"If you don't mess anything up, yes."

"How hard is it?"

"Mostly a matter of diligence, using simple unambiguous phrasing and so on. And caution. I'd want to be there giving advice."

"In the room? I'm not sure they'll want you in the room but we could set up a comm or something."

"What does 'accessible from the room' even mean in future-tech?" wonders Bella.

"Good point. It'd be untenable to clear everything away. And that scenario is awfully unlikely, the intersection of bored summons-takers and proficient computer scientists is probably nonexistent, I think I can drop that particular bit of paranoia."

Nod. "I will want thorough coaching on how to word things. Ideally not verbatim, not because I couldn't do it but because not doing it is safer along other axes given other assumptions."

"I think I've covered the most important points. Don't use turns of phrase or casual agreements like 'yeah'. Don't use vague phrasing. Write it down before agreeing. We could do a mock summon where I pretend to be a hostile maker if you think that'd help."

"I'd like - example transcripts," she suggests. "Of various hostility levels. And then maybe try the mock summon."

"I'll write some up. I could gag them - make one of the bindings 'do not speak except to agree or disagree' - but that's kind of horrid and I don't want to and the rest of the bindings still work perfectly well without it."

"It might be safer if it's so likely I'll screw up. So they don't trip me up with some conversational shenanigan where it's intensely awkward to be silent or say no or something."

"It's less 'you will probably fuck it up' and more 'better extremely safe than sorry because sorry looks like you being in a coma until you die while the maker gets to do whatever terrible things amuse them'. And if I teach you how to gag daeva I can't un-teach it. But I'll do it if you feel it's necessary."

"I wouldn't do it for kicks, but the daeva know it's a thing that might happen, right?"

"Right. Makers especially tend to be summoned gagged."

"So I don't get a summoner of the year award but I'm not giving them the worst day of their lives or anything."

"More or less, yeah."

"I'll read the scripts before deciding, if it looks really easy and you confirm I'm not just overconfident I'll do without, but otherwise I don't have much reason to be nice over being careful."

"Alright then. I'll work on those scripts. Already have a couple of drafts since I kinda expected you wanting them. You'll probably want to come up with a list of author's or artist's names that you know will be safe for someone to have. And preferably have significantly different corpuses of work or didn't exist in 2004 on the other Earth - I could download a library if you send me to fairyland and back, to compare."

"Butterfly effect should have at least substantially altered anything from after demons became common knowledge, right?"

"Probably yes, but it wouldn't do to just assume. Alternate worlds that are as similar as they are is a stretch already."

"If I'm sending you back for a library anyway and we assume the USADI is willing to purchase substantial amounts of commodity supplies for you to trade for stuff to bring back, how does that affect the wisdom of summoning a maker?"

"Maker's much faster, both in absolute time and in how quickly things can scale after. If sending me to fairyland is like getting a delivery of car parts, summoning a maker would be like getting four dozen finished cars and a few of those car-assembling robots and a factory building and a supply of raw materials."

"Assuming we can pay them without breaking infosec, which isn't necessarily a given."

"There's a limit to the harm caused if they do break infosec, besides tell everyone else in Hell there is another world out there somewhere what can they do?"