In walks a human teenager a few years older than Dion, wearing a necklace of coins that change color magically until the door shuts behind him.

"A ring if you'll tell me why you're blocking the street?"

"Oh, hi! This is Milliways, it's an interdimensional bar, sometimes doors lead here instead of wherever they're supposed to go." He looks at Valanda. "How about instead of a ring you buy me a drink?" he says hopefully. 

Nor can I sell alcoholic beverages to adults on behalf of underage patrons, Bar napkins. 

"Aw. Okay, maybe not, then." 

"...Who's leaving those napkins?"

"The bar. She's a person, called Bar. She sells things; I think she has some kind of matter reconstitutor hidden under the counter but she won't let me take a look. I'm Dion, by the way." 

The boy pauses and makes a face, then deliberately smoothes out his expression and stands straighter. "I mean, uh, Jedi Padawan Dion Vale, at your service." He folds his hands in front of him and bows. 

"At my service?"

"It doesn't really mean anything? That's just how we're supposed to introduce ourselves, it's like saying 'pleased to meet you' but for Jedi. Why, does it mean something weird where you come from?" 

"It just sounded like you were offering to do things for me. But you were saying you wanted something you couldn't buy here? Could a structure mage make it for you?"

"What's a structure mage? And what's your name, you never said." 

"...I'm Valanda. A structure mage is, you know, a mage who works with molecular structures? Like a force mage is someone who moves things around with their mind and a void mage makes things stop existing?"

"Where I'm from we don't have any of those except force mages. Did I forget to mention the part where Milliways connects different dimensions? Because I'm pretty sure I mentioned that part. Uh, I'm a force mage, Jedi is what we're called in my world." 

"We have twelve kinds and I'm a defense mage - I keep things from changing. I was assuming magic would be the same everywhere but maybe we can trade alien magic things! Do you want anything warded?"

"Uh, I don't really...have...stuff?" He scrubs a hand through his hair. "I guess you could try warding my lightsaber but that might kriff up something in the mechanisms. Or you could ward me?" 

"I don't know what a lightsaber is but there are some wards I can do safely on people. I can protect you from heat and cold, for instance. Inanimate objects are harder to accidentally damage, you could describe how your lightsaber works so I can tell you if I can see any potential problems with warding it?"

"Protection from heat and cold would be great, we go to planets with crazy climates sometimes. I probably shouldn't light my 'saber in here but I can get it out and take it apart so you can see—" 

Dion pulls a cylindrical metal object off his belt, goes to put it on top of the bar, then visibly rethinks this plan and heads for a completely non-sapient table. 

"Light it? - Wait, you go to planets? Don't you run out of air on the way or something?"

"Well, yeah, that's why we have spaceships with air cyclers." He blinks. "Wait, are you from a pre-spaceflight world? Not even pre-hyperdrives, pre-spaceflight?" 

"People can fly in space but they can only bring as much air as they can bring and space is really dangerous so people who want to live shouldn't fly in space. What are hyperdrives?"

"Awwww, you're almost pre-spaceflight, that's adorable. Have you even made it to another planet yet? How about a moon? Uh, hyperdrives are what let spaceships go faster than the speed of light, so you can get to other systems in, like, days instead of years." 

"...Faster than the speed of light? And how do you stay alive for days in space?"

"Okay so you get a big airtight metal ship—I'm guessing you've got that far although you could be doing some magic thing instead—and then you put machines in it that can take the kind of air we breathe out and turn it into the kind of air we breathe in, and that way you can keep using the same air the whole time."

He takes a breath. "And I have no idea how hyperdrives work but they definitely make things go faster than lightspeed, yeah. Otherwise, I'd still be on a ship on my way to the Jedi Temple from when I was picked up as a baby."  

"Oh, airtight metal containers, I don't think people have used those. Maybe that's why we haven't gotten farther than the moon. At home when people want to try to go to space they carry the air with them, with force magic, but then if their concentration slips any time the whole way there and back they die."

"Thaaaat does sound super dangerous! I don't even think most Jedi could carry that much air? Yup, airtight metal containers, an important thing to have if you wanna go to the moon!" 

"That explains a lot! So why do you go to other planets? Aren't they deadly to be on?"

"No? I mean, a lot of them are, but a bunch of them in our galaxy have breathable atmospheres. I think there are people living on...twenty million? A few million planets, anyway. We've been colonising planets for so long we don't actually know which one humans started on, but supposedly it was Coruscant." Dion sounds sceptical.

"That's where I live," he adds as an afterthought.

"I don't know what a galaxy is but we don't know of any life on any planets besides ours."

"Awww, tiny baby pre-space-travel world," Dion coos. He's clearly teasing, but also genuinely seems to think Val's world is adorable. "You'll get there. Right, so, lightsaber—" 

He starts disassembling his lightsaber with the Force, partly to show off and partly because it's faster. The pieces float in the air like an exploded diagram of a 'saber's inner workings. 

"You're good at that, that's a lot of little things to control at once."

But normal good at it, he's ever in his life seen people that good. And Dion might have practiced doing this specific thing a few times.

"Yeah, I couldn't do it if I didn't know this thing like the back of my hand. Probably better, actually, I didn't build my hand."

Time to explain the important features of his lightsaber. Lightsaber: when activated, emits a two-foot-long plasma beam, contained in a blade shape by magnets, which can cut through just about anything and also deflect or block projectiles. Parts that need to be able to move are these and these and these; parts that probably shouldn't be messed with include the power pack and this tiny crystal floating right in the middle. 

"I've never seen anything like that - you don't have to personally contain the plasma? How does it generate it?"

Complicated technobabble explanations! The tiny crystal is apparently an integral part of the mechanism despite not being noticeably connected to anything. 

"So what sorta wards could you put on this thing? You probably don't wanna do, like, all the little pieces, but you could ward the casing?" 

"I could! I can make it immune to magic or immune to magic besides yours. I can ward it against extreme temperatures, but if it lets you hold plasma in your hand already that's probably redundant. I can keep the case from breaking or something, too. I'm not clear on what lightsabers are usually damaged by, though, so I don't know what would be the most useful for you."

"You probably couldn't make it watertight and leave it working...making the case unbreakable sounds really useful! Most of the time when lightsabers break it's 'cause the casing got beat up," he explains.

"So does warding it against other people's magic...but I'm guessing you'd need to do that one last. I think it's probably fine with heat but making it not get too cold would be nice?" 

"I can do all those things! I think the information you've been giving me is worth one of them, got anything to trade me for the other two?"

"Uh...not really? Jedi aren't supposed to have, like, stuff." He deflates slightly.

"You could just make it unbreakable?"

"I could but I'm just as interested in information as stuff right now and I'm sure you know other things I don't."

Dion perks right back up again. "Oh, sure! So what d'you wanna know, should I just give you a crash course on scientific advances more recent than spaceflight...?"

 He pauses and spends a second or two in an internal debate. 

"Aaaaand my ethics teacher would yell at me if I didn't tell you this, so...Bar will give out books on that stuff. She doesn't even charge unless you wanna take them away with you." 

"Oh, thanks! Maybe you can help me figure out what books to ask for. Space travel is cool but maybe you have other technology we don't, too?"

"Sure! Do you have, uh...comlinks? Holograms? Droids? Cybernetics? Tissue cloning? Repulsion coils?" 

"We have ways of getting sound and pictures from far away but if you don't have most kinds of mages then I think you must be doing that a different way. I don't think we have any of those other things."

"...you use magic for a lot of things we do with technology, huh. Guess that makes sense if you have more mages per population than we have Jedi, and they can do more types of things." 

"...Mages per population?"

"Yeah, like, Jedi are one in...a trillion? I think it's a trillion. But it sounds like you have way more mages than that." 

"No, we only have people. What are the other, uh, what else are you counting when you say Jedi are one in a trillion?"

"The...rest of the sentient population? A lot of the galaxy is humans like me—and I'm guessing you as well—but not all, there's hundreds of intelligent species." 

"But... so are all the humans Jedi?"

Dion is looking increasingly confused.

"...no? There's some species like that—Neti, and I think Miraluka and a couple others? Humans are higher than the galactic average for Force-sensitives but not that high, more like one in ten billion or something." 

"But what are the other humans? They're just - empty? Fake?"

"That's kinda rude. I mean, some Jedi think that about non-sensitives, but you're not supposed to say it."

He takes a moment to get the implications. "So does your world just not have non-sensitives? People who aren't mages, I mean." 

"Of course not. For any given type of mage, most people aren't, but everyone has some kind of magic, otherwise they wouldn't be people and that's horrifying. Why - why would it be rude, why would it matter if you're rude to animals, do you need to move to a world without fake people?"

"...I think you might be confused about the definition of 'people'," Dion says. "People are the ones that can think and talk and make plans and fall in love and stuff. As opposed to animals that can feel but not think, or computers that can think but not feel. It's kinda hard to tell the difference between people and computers if you can't see them, but it's not hard at all to tell the difference between humans and animals." 

"But they can't do any magic? How can they be people? Magic is supposed to be why people are people."

"Says who? Maybe that's how it works in your world..."

"So in yours they have feelings and do logic and just don't have magic? That's horrible."

"Why? What's so terrible about just not having magic, if you were somewhere your magic didn't work you'd still be you, right?" 

"That would be horrible and someone might enslave me."

"Depends on the place," Dion says with a shrug. "But you'd still be you?" he presses.

"I guess so."

"So what's the difference between someone whose magic doesn't work right now, and someone who was born without any?" 

"What's the difference between a baby that's born without a heart and lungs and someone whose heart and lungs were just ripped out?"

"...I'm confused," Dion admits.

"Are you saying you think you'd die without magic?" 

"I don't understand how this is confusing. It's like... imagine if you were talking to someone and then somehow they got cut on something sharp and it turned out they didn't have blood. Wouldn't that be creepy?"

"...it would maybe be a little weird? But, like, I know there are sapient species without bones, I'm sure there's one out there without blood, it's not logically impossible or anything." 

"Okay, I think your world is weird, but moving on. Since you don't have very many, do you need anything that some mages could do if I hold my door open for you?"

Shrug. "Not really. My door opens on Coruscant, it's the centre of the galaxy and it's got pretty much everything you could ever need. We've got technology for stuff where you use magic, remember? And we're way ahead. I mean, obviously it would be super great if everyone in my world suddenly became mages like in yours, but we don't need it." 

"What else can your technology do, besides space travel? Are there medical applications?"

"Yeah—oh, right, we were gonna get books on stuff. Bar—" 

He asks Bar for books on a variety of subjects. Computers; it doesn't sound like Valanda's world has those and they're really good for letting technology advance in general. Bacta revolutionised medical care in the Republic, but Bar refuses to give him a sample of the bacteria so they'll just have to hope it grows somewhere in Valanda's world. Medical scanners! Tissue cloning! Repulsion coils are probably less useful if they have a lot of telekinetics to float stuff about, and it doesn't sound like they're in desperate need of comlinks or hologram tech. Here, have another medical textbook! 

This is going to be so useful back home, he'll make a killing selling the information and maybe be able to quit his job to found a city.

"...Do any of these books say whether there's a way to change a human's sex?"

"Yup, that's in, uh, this one? Wait, you probably want lower-tech ways..." 

Artificial sex hormones! A variety of surgeries! Much knowledge! 

"...so, should I ask which pronouns you prefer? We're kinda lucky Basic isn't gendered in the first or second person—I'm exactly as much of a boy as I look, by the way." 

"...I'm a man, but what do you mean about what pronouns I prefer? I hear you speaking Ilan and I've never heard of asking anyone which Ilan pronouns they'd like to be called, usually other people choose for you."

"I'm speaking Galactic Basic...Bar, is there some kinda magic translation going on?"

Everything you hear or read in Milliways will look or sound like your native language, Bar napkins. 

"Huh. Anyway, in Basic third-person singular pronouns are gendered and it's rude to use the wrong ones? The standard sets are he, she, or they. Does...Ilan...have something like that?" 

"Wow. Ilan has... twelve pronouns for the third person, some of them are gendered but they're also for how close you are. You use different pronouns for friends and enemies and sometimes they're different for adults and children. ...Which we have in the first and second person, too, I hear you saying you don't know me well but aren't my enemy and I'm saying the same thing."

"Yeah, that sounds about right. Wonder how it does that. Anyway, I'll use 'he' if I'm talking about you in Basic, that's simple enough, and the translation magic can just do its thing." 

More science? 

More science! ...After a while he can't retain much more.

"And if you take any of this stuff home with you it'll stop being in a language you can read...you could make notes, I guess? Get a few more things down that way. But if I write 'em they'll still be in Basic."

"If I just copy entire books, what then?"

"As long as you do all the copying out, it should come out in your language. Up to you how much time you wanna spend doing that, but at some point it probably stops being worth it?" 

"I'll do at least a little, I guess."

Dion would help with the copying but that would literally not help at all because he doesn't speak or write Ilan. He perches on a barstool so he can swing his legs, and watches Valanda work.

"What are you gonna do with all this science once you get back?" 

"Sell it to people who know how to use it."

"Why don't you just give it to them?" he wonders. "A lot of this stuff could save hundreds of lives; it seems kinda mean-spirited to hold onto scientific advances just because the scientists don't have enough money." 

"...What?"

"Like, what are you gonna do if, I dunno, maybe people don't believe you about how good the information is and don't wanna gamble their savings on it?" 

"Oh, that! Well, then I try... I think one of the medicines... with a structure mage who has a contract saying they can't tell the information to anyone else, and then I sell single doses at a reasonable price until people are satisfied I know things."

"And what if no-one will buy them because they don't have any way to know it's gonna work?" He's mostly playing Sith's advocate, being contrary just for the sake of it. 

"Then I'd do like Bar and give out some free samples until I got good word-of-mouth going!"

Dion nods approval to this plan. "Good. It'd be terrible if your world missed out on modern technology because you couldn't convince anyone to invest." 

Leg-swing. 

"It's so weird that your world doesn't have, like, specific organisations of Force-sensitives. I mean, mages," he corrects himself. "I keep wanting to say 'why don't you just take it to the Masters of your order and let them figure out how to help people with it', but if everyone is a mage you probably don't have one of those. I guess you could go to your government, but that's not really the same." 

"I could! The government would know who'd be interested in buying the information!"

"Couldn't they just give it to some scientists and say, here, work on this? What's your government even for if it can't do that?" 

"They could maybe buy it themselves and then do that, I don't know. They're for peacekeeping! And they do a great job of it, we haven't had a war for four hundred forty-seven years."

"Oh yeah? The Republic's lasted more than seven hundred." 

"Impressive! Someday we'll have lasted that long too! How did you do it?"

"I dunno, I wasn't alive back then." Dion shrugs. "Our history classes mostly talk about how we won the last great war against the Sith and wiped 'em all out." 

"You wiped them out? All of them? Why?"

"Uh, cause they were evil? A Sith is basically just the word for an evil Jedi." He shrugs again, looking uncomfortable with the idea. "I mean, it's more complicated than that, but it all started with some Jedi who went bad. Supposedly." 

"That's not translating well, are you using jargon or something?"

"I explained what a Jedi is already, didn't I? We're basically like force mages, I'm just used to saying Jedi." 

"No, the other part. What was wrong with the Sith, exactly?"

"They used the Dark side of the Force, which makes you get angry and paranoid and want to hurt people—wait, is the word evil not translating, what—"

"Yeah, that's the part that's not clear. The problem with Sith is that they get too angry to follow the law?"

"I mean, it's not really about the law, they sort of made their own laws back when they had an empire covering half the galaxy. It's more to do with all the murder and torture and slavery they were doing in their empire. That's evil, doesn't matter if it's legal or not." 

"...You didn't think you could make them stop? Or they refused to stop? What happened?"

"The wars were about getting them to stop." Dion rolls his eyes. "They wouldn't do it just because we said to, there were as many of them as there were of us back then." 

"And the only acceptable solution was to kill every last one of them?"

"Um. I guess, yeah. Otherwise they'd have just kept killing and torturing more people." 

"They couldn't be conquered and start following your laws?"

"Sith don't really do the whole 'following laws' thing. I mentioned how using the Dark Side makes you angry and paranoid and stuff, right? It's like—does your world have addictive drugs or are you going to go 'what' again?" 

"Oh, okay, so they're the kind of people who would all be enslaved or killed where I'm from."

Dion snorts. "Good luck enslaving a Sith." 

Then the implications catch up with him. "...your world still has slavery? Not legally, though, right?" 

"What do you mean, not legally? If it was illegal I'd call it kidnapping and assault."

"...your world has legal slavery," he realises. "Not of - wait, no, you're all mages - how do you even enslave a mage, anyway?"

"With command magic. What do you do with people who won't follow the law?"

"We...lock them up in prisons and let them out when we think they learned their lesson?" Dion isn't actually too clear on how the justice system works, but he doesn't care enough to look it up and get Valanda a better answer.

"What's command magic?" he asks, instead of doing that. 

"You use it to make people unable to take certain actions, like hurting people. Do you put people to work while they're in the prisons?"

"No, that would...that would be slavery. Unable how?" His voice rises and cracks on the last word. 

"Unable like you want to do it but your muscles won't move."

Dion shudders. "Sounds horrible. That's way worse than prison, why would you do that to people!" 

"Because if you don't do it to anyone, then babies who don't understand consequences yet will get annoyed about someone breathing too loudly and make them stop."

"...oh." 

He takes a second to digest that. "Some baby Jedi could probably do that. But they don't, because...because we're all raised in the temple with other Jedi and they teach us not to. That's why all Force-sensitive babies are supposed to be given to the temple, so they don't accidentally hurt people with their powers before they can control them." 

"How do you keep them from accidentally hurting people?"

"Well, babies aren't very good at using the Force, and in the Temple, they're surrounded by people who are better than them, so if they try to do anything bad an adult will stop them?" 

"...I guess with force magic you could maybe do that... I bet it takes a lot of adults to manage it, though."

"Not really? Maybe baby mages in your world are stronger than baby Jedi or something. Babies can't really do much with the Force." 

"What do you mean they can't do much?"

"Like, it takes focus and effort to use the Force, and babies are kinda dumb so they're not very good at either of those things? They can't just make something levitate by waving their hands and giggling at it." 

"How young are you talking about? Because where I'm from sometimes humans don't really understand being careful till they're five or six and they can definitely levitate things by the time they're two and usually a lot earlier."

"Tiny things? Sure. But when I was five or six I remember struggling to control a ball about—yea big." He gestures the approximate size of a soccer ball. "Couldn't do that much damage with one of those." 

"What does size have to do with it? I know there's a limit but I didn't think it grew or anything, but I'm not that kind of mage..."

"I think maybe your world's magic just works different. But I'm not an expert on the Force, either."

He tries to remember what they were talking about before this. "Okay, so if all babies in your world can do dangerous magic you need a way to stop them, that makes sense. It's still awful that you do that to anyone, but it makes sense." 

"Yeah. ...Different magic, huh? What can your kind of mage do? Just lift things?"

"No, that's the one everyone knows but we can do other things as well. Like, uh..." He struggles to think of an example for a second.

"...I guess mind tricks aren't really the same as command magic? But. Some Jedi can mess with people's heads." 

"...What kind of messing with them?"

"Uh...I mean, I've never done it, but it's stuff like making people pay less attention to you, or give you stuff without haggling so hard, just...confusing them for a second or two? We're not supposed to do it too much, it's kinda unethical."

"Unethical?"

"You know, 'cause it's messing with free will or bodily autonomy or something." 

"I'm not sure 'unethical' is translating right. Can you give me a definition?"

"Uh...morally wrong? Immoral? Bad—wait, 'evil' didn't translate earlier—"

"Yeah, I think you might be using jargon or something. This is related to the Sith being the kind of people who can't be free safely?"

One or both of them are very confused right now and Dion thinks it might be 'both'. "I—it's not jargon it's a basic concept, how does your language not have—what do you even hear if I say 'bad', there's got to be a word for that." 

"Yeah. Bad, not useful, usually if you don't specify what something is bad for there's an obvious intended use - bad food is rotten, bad money is counterfeit. Do you use 'bad person' to mean people who can't be part of a peaceful society?"

"I...kinda? This is hard, I've never had to explain morality before. Does that word translate at all or does it just sound like nonsense jargon—" 

"I think you're still using jargon or something."

Dion sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair. "So your language doesn't have words for evil, ethics, or morality. And I bet if I say 'wrong' you'll hear it in the sense of, like, a wrong answer on a test or something." 

"Yeah."

He sighs again and thinks for a while.

"Okay, so. In your language, things can be 'good' or 'bad' for their purpose, right? Well, morality is basically saying that there's an ultimate 'good' and 'bad' for the whole universe, because there's this...bigger purpose, underlying everything. Actions are good if they work towards the bigger purpose—so we call them 'moral'—and they're bad or immoral if they work against it. Does that, like, make sense or am I still talking gibberish?" 

"I think it makes sense. Who decided what purpose the universe should have?"

"Well...that's kinda complicated," Dion admits.

"Lots of people have different ideas of what the universe's purpose should be, and that's, uh, pretty much all of philosophy and ethics. People arguing about what the purpose is and how we should interpret that and turn it into rules and stuff. They mostly agree on the big ones like 'murder is bad', though." 

"So it's... what people want for the whole universe? How is this different from laws?"

"They're...decided by philosophers instead of governments, and governments don't enforce moral rules unless they're laws as well? Like, obviously murder is illegal most places with exceptions for executions or whatever, but something like...it's really hard to think of a good example. Uh, maybe charity? Morality says it's good to help people in need, but people will get mad if you make a law that says they have to give all their stuff to poor people. So it's moral to give money or food or blankets to people begging on the street, but there aren't any laws about it either way." 

"Because people want you to do that but if they force you to you'll get mad? So it's, what, all the things that people care about?"

"Pretty much! People care about being alive and happy and not in pain and so on, and morality means we all agree to work towards making that true for everyone. The differences are mostly about how people think we should get there—it's like we know the destination but we don't have a map so we have to argue about the route or which stops we should visit first on the way." 

"So it's cooperation. And, uh... positive-sum games?" He switches languages for that last term, not that Dion should be able to tell.

Dion is indeed unable to tell the difference; everything Valanda says is already translated. 

 "Yeah, that's the general idea. I still feel like you're probably missing some important part of it, but that's enough that we can talk about it, I think?" 

"Yeah, I think so. So your people study cooperation in more depth than we understand it where I'm from?"

"I guess. I'm still not sure why your people don't. I mean, what do you even have instead? Just laws that say slavery's legal?"

"Lots of people think it's important to pay people back for favors or get revenge if they hurt you."

"Yeah, see, one of those is moral and one is kinda not. I mean, revenge isn't just a Sith thing, but it's definitely on the Darker side of things. Uh, the more evil side. Less moral." 

"What's wrong with revenge?"

"Well...uh." He waves a hand as he casts about for an example. 

"Okay, say someone murdered your best friend. If you get revenge by murdering their best friend, that sounds fair, but it's still bad because you still killed someone. And it's still illegal—please tell me your world has laws against killing people."

"Yeah, we have laws against that. That's why instead of killing them you should take it to the government, so the government can punish them a predictable amount after checking that they really did it."

"Okay, so it's illegal, but you're not sure why it's immoral?"

"Is it immoral because people don't want to cooperate with you if you try to kill them?"

Dion snorts. "Yeah, I guess you could put it that way. People...don't like being killed? So if you're trying to be moral you shouldn't kill people. Unless it stops them hurting other people, I mean." 

"I guess that makes sense. But if you're getting revenge you are stopping them from hurting other people."

"...in some cases, yeah." Dion concedes. "But there's also the part where—you have to be sure about whether you're helping people or not? So, in general, you should leave punishing people to governments and other policing organizations who have enough resources and detachment to make sure they're doing the right thing and not just what you feel like the right thing is. If that makes sense." 

"Yeah, of course. So does that make it immoral not to report a crime someone committed against you?"

"...good question?" Dion says, to cover up the fact that he doesn't know. 

"I think only if it's a violent crime and you think they're gonna do it again? So if a random stranger mugs you or rapes you then you should report it so they can be stopped from doing it to other people, but if someone, like...I don't know. If your boyfriend hits you then I don't think it's immoral not to report him even though it would be a good idea." 

He pauses to think about this. "It's kinda important that...some things aren't about morality? Like, there are good things and there are bad things and then there are some things that are just kind of. Things. And you do them and they don't say anything about whether you're a good person. Like washing your socks or something." 

"That makes sense. Like having green or brown hair, right?"

"Yeah! Having green hair or brown hair or blue skin or whatever is, uh, morally neutral. I think that's the right phrase. Anyway, there's lots of things where morals aren't the important thing even if there is technically a right answer, like the boyfriend thing." 

"What's the important thing if your boyfriend hits you?"

"...making sure you're safe, I guess? Whatever that ends up meaning? I mean, you could argue that's a moral thing to do anyway because you're a person and your happiness and safety matter, but it seems kinda pointless to put it in those terms."

"I guess that makes sense. Why isn't that the important thing if it's a stranger?"

"So, two things. One, a boyfriend is different from a stranger in that he's gonna be sticking around you a lot more, so it's more relevant to think about keeping your future self safe and then protecting other people. Two, your boyfriend isn't necessarily gonna go out and hit other random people just because he hit someone he's with, but a stranger could go find another stranger pretty easily, and there's no reason to think they wouldn't." 

He frowns. "Okay, third thing. You're more likely to be able to guess whether your boyfriend will do it again, so it's less important to go to the government for that."

"That makes sense."

That's when the door opens and someone else walks in. He doesn't quite look like Valanda - browner hair and darker skin, brown eyes instead of green, easily a couple years younger but even shorter than Valanda was at that age - but he looks more like Valanda than a randomly selected person from a randomly selected universe should. A lot more.

"...Excuse me, are you gods?"

"Nope, gods aren't real. We're aliens and this is a magic interdimensional bar." 

"They're not? How do you know?"

"How do you know they are? Have you ever met one?"

"No, but I've seen some of the things they made before they left. They light up or kill you or just... exist and are made out of materials that aren't natural."

"Yeah, that sounds more like 'you got visited by aliens' than 'gods'. Even in places that have religions I've never heard of gods just leaving." 

"Excuse me, what are gods?"

"The people who created the world and could do amazing things and then went to visit the other stars or something."

"...advanced aliens," Dion concludes. "Weird to think about humans being the primitive ones in that setup—sorry, are you human? I assumed."

"Yeah, I am. What's the difference between advanced aliens and gods?"

"Youuu shouldn't worship advanced aliens?" Dion says, in a what-do-I-have-to-explain-now sort of tone. "And they probably didn't do everything the stories say, like, they probably didn't create the planet, just put things on it, maybe terraformed it a little..." 

"...Next you'll be telling me they're not even the definition of goodness."

Dion sighs.

"No, they're not. Are you going to make me explain morality again? And—why do you two look weirdly similar, anyway?" 

Bewildered shrug.

Even more bewildered shrug.

"Uh, what?"

"You and him—" pointing between them "—look like the same face copied in two different holos," he tells Vaayo. "It's weird. Hey, is your name Valanda too?"

"I'm Vaayo and my hair is not that color and... he's... taller. I guess it is kind of weird. Anyway why would you be explaining morality?"

"Because in Valanda's world they haven't invented it."

"In mine they have but people say it's all about the gods. Okay, so you don't think the gods are important, and you're from... some other planet? And this place just kidnapped me for some reason?"

"Yeah, it does that. You can get back through that door but you should talk to the Bar first, she has books from all the worlds and can sell you cool stuff." 

He goes up to the bar. "Hey, Bar, do you know why Valanda and Vaayo look alike?"

A napkin appears with an explanation of alts; he shows it to the two Valandas. (Sorry, Vaayo, but Valanda was here first so Dion's brain designated him the default version.) 

"Thanks. What currency does she use and... hm. Can I do anything to earn money here?"

I accept every currency in existence, Bar napkins. Jobs available to patrons, depending on qualifications, include Security and janitorial work. I can take applications for both, but I'm not authorised to hire the former on my own recognisance. 

"I'll do either."

Bar provides an application form for Vaayo to fill out. 

Meanwhile, Dion starts quizzing her about whether she's ever met any of his alts. 

I can't recall. 

"Aw." 

Right on cue, the door opens, and in walks a brown-skinned 10-year-old in a faded blue tunic. 

"WHOA." He runs in, leaving the door to swing shut behind him. "Hi! I'm Nino! Who are you?" 

"Valanda. Hello."

"...I'm Dion. Hi." 

Dion doesn't seem to know what to do with a ten-year-old bouncing up and down in his face. 

The ten-year-old, undaunted, continues to bounce all over the place. 

"Why is the tavern different to normal? Why is it night through the window, it was day a minute ago!" 

"If you can read you can ask the, uh, person over there, the invisible one who makes things magically appear."

He dashes over to the bar, catching it with his hands and leaning over it.

"Hello, invisible person. I can't read. Why do I need to read, can you not talk?"

Bar produces a napkin. He stares at it. "Whooooa." 

"I can teach you to read the alphabet I know but it might need some modifications for your language, I don't know."

"No, it's okay, I can read this. It says this place translates everything, even writing. Thanks, though!" 

"That's convenient! I also do magic professionally if you're interested in wards."

Nino runs back over to their table. "You can do magic? Can I see? 

"Yeah! I can make things indestructible, got anything you want me to demonstrate on?"

"Uhhh..." He digs in a pouch that's tied to his belt with string, coming up with a shiny pebble.

"This?"

"I can definitely show you on that but it'll be easier to see with something you could normally break."

"Oh. Hmm." 

...the pouch itself?

Sure, he can do that. And now it is not a soft or bendable pouch.

"I can undo that and I can do wards that aren't like that, I just wanted to show you the most obvious thing."

Nino turns the pouch over in his hands and pokes it, trying to get it to open and close. "COOL." 

...but it doesn't work as a pouch like this, so he will ask Valanda to undo it, please. 

"Of course." And it's undone. "I can also make it durable and leave it soft but I thought I should do something really obvious first, so you could be sure you weren't just not strong enough to rip it."

Dion's paying attention too. "Can you do that as many times as you want, or do you get tired?"

"I get hungry if I do it a lot and if I do more complicated things I get tired of thinking about it but I can pretty much do it as much as I want."

"The only people back home who can do magic are the priests, and they always say they shouldn't bother the gods for every little thing." He alters his voice for the last part, clearly imitating an older woman. 

...Fuck.

"Oh, why is that?"

Nino shrugs. "The gods have more important things to do, I guess? If I was gonna do magic I think I'd be a wizard instead of a priest, but there aren't any of those on our whole island. Are you a wizard?"

"I don't know what wizards and priests are or what gods have to do with magic."

"I guess that means you're not a wizard then! A wizard is someone who studies a lot and reads a ton of books and they learn how to do magic from that. And priests can do magic because the gods grant them power, but not always." 

"Oh. And anyone can become a wizard if they study hard?"

"That's what Signor Vasco told me," Nino says with a nod. "I asked why he isn't a wizard and he said he decided to study how to serve the gods instead, but I'd rather be able to do magic whenever I want." 

He frowns quizzically at Valanda. "So if you're not a wizard or a priest, what are you? A sorcerer? Oooh, are you a warlock?" 

"...No, I think I'm a wizard and just didn't have your word for it. I've studied magic for a few years."

He bounces. "Can you teach me? I mean, please would you teach me some magic?" 

"Depends on what kind of mages people in your world can be. You're not very likely to be the kind I am."

He nods seriously. "How do we tell? I didn't even know there were kinds of wizards." 

"If you didn't know there were kinds your world might only have one kind. And if it were my kind you'd already know what I can do."

"So...you can't teach me?" He deflates. 

"My world only has one kind, too," Dion puts in. "And your wizards don't sound much like Jedi." 

"Mine has none and I think I might want to hire one of you for something at some point."

"Why do you have my face, stop looking like me and - and - and get out of here, or die, I don't care - "

"Do you own this place? Should I have known it was your private property?"

The fake person needs to stop being alive right now.

And now Vaayo is enclosed in a glowing translucent blue sphere, and a man in blue robes is standing between the two Vals.

"Violence against other patrons is prohibited in the Bar area," he tells Valanda sternly. "Would you like to talk out your differences in a civilised manner, take this outside, or take some time to cool off in a detention cell?" 

"I'm perfectly willing to kill it outside."

"...Does anyone... maybe want to explain... anything...?"

The newcomer turns smoothly to face Vaayo. 

"This man here just tried to kill you with his magic. I stopped him using my own, that being my job as Security. Under the circumstances, I thought it wise to preemptively ward you against hostile magic for the rest of this conversation, hence the light show," he adds, indicating the glowy sphere.

"But why does he want me dead?"

"Because you're a disgusting freak that shouldn't exist."

"What—is this about the thing where people without magic aren't people. Because that's still dumb. Anyway, I thought we decided that was only a thing in your world?"

"It has my face!"

"You weren't bothered by that a minute ago," Dion tries, without much hope of success.

"I didn't realize it was fake a minute ago!"

"So...he was acting like a person, so you assumed he was a person, and now even though he's still acting like a person you're assuming he's not. Because of your world's thing where all the people have magic, which is only a thing in your world."

"I don't care, it just needs to go away."

Vaayo would like to know if he can keep the magic shield thing while he's here.

"It'll stay up until my shift ends, which won't be until there's someone else on duty who can keep you safe," the Security guy says, sitting down on a barstool to spectate. "Milliways takes the safety of its patrons very seriously." 

Dion looks between Valanda and Vaayo.

"...maybe you two should be in different rooms for a bit. Valanda, wanna come see what's outside? Bar said something about a back yard." 

"Okay."

So Dion and Valanda go out through the back door.

"...wow. I, uh, think 'back yard' might have been an understatement."

They're standing on the edge of a wide grassy meadow beside a lake. Further out, there's a forest and some mountains in the distance, blue and hazy. The building behind them is unassuming, a three-storey timber-framed construction not much bigger than the main bar area. 

"I've never seen a sky this blue." 

"What color are the skies you've seen before?"

"Well, Coruscant's sky is pretty much just yellow smog all the time, except at night when it's...kinda greyish smog. And I've only been off-planet once or twice since I was a baby." 

"That sounds strange."

"I guess you get used to things like that when you live in a megacity." Dion shrugs.

"What's the sky like where you live?"

"Blue. Sometimes with white clouds."

"Your planet must have fewer people than Coruscant by a long way. But I guess that makes sense if you haven't invented space travel yet, I'm not sure a single planet can support that many without trade links." 

"How many people does Coruscant have?"

"Uh...I think we hit one trillion a few years ago? That's just the official census records, though, everyone knows there's tons of people in the lower levels that don't get counted." 

"...Yeah, that's more than we have. That's a lot more."

"Yeah? How many people do you have?"

"Less than two million on land."

"On land? Do you have water-dwelling people as well? That's a lot more variety than you generally get on one planet."

As if on cue, a large tentacle briefly waves above the surface of the lake. 

"Hey, there's something in this water! Let's go take a look."

"Yeah." He approaches the lake cautiously. "Do we have any reason to think the tentacle creature is safe to be around?"

"Milliways is supposed to be safe, right? Anyway, I think it's intelligent, it feels like a person in the Force." 

He tries waving at the lake. The giant squid bobs to the surface and waves back. 

"You can feel people with the Force?"

"Yeah. I'm not very good at it, but I can tell when there's something living there and I can usually tell if it's a person or an animal. Doesn't work on droids—oh, right, you probably don't have those. They're machines that can walk and talk. Does work on Bar, which is weird."

"Was Vaayo a person, then?"

"Yeah? I mean, the Force thing isn't a hundred percent reliable for me yet and I usually just guess from context, like 'are they talking to me or trying to eat me', but."

He shrugs. "Walks like a person, talks like a person, feels like one in the Force." 

"Thanks. I must have just misunderstood something."

"I told you the magic thing is just your world. It's probably just a coincidence even for you, or maybe there's something about having magic that makes species more likely to develop sapience or something." 

"I think I heard that the reason people are people is because having magic makes us evolve to be smarter. But I don't know why anyone would evolve that way otherwise."

Dion shrugs again. "Evolution is weird."

He watches the water lapping against the lakeshore. 

"So...you believed me about Vaayo being a person when I said I could tell with magic, but not before?"

"Well, you also think you can tell for this other animal, you're obviously pretty confident in your ability."

"Did I mention it's less reliable than whether they can hold a conversation, for things that talk to you? Like, if they're not talking, I'll trust the Force, but if they are I just trust that." 

"Didn't you just say you have machines that walk and talk?"

"Yeah, and some of them are people, but Jedi senses can't see them at all because they're not made out of flesh and blood and stuff. So for those you have to talk to them to figure it out." 

"How do you know they're people?"

"Cause they...tell us so? And people who know more about droids than I do can look at their code and tell that way." 

"Couldn't they just tell you they were people because you made them do that? Like, an illusion mage could make a statue say 'I'm a person' whenever anyone asked it the right question..."

"I think that's what the looking-at-the-code is for? I'm not an expert. Anyway, it doesn't matter that much because mostly people just treat all droids like they're machines and not people." 

"Oh, I thought you said you didn't have slaves."

"...that's...it's different." 

"Different how?"

"I don't know, it—it just is! I told you I'm not an expert!" 

"Know any books I could get that would explain it?"

"Maybe? But most of them probably assume you know anything about computers." 

"Well, then I guess I'll have to wait and find out later."

"I guess. Is it gonna bother you now?" 

"Yeah, but it's probably not the most important thing for me to find out."