"...And about how many people do you have in the world, I suppose that's also an important question."

"Something like eight billion."

"By how much?" Helen asks.

"We have maybe a hundred and fifty million people. I'm guessing, I don't know as much about other continents, I haven't been brought up on one yet, but that's the guess."

"I think you probably don't have as high a technology level as us, if you don't know for sure how many people there are on other continents," Helen theorizes.

"Well, intercontinental messaging with shines is pretty rudimentary. I could travel but I don't know where I'd begin to get their creche population figures and death rates."

"We have a global information network that just about everyone uses," Helen says.

"That sounds useful. How does it work?"

"...I am not even a little bit an engineer," she confesses.

"Neither am I. I'm a servantmaker. In general terms? From the perspective of some of the lay 'everyone' who uses it?"

"You have machines with screens, and you can write things and post them publicly or send them to other people, and any organization that wants to be taken seriously has a site, and you can find books and art and people to talk to."

"...I think I mostly followed that. It's a very cunning idea. I'm not sure how I'd replicate it; it seems like it would require enormous quantities of complex shines."

"What are shines?"

"Servants made of light. There are shades, too, which are shadows that behave likewise. Let's see, do I have my -" She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small lens, and focuses some of the ambient light into a spot on the surface of the bar. Then she touches the edge of this light, and pulls it away; for an instant only, there is no light where the lens is aimed, and then it's swiftly replaced, with an identical blot where she dragged the first. The dragged spot of light makes lazy figure eights while she pockets the lens again. "I'm just operating this one myself, but I could program it."

"...Made of light, huh. ...I actually have powers. I can generate barriers that--we're not sure if they're made of light or if they just give it off. I wonder if it would be worth experimenting."

"...What did you have in mind? Like, here's the shine," the shine scuttles up to her and sits on her shoe, "it's all yours if you want to do something with it."

"No, I mean, if my barriers are made of light, I wonder if you could make a shine out of one of them."

"Ooh." The shine scoots off the shoe and is presently on the back of Lu's hand. "I can sure try it, assuming they're safe to touch."

"Perfectly safe." She creates a very thin barrier in a circle on the Bar's surface.

Unlike with shines created from projected light, the barrier doesn't immediately replace itself. "That felt weird. I...think I could still dismiss it if I wanted to, but maintaining it isn't a conscious action anymore."

"You can feel these?" Lu asks. She moves the barrier around. It is awkward turning corners, being solid, and doesn't seem to be able to leave the surface of the bar; she pulls a notebook out, holds it flush, and scoots the shine onto that.

"A little? I don't feel where it is, exactly, but there's a little indicator in my head telling me that it exists."

"Huh. Do you only make them against surfaces? Normal shines have that constraint, but normal shines can also bend, which this doesn't seem to be able to - how durable is it?"