"Current terraforming solution is wished on and satisfactory, but thanks."

"Maybe you can do something about the pit the demons come out of on the demon world."

"Ooh, possible. I'm not comparatively advantaged at finding that out, though, let me know if you find out if the hole can just be patched."

"Will do."

And Cam gives them computing tutorials - mostly Gem, who starts from more computer knowhow and will be able to catch Joy up on their own time, although she's still nearly two centuries behind.

Meanwhile, Loki solicits location information on where she might find the new Fingon and goes looking for him.

He's in Eithel Sirion. He blinks at her. "Another Bella, I take it."

"The generic is 'Bell', but yes. I'm Loki. Is this a good time for a visit?"

"Sure. Come on in. Did you get the history, my Arda seems to have departed from yours at the point where you didn't land on us."

"Yeah, everything got passed on - I am very glad I showed up on mine - my you who will need a new distinguishing name and had better not pick a letter of an alphabet was the first person I met there, actually."

"It sounds like you averted a lot of suffering. Though from how rapidly your war escalated I'm impressed ours was content to make only minorly terrifying amounts of trouble for four hundred years."

"They have this habit of escalating only fairly slowly unless abnormally provoked - that ended especially badly in Space Arda, maybe don't try to get that story direct from Cam."

"Who should I ask it from?"

"I can tell you, or there's a writeup you'll be able to grab out of the mailbox Cam just installed here once you have a computer up to multiversal standards."

"And where do I acquire one of those?"

"Cam can make one for you on our way home. He's teaching Gem and Joy to operate theirs now. The state of the art involves a little thing in your brain that lets you control the device with your thoughts and that's easier than learning the other input devices but it's not necessary for functions like 'access mailbox'."

"That's fine. I don't suppose I can control the device with my thoughts anyway with my mind powers?"

"Unlikely, since the devices are not minds? You could try it, I don't know how to expect the magic system to flex there."

"It flexes pretty usefully, though most of what I can do there's no really good way to test. Probably doesn't work on computers. Anyway, welcome, aside from having endured a while longer I don't know what's new or exciting about this Arda. Dragons were apparently new."

"Dragons were new, yes. And having endured a while longer is interesting, especially since you did it from a standard baseline unlike Evil Arda and therefore have several centuries of what-would-have-been that we genuinely couldn't extrapolate. Lets me calibrate how smug to be. ...I don't mean to trivialize."

"It worries me that we haven't found an Arda that won on their own."

"It... would not astonish me if you're set up to fail. Based on what I heard when I talked to an Aulë and he actually consulted an Eru."

"...what'd Eru say?"

"He didn't actually say you're supposed to lose - see, the Space Valar were dead. I went to ask the Elentári Valar if I should bring them back - well, rather, if I should expect to regret it if I did - and -"

She bounces the conversation.

"For fuck's sake - you know, I wonder if Eru says marriage is straight specifically because it's more tragic that way -"