"I think you're a little younger than I am," Shell Bell says. "And I think Golden is the oldest, even though she looks about your age plus Diamond vampire stuff."

"I'm forty-three," agrees Golden. "Chronologically. It's a matter of some debate, to what extent development is relevant or even frozen at all in someone who turns in their teens. Turning small children, though, is forbidden for a reason. But I was just barely eighteen when Elspeth was born."

"Eighteen, but also married and turned and plotting world takeover already. Amariah says I'm still in the," Juliet makes air-quotes, "resource gathering phase."

"I think Angela and Micaiah are going to wind up having a bunch of kids," says Shell Bell. "I get the impression that it's an angel thing. I don't know about anyone else."

"Isn't your Sherlock a girl, anyway?" says Juliet to Shell Bell.

"Yes," says Shell Bell. "But, magic, and even if there weren't magic, she and Tony are identical twins, so." She shrugs, blushing.

"What is up with my alts and non-monogamy?" asks Golden rhetorically.

"Don't look at me, I haven't even had that conversation," says Juliet.

"I don't think it's us. Well, I don't think it's most of us. I had a crush on my Tony before I even worked out how to make things happen with my Sherlock and my Sherlock is, you know, special circumstances. I think we just attract non-monogamous people who are interesting enough to make the hack worthwhile. Except you, Golden."

"When I met Stella it was one thing - there weren't any duplicates but us, I could explain to myself that in a world without vampires Edward would've died of the Spanish flu and of course I would have found someone else, but now there are so many duplicates I'm beginning to wonder what's going on," says Golden frankly. "If Whistles can show up in multiple versions of Earth - with different birth years; Amariah's parents apparently met later than typical or something and the picture of Kas still looks about her age - and also on Samaria, and if Sherlocks can appear with not only different genders but also in two neighboring Earths and the obviously far-future Panem... why is there only one Edward, why aren't there two or three of him too? I'm not saying I want there to be. I'd find that nearly as confusing as he finds my alts. But I wonder why there aren't."

"We talk about the template," murmurs Shell Bell. "But who's the template?"

"Well - what are the features that crop up a lot? We all look the same, except Angela's wings and Golden's recoloring - but not everything's universal. The template would have to start out with mental opacity. That random little town in Washington comes up a lot too - Sunnydale has its reasons for attracting interesting goings-on, but Forks doesn't, there's no reason for it to be repeated unless it's in the template. So it's not Shell Bell or Angela and it's not me."

"Stella and I share a birthdate with each other but not Amariah," says Golden.

"I think it's probably one of the two of you, yeah," says Shell Bell. "You share a lot of features with each other straight across, you both took over your worlds without extradimensional help - I think Amariah could've too, but she found us before she did - and Stella's got a duplicate boyfriend, but you've got a duplicate... supernatural element. Of sorts. Since you and Juliet both have vampires."

"However this works," Juliet says, "it has to base who we meet on something other than who the template met, since there are duplicates but not all the same duplicates. The Sherlock and Whistle templates are doing some of the work at arranging for us to encounter each other too. If that makes any sense. So I don't know if Edward being non-duplicated is even a point against Golden as the template. It might be a point in her favor."

"We're assuming that there is a template, though," says Golden. "Instead of just - a collection of features that often come together at a sufficient concentration to turn into one of us. We're assuming that if there's a template, we've met her - that there won't appear in the future a mentally opaque Bell with an Edward and Sherlock and a Whistle and - that poor Edward, goodness - and some manner of vampires who took her world over without outside help. Or that we're not just missing her forever because she doesn't go to Milliways."

"There's a lot of features that show up and don't seem essential, though," says Shell Bell. "We talk in our sleep even though Golden's not less Bellish for not sleeping anymore, we all start out straight even though I'm not less Bellish for having adjusted that. If it's just Essence Of Bell floating around the multiverse creating an - attractor, for worlds to fall into, then why would Essence Of Bell contain that stuff? We wouldn't turn away a Bell from the Belltower who didn't ever talk in her sleep and was gay for as long as she could remember."

"We're also consistently cisgendered girls," says Juliet, glancing in Sherlock's direction. "Although I'm not sure how we'd identify one of us who was a boy or a trans girl, so that could just be a problem of sampling."

"A sampling of, I remind you, the three of us and three more not present," says Golden. "Not really an avalanche of data on which to perform any statistical analysis to speak of."

"It's weird that we all look the same. We can't just be genetically identical - Angela's got great big speckly wings," says Shell Bell. "I want to know what's up with that."

"There's genetically identical and then there's genetically identical. Turning messed with my genes - I have more chromosomes now. Maybe however Angela's species works just adds wings."

"Wings and extra body heat and a spectacular singing voice that I do not have," says Shell Bell, "I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have it even if I blew a pentagon on singing pretty to cheat at all the training and practice she's put into it. I guess a really clever engineer could've done that and nothing else, but it having just happened is farther-fetched. Then again, she's got a god in her world."

"What, really? Did you check?"

"I watched her pray for stuff, and stuff fell out of the sky. Or clouds parted or the air warmed up or whatever. It wasn't a coincidence, there was a palpable difference in the air after a few lines of the songs, let alone after a complete prayer. I watched an 'oracle' talk to the god in question and get an answer. On a computer, which was weird, but it seems to work for them."

"Amariah's goddesses produce results when she recites poetry at them," Juliet adds to Golden. "And on my world, there are demons-slash-deities who do the same thing - except not to me because the spells are all 'divine Hecate behold my will' and my will is invisible. Also a Power That Is showed up in my bedroom. Have a little confidence in your counterparts, we're not going to believe in divine beings without observing them to do stuff."