"Hi!" Edie, there's a new you! "Close the door behind you, time stops while you're here."

...She closes the door. "What do you mean? And--do I know you, you look weirdly familiar but I can't place it..."

Ooh! I'll be right down!

"Maitimo, I go by Circle, you might know an alternate universe version of me? This is an interdimensional bar, and there are alternate universe versions of people. The versions of you so far are named Edie and Idaia, either of those fit?"

"...My name is Odette. Odette Zavier. You have both your hands, d'you have some kind of magic here?"

"There are three of me here and none of them are short hands, should they be? And we have a couple different kinds of magic, at least one of which can give people hands."

"I was short a hand before I died. Didn't mention it because it hardly seemed relevant."

"...Died. Alternate versions of people. Okay, please start at the beginning and explain what's actually going on. You said interdimensional bar, but--"

"There are a lot of dimensions. Not infinitely many, but 'I'm wondering if your world has enough math that I can mathematically describe what a big number it is' many. Sometimes people in a dimension get a door that lets them in here, it's called Milliways, we have no contact with the entities that decide who gets a door. Most people who find a door hang out for a little while and then leave, but my world happened to find a door in the middle of a war, and decide to stay here until we were powerful enough to win the war, and in the meantime more people - mostly versions of us - have kept showing up."

"Okay, but I'm wondering how much similarity between worlds containing the same person there is--it sort of seems like he's," she nods, "a straight up would-have-been of the Maedhros I know if I hadn't shown up, however far in the future, and you're--you're weird, I'm not sure what-all's going on but you don't feel like an Elf, but you definitely look like one--and it seems like you were never in Angband."

"You're from another Arda? Another shiny tree Arda? Also, what does 'feel like an Elf' mean -"

"I'm not from Arda, originally, I'm from the Free City of Genosha in my birth universe, and I have magic senses, essentially. I mean, they're not exactly that, but in my case it amounts to the same thing. And Elves have some...stuff...going on that humans don't and you don't."

"Can you bounce Matt what it is that you're sensing, and he can bounce it to me -"

"...I'm not sure the pure sensory data would do you much good, you don't know how to operate my magic system. A, and B the Enemy is supposed to be really good at illusions and I'm not yet sufficiently convinced you're who and what you say you are to give you access to sensory data concerning my magic system because that's how my magic is transmitted."

"Oooh, transmissible new magic. The kinds we've got so far are less so. So, shiny tree Arda still in the middle of its war? What year is it?"

"455. And the shiny trees have been dead for a while, as I gather."

"Yes, I mean by contrast with the Ardas that run on physics, in which the Sun is a flaming ball of gas instead of a fruit towed in a chariot."

"The sun is a what."

"In most places the Sun is a flaming ball of gas. In shiny tree Ardas it is a fruit in a chariot. I have no idea how that works or why it's true but we've verified it with our magic."

"The sun is a flaming ball of stardust in my universe. And my magic is really good at organic things."

"Stardust?"

"Uh. The element with the smallest atomic number?"

"Yes, that's standard for suns. Shiny tree Ardas either don't run on ordinary physics at all or else it's the incompetence of their gods."

"I'm going to go with 'the incompetence of their gods.'"

"Quite possible. Anyway, there are two normal Ardas so far - Singularity and Abaddon - and two shiny tree Ardas - Mirror and Ozymandias - and we have no idea why everyone we meet keeps being from Ardas, there are four hundred million of them but they're still a fairly small share of the multiverse -"