23:40 <banana> Sam Blackfin was never interested in marine biology. 23:40 <banana> Maybe it was the name, maybe it was growing up on the Jersey seaboard coast where fish were associated with smells and poverty. It's something that set her apart from the other nerdy girls in school, who wanted to be vets and divers and invent new kinds of kelp. 23:41 <banana> The only one interested in criminology was Tracey Sabbot, who used to write love letters to imprisoned serial killers. Something probably happened to her in the end, Samantha thinks. 23:43 <banana> Anyway, it's ironic (in the pop-cultural sense) that Aaron's been turned into a dolphin by elf magic. He wears it fine, but looks, at this party, like a fish out of water. 23:47 <banana> They both are, really. It's one thing to interact with the secret world through its violent incursions into normality, quite another to be enchanted by a piece of the old magic that her new coworkers swear once ruled the hills and dales up here. 23:47 <banana> Samantha's just spent twenty-five minutes interviewing strange and ironic figures who collectively represent the myth of the King Under the Hill, by whose grace the realm of Faerie is filtered and contained, trickling into the world only as seelie favour... except for what happens once every year and a day. 23:50 <banana> They didn't really tell her anything, and seemed deeply ironic (in the classical sense. people care about classics here) about the whole thing. The guy with the glasses has clearly had similar training to her, perhaps psychiatric. All of them are damaged in ways they've made into strength. They aren't her job. 23:53 <banana> Another round of dancing and drinks gives way as Aster is called away, and the girl finds her in a moment alone. William the army man's faery girlfriend, who wanted to ask questions about medicine. She's got a silver tarantula at her throat which has come alive under the shadows of what the Hill-kings called the Tatterdam. 23:53 <banana> Mari: "I don't mean to bother you if you're busy partying." 23:57 <banana> Samantha: "For the next ten minutes, nothing will bother me as long as I can do it sitting down. The turf's nice, but it's not exactly a ballroom floor." 23:58 <banana> Mari: "We could play cricket up here, but you'd have to be careful about the wickets or lost balls would go straight into the river." 23:59 <banana> Samantha: "Ah, yes. I've been studying for the citizenship test, so I know what cricket is: it's the tattoo they play on the Scottish border to keep Morris-dancers out." 00:00 <banana> "It's.. Mariam, right? Your friend who's running everything said Mariam Medwar." 00:03 <banana> Mari: "That's me. Sumi likes everyone to know everyone else... it's really the Autumn Hill running this event, but she consults on party planning." 00:05 <banana> Hills within hills, and the seasons keep coming up. An element that wasn't prominent in the public myths. Samantha asks: "May I ask you some questions about who Autumn is and their connection to this celebration?" 00:06 <banana> Mari: "Yes... you mentioned a trade. A question for a question?" 00:07 <banana> Mariam looks about... 20? Barely an adult. She's got this faint accent, Syrian or something, probably the parents that are refugees and she grew up here. She's dating a guy on the run from the actual Army and who knows what kind of spells she's memorised. There must be so many of them that don't come to the attention of the authorities. 00:08 <banana> Samantha: "Sure, but what do you want to pick my brains about?" 00:08 <banana> Mari: "Medical magic. Practicing medicine in the Underground... or on it." 00:09 <banana> Samantha: "That is actually sort of what I do, or what I used to do. Yeah. I don't think there's anyone on this continent who'd be mad if I give out a few tips." 00:11 <banana> Mari nods and drags another chair over from the food tables. The grass up here, off the dance floor, is starting to wet with dew that represents incipient frost. Move and eat enough and you don't feel the cold... 00:12 <banana> "First question: how do you adapt your knowledge of anatomy to superhuman body plans? What's your strategy for taking the stuff they teach you in med school and going to work on a guy with clockwork lungs or gold for blood?" 00:14 <banana> Samantha though she was going first. However, it's an interesting question. The red-hooded young woman is totally earnest, like she expects to make a career out of treating people who... they don't teach you about in med school. 00:16 <banana> This topic could really use a seminar or maybe a whole textbook. It veers from examples to intuition, or to the hard-won experience which substitutes for intuition. Samantha does her best to get Mariam started, give her some tools to think about the problem. 00:18 <banana> Ten or twenty minutes later, she's forgotten what she wanted to ask. So instead, when they take a break to let the ideas sink in, she says: "Do you feel like you're part of human society?" 00:21 <banana> Mari blinks. With her hood down, she's got a little dark ponytail, and looks less young. "There's an instrumental answer to that and an operational answer." 00:21 <banana> Samantha: "Feel free to take them in order?" 00:24 <banana> Mari: "Um... we need society, because there aren't enough of us to be self-sufficient, and cutting yourself off entirely from the human species just isn't healthy for most, like. There are a few people who can handle it. Society needs us, oddly. There are all these institutions and strange histories which were founded on unseen things. But the operational question is: to what extent can we 00:24 <banana> do what other people do." 00:25 <banana> Samantha wants to take out her notebook, but it's amazing she hasn't been told to fuck off just for asking the question, so she'll try and remember instead. 00:28 <banana> Mari: "The main barrier is the questions we can't or won't answer. Most people haven't got months or years of their lives missing from the record. Do the thought experiment: if a hundred changelings came out to the press and explained convincingly where we're from and what we can do, what would the official reaction be?" 00:30 <banana> Samantha: "Congressional hearings. Paparazzi and MIBs. Someone would found a charity. It would be bigger news than Bre- well, maybe not." 00:31 <banana> Mari: "I don't think so. The whole system desperately needs us not to exist. The implications run too deep." 00:32 <banana> "What's the point in actors when you have illusions? Why vote when mass emotion control is real? What good is the police force if it's run by vampires?" 00:33 <banana> Is that just a guess, or... 00:33 <banana> Samantha: "Is that just a guess?" 00:35 <banana> Mari: "It's not like the government doesn't know we're here. We used to be part of it, or other parts of the underground were in different ways. Do you know how recently they abolished the position of Royal Wizard to the Court of the United Kingdom?" 00:35 <banana> Samantha narrows her eyes. "Do you?" 00:38 <banana> Mari begins shaking her head, but catches herself. She's probably enjoying this. "Basically, once things got modern, it wasn't possible to establish an orderly society and have all this stuff out in the open. People can't live like that, not with mass communication and literacy. The deal was... we go Underground." 00:38 <banana> "People like us, the ones who weren't already hiding and manipulating. In exchange, we get left alone. We deal with our own problems. The welfare state is for demographics with statistical relevance." 00:40 <banana> Hmmm. Hm hm hm. Samantha stands up to stretch her legs; she's getting cold indeed. "Look, I agree that as things stand, lifting the veil would be a catastrophic disruption. The world isn't ready, I guess." 00:41 <banana> "I don't think things should change, necessarily, but the situation you're describing isn't as inevitable as all that. Imagine a generation prepared with changes to the education system, rumours seeded, little bits of reality carefully introduced into an increasingly blase population." 00:42 <banana> Mari: "I need another drink to imagine that. The people who'd have to work together.. I don't even know what some of them are, but they're so weird and so powerful, with so few reasons to cooperate." 00:42 <banana> Samantha: "You mean the House of Commons?" 00:43 <banana> Mari: "Ha, ha. They would also be a problem." 00:44 <banana> It's a shame she asked such a crap question. What about 'how does the magic work'? 'What are your leaders' weaknesses' might be off the table, but it would have been super-responsible to request a catalogue of demons. 00:45 <banana> Mari: "Seriously, let's go get a drink." 00:45 <banana> "Next question: what's the weirdest type of guy you've dissected? Physically or mentally?" 00:46 <banana> Samantha: "As long as there's something other than liquor left." 00:47 <banana> Mari: "No problem there. King Sam made a promise with every beer tap in the world."