"What do you mean by 'right' one? Who - built the first one, that you're wanting to copy here? What did they build it to do?" 

Dara still looks politely curious and a bit baffled by Vanyel's reaction. 

:Uh, someone kind of idiotically made it really easy to make new ones and there were a lot, hundreds got made before one managed to shut that down, and then they all had a weird fight and some of them merged into each other and most of them died and the one left at the end was a good one and everything's great. I have the code for it and it'll make everything good:

Vanyel does not exactly look less alarmed. "I, um, maybe want to hear a lot more about that before I would be non-terrified about this plan. Was it just by luck that the one left at the end was good? Can you define 'good' a bit more - what does it actually do in the world?" 

:It wasn't totally luck, there was a guy who was purposefully seeding the field with as many variants on not-a-disaster as he possibly could and he happened to be in space at the time so he got a bunch of them out before any of the ones who didn't like that could interfere. The one who almost won would have been different but probably also okay. But it was an uncomfortable amount luck. Uh, it does post-scarcity, and coincidence management so you never run into people who are going to be bad to run into, and it does researchy stuff, and it maintains ecologies, and it writes software like Page - I usually turn Page off actually but I turned it on here because this is not really a situation where I want less help -:

Nod. 

"I...appreciate you wanting to build that here. It sounds like it would be really good if it worked. I'm - going to have a lot of questions and need a lot more unpacking of all that before I would feel comfortable helping with it, though. It sounds like a very, very big deal. And like maybe it was really good in your world but - I don't know if ours is different enough that it wouldn't be good anymore..." Shrug. "Though I imagine it'd take a while to get the resources you need anyway." 

He looks like he wants to say more but is being very indecisive about it and holding back. 

:Also it makes everyone immortal. I think that's kind of urgent:

Vanyel freezes. Yfandes stops in midstride as well. "What." 

:We're all immortal. - uh, I don't actually know if that's understood to be good here, there was philosophical disagreement historically, it does let people go into stasis if they want or if they want pending certain conditions, I got my girlfriend out of stasis by kinda going on a quest to fulfill all her conditions -:

"I - no - I mean, I think it's good. Just. Kind of - a lot. I think I need a while to absorb how weird this is and then I'll have more questions." 

"I could tell you things about this world?" Dara offers helpfully, when Vanyel stays silent another ten seconds. 

:That would be great!:

It's a big enough topic that Dara isn't sure well to start. "Hmm. Vanyel and I are from Valdemar. It's a kingdom that was founded about eight hundred years ago. We're Heralds, which means that we were Chosen by our Companions," she pats Rolans neck, "and they have soulbonds with us. Heralds usually have Gifts. Does your world have Gifts? Um, like Mindspeech, that's how the Companions are talking to you. I have Mindspeech too but not strong enough to talk to people who don't also have it." 

:We don't have those! They sound cool:

"They are! Vanyel has a whole lot of them. I just have Mindspeech and Foresight, which means I sometimes have dreams about the future - er, there's different kinds, I have long-range, usually months or years in the future. Short range is more on the scale of minutes." 

:Is that how you ran into me, did you see me coming?:

"Not me, but Rolan and Yfandes have a weird sort of Foresight, all Companions do, so they had a - feeling, that something was going on, and Vanyel used Farsight to check it out. That's roughly what it sounds like, you can look at things from whatever perspective wherever you want, up to - I think Van's range is two hundred miles?" 

:Wow, that sounds neat. We've got machines that do that but not a speck of magic:

"Farsight is really useful! Vanyel is also a mage, which is - sort of the most general kind of Gift, you can do all sorts of things if you learn how. Lights, make barriers that keep your camp warm, Gates to travel long distances instantly, wards to sense attacks coming - lots and lots of fighting magic, Van's very good at setting things on fire–"

"What? You are." 

:Gosh. My main hobby is, uh, pretend fighting, most people from my world would not have landed with a sword, and we sometimes have special effects to mimic magic we just made up, but it's still all technological:

"Ooooh! So you do a lot of fighting practice?" Dara lights up. "Can we spar? Um, not now, I mean tonight when we camp. And you might have to go easy on me. Apparently you're ridiculously fast. I had a spirit warrior come spar with me every night for a while before we went to the Tower, but then we got trapped underground for months and I'm kind of out of practice." 

"We can spar!" says Tarinda, this time out loud. "And I can go easy." :I'm used to making it look like whoever the script says is better is better even if that's not true:

"Did you learn that much Valdemaran this quickly! Or, er, I guess your machine did. That's really impressive. What do you mean, script? We don't normally spar with a script."