"Over there," says the man in the pink shirt with the green hair and the prominent facial scarring. He points to a doorway about halfway along the wall.

"Thanks, dude," says Lexi, and she ducks into the bathroom and then emerges again.

The helpful dude is now sitting at a table, eating jellybeans out of a large open jar. He gives her a little wave.

"So hey," says Lexi, heading for his table, "what is this place, why was it here instead of the school bathroom, and also does it do that funky barrier time thing because I could absolutely use another few minutes to study for this quiz?"

"Milliways, it does that, and unless your world's very special - " he checks " - which it isn't, when you walk out that door it'll only have been a couple of seconds outside. Wanna jelly bean?"

"Oh, cool, thanks," says Lexi, and she helps herself to a green one. "How'd I get here? Man, my sister would love just a little pocket dimension where she could hang out forever without it even costing mana, running out of mana's bad apparently."

"Some of the flavours are pretty weird," he notes before she has managed to put the jelly bean in her mouth, "but I like 'em. Mm, Milliways has this habit of grabbing people. Shows up anywhere somebody's opening a door, whenever it feels like it."

"Weird like how?" Lexi asks, eyeing her bean suspiciously. "And why did it feel like grabbing me between bio and gym, I do not understand."

"Weird like I don't know whether that's gonna be lime or absinthe," he says. "And nooooobody knows why the door does what it does, except it pretty clearly likes to mess with people."

"I don't think I even know what absinthe is," says Lexi dubiously, and she sniffs the jelly bean experimentally.

Lexi decides it is safe to eat. She eats it.

"Apple," says Lexi, nodding, "very nice. I dunno if I'll try another one though, I can probably just get my sister to conjure me some jelly beans if I want them, that's what she's working on, and they'd be whatever flavor and Brilliance would eat most of them but I don't even care, he's okay after all."

"And who," says the stranger, "is Brilliance?"

"He's, like, my sister's - device - like, he calls himself a device, that's not me being depersonalizing or anything, he's a device not a human - and he's from space and sometimes he's a deck of cards and sometimes he's a staff thingy and sometimes he's a human - shaped - and he goes through ice cream like it's cocaine, and probably he'd like jellybeans too, I'm kinda surprised he hasn't started trying to eat the furniture really. He's teaching her magic."

"Well, apparently he didn't get around to trying food? For four hundred years. So there's that."

"Poor guy!" he says. "And who's your sister? For that matter, who're you?"

"Oh, I'm Lexi, and my sister and I are twins - fraternal - her name's Bella. What about you, who're you?"

"Funny little place, Milliways," he says. "You meet different versions of the same people here. A lot of different versions. There's eleven of me, for example, although lookin' at you I'm thinking it's about to be twelve."

"Well, you look sorta like Brilliance, but I dunno for sure," says Lexi. "Are you also a magic device from space? Do all those other Bellas have Lexis too?"

"Not a one of 'em does," he says. "I'm not a magic device from space, but then, sounds like your Bella's not a witch or an angel or a boy. His name's Cam, by the way."

"- None of them have Lexis at all?"

"Nope."

"...Oh."

"Sorry."

"...And there are lots of you."

"Yep," he says. "Three of 'em have brothers."

Lexi puts her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. "Oh."

"My type don't get along with our families so well, though. One of me didn't even meet her brother until they were both dead."

"Wait," says Lexi, "what?"

"Oh, the Bells took over Hell a while back," he says cheerfully. "Tidied the place up a bit."

"The Bells. I guess that sounds like something my Bella would do, if she could," muses Lexi.

"Don't it just?" he agrees.

"Yeah, she's been learning to, like, conjure food, so she can teleport to Africa or wherever and make big heaps of it for the starving orphans and whatnot, but probably Hell would be more important if she could do something about it, yeah. Did all however many of them just run into each other here and then do that?"

"More or less."

"Oh. Kinda sucks none of them are here now, Bella would flip."

"Kinda does, I guess," he says agreeably. "Bet she'll find the place eventually, though. And then they'll throw a big party and load her up with all kindsa nifty magic."

"Well, that's good, I guess."

"Nifty magic is fun," he says cheerfully.

"I guess. I went flying last night and Bella forgot to tell me I could run out of mana and so I did and I fell right out of the sky but Brilliance fixed me so I guess he doesn't hate me completely, or he likes Bella more than he doesn't like me."

"If he is one of me, betcha he doesn't hate you," says the Joker. "My bunch doesn't hate easy."

"Well, he kind of - some of him kind of - it's really complicated but basically I got possessed and it was sorta him but sorta not and then, well, Bella called it being 'catty'," Lexi shrugs.

"Okay, but, I don't know how much people are like other people who look like them," Lexi says.

"What is he like?"

"He's, I dunno, Bella likes him, he likes her," shrugs Lexi. "He likes food, he was made by some people to destroy planets but he didn't want to."

"How's he get along with Bella?"

"They go do magic practice all the time on some other planet," says Lexi, waving a hand, "I don't see a lot of it - wait, do you think they're not just practicing magic? Or something? You asked that kinda funny."

"Lot of the Jokers come with Bells attached," he says. "There was one in the world I started in, and there's one in the world I live in now, and I'm not attached to either, but there's, let me see - Alice and Stella, Kas and Amariah, Angela and Micaiah, Rose and Beast, and Cam and Jellybean." (He eats another one.) "Five Bells-and-Jokers who're dating."

"Wait, so they're not mostly named Bella?"

"Most of 'em are," he says, "but with ten of 'em in a room, you don't wanna say 'Bella' and have five look up, so they pick nicknames."

"Oh. I wonder what mine would call herself."

"We'll find out," he says serenely.

"I can ask her when I go out of here," says Lexi.

"Good plan."

"Maybe I should show Bella this place today. She'll just flip if I show her that the bathroom turned into a restaurant."

"It won't be in the bathroom permanently," he says. "It'll show up somewhere else next time. Likes to keep us on our toes."

"So I can't go get her?"

"Probably not."

"Darn. Why do I keep finding things when it'd be better for Bella to find them? This happened when I got possessed too, the stupid deck of cards kept telling me it had limitless power and I was like 'dude wait a second I want to give the limitless power to my sister because if I take it she will guilt me and I'll never get a weekend off again, come on' and it was like 'no I cannot wait' and I was like 'oh fine' only then it was actually trying to destroy the world, like, why does this happen to me?"

"What, you want to walk out of the girls' bathroom in the middle of Forks High School?" Lexi says. "Because I bet you get escorted off school property in a hurry, you do that."

"Wouldn't be the first time," he snorts. "But nah, I've got nifty magic, remember? I can be invisible if I feel like it."

"Oh, you have nifty magic, too, I thought it was just Bellas."

"Turns out, my bunch is really good at making nifty magic and her bunch is really good at using it. Works out pretty well."

"Oh. Well, okay, if you wanna come to my world you can do that, I guess," says Lexi.

He beams. Something about him radiates childlike glee with an almost literal luminescence.

Lexi tilts her head, but she gets up and makes for the door.

The Joker takes his jar of jelly beans and follows, turning invisible halfway there.

Lexi opens the door and walks out. +Bella, Bella you're gonna flip, turn invisible and let's cut gym, I found a thing!+

+Cut gym for what thing, please, Lexi?+

+There's, like, this restaurant, and there's this guy in it, who's like Brilliance's alternate universe twin, except kind of very alternate? And there's lots of you, too, only they weren't there, so I brought this one back, and he has magic, too.+

+What the fuck,+ says Brilliance.

+I know, right, I keep finding this stuff, Bella should find this stuff, but, like, at least I could bring him here? He's invisible. Come on, let's go tell the gym teacher that, like, you're dizzy and I have to take you home early.+

"Not far," says the Joker, appearing close to Bella's side of the car.

He gets in the car.

Lexi drives, singing tunelessly, "Iiii found more magic for Bella and I didn't even have to get possessssed."

"So," Bella says, "executive summary of who you are and where you came from and what you can do and what you want, please?"

"I'm from another universe, no magic there but I met one'a the Bells at Milliways and she gave me some eventually. I grant wishes." He passes a triangle forward, in his own clear-glass-with-hints-of-colour. "That'll do a little one. And I've got a few other neat tricks, but the minting's the biggest deal. A mint's a person who makes wishcoins."

Bella takes the triangle. She looks at it. "This does a wish? How does it go about doing a wish?"

"You wish on it," says the Joker.

"How little is little?"

"Exceedingly. It'll just about brush your hair or turn your nose blue."

"Okay. And I also wanted to know what you wanted? Because this is twice now my sister here has invited powerful magical entities to do things without finding that out first."

"I was trying to get you limitless power, Bella, God."

"I don't really want things," he says. "Not from you, anyway. Insofar as I have a plan, I plan to meet the native me, probably make out with him a bunch 'cause that's what my crowd tends to get up to when we meet each other, hand you some nifty magic, and then wait until Milliways shows up again and introduce you to the rest of ya."

"Yeah, about the rest of me, what are they up to, why haven't they come to visit too?" asks Bella skeptically.

"Oh, I could've gone home and fetched Golden, I guess," he says with a shrug, "but you seem pretty together, it wasn't urgent, and I thought this way might be more fun."

"I didn't tell him what you looked like and he did an illusion trick thing with, like, a bunch of yous," says Lexi. "Except one was a boy - and one of them had wings - and none of them have Lexis."

"...They're only children?" Bella asks slowly.

"All ten of 'em."

"...That is strange and disturbing."

"Three in nine of me have brothers," he offers. "I'm not one'a the lucky few."

The Joker smiles and waves jauntily.

"So," says Bella, patting Brilliance on the head as she walks past him into the house, "these other mes, without Lexis, with wings and assorted genders and stuff - what do they do?"

"Whatcha mean?" he asks, ruffling Brilliance's hair as he follows.

Brilliance trails after them.

"Well, they have fancy wish magic, yeah? Tell me about what they do with it."

"Stella made herself a space empress and opened a colony on Mars. Golden was an empress already, she doesn't use it for much. Pattern's got a colony set up in Saturn but I'm not sure if she's taking immigrants yet. Angela's bossing around her god. Not sure what the rest are up to. Oh, and they took over Hell, think I mentioned that before."

"Brilliance -" Bella maneuvers and hugs him. "Brilliance, what's wrong?"

"I met one of you," he sniffles, "I didn't really know what the hell happened, but - she had one of me and she said she had to bond with him to save the world and he reads her mind all the time and she's fucking wrecked."

"She says he sleeps as much as he can 'cause he doesn't do it then, and he tried to kill himself but she loves him too much to let him."

"It happened this morning, I wanted to wait until you were home, and then - " he gestured to the Joker, "he happened."

"These other mes," Bella asks the Joker, "with their fancy magic, could they get to her and help her? How much freedom of movement do they have, I assume it's not infinite or I'd probably have gotten a visit on some key birthday?"

"They can get to any world they've been to. Had some success hopping to worlds they haven't, but they can't just knock on the door and say 'show me a Bell I haven't met yet, please'."

"But - the specific one that Brilliance met - the one who's disintegrating in the head, god -"

"Maybe they could find her. Maybe not. We'll find out when we catch Milliways again and I go get 'em."

"Yeah," he says, "I wish I had too. But now we gotta play the hand we're dealt, and there's no rushing Milliways. Bells've tried. It'll show up when it feels like. All we can do on this end is keep opening doors."

Bella chews her lip. "...Okay. So Disintegrating Bell is stuck until one of us finds the place again. What else can we do that's productive?"

"I can mint ya," says the Joker, gesturing between Bella and Brilliance. "You too," he nods to Lexi, "if you want. Then you get to make wishcoins. Triangles do itsy bitsy wishes, squares do bigger ones, pentagons do medium-sized ones, hexes can get some serious shit done, and upward from there you start running into trouble if you don't know what you're doing." He bites his lip sharply and displays the resulting square. "Coins're made of pain."

"Pain? Oh, geez, tell me there's a loophole, or are you trying to tell me that if I were an only child I'd also be a masochist?" winces Bella.

"Nope," says the Joker. "I'm telling you I'm a masochist and so're the rest of me." He flashes a grin. "It's why they keep us around."

...Bella glances at Brilliance.

"You don't look happy about it," she says.

"No shit I don't," says Brilliance.

"Hey, sweetie," says the Joker, hugging him and petting his hair.

He sighs into the Joker's pink button-down shirt.

"What's wrong?"

"You should probably just mint us both anyway, 'cause, even little wishes are wishes, we're big girls, we can handle it, and anyway eventually Bella will fall down the stairs if she just takes off her new shiny thing for like a day."

"Uh, what's wrong is I like pain when it's pain I like but I spent years and years getting tortured and I didn't like that except - when - I did - " and he shoves his face against the Joker's chest and hugs him tight, sobbing.

"Aww, honey," the Joker says soothingly, kissing the top of Brilliance's head and petting him some more. "Wasn't long ago at all for you, was it. It's okay, hon. You're gonna be okay. I promise."

"...The torturing was four hundred years ago, wasn't it?" Bella asks slowly. "Or..."

"The other thing," he murmurs.

Brilliance nods shakily.

Bella would hug Brilliance, but he seems to have that covered.

"So there are - attractors - that multiple versions of the same person are liable to fall into," says Bella. "...Apparently Lexi is not an attractor for Bells."

"Guess not," he says, cuddling Brilliance.

"That's weird," asserts Lexi. "Are there Lexis with no Bellas, then?"

"We'll keep an eye out once we're all cosmopolitan and multiversal," murmurs Bella.

"Ooh," says Brilliance, and he sniffles and grabs the jar. Nom nom nom oooooooh, flavours.

The Joker pets Brilliance's hair and grins at Lexi.

"I thought he'd like jelly beans," agrees Lexi, nodding.

"Makes sense," says Bella.

"You were right," says the Joker, giving Brilliance snuggly scritches.

"Anyway, I think Lexi is right about minting the two of us at least, unless there's some drawback to being a mint," Bella says.

"I mentioned about the big coins, right?" he says. "Anything with more than six points will blow up if you try to use it. Star'll probably just kill you, next one up'll maybe eat your whole planet, the one after that would probably take a bite out of the galaxy. There's a trick to 'em, but you've got me around to handle that until you find the rest of the Bells, so I think I'll let 'em tell you themselves."

"Okay," says Bella, "but me and Lexi aren't liable to make big coins anyway, so that's not a drawback to being a mint anyway, the coins are obviously storeable or you couldn't have handed me this one." She holds up her triangle. "If they'd tell us anyway, why don't you just tell us now?"

"'Cause I don't know how they'd wanna deal with you," he nods to Lexi, "and they mmmmight take it amiss if I guessed, but I don't wanna tell one or two of you and not all three."

"Are you saying," Bella says, "that there is some realistic probability that they will only want me to have this information if I promise not to tell my sister?"

"You know," he says, "when you put it like that, it sounds so much less friendly." He checks that they are not under any kind of observation by outside parties. "The trick is, all the coins bite back a little, but stars are the only ones where it's big enough to notice. You can use a coin to knock the teeth out of one that's the next size up, or a bunch that're the same size, or a big bunch that're smaller. So a hex'll make a safe star, and a safe star'll make a safe - they call 'em evils, you'll see why - and a safe evil'll make a safe arrow, ditto. And if you feel like being extra careful, you can wish your hexes safe too and maybe you won't get hit by cars so often."

"Thank you. Hit by cars? Is that an - attractor I have to worry about?"

"Probably. One'a the Bells died of it. She got better, but it'd be all kindsa inconvenient, don'tcha think?" He wiggles his fingers. "You're all minted, by the way."

"Thanks - how do I make a coin, then?"

"You hurt yourself, and move it across your mind - you'll see what I mean - and want the coin to be somewhere. It can appear anywhere that's touching you. I know a few people who make 'em in their sleep a lot, so you don't have to know where you want it, but if you don't it might land somewhere uncomfortable."

"Across my -" Bella hmms and digs a fingernail into her palm. "Okay, that's weird, but -" She turns her hand over and now she's holding two triangles, the one the Joker gave her and one in an aurora pattern.

"Pretty," says the Joker. He pets Brilliance. "How 'bout you, hon?"

Bella catches it. "Mana color," she identifies aloud. "Lexi, what'd you get?"

Lexi bites her knuckle and turns up a peach-colored triangle with a satiny texture. She hands hers to Bella too. "Neato," she says.

"There's some other fun things on the market, too. Like the brainphone. Who wants a brainphone?"

"I think we already have one of those, does this one have special features?"

"Lets you put up a busy message so people can't bug ya. Does text or voice. Tells you who's calling and who-all's listening if it's a conference call. Does conference calls."

"Okay, that sounds like an improvement unless Brilliance has been holding back on me about magephone features. And probably is anyway, since he automatically eavesdrops on that. Cool. Let's have it."

He makes a little explosion-like gesture with one hand. [Poof!]

Bella runs a quick test of the brainphone with Lexi, then says, "Cool, thanks."

"Welcome," he says sunnily.

"Anything else I should know about how coins work?"

"Well, if you end up with any big ones, you probably wanna find somewhere to keep 'em. Invisible necklaces are the going thing, but maybe you'll come up with something better."

"Invisible necklace sounds good to me. Would want it insubstantial too. Or, I dunno, Brilliance, would another amoeba-device be a good coin handling plan?"

"Hmmmm," says Brilliance. "You could put 'em in a barrier, I guess. But no way I'm making you a device smart enough to get 'em out again on command." He glances at the Joker. "Gimme some coins? I wanna try something."

He can have a square, a pentagon, and a hex, all in the Joker's colour-glinting glass.

"What'd you do?"

"Gave myself a coin-sorting function," he says. "Our magic couldn't make one that worked the way I wanted, but turns out theirs can. Dunno what to do about you, 'cause you're not a device, but maybe coin magic doesn't care."

"Hmm. I'll have to think about how I want one of those to work." Bella reaches into her backpack and produces a notebook.

"Mine just lets me put coins into it and take them out again by size," says Brilliance. "And I can feel how many of what kind is in there, kind of the same way I feel how much mana I've got. Ooh, you should make it so you can feel how much mana you've got."

"That's a good idea. When I have a place to put a batch of coins beyond these three triangles I'll see about collecting some to spend on things like that."

"I've got a bunch," says the Joker. "And I can always make more."

"That's very kind of you." Bella is scribbling away on the subject of coin sorting.

"Not like there's nothing in it for me," he laughs.

Bella makes a bit of a sporfling noise.

"Okay, like, is there any reason for me to be in this conversation or can you just catch me up later, Bella?"

"I'll catch you up. I'll take notes so I don't forget anything," Bella says. "You go ahead and do whatever."

"Okay, bye, you're welcome for the magic guy." Lexi heads for the stairs.

"Thank you!" Bella calls after her.

"There's a Bell standard? Well, of course there is," snorts Bella, holding out her hand.

He drops the hexagonal glass coin into her hand.

"Fun, huh?"

"Hell yes." Bella closes her eyes and hums to herself, thinking.

The Joker continues snuggling Brilliance.

Brilliance continues eating jelly beans.

Eventually, Bella says, "Okay, have a sorter worked out, can I get another hexagon?"

He tosses her one.

He appears a sparkly purple velvet drawstring bag full of coins and tosses it to her. Contained within: a hundred pentagons, fifty hexes, ten stars, and an evil.

Bella peers into it. "Geeeenerous," she purrs, and she upends the bag and her coin-sorting power catches them all. "And yeah, that eight-pointed thing does look seriously evil. These big ones declawed yet?"

"I declawed the whole batch."

"Spiffy, thank you. Let's hear more wish-related technical details? If I wish for something that for some reason I can't have, what happens? What are good examples of things that require each sort of coin? Are wishes in any sense indelible or irreversible?"

"If you wish something that's impossible or too big for the coin you're trying, it just doesn't work. Triangles will give you a new haircut or turn the lights on from across the room, squares will conjure little stuff, pentagons will conjure big stuff or magic stuff or teach you a language or how to cook or play the piano, hexes will conjure you an entire underground lair or give you a permanent superpower. Evils will raise the dead, but probably so can the Bells once they check out your afterlife."

"...Raise the dead. Damn. What's the probably for on the afterlife issue? Some kind of - incompatibility this world might have?"

"I wasn't there for all of that, but one of the Bells has to raise her dead the old-fashioned way if she wants - I haven't heard if she's tried it yet. The rest consolidated all their afterlives and put Aegis's daughter in charge. Aegis's daughter is a computer," he adds helpfully. "Actually, at this point she's probably billions of computers. When she gets here, I bet she asks if she can eat your Internet."

"Aegis's daughter is an internet-eating computer?" Bella asks slowly. "Can you maybe explain that a little more?"

"I'm not totally sure about the details myself."

"Okay. Can I get a complete list of all the me's and their - blurbs, I guess, distinguishing features?"

"Cute," says the Joker. "Go for it."

"So apparently I come in angel, external-owl-soul, boy, vampire, and - is Shell Bell bi or outright gay? And they will all be surprised to learn they come in sister, I guess."

"Shell Bell's straight with an exception. Cam's the one who's bi."

"Oh. Okay. Huh. Man, I wanna meet them."

"I can tell," says the Joker. "Milliways'll come through. Could be a while, but it'll come through."

"How long have you been meeting Bells, if you have to wait a 'while' for doors every time? Is there even somebody worth meeting there every time?"

"Oh, now they've got Jane they can hop in and out whenever they feel like it. She hooks up all their worlds, Milliways and the afterlife included, and she can send people any which way."

"Oh. And I'm not hooked up yet."

"Precisely."

"Dang. Here's hoping Milliways likes at least one of us, huh?"

"Mhm."

"We can't just wish the world - let's call it Rainbow - into the system, I guess?"

"Try it," says the Joker.

"I feel like it might help if I knew more about how Jane worked."

"She's an internet-eating computer person who can move people between worlds if she's looking at the person and the place she wants to put 'em. The technical details are lost on me," says the Joker. "Think it's something to do with the way I used to go to Milliways in my dreams, though."

"Hmm." Bella shrugs, and tries a few wish designs on a few coin sizes. "No dice."

"Didn't think so. But there's no harm in trying."

"Apparently not. Do you need to crash here while we wait for a door? Because that would be harder to sell Charlie on than Brilliance was, I think."

He laughs. "I'll bet," he says. "Nah, I can find somewhere to snuggle up, don't worry about me."

"Okay, good. I hope you're not stuck here too long what with the adorable moppet at home."

"I love my munchkin," the Joker says fondly, and the air shows Juliet a scene of Kerron cuddling his mummy. "But I can live without him for a while. He'll still be there when I get back."

"I noticed the angel one is pregnant. Just how many of me have reproduced, if you don't count Jane?"

"Golden and Edward have a daughter named Elspeth. She's a sweetheart." The Joker illustrates her. "And Micaiah and Angela have a fetus, and I think that's it."

"...Elspeth looks about as old as Golden and Edward do," observes Bella. "Vampire thing?"

"Yep!"

"Nifty."

"It is!" he agrees.

"So how does enchanting work and how does it run on pain 'worse' than minting does?"

"Minting, you get hurt and you make a coin and then you can fix whatever hurt you and you're done," he says. "Enchanting, whoever's casting the spell needs to use somebody as a channel - if it's you, it hurts and you might lose control of the spell and kill yourself; if it's somebody else and they're into it, it'll hurt them in a way that sticks around afterward, and there's just not that many people willing to let you give them chronic pain problems so you can do nifty magic; and if it's somebody else and they're not into it, it'll give them nasty brain damage." He grins. "Us Jokers are all over channeling, of course."

"That," says Bella, "is a mean magic system. Why bother channeling, willing channels or no, with coins available? Does enchanting do things coins can't?"

"Mmyep! You couldn't wish up a nifty enchanter's aura like mine," he says, flaring a little so that suddenly he is the most fascinating thing in the room and every emotion he projects - amusement, friendliness, a gentle affection for Brilliance - is visible with crystalline clarity. "Gotta get those the hard way. It's why all the Bells did it, pretty much. Everybody's aura is different, but you can't tell what it's gonna be until you get it. The Bells mostly look all powerful and stuff; the Jokers mostly get get what I just showed you, along with," there is a cheerful little drumroll, "soundtracks."

"...Oooh."

"It's fun," he says. "I'll channel for you if Nibbles here doesn't wanna."

"...Nibbles?"

Brilliance snorts.

"Well, lookit him," says the Joker, gesturing to Brilliance and the depleted jar of jelly beans.

"I suppose. Is picking up an aura something I can do without meeting the rest of the gang?"

"Yeah, hex'll give you enchanting and pentagon'll make you good at it, and it doesn't take much more than a couple days to pick one up if you spend those couple days doing nothing but enchant. Got a free weekend and a planet you wanna colonize? I don't think anybody's done Neptune yet."

"I'm kinda fond of the Planet of Colorful Sand, actually, although I have no idea where, astronomically, it is, or if that's even a meaningful question given the dimension thing."

"It's not," says Brilliance. "Different dimension."

"Wonder what size coin it'd take to conjure a planet," says the Joker. "An evil, I bet; it took more than one star to terraform Mars. But if you want a planet of colourful sand, you can have one."

"No, I mean, there already exists a planet of colorful sand, if I decide to colonize space I might want to start there."

"Mhm," says the Joker, "and I mean, if you wanted to copy it and put one in your solar system, you could."

"Oh. That seems like overkill. There is already such a planet, and I have to use magic to get to any planets that aren't Earth anyway. Unless a teleportation power I wish myself with a coin won't let me dimension-hop like Brilliance does?"

"No idea," says the Joker. "But I don't know why more Bells don't conjure their own planets. What's it matter if it's overkill? Coins are cheap with one of me around."

"I might someday design one or more planets, it's just nowhere near my top priority," says Bella.

"Well, yeah, but there's a bunch sitting around you can copy and that way you get to colonize one and leave the other for the astronomers to coo over. Or do you just not like astronomers?"

Bella snorts. "I have no strong opinions about astronomers, I just don't think cooing-over is what planets ought to be for."

"What's that s'posed to mean?"

"Like, I have some sympathy with conservationist arguments that are about stuff that's alive. Save the whales. But I don't feel any inclination to save the barren wasteland. If people want to study why there was a barren wasteland there, they should be able to do it while there's people putting in swimming pools and zoos. They can work with illusion models or something, I'm not heartless, I'd help them out, but entire duplicate planets with nothing on them taking up space just so astronomers can ooh and aah offends my aesthetics."

"It's a big universe," says the Joker. "There's room."

"You just recently informed me that death is probably a temporary condition. I'm not confident in any long-term ceiling on the population."

"Did you just make an extra planet?"

Innocently: "Who, me?"

Brilliance cracks up.

"Is it an undetectable planet or are those poor astronomers going to be super-confused?"

"You've got a couple hours before anybody on Earth will see it, thanks lightspeed, so there's time to make it invisible if you wanna."

"Does it have any special features? Where'd you put it?"

"I copied the one you like so much, from just before you went there in case you've left anything there you don't want me touching, and put it out past Saturn where there's plenty'a room."

+...Okay, I'm pretty sure he knows we had sex,+ says Brilliance.

"'Kay," says the Joker.

+I dunno. I mean, I wouldn't, and he's me, but he's not exactly specifically the same person that I am, so... I dunno?+

"Rainbow?"

+...Uh, 'cause you asked me not to?+

"So you did," the Joker says agreeably. "Slipped my mind."

+Both.+

"Nope!"

"Cool. Are all the known worlds worlds with mes or are there others?"

"Ooh, there's tons more. There were about seventy linked to Downside, and only a sprinkling of 'em had Bells - they checked. Queenie's from one of those, and Ghosty's from another, unconnected one. And Milliways is always fulla people and most of those don't turn out to be from the same worlds if you ask."

"Wow. There is so much stuff to do," marvels Bella.

"Is that, like, a catchphrase or something?" laughs Bella.

"Nah. But only a Bell would hear about hundreds of new universes and see her to-do list unrolling down the hall." He makes an illustrative gesture that sends an illusionary scroll bouncing across the floor, trailing incomprehensible scribbles.

Bella laughs. "What do other people do when they hear about new universes? Knit?"

"And maybe, if they're feeling adventurous, decide to go visit one someday."

Bella chews her lip idly, trying to process this minute droplet of ambition. "Huh."

"Me, I like Milliways, but I don't feel like taking a great big tour of the multiverse."

"I'd argue with you, but while I'm confident of my ability to share the multiverse with eleven others of me - ten if we can't fix the one Brilliance found, I guess - I think maybe it's best if we stay unusual in our motivations."

"You're not gonna convince me," he says. "The Bell game just ain't my cup'a tea."

"Which is good, because it sounds like you have an awesome symbiotic relationship worked out."

He laughs.

Bella peers at Brilliance again.

Brilliance is most of the way through the jar of jellybeans, chomping on them contentedly one at a time.

+How d'you feel about the apparently traditional symbiosis here?+

+Um, vaguely anxious and really turned on?+

+...Okay, keep me posted? The anxious thing is probably bad, let me know if there's anything I can do about that.+

+I mean, I know you're not gonna fuck with me on purpose, I just don't... know it. And - I dunno.+ He glances up at the Joker with a thoughtful expression.

The Joker smiles.

"Penny for your thoughts," says Bella archly.

"You wanna go have sex?" he asks the Joker.

"Love to." He glances at Aurora and inquires, "Mind if we use the invisible planet?"

"You break it, you buy it," snorts Bella. "Go ahead."

He blows her a kiss and teleports himself and Brilliance to said planet.

Bella goes upstairs to catch up Lexi on what she has learned.

Brilliance doesn't come back that night.

As the twins get ready for bed, Bella asks, +You having fun?+

+Lots,+ he sighs. +I love this guy, he's awesome. I think I'll stay with him tonight, okay? I'll see you tomorrow morning.+

+Okay, see you.+

+G'night. I love you.+

+Morning,+ he says sleepily. +I can sleep now! Sleeping's fun. I cuddled with the Joker all night.+

+I am glad you like that most infuriatingly unproductive function. I should probably excise it in myself,+ Bella snorts.

+I wouldn't wanna do it all the time, but it's nice to have somebody to curl up with.+

+How does it work, do you turn it on and off at will or what?+

+If I wanna to to sleep, I get sleepy and then sleep like a human and then wake up and I'm not sleepy anymore until the next time I want to be.+

+Interesting. Did you design that or did he?+

+Me!+

+Some stuff,+ he says. +Joker said it might help with the making the coins part if we snuggled while you did it, and I bet it would.+

+Well, are you gonna?+

+I probably should, but now I'm curious about all those other pairs. I want to know about them, I want to meet those Bells and ask them about stuff. But none of them has a Lexi, so if I'm wired special somehow because of having a Lexi then I have to work it out myself.+

+I wonder if having just one favourite person is a you thing or an all-of-you thing,+ muses Brilliance.

+I - don't know. One of them has a kid,+ Bella says uncertainly. +I really, really want to talk to her - all of them - I wish he'd brought at least one of them here - I don't know. But I think that's what favorite means, isn't it? Priorities, nice neat numerical orderings, I bet you the one with a kid could answer me if I swore myself to secrecy and asked who she'd save if she had to pick.+

+I don't think Jokers do nice neat numerical orderings,+ says Brilliance. +I only love two people and I am already weirded out by the thought of picking between them - I mean, out of the two of you, you're the one I want to spend the rest of your life with, but I'm not sure if - I don't feel like that means there's a hierarchy and you're on top of it. And I'd save you from just about anything before I'd save him, but that's not a hard choice, we're more okay with bad things happening to us than you are.+

+- you know something,+ says Bella, +I bet I have the worst relationship with my parents out of any of them.+

+I think not having parents gives me the best relationship with my parents out of all the Jokers,+ says Brilliance. +He's told me some stories. But why's that for you?+

+Because they don't have Lexis. And I have a Lexi. And I love Lexi - but I was sometimes a morbid child, you know, and I'm just now remembering something that happened when we were eight, I don't think I could have even called it to mind before hexing up perfect recall, but - I asked Renée what she'd do if me and Lexi were both in trouble and she could only save one of us. And she hugged me and said that was never going to happen and she didn't answer me. And the others don't have Lexis. They never had to ask the question.+

+...okay,+ says Brilliance, +keeping in mind that I don't have parents, so this is all kind of abstract to me, but I feel like if I was in that situation, I would feel shitty whether the person I was asking picked me, or picked my favourite person, or couldn't answer. Differently shitty, but shitty any which way you slice it.+

+Yeah, but - for me either answer would've been better than 'that's never going to happen'. Because instead of Renée telling me that she thought I had more potential maybe, or that she got along better with Lexi which she does, or something, she decided to tell me that no matter what I'm planning for, if the stakes are high I can't count on her. If I'm trying to save Lexi from something and that puts me in danger, maybe Renée gets in my way. If I have a desperate attack of selfishness and I'm trying to throw Lexi under a metaphorical bus, maybe Renée interferes with that. Renée could've hurt my feelings some, and instead she decided to muck up my entire planning mechanism. I never asked Charlie the question but he'd answer the same way, so, same problem.+

+Maybe she didn't decide to muck up your planning mechanism,+ says Brilliance. +Maybe she just didn't know.+

+Probably. But at age eight I was not quite competent to say "Mom, you are mucking up my planning mechanism, and if I don't receive an answer to that question it will give me trust issues way worse than either possible answer, please pick one of us and then stick to it or notify me if you change your mind". You know?+

+Gotcha,+ says Brilliance.

+I had the conversation with Lexi herself not long after that - and a few updatey times since - and I eventually got her to get it even though she was confused at first, she's always been pretty biddable when I'm being serious with her. And Lexi and I decided on things between ourselves like - like people who know how priorities work. And I can trust her.+

+...What'd you decide?+

+In any situation of uncertainty, if we might be able to save us both, we do that. And if it is really just an evil binary choice, where exactly one of us walks out no matter how hard we try to cheat, it depends on what we're walking out into - by default Lexi gets to live in that kind of setup, but I also pointed out that those kinds of situations are very unlikely unless some high-leverage power is getting thrown around, and we agreed I could do better with that than her. So if this happened now I'd lose her, but then I'd have all the magic of the multiverse to try to get her back.+

+I wanna hug you now,+ he says. +Can I teleport there and hug you?+

+Yeah, she's downstairs already.+

Hug!

+...I don't think so. Like, I don't understand what it is to think not in priorities, but then if he has a different attitude to bad-things-happening anyway, if you have a decision algorithm I can understand anyway, I can work with that.+

"Hmm," he says hesitantly.

+...Hmm?+

+Well, that's all true, but it - sounds more certain than I feel. I don't think me-plural are as absolute about things as you-plural are. But now I don't know whether to get into that, because what I said about the Joker is all true and maybe I'd just be giving you trust issues for no reason. And trust issues suck.+

+I only need to worry about it at all if I need to trust you. Like eight-year-old girls need to trust their parents. I don't interrogate random people about this sort of thing. But you're not a random person.+

+I'm your device,+ he points out, hugging her some more. +You kind of do need to trust me at least about some stuff.+

+And I can about, you know, some stuff. You fixed Lexi when she fell,+ she offers by way of example.

+Well, yeah. Because you would've been sad,+ he says. +I don't want you to be sad.+

+You're a sweetie.+

+Awwwww.+ He beams and hugs her. +I love you.+

More hugs! Yay! +Anything else you can tell me before I sit down with - well, not with a notebook, that's redundant, I have a perfect memory now but before I sit down and think?+

+I don't really have a good guess about what kinds of stuff you want to know.+

+Maybe I should ask the Joker about the other pairs first.+

+Good idea!+

[Hey you!] Bella says to the Joker, wherever he may be.

[Hiya!] says the Joker.

[I want to know about all those Bells who are with all those Jokers and what those relationships are like, what can you tell me?]

[I can tell you lots!] he says. [Should we meet up somewhere for storytime? I like storytime.]

The Joker is in a cute little cottage on a terraformed asteroid. There are two comfy armchairs; he's just sitting down in one. He gestures to the other as she arrives.

Bella sits and puts one ankle on the other knee and waits expectantly.