it's a dead man's party

[self_composed]

The guest list winds up being pretty huge.

To start with, there are now eight Bells. Pattern isn't bringing anyone besides herself, and Aegis no one besides herself and her Whistle, but everyone else -

Between Alice, the Joker, the rescued Queenie, Kas, Micaiah, and Sue, plus Ghosty who Amariah picked up on her way home, that's seven Whistles. (Stella thinks ahead: there is a soundproofed orgy chamber away from the main party awning. With a few nodes off of it in case more than one orgy forms; she can think of at least two other likely ones.)

There's an equally absurd number of Sherlocks and Tonies if you count them together. They have Juliet's matched set, Shell Bell's matched set, two other matched sets from Bell-less worlds (one with souled vampire, one both human), a stray Tony, and a stray Sherlock from Downside.

Amariah grabbed a random Libby on top of the random extra Whistle, but at least she's not incorporating anyone from home.

Golden's bringing much of her family and many of her friends - although Edward is staying home, that still leaves Elspeth and Jacob, Alice and Jasper with little Brandon, Rosalie and Emmett and little Henry, Nathan accompanying his mate and their child Kerron, Esme and Carlisle and their Lily, Addy, and Elena who'll get to see her brother. Golden claims that this is a conservative list and she could easily have produced another twenty enthusiastic guests. Stella doesn't doubt it. She puts up a few signs reading Please Conduct Adult Conversation Only Via Brainphone. Little Half-Vampires Have Good Ears And Perfect Memories. As a last-minute surprise, Golden has taken Elspeth's suggestion to bring Edward's deceased mother Elizabeth, too.

Juliet has, on top of her boyfriend and his - progenitor? - her tiny Libby, James, a tagalong thereto called Virginia, and a ghost called Minnie, plus Giles.

Angela's list is more modest: her, her husband, and their friends Alleluia and Caleb.

Shell Bell is responsible for half the Sherlocks-and-Tonies all by herself, a tagalong called Pepper, and also someone called Darcy and also Matilda. (Shell Bell is also the reason Angela is not inviting her brother-in-law.)

Stella herself is responsible for inviting Libby, Orfeo, Chris, Mary, Anna, Sandy, Eights, Chainsaw, Lazarus, Kolya (who is informed that it would be awfully inconvenient for a majority of Bells to all have to coordinate on pretending he doesn't exist when only one of them has even met him to be able to identify him in the first place, so he can simply stay home if he's planning to be hidey), and Bridget.

Stella sets up a name tag system. Everyone will have a tag stuck to them. Solo persons - a minority - will just have their names. People with template names and nicknames will have both stamped on automatically. ("Hi! I'm a Bell, and you can call me Stella!"; "Hi! I'm a Whistle, and you can call me Alice!" "Hi! I'm a Sherlock, and I don't have a distinguishing nickname yet but as soon as I pick one it will appear here!")

She conjures up a nice buffet of food and beverages which will stay its correct temperature until consumed, and assorted synthetics for the vampires (labeled not for human consumption), and dishes and flatware (all glass; even some of the food-eating guests might dissolve anything else) and fusses with the awning opacity until it lets in just the right amount of sun, and, what the hell, she throws in a stage in case Angela wants to sing or she decides to play the flute or someone decides to pentagon some other performative skill to entertain the crowd. She makes sure there are enough bathrooms for all the people who still need bathrooms.

She puts out a few tables here and there with little bowls of squares and triangles - a mix of her glowing red and Alice's shifty black - in them for everyone's convenience. She accumulates coins in those sizes faster than she generally uses them and has a great many, so there are plenty for anyone to dip and wish if something comes up. She double-checks to make sure the Martian ground rules prohibit any misuses available for those size coins.

Jane gets one of those high-tech holographic projectors, on wheels, which she promptly manifests in, drives around the floor, and makes faces through.

Comments

[self_composed]

"One of my handiest inventions. What about it?" inquires Stella.

[neverbeatme]

"It has a serious flaw," she says. "Every call should come with identity information, especially conferences."

[dark_light]

"The voices do sometimes get confusing," acknowledges Amariah, "with so many alts."

[luminous_regnant]

"There aren't actually discrete calls, though. Every individual message is sent to everyone it's meant for; who one's talking to can change moment to moment. If this is about people tapping your phone, so to speak, you don't have to worry about that - well, you do, but only in the sense that someone could be relaying what you're saying without you knowing about it."

[neverbeatme]

"Yes," she says, "that is in fact what I'm worried about. That and voice impersonation. And it's just not convenient to have to keep announcing that you're in a conference and how many people it's with and who they all are. The way the brainphone works now is great for a small community, but," she gestures around at the party, "this isn't a small community anymore."

[self_composed]

"Okay, impersonation's potentially a problem. I guess we can propagate a majority of the change from here, considering the guest list, and patch any stragglers on our ends or make it viral or something. But it won't solve your privacy issues. If you're talking to me and I'm talking to Golden, I can have you and Golden on separate calls and tell her everything you say if I feel like it, and there's no interaction of that with this feature."

[neverbeatme]

"People feel differently about doing things when they're less explicitly supported by the system," she says. "Supplying identity information for all direct speakers and listeners will at least stop anyone from spying on me by accident."

[self_composed]

"Listeners too. Hmm. You realize that's just the equivalent of a blind carbon copy in an email," says Stella. "If I want to talk to the completely imaginary Albert and Bess and Chuck, and Chuck doesn't want the other two to know he exists, then you're saying I shouldn't be able to do that all at once? Mind Chuck won't be able to hear anything Albert and Bess say without my manually relaying it even under the existing system, since they won't be sending to him."

[dark_light]

"Uh, do I have the same brainphone you two have?" Amariah says. "I can set up any call so that Path gets a copy of what I get whether the person I'm talking to thinks about him or not, and I didn't have to wish it special."

[self_composed]

"...You should have the same brainphone I have. Wishes sometimes fill in gaps, I might be mistaken about how it corrected for some vagueness in my specification - I made it up before I was boosted all the way and there was some wiggle room. Maybe the way Golden and I have been using it is just what makes sense to us."

[neverbeatme]

"So," says James, "now would be a good time to straighten that out. And I think making the change viral makes the most sense. But make sure to design it so that if you have to roll out another update later, they won't start fighting."

[self_composed]

"Yeah, sure. Version numbers," snorts Stella.

[luminous_regnant]

"So conferences that behave like everyone is in the room will list who's in the metaphorical room, and individual messages will have sender information to prevent misrepresentation," says Golden. "I don't think we ever have reason to impersonate each other, do we? For impersonal purposes trusting one of us tends to propagate to trusting the others and for personal purposes we'd never want to."

[bellfounding]

"Yeah, I might not be thrilled with being completely indistinct but identity theft isn't my solution of choice," sighs Pattern, "and nothing else is coming to mind."

[self_composed]

"All right, viral patch to brainphone, version 2.0, ready to roll unless someone has last minute design input," says Stella.

[neverbeatme]

"Nope, sounds good to me. Thanks," says James.

[self_composed]

[Bam!] says a message clearly labeled as from Stella.

[neverbeatme]

[Awesome,] says James, conferenced to the group.

"By the way," she adds out loud to Pattern as she turns away, "you should talk to my alt who's going by Slipstick. She's looking for a job."

[bellfounding]

"...Ooh," says Pattern. "I'm not really in a position to pay anybody yet. I don't even have a mint-helper..."

[self_composed]

"Libbies do personnel," says Stella. "It might make sense to get a Libby even before a mint if you're having a personnel issue."

[bellfounding]

"Ooh. Okay. Thanks!"

And Pattern goes off looking for Slipstick.

[prima_sequentem]

She's by the desserts!

[bellfounding]

"Hi, Slipstick," says Pattern. "James says I should talk to you about maybe working for me?"

[prima_sequentem]

"Yeah, I'm kind of at loose ends at the moment," she says. "And since you also seem to be kind of at loose ends, it occurred to me that maybe we could make each other's lives easier."

[bellfounding]

"Possibly. I'm running some afterlife-related errands for the peal, but I should be done inside a week or two - it's just running a few Upsiders from each world who can most readily pretend never to have been dead back home and inserting Jane into their worlds so that we can transport everywhere without having to wait for doors to Milliways. But then I go back home and work on my world. And alas, I do not have a mint-helper nor, as far as I know, any local magic."