"I mean that if you take the goal of 'colonize space' to be 'put humans on more planets than Earth', which people on Earth tend to when they're discussing it theoretically, it has been done. There are something like a thousand inhabited planets across all the dimensions we know about, and plenty of room for expansion."

"Well," says Aurora. "This is gonna be interesting. Anyway, I'm also motivated by alleviating crowding on Earth itself. And any other crowded planets I run into."

"What's gonna be interesting?"

"Belling in a world with lots of humans all over the place. Amariah's looking at something a little similar because Alethia's a worldsheaf too, but if any of her subworlds have the tech or the magic for space colonization absent her help I haven't heard about it. I think Angela's universe has other human colonies besides the one she grew up on but she's being very leisurely about ascending on her home planet, I don't think she's touched anything else yet. Aegis's world has some aliens, and humans are just starting to colonize. Syntropy has aliens too, in addition to all the talking trees-and-stars-and-cats-and-stuff. Juliet's got to deal with several thousand species of demon. But everyone else is pretty much looking at the contents of the planet they started on as far as anyone knows, so this exact setup is new. I get to be a template for the next Bell in the situation 'unbeknownst to Earth, there are humans all over the place'."

Matilda laughs.

"Brilliance wasn't able to tell me a whole lot about the whole interdimensional civilization situation, he didn't have a great vantage point. What's it like? Why'd Earth get left out even after you joined up with the TSAB?"

"Left out of what?"

"The interdimensional civilization thing. It's not common knowledge and so far none of the miscellaneous presidents and prime ministers I've talked to knew magic existed. I didn't know till I met Brilliance."

"Well... yes," says Matilda, "exactly. Earth has hardly any mages. So of course the TSAB doesn't bother the rest of them; they're not going around creating dimensional disturbances."

"Is magic not common knowledge among non-mages in general? Is the TSAB just a free-floating enforcement organization that isn't associated with some kind of more civilian governance?"

"We're based on a planet called Mid-Childa. But the governing authority of Mid-Childa is vastly smaller than the jurisdiction of the TSAB. You know, come to think of it, I think Earth might be the only planet with a large enough population of non-mages that it's feasible for them not to know about magic. It's much more common everywhere else."

"Huh. Well, I'm gonna fix that," shrugs Bella, "do you want to, like, appoint a liason to help me not mismanage mentioning TSAB-relevant things to the general population? Bells are good at lots of things but it seems generally a good idea for us to outsource heavy PR and diplomacy when we can."

"Fix... what, exactly?"

"Magic not being generally known. I'm not just pulling a Stella - she visibly terraformed Mars and put a sign with her email address on it in front of the probes when NASA flipped - I'm working with Earthly authorities on presentation and timing, might as well throw in TSAB authorities too. I mean, it's obviously possible to be a mage and not know it for at least seventeen years," she gestures at herself and Lexi, "so you might find yourself with more to do Earthwise than you currently have unless you just want to leave it all to me?"

"Leave what all to you?" she asks patiently.

"...Let me back up some. I'm going to go public on Earth as soon as I have a strategy. About magic, about my interest in doing useful things with it, about the availability of the Rainbowsand planetary colony. Now that I know that there is a TSAB, it's probably going to come up in conversation too. I don't know what your first contact policy is like for large planets rather than individual mages who happen to have been harassed by pirates, so I am inviting your organization to have input towards and/or participate in that segment of my going-public."

"We don't really have a first-contact policy for large planets; it hasn't come up. I'll pass it on to some people and see what happens."

"Okay, thanks. Earthside politicians move slow enough that I don't expect to be on TV in the next month anyway."

"Politicians everywhere."

"Rose ignores hers, but she mostly has low-tech monarchs. Golden usurped a shadow government and inherited all their spooky influence. Glass was already married into royalty when we found her. Me and Pattern and Stella and so on have to deal with," vague gesture, "Earth stuff from scratch. Well, Stella has a Libby - and Pattern imported one and Golden resurrected one, but imported and previously dead Libbies don't come with sinister networks so I'm not sure how much use the latter two get out of theirs. And Juliet has one but Juliet's working on demons before human stuff."

"What is a Libby and what sorts of sinister networks do they usually come with?"

"A Libby," says Bella, adding a purple cluster of coin colors to the chart, "is this template of whom we know four. In Aurum she's Golden's husband's biological mother; she hasn't matched up with the correct guy to get copies of Golden's husband anywhere else, though. Which is kind of a pity because Golden's kid is awesome. Anyway - you know what, I should probably actually check Rainbow for a Libby. I wasn't expecting you, maybe there's one of her too." Port?

The teleport fails.

"Can't port to her right now, but there could still be one who's in the bathroom or something," shrugs Bella. "I'll try brainphoning later, that's probably a better idea anyway. Anyway, they are really good at figuring out what people are useful for. They make good personnel officers."

"Sounds handy."