholes yet and am not sure whether I should take that as meaning the orders are good or she's just doing her best not to think very hard of them right now."

[imeanforever]

"Or she's not very smart. It could be all three."

[mrmortal]

"Are you avoiding thinking of loopholes?" he presses the button to ask.

[alicornucopia]

"Yes."

[mrmortal]

"There we have it," he sighs to Promise. "In general, try to think of loopholes in my orders. Are there any in the orders I've given you so far?"

[alicornucopia]

"I haven't thought of any."

[mrmortal]

"Okay. Next, what's a distress code?"

[alicornucopia]

"If I say it it's a signal that I'm compromised."

[mrmortal]

"What is it?"

[alicornucopia]

"'Creek'."

[mrmortal]

"Under your current orders, and assuming we find a way to prevent another fairy's order from taking, would you be able to use this distress signal?"

[alicornucopia]

"I don't think so."

[mrmortal]

"Are there any more contingencies you know about or whose existence you suspect?"