"Tons, and we keep finding Ardas. We do look for them specifically, but they're very repetitive."

"Earth's aren't repetitive?"

"Earths are all different! There's the one with demons and stuff attached to it, there's the one with vampires, there's the one with wizards, there's the one with magical girls, there's the one where everyone is kinky and there's mages and psions, there's the one where everyone can turn into animals since they met aliens who knew how to do that, there's the one which founded a galactic federation with a ton of aliens, and there's this one. Earths just love having different magic systems or equivalents and being relentlessly similar anyway."

"Do they have all the same people?"

"Some of them, not all. And sometimes people show up in different places and times. For instance, if I'm born on an Earth I'm usually a white American, but we found one of me who's black and was born in 1789 England. She's the wizard one."

"This refers to - skin color?"

"Yeah it's kind of a thing."

"How do Elves decide what faces to take?"

"Oh, ah, I was not a computer to start with, I had a body. This portrait resembles it. It met with some bad luck."

"If you want a robot body after we save the universe I could see what I can do. They have some things going for them, like hands."

"Since you wanted more downer in your life I'm like ninety percent sure that he's going to insist on instead ceasing to exist once that's a thing that can actually happen and only casually forks himself now because the Enemy still has all the copies he wants."

"You know, I actually think I'm oversupplied on the gloom. Doom, still useful because it can let us think of new things to protect against."

"Sure thing."

Thor returns about an hour later. "There were Asgardian survivors," he announces.

"Oh, awesome. Do they need a place to stay -"

"I put them up at a motel in Tempe, Arizona. It was the first place I thought of that was not very chaotic at present."

"Put them up at - how many -"

"Sixteen."

"Right. Okay."

"Are they okay, do you want me to heal them?"

"None of them were grievously injured. They were encouraged at the thought that we would be erasing this timeline entirely."

She nods. "It occurs to me that I should ask you if there's a good reason not to go to Jotunheim looking for help?"

"To Jotunheim? Why would you - ah, I don't especially recommend that. Loki tried to blow it up."

"...of course he did, I'm glad I asked first. Was your Odin's original plan also to inculcate a frost giant royal baby with Asgardian values and interests and then attempt to emplace him upon their throne, detecting no room for flaw in this sequence of projected events including the parenting part?"

"Loki objected to the plan before I think it was spelled out in all its detail, but approximately. Did you stage a coup when you learned?"