"Come to think of it, it might be a good idea to be at least moderately discreet about prioritizing healing at-risk persons, because then you get people who have cancer or other terminal disease being incentivized to do the kinds of things that get your attention."
Mehitabel thinks about that. "That," she concludes, "would be bad."
"Yeah. Law of unintended consequences: going with the first version of a plan without going over it for the obvious points of human failure is doomed to myriad unfortunate side effects."
"I will be careful about plans," nods Mehitabel.
"Anything that's intended to affect the behavior of large groups of persons is especially tricky, too."
"Because people are complicated, and different people are complicated in different ways."
"And then if you have a plan that works with one person's complicated it might not work with another one?"
"Right. The more people there are, the harder it is to get something that works for everyone. Once you get to really big groups of people, you have to start asking yourself if the plan is going to work for enough of them compared to how badly it would not work for the people it didn't work for to be worth it."
"Probably whatever you do will do significantly more good than harm, considering what people have said about your template in that between-worlds place. But that doesn't mean it's not better to be careful."
"I'll be careful," nods Mehitabel. "I want to meet more of me, can I do that?"
"If we find a way to do that, but right now we don't have any way to access other universes."
"Apparently there's another between-the-worlds kinda place that more people can get to, called Milliways, and you can get to other universes from there or just meet people therefrom."
"There is, apparently, no way of knowing until it happens. But I certainly wouldn't bet against it."
"Yes, even if we somehow knew for sure that you would, there would be no guarantee at all of when."
"Yeah. And besides, I want all the other mes to be proud of me when they meet me."
"Well, not yet they won't, I haven't even done anything yet."
"You also haven't found Milliways yet. And the suggestions you've made aren't as much as you're going to do, but they're not nothing."
"Well, okay, but I don't know if they're all the way to proud."