"Tirra mostly does not have machines. More than half of people farm. It is getting better, slowly. There is better magic, there are better roads, there are more boats, there is more metal. A person came through a rift with a hand computer and from it showed people how to make good metal." Behold, a Bessemer converter. "Other people came through rifts sometimes but rifts are always only sometimes so far. A long time ago there was... How much are you telling everyone on the planet? There are things it's not good to tell everyone."

"We are telling everyone ... things about Tirra, and about plans, and about meeting-neighbors process, but not about ... your things that are private things," she explains. "We are telling everyone about monsters, so they can be safe. If there is a thing that is not good to know, we don't have to tell everyone."

Tatenika bites her lip and looks worried.

"There are stories about ... things where it is the knowing of the things that is bad, not the doing with the knowing. Is this a like-that thing? Or is it like knowing how to make a weapon, and if everyone knows there is more fighting?"

She thinks.

"More like the second thing. Maybe a little bit first thing."

Tatenika sets down her controller and looks serious.

"We will not telling everyone, then," she promises. "Is it safe for the Emergency Services people —"

She gestures to the tent.

"— to know? Or should you tell only me?"

"It's probably okay to tell people who are careful and serious. I have to think about how to say it probably."

Tatenika waits patiently.

"People are reading parables of the light gods? The light gods are people who are ... made of magic. 'Praying' is thinking about them in a way that tells them things and maybe also feeds them. They are good people, who want to help. They are not just stories. They are called the light gods, a category of a more general thing that is just called 'gods'."

... oh. She can see where this is going. That explains how a world could have, apparently, occasional visitors with knowledge of advanced metallurgy, and still have a problem with monsters that are vulnerable to guns.

Frankly, it sounds like it might explain what's going on with magic, even, if there's a more advanced alien species that uses it. And Weiss's magic already works here, so they're already contaminated. Fuck.

"Can you ... tell whether praying works? Does it feel different than thinking normally?"

If there's a noticeable difference, they might be able to tell whether the whole planet is affected yet, or whether it's time to make very fast very serious decisions about nukes, depending on how bad the non-light gods are.

"Priestesses, people who are favored by a god, can do god-specific magic. They can definitely tell if they are praying, because the god-specific magic, divine magic, works or doesn't work. Ordinary people can't, unless the god answers them. The next part maybe I say to just you and you choose what to say to other people."

None of Tatenika's panic shows on her face, by dint of long practice. She cuts the hardware switch on her earpiece, and sets it on the table, and then leans in to listen to what Weiss has to say.

She whips up a strong baffle.

"The light gods broke the dark gods into small pieces during a terrible war- War is everyone fighting everyone- A long time ago. The pieces aren't dead and can only be killed very slowly, but they can't do much as long as they stay apart. The pieces are curses and undead and Cryptids. There is a problem sometimes with people thinking, I will take this piece of a God and be strong and tell people what to do! Or I will take these pieces and put them together into a God and the God will reward me for making it! This would be... Really really bad. So we don't talk about it much in case people get ideas."

... okay, that's a lot less bad than Tatenika was expecting, actually. It also smells like a story and not a complete explanation.

She thinks about this for a moment — but actually it's not her job to figure out how to handle these things; it's her job to get information for those people so they can do their jobs.

"We have weapons that can kill cities for thousands of years," she tells Weiss. "Everyone knows how to make them, because they are simple. The people of all the world, the Global Minimum Standards Body, tells people not to make them, and mostly people don't. When people do, the GMSB finds out by watching for weapon-building-stuff and makes them stop."

"Is taking dark-god-pieces like making a weapon? People can see it and stop it? Or is it like praying, and people can't tell if you are thinking, and then poof there is a god?"

...Nukes: Check.

"I think the light gods would be more worried if just praying could bring the dark ones back. I think it's more like making a weapon, yes."

Tatenika nods.

"If you can tell us what it looks like, we can ask the GMSB to tell people not to do it. And they know how to look good and stop people. And, if someone does get a dark-god-piece, we won't do what they say anyway."

"Oh good. Maybe you can find the right people to tell and I'll tell them later. After this heavy talk I'm going to take a break and vanish for a bit."

Tatenika really wants to insist on learning details of the potential unfriendly magical alien empowering process now, but she's worked hard on getting Weiss less skittish, and pushing it probably isn't going to help.

"There is a GMSB Inspector here to look at the meeting you process; you can tell them," she offers. "They wear purple and gold little stripes. But if you want to take a break it is okay."

"...So, the thing is, you want me to explain more and help you all be safe. You're not pressing but I can almost kind of tell. I know. I get that. I am trying to be good at this, and say the things that should be said. It's important. But... You said you don't want me to be sad because of this? I also don't! I am not... Mmmrh... I am going to rant, to talk a lot in an upset way, for a bit, because I know myself and I know that I woke that feeling up and now, I won't calm down until I do. It's not your fault."

Pause.

"Thinking hard about what to do, what is best, what is worst, will this hurt people, is this better than that, do I keep secrets, how do I make people like me, will this be scary, will they like this... I can't do that. I am not a Diplomat," she loanwords. "Nobody sent me. I'm just a girl who spends a lot of time out in the woods, hanging out with friends and killing monsters when they're in front of me. And now a whole city, a whole planet, a thousand thousand thousand people and more, are going - Alien! Kitsune! Aaaaa, excited scared! It's too big! It's too big. I can't think about it. I... Will feel guilty, sad that I did not help or that I hurt someone by not helping, and I will help and help and help and help, fix the big problems, deal with the problems of towers and cities not houses and villages, I was suffering to help people who I'd never meet, making decisions that can help or hurt a thousand people at once, agonizing over whether I did it right or I could have done better, until I was tired and miserable, until I cannot think anymore, until I feel so sad and worn-out that I go - wear red in the forest for twenty years. I did that. I tried too hard, and broke myself, and... I know not to do it again."

She grabs her ears and rubs them some, some kind of stimming, then looks like she's feeling self-conscious about it and stops, and her tail lashes around instead.

Deeeeep breath. 

"So I'll help. I'll be responsible, and say the things we need to say, and answer the questions, and be smart and careful and- I'll do the basic duty of - trying to do an unknown amount of good to a billion people I'll never meet. But I'll hate it the whole way. I'll only help so much. I'll be perfectly fine and calm and playing games one moment and just - not at all the next. I do a lot better with small problems, personal problems, people I know. My friends, who I'm going to try to go get when I'm more sure you won't set off one of those giant bombs 'cause you're too scared and twitchy. -I don't think you are, I think you're being a lot more sane and calm than you've any right to be, I'm really glad about that and was worried you'd be sending people with guns to try and lock me in a metal box. Which, uh, would not have worked at all, by the way. But you haven't. It's great. I'm not nearly so competent at calming the fuck down and getting over myself. So, I'm trying. I care that meeting people of another world goes well. Just... Only so much. Only ever so much. Tamamo's tails, most kitsunes wouldn't be half as patient, helpful, serious..."

"...Okay, rant over."

Then she takes down the baffle and sighs.

"So... Yeah. It's not a problem now, it's a problem in six months if things go badly. I'll be back in like... An hour, and tell whoever all about the signs."

And then- It looks distinct from when she just goes invisible, it's like she's turning a corner into nowhere- She's gone.

Tatenika's first thought is something along the lines of "Aliens: They're just like us".

She gives Weiss's former location a fond smile, just in case she can still see her, and then pulls out the storage media from the computer to save their game and puts her earpiece back in.

She stands and heads back to the tent, tapping her earpiece to get a dispatcher's attention.

"Kavri, I've got something that needs attention from Inspector Dafika. Could you send them a message to meet me in the temporary conference room? We can kick out the linguists."

Weiss isn't wrong that people are freaking out. It's a big deal! It's worth freaking out!

But there's a þereminian saying, passed down for generations: the first step of every plan is to breathe.

So there are parties, happening. And people speculating about the other world, and discussing how magic might work, and worrying about monsters, and learning languages, and trying to plan for the future in a world where a lot fewer things are certain.

And then there are the people who have decided that these things are too big to deal with, today, and they are just going to quietly continue living their lives.

Volharmi is a train driver. He arrives at work at precisely 13.00 every morning, checks in with his supervisor, and then gets in his train and drives it until his lunch break at 20.00. When there is an emergency, or some other unexpected occurrence, he is required to adjust the schedule of his train. This is fine — there is a defined procedure that he follows in such cases.

On a modal shift, no such event occurs, and his train runs on time until 25.30, when he completes his shift-end paperwork and turns it in just before clocking out at 30.00.

Then, in winter, he puts on his thick coat, and turns left out of the train station. He walks with metronomic precision and arrives at the little tea shop he likes at 30.22, where his phone has already placed his daily order (unless he cancels it before 30.00).

He drinks his tea and eats a muffin, before walking down the connecting street to his apartment.

Today, there is a quarantine barrier half way between him and his tea shop.

It's not that he doesn't understand this is a bad idea. He understands that perfectly well. He comprehends the importance of quarantine — and, in general, following defined procedures. He knows that it is a completely stupid idea as soon as he thinks of it, for several reasons. Not least of which is that the tea shop will be closed, obviously.

But, with the sort of horrible inevitability of a ship hitting an iceberg because the captain has a critical lack of executive function, he does it anyway.

Specifically, what he does is this:

When he sees the barrier, he realizes that they're going to stop him getting to the tea shop. So he scales the building next to him. It doesn't have belay ropes, so he really shouldn't be climbing it, but it's made of brick, so he's got plenty of handholds.

He pulls himself up onto the roof, and looks out at the crowd of gawkers hanging around the barrier hoping to see anything. There are fewer of them on the rooves, so he starts making his way closer.

Emergency Services knows that people will go over buildings if they can't go around them, obviously. There's fencing set up across one roof, with a sign indicating that beyond is a quarantine area, and that entrance is restricted to permitted personnel at ground level.

But there's a lot going on, and it's hard to completely surround an area, and there is not actually anyone watching this specific rooftop in person, although there are cameras.

He approaches the barrier cautiously, checking to be sure there's nobody watching, and then vaults it and breaks into a sprint toward the fire escape.

But even if they can't post people around the entire perimeter, there are two people sitting on a roof near the center of the secured area with paintball guns.

Their job is simple: tag anyone who should not be there with paint, to make it easy to follow up with them and figure out what's going on. So when Volharmi silhouettes himself against the sky, one of the guards takes aim, and hits him with bright pink paint.

Volharmi nearly falls off the roof, but catches himself on the fire escape rail. Paintballs are less-lethal (and the guards are trained to aim for center of mass, to avoid eye damage as much as practical), but they still hurt, and he was already not in a good frame of mind.

He runs down the fire escape, and then into the side-door of the tea shop.

It's locked.

So he turns toward the mouth of the alley, to see if he can break in through the big windows near the front.