"I... like that. A lot. I wish there were people like that at home. How is slavery bad, though?"

" - OK so this is like a complicated ethics question in the theoretical form, because like, maybe there are versions of humans who are responsible enough to do slavery without being horrible about it? But mostly in real life it seems to lead to people raping and torturing each other and abusing each other horrifically? And I think that even if you were doing it in a way that wasn't obviously horrible then it would still be kind of horrible in itself, because it goes against this whole idea that people're all valuable in themselves, regardless of their value to other people."

She considers.

" - are you, like, OK? I should've thought to ask if you were OK, I'm really slow about things sometimes, are you like, safe and happy and - are you where you want to be? When you're where you come from?"

"I'm not really happy but I'm safe and I'm where I'd be if I wanted to be good. So if you don't have slavery what do you do with people who can't follow your laws?"

"We have their family members and people look out for them? Like, my niece is one this year, so her mom is responsible for her? If that's what you mean? But also if her mom were really horrible to her then the government would take her away and give her to someone less horrible. - this is actually a sort of broken part of the system, it turns out it's really hard to respect the rights of children and really disabled people, but I think it's important in principle that you can't just be as horrible as you want to toddlers with no consequences, even if we are not perfect at making the consequences materialize correctly. - unless you mean what do we do with people who break the laws, those we mostly lock up. This is also a flawed part of the system. We are working on it."

"...So, where I'm from, the only way we know of to prevent a baby from accidentally throwing their mother a mile in the air and letting her fall is to magically bind them. And doing that to unconsenting free people is assault and it's illegal. I don't understand what you do instead."

"Well! That sounds like a situation that would complicate the question immensely. Where I'm from babies just sort of flail their arms and pee. Mostly. Depends on the baby. The laws were written with the assumption that babies mostly just flail their arms and pee, and this is near enough to correct that it works out OK for the most part. I guess if I were writing a story where everybody has destructive magic from birth, and I wanted it to be a good place to live, I'd probably have them bind everyone until the age of majority but not have that tied to any other lack of rights? Because, like, it's one thing to keep a baby from tossing their mom in the air and killing her, and it's a totally different thing to hit a two-year-old for crying, you know? But I'm literally just now thinking about this, where I come from you can do magic by accident but you can't do it so accidentally that babies are at any risk of doing it ever. Mostly. So I mean, maybe your world is doing the best it can, you know? Mine hasn't had to deal with that. I just know that in our world slavery has consistently been way worse than not-slavery."

This barstool is not a spinny chair, but Karen is trying to spin around on it anyway, because she sort of feels like this is a spinny chair sort of conversation.

"Our babies also can't be trusted to enter contracts even for a while after they learn how to say 'yeah, that sounds like a great deal' and the ones who are really young literally don't know what the laws are. Even if we just made it illegal to assault them... no, that wouldn't work, sometimes you have to grab them to keep them from running off and getting hurt or hurting someone else. I guess if their parents were good people they could be trusted to only do that when it's for a good reason?"

"Yeah, that's why it's so hard! Because small children do have to be controlled sometimes, to protect them and to protect other people. But I think it's important that there are things you can do that will cause people to agree that you are an unfit guardian, mostly, and then your kids can be taken away. And - it's really hard, you know, to do that responsibly, because it turns out it's really hard to legislate goodness? But I still think it's really important that parents don't have unlimited license to do anything they want to their kids. - also when Earth had legal slavery it was mostly not about children, it was mostly kidnapping people from other regions and then forcing them and their children to do whatever you told them or be beaten or killed, sometimes for their whole lives, and then we decided that that was bad, actually, and everyone was important even if someone had a piece of paper saying that they owned them."

"That all makes sense, thank you. It would be nice if I could see it in action but I don't know if the door works that way."

"Yeah, it'd be super cool to visit either place, but I can't risk leaving my world, so I totally get why you might not be able to risk leaving yours. We can't all be as ready to leap into unfamiliar magical realms as the Pevensies were. - I actually haven't checked whether the door even goes back home, it totally might spit us out in Narnia. Or someplace weirder and worse and more extant than Narnia."

"I've never heard of the Pevensies or Narnia but if the door leads back to my world I can try to help you learn the imperial language and the laws."

"Thanks! But also your world sounds super concerning and if the door leads back there I am totally going to throw all of my effort into figuring out how to open another dimension door and go home. Man, I should have been carrying my survival bag - I guess I can't just walk around my house carrying my survival bag all the time - I should've grabbed it when I saw that my closet was all portal-y, though, that was dumb. - we should see what we're dealing with."

She puts her notepad back in her pocket, gets up, crosses the room, and opens the door onto her room again.

"So that one's my world. - I guess that's maybe not great for you. Maybe because I came in after you did. Whoops."

"I wasn't here long before you, you should maybe go back now before it changes again."

" - yeah. I guess. It'd be - problematic, for more than just me, if I couldn't go home. - uh, do you wanna stay, or - I dunno if all the worlds it opens to are nice ones - "

"I want to go home but if that's not an option I'm probably better off moving in with you if you'll have me. But I don't know your language or which of your plants are edible or anything."

"Yeah! Uh - I have this magical translation necklace that I bet'll work on you, it's one of the things I keep in the survival pack and one of the reasons that I'm really dumb for having come in here without it. Um - I'm not really supposed to invite random people into my house, but also I sort of do it all the time and it will actually be fine on my end, promise. Um - I mean I want you to be able to go home, too, I just don't know if - some worlds are nicer than others, and some worlds are harder or easier to open dimensional portals to, and my world is much, much nicer than most of the ones I've seen - for humans, anyway - and is much, much easier to open portals from than most of the others. So - I'd worry that if you waited for it to spit you out into a different world then it'd be harder to get from that world to your homeworld, and I think if we're on Earth we at least have a shot?"

"Okay. That sounds like my best option. Do you want me to do anything to make up for hanging out in your home and eating your food while I'm figuring out how to get a job?"

"No no no, it's fine, or like - we can talk about that later, maybe? But this must just be super stressful for you, especially since you've never dealt with anything even remotely similar before? And I want to help because - uh, it's the right thing to do. So. Yeah."

"Okay. Anything I need to know before I go through?"

"Ummm - I am not really sure how to sum up all the relevant traits of my world in a timely manner. We have the internet, and we have cows, and we have superhero comics that you can get at the public library, and sometimes people get bitten by vampires and then they turn into vampires and then they work really hard at making the world worse, and it's super concerning in some ways, actually, but - we're trying to fix it. Oh, and I'm this thing called the slayer and I have this whole mystical duty to fight vampires, and to protect and help people, and - if there is a way to get you home and it is possible to find then I will find it, probably, because that is what I do.

" - also we have a baby but I promise she can't hurl you in the air, she just flails her arms and looks concerning sometimes. Also it might be hard for you to get a job because the government doesn't know that you exist, but that's true of like half of my friends and we'll figure something out, if it means you not waiting to step through into a series of progressively more horrible hell dimensions.

" - this is honestly such a concerning situation. I am probably freaking you out more. I'm sorry. I really will figure it out."

"You'll have to point out which species the vampires are if we see one." He walks through the door and looks around.

Karen lets her door close, and then opens it again, and yep, there is her closet.

Her closet actually contains her survival bag, so now she feels marginally less stupid, but only marginally because she didn't actually know where it was. She murmurs some totally unintelligible things while she sorts through it. She fishes out the translation necklace and hands it to Valanda, pointing to her own necklace in an attempt to indicate that he should put it on.

He puts it on. "This does translation somehow?"

"Yeah! Super neat thingamabob. Far superior to most of my other thingamabobs. Occasionally I run into ancient magical artifacts that aren't about to end the world or anything, and then I get to keep them. - oh, you can understand me, right?"

"I can understand you! So what could you use a defense mage for while I'm staying here?"