Pattern is milling around over here with a cup of that tea the elf made. She likes it.

"Well, for four years I was in this extremely committed relationship with being dead, but I dumped it," says Pattern. "Why d'you ask?"

"Well! Yeah, I guess that is, sort of, my distinguishing feature, is that I am the single one, although I kind of wish it were something flashier," says Pattern. "I'm basically a standard Bell stripped down of everything warranting particular categorization. I don't even have a mental opacity because that'd commit me to a magic system. Let alone a boyfriend to let me pick a team if we ever play pickup softball, although I guess it'd just wind up being Joker-Havers versus Non-Joker-Havers."

"At least you guys have distinguishing features," says Tony. "One of my alts had to name himself after the paint job on his favourite car. I mean, because it was his coin colour, but also: his coin colour is the paint job on his favourite car."

Pattern bites her lip and produces a triangle. "Notebook paper," she says dryly.

"I feel ya," laughs Tony. "Mine looks the inside of an arc reactor. My dad built one, and so did the dad of every other Tony who was born on the right kind of Earth."

"Oh yeah, I remember hearing something about that being how you guys settled on nicknames. At least you have different coin colors from each other? Nobody seems to outright match, although the Bells with opacities all get solid glowy colors and the ones who don't all get more complicated designs."

"Yeah, if we all had arc reactors or something I would feel tragically generic."

"Maybe you should see about getting an enchanter's aura," suggests Pattern. "Mine's not that great - it basically lets me switch between ninja and movie star, which, I really could have covered that with wishes if I needed to, but at least no other Bells have the exact same thing."

Tony laughs. "Knowing me, I'd end up with one that plays AC/DC all the time. ...Which would be kind of awesome, maybe you're right."

"The Jokers get soundtracks, Angela gets accompaniment when she sings, I bet you'd wind up with something else," laughs Pattern. "The auras don't seem to lend themselves to repetition except for the soundtrack thing, the Jokers all have different other effects."

"That is kinda what I was getting at," he says, "with being all generic and stuff."

"Which Sherlock is yours?" Pattern asks. "I don't think I ever got, like, a chart, and the nametags don't say worlds, maybe they ought to."

"Mine's Plus," he says. "The vampire with a soul who's not dating Juliet, since 'vampire with a soul' isn't unique anymore."

"I think all the other Bells expect me to feel at loose ends without a boyfriend and start loitering around the Sherlocks," muses Pattern. "Or possibly you Tonies, since Shell Bell has a thing with her Tony too."

"But you don't?" says Tony.

"Feel at loose ends? Not especially. I think they're ignoring the fact that all their boyfriends got pretty much dropped in their laps. I don't think any of them were actively looking at the time, unless you count Angela's general openness to divine command."

Tony shrugs and grins. "Maybe that can be your distinguishing characteristic someday," he suggests brightly. "'Bell Who Actually Went Out And Got Herself A Boyfriend On Purpose'."

Pattern laughs. "Maybe. I don't know where to look, though, since so far it doesn't seem I'm inclined to loiter around the Sherlocks. They don't seem to be loitering around me either. Although, here you are."

"Here I am!" he agrees. "Kind of flirting with you!"

Pattern laughs. "How come?"

Pattern laughs again. "I guess that's a good reason."

Tony beams.

"So you're an engineer, right? What are you working on?"

"Some classified stuff... a laser pointer Sherry can keep around without setting himself on fire by accident... restoring an old car... I dunno, stuff," he says. "Iron Man built himself a particle accelerator, I'm kind of tempted to try that."

"Ooh, classified stuff. What are particle accelerators for?"

"They are for accelerating particles!" laughs Tony. "Um - physics stuff. He used it to synthesize an element that makes a really efficient catalyst for cold fusion."

"Nifty. Does it scale? That's the advantage science has over magic, pretty much, is that it scales better."

"Tech...nically yes," says Tony, "but you'd have to ask him about the details, I still haven't actually seen this stuff."

"Gonna collaborate or figure it out for yourself as a puzzle?"

"Figure it out, of course."

"No of course about it, depends on whether you're interested in the solution or the process and whether you're in a hurry."

"It's an of course for me."

"Well," says Pattern, "I guess that tells me whether you're usually in a hurry and whether you usually care about process or results more, then, doesn't it."

"I'm not never in a hurry, but if I was in a hurry to have Iron Man's arc reactor I'd have one already," he explains.

"Ah. I should have been more specific. Whether you ever attend parties while in a hurry."

He snorts.

"What all do you do besides engineering, or is that your all consuming passion?"

"Um... engineering and Sherry," he says, "pretty much. And cars. But cars are related to engineering."

"I suppose they are. I sort of have a car. Charlie never got rid of the station wagon I had, when I died, so it's still around."

"Guess you don't have much use for one, with all the magic, huh?"

"Right, I mostly teleport places now, if I feel like indulging in sheer travel-related delight I fly."

"Driving's fun," says Tony, "but I think that's a me thing, not a general people thing."

"I think flying's pretty universally compelling, except for people scared of heights," says Pattern, hopping a few inches into the air.

"Flying sounds awesome!" says Tony. "But I wanna do it myself, you know?"

"And having a stable magic superpower for it doesn't count?"

"It'd still be somebody else giving it to me. I want to invent it myself - well, build it at least, Iron Man did the inventing already."

"But if you had a magic system where you could do your own detail work that'd do it?"

"I don't know, what do you mean by detail work? We have a magic system, it's kind of shit," he says.

"I don't know, I just have the standards. Enchantress, mint, stack of utterly Bell-typical wished powers, I was going to copy Sarion's elfmagery but the unicorn over there said that would be a bad idea. But if there was some magic system as fiddly as the laws of physics and not actively awful like the Sunshine worldfamily magic is would you like that?"

"Maybe, I dunno, I guess I still wouldn't feel like it was mine," he says. "...Which the laws of physics totally are, of course."

"Are they really."

"Yep."

"Extravagant Christmas present? A kickass find on your most recent archaeological dig? Inheritance? Built them yourself out of spare parts?"

He giggles helplessly.

"Ah, I see, you annexed the laws of physics, stuck a flag in them, and gave the natives smallpox."

"That is terrible," snorts Tony, "that is a terrible joke, also isn't that what you guys do to your entire universes?"

"Stella's the only with an actual flag design, and Mars had no natives," says Pattern, waving a hand. "Golden and Shell Bell are revolutionaries against unjust governments, Angela plans to take office in a manner perfectly typical for her planet, I think Aegis actually plans to try getting elected, Rose is licitly a marquise by marriage and if she's annoyed her monarch yet I haven't heard about it, Amariah's doing diplomacy to witch clans, Cam and Aurora and Sarion haven't taken anything over yet, I guess Juliet is being sort of annexy but I'm taking a leaf out of Stella's book except for Mars read Saturn."

"Okay, sure," he says. "Like, I don't think it's bad necessarily, I just definitely get the impression that you guys are kind of proprietary about your worlds."

"We talk about jurisdiction and not stepping on each other's toes and so on, and we do feel entitled to name them, but that's pretty much just to cooperate more effectively. If Sarion never recovers enough to take care of her world, she'll let us help. If Golden's husband kicks it and she has to abdicate in her daughter's favor, we'll help Elspeth. We don't have it worked out yet what we're going to do about worlds that haven't got Bells in when ours are running smoothly. Especially since it's not impossible that the other worlds will have Bells crop up in them later. I have no clue what we'd do if we found a very small Bell, come to think of it, it's not impossible, Shell Bell found Milliways when she was six."

"...Or, like, a world that's doing fine without you guys," Tony suggests, "I'm pretty sure that's theoretically possible."

"Yeah, sure, one of those we'd want to, like, talk to it, set up trade and a Janepoint and so on, but we wouldn't have to run it if it was really fine and populated by happy peaceful immortals."

"Do you know what you'd do if somebody popped up in one of your worlds who was better at running it than you are?"

"Would probably depend on the world and the other person. If somebody popped up in my Origin who was honestly a better person for the job, I'd probably move, there's like seventy worlds hooked into Downside with no Bells, I checked them, I could go set up there. If somebody showed up who could do all our jobs put together better than us, we'd, I don't know, read a lot, get kind of antsy, I'd probably start looking for a boyfriend on purpose around then."

"A boyfriend to, what, distract you from the excruciating boredom of not running a universe?" he teases.

"Yes!"

He laughs.

"I mean, perhaps I could've settled into something less grandiose if I'd never met the peal, if I were just stuck in a nonmagic world and didn't know there was anything else, maybe I'd go to med school or do engineering like you, I don't know, but now it'd be such a step down."

"That's cute," says Tony. "And possibly unhealthy. But cute."

"Which part of what scenario here would be unhealthy?"

"Uh... it would kind of suck if you couldn't deal with not being world dictator or whatever?"

"We need things to do. We can entertain ourselves, to a point, but I want to accomplish stuff, not just mess around."

"...Isn't that going to really suck in like a thousand years when you don't have any problems left to solve, though?"

"So far we're finding stuff faster than we're accomplishing it!"

"...That's terrible, though!" says Tony. "Either you spend the rest of forever knowing you have so much work to do you will literally never get it all done, or you finish it all and then get bored? Oh my god that's so depressing!"

Pattern laughs. "The work is good, though, the work is fun, never getting it done is only a problem insofar as a lot of the work involves helping people who ideally wouldn't have to wait on us but as long as we're the only game in town we can live with it if they keep coming. And, you know, in the course of all this finding-stuff we are also acquiring more things to do with downtime, I might get antsy but I wouldn't technically be bored with a few million universe's supplies of books and movies and games and people and tourist destinations, you know? They make those faster than we can use 'em up, even boosted for speed. Besides, does your endgame look any less depressing than that, do you think there's literally infinite things to invent?"

"...You know, I haven't thought about it before," he says, "but I actually think I do. I mean, technology isn't just about planting a flag in the laws of physics - it's not about what you can do, it's about what you want to do and what you need to do, and people's wants and needs don't stay static forever. I don't think there's some kind of ceiling on what we can do with technology, and even if there is, if I ever reach the point where I literally can't think of anything else I want to invent because all of the cool shit exists already, I will be totally willing to retire and play with my toys for the rest of ever."

"The fact that people's wants and needs don't stay static applies to us, too," Pattern points out. "People are going to go on having cultural shifts - maybe not as fast once we've got Downside emitting dead people as smoothly as we're hoping and cultural shifts can no longer happen in the form of old people dying, but we'll still have stuff to react to."

"...I don't know, if I were you, I'd be working towards a society that could handle itself without me," he says. "Like, and then I wouldn't abandon it or anything, but the optimal system is the one that's self-maintaining, you know?"

"Sure, I agree," says Pattern. "But that doesn't mean we'll have nothing to do, it just means we'll wind up doing something that's - scaled a little differently. We like inventing things too; we're more magic geeks than engineering ones but I'd consider it a satisfying day's work if I determined that my society could really use, like, a system that sprockles the widgets, and then I concocted one. Especially if for legacy reasons I get to wear a crown while I'm doing it." (Pattern doesn't in fact wear a crown yet; no one has moved to her Saturn so far and she considers it premature.) "Our gig isn't ruling - that's mostly cosmetic and practical. And also vanity. Our gig is finding things that don't work well enough and making them work better."

"Okay, but I dunno, I feel like if that was my goal I would be actively looking forward to eventually having everything work perfectly," he says. "...Man, I'm such an engineer."

"Of course everything working perfectly's the goal," says Pattern. "But exactly what constitutes perfection might change over time."

"Well, then you just need meta-perfection," he suggests.

"That could keep me busy for a long time, figuring that one out."

"Probably, yeah!"

"And I have a long, long time to think about what to do with eternity, anyway."

"Also true," says Tony.

"And we both have a long time to pick up distinguishing features!"

He giggles.

"My world isn't exactly standard Earth, so there's that, I have a Gotham and most places don't. It's just nonstandard in a way unrelated to my pre-pealing backstory."

"A Gotham?"

"It's this city. It's not very pleasant or safe, several Jokers come from there. I think the nearest equivalent elsewhere is New York City, except we also have New York City, it's just not very big or important."

"Oh, huh," says Tony. "Okay. That's weird, to have one city different between the worlds like that."

"I think it's just the one. I mean, there's suburbs, too, but I haven't run into anyone talking about other major geographical or political differences that aren't chalked up to Bell activity."

"That is really weird, which worlds have it and which ones don't?"

"Origin does, Ghosty's original world does, Queenie's original world does. I didn't check all the miscellaneous unbelled Downside-attached worlds for it - Jane?"

[Two of the miscellaneous unbelled Downside-attached worlds have Gothams, the rest don't.]

"Weird," says Tony.

[If Jokers are going to appear in them it won't be soon. One is currently experiencing 1877 and the other one 1908.]

"I guess we have time to figure out what in the world we'll do if we become aware of a baby Joker. I should ask one of the grown ones about that," laughs Pattern.

"I, uh, haven't had a lot of social contact with the Jokers," says Tony, "except at that one party. Would a baby one be some kind of problem?"

"They have terrible dads," says Pattern seriously.

"...Like, 'my misery will make a funny story in ten years' terrible or 'take the kid away right now' terrible?"

"Um, considering how Jokers are, those are not wholly incompatible, but I would pretty much not feel right about not kidnapping any baby Joker of whom I became aware."

"Gotcha," says Tony. "Okay."

"...Now I'm wondering what to do if Jane notifies us of some world's Renée and Charlie getting married. Like, the standard Earth version get divorced. We don't have unhappy childhoods really, but it seems like it would be nice of us to warn that Renée and Charlie."

"...If you did warn them, though, would that mean a you not existing who could've?"

"Presumably, yeah, but, like, all kinds of people could exist who are not existing for good reasons, most saliently it not being a good idea for their theoretical parents to have a kid, and whether 'you are overwhelmingly likely to get divorced' is a good enough reason or not shouldn't necessarily change based on whether they'll get a Bell if they have a kid before doing that. Besides," Pattern shrugs, "Aurora has a twin sister, so maybe they sometimes get a Lexi instead."

"I don't know," says Tony, "if I heard there was a twelve-year-old me about to clone himself, I would, like... probably give him a hug, but I wouldn't stop him. I don't think Sherry'd want me to."

"Okay, but, like - Angela's pregnant. They're probably going to have a bunch of kids because of angel cultural stuff, let's say it's six. And based on what we know about how templates work, that's a very good piece of information for all the other Bell-Joker pairs about how they'd have kids if that happened. I bet Jane doesn't count, although if Angela manages to have a little winged biological Jane I will be super impressed with template attractors, like, as a force in the multiverse. So say Rose meets all of Angela's kids and she doesn't get along so great with kid number three. And say that Rose would've had three kids, but decides to stop at two because she doesn't like Angela's third kid. I think that would be a good thing for Rose to do, to stop at two, even though somebody who presumably likes existing doesn't get to exist a second time. I think it would be good for us to warn a standard Renée and Charlie. But they could decide from there."

"I guess," says Tony. "Man, this shit is complicated."

"And you were worried about me getting bored," scoffs Pattern.

"Bored or depressed!" says Tony. "Don't forget depressed."

"All right, I guess we haven't precluded 'depressed'," laughs Pattern. "But I feel pretty okay so far. Kind of annoyed about the distinguishing features thing but something will crop up eventually."

"I bet it will!" says Tony.

"I really wonder how templates work. It's so peculiar. We all seem to have different sorts of attractors. Like, Atlantis Sherlock and Tony are actually twins, but the Sherlock name appears even without the usual explanation. Our names don't seem to work the same way. My parents even told me once that if I'd been a boy they'd have named me Alexander - I guess that's where Lexi's name came from, but for some reason Cam is named Campbell and not Alexander. And then Rose has a last name that means 'swan' in her pseudo-French but the first name seems to center around the sound."

"And if you look at the Tony-and-Sherlock pairs," says Tony, "it kind of seems like Sherry's the one who matters and we're just along for the ride, and then you have the one Tony who's never had a Sherlock and the one Sherlock who's never had a Tony and Iron Man is basically a Tony but Strat actually was Sherlock Holmes, like, in the 1800s."

"Yeah, I have no idea what's up with that, the way Sherlocks vary so much more," says Pattern, shaking her head. "It's like, you've got the Tony template, being its own thing, and that can work on its own, observe Iron Man. And if you reach into templatespace in a particular way by cloning yourselves, or if you're a twin, then you get a version of Strat, who also works on his own, and the templates sort of know who to be well enough to spot and deliberately emulate fiction about him, which, don't ask me, did Pearl even have access to the books?"

"Nope!"

"So the name can, causally, come from the books, but doesn't have to, it will fly out of nowhere and attach to the template however it can. The template features can, causally, come from deliberate emulation, but they don't have to."

"Yep, sounds about right," says Tony. "...I wonder what happens if a Bell clones herself."

"Probably not a Lexi. Although maybe a Lexi, if genes don't matter that much, she'd just look different, it's not like you could mistake me for Cam. Even Rose looks different from the rest of us without any obvious reason to, she's super pretty. I should wish up a genome sequencing lab and attach Jane to its outputs and have her tell us how we all match up."

Tony laughs. "Well, don't try it," he says. "The cloning thing, I mean. Totally try the gene sequencing."

"Yet you wouldn't stop a twelve-year-old you who was going to try the cloning thing," observes Pattern.

"Yeah, because I know Sherry, and I know the clone would be a Sherry. We don't know who a cloned you would be. And even though it turns out well when it's Sherry, 'for science' is a bad reason to have kids."

"Golden didn't exactly have Elspeth for politics, but she had her when she had her because she needed an explanation for removing one of the Volturi's human servants," Pattern volunteers.

"...That seems kind of sketchy, but I wasn't there, so maybe it was the best idea going," shrugs Tony.

"Well, the alternatives were leaving Elspeth's surrogate mother to die, or delivering some sort of speech to the people-eating paranoid trigger happy vampire rulers of the world about the value of human life."

"Yep. So, best idea going."

"I mean, people have kids because of accident all the time, I'm not sure scientific motivations are worse than 'whoops' and 'whoops' kids routinely turn out fine. I have no imminent plans to clone myself, though."

"I dunno, like, the danger with cloning yourself for science is that if you're doing it for science and not for the kid then you might end up caring about the science more than the kid, or not knowing what to do with them once you've got 'em, and I mean I fully acknowledge that I'm projecting here but it just - it could have been so not worth it."

"I'm not going to produce any kids I don't plan to rear in an appropriate and caring manner, regardless of ulterior motive."

"Well, then maybe you're safe," he says. "But I still don't think you should clone yourself. ...Although come to think of it, that would make a pretty good distinguishing feature."

"It would! But I'm still not going to do it, at least not in the near future. Golden kind of had to have her kid when she was seventeen, that doesn't mean I should even if that were the only reason to avoid it. Even if I was chronologically born twenty-one years ago."

"Being dead makes everything weird," says Tony.

"So weird! My parents took my return with surprising aplomb, really."

"I'm glad!"

"Your parents are dead, right? Did you want them fetched? I haven't heard about you asking but if you asked somebell else or went through Jane directly I might not have been told."

He sighs. "...I don't know, whatever, it's complicated."

"...Don't wanna talk about it?"

"They kind of ignored me for most of my life, so you know, while I'm glad they're not going to stay dead forever, I don't really need them to be dragged out of the afterlife ASAP."

"Okay." Beat. "Rose is going to fetch her Renée soon. She died when Rose was a kid for some reason. None of the rest of us have dead parents."

Tony shrugs.