"You're welcome."

"My counterpart—I believe he's been called Scion by the people from the Earth we've been inhabiting?—has informed me of everything that has happened, to the extent he's been able to, but I believe there may have been nuances he missed. You are from—different universes? To which we do not have access?"

"Yes."

"That seems to go against everything we've been able to determine about how physics works in the past thousands of years."

"Yes, it's very subtle from inside of universes."

"And Scion was under the impression you had—magic, was that it? Understanding that as things that can break the laws of physics."

"Yes."

"May I ask—how?"

"I don't think you can reproduce it here."

"Why is that?"

"Some worlds just have it. Closest thing your world has is you guys."

"We just use technology and discoveries other species made. Your—I'm not sure what his relationship to you was, the small one calling himself Epic—seemed to be able to perform magic here, though."

"It's portable, you just won't be able to generate it naively."

"I see. And do you know why we can—see the worlds we're connected to but not the others in their neighborhood?"

"I could guess. You may be overestimating my willingness to dump useful information on serial genocides without a good reason."

"—yes, I understand how that would be concerning. But I seem to be very thoroughly stuck, and could not harm anyone even if I wanted to. Which I don't; surely you understand we merely have orthogonal values, not incompatible ones."

"Yes, we've met the category 'amoral aliens who are only doing horrific things in order to combat entropy' before. We do not plan to let your universe die. Congratulations."

"It must be very upsetting to know we're a category. But if it helps, most species we've met are more like you than like us."

"Not surprising."

"It does seem like natural selection would pick that for sapient species. Regardless, given that it appears I will achieve my goals more effectively by helping you achieve yours, and that I have magic preventing me from doing most of what I'd normally do to ensure that remains the case, I do believe it would be in your interests to share more with me."

"Perhaps you could be more specific about how you plan to be helpful."

"We have several hundred thousand different ways to cheat at physics without outright breaking it, but the reason we created the whole cycle was that we are not a very creative species. We rely on others to do creativity for us. I'd offer the same, if in a less—destructive relationship than our usual ones."

"What are your interests past preventing the end of the universe?"

"I don't have any. Increasing the probability that I'll keep existing is really my only goal."

"We don't make a habit of resurrecting people and then killing them later. I suppose you could be useful as a consultant on other members of your species if you want to help out though."