Milliways is just as quiet and quaint and stars-exploding-out-one-window as before.

There's a sizable contingent of people dressed in white-and-red uniforms drinking and eating and being noisy in one corner, and one old man at the bar.

Valanda considers talking to them but then decides to get paper and a marker from Bar and set himself up in a booth with a sign saying HUMAN DEFENSE MAGE - WILL MAKE THINGS INDESTRUCTIBLE, RATES NEGOTIABLE.

And presumably he has reading material for now.

OId Guy leaves. The party in the corner stays for a while. More people filter through, a few people want things indestructibled - from jewelry to their shoes to fancy technological devices called 'phones'.

"They're just so easy to drop, ya know?" Complains this teenage girl. "And, just, crack, hundreds of bucks gone."

The jewelry's all very easy, the shoes are tricky but a kind of tricky he has lots of practice with.

"What does your phone do and does it use any physical changes of state to do it? Does it have some kind of gears in there or something?" he asks the teenager.

"No, it's all computers and electricity. Not, like, steampunk stuff." The phone is a hand-sized piece of glass and metal. "It's a phone. It does phone things. I guess don't guard it against shocks. 'Cause it needs electricity to work."

"How about I try a temporary, reversible ward and see if that interferes with anything? I'll do the test for no extra charge, then if it works I can set a permanent ward on it. Oh, and is there any reason it would need to be able to get very hot or very cold or do you have access to all of its functions at this temperature?"

"Uh, no. It can do everything at room temperature. Sure, let's try that. How much you gonna want to do the permanent version?"

Valanda tests it. The ward design doesn't seem to interfere with the phone's function at all.

"Ninety imperial rings, thirty rupees, one and a half Kavased, eighteen US dollars, or we can get Bar's help with exchange rates."

"Eighteen bucks?"

She breaks into a wide grin. "That price work for all phones? What about tablets, about - yea big? And laptops, about this big..."

"Do tablets and laptops function in precisely the same way as phones? If they do, then yes, I can do tablets and laptops for the same price."

"They're pretty much the same thing but bigger. You still gonna be here in, hmm, an hour? I gotta make a call." She gestures at the phone. Still grinning.

"I expect I'll spend another few hours here and then rent a room for the night and come back to it after that."

"Well, don't go anywhere and you'll have a big order from me."

She inches over toward the door and opens it and taps the phone and, "Hey, Kenny! Yeah, it's me. No, wait don't hang up, you run an electronics store, right..."

The party of red-and-white uniforms seems to finally be breaking up. They're heading for rooms or the door.

If he doesn't go anywhere, the teenage girl is back with three cardboard boxes full of various electronics on a trolley, and several thousand dollars in cash, in an hour.

What a long and excruciatingly boring and repetitive order. On the other hand, what a huge order from someone he's charging almost double.

He's there and it takes a long time to go through everything but it's more than worth it.

She seems to think so, too. "Unbreakable phone" is a good gimmick. She tells him about her plan to hand people hammers and offer them $100 if they can break it, and when they can't, to sell the unbreakable device at a profit.

They will survive anything a hammer can do to them. He cautions her to be careful of people swinging hammers in the vicinity of things and people that aren't warded, especially swinging them at smooth indestructible things they might slip right off of. Also maybe she'd like her hammers indestructible? Since otherwise they'll be doing a lot of hitting things much harder than they are. Or maybe it'll be good marketing if the hammers break, it's her call, but he'll do hammers cheaper than laptops.

(Later she might find that the warded electronics are hard to take apart if needed and that once taken apart they're no longer indestructible. Valanda doesn't know enough about electronics to guess that anyone would ever do anything of the sort. Luckily they're also vanishingly unlikely to ever need any parts replaced.)

She'll probably notice that eventually. For now, she's happy making this profit.

Business is usual for a while longer.

Until someone potentially familiar but dressed with what seem like cruder clothes - in a very different style (more leather, less cloth) - walks in and looks around, desperately confused but trying his best to hide it.

"Nils! It's good to see you! Did you get a good price for the metals?"

Valanda notices how different the clothes are and wonders if that's because they're from different places. Maybe his colony will diverge that much from the mainland. He should ask Nils how far apart the places where he bought this outfit and his other one are.

"Metals sound profitable, yes. Do I know you? Because I think I do not. What even is this place?"

"Valanda, human defense mage, I had access to cheaper metals than you and wanted toothbrushes and waterspouts. You also paid me to ward your... where is your necklace?"

What the fuck happened to Nils? It can't be good. Is it going to happen to Valanda? Is it specific to Tileworld? Will he be safe if he just never goes to Tileworld? Lost memories, maybe lost property, maybe it's some awful way magic works in Tileworld.

"I must be dreaming. Or else you're trying to trick me somehow. Do give me evidence I'm wrong?"

A napkin appears on the bar. They might not notice it.

"You're Nils the merchant from Tileworld, you think enslaving children is appalling, you... had... a necklace of unbreakable magic crystals. Have you forgotten Milliways?"

"I am Nicholas, the merchant from Cloudbank. Enslaving children is appalling, what the fuck. Did I eat some bad mushrooms or something."

Someone at the bar notices the napkin. "Hey, you two! Bar says there's more than one of some people. So calm down, yeah?"

"More than one of me. Riiiight."