Gotten to the part in Goose where R and Kay are thinking, we are fated, as species, to achieve excellent science, which will be followed 8and fucked up) by awful politics and then, out of the ashes, great art will emerge. In circles. Rinse, repeat.

I've added bits and pieces from Yakosta's notes  to add details to the late 20.000 Quills (the ship that went down at the end of Gorgonaut because of, well, it had the wrong captain for about ten minutes and sometimes that's all it takes for a good ship to go down..) She writes about a jelly that causes, when bothered by some alloy or another, enough friction to produce static electricity in copious amounts and the remaining Quills (ex Literate)  would run on these massive tanks, full of the pink jelly, perpetually mixed by alloy plates, generating a controllable storm. A smaller ship couldn't use it, because it would be too unstable, but Quills was designed massive in the first place, before they even put the engines in. Second invention, based on her notes, is this very long, very winding tube, full of water-like liquid, running quite fast. In it would be three inter-laced buoys, so that it would be very obvious, when they passed the counter, how the water is doing. 

And so forth, and so on. The book is slow going at this point, because it is still sunny (if freezing) outside. Once the worlds move indoors, I'll switch back to more text. I imagine that, when I have to sit outdoors sorta in the fair, I'll be writing plenty. 

had a bad day yesterday, looking for the stage for our production of Veris, the way people treated me. I really thought I was pass that, but it looks like once you climb something in some field, others are too fucking dim to notice and you gotsta start over. And nobody likes an energetic amateur. The General was upset over things I said in anger, so I pulled a profound philosophy out of by arse today, first thing: you always worry, when I'm happy, I will get sad again soon. But you can't do that, because although that is inevitable, it could be months. Whereas, when I am sad, just weather through it, because you can be sure I will get happy in, at the most, half a day...