[I mean, there are lots of worlds and worldsheaves - universes and collections thereof, not planets - of which this one and the dimensions that it is possible to reach with local magic is only one sheaf, and I have been to some more of them and met people from more still.]

[And these people included alternate-universe versions of me? Who made a good enough impression on you that you then decided to see if you could dig up a local copy?]

[The four of you work for four of me. There are more of me than of you so far, though, although I don't know if anyone else has actually run sweeps of their worlds for copies, the others ran into theirs through more coincidental means.]

[And what is it that you do?]

[Have you noticed all those bewildered newspaper articles about oncologists being able to take simultaneous vacations all of a sudden? Among other things, but I think that made the biggest media splash.]

[I mean in the context of me working for you. What is it that you do?]

[Oh, the other Libbies are on the books as personnel officers. Bells take over the world, is the concise way to put it - there's nuance, some of us don't actually do that, but that's the basic idea.]

[I see. Maybe now you'd like to explain what you mean by 'magic'.]

[Do you even know about the local kind? Stella's Libby and Juliet's James knew about their local kinds. Pretty sure Slipstick knew about her original world's too although she's since moved worlds, not sure about the Aurum one.]

[Assume that I don't.]

[I'm going to take that as a "yes, I had my suspicions, but I feel like seeing how much you want me to know". Or possibly a "yes, my aunt is a mage, but...". Okay, well, local magic exists, there are people who have mana capacities and can do magic; I'm one of those, but I lean on it less than my offworld kinds lately. Apparently the word for us is "mage". There are also artificial Devices of intelligence levels varying from "amoeba" to "smart human" who can do or help mages do magic. I know less about the local system than I'd like because until the other day the only people I knew who had any were me, an equally underinformed sister, and a Device whose info is four hundred years out of date, but I recently found a Matilda-template in the Time-Space Administration Bureau and we've been talking, I bet she'll give me books on it if I ask nicely. Would you rather have this conversation in person?]

[Not particularly. I'm actually kind of busy right now. Go on. What can mages do? What can you do?]

[If you're busy we can talk later. Around the time I met the rest of me I had managed to conjure sweet potatoes with the use of mana. Also does flying, miscellaneous destruction, defense, conjured nifty magical girl outfits, teleportation, some stuff in the category my Device calls "matter manipulation", I need to ask Matilda for those books to give you any more details. My offworld magic to a first approximation does everything. Although I probably shouldn't resurrect any dead people until the interworld computer network's emergent intelligence wakes up again.]

[I'm not too busy to talk, or I wouldn't be talking. So with your approximate omnipotence, you take over planets? And you're, what, looking to hire me to help?]

[Maybe. I mean, maybe you are unlike the other Libbies and do not wish to be somebell's personnel officer. Just thought it was worth looking.]

[If you came bearing another Libby to back up your claims, I would find your offer a lot more tempting.]

[I can't produce one right now because Jane is down, and she's the one who does on-demand interworld travel. Unfortunately, she also does interworld time synchronization. This has happened before, although then the error message she threw was a lot less worrying; it could be hours or years before she comes back, I got lucky last time but some other places were spun off for over a decade. The old-fashioned way involves an interworld bar that appears according to thus-far-unfathomable whim. If you open a door and it goes to a bar instead of where it was supposed to go, have a look in the backyard and you'll see the Belltower; you could go in there and leave a note saying that if Stella, Juliet, Golden, or Pattern happens to see it you'd appreciate them forcing the door to Rainbow to introduce you to one of your alts. I'll let you know if I find a door, too.]

[Thanks for the tip.]

[No problem. I can produce, like, illusory displays of all four of them, and mostly-secondhand information and snippets of conversation therewith from talking to other Bells about them, and common knowledge about the template from the Friends Of Bells book we maintain, but I haven't made close personal friends with any.]

[By all means, produce those things. But not right now. Say, tomorrow?]

[Sure, whenever, I don't sleep and I don't have any meetings until Thursday.]

[You don't sleep,] she repeats.

[Yeah. Standard Bell superpower that gets slapped on with everything else cool when we get access to the offworld magic. I can sleep, I just usually have better things to do.]

[You know what would also make your offer more tempting? If I could get some of this lovely magic you're throwing around.]

[You just want me to standard-no-sleep you? I can do that.]