"Hmmm - if someone else did it I would have had to be pretty young and they would have had to have a lot of leverage - or known about chip duplicating or had good amnestics, so they could get me alone and have a lot of tries at pulling it off - or in my society which is not fucked up, I can imagine an evil me deciding that a non-evil me would be likelier to end up ruling the world, and that whatever aspects of continuity of identity he cared about survived becoming not-evil, and swearing something carefully worded enough to forget having done this and why -

 - or, if whatever he cared about didn't survive becoming not-evil, could be time-limited -

- none of this is plausible, I'm just being maximally paranoid -"

"Could see if we can learn to read the presence or absence of oaths on chips."

"Worth a look."

"Have we got samples of known populations to try?"

"I can name you a couple thousand people who definitely are under - safe, reasonable - long-term oaths and a couple thousand who aren't?"

"Yeah, that's what I mean."

"Want me to give you names or write up a list so you can do it in one batch -"

"List is preferable."

"'Kay."

And he settles onto the couch and writes a list. It takes a while. Cam might have magic songs up and running first.

Well, here is something that sure seems to look like playable sheet music in Earth notation.

"Shall we give it a go?"

"Let's get Edie in here but yes."

So Maitimo asks the two of them to come in and they've been productively distracting themselves from moping about this stupid mess and are happy to come babysit the bar while magic is attempted.

And Cam sets a tempo at which he expects to be able to sightread this weird music, and violins.

And he sings.

And they do magic!

"Weird. Songs can't be magic back home, someone would have definitely noticed -"

"Nor Earth or daeva worlds or Limbo." Cam plays back a recording of their performance.

It does magic.

"Oh, lovely, I should go revise all our running-the-multiverse plans to account for the fact we can play music to the fields and boost production by as much as the inventors of nitrogen fertilizers."

Wag wag. "I wonder if these are good enough to let things grow in Limbo without having to just completely replace the topsoil."

"Ooooh. And if they're not, maybe better ones could be developed - they are deliberately composed, right - we've got to fork Macalaurë now -"

"You think having him reverse-engineer his Mirror alt's compositions will work? Given music is not magic most places?"

"I have no idea - though it'd have to be that the songs work everywhere but have to be written on Stupid Arda - but even if all he can do is perform them, you probably get a more powerful effect with a better singer, and next to Macalaurë I sound like a deaf, drunk teenager with a cold."

"I have heard recordings of Macalaurë - two of him, even - but you still sound lovely to me."

"Have we been dating for long enough that I should start screening for you being adorably biased in my favor?"