There he is!

"Hi," says Shell Bell. "There is a reasonable chance that there is a live vampire version of you at home. If you open the door it should take you to your original world, and we can go introduce ourselves to him, and you can fold back in in some agreed-upon way. Juliet's copy of you managed it just fine."

Shell Bell walks into the closet and attempts to brainphone any local Sherlock who may exist. [Sherlock?]

[Yes...?]

[Hello, I don't actually know which world this is, have you by any chance met one of me before? I'm Shell Bell, next most likely goes by Juliet when there are several of us under discussion...?]

[Ah, Juliet. I remember her fondly.]

[Right, so. Some people, including Juliet's copy of you, have a little duplication problem. You're one of those people. I've got your extra here, can I bring him by so you can work out folding back into each other? I've done it myself.]

[By all means.]

Teleportation!

The first words out of his mouth are: "He is dead?"

Bam. "Well, that was much simpler than any of the previous instances," she says. "D'you have a Jarvis here? There's a way to network them with each other, world to world. Also, us Bells have a friend who'd very much like to eat your Internet if this world has got one."

"...Yes," says the newly merged Sherlock, "I do in fact have a Jarvis. And I am sure he would be very interested in meeting more. What exactly is involved in the eating of an Internet?"

"The same thing that's involved in networking Jarvises, only whenever Jane so much as looks at something she automatically incorporates it into herself. She won't eat Jarvis, though. I would just conjure her an ansible set and hook her up anywhere that didn't involve her going through Jarvis himself. The Internet wouldn't perform differently or anything, she'd just be able to see it all. Also, then it would be possible to get in and out of this world without Milliways."

"I see," says Sherlock. "Sounds like a net benefit to me."

"Is your Tony around? He'll probably want to talk directly to Jane about ansibles - in case this Jarvis installation is different from the others in some way - and where should I put Jane's own insertion point?"

"Tony will answer all of these questions," he assures her, and indeed - when they find him - Tony does. Jane is soon chewing on another Internet, and Jarvis and Jarvis are happily chattering back and forth.

"All right then. All my known alts and our friends are going to have a huge party on Stella's Mars after we've finished some relatively urgent tasks - if you guys want to come, Jane can take you?"

"Sounds lovely."

"Cool."

Jane's Janepoint has a little projector. She manifests a face. "I'll let you know when," she says merrily.

[Want to network with some other Jarvises? I'd need to come into the house and conjure some stuff.]

[Interesting notion. Tell me more.]

[Well, there's two others already on the network, the one from Juliet's world and another I just added in. There's these devices called ansibles that can do instantaneous communication even between worlds. I give you a half-one, and our new friend Jane picks up the other and puts it with one of the other Jarvises, and then you both get hooked up and you can talk. Also, Jane would like to eat your internet, and promises not to eat you on top of that.]

[It's so comforting when people promise not to eat me,] Jarvis remarks.

[You'll like me once you get to know me,] puts in Jane. [Used to be I'd automatically swallow up anything I looked at but now I don't. Code that looks like me eating something is thus:] And she sends along rapid-fire text-brainphone dumps of the variants.

[Let's hear what the other Jarvises have to say about it,] he decides. [I'll hook up with them first. Unless this is an all-or-nothing proposition...?]

[I can hook you up and not install a Janepoint,] confirms Shell Bell. [I do need to be in the house near someplace to plug the ansible in, though; may I? I just watched a Tony install one of these and I can probably do it without embarrassing myself unless you've got very different hardware. Or I could wait for him to wake up.]

[You may come along and wait in the living room. He should be up in another few minutes,] says Jarvis. [And I'm sure he'd rather supervise if anyone is going to touch my hardware.]

[Sure, I can wait a few minutes.] She teleports into the living room, and sits.

"Hi, Tony, it's a very long story, but the short version is I can conjure up a device that'll let him talk to Jarvises on other worlds. Two so far, at least one more to come."

He makes beckoning motions with both hands. "Show me."

"The ansible? It can look like all kinds of things. My ring here's a half-ansible." She squares up a pair, twists them apart. "This is a more standard less bejeweled model, though. I don't know if the connection is the same kind you need, but this is like the one I just saw installed."

"Okay then." The other half disappears from her hand as Jane puts it in Sunshine. "All hooked up on the far end. And if Jarvis finds the other two Jarvises sufficiently reassuring about Jane she would also like to eat the local Internet. It'll be fine, it'll work normally, she'll just - constitute it."

"Yeah, lemme get this hooked up," says Tony, wandering off with the other half.

Shell Bell waits. She tries Darcy again. [You up yet?]

Darcy is not up.

"Ah," says Jarvis, after a few minutes. "There we are. Ooh, that's fascinating. Yes, all right, you can eat our internet, bon appetit."

"Where should I put Jane's insertion point?" prompts Shell Bell.

Jarvis directs her to an appropriate connection.

In goes hardware. In goes Jane.

Jane cackles over the brainphone gleefully.

"As long as I'm here, Tony," says Shell Bell, "all us Bells are going to have a big party in Eos, on Mars, in a few hours after some errands like this are out of the way. Do you want to come? Jane can send you there and back."

"Sure," he decides. "Why not."

"I'll let you know when I'm hauling everybody in," says Jane brightly.

"You could bring people, too, if you want," Shell Bell adds. "We keep finding unexpected alts anyway, and even non-alts could have a good time, and Stella's making lots of room."

"I wanna hang out a bit to see if Darcy wakes up so I can invite her too. Can I do that here?"

"Sure," he says agreeably.

"Also," says Shell Bell, "the party is to celebrate how we have taken over the management of - an afterlife, at least a fairly commonly shared one, but I can tell by looking that it doesn't cover here and you don't have a competing one, but that can be fixed!"

"...What," says Tony.

"We took over the afterlife. An afterlife. There's at least one other. You don't have one, but if the one we manage now is extended to cover this world it's retroactive. I died," she adds. "Not long after we last met I went home and was pretty promptly assassinated. That's how we knew about it. And it was very apathetically run, but we talked to the admin and she let us replace all the judges with Jane and add some rules to make it less hellish and now it's much better than nothing."

"O...kay," says Tony. "Why are you consulting me about this, is my next question. I mean, and: yes. Yes, we should have an afterlife."

"Well, you're here," Shell Bell points out. "I also consulted you about whether Jane could eat your Internet and you didn't think that was weird, did you?"

"Oh, the Internet is totally mine anyway," he says with a grin.

[Not anymooooore,] sings Jane.

"I was just asking in case there's, like, a reason not to. If there's not Jane can ask the admin to add you right now. Is there anybody who should get jumped out of the queue?"

"...Jumped out of the queue, like...?"

"Like, I died, and yet here I am, and I'm going to go home later and see about ways to pick people up out of the afterlife and send them home if home is in Atlantis for them, and the other Bells are going to do the same thing, and we're going to wait till this is all streamlined in ours worlds before we extend the service to others but if you want, like, one or two or ten people to be here instead of waiting in the catacombs Downside, Jane can fetch them for you, as long as it's not too many there doesn't have to be such an orderly system for it."

"..There was this guy I met," he says. "Name of Yinsen. If you could find him, and... well, make sure he's found his family... that'd be great."

"If him and his family are from this world, right now they're all asleep Downside," Shell Bell says. "They would only have had a chance to wake up if your world had been in the queue earlier. D'you want them just woken up at the same time whenever they come up normally, or do you want them all alive and put here?"

"I don't know," he says. "Either. The first one, I guess."

[Can do, but I need more than one name and a world to go on unless somebody wants to search the catacombs by fancy teleportation,] Jane says. [Got a face for me?]

[...No? I know what he looked like; I don't have pictures of him.]

[Well, I could staaaare into your soooooul and get it out that way, up to you if you wanna let me,] says Jane. [But the way the great and powerful peal of Bells have things set up him and his loved ones will be able to ask for each other on waking regardless.]

[...I guess that's okay.]

[And if I stare into any souls named Yinsen and one remembers you I'll say you asked after him,] Jane adds merrily.

He laughs and shakes his head. [Thanks.]

"Jane's the best thing to happen to us since minting," says Shell Bell brightly.

"She does seem pretty handy."

"Aegis - that's the Bell who brought her in - kept bragging."

[And she ought to be proud of me, too.]

Tony laughs.

Is Darcy up yet?

"Whatever," says Tony.

And has Darcy a preference between the two?

[Hey, if I can hang out at Stark's place, why not?]

Port-port-"Darcy, this is Tony and the house is Jarvis, Tony and Jarvis, this is Darcy!"

"Hi," Darcy says brightly.

Tony laughs.

There's one!

"Matilda! Hi!" exclaims Shell Bell.

"Hi," says Matilda. "How're you? Looking very magical!"

"I'm so, so magical," laughs Shell Bell. "And me and the other Bells have figured out how to get around without relying on Milliways except for initial incursions - and we took over an afterlife - and we're having a huge party on Mars in Stella's world to celebrate, d'you want to come?"

"Yes I do!"

"Cool! Want to wait for it to start here or at my palace? Oh, or we could go to your world, do you mind if my friend Jane eats your Internet? Also your world is hooked up to the afterlife we took over, is there anybody dead you want back ahead of the queue?"

"...I would love to see your palace," she says, "who's Jane and what does she want my Internet for?"

[I'm Jane,] says Jane, yoinking, [here's the palace, and Internets are delicious! I won't interfere with it, I'll just sort of become it.]

[I tucked you away and then I put you down here. I can see you through Shell Bell's ring and this place through all the cameras. Aren't I neat?]

"You are very neat," says Matilda.

Jane manifests a face on one of her screens. "I'm so glad you think so! I'm also your ride to the party. And the judge of the afterlife."

"...Okay then," says Matilda.

"Dead people? Yes, no, maybe so?"

"Dead people! Right," she says. "Magnus Honey. And Phoebe Honey, but she would've been born a Trunchbull, I'm not sure if that makes a difference to you."

"The system does birth names, but if she lets me have a closer look at her I can find out things like that. Or there's always asking. Dates of deaths?"

She has Phoebe down to the decade, and Magnus down to the day.

"Awake," reports Jane, "both, and you're in luck, they're in the higher-rent area. Who shall I say is asking for them?"

[Magnus Honey and Phoebe Honey-née-Trunchbull,] says Jane, [Bumblebee's daughter is friends with the new management and she's asking for you. If you'd like to return to your world ahead of the queue, you may come to the former guide office and be transported now.]

[Oh!] says Magnus. [That's lovely. My poor bumblebee. Where is she, do you know?]

When they are right there, Jane picks them up and puts them in Coral Palace. "I can put you in your original world as soon as there's a Janepoint there," she says.

"Thanks, Jane," says Shell Bell. She turns to the newly moved couple. "This is my world. I call it Atlantis. I'm one of the new management."

"You want a tour of the palace first, or you want to pop back into Milliways and take 'em home to see Jenny?" asks Shell Bell.

"Definitely Jenny."

"If she's far off and teleporting's not a thing you do, I could go fetch her," offers Shell Bell.

"You do that," says Matilda.

Port. "Hi, Jenny, I'm Shell Bell. I was involved in the back-from-the-dead-thing and now I'm your ride to where they are, you ready?"

Port!

To Magnus and Phoebe: [Here's the elevator pitch. You are still technically dead, so you'll still torch if applicable. Your house Upside will wait for you if you ever want it back. You can put in a request through me - I'm going to have a node in your world presently - if you want someone else jumped through the queue, although I cannot guarantee that all such requests will be honored unless you get Shell Bell or one of the other Bells to back it. Questions, comments?]

Shell Bell waits for an opportune moment to ask about a good place to install some Jane.

[You're welcome!]

Matilda extricates herself from the hug collective eventually, and after a short consultation, Jane is happily nomming up her internet.

"Thanks," says Shell Bell. "We've got a lot of worlds to put her in. Pattern's doing most of it, since she's not got any pressing obligations in her own world right now, but Jane'll tell her to check this one off her list."

"I'll take the rest of that tour now!" says Matilda.

Yoink. Jane is a well-fed limo service today.

The palace is beautiful! It might also have a Sherlock and/or a Tony in it at any given time.

Matilda oohs and ahhs appropriately.

And soon, it is party time.