"Y'know," says the Joker, "it really, really does."

Rose laughs. "What of the Sherlocks and Tonies?"

"They..." Glass contemplates this, nibbling her lip. "Come out of the same mold. Their templates are making their circumstances do most of the work of pulling them into shape, instead of making them turn out the same way in spite of where they wind up; that might even be why so many of them come from that one worldfamily. If you kidnapped a baby would-be Tony and brought her up in atypical circumstances I have no idea what would happen, but I'm sure Harley's going to be one of you."

"Mm, that's good to know."

"Hey," says Cam, "perhaps you can answer the age old question: why am I girls?"

Queenie giggles.

Golden wanders by. "I hear you are reading templates."

"I heard the same thing," says Pattern. "How come we weren't invited?"

"I was looking at the Jokers first," explains Glass. "...Huh, Pattern, you and the Joker are from the same world but you are not at all attached. I think metacausally you being from the same place was almost an afterthought."

"Not surprised," says the Joker.

"Yeah, me either, what with us never having met and barely interacting," says Pattern. "Can you answer the age-old question of which Bell is the template? I act like it's me, but I don't have a mental opacity..."

"...You, and Golden, and Stella all have claims on different layers to being the template," says Glass slowly. "On the - the top layer it's Golden. Then Stella a layer down from there - they're weirdly interdependent, and then we all branch out from them in a dozen directions. And then - you're kind of an afterthought here too, I'm sorry, I can't think of a better way to put it - you're close to template baseline but - backwards. You're not the original Bell, you're the modal Bell. You're very close to the essence of Bells but we didn't start there, we started there-and-there in a weird confusing metacausal way -" She waves at Golden and Stella - "and the contingent extras got replaced as we propagated to other worlds."

(Aww.)

"Dammit."

"There's nothing stopping you from acquiring features going forward by ordinary causal means," adds Glass, "but I don't see a particular attractor for it."

"If I'm the - or a - template, then why do I have the only unique significant other?"

"That... is... a hard question," says Glass, squinting at her. "It might be easier if I got a look at him. Without, my guess is... something like... okay, some templates are attached to other templates. The Obadiah template is attached to Tony, for instance," she realizes aloud, "Bells' parents are attached to us, Bats are attached to Jokers, in each case one template is leading and the other is following. Bells and Sherlocks-and-Tonies, and Bells and Jokers, are sort of attracted to each other - I don't mean in the obvious sense, I mean in the template sense - but there's not a leader-follower relationship except in the obvious causal sense that Bells make and follow through with more plans. Edward is attached to you, but not strongly enough for the rest of us to have copies, and his template doesn't independently travel, insisting on cropping up in lots of places. I think that could change - although what 'change' means when this isn't working by anything I'd recognize as time I can't tell you - but right now he's a weak template attached to a very strong template, and that means he would only show up again if a stronger template didn't take his - place."

The Joker snorts.

Golden casts an exasperated look in her employee's direction.

"I don't know what template strength means," Glass hastens to add. "Not with so few examples, not when I'm so new at this."

"Do you see anyone here who has a strong template and isn't duplicated so far?" asks Stella.

"We're the strongest template here. The Jokers are second, I don't know how to interpret the gaps but I don't think it's a particularly wide margin... Sherlocks-and-Tonies-as-sets are next, the singlets aren't particularly strong-looking to me... Actually, no, Sherlock singlet looks like there might be something major on a high layer, but this particular sort of Sherlock singlet doesn't have a lot of force. Libbies are strong but not as strongly magnetized to us as either of those, but they are a little bit... and also to Sherlocks..." She has to look harder to get the other results. "Chainsaws, Annas, Matildas, all reasonably strong templates, not too attached to us... Matildas have a weak magnetism to Jokers, I think Harley was slated to meet one, should keep an eye on that world..." She squints at Lexi, where she's hanging out with Liselen. "We might find more of us with twins. If we do they'll be Lexis." She scans the room again. "...And I'm not sure, but I think... Kanim and Lazarus could appear again."

[Hey Tilly, Glass thinks a Matilda's going to appear in the world Elspeth got Harley out of. Should any intervening happen?]

(Jellybean grins a little.)