"Our telepathy can do most of that if we want it to and we could probably finesse the rest with other software if anyone were trying to operate thousands of themselves without drifting out of sync. Our forks work by copying the state of our chips and putting a new body around the copy; usually they decide what they're going to do differently in advance."

"Huh! Then probably you could get there if you were trying to stay in sync instead of trying to specialize."

"Okay, so I hope that isn't doing much of the work of explaining the divergences because my Maitimo thinks he'll be forking a few times once his kids are grown up, his grandfather retires, and there are people to govern scattered on more planets."

"Perhaps he should exercise some caution about that, I didn't start out all that differently from that."

"What happened?"

"Millions and millions of copies, thousands of years, everyone died."

"We don't die, at least not for long. - why didn't you - bring anyone else with you, once you had a way to not die -"

"Didn't, until after they were all dead."

"Oh."

"It'd help if there were others, I'd suspect. But I can't really guess. I don't - particularly remember, or have much continuity of identity with, the person I was when I was human."

"No memory enhancements? Or they just don't work retroactively."

"Lots of memory enhancements. I gave his guards six thousand planets, when they asked which ones I knew. But they don't work well retroactivity. I'm not - or I am now, I suppose, but I wasn't - the same sort of thing as humans. My cognition wasn't structured the same way. I can't really relate to them. I can predict them but not by feeling how they feel, or holding them in my head. More like you can predict a game when you've seen it played enough times."

"Well. Inconveniently attempts to magically contact my plane have not been fruitful."

"Would that...help?"

"At the time I wanted to tell the gods at home about things that could benefit from their attention but given the opportunity I'd also like to talk to my Maitimo about things at this point. Do you have any guesses about Cor's situation, is that a game you've seen played enough times -"

"They were romantically involved. When it ended, he didn't let him go. Cor's worried about this one, but this one has never in his life actually wanted for anything and hasn't dreamed that if he did he might even be tempted to take it. And he's hardly going to want Cor, it's noticeable when people despise you."

"Well, I don't know about never in his life, he reportedly underwent some changes when he ascended to the throne and is now some human-deity hybrid sort of situation."

"And he's miserable! Look at him! He's not a human-deity hybrid, he's a man who knows everyone expects him to be a god and who is shaped like what everyone expects, unless he's desperate enough to cut his way out of it."

"Well, I'd been hoping he wasn't miserable, I couldn't tell for sure."

"He's not about to snap or anything but he has absolute power and he's patiently waiting for his life to begin. That's not right."

"Oh, what would you advise him to do instead?"

"Might not be fixable, right, he's one human trying to do the things I do - or yours does. But we have a whole lot more capacity, and fewer traditions to be bound by, and no god to please. He's not just going to drop the responsibilities. And I don't have the means or, to be honest, much reason to make him capable of handling it with fewer sacrifices."

"Did you just, what, decide this body is a writeoff with respect to all the goals that interest you since there's no obvious way to get it home and there are thousands to spare?"

"Millions to spare. And yes."

The pharaoh returns.