"I can leave the circle to do the thing, take the reward, and then I can go home. If we don't agree I just sort of have to stand here until you dismiss me."

"Next time I'll leave enough room for somebody to sit," says the summoner. "The terms of Ellie's deal are agreeable to me."

"Done and done! One lemon creme for you, one chocolate for me. Feel free to call me back any time!"

"Now you dismiss him."

"If I call you back what are you likely to want?" the summoner asks him, ready to write up a list.

"A book about vampires. An orchid. Maybe an authentic witch's hat."

"How are you going to verify the authenticity?"

"I'll put it on and see if it makes me feel like a witch."

"I'm not sure even the real ones do that."

"On the other hand, this world's magic apparently doesn't work for her. So you may yet be in luck."

"I haven't done the hat experiment, either, so maybe I'm wrong."

"As long as there's not no hope, there is some hope. And that's good enough for me."

"Okay. Thank you very much, I will see about your wishlist." Dismissalllllll.

"Bye!"

And then he's gone.

"This is so cool."

"It is. This has the potential change the situation here significantly. What do you plan to do?"

"Not sure. If it weren't for the fact that the nasty biteys might be able to summon help too I'd probably try to see to it that everyone knew. End scarcity. Since the nasty biteys may be able to summon help I will have to be more conservative."

"Summon demons in secret, trade for 23rd century technology? Or maybe just textbooks."

"This is a promising avenue. What do you pay demons?"

"Media recommendations. We should see if there are any significant differences due to the divergent magical history, those would be valuable."

"Yeah, otherwise I feel like being from the past will handicap me terribly."

"It could. But you seem like a problem-solver to me."

"We should compare history, find points of divergence... I might have to just repeatedly summon demons until I find one who's bored, bootstrap from there, if you don't have reliable history memory off the top of your head..."

"Broad strokes, yes. I will likely not be able to tell whether a given artist or author has a counterpart there. Repeated summonings could be a viable tactic, if we leave off the standard gag."

"Standard gag?"