Somewhere In The Air Between Rotterdam and Ribeirao Preto, Wednesday Afternoon
Peter was asleep.
It was the first sleep he'd had since being woken up early on Tuesday morning. While he was accustomed to some level of insomnia, he had a limit. And so, twenty minutes ago, he had nodded off with the desk still in his lap, finally too tired to wonder about what was going to happen with the FPE, and the planet, and Envy, and a whole host of other bugbears that had all come crashing down on his increasingly exhaustion-paranoid mind.
The desk beeped loudly. He jerked awake. "Wuh--?"
The first lines of an email were making themselves insistently clear on the screen. He was about to wave it off, turn off the sound and go to sleep when he realized what address it was from. He rubbed at his eye with the palm of his hand, sighed, and called it up.
From: The Impaled One
To: HonestAbe%Lincoln@RailSplitter.org/WriteToTheAuthor
Subj: God help me
Sometimes you give advice assuming that no one will take it. I just hope the man upstairs will forgive me and still find a place for me. Meanwhile, tell the big guy he's got to do something about the cup I broke.
The second sigh Peter released was louder, and much more resigned.
He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "It never rains but it pours," he muttered. "Right. Bean. Then Coffee. Then Graff. In that order." He typed a swift message to Bean: How busy can you keep the Turks, while watching out for Russians in the rear? - and then got up to figure out where his coffee machine had gone.
From: PeterWiggin%private@hegemon.com
To: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov
Fwd: God help me
Dear Hyrum,
As you'll see from below, our Slavic friend has apparently offered suggestions to his government that they actually took, and he regrets it. Assuming that you're the guy upstairs, I would guess this open encryption suggests he wants out. My sources last put him in Florida but if they're watching him closely, they would have moved him to Idaho.
As for the cup he broke, I think he means that instead of Russia looking for a chance to attack Alai, they've made a deal with the Muslim League and while China looks south to fight India, Russia is going to move on Han Tzu from the north while the Turks move from the west, the Indonesians from Taiwan, and Virlomi's insane invasion will go on over the mountains. Not so insane now.
However, on the chance that by "the big guy" Russian Boy meant somebody other than "the man upstairs," he could only mean a certain giant we both know. I'll confer with him and Mrs. Giant about what, if anything, we can do to deal with the situation.
Peter
Suriyawong poked his head into Peter's little cordoned-off section of the plane not too long after. He said nothing, but he raised his eyebrows high.
Peter smiled wryly at him over the edge of his cup of coffee. "Suri," he said, "Don't tell anyone about this just yet, but you're about to get your shot at vengeance. Practice your best Shakespearian drama routine, please. You'll need it. And tell the captain to turn this plane around."
[[ NFB. can be open for phone calls, but they'll probably be short. taken from Shadow of the Giant, because oh my god, I actually have a bunch of stuff that happens in roughly the same timeframe for once. ]]
It was the first sleep he'd had since being woken up early on Tuesday morning. While he was accustomed to some level of insomnia, he had a limit. And so, twenty minutes ago, he had nodded off with the desk still in his lap, finally too tired to wonder about what was going to happen with the FPE, and the planet, and Envy, and a whole host of other bugbears that had all come crashing down on his increasingly exhaustion-paranoid mind.
The desk beeped loudly. He jerked awake. "Wuh--?"
The first lines of an email were making themselves insistently clear on the screen. He was about to wave it off, turn off the sound and go to sleep when he realized what address it was from. He rubbed at his eye with the palm of his hand, sighed, and called it up.
From: The Impaled One
To: HonestAbe%Lincoln@RailSplitter.org/WriteToTheAuthor
Subj: God help me
Sometimes you give advice assuming that no one will take it. I just hope the man upstairs will forgive me and still find a place for me. Meanwhile, tell the big guy he's got to do something about the cup I broke.
The second sigh Peter released was louder, and much more resigned.
He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "It never rains but it pours," he muttered. "Right. Bean. Then Coffee. Then Graff. In that order." He typed a swift message to Bean: How busy can you keep the Turks, while watching out for Russians in the rear? - and then got up to figure out where his coffee machine had gone.
From: PeterWiggin%private@hegemon.com
To: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov
Fwd: God help me
Dear Hyrum,
As you'll see from below, our Slavic friend has apparently offered suggestions to his government that they actually took, and he regrets it. Assuming that you're the guy upstairs, I would guess this open encryption suggests he wants out. My sources last put him in Florida but if they're watching him closely, they would have moved him to Idaho.
As for the cup he broke, I think he means that instead of Russia looking for a chance to attack Alai, they've made a deal with the Muslim League and while China looks south to fight India, Russia is going to move on Han Tzu from the north while the Turks move from the west, the Indonesians from Taiwan, and Virlomi's insane invasion will go on over the mountains. Not so insane now.
However, on the chance that by "the big guy" Russian Boy meant somebody other than "the man upstairs," he could only mean a certain giant we both know. I'll confer with him and Mrs. Giant about what, if anything, we can do to deal with the situation.
Peter
Suriyawong poked his head into Peter's little cordoned-off section of the plane not too long after. He said nothing, but he raised his eyebrows high.
Peter smiled wryly at him over the edge of his cup of coffee. "Suri," he said, "Don't tell anyone about this just yet, but you're about to get your shot at vengeance. Practice your best Shakespearian drama routine, please. You'll need it. And tell the captain to turn this plane around."
[[ NFB. can be open for phone calls, but they'll probably be short. taken from Shadow of the Giant, because oh my god, I actually have a bunch of stuff that happens in roughly the same timeframe for once. ]]