"I can tell you what the stars are made of and in fact can even confirm that the other stars in this world are unoccupied!" Cam says. "However, I'm not sure that knowing they're mostly hydrogen and helium will help with the project of ruling them all."

"...the crane that's apparently-not-your-familiar said that's where you came from," Finankar says. He's fallen in step with them because his counterpart is here so why shouldn't he be.

"I got the sense he was oversimplifying," Mitros agrees. 

"Dramatically," Maitimo says. "The stars are other suns; around them orbit other planets, which you can definitely colonize, and you're human so your population grows swiftly by our standards and you'll have an empire spanning the galaxy, my lady Queen, if the supply problems that'll invite do not deter you. There are also other dimensions, worlds not accessible from this one by travel in any direction, and we're from one of those. My father invented a way to hop between them and we hopped here."

"The crane's a machine like the spaceship," Cam says. "I just made it look like a crane because you have talking animals here and I figured it would blend in, how'd I do?"

"What exactly are you non-humans?"

"I am impressed by the crane," Mitros says, "it's a very persuasive crane! And I am even more impressed by, if also a little concerned about, the apparent capacity to make machines that speak and explain and oversimplify."

"It doesn't think," Maitimo says reassuringly. "Cam can make people of my species but not yours and he cannot make thinking machines."

Mitros nods. "Immortality?"

"Not yet," Findekáno says, "we're trying, sorry."

"Improved recall and working memory?"

"Our species has metal in our brains, and when we invented those things we invented them to work through the metal in our brains," Maitimo explains. "So we have those ourselves but can't share them, I felt terribly guilty about that even before realizing there was a version of me here. How do you know everyone?"

Mitros grins. "You know, I am actually not sure I would have benefitted if that'd been an achievable ambition. I abandoned it in favor of ruling the world, or are you doing both?"

"I found cause to abandon that ambition too," Maitimo says, "at least temporarily."

"The crane didn't compose its own words, we were talking through it same way we're talking through these things now," says Cam, waving his computer. "It's also loosely possible that you could get the kind of immortality I have if you travel to their world or mine first, it doesn't work here but it might not just fail to work for you."

Mitros glances at Iobel. "We might consider that, then, when we're less needed here. How long would the trip be?"

"No time at all. We took a while to get to you because we landed at a random point in the universe, but the worldleaper we used to get there will act as a beacon."

They file into the palace. Mitros dismisses the guards. The newcomers aren't exactly safe to be around but the guards don't make them any moreso. Several people should keep ranged spells for unconsciousness charging outside the door, just in case. Antir lands on his shoulder. He murmurs to her that she should go meet Maitimo. 

So she lands on Maitimo's shoulder instead. Maitimo's face remains perfectly relaxed but Mitros can tell he's startled. 

"All right," Mitros says. "Can I get you anything to eat or drink?"

"Stop me if I'm treading on a hospitality obligation of some kind but I can make arbitrary matter and that includes food," Cam says, raising a hand. "Can I get you anything?"

"Persimmons."

Cam hands her a persimmon.

Mitros laughs delightedly. "Chocolate fudge cakes from the little store near Iobel's old place, or is that insufficiently specific?"

"If you gave me the name of the place I could probably do those too!"

He names it.

Plate of fudge cakes, enough to go around.

Mitros stares adoringly at his wife and lets Antir do the monitoring of reactions in the room while everyone eats. Finankar has noticed what Mitros is up to and is amused, though keeping a straight face. Maitimo has figured it out and disapproves strongly but is hiding it almost perfectly. Findekáno's also leaning towards disapproval. Cam seems carefree. 

And Iobel is watching everybody thoughtfully and enjoying her persimmon. "So arbitrary matter, but does that get you crane machines all by itself?"

"Oh, no, we've also got more advanced technology on top of that - I'm not sure how to cash it out in terms of years, since it depends what you focus on and with what development resources and also whether you're an Elf, Elves are kinda slow at things - these ones are better than average - but anyway much better tech, you're many prerequisites behind from what I can tell."

"What do those prerequisites look like," Mitros says. "with an eye mainly towards improved quality of living, disaster relief, and life expectancies?"

"First of all you need electricity, which is basically tame lightning," Cam says. "That does all kinds of good stuff. The other intermediate steps between electricity and drones like the crane mostly don't touch on those priorities, though."

"Okay!" Mitros says. "Do you happen to have a standard approach to giving worlds a substantial technological boost or should we spend the next few hours outlining one?"

"We do not yet have such a thing, you may choose to feel slighted that we came unprepared or delighted to have design input as you prefer." Next to the part of his computer display that is producing translations as the Marlatians speak, he produces a notetaking window and starts an outline.

And Mitros sits back in his seat. And frowns. "Okay," he says to Maitimo, "I am actually really disappointed in you, what happened -"

"Later," Maitimo says wearily. 

"Huh?"