Quoted By:
>Continued
God. Do you want to believe that Management is snakes? Not at all. Do you want to believe that Management is some other unknown and unknowable and completely unprecedented type of creature? Even less. If you can get a little more information... "Um, yeah. About giant snakes."
"Yes?"
"...Are you positive there aren't any hiding anywhere? How would one even know if there were giant snakes in the world or not? Maybe they're very stealthy."
"It's thought the largest ones live deep underground, so you're right in one sense, Charlotte. If there were any, they'd be hiding. The trouble is— can you guess?"
What? Guess? You might be a skilled detectivess, but that doesn't mean you can summon up stupid snake guesses on a whim. That's Richard's job. "No?"
"Ha! Fair enough. The trouble is, very large snakes measurably distort the strings around them. The snakes themselves aren't trackable, per se, but the distortions are. And— well, I admit my knowledge is out-of-date, but I haven't heard rumblings of anything being spotted."
"Just rumblings of all the strings tightening up."
Eloise's face drops. "Yes."
"Okay," you say. "Suppose, um, hypothetically, that there were giant snakes. Somewhere. Assume there are. Is there a way they could avoid the distortions being detected?"
"AUX space," Gil says.
"Huh?"
"Um, I-I-I-I have no idea if they're actually... um, I don't know if there are giant snakes anywhere. I wouldn't bet on it. But i-if there were, I assume they could... uh... hide out in..." He's losing steam. "...an auxiliary space? You know, like Garvin's warehouse? I-it's outside reality, so you wouldn't be able to detect it unless you were looking specifically for..."
"Would it be big enough?" you say. Horse Face's warehouse is big, but giant snakes are giant, and "Management" implies the plural.
"I-I-I think they can be any size? I-It's just too complicated to make anything too big, since you need to fuck around with, um— basically, you artificially inflate a pocket of reality, then you sort of twist it off and disconnect it, so it's its own little separate... uh... yeah. And a pocket dimension's the same thing, but not disconnected, so they're usually a lot smaller. AUX space would make more sense. But I-I-I really— uh— I don't know how a lot of giant snakes would get inside one? And I think she's right, I-I don't know why they'd need to make another giant snake, uh, if they were giant snakes? So I wouldn't..."
"An up-and-coming MP!" Eloise says approvingly. (Gil reddens.) "If you're dead-set on the snakes, I think that's one valid suggestion, though it raises all sorts of other questions— not that the alternative doesn't raise questions, of course. Still. 'Darkness at noon is only a cloud'— I personally wouldn't roam too far afield for explanations."
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