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Bella's public facing email address (eor@eor.eor; many of the Bells are following similar protocols to Stella's, for web presence, and in Origin the relevant empire is called the Empire of Rings, after Saturn's feature) gets a lot of mail. Jane used to help with it; without Jane, there is still extremely smart filtering going on, and a program no one has noticed at work yet auto-responds to almost everything with canned but tweakable responses and links to the imperial website.
This still leaves a lot of emails every day she has to deal with herself, although some of them allow her to make gentle adjustments to Jane's program to handle future inquiries of the same kind. The number goes up over time. Slipstick's still on the lookout for a suitable secretary type person to help out. Until then, Bella leans on super-speed.
She has had to address the rumors about being able to raise the dead. It's a frustrating, narrow line to walk, between lying, explaining too much, and getting everyone's hopes up. Currently the FAQ has a section that looks like this:
Can you raise the dead?
Eventually, I'd like to be able to do that for everyone's departed loved ones. I'm working on it as fast as I can, but today all I can deploy are public health measures and, on a smaller scale, immortality, for people who are currently alive.
I heard you were dead and brought yourself back to life / I heard someone else was dead and you brought them back to life!
This is an exaggeration. I'm immortal; if I suffer lethal damage, the thing I do is called 'torching', not 'dying'. The same is true of other people who I've made able to torch.
I want to be able to torch.
There's a waiting list, but this is something I can do. Just fill out the form and my staff will process your application; if everything checks out the current wait time for getting into a torching batch is about four months.
I don't want to torch, but I want to stop aging.
This is also available, but the waiting list is longer; apply here.
Are you sure you can't raise the dead?
I really, really wish I could do that for everyone who asks. I maintain a waiting list of people whose resurrection has been particularly requested so that as soon as I have this capability I'll know who to use it for first.
bellfounding
bellfounding
She laughs. [How come you're curious about my lurking habits? Were you worried I was going to suddenly appear after you replaced your ill-fated tea?]
tearingup
[I have actually had multiple cups of tea since you left,] he informs her, with a hint of a laugh. [No, it's just - Rayne stormed out in a huff yesterday and I've been feeling watched ever since, I'm trying to narrow it down between 'paranoia about magical empress with lapsed sense of personal boundaries' and 'paranoia about morally depraved ex-friend'.]
bellfounding
[I have not been spying on you,] she says. [At the risk of doing nothing to improve the situation, I would not have to lurk anywhere nearby to do it if I wanted to.]
bellfounding
[Do you think he's going to do something unfortunate? I can jump you through the queue to colonize Saturn or something.]
bellfounding
[Enchanted. Populated with a designer ecosystem, outside the habitats. People tend not to choose to move away from it, so far.]
bellfounding
[I don't know about use, but it can accommodate one. It's not designed to require much from its occupants; Saturn is post-scarcity.]
bellfounding
[Of course you did.] And a passport appears in his lap.
Empire of Rings passports look about like normal ones, in blue-white with her ring symbol on the cover, but they're attached to their persons with magic, not by fallible photographic evidence; it doesn't even have his name in it, just pages for stamps. [Welcome to the Empire. If you can't get to a transit office by yourself, the torching pamphlet I gave you has a bit in the back about arranging a pickup. Or you might catch me at a free moment and I could give you a ride.]
Empire of Rings passports look about like normal ones, in blue-white with her ring symbol on the cover, but they're attached to their persons with magic, not by fallible photographic evidence; it doesn't even have his name in it, just pages for stamps. [Welcome to the Empire. If you can't get to a transit office by yourself, the torching pamphlet I gave you has a bit in the back about arranging a pickup. Or you might catch me at a free moment and I could give you a ride.]
bellfounding
[We are talking about whether it makes sense to give me a Nobel Prize given that I had all this magic that's not generally available.]
bellfounding
[Yes, but not magic, so I don't think it's very fair. Although, ironically, I could use the money.]
tearingup
[Not much I can do for you there, unless you want to bribe him with my autograph,] he says whimsically.
