Ukyo sighed slowly. "Listen, I think that there might be a way to salvage this mess, without too much risk of making it worse."
"Shampoo doubt that, but go on."
"Okay... Mihoshi, was it? Are you familiar with the concept of a conference call?"
"Uh..."
"You know, when there's a bunch of people having the same conversation on the phone, like a long-distance meeting."
"Oh, yeah, I know about those. I had to do a few of them when I was still with the Galaxy Police."
Ukyo decided to ignore the unsettling implications of someone like Mihoshi working in law enforcement and continued on. "Well, what I want you to do is similar to that, but not exactly the same—which is why you aren't going to be doing anything until I tell you I've finished explaining. Got it?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess."
"Good. Now, at the moment, Ranchan here is just getting every thought that's running through our heads, completely unfiltered, and all at once. That's why he wanted some peace—he was getting a overwhelmed with information. You still with me?"
The genie nodded her head again.
"And on the flip side, I don't think any of us like having to hear Ranma's one-sided conversations with the others."
"Why not?"
"For one thing, one-sided conversations are really difficult to ignore, and for another, we might end up drawing incorrect conclusions from them, which kind of defeats the purpose of this whole exercise."
"Oh, well, that's easy to fix. I'll just make it so that all of you hear each other’s thoughts all the time..."
"No!" the girls chorused as quickly as they could.
"What's wrong with that?"
"Well, that means that we'll all be overwhelmed with information, which means you've got Ranma's problem times five," Akane said.
"Oh... right."
"Anyway," Ukyo said, "I think there's two parts to the solution. The first part is making it so that we aren't transmitting more information than necessary. Like... some sort of active thinking, like between thinking to yourself and talking."
"Oh... you mean ordinary psychic conversations," Mihoshi said with more than a hint of disappointment.
"Are you implying that there is something wrong with that, Djinn?" Kodachi asked. Ordinary or not, this seemed like an idea solution, since it meant her Ranma-sama was less likely to be spoiled by proximity to Akane's prudishness.
"Well, if I do that, that means you'll all still be holding things back."
"Holding things back?" Ukyo asked.
"Yeah, you know, keeping secrets and all that other stuff that gets in the way of communication. My mother always told me that good communication meant being completely open with somebody else."
Shampoo's eyes went wide at the mention of secrets. "Oh no... Shampoo just remember. Knows many Amazon tribal secrets. Very, very bad if they get out."
Ukyo rolled her eyes. "Ugh... more kill squads? No offense, but your tribe's traditions are a pain in the ass."
"No one in Tribe ever expect to be in this situation."
"Good point. But anyway, that's why we need to be able to control what we're sending out. Besides, I don't really think anyone here has a problem of holding things back—it's more like circumstances make it easy to ignore someone when information's being shared."
"Oh, I see. Well, how about making it so that none of you can ignore any part of a psychic conversation, then? That way, nobody can just walk away."
"Uh... sure, I guess," Ukyo said. "Any of you have problems with it?"
"I have plenty of problems with it, but it's still better than what's going on now," Akane replied.
Shampoo agreed. "Trust Shampoo, is much better than emergency induction into Tribe."
Kodachi, meanwhile, couldn't help but smile. "Surely you jest—any measure which prevents me from missing Ranma-sama's profundities would be a most welcome boon."
"Well, that's great!" Mihoshi chirped. She loved helping people. "So, that's your wish, then?"
"Not so fast... there's more," Ukyo replied.
"Aww... what now?"
"Well, we still need to make sure that Ranchan doesn't get overwhelmed again, which will probably happen if we're all talking to him at once. But if we can hear each other, then we'll probably take turns, like in a normal conversation. Can you do that?"
"Uh, I think so, but I'm not sure if one wish is enough to let me set up something that will let you talk to each other directly. Is it okay if you go through Ranma?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, Ranma would be like an operator at a switchboard, like in old-timey movies from, like, fifty years ago. He'd get to decide who joins the conversation, and who leaves, because it would all be going through his head. But everyone who was in would get to hear everything... but then again, that might be bad, since he could cut someone off to ignore something they had to say."
"We can deal with that," Ukyo said.
"Oh, okay. So is that the wish?"
"Unless there's some other hidden catch."
"Oh, yeah, forgot about that."
"You mean there is one?"
"It's just that it's standard practice to make sure that wishes as detailed as yours can't be ignored... in other words, something's going to happen, either to the magic itself or to the rest of this universe, that will pretty much guarantee that this network thingie gets used. A lot." "What? Why the hell would you do that?"
"Well, the Council of Djinn basically views a wish that has been designed specifically to not make any change to the wisher to be the same thing as using a no-strings-attached wish to wish for nothing, which they view as a massive insult. I'm not sure why, myself—it seems to me that we'd eventually come across someone who's so content with their life that they wouldn't want to change anything—but I'm pretty new at all this."
Ukyo sighed again. "Well, that's super."
"Really? Wow, I thought you'd be disappointed. Well, here we g—"
"She hasn't actually wished it yet," Akane interjected.
"Oh... right."
"And besides, I was being sarcastic. Look, if there's no way around this, can I at least pick the reason why this wish is going to keep nosing its way into our lives? Or is that just luck of the draw?"
"Uh, no, I think you can decide that."
Ukyo mulled things over for a bit, trying to come up with something that could (in theory, at least) be really annoying, but still tolerable. "Okay, how's this, then. If we don't keep practicing psychic talking, then all of our regular talking gets automatically transmitted to everyone who's in on the conversation. That would really only mean Ranchan would have to do is, since we wouldn't be connected to anyone without his say-so, right?"
"But what if Ranma never lets anyone in?"
Ukyo sighed again... she was getting tired of this conversation. "Fine... he starts conversations by thinking directly to us. There, now if he doesn't practice, the whole thing turns on whenever he talks out loud. Is that enough, or does it need to be a bigger pain in the ass?"
"You don't need to get snippy."
"Sorry... it's just that today's been way more stressful than I could have ever imagined."
"So, is that your wish, then?"
Ukyo looked at the other girls, who didn't give any indication that they had any major objections (other than the obvious one about how it was happening it all). Satisfied, she answered the genie: "Yes. I wish for you to change the telepathic link exactly the way we've discussed it."
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by Kwakerjak
(Posted Sat, 09 Apr 2011 19:04)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.