"What are you going to do? How'd you hijack my spell?"

"...Spell? No, you summoned me. That is what happens when you draw circles on the floor."

"Don't try to fucking gaslight me! This is not a summoning circle, it's a divination circle!"

"Well it summoned me. Without bindings, I may add, which is really damn irresponsible, do you even have a summoning license?"

"It's a divination circle, look at the compass points!" she says furiously. "I don't know how you got here or why you want me to think it's my fault but so help me if you don't cut out the bullshit I'm marching straight to the USADI and I don't care if they draft me for it!"

"Look, I have no idea what the hell you're on about with divination, or what the USADI is. But if you want me gone, just want me gone. You haven't agreed to a deal so I can't stick around to collect on it."

"I can't even think of how that would be a trick but I'm not stupid enough to think that means it isn't one." She shakes her head. "I didn't even cast anything. I was only half done and you appear in my divination circle like you're the demon of the week and it's my fault, what's your deal?"

"My deal is: I am just as confused as you are, and I'm starting to think I'm the butt of a practical joke, here."

"Oh, poor you, show me on the doll where the other forces of darkness touched you."

Sigh. He can't just leave, he'll be stuck on Earth. "If I demonstrate abilities that your 'magic' cannot quickly and easily imitate will you start to actually listen?"

"I'll start to call the fucking USADI if I can't reduce you to ash myself if you twitch wrong, the only reason you're still standing there without goons coming after you is all you've done is talk and it's just barely possible that you're a mutant from a neutral species or some kind of undocumented somethingorother."

"What's with the fucking hostility, seriously, I'm the one that's stuck if you won't unsummon me. And I still have no clue what the USADI is besides, apparently, military."

"I did not summon you it's a divination circle. United States Anti Demon Initiative? Black uniforms, stupid hats, stompy boots, ring a bell? You speak English with an American accent, where the fuck would you have got that without hearing of the USADI?"

"Daeva get their summoners' languages, don't you know." He switches accents. "I can also do BBC," switch, "Australia," back to American English, "Whatever. Demons are nasty characters, sure, but all you have to do is not summon them."

"Which I was not doing. Because this. Is a divination circle. Observe. The compass points. What are you if you don't like the catchall term?"

"I am a daeva. Specifically a fairy. Demons are another kind of daeva, angels a third. Okay, there is a fundamental disconnect here, this argument is not productive. Just. Dismiss me. Focus on wanting me gone, and I'll be gone, out of your hair."

"Have you or have you not caught on to the fact that I think you are up to something and do not care to take instructions from supernatural creatures who are up to something. Is that not clear."

He makes a noise of wordless frustration. It would not help to say that the other way to go home is to kill her. It won't help. Don't say it.

"Now, I haven't heard of fairies outside of cutesy kids' stories so I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to find reference materials on what the heck you are. If you'd like to give up this con as a bad job and shoo, this'd be a good time."

"I. Can't. Leave. You have to send me away. You have magic, do you have some kind of bullshit lie detection? Because neither of us wants me to follow you home and hover around until you dismiss me."

She sighs. "I could maybe put something together with what's in my bag that'd do it." She opens up her bag and rummages. When she leans over her shirt hikes up enough that he can see a water pistol on her belt.

"Yes. Or did you want me to wait and answer after you cast Detect Lies?"

She finds the oil she's looking for and takes the lens out of her mouth. "Why do you have a computer?"

"Because I like video games and CAD software."

"I don't have wings."

She winces. "And what's your story of what you're doing here?"

"I answered a summons in the usual way, everything felt normal, until I appeared in front of you and we had that little standoff. I have not lied to you. Except for the wings thing, which doesn't really count since it was a demonstration."

"Explain 'the usual way'."

"...I get a little note in the back of my head that says 'a summon you could answer', and I pull on it, usually not fast enough before another fairy gets it, and I appear in a circle and work out a deal and carry out the deal and get paid and then get unsummoned and go home. Would you mind explaining your definition of 'demon' since mine is only one species?"

"Maybe after the duration on this runs out. Summoned from where?"

"Fairyland."

"Which is?"

"The place where all the fairies are? I don't have a better definition for you, sorry."

A spark of green light flickers around the edge of her lens and she scowls and flicks it and quickly asks, "Under what circumstances are you likely to lie to me in the near future?"

"Maybe if you ask for details about my kind of summoning because it's really fucking dangerous. Or personal questions. And I'll probably be sarcastic a lot."

"Is -" There's another flicker. She sighs and frowns at her lens and puts it in an empty plastic baggie from her bag. "Okay. You don't seem very good at explaining things from a starting point of 'what the hells are you talking about' so I'll do it and maybe that'll help. This is Earth. Humans live on it. So do a lot of mostly hostile supernatural sapients mostly from other dimensions collectively called 'demons', ranging from 'lethal nuisances with convenient allergies' through 'unkillable hellgods' and thousands more in between. If it talks and it's not a human or a parrot it's a demon. If it doesn't talk but it isn't too friendly with the laws of physics and wants to eat you and comes from not-Earth, it's a demon. With me so far?"

"Sure. I'd count as a demon under this system, obviously enough."

"So you would. And you are not recognizably a known not-universally-hostile species. So. The USADI is the United States instance of a government pseudomilitary body intended to handle demons - mostly vampires by the numbers; they're a sort of special case because they're parasitic on dead humans, memories and appearance and all, and very common. The USADI and equivalent foreign organizations sprang up when something called the 'Slayer line' was wiped out a few decades ago. Based on the reported supposed powers of the Slayers, which were 'be one teenage girl with super strength and speed and magically implanted martial arts knowledge and prophetic dreams', the USADI ought to be a million times more effective; in practice she had a kind of mythical aura to her and when the demons wiped out all the potential replacements and then the last Slayer all the demons everywhere went fucking nuts. Before that most people didn't even know they existed and now humans are generally on the defensive."

"Well, shit. The Earth I know contains close to zero nonhuman sapients, only active daeva summons, for comparison."

"Good for the Earth you know. I am a witch, but if the USADI finds out I'm a witch and that I'm any good at it they will insist that I join up with them right then. Which I may well wind up doing anyway but I want a better negotiating position than I can get right now and also it'll make my parents very upset. So I'm not thrilled with the prospect of hauling you to their office and explaining what just happened, but it seems like you might be extremely relevant to their extremely important projects."

"I see your reasoning. I agree that I am probably relevant to their projects. Urgent question: You can do lie detection - is outright mind-reading a thing?"

"Yeah. Not a common thing, but it's not outside the bounds of magic."

"I know how to summon more daeva, and this knowledge is potentially apocalyptic. Are there defenses?"

"Sure, but they require materials I don't have on hand and we deal with potential apocalypses alternate Tuesdays."

"Right. I'll just-" He takes a deep breath. "Do you have any ideas for presenting myself to USADI that do not lead to shooting and preferably lead to minimal amounts of hostility-assumed interrogration?"

"Best idea I've come up with so far is you wait here, I go turn myself in, and me and my new co-workers come out in black uniforms and stompy boots to collect you after I've explained."

"Right, right. I'm- Not used to heavy stuff like this. Full disclosure. Daeva in general are fully indestructible to all known attempts at destruction, including things like black holes. And I will go back to fairyland if you want me gone intensely for a full minute, or if you die. I had not and still do not consider it a valid course of action to arrange for that to happen. Fairies move things. Any things, any speed, and I think I can kill any demon that can be killed by physical force, and exile them to the kuiper belt elsewise. I'm pretty sure my Earth is higher-tech than this one, so, science, yay. And I'm trying to think of further relevant non-sensitive information."

"Do I have to go tell the USADI that I found a helpful demon who knows where to find more helpful demons and won't say?"

"I have to think about it. They're probably paranoid enough to be safe about it but I want to watch them being paranoid first. And watertight infosec is hideously difficult and I'm worrying about some unscrupulous new summoner deciding to cause havoc by summoning dozens of unbound daeva. Plenty of daeva are prefectly peaceful and cooperative, but then there are the ones who aren't. Standard practice for rogue daeva on the other Earth is to kill the summoner by any means necessary, up to and including nuclear weapons. I know it would help, but this is not a light decision."

"This is going to be a fun drafting conversation."

"Highlight of my year, this is going to be," she says. "I'm planning to turn you invisible before I leave, by the way, we're outside of the enclave right now and I'd rather a vampire didn't come along and tangle with you before you've seen some kind of informational slideshow or something. Anything else I should know before I go get stompy boots?"

"The rest can wait, I think."

"You're quite sure?"

"Well don't draw that particular circle again, but I thought that would be obvious. One more 'thought it would be obvious' thing: I don't actually fully trust you right now, you're the one with convenient fancy lie detection and I will be waiting on outside evidence."

"I don't fully trust you either, you could have a way to spoof my fancy lie detection," she says. "But if I waited for total certainty to do anything I'd lie paralyzed in bed all the time. What's your name?"

"Nick. How long do you expect the run to take, and if it's more than an hour or so must you invisible me?"

"Likely more than an hour, and if you want to sit out here being bait for every nasty thing that might walk by in this forest, well, I'd say that's your business and the business of your souped-up telekinesis but I don't think my imminent commanding officer will agree."

"I'd really rather not be invisible. I can start compiling tech manuals for whatever decade this Earth is at, what, 2040?"

"2004. Why don't you want to be invisible?"

"Because I don't know how your magic works or whether it will have unexpected effects when given a new species as a target, and I am extremely confident in my durability."

"It'd work on a regular demon fine."

"Fine, then. Just let me turn some music on while I can still see my hands first." He puts in one earbud headphone.

"What part of the spell is to prevent you from attracting demon attention makes you think music's a swell idea. Headphones or no headphones. Most of them hear much better than humans do."

"I did not know that. Daeva have normal-human hearing by default. Fine, here, silent, invisible, for however long your explanations to the twitchy jackboots takes."

"Thank you. They might also smell you or detect warmth or something but I can't do anything about that." She rummages in her bag again. "So your phenomenal telekinesis powers will have to take care of anything like that which comes along."

"Take my flashlight? If you want a piece of impossible technology to lend weight to your words."

"We have flashlights. What's special about yours?"

"Extremely bright, ridiculous battery life, goes down to infrared and up to UV, also extremely durable."

Toss.

She does not catch it; she has to scoot over and grab it. "How does it UV?"

"Short version: The thing that came after LEDs."

"I mean what button do I press."

"Ah. The button that's labelled like an 'A' and an 'X' combined."

And Nick floats there with a modicum of effort, resigned to being bored.

"Hello, I-forgot-to-get-your-name Swan and M. Roxbury. Has she sufficiently reassured you I am not a ravening fiend?"

"Sure. Can I have my flashlight back, Bella?"

...A captive. Well. "I am willing to share technical documents and by my guesstimate I could build a machine to produce the same kind of UV emitters at scale in a week or two. But I want my property back. Please also keep in mind that I have never visited this version of Earth before, and will probably react to things differently than you expect. For example, killing a prisoner is often considered a war crime."

"Experimenting on vampires is legal and strategically essential," says M. Roxbury, sounding surprised that he'd take offense. "We don't always have one around, but since we did, it was used to verify your story that your flashlight was ultraviolet. At any rate, we have no attachment to the individual flashlight, but our techs been trying to develop handheld civilian-suitable ultraviolet flashlights that produce a strong enough beam to dust a vampire for years."

"I don't doubt your word, but imagine if someone told you they had executed a, say, a religious extremist. That's what I mean by warning you that I might react to things strangely. At any rate, lead the way to the base, or I can fly us all there very quickly if you give me directions and trust me enough for that."

"What are you planning on doing with the money?" Roxbury inquires.

"Historically only a handful of demons want money and they usually don't want it for anything nice," Bella says. "You can probably get a better deal if you offer to let the USADI or a representative hold it in trust for you and block you if you start hiring mercenary vampires with it."

"It'd come with a fair bit of bureaucracy, wouldn't it? So that's a 'maybe, negotiation pending'. But I'm not a classic demon. I'll swear under lie detection- my temperament is better described as similar to the so-called neutral species. I have never killed anyone or indirectly caused any deaths- any humans, I should amend, given the test you mentioned. And I plan to keep it that way."

"I'm actually considering assigning Swan as your liaison," Roxbury says. "You're currently need-to-know but everyone who needs to know has a lot on their plate and she can be freely assigned. Too bureaucratic?" asks Roxbury dryly.

"No, that's fine, not too bureaucratic. And I like that you're taking infosec seriously."

"In that case I'm sure we can work out something economically palatable," says Roxbury. "When we get to base I want to take a statement of your powers and inclinations under a different form of lie detection than Swan used and assign you quarters - unfortunately since we can't keep you in the barracks it'll be a repurposed holding cell, the base doesn't have a guest room, but we can leave the door open."

"I don't actually need to sleep, can my quarters be a workshop so I can start on UV emitter precursors?"

Roxbury hummms. "We're a small base. What kind of equipment do you need? We might not have it, wherever we put you."

"To start with just open space, internet access to research what you even have at this tech level, maybe some steel or aluminum, maybe random electrical parts. Planning phase and making a frame."

"Alright. I don't think moving would be necessary if I end up working on this in Seattle - I can commute to anywhere on the planet in ten minutes. Somewhat longer with passengers."

"How much longer with passengers?" inquires Roxbury.

"Perhaps fifteen or twenty. Mostly because I'd be going slower to ensure the passengers' safety."

"That's a really big deal," comments Bella. "Especially if you don't need to sleep. Response time in areas far from a base would shrink enormously and could draw on farther-afield resources."

"Summoning fairies is useful, who knew. I personally have little desire to be an emergency response vehicle permanently, but every fairy has similar abilities so when I teach summoning you could find some who are more willing."

Roxbury nods thoughtfully.

"I'll let the base cook know," says Roxbury, smiling slightly.

He gives a short 'heh' and goes back to hiking quietly.

"I am a daeva, which means I'm indestructible and can be summoned. Specifically as a fairy, I can move any number of objects or pieces of objects that I can sufficiently identify, at any speed including up to the speed of light. There are limits to my range, acceleration, and maximum volume affected but I'll have to look those up. Should I give more details about the summoning?"

"Yes."

"Would it have mattered what order she drew its components in?" asks Roxbury.

"Only slightly. You finish the circle itself only after all necessary components are done, or it might change the bindings or lose specificity, otherwise it doesn't matter. Oh, you can also summon a particular individual, but again I'm trying to hold back the actual process at least for now."

"I'm just trying to figure out how aggressively that particular divination spell should be suppressed," Roxbury says. "A lot of people wouldn't have come straight to us with a fairy."

"I think better safe than sorry. Whoever manages to duplicate what she did closely enough could do it, any significant deviations might or might not invalidate it. I don't know this kind of magic so I can't advise further, I think."

Roxbury nods and makes a note. "More detail on 'indestructible'?"

"Shoot me between the eyes and I'll bleed a little bit. Put my arm in an industrial press and it hurts but the press will break. Stuff a daeva in a black hole and they are very, very bored for a very, very long time. I don't know about magical attacks, but my intuition is that they can't significantly harm me either."

"Are you interested in conducting small tests of that to gauge your indestructibility relative to magic?" inquires Roxbury.

"...Yeah, that is probably a good idea."

She makes a note of that too. "Do you require any unusual resources or upkeep?"

"I don't need anything but a steady supply of coffee would be nice."

"We've got that in spades," Roxbury remarks. "Any objections to remaining on the premises in designated areas until, at minimum, we've got a way to hide your wings, barring emergencies in which case you'd have a USADI escort?"

"They roll up without more than a little discomfort if that'd help. But no, no objections."

"Enough that you could get them under a long coat?" inquires Roxbury.

"Probably. Might look a little hunchbacked, and this coat's not designed for it."

"Is there anything else we would like to know about you, your plans, or your powers?"

"I'd like to learn magic if that is not blatantly obviously a terrible idea. And I should probably make a list of the kinds of tech I can give access to. Other than that, I can't think of anything."

"Magic is addictive, difficult, and dangerous," Roxbury says. "As long as you're the only fairy I don't want you compromised with it. I'd like to see a list of technology as soon as you can produce one. Swan will show you to a room and fetch you whatever you need." She disassembles the materials of her spell.

"I did not expect today to turn out like this."

"Me either. So I should get you coffee and lunch, I guess, and what was it you needed for the lights?"

"I'm not familiar enough with the tech level yet, so I guess please list a bunch of tools and whatever electronic parts you've heard of. I'll probably need to build a few tools before I can get an emitter mill working."

"...uh, I don't know where to actually find you an arc welder or a circuit board or a transformer or anything, but those are things I've heard of?"

"Sorry if this is outside your expertise. Could I just - name things, and see if they sound like they exist here? At least until I can get onto the internet."

"I can get you an ethernet cable but that probably won't be compatible with your device. Yeah, go ahead and name things."

"Sure." She shows him to a row of holding cells, all currently empty, and opens one up and props it open. It's not particularly oppressive as cells go. Roomy, contains a bench and a table built into the wall. No window and the light all comes in through the glass from the hall. There are scratch marks on the floor.

"Those marks from a vampire?"

"Nah, something else, vampires don't so much with the claws. Anything I should know about when lunching you?"

"I like meat, preferably not fried, but beggars aren't choosers... Sorry I got you recruited. It was clearly the best course of action, but it still metaphorically bites."

"It went better than I expected, actually, she said 'and you still have to go to school' and I was like 'ugh' and she was like 'is the problem that it's boring or that you don't like educating yourself' and I said 'first thing, what, can I just do college courses instead' so now I'm doing that. I haven't told my parents yet though."

"Well. Good luck, if it's relevant, I don't know about parents."

"Fairies don't have 'em?"

"Nope, we just start existing in adult shape with, hm, basic skills like recognizing things and eating and moving hardcoded."

"Speaking of eating, I'll be back in ten with your lunch, please don't suddenly turn evil or anything." Off she goes in her stompy boots.

Bella's back in a little under ten minutes with two trays. She has gotten them both grilled chicken and a heap of potatoes and broccoli in some sort of sauce and sugar cookies, and coffee for him and water for her.

"Aha, caffeine, the precious." He floats his tray in front of him rather than use the table, and also declines to use utensils.

She watches the chicken disassemble itself in fascination. "So what are you doing right now?"

"I'm moving two small layers of the chicken slightly parallel and opposite from each other. It doesn't go down to the molecular level, but it's better than any knife."

"Huh. And what've you got going on with your tablet? It didn't sound like you were expecting to be transported to a low-tech world full of hostile demons so you must have to work with whatever was already on it..."

"Yeah, but I'm a bit of a tinker, which helps. If I can't swing it with just what's on me I was planning to write out a summoning diagram geared to get me and only me, and gather some stuff from my workshop, download a library or two, buy a few esoteric tools I don't already have."

"What do fairies use for currency?"

"There's fiat currency in some places, but there's also plenty of barter, at least in my part of Fairyland. Things like salt, cloth, and steel are pretty fungible and weight's not really an issue. Postal service workers get paid with prioritized imports from, well, the word in this language is Hell. The place where the 'makers' live."

"Can you bring any amount of stuff back with you when dismissed?"

"It's a bit fuzzy but, basically, stuff that is clearly in my direct control. A crate that I'm touching, yes. A car, if I had any reason to want one, probably not."

"But if we supply you with steel or salt or cloth to cover expenses...?"

"Or other kinds of food. Coffee and tea are very valuable there and just don't keep indefinitely. But yes, I could buy a lot of fancy tech in Fairyland if repeatedly dismissed and resummoned. Possibly a simpler solution would be summoning and making a deal with a maker - but that's probably more risky, the ones that answer summons tend to be sadistic assholes."

"Why's that?"

"They make whatever they want, so the things they want as pay are what they can't easily get. The name of your favorite author or musician or actor so they can conjure up all their works if you're lucky. Sex or a soul or similar, if you're not. It's definitely possible to just not agree to anything, not dangerous if the bindings are tight. And then you just dismiss and resummon until you get one who'll play ball. If I was significantly less paranoid I'd think that's a much faster route, but I don't have a sense of just how threatening your demons are day-to-day so I don't know if it's worth the risk."

"There is a daily body count, worldwide, but this base in particular's pretty quiet because the town is a walled enclave."

"...Summoning a maker sounds like a better plan now. You'd have to do it, daeva can't summon daeva."

"Me personally?"

"Not you personally, sorry. A human. Using strict adherence to the circle I write out. If I write out a proper, safe circle it might become clear how to make more circles, which could be an infosec leak."

Nod. "A supply of - daeva's the catchall? - could completely turn around the way the world's gone to shit in the last while."

"I agree there. And USADI has enough institutional paranoia to be properly cautious about summoning. But it wouldn't do to be too hasty and make things worse. Do you think you could ask if they want to risk the maker-summoning, or have me ferry things from Fairyland? I do think it's safe with precautions and care, just very slightly less safe than the other way."

"I can ask. They probably want to sound you out a bit more before they summon up lots and lots of you, but the resource is too big to ignore long-term."

"It'd be faster." He shrugs. "I guess I'll keep poking at plans for the UV thing for now."

"Sure." She pulls a radio off her uniform belt and frowns at the controls and eventually figures out how to radio Roxbury and relay the thing about makers. Roxbury says she'll take it under advisement. And then Bella pulls a book out of her bag, keeping half an eye on Nick, and reads.

Nick is focused on his tablet, taptaptapping and sometimes muttering at it (apparently it does voice input just fine), and sipping at his coffee. He frowns at it when it's gone but doesn't ask Bella to get more.

She asks anyway. "Need a refill?"

"You might as well get the whole pot, really. And I'll have a list of landmark tech for Roxbury in another hour or so."

"Pot'll get cold. Can you heat stuff by shaking it or something?"

"Flashlight does infrared, I'll just- Wait, I never got it back."

"It's possible they're taking it apart or something, they didn't tell me. Do you want me to track it down? Isn't aiming a light at a coffeepot a really inefficient way to heat it up?"

"Yeah, point, but the thing you mentioned is tricky and messy. I don't like trying to finagle liquids. I would like the flashlight back if they can be sufficiently reassured that I'm not permanently denying them a resource."

"I'll see what I can do, but I'm not even out of initial training yet so I doubt it anybody'll listen to me if they have different opinions on the subject." Up she gets.

He mutters something that might be "bureaucracy," then says, "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Off she goes.

Nick keeps working on making his vague, scribbled UV flashlight plans less of both things, of course.

Bella's gone for four hours and comes back without his flashlight but with a tray of dinner and a pot of coffee. "Roxbury's in meetings, I got blindsided by paperwork she deferred when she enlisted me, and it's surprisingly hard to find out who else is even allowed to know you exist and I'm supposed to go home now. If there were a power outlet in here I'd bring you the whole coffee machine to keep it warm, but..."

"Oh well, thanks anyway. Cold caffeine is still caffeine. I'd appreciate it if you communicated that, what's a good phrasing... I don't want to have to threaten not to share the rest of my tech to get my flashlight back."

"I'll send Roxbury an email."

"Thanks. I'm somewhat attached to that particular one since I built it myself. Good night, then?"

"Yeah, unless you need anything else right now."

"I assume you'll be back tomorrow. So, no, I'm good."

Bella's back at seven in the morning, uniformed up and carrying breakfast and coffee.

"Hello again. As long as you're stuck hanging around me, d'you want I should try to explain the UV tech?"

"Go for it if it suits you, but I've got a 2004 high schooler's engineering background."

"Yeah, good point. I think I'm close to all I can do on it without getting at a machine shop and lots of parts, though. Or just summoning a maker like I suggested. Paper and pen and I can have Roxy's tech list written out in five minutes... I should never shorten her name again. I don't think she'd like it."

"I'd tell you her first name but I don't know what it is. You wanna tell me how to summon a maker safely?"

"I think I'll wait for an official decision that maker-summoning is a go. The longer I wait to put it to paper the fewer chances everything goes to hell."

"Fair enough. I don't have an actual machine shop for you but I'm supposed to get a USADI credit card and go shopping for you if you know what you need in sufficiently local terms. This is a pathetically tiny town, though, I'll have to go to Port Angeles if you want anything nonstandard."

"I still don't actually have an internet connection, but digging through history books gave me a good idea of stuff a hardware store might have. I'll write a list after breakfast if you fetch paper and pen." And then he starts eating, before it gets much colder.

"I can pick you up a laptop on the same card. And a really long Ethernet cable."

"Heh, ethernet. I don't think they'll move me somewhere else fast enough to make it pointless, so sure, thanks. Make and model of the laptop is not likely to matter, go for something cheap and tough looking."

"Sure. Lemme see the list?"

"It has a feature that would prevent me from taking a photo of it?" she asks. "Anyway, I don't have a camera on me, I'll just copy it out if that's okay." She does have a notebook on her.

"Yes, yes it does." He sounds a little smug.

"How's it do that?" She writes quickly and has very neat handwriting.

He attempts to explain. It involves things like photon polarization and reactive algorithms.

"Would it be stretching to ask for a supply of tea and a pot? Something fruity or chai. I'm not particular as long as it has plenty of caffeine."

"I can do that. How're you going to brew the tea in here if you don't like heating liquids with teekay?"

"Gut one of the toasters and make a heating tray. Though if you see an electric tea-brewer that's probably better."

"There's still no power outlet in here," she points out.

A little device flies out. "I am a fairy, and also a power source. This is a generator. Tuning it to 110 volts is easy enough."

"Oh, okay. You'd rather have the teakettle than a coffeepot? Or you want one of each?"

"Tea's better overall, I think. Thanks for your help."

"You're welcome." And she's gone again.

Bella's back in four hours with an array of shopping carts on a dolly. "Here you go. I crossed off the things I got, couldn't find everything." She offers him her paper list.

Bella watches for a bit, then says she's going to bring him lunch and then she has a training thing unless he needs her for something.

He pauses his careful telekinetic soldering to answer. "Hm, no, go ahead, maybe mention my flashlight and how I ought to lecture about futurestuff to a pomposity of professors at some point."

"Will do if I see an opportunity." She goes away again. She brings lunch. She goes. She is back with dinner at seven in the evening.

"Things're okay. Roxbury says she'll make the engineers put the casing back on your flashlight."

He cringes a bit. "I'd rather just do it myself. I did give it to you to give to them, but it's somewhat upsetting. They know I'll need more stuff sooner or later, right? I can only get about halfway without, like, a dedicated warehouse space to turn into a factory. Most of this is tools to make tools to make tools to make useful things."

"I'll tell her you'd rather do the reassembly on your own. I'm not sure what specific results they're expecting from this shopping trip's worth of stuff."

"I am working under the assumption that the end goal is 'mass production of UV flashlights'. This is approximately step three of ten."

"Gotcha."

"What kinds of things can your magic do besides... Divination, fire, lie-detection, I think I heard a reference to curses..."

"It can summon certain kinds of demons, although this is almost invariably a bad idea. It can do teekay. Wards. Invisibility. Transformations. Something in particular you want magicked?"

"I could use some palladium and platinum to skip a few steps. Just few dozen milligrams would do."

"Transmutation's above my pay grade, but I can ask Roxbury. Might be easier to just buy it for you though."

"Oh, I'll need more than a few milligrams by the end of this, it'd just save time to have a little bit now if that were possible. I was thinking summoning again, a changer. They're fairly nice on average, though you want precautions as usual, and would probably accept an interesting book or a gadget from me at worst. They can't do electronics well."

"I think Roxbury's been arguing with some higher-ups about whether to go full speed ahead with that or not."

"Institutional paranoia works both ways. But, say, do you want anything I can help with? You're my summoner, not the USADI as a whole."

"What do you mean? Like what?"

"I don't know, that's why I asked. A gadget, maybe. I just think you're getting a bit of a raw deal for a good cause."

"It's not as bad as I thought it'd be and I was probably going to wind up joining anyway. Besides, assuming you don't turn out to be the vanguard of some kind of invasion it's a hell of a good cause."

"Pff, as if fairies could cooperate enough to organize an invasion."

"Can't they?"

"I'm sure you could get secret society types, a couple hundred fairies looking at a common goal, but I think I told you fairies mostly don't do government. Not a one of us is used to following laws, following orders, and not being able to just fly away when we don't like them."

"Anarchist fairies, gotcha."

He nods, sips tea, and starts eating dinner.

She hangs out and reads and takes notes on whatever she's reading.

"To you or to whoever casts them on you?"

"...Either. I had assumed only the former was possible."

"Roxbury mentioned witchcraft's addictive and dangerous. We can probably cough up a witch who's heavy-duty enough to do it without serious problems but they'd be a little tough to schedule for obvious reasons. I did my own mental defenses and I had to pretend to be sick for a week."

"I keep forgetting that your magic has costs. Daeva don't get tired, and the only danger is not knowing what you're doing well enough and breaking things. Guess that's a 'not worth it' then."

"I mean, I wouldn't go that far, I still did it for myself, but I can't just whip up a set of wards right now unless I want to be high for three days and pissy for four."

"It'll wait for someone heavy-duty. I'm probably not being exposed to a lot of people who want to read my mind right now."

"Yeah. I'll remind Roxbury." She flips to elsewhere in her notebook and writes this down.

"Lots of stuff that's happening at the speed of bureaucracy. When I agreed to stay here until otherwise permitted I assumed it'd be for one day, two at most."

"Where else d'you want to go?"

"I don't want to go anywhere specific, I want to have control of my location. I could just leave and wander the Earth or I'd be freaking out a fair bit more, but I can't do that without wrecking whatever working relationship I've earned and threatening to start spells flying."

"You'd scare people, is I think the major concern."

"Not much different than being an unbound fairy on the other Earth there... I could fly through the non-touristy parts of the grand canyon. Eh, ignore my complaining if you want, griping about something makes me feel temporarily better about it even if it doesn't get rid of the thing."

"I hear ya."

"I've trying to think of understandable ways to explain how all this stuff works, care to be a test audience?"

"Sure."

She follows along pretty intelligently given her prior education in the area.

After an hour and a bit, "It seems I can be a semi-effective teacher, which is probably going to be useful. That's enough for now though, I should get back to working on these tools."

"Sure. I've got a training thing I'm supposed to do sometime today if you don't need me."

"What are they even training you on? Endless streams of rules?"

"Some of that, and I have to be in decent physical condition to the limits of my ability, and I need to know the standard spells."

"Hm. Good luck with that."

"I don't know of any weird effects on summoners, but I wouldn't rule it out, your magic is not friendly. And I'm pretty much at the end of what I can do towards manufacturing them unless you can send me to Fairyland and back on a shopping trip and/or find me a proper workshop. And summoning will speed things up too. Do you want to risk summoning a maker, or stick with the less universally hostile changers?"

"From what you've said the worst case scenario if I don't mess anything up with a maker is that we can't agree and I have to send them back?"

"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?"

Shrug. "Be ready to pull something next time they wind up summoned here."

"That's what bindings are for. The biggest risk in breaking infosec is having nothing to pay them with next time."

"...How would that work?"

"If one of, say, John Doe's written works is a biography of Sarah Smith they're confident enough Sarah is a real person, they can conjure up Sarah's written works, and Sarah wrote letters to George so they can get anything George wrote, ad infinitum. Computers make this much less of a chore than it might otherwise be. I'm far from certain a random maker would attempt it, but from what I've heard it's possible."

"Well, if that's likely we should delay summoning one as long as possible in case we only get one shot."

"Makers are summoned now and then back on the other Earth, enough new content is generated over a given month that they can find something interesting. And some will do it for recommendations that they could theoretically already have accessed themselves. But yes, it should wait as long as possible."

"Changers don't have this problem?"

"No, they 'do their own detail work' so to speak. They can't change something into a hard drive containing someone's entire written works without having those entire written works as a reference. And even then it'd take a long time."

"So we'd need to actually get them the books instead of just saying they exist and we'd have to get one who knew how to do anything fancy but they're not such a potentially finite resource."

"Yes. And they'll take electronics like some of my tools or the spare tablet from my house, once I wipe it of course, and I can provide blueprints for simple but hard-to-make things, ceramic junctions and so on, so we don't necessarily need to find an engineer-changer."

"Would they be likely to be able to provide references if we did want a specialist?"

"I think so but I don't actually talk to changers much. I have a couple of changer pen pals but the only time we can actually exchange messages is when the concordances line up."

"The what?"

"Concordances. When the four realms sort of - cross into each other. They happen once every decade or so."

"That's a new wrinkle. Would a changer or another fairy leak info to the makers?"

"...What happens to them there?"

"Being bored, for the most part. Limboites are as indestructible as daeva are, but no extra magic powers beyond that. They get one thing, I think the rule is that it's their favorite thing, or the one thing that they think the afterlife would be wrong without, and it's otherwise a featureless infinite beige plane. Some people get houses, restaurants, hotels. They either share, or are made to share. Some people get their dog or a game console or a car, all sorts of things."

"Can they be summoned? They sound like they'd be trivial to pay - we could pay them with 'not being in Limbo', for starters - and the indestructibility alone would be an amazing asset."

She waits.

"Uh. Yikes? So they might be summonable or not."

"Right... I can make guesses at circles that might do it if it's possible at all."

"Is guessing at circles dangerous?"

"Trying for a limboite excludes the possibility of getting any daeva, so no. I'd have some reasonably tight bindings on the circle just in case though."

Nod. "And it'd be good summons-negotiation practice with summons who can't go rogue too horribly, for if we want more daeva later."

"If it works at all, that is."

"Yeah."

"Okay. I! Am going to write up some prospective limboite circles. Can you go arrange for the warded room?"

"Will do." Off she goes.

He designs circles. He writes them on paper. There are two sets of six mostly-identical hopefuls when Bella returns.

"I'd still like the scripts to study before I actually try this."

Read read.

"Is there any reason I can't just write up a proposal, leave it in the circle, and say I propose that?"

"They'll probably see it as a bit rude, and you do have to verbally agree once they say they agree to the proposal, otherwise no."

"There's etiquette here?"

"It's a negotiation between two people, there's a bit of etiquette, yes. You can just dispense with it if you think that's dangerous, obviously."

"I'm not planning to insult their nonexistent mothers but if gagging them is customary I don't see how having a boilerplate is any worse."

"The gag is rude too. The boilerplate would be insult-to-injury to some, amusing to others, some wouldn't care. Shouldn't have mentioned it really."

"Well, if I find a daeva who doesn't seem to have nefarious intentions maybe I can dispense with it on further summonings."

Nod. "Do the summoning scripts seem helpful? I think I've covered the most common ways for things to go horribly wrong."

"Yeah, they're helpful. I guess I'll go get clearance to try to summon a Limbo person."

"I'll finish my shopping lists. One for fairyland, one for a changer, one for a maker. See you later."

"Hours isn't normal... I could try a few more variations, but it's really quite unlikely, I think limboites just can't be summoned."

Nod. "I'm supposed to try a changer tomorrow, but I can send you to Fairyland and back now if you like."

"As long as it's with enough of something commodity-like, yes. You'll want to resummon me tomorrow, to give me enough time to get everything."

"You mentioned fabric, I can go to a fabric store, how many bolts are we talking here?"

"The more the better. Every ten bolts will make mass production of gloriously beneficial future-tech a few hours or days closer."

"Does it matter at all what kind?"

"...Cotton. Various kinds of cotton, or wool or silk but I don't think that's as common even on Earth. We have all sorts of fancy synthetics, but cotton you still have to actually grow."

"Sure. But it can be whatever color or print or anything?"

"Right."

Nick produces a diagram clearly labelled - 'Summons Nick the fairy ONLY, no bindings', and levitates the bin. "This is close enough that I can bring it with, thanks."

"And I just concentrate on shooing you for one minute?"

"Yep."

She looks over the circle drawing, finds nothing she needs to ask questions about, and shoos him.

Nick: Disappears.

"Morning. I got you breakfast." She indicates breakfast. "What'd you bring?"

"All sorts of good stuff. Two dozen modular computers, a swarm of little drones, a proper 3-D printer, the real prize is an industrial-size monoatom deposition beam," he motions at the largest bundle. "Might not sound impressive but if I get some raw materials from a changer and factory space from USADI I'll have fifteen UV flashlights a minute rolling off a line in four days."

"Sweet. I guess I should go summon a changer then. Wanna help me work out a rude proposal to leave in the circle?"

"Sure, it'll go something like 'In exchange for the following list of books, you will convert the provided tubs of water to the following list of items and substances, do you accept?' Lemme pull up my shopping list..."

Bella mostly proves willing to accept Nick's direction on the wording of the rude proposal.

And she carries it off, presumably to fill tubs with water and get his shopping list.

His shopping list, if vetted, does not contain anything inherently dangerous like vicious acids or radioactive material, merely rare and valuable things, such as almost three hundred pounds of rare metals with strange names.