"They're - computer technology has not advanced in the way that was promised in the nineteen hundreds and the two thousands," says Linyabel. "It's a cryptography and security problem, principally - I can't remember off the top of my head if you already have computers that are more portable than the average comconsole in my world, but you soon will, assuming a similar tech track. Our software is smarter, though, and I condensed the necessary cryptography and other equipment into this," she displays her pen, "which also does gesture recognition and three-dimensional holoprojection into the air. The simple model - low-security crypto that will still more than suffice against anything you're dealing with unless you have data mutants, cabochon-style nib, etcetera - you might be able to make yourself with a small handful of technological jumps I could help you get. But while the idea of using a turn-of-the-twenty-first-century portable computer fills me with dread I imagine it doesn't look like such a large jump coming from the other direction. So you might not consider it worth the trouble."

"...That sounds like the kind of thing it would be useful to have the plans for socked away in a database somewhere for when cryptography gets to the point it was when you invented them."

"Keeping up with the cryptanalysis is actually not the problem. The crytography keeps up. It just gets bigger. The real breakthrough was how I shrank it, and you'll have - Bar, an example of a relevant portable computer, late nineteen hundreds?" Bar shows them a laptop, presented open, and then vanishes it again. "You'll have those, which aren't as snazzy as my pens, but you also won't have the kinds of hacks that necessitated the arms race."

"Well, your pens are at least aesthetically interesting..."

"Thank you. I wanted mine to look like jewelry to a casual observer. They come in different colors, and Miles wanted one with a pointed tip - purest vanity and the hardest optics project I've ever pulled off, but they come with pointed tips now as an option."

"Vanity as cause for scientific breakthroughs. Well, I've heard of worse reasons."

"Well, he's very cute when he offers me engineering challenges."

"Aw, does he do that very often?"

"Not too frequently. I'm in a non-consumer-grade field at the moment - pens are down to occasional software upgrades and some delegated design, marketing, and fabrication work, not an ongoing concern in most of my working time."

"What field?"

"Neuroscience. I'm not the neuroscience expert in my operation, I hired someone, but I know enough to provide him software support and evaluate additions to the lab, and I'm picking up more."

"What are you trying to do with it?"

"Eventually? Uploading."

"Oooooh."

"It's a long way off. But pens make a lot of money and I am throwing it at the project as hard as I can."

"Sensible of you."

"We're hoping to find someone in Milliways with some kind of distributable immortality."

"Any luck? The haut have been trying to achieve biological immortality for centuries and have barely manged, well, 'centuries'."

"Not so far. Magic seems more likely than technology, though."

"Wouldn't that be nice. I'm planning to camp out in here for a few weeks at least, see what I can find. I'm certainly hoping for magic."

"We've met people with magic! Nothing we could take home, so far, but still magic."

"Oh? What kind?"

"Various. Some of them were single-task, more like the mutations from our world than the typical fantasy wizard, but some were more general. There was one who was some kind of dragon which came with several different kinds of species specific magic--like shapeshifting, which was how they could fit in the bar at all--and also a more generally practicable kind that only works in the world they're from."

"How disappointing that none of it was exportable. They sound interesting, at least."

"One of them might have been exportable--not everyone could do it even in the universe it came from, and we can't be sure that it wasn't just that we personally couldn't do it, not that no one from outside that universe could."