Countless Joyful Dawns - Chapter ?? - 10: To the Birdcage (Patreon)

I needed to make a pitstop at the local electronics store first. The clerk eyed me suspiciously as I merrily skipped through the aisles, piling up equipment into my shopping cart.

It was good project management! Grab the supplies, throw them at Armsmaster, and he could work on my printer and his various projects while I was on Operation: Freebird! I’d hated my brief stint as a project manager - way too many people and egos involved, not nearly enough getting the work done - but the skill to identify critical paths and follow them kept paying dividends over the years. Like how hilarious it was to see Iona’s speech patterns change after her formal logic course!

The fun of trying every job under the sun - I picked up skills that I continued to use for my very, very long lifetime. Even if the career in question sucked, I still learned new things, and continued to grow. 

Legend had taken off after making a few phone calls, one to Dragon, of all people. I really wanted to talk with her, and given that she was coming to pick me up, I was going to get that chance.

I rolled my overly full shopping cart over to the clerk, who seemed relieved. What, did he think I was going to try and steal it all or something?

His mouth opened and closed a few times, like he was going to strike up a conversation or ask me questions, but instead he just scanned all the items and gave me my total. I teleported out a stack of bills and peeled off the right number. His eyes went as round as a quarter. His hand jerked towards a counterfeit testing pen before simply ringing up the purchase.

“Have a nice day.” He barely managed to stammer out.

“Thanks! You too!” I teleported all of my purchases onto Colin. Literally, in the case of a few of the lighter items, he seemed like the sort of personality that would need a bonk to help him notice all the new supplies. 

I left the store and shot up into the sky, meeting Legend a minute later.

“Dragon will be here in two hours.” He said. “Are you sure you want to do this? Nobody’s been able to escape from the Birdcage so far.”

I smiled cheekily at him. 

“That you know of!”

He chuckled.

“Right. That we know of.”

Strangers seemed to have exactly the right sort of nonsense to escape from a jail and nobody would know it. Seriously, all the skills here were going to make me paranoid. 

Two hours of sitting around and doing nothing though…

“Want to point me in the direction Dragon’s coming from?” I asked Legend. “She’s a little slow, I figure I could meet her halfway.”

His lips twitched.

“Most people wouldn’t consider mach 2 to be particularly slow.”

“Most people aren’t me.” I said with no small amount of smug.

Legend chuckled.

“Why don’t we fly together?” He proposed.

“Just point the way.”

He did, and we took off. I was tempted to try and show off how fast I could go, but nooo, Legend had to be able to turn into a literal beam of light and zip around. I wasn’t faster than that, and I wasn’t going to try, nor was I going to show off how fast I could fly. Assuming they didn’t already know from my little tussle with Alexandria.

Still! Positive relation building! Maybe I’d get them to recognize Exterreri as a nation, and help me get back to Pallos. They had to be hiding a bunch of Tinkers away somewhere, right?

Hmmm… I could skip a bunch of steps and just try to straight up pay a Tinker way too much money to make it work. First the Birdcage, then find a TV crew or something.

We intercepted Dragon’s craft. It was shaped and modeled like a dragon, and once again I found myself admiring the sheer gall of Dragon, not only for the name she picked but the creatures she was imitating, before reminding myself that, no, here it was fine. The dragons wouldn’t get pissy and burn down everything she’d worked for. 

Old instincts died hard, and I very specifically did not want this instinct to die! I was going home, damnit, and I wanted it to be like a long trip. No culture shock, no ‘oh god I immersed myself so hard in this other culture’, none of that. 

The door opened - in midair - and I climbed on in.

“Thank you, again, Legend.” I said, waving the list of people he’d given me. People who’d been found guilty and sentenced to the Birdcage… but Legend suspected might not have been actually guilty. Courts were made out of people, and the Birdcage was supposedly a one-way, nobody-can-escape prison. New evidence coming to light didn’t matter too much if the person couldn’t get out. 

Like the death sentence, only it was trying to pretend to be more humane. 

“You’re welcome. I hope you’re as good as you think you are.” He told me.

I waved off his concern.

“Let’s be real, you’ll probably be pretty happy if I’m not as good as I say, and I get stuck in there.”

He cracked a grin, and wow, I could suddenly see why he was the face of the entire program. 90% as handsome as Kallisto. 

“Well, you’re not wrong there. Best of luck.”

The ship started to move at a lumbering pace - only around mach 2 or so - and I took quick stock. I was in a cargohold, with a few extra padded benches and a screen on one end. I eagerly, curiously, started to poke at Dragon and the equipment.

She was just so fascinating! A puzzle! A mystery! An enigma-wrapping machine!

“Dragon! YOU’RE ALIVE! I can’t believe it! Oh thank goodness, I was sure I had killed you! How did you do that? Some sort of Breaker? That’s what they call it here, yeah?”

One of the screens flickered to life. The generic, ‘blend of everything’ 30-something brown haired woman came on screen, scowling at me.

“Dawn. No, I’m a Tinker. It’s well-known that I remotely pilot my suits.”

I crossed my arms and thought about how to properly frame things.

“Bullshit.” I said. “I’ve got a - well, you’d call it a Trump ability - and part of it tells me when I’ve killed somebody. It told me you died. Death is final, permanent. Black Crow or White Dove returns your soul to the great cycle of Samsara. Yet, you’re still alive. How?”

The avatar sighed.

“Alternatively, Dawn, I am a Tinker. I was remotely piloting the craft when you shot it down.”

Harumph. Double harumph! My poorly-calibrated bullshit detector was attempting to perform a Triumph - err, military parade - down Central Lane.

“Harumph.” I said, crossing my arms. “Fine. Be that way.”

I pulled out a stack of paperwork, a quill, and started getting ahead on my reports.

“What are you doing?” Dragon asked.

“Paperwork.” I said, then one of my forever-running parallel thoughts spoke up, making an obvious connection.

“Oh! Sorry for the WILD change in topic, but Dragon! You’re the Warden of the Birdcage, right? Do you know who’s inside and innocent?” I asked. 

“Everyone placed in the Birdcage has been found guilty in a legally recognized court of law.” Dragon answered.

“Yes, but what about the people inside the Birdcage?” I pointedly asked, while getting started on the mountain of paperwork.

All hail multitasking! All hail being able to do two things at once! I could talk with Dragon and listen to her, while also focusing on my paperwork and writing! Eyes and hand doing one thing, mouth and ears doing another!

“That’s a difficult question. The current courts have decided that, since the question of innocence is moot, there is no purpose in taking up any appeals from inmates of the Birdcage. Legally, they’re considered dead, and their estates have gone through probate.”

I blinked.

Dragon was very carefully dodging the question in an unusual way. I had expected a lot of protests, denials, or outright justifications. Instead, I was getting pure law. Interesting.

“Do ethics not play a part?” I asked, probing around. She sighed.

“I wish they could.” She said. “I’ve had a few inmates that, while guilty in the eyes of the law, had certain… irregularities in their trial. What are you working on?” She asked.

I could take a hint at the change of subject.

“Paperwork.” I griped. “[Scribes] and [Politicians] love the stuff. The government runs on it. But oh dear lord, filling it out is the worst!” 

I was getting a full head of steam.

“It’s got to all be done by hand. Unless you’ve got a skill for it, which I don’t. Okay, yes, I can teleport ink around if needed, but some jerk got a bee in their bonnet about it, so I’ve got to do it all by hand. Extra dimensional travel forms. Arrest forms. Booking. Replacement of personal items used in the line of duty. Explanation of why they’re not being rapidly turned over. A preliminary report of what I’m doing. And worst of all! They keep changing the paperwork! I get all the forms, get nice stacks of them, and BOOM! Suddenly, it’s all ‘that’s a 20 year old form’ and ‘we updated it’ and ‘please redo them all’! Is it so much to ask that some degree of reasonableness is applied?”

Dragon was starting to look vaguely amused.

“Well, most people would say that 20 years is plenty of time for things to change. Plus, you don’t look that much older than 20 yourself.”

I waved that off with a flick of my quill, expertly not losing a drop of ink. Hey, experience and stats mattered!

“Oh, I’m Immortal. A respectful percentage of the population at my level is also Immortal, can’t get this strong in a century. Gotta rotate out, otherwise stagnation, burnout, and all that good stuff. But SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, always works out a ‘new and improved’ form in the time we’re off, and then noooo, it’s all ‘that form was ancient when my grandpa was around’ this and ‘we don’t accept dust that’. AND! Half the time they’re bloody inflexible and won’t realize it’s all the same boxes in different places.”

I shook my head.

“Bureaucracy makes the world go round, but boy can it be obnoxious.”

Dragon opened her mouth to respond to that, but ANOTHER thought came to me. Man, my ADHD was particularly bad today. Maybe it was all the things that were happening. But that was all wrong - new, novel, interesting things were stimulating, so it shouldn’t make me antsier. 

Whatever.

Idea! Plus, the reason why Dragon was so frosty with me. Whoops. Hadn’t considered everything from her point of view. Classic Elaine-mistake to make. Iona would’ve pointed it out ages ago. 

Ugh, this was why we occasionally swapped things around and rotated. I was clearly overdue for being the social brains, I had spent far too much time leaning on her expertise. Should’ve realized this ages ago. 

“Oh yeah! You’re, ahem, not dating Colin. Anyway, he’s mostly been good, and I see absolutely no reason why he can’t come out, say hi, have the two of you catch up. Make sure I’m not horrifically abusing prisoners or anything like that.”

Some memories welled up and I shuddered. I felt the craft decelerate hard, and turn. Oh look, we were suddenly taking the slow, scenic route.

“You’d do that?” Dragon asked.

“As long as everyone promises to be on good behavior, yes.” I said.

There was a bit of negotiation and bickering that followed - some mention of ‘I wasn’t actually an arresting person’, a counter of ‘possession being 9/10th’s of the law’, an appeal to humanity of ‘condemning innocent people to life in prison’, a counter of ‘the law hasn’t gotten a chance to judge them yet’, and all sorts of other deep, philosophical conversation occurred.

Which really all boiled down to: I was holding the cards, Dragon really, really wanted the card.

“If you can stop the craft, I can open the portal for Colin.” I told her in the end.

“We should keep going.” She said.

“Yeah, but my portal’s inertial reference is Earth. It’ll slice the craft in half.”

The dragon jet came to a complete halt in midair. I popped open the entrance to my home and wandered in.

“Colin! Yooohoo! Dragon wants to say hi!”

I swear, he must’ve made tinkertech boots or something with how fast he flew out of his lab. I poked my head in, confirming what I already saw with my sphere of perception.

Good. My printer was up and running.