"Does Cricket have any insights?"

"Not really. He can't remember much about before his dungeon died. He started out with, like, a personality, and he was able to speak English - though I had to teach him to read - but not a lot in the way of memories or propositional knowledge."

"Huh, have you placed the accent?"

"He sounds local, as though he's from the place his dungeon spawned."

"Have people talked to uh - was the word monsters, that seems rude - before dungeons died?"

"The word is monsters and Cricket doesn't mind being referred to as a monster cat. There... are dungeon monsters who talk. They're very rare. There's a big-deal psychic dungeon called Nightmare which kidnaps people specifically in their sleep and then physically manifests the components of their worst nightmares to act out while they're in there, and sometimes that involves humans who talk. The other examples are, like, dungeons with parrot monsters."

"Do monster cats only gain the ability to talk after their dungeon dies as far as you know? Also that sounds absolutely horrifying and does not leave me optimistic about whatever created the dungeons being at all benevolent - though I suppose everything else doesn't seem exactly encouraging on that front either."

"Nightmare is plausibly the worst dungeon, a lot of the time people just wind up in some kind of compartment of the dungeon bored out of their minds till we get them. And yeah, the monsters in Cricket's dungeon did not talk before its death."

"Are there any good dungeons?"

"Not, like, actively good. There are dungeons that don't take very many people but none that take zero. There are dungeons that don't particularly hurt their victims, lots of those, but if nobody gets them out the dungeon eventually despawns on its own and everybody inside is gone."

"Oh. They aren't there when the dungeon returns?" 

"Nope. They come back refurbished, same themes but bigger and - fresh, and none of the previous victims or even remains."

"What does being bigger translate too?"

"Literal size, the extent of the dungeon itself."

"Do they otherwise come back worse, or just bigger?"

"Sometimes there are other changes, especially the very first time a dungeon gets away and comes back it'll often be more - tightly designed, I want to say? - but after that mostly just bigger and able to kidnap more people."

"How many people get kidnapped a year?"

"That's a good question but not every country is cooperative about reporting stats so I don't have a very exact figure. Hundreds of thousands, maybe low millions. Most of the kidnappings aren't much more disruptive to the kidnappee than, say, being stuck in an elevator for a few hours, but the worst dungeons get the most press and I personally see a lot of psychic dungeons because I can shield out their effects."

"It's rather disappointing that people still aren't cooperative about reporting stats."

"I'm sorry we have not improved on that front as much as you might have hoped."

"I was planning to push for that if I took over the Times - insofar as I'd have influence to do that."

"Does the New York Times have... applicable international clout? Or, uh, did it."

"Some? But I think I would only need clout with a few of the right people at the League of Nations - not even top people just the sort of people who could report to their bosses that it would be nice if this program kept this sort of records and stuff like that. Also I'd push New York to become a model other places can point to as a good example to follow, which I think can do a lot on it's own."

"Very American of you."

"How so?"