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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.
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bellfounding
tearingup
[So I'll talk to the band and see what they say about moving, and they'll say no, and we'll play what was probably going to be our last concert anyway - do you want tickets?]
bellfounding
[Sure, why not. I'm not sure about plural, though, I don't know who to invite. What's the band's name? I can see if anyone I know is familiar, since probably you don't want me to bring a Joker.]
bellfounding
[Or, for that matter, the one who is six and a half feet tall, bright red, horned, tailed, winged, and inclined to forgetting that pants exist.]
tearingup
[I think I want to hear more about the other one's trouser problems. Does he forget that they exist or does he just not care?]
bellfounding
[You know, I'm actually not sure, he just doesn't default to wearing them. He'll put them on when reminded, sometimes he remembers by himself. Probably has to do with the part where him and the dragon lived on an island all by themselves for several thousand years.]
tearingup
[...Yeah, that'll do it. Wait, does he walk around naked all the time...? I am getting the most incredible mental images.]
bellfounding
[I don't really hang out with him while he's being naked,] Bella says. [I'm sure he would be thrilled to demonstrate if you need something clarified.]
bellfounding
The King of Sweden gets up to go to the bathroom; Bella has the brainspace to start another side conversation. [Hey Slipstick.]
