"Causes and effects happening in the right order. We'd be telling people to do or not do something based on an event that won't happen until 2003. No rule against it, it's just never a first resort.

What was the date, by the way?"

"April twenty-seventh, but I'd actually prefer to be awoken a couple of days earlier."

"I'll make a note of it.

This thing shouldn't take any active managing yet. There might be a while before I can come up with a good way to send you back, do you have preferences about what you'll be doing in the meantime?"

"I'd like to continue working on my magic and stuff like I've been doing? And, ah, what day is it today?"

"29 March."

He nods. "Anyway, if you say I won't really change a lot unless I really try to I could probably find a way to sort myself out, here, get some unqualified job—the biggest problem will be I expect mannerisms and culture."

"A job would be easy. War footing and all. Magic is in just as much demand, but that would mean more questions to dodge about who you are and where you came from.

You'll stand out as not from around here no matter where you are, but you have a lot of leeway before people start telling their grandkids about you. You could get even more by relocating to another city, if you're worried about being too memorable."

"The problem is not so much being worried as—I'd like to matter, I'd actively prefer to be memorable, and if I continue working on that little project and it succeeds I will necessarily be. As for dodging, I could just say it's unsafe for me to reveal more about myself?"

"If you're planning to keep working on your project while you're...now...it'd be hard to make sure word doesn't get back to Jacob's Bell in six decades. You should definitely try it somewhere else and if you make much progress distance probably wouldn't be enough."

"Which means I will not, in fact, make much progress, probably—or at least not on this."

"Right. You could take steps to hide it from your past self, but since the whole point is to get it well known and accepted hiding would be counterproductive."

"It would. But maybe going elsewhere would be better in any case—" Pause. "Er, you don't have the internet yet. Or even personal computers."

"No to both. State of the art in transportation is cars and railways, and computer is a job title."

"Right. How much do you want me to share about the future?"

"I think you can mostly talk freely. I know the risks, not exactly well, but better than most, and can definitely avoid trying to avert it. Feel free to hold back anything you think could be tempting; if something does go wrong it might rebound on you as well as whoever messed up."

He nods. "Cars are still a thing, but they're better than the current ones. Railways are less of a thing, we mostly use commercial planes for long-range transportation. Computers are—I'm sure they used some in the war, they're machines that do calculations except when you remember that everything is calculations this becomes really impressive. The internet is harder to explain."

"Everything is calculations? I know a universe or two that might disagree..."

"I—don't think it'd be productive to get into a philosophy discussion, here. I would still say everything is maths even taking into account magic and spirits and stuff—just more complicated maths—but anyway, point is, robots, access to information from anywhere on Earth instantaneously, more information being created in a year than had been created during the previous hundred, this sort of thing."

"That sort of thing. Wow. No, we definitely don't have that."

"Yeah, I know, I'm just mourning the lack.—hey if I impersonated some famous person—let's say an author—from around now how likely is it that I was that author all along? Not that I'm planning to do that, just curious about the time thingamajig."

"I suppose it's not impossible... you'd have to pull it off well enough to match the spirits' idea of that person being that person. Since the universe thinks there was such a person, and if you don't pull it off that well then it must have been someone else."

"Unfortunately I don't have access to the huge online encyclopedia that'd let me find the appropriate target even if I were so inclined." He shrugs. "So, what next, in your opinion? Should I go elsewhere? What—it should be asked, what do you want in exchange for helping me?"

"I'd recommend it. Montreal or Toronto are nearest, and Toronto has a branch of the Behaim family in it, so Montreal's safest. Finding mundane work would be easy but a bit of a waste, the practice has the downsides we discussed. I could ask the city's Lord not to pry, no idea if he's the kind of person to do it anyway.

Payment... what about time? You're already going around forcing Others to agree to things, maybe you extort some of their time from them until it adds up to the sixty years. Longer-lived Others would be a better bet, obviously."

"Hhhow exactly do I extort time from someone?"

"Get their agreement to give it to us, we handle the how. We meaning Laird, probably, so you aren't chasing Others this early."