Epic sings quietly to himself and heads off with his escort.

He is led to an official-looking shiny black car.

...okay. Car!

They start trudging through noon traffic! It is a lot.

He works on his artifact.

It soon transpires they're not going to HQ.

"Uh. Where're we going?"

"Oh we're kidnapping you," says the driver.

" - I don't think that's a very good idea."

"Then you can see it as 'we're showing you what the government's really like.'"

"I get all mail addressed to 'Epic'. Writing me is a much better way of communicating with me and won't get anybody panicked and won't cause people to start fighting. People start fighting over kidnappings. And I know they're a military dictatorship, I just don't know how to get them to stop being that without being something worse like chaos."

"—what?"

" - are you the person in charge of the kidnapping or should I wait for that person so I don't have to explain everything twice."

"I'm not the person in charge of the kidnapping, sorry."

"Can I have an hour uninterrupted, it's not worth working on if I don't get an hour uninterrupted."

"...might take us an hour to get there so sure."

"Are people not going to notice I'm missing by then?"

"Maybe, but they won't find you."

"I really don't want them to worry. Can I pop home and leave a note? - no, then I guess they'd be mad I went along with being kidnapped at all, whereas if I don't go home I can pretend I couldn't think how to escape or something."

"...sure."

"What."

"How would you pop back home?"

"Oh I can make myself several bodies and then - inhabit different ones. So I'd make one at home and then I'd go be in it. I have to know exactly where I am relative to home, though, so we could pretend you disoriented me enough I couldn't figure out where to put it."

"—you can do what?"

"Lotsa things. You really didn't think your kidnapping plan through very well, did you."