Maybe a hundred million - that's inexact but right order of magnitude - and to the extent anyone's typically-appearing for their species sure, I'm average height for a man, paler than most people, etcetera, but not a real outlier.

A hundred million. That's - I hope you realize what a fantastic advantage it is, to have that many people - with talent normally distributed - what things does your world have that we don't seem to?

Nothing's really obvious so far besides servantmaking stuff, but servantmaking stuff is a big deal, we use it for a lot of things. Having a big population's pretty nice, but we do keep dying and have a lot of problems you seem to have just skipped so I'm not sure it's as much of a head start as it sounds like.

Yeah, tell me about the dying. Does anyone know why it happens? Has it always?

It has always - to animals in our world too - there's injuries and a jillion kinds of diseases, both of which we're getting better at managing and treating, and if nothing gets us early then after like ninety or a hundred years we just wear out and our hearts stop.

Shouldn't happen in Valinor, at least, which gives me some more time to figure out what's happening at all and then stop it. I wonder how to even start researching a process that's unobservable here, though.

I think a lot of problem-solving endeavors will need to wait to be planned precisely till we know how accessible the Valar find the world, that's what it's sounded like - somewhere on the spectrum between 'sorry, Kib, welcome to Valinor, at least it's pretty' and 'why yes we can be emergency services for everyone about to die of anything anywhere in your world now that you have alerted us to the problem'.

Yes, but - have you heard the saying 'none, one, and infinity are perfectly reasonable numbers, but two is ridiculous?'

...In a programming context. Suppose it applies here too. My world might not even be worst off.

So I'm going to get started on death.

Excellent. Can I help?

Maitimo thinks this is a biology problem. I'm not sure, but it's at least one obvious avenue. We're made out of cells. Do you know if you are?

I don't, but if you need some blood or something to see what it's made of I don't need it all.

That'd be great. I don't have anything to collect it with, the palace workshops aren't as good as the ones in my home - perhaps you can come over later this week when I've developed a list of all the tests I'd want to runt through, and we can do it all in one go? How about Elenya? That's the day after tomorrow. I also want to learn the language you're speaking but you can teach me while we're running tests.

Day after tomorrow works for me. He has paper on him, because of course he does; he writes this down.

Nice guy.

I cannot tell if you're serious.

What? I like him. He's going to attack the entire problem of death because he heard some people he's never met before are dying. That's awesome.

I think he's an extraordinary person. But he didn't ask your name or little niceties like that so lots of people do not in fact find him very nice.

You told him my name.

Yes, he asked me for a three-sentence version of everything more interesting about you than the language - which he finds very interesting, he'd probably have kept you up all night if it hadn't turned out you come from a planet of dying people - which is a very efficient way to get to the heart of matters. But 'nice' doesn't always leap to mind.

Well, I like him.

Maitimo beams at him.