a city and a mint who sleep very little between them

[self_composed]

Bella bikes to the airport on Friday. She gets a little reading done on her flight, then sleeps-on-purpose through the remainder of the trip, waking up precisely when the plane touches down. One nice bonus that she didn't even explicitly build into the power is that she can sleep at will in virtually any position; she doesn't have to get comfy if that's not convenient.

She steps off the plane, backpack full of her things over her shoulders, and stalks into the halls of LaGuardia, eyes peeled for Libby.

Comments

[self_composed]

"I have no idea if astronauts packed them," Bella muses.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Who cares? We're eating cookies on the moon," says Alice.

[self_composed]

"We are," hums Bella. "Libby, what can you tell me about the leverage your organization has over various institutional type things? I can just start curing diseases and stuff right now, in theory, but I'm concerned that I'll destabilize something which is made of humans, and then won't be able to fix it without brute force. I could have done it before, but I didn't want to make any major moves before I had you figured out."

[prima_sequentem]

"I suppose this is the part where I admit to being James Moriarty," says Libby.

[self_composed]

Bella blinks.

"...In what sense are you claiming this?"

[prima_sequentem]

"In the sense where about sixty percent of my not-that-sinister organization is made up of various flavours of criminal who know me by that name."

[self_composed]

"So it's, like, your codename? It's a decent codename if you're going to run a criminal organization."

[prima_sequentem]

"I thought so!"

[self_composed]

"I assume people you aren't being criminal-organization-secretive with don't tend to call you that?"

[prima_sequentem]

"Not usually. Is that relevant?"

[self_composed]

"Well, if you wanted me to call you James instead of Libby, it would be," Bella shrugs. "So you mostly handle criminals, not so much politicians or businesspeople?"

[prima_sequentem]

"I handle the occasional politician," she says. "And a few government agents in various countries. Completely legitimate businesspeople, less so, but completely legitimate businesspeople are hard to find in the first place."

[self_composed]

"Any tips on getting and using leverage over any of these categories of people?"

[prima_sequentem]

"I tend to work on a more individual level. I probably couldn't give you general advice that you'd find useful. On the other hand, if you have a politician you want moved, I can probably come up with the impetus."

[self_composed]

Bella's conference room now has one wall that is a brain-operated whiteboard.

"All right. I have a few loose plans. I have given them all nicknames."

The board says:

- Supergirl [go around doing useful things as they occur to me, claim credit only as convenient, patch any resulting problems in ways that incidentally consolidate allegiance/information flow/resource control for me, ignore governments until they stop ignoring me] PROS: Straightforward, with good mix of action/reaction CONS: governments could stop ignoring me messily, does not lead to a well-centralized and top-down-organized end result empire

- Boo [appear in the presence of various world leaders, give them their two weeks' notice, assume all their nonfigurehead jobs with large initial effort to address inevitable objections and then operate through existing institutions] PROS: Assuming I think of everything resisting persons could pull ahead of time, doesn't involve much upheaval in citizen daily life. Near-immediate acknowledged rule of world and some runway to leave institutions at status quo while I catch up with everything. Inherit staff who might know useful things. CONS: Lots of people have honestly legitimate reasons to be mad at me if I do this. Someone might panic and blow up something or someone.

- Big Sister [develop magical systems that allow really serious global micromanagement; bypass governments and become a very involved deity instead] PROS: Hits the ground running. CONS: Potentially intractable even with stars, helpers, and superbrain. Probably not possible to implement fully without nasty privacy invasion issues.

- Presidency [give every human in the world leaflets or little audio recordings or telepathic messages or whatever inviting them to cast a vote for president of the world in six months, then implement part 1 of Supergirl and run a very intense campaign] PROS: Fewer people will be able to complain about me, although far from zero. CONS: It is not literally impossible for me to lose assuming I don't rig/mindcontrol anything, and then I'd look like I jerk if ruled the world anyway. Not everyone is on board with democracy.

- Space Empress [terraform planets and moons, set them up nice with good automatic law enforcement and stuff, invite colonists to come live there for free, slurp up population off the Earth merrily and get the hang of being in charge starting somewhat smaller, open diplomatic relations with Earth governments as a sovereign power and start an EU style coalition and work from that] PROS: I get to be Space Empress and that just sounds cool. Bypasses difficult problems of dealing with Earthly institutions. CONS: People who do not happen to trust me or who are very attached to Earth are stuck with various Earth problems for however many years. It is possible that not that many people want to go live on Mars, even if it's terraformed all nice and has magic FTL phones on it so they can talk to home, and then I have a population of a few million or so but do not actually rule the world unless the EU thing works unexpectedly well even without me having slurped up that many Earthlings.

[prima_sequentem]

"Boo is a bad plan," says Libby. "Presidency is not going to work, because no one is going to accept that you have the authority to call an election for president of the world in the first place, because you don't. Space Empress has a shot, depending how good your PR is, if you can get past the initial hurdle of people not wanting to move because no one they know lives in space. And knowing you, I bet there's going to be a little bit of Supergirl in whatever you end up doing anyway."

[edgeofyourseat]

"I want you to be Space Empress," says Alice.

[self_composed]

"I'm leaning Space Empress myself," Bella agrees. "Although Big Sistering deserves a little more thought. I don't have a great sense of what stars can do, yet. If I can make them make really sophisticated judgment calls according to really complicated algorithms..." She makes a face. "But then a lot of the system is awfully nontransparent."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Space Empress is cooler," says Alice.

[prima_sequentem]

"And I'm not sure you could really test the limits of a star's ability to do that kind of thing without just trying it, which I bet you don't want to do."

[self_composed]

"Yeah." Bella chews her lip. "I don't think there's a downside to Space Empressing. It's compatible with doing anything else on the list later. Could even give me the authority boost to declare an election, but you're probably right about that not being a good plan."

[prima_sequentem]

"Go for the Space Empress!" encourages Libby.

[self_composed]

Bella grins from ear to ear.

"All right. I think I will start with Mars; I feel like Earthlings might feel a little threatened if they knew me to be directly overhead. Automatic law enforcement, hmmm... need laws, first. This could take a while even at 12x. So first, something that has been bothering me..."

She snaps her fingers.

"Malaria has ceased to exist," she announces merrily. "That took a star, to get it all at once, but now it is gone and I will have to think of another example of things the world needs a magical empress to do."

[prima_sequentem]

"I like the way you operate."

[self_composed]

"I wonder how long it will take everyone to notice," Bella muses. "I should also decide if I'm going to continue to attend school."