When that's over with the New Dovites are ushered out of the courtroom and in go some furious bloodthirsty beluli. A police officer takes Danny's bracelets off. There are surveys if Harold feels like filling one out and letting the imperial government know how satisfied he is with imperial justice.

'Imperial justice is really weird, but at least faster than British justice' would not be very helpful. The three New Dover humans talk quietly - a bit tense, but civilly, anyway - and go buy tickets for the shuttle automaton to New Dover that some enterprising type set up.

Meanwhile, Nik mostly has broadcast TV sorted out. The receiver should cost about 250 rings to make in bulk, a standalone screen-and-controller about 500, or you can use one of his computers for it. Broadcast equipment will run at least 50,000 rings but can totally send whatever and run at least a dozen channels (he also explains the concept of channels). You can make little cards that allow the receiver to understand the broadcast, and set them for only a couple of channels, or only for four months, or whatever. You can sell subscriptions in this way. An upgrade to the broadcast equipment is in the works but at minimum a year or two out. He's very interested in just making the stuff and letting someone else deal with all the complicated business dealings.

He sends a letter saying as much to that one director of illusion shows and perhaps she'd like to visit or invite him up to visit and they can work out a deal. He sends another one to the imperial government and to Valanda's office, perhaps they could run The Law Will Find you and executions on one channel, and the language tutorials and the laws on another, and so on.

She immediately sends him an invitation to meet with her in her home on the mainland.

The imperial government takes longer to get back to him.

Arranging shipping of sample products is annoying. He does it anyway. Being rich is safety, in this world.

Hello illusion show producer where would you like to talk about stuff?

She invites him into a room clearly meant to hold more than two people at a time. All along a wall that definitely didn't have visible windows as seen from the outside, there are spectacular arched windows, each one a mosaic of clear and stained glass. It might be a dining room. There's a table with seats for sixteen that she gestures for him to sit at.

"Would you like a salad while we talk?"

"I'm afraid salads don't agree with me - not quite human, see - But thank you for offering. My, this is a nice place, though."

He sits.

She sits across from him. "As I understand it, you have a set of working prototype technologies that can do one-to-many and many-to-one communications and you'd like to profit from that but the negotiations with illusion show producers would be more hassle than you'd like. Do you have any other ideas about what you'd like from me or would you like me to figure out all the details and suggest something?"

"Broadly, yes. Systems for one to many are ready and what I brought examples of today. A different invention that will do both one to many and many to one needs more work, perhaps a year or two. The second one relies heavily on computers, which I don't think you actually have any of, since you got the single-purpose encryption machines instead? Media distribution companies where I'm from made a lot of money with advertisements and subscriptions, but you'd know what will work here far better than I. I can definitely demonstrate the technology whenever you want to do that."

"Many-to-one will be the more important breakthrough, otherwise I'm not sure what the benefit of using this technology is compared to using magic. Is there any way I can help that happen faster?"

"Eh, just needs time. Time and testing. I'm not strapped for cash or anything. The stuff I have for one-to-many might still be an improvement over magic, you can change the program at any time, add new ones easily, let people choose which show to watch, that sort of thing."

"How does this version let people choose which show to watch?"

"You run multiple shows in parallel, and they choose which 'channel' to look at. With enough channels you could have one for each show, or even multiple ones per show on different episodes. I could also get you a thing that will write illusion shows onto chips that my computers can play, pause, go back to the beginning, or skip ahead, at any time."

"That would be very useful, yes. How many channels can someone have available to choose between? How big is the viewing hardware?"

"Number of channels largely depends on the quality of the broadcasting equipment. A dozen will be relatively cheap and easy, 144 would be pushing it with my current set of techniques. And if lots of other people want broadcast channels too I may have to limit them a bit or you could interfere with each other. The receiver is about two feet long and weighs five points - and it has to have a cord feeding into one of my computers or a standalone screen device. The screen can be fairly flat and lightweight, less than an inch thick. I'm working on more portable computers, too."

"It'll take a lot of new shows to make that better than buying illusions. If I had two dozen new shows to release exclusively for your broadcast I could guarantee you a market, but I don't. Yet. Will this hardware be obsolete in a couple of years when you have the improved version working?"

"Hmm. I'm trying to design things to avoid that kind of obsolescence whenever possible. Aside from my first calculating machines, I did a lot of iterating before I started selling computers, I have standardized connectors and such. These antennas will let people connect to the internet, the many-to-one system, once that's a thing. Though, if you want six months to get a lineup of shows together before moving on this, that's probably enough time to switch from broadcast to satellite. A sat - or more likely a few dozen once I get the problems the first one needs fixed worked out - is pricier and puts extra steps in the chain of information, but it will be able to broadcast shows to anyone with a receiver on the continent at once and not just one city, and is probably more efficient in the long run."

"...Yes, if they'll only work within one city I don't know that any lineup I could offer you would be enough. Will people be able to decode the satellite broadcasts if they figure out how to make their own receivers?"

"I mean, you could set one up in every city that all show the same thing, but fair. With satellite broadcasting, I can't guarantee that it's totally impossible but it will at minimum be difficult. If it's done I'd have no way to tell that it's been done, though. Internet streaming, the version in a couple of years, also not necessarily impossible but still difficult, and probably more detectable. The cost of internet streaming will scale with the number of viewers and the cost of satellite broadcasting will not, though. I don't have exact numbers for either yet. Also, I don't actually have any way to stop people from making illusions of shows themselves once it appears on the screen, or using another device to record it again, unless magic I don't know about can do that."

"You can hide the screen from knowledge magic... oh, but not from cameras. That'll be a problem already, I bet it's only a matter of time before some enterprising thief figures out how and I have to rethink how I make money from my work... is that a problem where you came from?"

"Yes on both counts. I'm kind of reluctant to redesign my screens and my cameras to be incompatible with each other, and cryptography only goes so far. There were also intellectual property laws that banned copying, but I think they were badly designed. Modern media companies mostly relied on the fact that people are lazy and will get their media from whoever is most convenient, and try to make buying the media cheaper than spending time trying to get it for free would be, and accept that smart and determined media thieves will get their media free, and just try to get by with everyone else's money."

"Hm." She pauses and thinks. "...I have ideas and I'm interested but I think I need time to get more shows ready to release with your technology and work on ways of profiting that will be resilient against spies. If you spend that time making satellites, will you be able to use them for anything else?"

"Yes. Satellites are also critical internet infrastructure. It's either sats or tens of thousands of miles of fiber optic cable, and sats are cheaper because force mages exist."

"Will you be interested in a similar deal for your internet? You make it and I figure out how to make it make you rich?"

"Eh. I'm gonna be more involved on the internet itself. I don't know how to make shows - I know how to run an internet, more or less. I do want people to find the internet and computer programs compelling so they buy more computers, build an ecosystem of business, ya know?"