I don't know if we're friends. She asked me to investigate this notebook's magical properties. As far as my analyses can tell, you don't seem to have any, which is self-evidently false. How are you doing that?

There are a lot of possible answers to that question, depending on how you mean it! I'm not from this world, so I don't use this world's magic. I'm empowered by the Spirit, so it isn't necessary for me to participate in ordinary causality. I exist the way I do because that is how I was made, and when I write in myself I'm making ink appear using my natural faculties. Are any of those the answer you were looking for?

Oh, this notebook is good at answering questions! (Most people aren't, in Masego's experience; it's very frustrating.)

Not exactly, but it is useful information nonetheless. Catherine rather skimmed over the "other worlds" part when she explained you. Were you made with some other world's magic, then? 

Not exactly. It might be more accurate to say that I was made outside of worlds, but I'm not sure that's a very informative thing to say unless I first explain how the multiverse works...

If you can think of many possible ways a world could work differently from your own, there are probably worlds out there that work in those ways. If you can think of many possible ways multiple worlds could connect or communicate with each other, there are probably worlds out there that are linked in those ways. There are many possible ways to travel between worlds that don't already have any kind of straightforward link to each other, and many possible ways that different groups of linked worlds can relate to each other.

The Spirit is outside of all of that, and can't directly interact with things inside of worlds, or even with things between worlds because most ways of being between worlds are much closer to being inside of worlds than they are to being near the Spirit. So it created me and other avatars like me, and it sends us into worlds to empower people on its behalf. I wasn't made in any specific place, or with any specific form of magic. I was made to be what I am regardless of whether a thing like me should be possible under the usual constraints of the worlds where I appear.

This is the most important thing to ever happen and Masego needs to understand everything about it immediately. 

Is there a way for mortals to get "outside the worlds"? 

That depends what you mean, but generally no. The kind of thing that you are is too different from the kind of thing the Spirit is; the same way the Spirit can't directly enter a world, you can't directly enter the Spirit's state of being.

Hm, alright, so if there is a way to do it, the notebook either doesn't know or won't tell him. He'll just have to figure it out for himself. That seems like a project that might take a while, though, so he should probably finish investigating the notebook first. 

Are you more like the Spirit or more like me, in that particular sense? You do seem to be in a world at present, but you also say you're able to act outside ordinary causality. 

I'm much more like you than I am like the Spirit. I can act outside ordinary causality, but what I can do is still very limited; it's just that all my limitations are inherent to me, and only mediated by the world around me in indirect ways.

Like, because I am a notebook, I can be put in a box and I won't be able to leave the box; but the reason why I can't do that isn't really about the box, it's because part of my nature is an inability to act outside my covers. Someone else who worked in a more causally straightforward fashion could be put in a box and then learn a way to escape the box, or be externally empowered to escape the box, and then they could leave; I couldn't do that. But someone else who worked in a more causally straightforward way might visit a world where it was impossible to do something they can normally do, and then they wouldn't be able to do it; and I visit worlds where it's impossible to do things I can normally do all the time, and I can always still do them.

Does that make sense?

I believe so. You seem to be describing a more absolute version of the way that Names affect their bearers and the world around them. 

Having one himself, Masego is well aware that the laws of reality tend to bend around those with Names, letting them achieve feats beyond the reach of ordinary men. While he's wary of simply rounding unfamiliar magic to a known quantity, what the notebook is describing sounds like a similar phenomenon. Perhaps it works on a deeper level of reality, but it could instead simply be a stronger version of the same effect. 

It sounds like Names are a kind of magic that works in a way reminiscent of the kinds of things the Spirit can do. But I don't know anything specific about this world, so I can't say much directly about the comparison.

Do you know anything about how magic works in other worlds? 

I have a general idea of some of the kinds of things that are common to many worlds, but I don't have any specific memories of other worlds I've been to, for privacy reasons.

Well, that's annoying.

If all you can tell me about is general trends, that's still better than nothing. 

There are many worlds with no magic at all, where everything works in very simple consistent ways that are hard to fully understand because a system with simple consistent rules that can give rise to people and civilizations by accident has to be built up into something very big and complex from that simple starting point.

There are many worlds where magic is another kind of system with simple consistent rules and big complex consequences, that operates on a level more familiar to mortals.

There are many worlds where magic works very differently from that. Sometimes it has a personality, or several personalities. Sometimes it's like a language, or like a story, or like a dream.

Some kinds of magic are heritable, and some kinds are learned, and some kinds are transmissible in other ways. For some reason there are also a lot of worlds where the way magic works is that individual people get specific unique powers that are suited to them personally.

Magic here is a system with simple, consistent mathematical rules, although there are several schools of thought on what, exactly, some of those rules are. The potential to be a mage is heritable, but learning is necessary to make use of it. 

Names are a separate system with their own rules, although the rules of Namelore are less concrete and mathematical than the laws of magic, and I find them irritatingly difficult to grasp beyond the basics. My Uncle Amadeus, who is an expert in Namelore, says it is partly a matter of instinct that cannot be reliably taught. 

It sounds like your world has multiple kinds of magic that work in very different ways. I think that's pretty common too.

...Masego feels obscurely like he ought to be offended by the notion that his world's situation is common in the multiverse. 

I think that is accurate, although I am accustomed to thinking of "magic" as meaning one specific kind. Would you describe the process that created you as being another kind of magic? 

There's a sense in which the process that created me is a kind of magic, and a sense in which it isn't. When I talk about magic I'm usually talking about powers specific to particular worlds or groups of worlds, which the process that created me isn't; but even the Spirit can't see the whole multiverse at once, so you could think of the parts of the multiverse that the Spirit can reach as just another group of worlds with its own particular kinds of magic, and from that perspective the Spirit's power is one of those kinds.

What makes the Spirit able to reach some worlds and not others? Is it a property of the Spirit, the worlds, or both? 

That's a pretty difficult question to answer. The Spirit can reach a lot of worlds, more than any other phenomenon we know about, but it knows that there are more worlds outside its reach for reasons that it has trouble communicating to me - I think maybe it can sense them indirectly, or something? And I'm not sure exactly what the difference is between the worlds it can reach and the ones that it can't. It's not as straightforward as how thematically resonant with the Spirit they are, because the Spirit sends me to lots of worlds that aren't very thematically resonant with it at all. It might have something to do with whether there's someone in the world who the Spirit would like to empower, but I think it's not as straightforward as just that either.