"...someone to feel accomplished about beating at Governor? And plot to take over the universe with? Or are you two thinking bigger than the universe by now? When he was, like, on Cam-hiatus you seemed significantly less - dunno. Smug. 

And I really don't do 'should be motivating'."

"Governor is fun, I missed it," says Cam. "Multiverse, if we can do controlled interuniversal teleportation. Feel free to be motivated by whatever you like, I guess, if being motivated by the mood of someone who doesn't think it makes sense to be motivated by his mood is a thing that works for you."

"I'm really looking forward to starting time again and killing the Enemy - probably via instructions to Edie's alts on Endorë since the rest of us are mid-leap - and then exiting leap for Maitimo to announce 'Enemy's dead, we've got reliable non-summoning interdimensional transit, we're taking over the multiverse, here are your orders, let's have this done by Aldúya'. It's very motivating."

"Yeah, that'd be nice."

"We have literally as long as we'll need to pull it off, and there are dimensions with precogs. It'll happen. We may all be bored out of our skulls by the time it does, but it'll happen."

"It's amazing how possible it is to be bored with access to all the books."

"Well, I'm functionally illiterate and Maitimo's used to having several hundred people to look out for, minimum. I've seen him spend thirty years on infrastructure negotiations without getting bored but a week alone and he's unhappy, a month alone and you might as well lock him up."

"Also all the movies," Cam says. "...Idiom's not seamlessly translating courtesy of Milliways, if 'lock him up' is an idiom?"

"Elves, like, short-circuit if imprisoned. Not your version?"

"- oh, they do, I'd just sort of mentally folded it into the need to be in pretty places, I remember now."

"Pretty spacious places, I'm honestly impressed that Elves without summoning ever get off-planet, the ships we need are a nightmare to build the non-magical way."

"Well, they didn't have enough of them until I showed up..."

"I am actually really curious about how your war went but I understand if you don't want to talk about it."

"I'm - fairly decompressed at this point - I can tell you about it if you like."

"They didn't have enough ships?"

"Yeah, they had a small fleet, couldn't hold everyone who needed to go and the moon wasn't a nice place to hang out in the meanwhile -"

Cam goes through his notes, goes over the events of the war.

"Well, fuck. 

I'm sorry you didn't have a less shitty set of choices. We'll fix it."

"Thanks."

Huan buries his head in Tyelcormo's chest and whines. "Yeah," he murmurs. "Yeah. It's okay. We'll become ridiculously powerful and fix everything. It's okay."

"It'll still have happened."

"I know. I - 

I doubt those versions of us are ever really going to stop hating themselves. Doesn't mean they wouldn't do it again, but -"

"I actually don't hate myself," Cam says, "I've just forfeited the right to ever argue even in my own head with anybody who does hate me."

"That's very - not the way I think. But - okay. Uh, I don't hate you. Huan doesn't hate you. My alt doesn't hate you either, I bet."

"Sure, not everybody - even everybody who knows - will happen to exercise the option, but - if you did -" Shrug. "Can't really go 'well, that's because you're wrong', anymore. It is in fact completely sensible to have a hating-people-who-commit-genocide heuristic."

"Okay but it is also completely sensible to hang out around people who don't hate you and avoid the ones who do."