"Huh. Okay," Hevvi said, eyeing the rings where Sine used to be, "If I give in, will you at least agree not to confine the step functions to our quarters any more?"
"You are in no position to make demands," Radik shot back triumphantly, holding Flora's arms behind her. In the absence of gravity, he had hooked a foot around the rung of the bridge ladder to anchor them.
"Agreed, 'Evvi," Cosecant answered, shooting Radik a glare. "That was an overreaction on our part."
"What?? Logan, overrule her, Csc's been bewitched again!"
"Shut up, Radik," the reciprocal trig function sighed. "I'm perfectly in control. What I'm hoping is you see this as a gesture, 'Evvi. That you step functions will respect our boundaries too. Okay?"
 |
| QT, now with positive leading coefficient |
"Can I restore gravity then?" Logan asked, hand poised over one of the panels in his chair.
"Yes, please," QT squeaked. Everyone turned to see the quartic bobbing upside-down near the ceiling. Desperately holding up her skirt.
"Gradual activation then," Logan concluded. "Also, we should hail this Julia resident that Radik mentioned." He frowned. "Which I suppose I'LL do, as Sine is gone... hm, just when I was getting used to delegating."
Everyone had made it back to the floor when the response came in minutes later. Once Logan flipped the viewscreen on, it showed the face of a dark haired girl with crinkled hair and peculiar looking eyes. "Julia Childset calling unidentified... ah, bonjour! Speak very loudly and quickly."
 |
| Greetings from Fractal City |
"Hello," Logan said amicably. "We're new to the city, looking for a couple functions named Mink and Con."
"They left some time ago," Julia chirped back. "And you're in a restricted area. We're rezooming."
"Re-zoning?" Signum asked, lifting her hand to her ear.
"Whatever. If you don't relocate in about four minutes, you'll have major escape-time problems!"
Logan exchanged a quick glance with the others. "Oh... where should we go? Everything scans rather similarly around here."
"You want me to set up a beacon?" Julia offered.
"Yes. Signum can use it to guide us towards you," Hevvi chimed in.
ParaB raised her index finger. "Point of order. If we want to abandon ship, we can't safely activate the Cone of Science while we're in motion."
"Beacon is served!" Julia announced, seemingly tapping at a keyboard out of their field of view. "Hurry up. Two hundred seconds until you're trapped in a Hilbert Curve."
"Until we're... do you greet all your guests this way??" Radik asked, running to the engineering panel.
Julia put her hands on her hips. "Most guests don't randomly portal in. They read the forum, and make use of our Heighway."
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