"That works. I'm going to get back to work on checking whether the Doom was real, I guess, that was an interesting project."

"If the bug doesn't time-sync and he comes down what should I say, anything?"

"Uh, depends. Probably nothing."

"Okay."

Kiss and upstairs. To check whether a machine learning algorithm can sort Doomed and non-Doomed people, to start with, and then go from there.

Cam gets recommendations on books from the new Arda about magic but conjures them up in computerized form rather than have a stack of them sitting incriminatingly nearby.

Magic: comes in music, which can get dramatic effects very fast if you're good, and artifact, which takes years to design and months to create. The process the way the Elves do it requires native telepathy, though apparently Dwarves do without. This world's Silmarils are magic; you can't kill a Balrog without magic weapons, and even with them it's suicide; the major Elven cities have enchanted walls to slow down enemies.

Maybe he can learn to do the music kind. Do they have sheet music? He can learn to read their sheet music and write something that will translate the one kind into the other...

They have sheet music. The notation is fairly straightforward.

Cool. He can kill a while writing a nice notation conversion program.

And eventually he'll come downstairs. "Morning," he says to Cam and to Bar, and then, "breakfast for two again? And lunch, if it's convenient?"

Cream of wheat loaded with berries! Bran muffins! Mystery picnic basket.

Cam doesn't say anything.

"Findekáno spoke very highly of you," he says, "and it would probably be psychologically healthy for him to interact with people who aren't me - are you going to be down here all day? Is that even a meaningful question, is time consistently inconsistent in some pattern we haven't noticed yet -"

"If he wants to find me he can send me a computer message."

"Thanks! I'll tell him." And back upstairs.

Cam sends the contents of this eventuality to his Maitimo.

Huh, okay.  - computer can reliably tell Doomed and non-Doomed people apart, but it's not picking up on, like, a convenient Doom block of code in our heads, and it could be a false positive, there are some famous mistakes in this field that come from assuming the thing you're looking for is the only difference - might just be noticing people feeling upset -

Try the kids?

It hasn't made any mistakes yet in classifying, including kids.

They'd be less likely to know what was going on, but I suppose they could've picked up the ambient mood, even the under-threes have chips there and I don't know how much people let stray emotions fly around...

Do you know how the Doom was delivered, was it announced at the instant it was - put in place, if it was -

The impression I got was that announcing it constituted placing it but I'm not certain.

Thanks. Might ask you for more samples at some point.

I still think it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on the main bar, so you might have to come get 'em if Edie and Tyelcormo don't come in.