"...Okay, granted. I wonder if they're likely to do that on the first pass or figure out something more delicate considering all of the everything."

"Good question. Might depend how portals work - if the Valar can just immediately close them it'll require more handling..."

"Yeah, I am not nearly caught up enough in engineering to understand the portal stuff yet."

"How far ahead of Earth is Abaddon, exactly?"

"Do you mean the Earth that inexplicably exists in Abbadon, Endore, or the fleet?"

"I mean my alt."

"...I don't think you or your alt are engineers? Farther ahead of you at what?"

"Their background tech level, compared to Earth's."

"Well, they have FTL, fancy demonproof computers, the chips..." She describes other things she's heard them refer to.

"Were they at roughly modern-Earth levels a hundred years ago? Two hundred? Were they at 1900s-Earth levels a century before they were at 2000s-Earth levels..."

"I don't know."

"I might ask the next time I see my alt or someone else from Abaddon around."

"I wonder if Bar can answer the question."

To a very rough approximation, they were more similar to Earth's tech level five hundred years ago, allowing of course for different research priorities, infrastructure availability, outside sources of information, etcetera.

"And where were they six hundred years ago?"

With the same caveats perhaps closer to Earth's 1970.

She slides the napkins to Matt.

"Huh. So humanity'll probably be there in a century or two, tops - the chips, their most impressive tech, isn't actually them - can our kind of Elf be chipped?"

"They may or may not have checked yet."

"And humans can't?"

"Putting a chip in a human brain kills them. It's possible it also downloads their brain first and they can thereafter be reinstantiated as an Elf but this has not been tested."

"I can't imagine why not." He shudders slightly.

"Basement dwellers can only do so much."

"Basement dwellers?"

"Demons can't make minds. Not without technological assistance like the chip-readers, anyway. If they try to make people they get mindless bodies that are for some reason called basement dwellers."