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twinsies
Eclipse peals
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Andi is annoyed by all this not having alts she's doing. Bella comes in singlet, so maybe she does too. They should look. C'monnnn. It's not, like, urgent or anything, but she thinks she is pretty neat and there should be more of her.

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They have multiple magic rocks that can in principle search for alts, now, but they are trying not to tell everyone about alts lest everyone on the Earths bounce around looking for their selves and a single version of their high school crushes and people destined for eventual celebrity. So she is the designated alt-finder. "None of these worlds have Bells," she says, "I checked a couple years back - so they won't have you unless you come without a Bell."

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"Yeah that's the idea. Bells come without mes! I might come without Bells!"

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"Okay!" Mîr has thirty protectorates now; they start there.

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The world of Patalon is a large moonless planet inhabited by inoffensive nonmagical plant people. They try it twelfth.

There's an Alex alt adjacent to it!

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Which they discover by landing on top of him, of course. 

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He has a Bell after all. "- hell are you talking about -"

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"- there they are I told you so. Hi."

The Bell has an unconscious redheaded Elf.

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"- uh, hi - you weren't here a year ago I checked -"

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"I live in my Arda, it's Flat and mostly standard but genderswapped. I didn't have time to get the whole teleportation path to Warp with my bullshit precognition powers that I will explain later, how do I get to Warp, I need Boots to fix Maitimë."

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"...what year is it, past a certain point they don't want to be fixed -"

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"Year of the Sun six but I'm on an irregular timeline it's much earlier than that - she said I could wake her up if I could fix her how do I get to Warp."

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"Six yeah you're fine is the Enemy dead Andi want to come -"

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"...I think I'll chill with, what's your name, Alexander?"

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"Alex."

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"'Cause that's why I'm even here? Uh, you're welcome, new Bell."

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"Yeah - thank you -"

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Hop hop hop hop hop hop hop hop - "Please do explain the bullshit precognition powers -"

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"- apparently they're adjacency limited, damn, but I can pan forward in my sensory experience for a little over an hour in my neighborhood. You didn't have to give me a ride, just the stopoff points, you were going to have fetched Elspeth to fix my Valar and I got the teleport off her and already have an eidetic memory. Where's Boots -?"

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"Probably working? It takes her a solid week to get anywhere with them, just in case you didn't know - I'll ping her and Elspeth - do you need a hug -"

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"I've waited this long, just sort of frantic to get underway." Sigh. "Hug'd be nice."

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Hug. "...uh, I'm Joy, I'm a Lúthien, I'm married to my you, nice to meet you."

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"I can't think of a nickname and in my Arda you have not been born yet, nice to meet you too."

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Crystal ball. general channel, attn: Boots, there's a new Bell, has precognition but only locally, has a girl Maitimo in a coma, wants you to fix her, attn: Elspeth care to fix the new Arda, the Bell already has Loki's spells because precognition, apparently. 

"I might not be born at all, if your Arda's genderswapped - or I might eventually have siblings, depends -"

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"If it causes any differences in who has how many kids by default it didn't come up in the versions of the conversation I had."

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"I'm half-Maia. I wouldn't expect it to affect Elves."

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"Might make a difference, yeah."

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Boots shows up. "Where's the - is that her? I can't even read a signature off her."

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"I've been keeping her in a coma for a few years now. She'll wake up in about twenty minutes if I don't refresh it but then you can fix her, right?"

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"I can try..."

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"And you can keep her knocked out? She doesn't like it when I let her wake -"

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"I can keep her knocked out for a little while, my version doesn't work sustainably particularly on Elves, you'll have to do your version when I take breaks."

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"I'll have to bring her home for that but I can do that."

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"- I can do some basic stuff, next few hours, and get back to you with the rest of my schedule. What's the level of consent I'm working with here -"

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"As long as she doesn't wake up until everything's okay it's fine - I can do more detailed questioning in counterfactual if I take her home -"

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"I can do enough that she'll probably be willing to wake up off that and alt consent. I'll be in my office - looks like this -"

And she and Maitimë teleport away and Boots waits for her to wake up to be switched over to subtle arts means of unconsciousness, and she tells the Maitimos about the situation.

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They come in girl. Weird. Also horrible things end up happening to them no matter how hard the original timeline is deflected, also weird. (Is Mitros okay?)

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Mitros is fine and thinks it's probably an Elf thing. Sucks to be you, Elves.

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Anyway were they asking about counterfactual consent because, yes, it sounds like this Maitimo is totally retrievable.

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And still has her whole family intact and atrocity-free. Yeah, she'll be fine.

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Isabella passes the interim getting introduced to things by T'Mir and then naming her world (Eclipse) and her Arda (Ithil) and writing up blurbs about them for the files.

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"Should she meet people or should that wait -"

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"Don't see any reason to wait on it."

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"Want to go say hi?"

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"Sure, why not."

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Warpwards!

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Isabella-who-doesn't-have-a-nickname-yet is parked in a garden finishing writing up her explanation of roles, since that seems not a thing anywhere else.

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"Hi, good time?"

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"Sure. You must be Kib, and presumably you're Kib's Maitimo?"

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"What gave us away."

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"I think it's how none of the rest of me have a Bell, being all inconveniently gay."

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"And you arrived together. Although on paper I'm not compatible with mine either."

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"Hmmm? ...I mean, Mitros sort of tried to make it work but it's really a pretty glaring incompatibility -"

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"Not for gender reasons, my planet has an extra thing, I'm mid-writeup on it -" She turns her computer to display the abstract of it.

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He starts laughing. "That's adorable. I like your world."

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"I'm sort of surprised it's a one-off. I guess the Arda humans don't have it, but that could have just been Arda."

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"I bet if we make it known lots and lots of humans from the other human worlds will immigrate."

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"Well, that's hazardous for magical reasons but not prohibitively."

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"I'm terribly disappointed your magic has an adjacency limit, Vala-killing at will would be really handy."

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"I am at least as disappointed as you."

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"You holding up okay? She's - going to be fine."

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"Good."

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"I hope the lucid dreams and stuff did her more good than you harm, you seem to have gone kinda... perseveratey."

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"I really don't know."

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"I am sure once she's in one piece it'll mean a lot to her."

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"She did appreciate how it made Maira spend a lot of time writing alternate endings to Earth literature."

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Snort. "Was she any good at it?"

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"She liked her version of Julius Caesar better, hasn't otherwise commented on that."

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"She is going to owe you a lot of nice presents."

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"What, for reading to her?"

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"For general emotional-turmoil-put-through."

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"By this logic Maira owes me presents. Except for how she is dead now."

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"That sounds like a pretty excellent present."

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"If only it had been in time for my birthday."

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"Has Loki shown you the dramatic illusion version of her fight with Sauron - most climatic one - they're usually called Sauron -"

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"Haven't met her in person yet, Cam says she's doing princess stuff, but I'm looking very much forward to that, my way isn't climactic at all."

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"Yes, ours neither, didn't even get to see him die."

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"But if we figure out how to affect adjacency I'll kill every one we run into no problem, all I need is a nice dinner and not an army of automata."

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"Hear hear."

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"Apparently you've got four Silmarils? That might actually do the trick."

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"Yeah. I beat her to it but she did make four, leaned on psionic computation for it."

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"I'm having a hard time imagining my father as a girl but I guess if everything else is also switched-"

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"Everybody mentioned over the course of an hourlong conversation, anyway."

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"And the - social expectations associated with gender, are those switched too -'

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"I suppose? In the sense that there are queens regnant and their husbands are less politically relevant? I mostly found that a sidenote to everyone doing without roles."

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"I wonder if the swappage is enough to curb the referring-to-alts-in-first-person habit, imagine how silly it'd sound if you said 'my father' about a woman."

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"We're still going to call her 'a Fëanor', on some level that's just as silly - how did she cope with her, um, mother getting killed -"

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"Not well. Loki might have generic resurrection before eclipsed figure it out, it's been perennially insoluble on my world."

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"But no half-dying from grief and asking all of us to swear to a vengeance quest forever, that's something."

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"Yeah, dodged that bullet, that sounds like a mess."

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"Those are the mes therapy doesn't help. Past a point."

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"But mine'll be okay?"

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"Oh, she'll be fine - how detailed an answer do you want -"

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"More than that, anyway."

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"Actually, do we have a solution for the thinking it's real part, if she hasn't sworn anything to notice free will if she gets it...?"

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"I am guessing her Sauron had a harder time of that in the first place, with the lucid dreams and the memory refreshes. Also they could get married and unmarried - if you're willing to, Isabella - it's pretty distinctive -"

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"I don't think any psions have picked up anything to do with Elf marriages - well, any who are still alive, one of the kids was eighty percent of the way to figuring out magic soul divorce before he got killed - or is there a way to do it same-sex on the standard architecture? -"

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"We can resurrect the kids, but yes to the standard architecture - it's expectation controlled, you get married whenever doing anything which either party expects will result in a marriage, my husband and I are married without any extradimensional magic at all."

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"Congratulations. Uh, after Boots is done with her how much is this still going to involve feeling like I'm very evil, ballpark."

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"...it's entirely fine to just tell mes to stop making their loved ones miserable, you know, and then we'll do that - after Boots is done she won't internally have panic attacks if you touch her but unless you have told her to stop making you miserable she is unlikely to express enthusiasm about getting married for an Elf while."

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"Told her not to lie to me, instead."

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"Once she wakes up the two should be compatible."

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"That'll be nice."

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"But I don't know enough to guess how she'd feel about getting married."

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"I'd probably be up for it if it'd help even if it weren't for the 'get unmarried' step, no qualms if that step is in there, would need to think about it longer without."

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"You can just time it for right before batched free-will dispensing. It doesn't do anything on the human side when it's Elf-human."

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"Yeah, I know, there was a communication mishap years back that got some poor Elf married to this dom who was inconveniently already married with a kid back home, 's one of the reasons there were people working on soul divorce."

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"Unless there's a reason not to we can resurrect them this afternoon."

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Nod. "Not Liz. Liz needs to - wait."

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"That's the one who's in love with Sauron? We could keep her out of your dimensional neighborhood, but - yeah."

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"The one who's in love with Maira, and killed Mandos and Finwë and another Elf who got in the way of their departure from Valinor."

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"Mandos I can sort of forgive. But - yes, that one can wait."

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"It's not that I object to Mandos being dead all that much, it's that this is how Melkor got out."

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"I am starting to suspect that Eru wants Melkors loose and we should keep a closer eye on Telperion."

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"If it turns out Eclipse is conveniently adjacent to it or something I am happy to obliterate Telperion's Melkor - seems like you missed me when you swept for Bells because I wasn't home at the time."

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"We should have thought of that failure mode, given the tendency of Bells to end up sucked into Ardas. We can add a check for Bell parents from everywhere."

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"That'll definitely work with no false negatives!"

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"I can't think of any check at all that would've found Stork while you were in Shine, dearest, without wishing on some better tracking."

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"Oh well. Parentless Bells will just have to be statistically underrepresented. It's a good thing Andi wanted to find alts of herself, though."

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"And they get along, too, or at least they do if it's not highly path-dependent, they did in my precognition but I didn't stick around in reality."

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"Matirin thinks they will all the time."

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"I admit to being weirded out that Maitimë comes in shapeshifting blue centaur alien. By comparison I'm not particularly weirded out that she comes in boy, although the skew is a little overwhelming."

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"Andalites feel like a pretty natural thing for mes to be, really - girl only seems weird until I remind myself that they have Asgardian-style gender roles -"

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"What would happen to a you stuck with the less convenient gender role?" wonders Kib.

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"It's like trying to imagine a straight me - there's no reason it couldn't happen but it'd be really hard to wrap my head around. I - if it had workable parts I might just work with those, if I was expected to marry someone who could run the country and have lots of children then I - have absolutely no idea. Might not end up seeming much like an alt."

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"Alts are weird and less path-dependent than I expect people to be by default."

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"What frightens me is when events that should be path-dependent aren't. But - Bells don't seem to come in Elf, probably because not having free will just doesn't suit you. It would not surprise me if I similarly fail to come in 'a gender where my social expectations were all things I couldn't do'."

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"We don't seem to come in very similar the way Arda staples do, even the Earth ones have all different magic systems and are all strongly affected thereby at or before age seventeen. We might come in Elf once and just not do it twelve times."

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"That would be exciting. I hope there's an Elf of you out there somewhere and that they still manage to avert everything being terrible and then they can meet the rest of you and be appalled at your hair. I'd find that really soothing."

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"Last I checked you were not appalled at my hair per se."

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"Does Maitimë cut yours, Isabella?"

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"...no?"

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He seems to read a lot into that, for some reason. And adoringly ruffle Kib's hair.

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...Kib takes a little longer and then he laughs.

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"I'm missing something."

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"I think it only worked because you got her so young - oh gods -"

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"...what?"

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"The hair thing is a - uh - roles thing?"

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"Yeah, though that's pretty culture dependent, if I were from China or something I'd have it really long probably."

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"It's one with Elves too, other way around."

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"I've... never seen an Elf with short hair, it'd hurt or something..."

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"It's kind of extremely kinky. You've sorted out in a sort of compromise direction and we're doing, like - haircut commensalism."

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"...haircut commensalism. That's cute."

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"It worked out tremendously conveniently, how many things had equivalents to haircut commensalism."

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"I could imagine doing something sort of like haircut commensalism in the sense that getting my haircut is a service I pay barbers to provide but it'd probably parse weird somehow."

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"How does how young she was affect it?" Kib wonders.

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"...well, I'm assuming I was unattached, since Isabella's come out here alone? And probably in denial, because those went together, and - a girl, I don't know how that bit affects it - and anyway less likely when trying to acquire the shiny Bell to think of it in those terms."

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"Annnnd the first person habit is uncured..."

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"Unattached, yeah, should I like, apologize to Findekané for counterfactually stealing her girlfriend do you suppose -? It's sort of a cute story how it came out she had a crush on me actually. I already had eidetic memory down when I landed and she was jealous and I said I could learn to hand it out and she said if I did that she'd offer me anything in her power short of the empire - and then later I did, and gave it to her and said I'd take a raincheck on my anything, and she blushed, so I asked - counterfactually but I bounced it when I had the answer -"

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"Awwwww. I do not think you should apologize to Findekáne for counterfactually stealing her girlfriend, I think she will say 'it does not seem like that life choice would have bought either of us much happiness!' and at least until you two are all squared away that will just make you needlessly sad."

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"Yeah probably."

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"Once you are deliriously happy you can apologize to her but then it might just seem like gloating."

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"Inconveniently for future Findekané there aren't spare girl Maitimos for her to hook up with the way Finankar was able to snag an extra Space."

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"Perhaps we'll find another genderswapped Arda and that Maitimë will delightedly acquire two."

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"Aww."

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"Though given the tendency of mes to be suicidal we should probably expect a surplus of Findekános as we find more Ardas."

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"I am really hoping Ardas-left-alone-that-long are a minority."

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"You don't say." To Isabella - "did you get a chance to read the standard trajectory -"

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"Read the outline, yeah."

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"When you tell her about it she will hug you a lot."

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"...that'll be nice."

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"...highly recommend asking your me to stop hurting her loved ones, it will work and she will not mind being asked to do it."

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"Well, you said it'll be compatible with the not lying thing when Boots is done."

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"Yes but she still might not default to it rather than to 'maximally annoy Sauron if this is Sauron'."

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"I'll bear that in mind. Saurons are annoyed about having successfully made their victims averse to physical affection, really? -"

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"No, not at all, but they love it when we go to them willingly."

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"Ah."

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"...I don't know how determined to navigate that in particular you are, but - every time she'll expect it to turn into something else halfway through, that's the whole point - and you can tell yourself that you'd rather just know, but it's still hard to make yourself seek it out -"

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"I'm not in a hurry." Ruefully: "I can lucid dream. But - hugs would be nice."

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"I do not expect hugs to be a problem at all."

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Nod. "Boots is useful. I've got more oomph but she doesn't have to meditate on a skill she wants for five to ten years before it comes in and she's got actual training, I was expecting to have to spend ages on collecting whatever dubious this-and-that and turning it into some kind of regimen and half-guessing on whether she'd even want me to go through with it..."

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"Honestly? She could have put herself back together, she just didn't need to and it's horribly unpleasant. If the war'd still been ongoing she'd have done it."

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"Well. Instead she got to spend a while in a coma and now I can put Elves in comas. She didn't even need to eat, the soul-controlling-the-body thing stretches that way under the right push apparently."

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"That's useful. ...it wasn't you, it's that - the first time we put ourselves together and it's so awful but there's the promise that you'll have forever once you just get it together, and then it's a lie, and the second time and the third time you push just as hard because in principle you should act like it's real except insofar as it helps the Enemy and this doesn't, and then eventually it becomes harder and harder to do it just on the off chance it were real and mattered and didn't just open you up to hurt even more when it turns out to be a lie -"

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"- what will it have done to have gone in knowing that it was definitely feasible for Isabella to kill the Enemy, though?"

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"I have no idea - she's probably going to be significantly psychologically healthier than in the standard trajectory, because of that and also the averted horrors, but in addition to everything else Sauron had psionics to play around again -"

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"I don't think Liz had enough time to learn much besides what I know to have been her precognition range and maybe a little of one or two other things. And she was insulated from the really overtly unjustifiable stuff, whenever I managed to convince her it happened Maira deleted the conversation out of her head."

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"That's actually very encouraging."

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"Well, sure, if she buys that Liz didn't have very long sidereal, but one time a few weeks went by and she had twenty fucking years of memories -"

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"...they can't do that, they can do some serious dilation but not like that."

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"...yeah, that's - either a lot of psionic help or something else going on -"

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"Liz didn't have enough time to do that at all, that would be intensely complicated - I haven't even picked up thought acceleration in spite of how stupidly useful it would be because it just takes so damn long to get even if the psion has a knack for it! And we have to do our own detail work, she would've had to compose the twenty years of memories to just put them in, and she didn't have time to do that. I can't chalk that up to Liz. Did I have a nonstandard Melkor...?"

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"Only nonstandard Melkor so far is the one that produces evil Ardas - uh, did you see that note yet, it is an upsetting topic - most Melkors are not trying that hard to kill everyone, but I don't have much reason to think they were holding back on the torture -"

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"Skimmed it. Okay, why else would she turn up in a dream with twenty years of memories -" Bounce.

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"I mean, maybe Sauron can do a sloppy job? Insert memories directly without the interim having been lived - which would require composing them all and disguising that there aren't twenty years worth of them -"

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"...I guess that would explain why she'd refer to people as 'somebody' and 'some Earth musician'?"

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"It wouldn't hold up long but if you were always there as soon as she fell asleep it wouldn't have to in order to serve some small sadistic purpose? And normally they wouldn't do it that way but you were dropping eidetic memory on her all the time and the usual hallucinations rely on a lot of backtracking."

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"Sauron doesn't actually do a very convincing Bell until he's had lots of practice."

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"So Maira may have invented twenty years of fictitious memories just so I'd have to be the one to tell her they were fake and so she'd wake up prematurely?"

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"Wouldn't be out of character."

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"I guess I'll recalibrate how smug I should be about making her come up with Shakespeare fanfic."

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"I mean, I much prefer Sauron spend all her energy torturing me, she's dangerous when she's doing stuff more strategic than that - in Millenia she arranged for Eru to sink a continent -"

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"Fucking Eru. I can't even precog her, she kicks me out as though I'm trying to backchain."

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"We've had conversations with one secondhand through Elentári's Aule. It was not especially encouraging."

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"I can't imagine what, consistent with observations, could possibly have been encouraging."

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"Well, the Valar don't understand what they're doing wrong. This seems not to be Eru's problem. Anyhow, Eru thought that the Space Valar should stay dead because that was delightfully tragic, and the Luster Eru thought that Yeerks should come live in Luster because it would make a great story. - the latter has not yet been a disaster, although I was half expecting one -"

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"Maybe it'll take a while."

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"Seems entirely plausible."

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"Did you read my war writeup, the part where there were suddenly humans during an eclipse -?"

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"Yep. Puts 'em in when the Sun rises, never mind whether that makes any sense. Sauron's usually right there to catch them and indoctrinate them, too."

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"Well, at least we avoided that, instead Earth anthropologists are having the absolute time of their lives through the portals."

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"Do standard-issue humans develop roles when in contact with Eclipse human society?"

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"Mostly not, but some of 'em do! The anthropologists are fascinated!"

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"At least someone's having a good time. ...are eclipsed orcs going to be sad about going to the orc planets where they don't have fantastic cosmic power -"

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"Considering suggesting that Gem move her orc planet to Patalon."

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"That means orc society'd have to figure out how to handle eclipses, right?"

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"Only if their planet has a moon, which I suppose I don't know."

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"And if the population of Patalon ever settles another planet they'll be in for an unpleasant surprise. We should probably get to exploring in your neighborhood."

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"Yeah, probably. There's likely to be some very high-power stuff flying around - we're calorie-limited but that's species-dependent, an eclipsed Ent did a time dilation trick that I've never heard of a human pulling off, so we might be able to find species that can use my magic system for very cool stuff."

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"An eclipsed Ent. Huh. ...we accidentally killed them all in Shine. Congratulations on not doing that."

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"Oh, they could easily have all died because we didn't know they were there because fucking Yavanna didn't mention 'oh I made this species they're trees'! Aulë sort of had an excuse for not having mentioned the Dwarves."

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"Dwarves're great, most Bells really like 'em."

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"I haven't met any personally. They sound kinda cool. Weird that they only throw mages and not psions."

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"Aulë made them with Melkor already loose and made them categorically immune to all mind-affecting magic."

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"Yeah, I got that explanation. That was his excuse, he figured they might not eclipse at all and if they did at least worst case they'd die and go to their rather adequate afterlife planet. Which I suppose must not have a moon."

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"I popped over to check ours out. No moon, exceptionally pretty, resources for them to eventually get to space travel and come back to Arda. Aulë did well with the species design."

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"Good for Aulë."

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"You two still planning a kingdom in Endorë or did that fall through, what with everything?"

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"I suppose we could pick it up once she's okay again, but she's been, you know, asleep."

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"Thank you for that."

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"You're welcome."

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"I've been debating whether it gives us more leeway to try to salvage farther-along mes or whether it's still kindest to let those die."

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"It takes maintenance, I'd have to visit them every day and a half or so."

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"Was using other forms of magic to make psionic effects permanent determined to not work or just not figured out yet?"

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"Not figured out."

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"So hopefully giving your Fëanor more Fëanors and prospects of eventual reembodiment of her loved ones will produce progress there."

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"That'd be good. - Maitimë wanted me to sort of look out for her but I'm not sure I did a very good job, I was sinking most of my time into meditating on killing Ainur."

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"The risk Maitimë probably anticipated was that she would either die of grief or go on a vengeance spree with a lot of collateral damage and looks like she didn't do either of those things so clearly you allocated time well."

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"Yeah, that would've gotten my attention."

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"Fëanors usually really fall apart with the right pressure points but usually Melkor has a thousand years to fuck with her."

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"I get the impression people are going to be surprised at how little she cared that Nolofinwë took over running things."

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"Yeah, one of the pressure points if Melkor gets enough time for games is that the succession gets contested."

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"Ruling people does not seem like Feanárë's optimal deployment at all."

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"Presumably why the Enemy tries so hard to convince her that she can't trust anyone else to do it."

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"I'm not really sure whether to count my Arda as a contributor to the earlier-the-better pattern. I guess it depends whether you think an eclipse is worse than a well-evacuated continent collapse and how big a deal Mandos dying is."

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"You got there faster and your humans didn't murder all the surrounding Elves and Dwarves under Sauron's guidance; I think you win..."

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"Suppose. Eclipses are a mess though. ...Come to think of it, I think Eru was deliberately fucking with us, the humans could just as well not have eclipsed at all, they weren't twelve yet."

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"...that's worrying."

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"It's also possible that this is just how suddenly existing adults who are developmentally as-though-older-than-twelve work but absent investigations of neighboring worlds where we have natural experiments on that I suspect foul play."

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"Matches my vague impressions of Eru's style -"

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"Yyyyep."

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"I am increasingly inclined to interpret the something-awful-always-happens-to-me as them also."

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"Supporting evidence: Mitros is fine!"

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"And awfully smug about it."

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"I don't know why Erus would have it in for you so undeterrably though."

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"There's a sort of - give someone everything and then take it all away, bit by bit -"

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"Having everything and then having it taken away bit by bit is not how I'd describe being still closeted and not running a political unit in your own right yet at the time you're abruptly captured by the Enemy."

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"In the standard timeline I am very happy and fulfilled before everything falls apart. Not having achieved all my goals yet is - a feature of my goals, they tend to be ambitious."

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"Okay, fine. Still, there have to be other people Eru could get her kicks out of messing with and somehow it's always yous."

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"I mean, in the standard timeline everyone has a pretty terrible time of it. But it does seem to be especially mes."

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"It seems to be specifically yous in the sense that even if somebody shows up in time to avert most people's terrible time of it or at least scramble it beyond recognition, the you gets singled out. I guess Finwë also dies with remarkable consistency."

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"Sometimes even in ways we can't fix!"

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"Loki's designing her spell to work on nonreductionist people, right -"

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"Right, give her a few decades and you'll be having an awkward conversation with your Valar about whether they get their Mandos back or not and everything."

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"General resurrection will be nice."

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"I'm still convinced there's a way to do it with eclipsed but it might be an intractable calorie expenditure if you try to do it with human eclipsed."

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"What are Ent eclipsed like? What are Ents like in general?"

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"I, uh, find them way too frustrating to talk to, so I delegated it and haven't heard back because they are very. Very. Slow."

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"Ah."

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"You'd think it'd be easy to talk them into spending a couple trivial years in a virtuality but apparently they take a long time to make decisions about even such trivial periods of time so they're still locked down for now."

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"What a very Vala-designed species."

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"Very. Even the Valar are capable of alacrity now and then, though, Ulmo was pretty easy to work with when I was trying to prevent Valinor from melting - though I do have to dock points for not having figured out that if Melkor escapes you tell the local precog instantly -"

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"I have this weird feeling Eru would have interfered with that but I suppose it would have been valuable to force her hand."

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"Would it? How?"

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"We can't refrain from fixing things in the fear it'll inspire an Eru to get involved, and so far they haven't directly done much, I would really really like more data on what they're willing to do -"

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"I suppose it's out of the question to just ask?"

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"...not really. I'd like to do it somewhere where we can react if things go badly but there might not be any such place -"

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"I mean, you might get your data if Telperion's Eru takes exception to the Valar there containing their Melkor... did they catch the Telperion Sauron yet?"

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"They said - uh, two Earth years and a bit ago - that they'd be really careful, grab him the next time he showed up. It would surprise me if they got around to it already. I would rather get data in some other form than an Eru objecting when we take away his toys."

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"Exactly. So maybe we should ask one."

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"Yay. Which one - how -"

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"Elentári maybe? Most of the interesting people are already out and Loki can reach it and it started as a standard example."

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"Assuming Eru can't reach Edda - or that the Tesseract can take him - but yes, it's probably the safest."

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"One of the Ardas in range of Wish is also an option but I think I'd bet on the Infinity Stones before the inadequately documented wishing machine."

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"Sounds right."

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"Why is it that Cam hasn't documented the wishing machine, anyway?"

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"Results of attempting to do that are consistent with the wishing machine having been manufactured by inherently magical people who didn't use writing!"

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"And wishing them resurrected is a bit risky."

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"So we're saving it for an emergency?"

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"I suppose that'd be the worst circumstance possible to do it in. Saving it until we've acquired more fantastic cosmic power might be worth it, though."

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"How much, precisely?"

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"I want the ability to affect adjacency but have no particular expectation we'll get there. ...we're close on portals between adjacent worlds, though. Space can do this sort of permanent worldleaper gate thing that's lethal half the time but they think they can fix that ... I suppose you could always go home and see what we can be expected to come tell you happens if we resurrect the powerful entirely magic aliens..."

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"Portals are possible with eclipse magic... that or somebody passed through, but they selectively admit specific eclipsed or people who've interacted with eclipsed in certain ways so I'm betting it's native. But we're adjacency-limited. Valar can do portals, are they limited to doing it from their Ardas or hard to convince to do 'em elsewhere or -?"

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"Don't want to rely on them and what we especially would like is nice subtle portals from Space to its neighbors so we can send demons on projects without making it obvious that dimensional transit exists, and the Space Valar really don't like us."

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"Do they also not like anybody who likes us?"

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"You have someone in mind?"

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"No one in particular, it just seems unlikely that there is nobody in Space on good terms with the Space Valar who has an alt in another Arda who's friendly with the peal and could convince their Space alt to make a petition..."

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"A Lúthien or a Rúmil, probably - though the Lúthiens are all pretty not-okay with the Space situation, I don't know how wise it is to confront them with it a lot -"

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Wince.

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"..."

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"Rúmil in Ithil was one of the people Melkor grabbed on her way out and she got obliterated in the eclipse."

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"If I ever get grabbed again you should just kill me, that's not - there'd be no -"

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Kib squeezes his hand.

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Squeeze.

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"Yeah, kinda figured to expect she'd rather not exist again."

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"There's occasional discussion on the Angband-survivors mailing list of how likely it is - it's a big multiverse -"

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"Recapture, or not being out yet in the first place?"

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"The former, everyone's got different numbers for the latter -"

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Nod.

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"It is a big multiverse and there are plausibly dimensions with a lot of oomph but no dimensional transit and there are lots of ways things could go horribly wrong."

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"Well. Congratulations on not staying paranoidly home."

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"That wouldn't make it less likely."

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"I guess not in the long run."

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"Is there a reason Melkor grabbed her particularly -"

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"I didn't ask Melkor and Rúmil didn't want to talk to me."

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"She sort of had a point, it's possible I should've left Maitimë alone too - she did tell me she didn't want the option to start conversations herself -"

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"It was probably good for Maitimë but it does seem like it hurt you -"

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"I think I'd say 'distracted'. Leaving her alone might've been pleasanter but it would've been less... the thing that we do instead of being hedonists?"

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"Yes, but not having the option -"

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"I wouldn't have opted to not have the option."

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"I'm glad she'll be okay."

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"Me too. Will Boots need her awake for any of it, do you know -"

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"Probably. Someone standard-timeline she might be able to just assume has all the exact same associations as us but yours isn't standard-timeline at all and there are thousands of them -"

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"And to fix panic attacks she has to induce one and sort of follow it home."

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"First part I might be able to route around by precognition so she doesn't have to actually wake up, if Boots will make a housecall, if she just needs to know what they are and doesn't need weird subtle artist sense impressions of them..."

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"Might need subtle artist sense impressions."

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"Boots can keep her calm about being woken up, too - she'll be freaked out by that later but it won't lastingly upset her like it would one of you -"

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"- so it's better than not doing it?"

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"Might be - what's she like when she wakes up-"

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"Complains about how the fact that it happened demonstrates the superiority of the 'just kill her' option, if I leave her awake long enough she gets on the Internet and starts passive-aggressively pricing psions who aren't me who can do it."

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"Yeah, have Boots calm her down, it'll be a lot faster than explaining and not really more terrifying."

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"Okay."

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"And I expect Boots'll be happy to do one of these that doesn't end with the Maitimo dead."

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"That one sounded traumatizing for everyone involved, yes."

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"We're really hoping to catch most Ardas sooner."

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"Yeah, I guess Joy'll go stand in Eclipse and Ithil and see if there are any more branched off from there?"

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"Yeah. And check for more Bells in the neighborhood, we don't all fall on Ardas."

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"She might've done it already. Ardas have so far not been neighbors, but Eclipse could have several."

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"Would they all have eclipses when their Trees died?"

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"...anyone's guess. An Eru might suppress an eclipse if it was just going to be a mass extinction event with no redeeming dramatic opportunities."

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"Of course."

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"...I sort of expect that, actually. I'd be mildly surprised to find an Arda that was a tragic magic slag heap."

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"That'd be less 'variations on a theme', more 'the orchestra saw a spider and panicked during the overture'."

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"Not really Eru's style. I bet if Eclipse has neighboring Ardas they are magic-suppressed."

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"Do you suppose they're suppressed to the point that my magic won't work there either?"

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"Not sure. ...tempted to guess it depends on whether you'd be bursting in at a climactic moment - like, your magic might work there if we found it in the middle of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, might not if it's 1440 -"

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"It is so unreasonably difficult to do science and make predictions when there are omnipotent beings confounding it."

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"Yep. Erus are way more permissive about exploits than Materia but - to a point -"

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"And they're all spread out, Materia seems localized to one cluster so far."

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"What with the more careful hopping we might not have found other Materia-type worlds if there are any."

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"They do have the clustering, though, which Ardas never do - I wonder if Erus next to each other move on purpose so they don't feel redundant -"

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"If Erus can affect adjacency then we should really talk to some. Offer them so many high fantasy movies in exchange for putting everybody next to Wish and Edda and Eclipse -"

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"I think Wish has us beat."

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"Wish is great but they're constrained by Gem's time and the unknown parameters of the device."

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"Eclipse trades natural disasters for randomly distributed magic with a long lead time. It took a long time for Eclipse itself to work out a consistently constructive handling mechanism. And we don't have resurrection."

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"What I really want is your powers to work more-than-locally, I can take or leave the random distribution in general. Somehow I feel like Eru won't help us and this is all academic."

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"Probably. I would like my powers to work nonlocally too, I feel very weird without them, at least eidetic memory doesn't need maintenance."

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"Everyone who has a necklace may prefer your version so they are less disable-able by stealing their necklace."

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"Happy to hand it out, just need to spread it over a few days so that I can eat enough to make up for it."

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"Have you checked if Loki's healing spell does anything for you there - wouldn't particularly expect it to, but seems conceivable -"

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"Doubt it. All I got was the teleport, Elspeth's fast but she's not that fast, so I haven't tried it."

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"It also wouldn't surprise me if Hex could come up with something to make food consumption more convenient!"

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"That might be a big deal, I'll drop Iobel a note."

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"Might also be worth paying a longer term precog to check what happens if lots of people relocate to your dimension - do any of them eclipse - and what it does for control training to leave the dimensional neighborhood -"

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"- yes, if people can do control training in the form of a couple years abroad that'd be huge, wow."

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"The multiverse'd be happy to have them - actually, I bet Mîr'd be best equipped for it, human population from around the same time period and fairly arbitrary magic."

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"I bet if nothing else Patalon can be wished up into a particularly efficient virtuality site or something."

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"And we can get some more Fëanors on persistent psionic effects, and - if we rain immortality down on more people will that encourage mages to pick it up or make them decide they'll be priced out of the market -"

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"Mages don't do immortality qua immortality, they do de-aging. I'm not sure what the market effect would be but they'd probably have some takers for cosmetic reasons still..."

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"Vanda Nossëo'll send you a resource list and you can decide what to do with it."

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"Is Maitimë going to want to help or does that take longer -?"

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"That part comes in first, usually, actually."

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"Okay. Good. I could figure it out myself but - rather not."

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"And it'll be good for her."

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"Good."

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"Thank you for being patient with her."

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"Of course."

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Vanda Nosseo sends their resource list with a note that the Earth chronologically closest to theirs is Cube's and Maitimë should be told that Matirin gave his Bell the whole planet.

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...why specifically should Maitimë be told that?

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Maitimë will be tempted to do nothing much  both because she expects that if this isn't real she will be nudged into being more interesting and because she will expect she can get a longer reprieve by testing its limits less. Conditional on it being real she would prefer to be nudged into doing things.

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But how does reporting to her that Butterfly received Cube as a present do that.

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Being nudged to give her Bell the best presents is a constructive sort of nudge.

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Okay.

Isabella explains to Maitimë's family where she vanished to and apologizes for not leaving a note. She sits with Boots and her sleeping Maitimë to find out what all the associations are; Boots can't necessarily find all of them by description alone but she can find about half, and Isabella can tell which ones, so that'll cut down on how long Maitimë will have to be awake-and-not-yet-all-fixed -

- and then when Boots is out of things that can be done with a sleeping patient, Boots wakes her up.

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...there are two of Isabella and she doesn't know what the game is there - guess which one is real? But neither would be real - or maybe Maira found a way to insert herself into the dreams - one of the Isabellas has long hair maybe Maitimë gets to choose the real Isabella or a sub Isabella that'd seem like a game that would entertain Maira - the last hallucination was so good, the last hallucination had the premise she could die, this one is practically guaranteed not to have such a lovely premise -

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"Hi lovely," says Standard Issue Isabella. (Boots was able to find that one, she can call her that again without getting a flinch -) "This is an alternate universe version of me with different more freeform mental powers and an actual therapy license. You did say I could wake you up if I could fix it - she's at the limit of what she can do while you're asleep."

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"- what's she doing -"

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"Keeping you from freaking out about being awake, at the moment. Sibyl - uh, that's the disambiguating nickname your Bell picked - precogged a few things I usually need to talk to patients to find, but that was only enough to let me actually locate about half the associations that need pinching off, and also my method for preventing panic attacks does require me to induce one and follow it home, as it were."

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"...okay."

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"There's alternate universe versions of you too and she's worked on them and they have been supplying advice."

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"...it happened to them too -"

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"Most of them, yeah. Differently, and later, the only Arda that's been multiversally hooked up earlier than ours its version of your mother is currently yea big." Hover hand. "But yeah."

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"But I don't like leaning on alt consent more than I have to - I don't need a cooperative mental state, just consent."

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"If it were the case that you were an alternate universe version of Isabella and the premises of this scenario were true you'd have permission to try to make it less deeply unpleasant to be conscious."

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"Okay -"

And a standard introduction-to-subtle-arts-therapy later Boots proceeds.

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She can watch a panic attack. She can have a list of associations - Isabella's posture, eye contact, looking up from the floor, standing or sitting or moving her arms -

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Sibyl has already heard them listed in precognition and doesn't wince anew.

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Boots fixes the panic attack and goes pinch-pinch-pinch along all the problem associations.

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"...how long -"

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"You've been unconscious for a couple years."

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"-you okay -"

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"I'm all right."

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"Thank you."

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"You're welcome."

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"How long does this part take -"

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"I should be done in another eight hours of work total but I need to split it up because I have a stamina limit."

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"Okay."

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"I can put you back to sleep in between if you're not comfortable enough yet."

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"No, I'll stay up - I want to know the premise here, alternate universe versions of people?"

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"Lots. There are more Ardas, this one is the genderswapped version and all your alts are guys. So are two of mine. There are more Earths, with all different magic systems. Mine's the only world that does roles. Worlds are or aren't next to each other and lots of things only work within one hop of the hub of the magic system or wherever something more portable is being used."

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"...and there are more Mairas and Melkors, some of which aren't dead..."

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"One Melkor is still locked up and his version of Maira is supposed to be arrested any minute now for Valar values of minute, one Melkor ran away with his Maira alt in tow and hasn't been found yet, the rest are dead mostly with adjacency limited magic but there is one portable unwieldy solution."

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"Okay. And regardless of intervening events all of them torture me -"

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"Yeah, speculation is Erus just kind of have it in for yous. You have a human alt from a non-Arda and he's fine. And there's a science fiction Arda where Elves are cyborgs and the you there is forked from an instance before he got captured and now there's six of those and they're, well, not tortured, they have other stuff going on."

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"...oh?"

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"Boyfriend drama and also their war wound up with Valinor being destroyed with everybody on it and then mostly put back but not with the Valar or Maiar, to extract an airtight oath from the Melkor and company. I think my alt is more fucked up about that than yours are, mine's the one who actually did it."

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"...yikes." Hug?

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Hug.

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"How's your alt doing -"

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"Oh, he's mostly okay, another one of my alts showed up and put all the dead Ainur back. You'll meet him if you feel like it or if you want a fancy brain surgery computer. Although tiny-alt-of-your-mom can also do the fancy brain surgery computers."

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"There is a tiny alt of my mom who can do brain surgery?"

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"Not surgically. Destroyed-Valinor-Bell - his name is Cam - is a species that can create arbitrary matter, and that includes computer chips in people's brains, and tiny-your-mom who is the only member of the template to have actually picked a nickname and goes by Epic thinks that species is the coolest thing and has by assorted means emulated most of its traits."

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"That sounds like her - do my parents still have seven children when it's my father who has to do the actual having -"

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"They do! Also one set adopted a random human baby because that Fëanáro was a tourist on a planet where human babies spontaneously appear and he decided to take one home."

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"...continues to sound like her. Gosh, I'd hate being a boy."

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"The Arda gender roles also swap."

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"Oh. ...guess that makes sense. And points to their inherent arbitrariness or something, wow."

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"No kidding. Anyway, most of me are heterosexual girls so most of us aren't dating - Space Maitimo and Cam could have in theory but Space Maitimo dropped the ball and reportedly Mitros, the human one of you, was really exasperated about it, he married his me - Iobel - but it's a platonic political thing because she's a girl. The other boy me, Kib, is dating his you and his Findekáne too but is married to this other guy. Uh, if I had not fallen on you you would probably absent other divergences have wound up with Findekáne, fun fact."

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"Really. Huh. I was planning to stay virtuously celibate."

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"Oh, yeah, she would have had to tease you about it for a long damn time even by Elf standards, but at this point some yous and hers are married."

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" - wait -"

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"Yeah that confused me too. They say it does actually work on the standard soul marriage architecture, expectation-controlled - my alt Gem accidentally married a half-Maia princess called Lúthien who hasn't been born here yet, because the expectations got just that confused - I'm a little surprised we haven't had any mishaps like that here but maybe Minassë spooked everybody and they've been avoiding hooking up with humans of any description? But there's also an Arda where they've got free will and are just regular married. Free will is distributable."

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"- well that's sort of inconvenient -"

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"Kind of an infohazard. Joy - that being the Lúthien's disambiguating nickname - was affected by learning that same-sex marriage is legal in the relevant Canada. Seems to have followed the trajectory of same-role marriage on my Earth. I named it Eclipse. And this Arda is Ithil."

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"Right, I guess the other Ardas wouldn't have moons -"

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"They actually do except the one with live Trees, but the eclipses aren't magic."

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"Huh. And most humans don't have roles -"

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"Not even the ones Eru dropped here, not systematically, it's just an occasional private thing instead. I have yet to hear about any worlds in which gender gets that treatment for use in analogies."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Gender seems more - necessary - but I'd think so, I suppose. Your Earth's anthropologists will be falling all over themselves all over again - how about you, how are you -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm all right, I said."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nothing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My alts are neat and have lots of cool stuff and you're going to be fine. I'm good."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good." She sits down. "Alts, is that the word?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"In English, yes. Also they have universal translation."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mum must be going mad. - how many worlds -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"219 but only a fraction are officially interesting."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Officially interesting? Are we?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ardas are, anywhere with alts is."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am not totally thrilled Ardas are plural."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, and ours is second nicest, too. Rule seems to be that with the arguable exception of Space they're nicer the earlier a Bell drops in."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, thanks for getting here so promptly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're welcome, it was entirely a matter of skill and derring-do and whatnot."

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

- she smiled!

"Hers is nicest," she says, aiming a thumb at Boots. "Live Trees, she saved Epic's mom with the power of therapy, his parenting situation still wasn't cutting it so she basically adopted him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...that sounds like it'd work out. Uh. Fascinatingly. - I'm having a bit of trouble imagining you parenting a my mother, but I think it'd be good for him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It sort of happened in fits and starts. And Rúmil helps."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's good. ...ours is dead, did Isabella -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, she wrote it up for everybody. I haven't mentioned to mine yet and I don't think he's read it on his own either."

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

"Your alts expect your Rúmil'd want to stay dead, I'm gonna wait for confirmation from him on that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, I wanted to be dead. You're - pretty good at the terrifying mental tampering thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sorry, it's just hard not to think what if the Enemy -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. This is actually how I convinced the Bell who went through Angband he was out, I stacked him up with some temporary stuff and he conceded that if the Enemy could do all that..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then she made it with surviving orc mages and psions through the portal to another dimension she was working on and that dimension is probably a nightmare but for the time being my Earth and my Arda are probably safe."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...well, that's not what Kib concluded but he had different background assumptions, the existence of psions complicates matters some for you. The powers are really different but they could probably emulate any specific telepathic application of my powerset I could name and of course it doesn't prove anything that subtle arts also gives me telekinesis."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm thinking this is likelier than not to be real, it's not a very productive lie. I'm glad your - alt - decided it was real."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We are too. Although he coped better than yous do - er, after a period of coping much much worse, but Cam and Iobel snapped him out of that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How's that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"He was slightly vaguely informed about Enemy mindreading capabilities - not that 'can detect any actions you attempt to take and read your complete history of sense data' is much better - and turns out that if we expect to be mindread all the time we can sort of self-destruct and instead not have any thoughts to read. Also when his memories were deleted he'd get them back in dreams because he's a reincarnation and 'getting memories back in dreams' comes with the package, so he couldn't be stuck very long convinced that the Enemy couldn't actually do that or that he hadn't actually been captured. So they rescued him and he hadn't developed triggers or anything, he was literally not paying enough attention, but he was thoroughly unresponsive. Cam and Iobel hung around narrating the thoughts he would've been having if he'd been having them and he figured if he couldn't prevent the Enemy from having his thoughts he might as well have them himself and then he was pretty okay, just wouldn't use magic or do politics until I finished convincing him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...huh. I'm glad he's okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So're we."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What's - going on, in the world, in the multiverse -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lots of stuff, although we're very much current events ourselves. Here, have a map -" Sibyl has a chiplocked computer. "Ardas are yellow, worlds with Earths are blue, red worlds are interesting but neither, little gray ones are boring, non-circle shapes have useful adjacency properties. We're actually just guessing that Eclipse is the 'middle' of the magic system, this world between us and Wish has no inhabited planets with moons but my magic still works there but we could all be clustered around some other world. Multiverse facts come in a wide range of pleasantnesses and any awkward talking around stuff is because of that. Uh, I'm supposed to call your attention to the fact that your shapeshifting blue centaur alien alt Matirin gave my alt Butterfly her Earth."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Gave it to her? How does that work -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Her Earth was being invaded by smaller yuckier more horrifying aliens and his lot came to help and accumulated lots of political capital in so doing and then he turned himself in for the most justifiable war crimes of all time and went to be in political prison on his home planet - he has since been sprung - but not before leaving her all the political capital."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Awwww. Is she having fun?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, although he didn't actually tell her she was receiving a planet in advance so she snarks about that. Also she's the only other Bell with an Alex, most of me are only children - Loki's adopted and has an older sister that way, Golden rounds to 'sibling' with some adopted inlaws, that's all."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do I always come with the full set -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, even the human alt, so far nobody's found an Arda after you but before the twins."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We need to introduce Laurië to a boy of her, it'll be entertaining."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's a selection. What are you envisioning happening there?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They will find the competing gender roles thing really weird but get over it quickly enough to have a spectacular and globally-televised wedding on whoever's planet has more people to be impressed by such and then they'll sing together for all of time. ...are we genetically similar to our alts -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm genetically identical to Gem, Golden before she turned into a vampire, and Butterfly, and very similar to the others except Loki who is a frost giant, I don't think anybody's checked Ithil Elves against alts yet but Flat - as opposed to Space - Elf alts are in other cases identical."

Permalink Mark Unread

"In that case we should probably introduce Laurië to a space one first, she's gonna really really want to marry herself."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's also the human one, who'd be less similar still. He can actually sing to Elf standards but he had to wish it on, and he's not as pretty."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He wished to be as good at singing as his alts - actually, you know what, I'm not surprised, I'm only surprised he didn't wish to be better -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm told he did but I've been reading my alts' writeups so far and none of 'em are qualified to judge. It was a backup wish, there's things Gem's not sure if they'll go through or not so they have to be wished by people who have backups in mind."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Anyone wished a really really indelible suicide trigger -"

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Your alts make do with a teleportation spell, is my understanding."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounds - nice, but - Eru can be presumed able to cut it off -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, but, well, same with something purpose-designed for suicide."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"When I explained about you they wanted to know what year it was - one was found too late -"

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

"Too late even with the terrifying mind powers? She can't just make me whatever shape you want?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's not the point. I'm a therapist, not a - sculptor."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're undoing a lot of sculpting."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"When's too late - how long -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Undiverted trajectory is fifty years sidereal in Angband followed by a would-be mercy-kill-suicide-mission by the Findekáno which Manwë sends an Eagle to turn into an actual rescue mission followed by centuries of miserable war and that is actually not too late - too late is - there's usually Silmarils. Three of them, and later. You and your mom and sisters would've - after Melkor violated her century of parole - sworn a not particularly well-worded oath to retrieve them undeterrably, which seemed like a good idea as long as the Enemy was the one who'd made off with them, but other people get hold of them and stupidly hang onto them and there is much more horrible oath-driven war and eventually the Valar show up and try to claim the Silmarils after not doing anything much for centuries and your alt and Macalaurië's are the only ones still alive and you have to go get the Silmarils and wind up getting hold of a couple of them and then your alt jumped with his into a chasm and spent entirely too long in Mandos and the peal got everybody out of Mandos, but -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"- couldn't make it okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm so sorry -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I knew it might not work when I started. But in retrospect it didn't have to be me personally, he didn't know any Bells or anything, never came up."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is there an Arda right around now in the timeline, no major tampering -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Closest is Shine, where Kib landed, but he derailed it like mad."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If we happened to stumble on one there's an only-slightly-unethical way to save mass-murdering mes. If you even wanted to, I wouldn't blame you if -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Bell consensus on Silmaril-related mass murders is pretty much 'the ability to exercise moral agency on that sort of thing was wiped out when they swore the oath in the first place and if we find them post-Oath but pre-murder we still like them, and also, fuck Elu Thingol'. What's the idea?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"What I'd want more than anything would be a chance to start over and do it right."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...what would the one of you who came with the place do, then?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"All these planets without any gods at all. I'm surprised any mes spend much time in their home worlds, really."

Permalink Mark Unread

"All right, I guess we can try pitching the weirdest reality show ever if we ever find an underailed Arda nowish."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The me will be very annoyed when everything is explained but they won't feel like it's just objectively better that they die even if they could be made to find life tolerable."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...does this need to be a different too-late one, would it be... a bit much... if we hauled the one out of his black hole -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think you'd need to not tell them anything - get them out of Mandos, fix them as much as you can fix them without waking them, they kill themselves and they wake up a thousand years before it all started with just enough space to believe that they didn't do it - If we know that not existing is an option then it's really really really hard to keep on going -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"So this relies on being able to find another too-late and a matching variety of Arda at the same time or subsequently which we can stand to leave mostly alone because I assume that if one day it's like 'oh look it's a thousand years ago' and the next day it's 'oh look aliens' it looks way less plausible -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yup. Eventually if we find enough Ardas there'll be matches but it's very very far from a magic solution."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, better than it not being doable at all."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not sure who it's better for, but."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It might not be, we'd want to check with the Findekáno and also the couple of half-elves adopted during the Silmaril-related-murder-incidents. And I guess other family members but they didn't seem even slightly inclined to be impediments to cessation of existence last time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"This time either. My family doesn't hold with obligations being a thing, really. Or, less than me, so if I don't think that's overriding then they won't raise it with me as if I might have missed it."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can't speak to my cousin or, uh, adopted children."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, there's lots of Findekános to issue predictions about future Findekános and there's - just the one set of the adopted children but there are those."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What's the story there -"

Permalink Mark Unread

There's a writeup; Sibyl digs it up and hands her computer over, scrolling down occasionally.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...weird."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Little bit, yeah. Elrond hangs on to the crystal ball there for lack of the usual suspects."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd like to meet him. Or is that painful or something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You do not even look identical to his dad or anything so it'd probably be fine."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Kids - in wartime, too -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not actually sure but they may've been accidental? We should look more into how half-Elves work."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounds valuable especially if I am correct in my anticipation that Laurië is going to run off and marry the first alt she meets who isn't genetically related to her."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It seems somehow impolite to ask Elrond directly. Maybe that Macalaurë knows, he co-parented them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Who are their birth parents -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wasn't actually in the summary I read..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're descended from Lúthien somehow? Who you don't have here yet either."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...do I have an alt who is free to tell me who everyone is-"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There is a computerized dossier of Literally Everyone, Holy Shit, which I am told you will read nearly straight through and not be even slightly bored by the blurb on random-Edda-alien-number-six-hundred-thousand. It can probably stand to wait until you have your own computer and can scroll through it on your own."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh good."

Permalink Mark Unread

(She smiled!!!)

"Alts are convenient!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"And if this is fake Maira will have had to put so much time into it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...yep. Very elaborate."

Permalink Mark Unread

Hug?

Permalink Mark Unread

Hug.

Permalink Mark Unread

"If all our neighbors have eclipses and there are a bunch of Elves who can do lockdowns now then the first thing we should do is probably go find them, do we have a way to handle 'they have eclipses and more metabolic efficiency than us and are super powerful'?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sorta depends on what the efficiency allows, if it breaks any hard limits. Probably we want to show up friendly-like in case they have extra good precogs and have expected us since before I was born or something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...yeah, definitely friendly and probably not you in case they have really excellent telepaths and probably not anyone who has scary powerful magic in case there are other scary tricks psionics can pull with enough control..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Golden has a good mental defense, probably better than mine, and can cover other people temporarily. Also some Space Elves don't mind considering themselves more-or-less expendable since they're easy to fork and resurrect."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can Golden cover people without going with them -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, she'd have to go along. She isn't one of the heavy hitters in peal terms but she does have Loki's spells and stuff."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then maybe friendly eclipse-finding expeditions should include her and some Space Elves and unless there's a precog collision Isabella can tell us how they go anyway -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Unless they have collision-proof precogs but if they have that nothing but being friendly and lucky will save us."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep. And - that seems a risk the peal takes any time they go dimension-hopping -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, but besides 'the multiverse is quite a place, isn't it' we do refine our sense of risk over time. They used to do random hops and then they discovered my world and now they don't."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good thing they didn't land there first."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There were not in fact casualties when Cam did land there but it was very unnerving."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And might have scared them off bouncing around finding everyone else."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most worlds are not found via random hop outside of the Edda and Wish neighborhoods, and Loki and Gem expect to be able to handle what they find near them. The hop to my world was trying to track down the runaway Melkor."

Permalink Mark Unread

Shudder.

Permalink Mark Unread

"He might actually be there, where he'll fit right in with all the other evil gods and where the portable solution to Melkors needing dead cannot be relied upon to work."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Does he need dead particularly by the standards of a world with multiple evil gods?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Melkors are a little more single-minded about the being evil gods thing, most of the ones from my worldcluster have something else going on too. But mostly my entire world needs to be evacuated and then condemned as unsafe for sapient beings. We're working on it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds like a very worthy project."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How much has my family been told about -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They know that I whisked you off to see an alternate universe psychic therapist version of myself who I anticipated being told about, and that more alternate universe versions of people may swing by to visit, and that I'm reading up on all the interesting alternate-universe-related facts and will be more able to answer questions after I have finished doing that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. I should let them all know I'm going to be okay -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's also probably going to be impractical to keep certain secrets when some of your alts are openly married to their Findekános, you - possibly after consulting them - know better than I how to handle that. Kib thinks that as soon as that part is known your mom will put together the part about me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And how do versions of her typically take it -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They are fine with the disapproved-kind-of-monosexuality thing and your mom likes me in principle; they don't like Findekános, Kib went for a while with his Fëanáro aware that he was dating his Maitimo but unaware that either one was dating their Findekáno. Then Kib turned out to be married and his Fëanáro was passive-aggressive about that because he wasn't clear on the whole 'reincarnated, gradually recovering memories from last time around' thing until Kib noticed he was being passive-aggressive and went and repeated the story to his face. Kib thinks he figured out about Findekáno around the time he rode a pterodactyl to Angband and came home with their Maitimo, but that was never explicitly brought up until they got married."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How'd he take that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Loudly announced that his children could do whatever they liked, did not as far as I'm aware make a fuss about it even in private, not sure how much leeway the pterodactyl-borne rescue mission earned the Findekáno-whose-nickname-is-Pterodactyl."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think it'll upset my cousin to learn that her alts usually rescue me. Just a bit."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, for a value of 'usually' that means 'three times of eight Ardas', but by default sure - why?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because it'll mean she should have tried? Even though that's stupid. And was presumably also stupid in the universes where they did it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Intensely stupid in the case where it only worked because of a timely Eagle, a bit less so in the better-equipped Shine instance, prohibitively stupid when she'd have had to mount the rescue mission from Valinor - also default trajectory it takes fifty years."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would the killing me part have worked sans Eagle -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably but only because for some reason it turned out to be possible to make it to the inexplicably outdoor holding location on foot while fucking singing a fucking song not even a magic song instead of trying that resulting in immediate death by orc. Probably doesn't work even that well with Liz around."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...yeah probably not -"

Permalink Mark Unread

Squeeze.

Permalink Mark Unread

And if she tilts her head up for a kiss -

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Kiss.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I will be out of your way for the day in forty-five minutes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are humans rarely monosexual even outside Eclipse or is that another your-kind-of-humans thing -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Humans are mostly monosexual outside of Eclipse. And mostly heterosexual. Bells are also usually these things but not always."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So most humans are a lot more like Elves. Huh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Eclipse humans are also more polyamorous. But have a lower rate of unintended pregnancy!"

Permalink Mark Unread

Shudder. "I assume the multiverse has solved that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There is a Noldor planet in Edda called Vanda Nossëo and they have a thing and hand it out like candy. Alex's alt is a heterosexual girl and also a world-famous performance artist with groupies and she was singing the praises of her magic ring specifically to annoy Alex. Her name's Alexandra, Andi for short."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh good. ...I think I should like to see a Noldorin planet that's inventing and distributing magic rings of birth control -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We can go after Boots is done if you like? It's also where Golden's daughter Elspeth hangs out a lot of the time and she's the quickest way to get Loki's spells, though you can also just read them if she's not handy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A teleport would be nice."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I got it counterfactually and was waiting for Andi and Joy when they got there. Elspeth is also capable of turning Valar into reasonable people, she's got magic truth-telling powers that stretch in all kinds of fun ways like 'telling the truth really fast' or 'telling the truth so that Valar actually understand it' or 'telling the truth to a hunk of metal about how it is supposed to be magic'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooooooh. So if we do nail down artifacts that make psionic effects permanent we can mass-produce them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, and some people on Vanda Nossëo have wished on rapid artifact production sort of the same way she does it too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I want to see this place, I want to know what we're working with -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The three big multiversal hub spots are Vanda Nossëo in Edda, Mîr in Wish, and Elendil in Warp. And Space Arda, but that's more 'it's literally in the middle of everything adjacencywise, and has some personnel conveniences special to Space Elves' than a political hub-shaped organization. We're closer to Mîr but Vanda Nossëo is more Noldorin in character by far, it's a reasonable first stop."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Once Boots is done, then." She kneels and puts her head in Isabella's lap.

Permalink Mark Unread

Hand on cheek just like last time she was awake. "I'll tell Cam and Epic whichever one of them is free sooner should be ready to give you a computer chip?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, good. That way I can know all the people before I go out and meet them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And all the people will be like 'you must be one of that redheaded template that knows everybody'!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do the others all look alike?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Elves do. Human one has short hair and a beard but he's recognizable. Andalite one - that's the centaur aliens - looks like a centaur alien, but when he shapeshifted into a human he somehow landed on the same phenotype, it's weird."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's really weird. Just him, or does any centaur alien who morphs human land on the phenotype their alts have..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"This happened with all the ones who picked up human forms before the world pealed, yeah - since then they've just been acquiring their alts as shapeshifting templates."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can we have shapeshifting or is it a centaur alien only thing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can have it but it only works in the neighborhood, that's why that world is square on the map."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Awww. ....we should probably have at least one psion who's going to stay here all the time who people should come tell immediately if bad things happen anywhere - if you're going to want to travel -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, good plan."

Permalink Mark Unread

Lean.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I missed you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm so sorry."

Permalink Mark Unread

Shoulderpats. "Occasionally I'd sit with you like you were just actually asleep but it felt weird so I mostly didn't."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lucid dreaming wouldn't work? Not that I'd have appreciated it, but you could hypothetically do whatever you wanted -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It works, it's just all - dreamy. By that logic I should never bother doing anything in real life that I could put together in dream form. And you do realize that insofar as I can determine that you don't appreciate things that affects both my enjoyment of a hypothetical and my resolve to hypothetically try it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...right."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I did check what happened if you woke up. It was 'complain and price psions on the internet'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sorry, I should've thought that you might do that and resolved to be delightful for an hour after waking up."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That would've had its own problems."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have a blind spot in modeling you where even when I'm conditioning on you not being Maira I still expect you to be, on some level."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, the problem isn't even just 'pretending-based delightfulness is nondelightful', since you did demonstrate I could maybe not tell; there's also 'what if you'd been asleep for thirty years and I'd developed a two hour range'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That would have been awkward."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A bit."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sorry."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's okay. I love you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I love you."

Permalink Mark Unread

Contented sighing.

Permalink Mark Unread

A knock on the door. "You rang?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Boots gets it, not having a head in her lap nor needing to remain still to work.

Permalink Mark Unread

In comes Cam. "Hey, welcome to the world of the awake, you want a chiplocked computer?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Love one. - huh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Chip installed, here's a computer to go with it." He tosses her a computer like Sibyl's. "Huh?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...oh, Isabella said that my alts were all the socially-unacceptable kind of monosexual but I guess I didn't think much of it? I'd been assuming that my problem was that the most appealing person in the world happened to be a girl, not that I was categorically broken on that front --"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You will sound very provincial if you go around referring to this as being 'broken', FYI. Do I parse as a Bell that instantly or is it just that you already knew?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It would probably have taken me a sentence or two if I hadn't already known."

Permalink Mark Unread

Wag. "Anyway, enjoy your computer, you'll need to teach it to respond to your thoughts."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do I do that, or is it self-evident?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It has a tutorial on it - hold it like Sibyl's doing."

Permalink Mark Unread

Computer?

Permalink Mark Unread

Tutorial!

Permalink Mark Unread

And then the really large folder of names!!! She's so happy!

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seeya. Let me know if you need stuff." Pop.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm just going to read these until Boots is done for the day, if that's okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Course it is."

Permalink Mark Unread

These are so many people. She's very happy.

Permalink Mark Unread

"- okay, I'm out. I'll finish up tomorrow."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you very much. You have very useful powers."

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"You're welcome! New Bells are always surprised one of us is a therapist but I keep coming in useful!"

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"As long as there are Ardas, to be sure!"

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"Enjoy Vanda Nossëo." Pop.

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"Shall we go?"

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Smooch. "Yes."

Nine hops! Edda!

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Ooooooooh it's pretty!

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Of course. Elves made it.

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Well, they did a good job. "What's the agenda?"

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"I've already been here, what d'you wanna see? Could look for Elspeth..."

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"Sure, sounds good. Have you met my local alts?"

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"No, I met the Shine one and he probably put me in the giant dossier thing but Vanda Nossëo's was elsewhere when I came through. I have met all my alts but I think Bells find new Bells more interesting than random other peal people do."

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"All of them? How long ago did you find them -"

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"A few days, Boots did a bunch while you were under - she can't actually work through my sleep thing, we had to transfer you over to her version. And people came to visit me and I went and looked at stuff and read everything."

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"Fun. I am curious what my alts are like but not much more than baseline curiosity about interesting new people."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Whereas Bells are self-absorbed enough to find alts of ourselves the most inherently fascinating thing of all time, although only Cam and Loki are actually dating each other, it's not as apparently inevitable as you suggested it is with Macalaurië and alts."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you're mostly straight girls and often attached by the time you meet that'd rather explain that - a Laurië who was already married wouldn't drop someone -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, but they're never already married, whereas a bunch of me are to a wide variety of people. I'm not supposed to meet Golden's husband because he's weirded out by people who look like her and aren't, and Kib will gush about his husband at the slightest provocation, and there's Gem and Joy who are very cute at each other, and Boots is dating her Rúmil - not sure if you picked up on that or just that she's fond? - and then there's Cam and Loki. Rest of 'em are single unless you count Iobel being technically married."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Who does that leave, Butterfly and T'Mir?"

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"Both single and not feeling particularly urgent to stop but they'd let somebody set 'em up if there were somebody to set 'em up with."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Golden and Kib's spouses are one-offs?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Kib wholeheartedly recommends somebody snap up another Aydanci if one comes to be available; Golden's more reserved about Edward, there's a possibility they only work because he fell in irrevocable ultra-intense vampire love with her at first sight."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That does seem like it would help."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A bit, yes. That and it's symmetrical in vampires so if she wanted the local brand of immortality..."

Permalink Mark Unread

Shiver.

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"Yeah, Golden did put it off until she was in love with him anyway."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How many exciting varieties of mind control does the universe have -"

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"Aurum has two kinds of species-specific pairbonding things, there's more people with Boots's powers, Warp has some species with psi abilities but Boots pretty much categorically outclasses them all, Wish can throw mind-altering wishes and mind-altering powers if you become a magic rock but Gem's careful about wishes that might do that, spellbinders are pretty flexible but do have particular trouble with mind-affecting spells in general compared to other things, Edda contains the Mind and Soul stones which are the ones Loki is not advised to try operating, and there are Yeerks who are not magic but are mind-controlly, did the dossier contain a footnote or anything -?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It had species. That is a lot of exciting varieties of mind control."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah I just don't know if it has 'and then there's Ristrell, who is a Yeerk' or if it has 'and then there's Ristrell, who is a Yeerk, which are like this'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There are all kinds of endnotes but I hadn't gotten there yet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can explain Yeerks or you can skip 'em for now, they're not an ongoing threat."

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"Yeerks seem like a perfectly fine thing to explain while we're looking for Elspeth."

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"Yeerks are the small horrifying aliens who were invading Butterfly's Earth. Their empire has been conquered and all Yeerks are currently under much more neighborly jurisdiction. They're slug-like, yea big," gesture, "and parasitic in the sense that in order to do things other than be aquatic slugs they crawl in people's ears and wrap around their brains and apprehend their contents astonishingly fast and pilot the bodies however they like from there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yikes."

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"Yeah, Matirin kind of has 'Yeerks' where Elves of you have 'Angband', I think."

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"They got him?"

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"Yeah. Butterfly too but his was worse, she had very nearly a best-case involuntary Yeerking scenario - Butterfly's Yeerk has since permanently shapeshifted human and lives in Cube's Israel - and Matirin was not Yeerked for very long but it was long enough for the Yeerk to use him to kill his Tyelcormë alt."

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Shudder. "...Tyelcormë also might marry an alt of hers, come to think of it, it's going to be an epidemic."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can get in principle how alts of me would work with each other but it's an extra inferential step in my case because I'm pretty sure I don't come in sub even if you found a dozen Eclipse-style planets."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, likewise, I'm totally incompatible with me even if we find more girls."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Island thinks you and me only work because I found you early and it wouldn't have worked if you were older."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, apparently I find someone? If I was happily in a relationship I'd - still pine, but I'd get over it a lot faster -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Island didn't get over it at all, instead polyamory happened. But not before he managed to mortally offend Kib and need Pterodactyl to rescue him."

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"...ooooh, do tell."

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It is a funny story, in retrospect, if one does not object to laughing at Island's expense.

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Only a tiny bit. "...hmm, okay, so if you'd landed on us later - I would gush endlessly to Findekáne about how you were the best human in the world and the way she plays Governor and I think I'm in love, that bit's plausible, but Findekáne would probably not go 'that does sound like a very crushable person, I am not melodramatic and deeply closeted so I shall ask her out' - because, like, I'd be miserably jealous and she'd anticipate as much -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, adding the role complicates it there some."

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"So much! I do wish it worked out because 'most of your alts are happily married to theirs' is quite an endorsement of a person but probably I would have just written a lot of melodramatic songs and then been fine - until you found a sub, and then written more melodramatic songs..."

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"I wonder just how much creative output is permanently squirreled away never to see the light of day, privately ode-ing this or that unattainable... Anyway the population of Eclipse is unusually polyamorous but I don't think I am, I didn't pass 'sharing' in kindergarten."

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Kiss. "All yours. Unusually polyamorous compared to nondynamic humans? Are humans generally the same across Earths?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Per time period modulo whatever else is going on, but it's pretty easily perturbed."

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"And Elves?"

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"Almost creepily similar across the board, but that's par for the course on Arda traits generally."

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Oh look! An Elspeth! She is not going to try to convince the new Maitmo that she is not in Angband because that is known to be disconcerting but she can distribute spells.

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"Oh good. A teleport will be really nice."

Permalink Mark Unread

Naturally. This will take a while. But less than an hour or Sibyl would not have been able to meet Joy and Andi when they landed in Eclipse. Other spells can be after the teleport. Here are 209 conceptual letters! Here is a shitton of gibberish!

Permalink Mark Unread

She'll remember it. Of course.

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Of course!

"Any questions while I run through this?"

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"Lots but I assume it's all in the files -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mostly. I like explaining things though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"In that case - who's been in contact with the multiverse longest, what's the dimension with the most people and the dimension with the least and how rapidly are we turning up new ones and what are the bottlenecks there -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Space and Hex were the first deliberate interworld meeting. The others branched off from that except Boots and Epic and Scroll found Warp independently. Warp is most crowded, followed by Edda - we think, those are estimates - and the least is a Shadow neighbor with what appears to be a population of exactly four fused hivemind things two of whom are considering a merger, but if you don't count that it's an Edda neighbor with Stone Age humans who have a population of a few thousand and so far refuse to talk to any visitors. Uncontrolled worldleaping is now considered unsafe so we're only looking for worlds by parameter now and that slows us down, but it's still about one a month, mostly around Wish, and the bottleneck is how quickly we can feel reasonable about moving on from the typical new one having done some reasonable first-pass interventions and mined it for useful contents."

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"How many of those know of the multiverse, how many are we actively involved in -"

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"A majority of worlds have at least one or two natives who know at least a little about the multiverse because it's usually more accurate to supplement conjuration and reading with actually talking to somebody, but in most it's nothing approaching common knowledge. There's ongoing projects in or confederated status of polities in fifty-three."

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Nod. "What do most of the Noldor do with their time -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Develop stuff. The ones who do music have to be in Flat Ardas, it doesn't work if composed outside of them, but Cam made them a dwarf planet in Elentári so they don't have to be on the usual one. And distribute things, and Elves are usually a first choice for getting and using wished-on powers if Gem doesn't find people from Wish to do it because on a population level they're very trustworthy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most people are that sick of Arda? Not even just Valinor, the whole world?"

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"Yours might be an exception since you're from early and didn't have the specific Valar failure mode of Telperion, but mostly the Noldor are very sick of the Valar. Which isn't entirely fair since I can make Valar much more reasonable but still inspires a lot of not-living-in-Ardas."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What do they do -"

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"Kicked Boots back to Materia because they panicked about her doing too much too quickly and inspiring Epic likewise. Be almost completely useless during standard trajectory wars for multiple centuries. Exhibit excess social conservatism and use that to decide who should be dead. Doom the entire Noldor over a fight for some boats, in standard trajectory." Elspeth comes with magical footnotes.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yikes. And here I was about to rule ours 'not actually that bad' - should I be convincing my people to come here, is there an efficiency loss having them all still situated in Valinor -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No need to move if they don't want to. Shine retains a lot of its Noldo population too - so does Telperion, the Boots incident mostly offended only people particularly close to her. And I've already swung by to explain incarnates to your set, it helps a lot."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh good. Who all is a member of Vanda Nossëo -"

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List!

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"And what do they get -"

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More list!

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She's awake and smiling and interested in things!!!!

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She totally is! She wants a tech summary next!

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And by the time Elspeth has finished with that the teleport spell has also been conveyed!

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Pop.

Pop. 

 

She hugs Isabella. "It helps a lot - just having that -"

Permalink Mark Unread

Hug. "Good."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can we have the rest of the spells as well-"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you need them fast? I was planning to be home in half an hour."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, we can look them up later - what do you do as Princess of the Golden Empire -"

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"Public relations!"

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"Any tips for us?"

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"Unfortunately my strategy relies heavily on being me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose it might. Okay. Thank you for the spell and explanations!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're welcome!" Pop.

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"You thinking about how much we share with Earth?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I want to be pretty sure I've thought through interactions of all the stuff with eclipsed powers before I turn it loose."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The magic, definitely. The tech we could bring home today, except we'd have to explain it somehow..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep. I do not think we can pin it all on your mom."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, I am curious what people will assume if we just proffer no explanation whatsoever. ...we could have the Andalites make contact and pretend to be from some-moonless-elsewhere in the same dimension, if we want to drop all the stuff before explaining the multiverse."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most of the Andalites are not actually likely to be friendly to this project, we'd bottleneck on the availability of the ones who went and helped out Cube's Earth. Standard-issue Andalites have serious taboos on sharing technology and are currently the victims of Butterfly trolling them by not sharing the teleport."

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Snort. Sigh. "...if the multiverse'll become public knowledge at any point in the next year, some people already know about it -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No they don't, because there's no way the multiverse becomes public knowledge without my involvement and my involvement means precognition."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...should we assume we're fuzzing pretty much everything, what with how much the new tech would influence -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...yeah, probably, although the longrange ones often make their niche work by being the sort of person who might hole up in their house and get food delivered and watch preexisting TV and read only coded precog info channels for an extended period."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounds terrible. - I suppose you know better than I whether there are genocides or refugee crises or whatever ongoing, such that we can't just wait -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Currently genocide-free. Last eclipse was hard on Sri Lanka but I'm not sure I'd call the refugee situation a crisis."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then we can table that, figuring out whether people can wait out control training extradimensionally and finding our poor neighbors probably takes priority - two hundred worlds and none where the sapients drove themselves extinct, that's interesting -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's speculation that this is somehow selected for by all known worldfinding methods."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That'd do it. The ones that allow parameters can't parameterize for 'uninhabited'?"

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"...y'know, I am not actually sure they've tried that." Computer message.

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"Might be useful to have an empty dimension for something and feels really valuable to know how many worlds do wipe themselves out -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If we can only find uninhabited worlds by looking for them we can only turn that into a ratio when we're sure we've found all worlds adjacent to somewhere."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Tesseract not in a mood to give us a count on Loki's neighbors?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's been mad since it found out there are non-adjacent worlds."

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"And not that kind of mad conducive to 'trust us, we're trying to fix that'?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Apparently not. Won't talk to people besides Loki, either."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Shame. Okay. ...it doesn't actually look like there's anything urgent for us, then, if we want Golden to intend hard enough to look for Eclipse-neighbors and Earth's not in a state that'd justify immediate tech dumping and Arda I assume continues to be entirely fine -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Pretty much. I mean, we should do a slow plausibly deniable tech dump for sure, and magic songs and stuff we can claim are from Ithil, but no need to panic or anything."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I realize 'underdemanded' is a ridiculous way to feel, but -"

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And pop there's another Maitimo a short distance off.

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"Oh look a you."

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"Did you guess the first time you saw one? - I'm Swift, nice to meet you -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Haven't picked a nickname - I don't want to steadily ruin all of the words I have positive associations with -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep, so go with something specific to this scenario - or, most usefully, something that differentiates your timeline from the standard trajectory, which suffices as specific to this scenario and is easier to explain to people who want to be in denial about -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Dream?"

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"Works. Anyway, nice to meet you, welcome to Vanda Nossëo we have a very enviable list of projects ranked by estimated lives-saved-per-hour I'd encourage you to do something but I in fact took a vacation, first, and that has something to recommend it -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think a vacation is the opposite of what I need right now - I made sure everything back home could run without me, and now all of it does, see-"

Permalink Mark Unread

"So take a vacation from Ardas, if not from doing things. Matirin got himself a lot of Charps with knowledge of the whole tech tree up through the modern Internet and has been hopping around leaving them in little auditoriums to teach endless physics and biology classes to anyone who wants to learn, which natural experiment is of course very interesting but it could stand some followup. Or you could just grab the top priorities off the aforementioned enviable projects list."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I did guess but mostly based on 'tall, redheaded, pretty, accompanying Kib to come say hi to me' rather than psychic mannerism analysis."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think Island was terribly excited to have alt validation of his romantic decisions."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're married."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am!!! I highly recommend it. Findekáno is the one who set up our current way of handling priorities and he's been corralling the musicians - everyone agrees that what we need them to develop is a better healing song, and deaging, and ideally long-distance communication, and instead they keep coming out with cosmetic deaging and street-sweeping and metal-polishing."

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"Laurië too?"

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"My brother goes by Cáno. And no, he did stacked perception and a few other things in that vein during the war and is all over the long-distance communication development project. But he's not our only musician -"

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"But we've got several of him!"

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"Two of which are about to run off on a very dramatic televised honeymoon, unless I miss my mark -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nah, I'm expecting that as well."

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Giggle. "But there are so many to choose from, won't she have to dither for an Elf-while?"

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"She'll go for at-first-sight," they both say simultaneously, "and therefore it's on me to make sure the first one is also the most suited," Maitimë adds.

Permalink Mark Unread

"So you need to go Macalaurë-interviewing."

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"I mean, I know the personalities, it probably goes off life-circumstances -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They in fact marry in the standard continuity, so Luster's and Millennia's are - I am assuming Shadow is out -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"- hmmm?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, there's an Arda where the Enemy was sort of subtler and most relevantly this means Rúmil came out extra fucked up, was not in a position to do good supplementary parenting to the Fëanor, this snowballed and all seven of his kids there were badly brought up? ...details unpleasant."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then I'll trust Swift. And I assume the blue aliens don't interbreed with humans -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can, actually, in morph, but yes, I don't think that's a good match either. Leaves you Shine, Elentári, Hex, and Space, which has five -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are the Space ones differentiated to speak of?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Little bit - Space music isn't magic and they were delighted to hear there's somewhere where it was, so a couple moved to Telperion and the other three to Shine to help with modernization projects."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Picking one of those if they all have close forks sounds awkward, but maybe just to me?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Little bit, and they might prefer to marry someone who can fork in case they decide to do it again - it turns out that Noldor, put in that setting, take forking to heart as a very important part of their culture -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Makes sense, with so much to do -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. So you want to point your sister here or at Hex or Stork - does she want to have kids -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, are genderswapped alts, like, genetically siblings -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We might want to check."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cam was going to, maybe he's had a minute since he said that -" Check. "Yeah they are."

Permalink Mark Unread

"In that case maybe introduce her to Makariel -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Human ones do not match," agrees Sibyl.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, then, there we are, the small choir that will doubtless ensue from this marriage will not have any inbreeding problems."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But if they're half-Elves they might not emerge from the womb as perfect virtuosi without magical augmentation!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was assuming even unaugmented Makarial can sing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, just not Elfily."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do half-elf kids even work -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mostly like humans - no oaths, age to maturity fast and to old age eventually - Lúthien asked the Valar for a special dispensation from Eru for her descendants, they get to pick, maybe now the Valar'll do that for more people -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seems like an awkward kind of decision, as long as there's going to be half-Elves and reasonable Valar around why not try to blend all the convenient features or something sort of like Golden's vampire hybrids project?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"With fate out of the way, what're the advantages of humans?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not being crippled by the presence of ugly things, nor paced somewhere between 'reasonable' and 'Ent', nor prone to ridiculous melodrama? I enjoy these features and imagine some half-Elves might want to share them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think at least the latter two are cultural."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We can talk with the Valar about ideal traits of hybrids, though, if people are going to get it into their heads to have children soon -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, are people mostly not -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"People in Vanda Nossëo mostly aren't, taking fifty years off to raise them would mean missing a lot of important work."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are the Valar all equally reasonable once Elspeth talks to them or do they vary?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They are all possible to have a conversation with, some remain more interventionist or more creative or more persuadeable or less inclined to ask Eru or whatever."

Permalink Mark Unread

"By - batch, or by template?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Template - there are some difference by batch but mostly 'the ones where we were involved in massacres like us less' and so on."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Makes sense."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep. Yours should be all pliable, no horrible atrocities even on the horizon - did you get the prophecies -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some of 'em, several through precogging talking to Melkor while she was still locked up and then asked around for more, it was mostly pretty vague and seemed implausible given, like, my presence..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, interdimensional contact knocks Ardas off the rails. I don't know if that's because Bells are so - active - or if it's a butterfly effect thing where any changes knock fate apart."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was thinking more that I precipitated contact with my entire Earth more than either."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That too, but fate falls apart even when that piece doesn't happen."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I shall feel pleased with myself vicariously."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Alts are tremendously useful for that!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They are! Having alts is my favorite thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd feel the same way if mine didn't invariably wish we could just kill them!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...yeah, that. Well, not invariably, I am told Mitros is fine? And the Space ones? How's Matirin, notes are unclear on whether he was actually suicidal amounts of traumatized for more than a little while."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Andalites have an out. I think he was just gloomy."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Being an Andalite sounds nice."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Matirin is doing a lot of interesting stuff if you think that'd be a good first getting-acquainted-with-what-we're-up-to project."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Also you could try being an Andalite while you were there. Butterfly likes having a tail, but I think that's generic to tails, not sharp ones in particular."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds fun, but it seems like it makes more sense for you to be working close to home where you've got superpowers and all-"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do like having superpowers, it's true. You can wander even if I mostly don't though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not very tempting."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay." Handsqueeze.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Missed you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That is my line you were not experiencing the passage of time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Before that, I mean."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Squeeze.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is there anything else we should see -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, if you want to be expensive to simulate I shouldn't pick things out for you. There's - do you have responsibilities at home -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, handed all of them off."

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"Okay."

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"Space Arda's nice but he has a point about not letting people pick for you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We could start there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It would definitely take longer than the average fanfic to invent, anyway. It was nice to meet you," she adds to Swift.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You too. Take care." Pop.

Permalink Mark Unread

Space Arda!!!!

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooooooooh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know, right, Elves plus science fiction plus demons and you get this. You also get a very silly building with elevator offices."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Whose idea was that? Have you toured everything already -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Just came through real quick, we can totally tourist around. The elevator office building was part of a contest to make Cam produce a facial expression but unfortunately he didn't notice."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would he have made a facial expression?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Possibly! It is a very silly building! But he was just conjuring from blueprints without looking very closely so it did not interrupt his brooding-about-having-committed-genocide mood."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Poor Cam."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He's better now, Loki fixed it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, but."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is there anything that'd be more helpful than a peal of him -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The consensus is that it would be swell if anybody he killed showed up and was like 'that was definitely the right call' but that it would make him more uncomfortable than it's worth if they were actually prompted to do so."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...do they have, like, the means to do that, it is not obvious to me how as a citizen of Afterlife I could show up to talk with him even if I thought that was a good idea -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They have the internet and he publishes his correspondence label that he conjures up everything titled that regularly."

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"I know some people who might think it but they probably would not write him a letter." Sigh. She approaches a street vendor to take a couple of ice cream cones, and then pauses at the very brief flash of confusion on the vendor's face.

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Mmm ice cream.

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"...something wrong?"

"...we use money here, it's just flat Elves who don't bother - go on, though, it's fine -"

"Flat Elves -"

Handwave. "You're magic and stuff? And have yet to invent currency. Like I said, go on, it's fine -"

"I'll pay you, I just don't know your money or how to acquire it -"

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"...uh..." Isabella looks something up. "Okay cool I'm allowed to use Cam's money, question is how do I actually get at it -"

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"...most people have it on their chip, then you can just mentally transfer for purchases? Humans and Dwarves either carry a chip or get a little implanted one in their fingertip - I don't know what Cam does - I'm sure the prince Nelyafinwë would help you out -"

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Giggle. "Probably."

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Well, one of the local Princes Nelyafinwë can be emailed about this.

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And will pop over. "Hey! Oh -" he tilts his head slightly and the vendor relaxes, ice cream paid for. "Welcome to Ambaróna."

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"Thanks. Sorry about that, should've figured that Elf Communism does actually get intractable at this population size..."

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"Yeah, I haven't the faintest idea how everyone else handles their allocation problems - well, Vanda Nossëo has little signs on everything saying what it'll go to if you don't use it, so you can decide if you're a better use of it than that thing, but honestly I think even Elves would feel uncomfortable making allocation decisions that way if they weren't shellshocked by the horrible state of most places in the multiverse. We do money. Most unchipped people get a thing for it in their finger, you can also just tell people to charge it to me."

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"Cam's notes say I can use his money, can I just tell people to charge it to Cam?"

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"They might want to check with Cam? - most people here don't know about alts because we don't have a better plan than 'information security' for keeping the multiverse from demons -"

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"Fair enough. Well, Cam'll pay you back for the ice cream if you want, I guess."

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"Please don't worry about it. Uh - I'm guessing offering a tour would be counterproductive, but care to pick up a guide book? There are a lot of cities like this - though my word isn't good for credit in all of them - and we've got three colony planets."

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"Guidebook sounds great."

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Guidebook!

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"Thanks."

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"Of course! Anything else?"

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"Nothing springs to mind. Let me know if you need anything prognosticated."

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"We are going to exploit that so much!"

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"I will require carbohydrates for my trouble."

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"My favorite kinds of unfathomable power are the kinds you can trade for cookies."

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She is circling things in the guidebook. 

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"What's the agenda, lovely?"

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(The Space Maitimo blinks.)

"Colony planets! And the other Noldorin kingdom, and these three Dwarven cities and these two Orcish ones -"

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"Well, you can teleport, show me."

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Here is a colony planet! 

"...I'm actually not sure how you'd do the teleport, or the computer, without outright mindreading-"

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"Kib concluded that too but he did start out assuming the Enemy could do that. You could pin it on Liz likewise I guess. Or wait out however much dilation you think can go between dreams and wait for me to say she hasn't had time to pick up mindreading? No that won't work psions can do sleeplessness..."

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"I think eventually I'll probably be pretty sure."

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"Speaking of dilation, that time with the twenty years, Island and Kib thought that would've had to be inserted whole-cloth, not lived through, it's not standard practice but I kept fucking with her, so."

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"...yeah, think so, there were weird holes - and no names, but she does that to me sometimes -"

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"I would've fixed it if you'd popped out with no names."

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"We had a fight. ...she did that sometimes when she was getting fed up with the effort to fake you -"

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"I can't actually remove memories and you claimed to have spent ten years catatonic and I would've freshened you up in there somewhere even if you subsequently antagonized me somehow."

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"...yeah, you would have."

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"What'd we fight about? - would you rather I didn't ask, or, I don't know, save it for Tuesday and just do touristing now?"

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They're doing such good touristing; they are walking through this city and she's checking to see if any blocks or buildings or pedestrians are duplicated.

"...usually it was that I wasn't okay and you got impatient, that occasion there was actually a lot of political intrigue on top of that -"

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"Would it be interesting if novelized?"

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"...possibly. Why -"

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"I'm not specifically interested in novelizing it, I just, I have no idea what you spent that time doing except that it was really horrible -"

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"...and you want to know?"

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"...I'm curious, which is not exactly the same thing."

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"If you want to know I'll tell you."

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"Well, partly I'm curious and partly I have this problem where aside from desperately flinging you at a therapist who is known to be able to make progress on cases strikingly similar, I don't know how to - look after you - and I don't know if asking you to tell me constitutes becoming more able to do that, or failing to do it in the course of asking, or both, or what."

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"I'm - taken care of. You're not going to hurt me by accident, not compared to - well, not on a scale I'll even notice - I'm not helping -"

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"Kinda not helping," Isabella agrees.

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"I am probably fixed enough that eventually 'things could happen, other than you turning to be Maira, that would harm me' will - make sense. As an idea. But - 

 

- not yet, and - 

 

- I'm not fragile, just recalibrated -"

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"I would like to exceed the standard of 'not harm'. Cauliflower routinely achieves 'not harm'."

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"I want you to be happy. I want all of this to have not succeeded at fucking with you, no matter how irrevocably it fucked with me -"

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Sigh. "I love you."

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"I love you."

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I am not sure how liberal this particular Elf planet is. Pity.

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Are Dwarves likely to care? That one's next.

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Nah, they don't even have gender as a concept!

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Huh. ...I guess that's how you felt landing on us.

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Yep. Except Dwarves do have the underlying biology and just don't have baggage about it and role doesn't supervene on anything so concrete.

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What an interesting choice of Aulë's.

Pop.

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Oh look, Dwarves. Most of my alts like Aulë best on the basis of his design choices. I'd go with Ulmo but most Ulmos have fewer instances of making themselves useful than ours.

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What do they do in the standard trajectory?

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Not that much. They do hide a city, which is useful as long as it lasts.

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What a stupid pointless waste of life -

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Yeah.

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Any Ardas far enough for those prophecies Melkor gave you -

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Farthest ahead one is Millennia so far. And yeah, the ones verifiable as of then are verified.

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I wonder why tell the truth on that. 

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Trajectory of Space Arda suggests that while Melkors are intensely sadistically evil they do more highly prioritize derailing things qua derailing things if offered a choice.

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...I don't know how to feel about that.

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Me either, to be honest.

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And Saurons?

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Cooperated with the Melkor in Space Arda but not independently known to have such mixed character.

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Good, then I can go on childishly considering her uncomplicatedly horrible.

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Go for it, I sure do.

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She reaches for her hand. The Dwarf city is very pretty. There is no apparent repetition in the architecture.

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Handholding! Dwarves!

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Dwarves mostly ignore them! Elves are so weird! Or humans, whatever, those are also pretty weird! A Dwarf fairy floats by arguing heatedly with someone.

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"You read the full explanation of daeva yet?"

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"I know who is one but not how they get that way."

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"Dying - more than Space Elves ever do - while from a world adjacent to the daeva worlds and having summoned at least one before. Flat Dwarves have a proper afterlife, Space ones don't."

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"- why didn't Space Aulë -"

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"Space Arda's lower magic than Flat Ardas, seems likely he couldn't. Why he made Dwarves here anyway is an exercise to the reader, we're not on good terms with Space Valar."

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"Right, guess not. ...I mean, I doubt Dwarves resent being made, even mortal."

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"Probably not, but there might have been some way to chip them cryptographically securely so they could have the mental immunity thing and also the local standard of immortality maybe? If you're gonna do it do it right."

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"Have we figured out secure chips? Seems like it'd be really useful-"

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"Haven't, might be they're impossible and Space Aulë's off the hook."

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"If ten of my father haven't got anywhere - then again I guess they've had other priorities-"

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"I think they're currently concentrating on portalmaking."

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"Guess that's useful. I wonder what my mother'll do - she has a lot of anxiety about not having anything to uniquely offer the world -"

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"Artifact-eclipse interactions probably? She's also the only one to make four Silmarils, it's usually three."

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"Oh, good, in that case she'll be quite smug."

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"And that should hold her long enough for her to come out with revolutionary magical psionic tech advances or something."

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"None of those while I was out?"

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"Well, I did avert a spectacular explosion but nothing useful yet."

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"Oh no, what happened-"

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"Nothing happened! She checked with me before she turned it on! And would have suffered only moderate burns easily mage-fixed!"

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"What was supposed to happen-"

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"Supposed to fool virtuality into thinking somebody was operating it."

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"Oooh, that'll be good once it's not explody."

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"Yeah, it's a huge indispensible waste of psion attention."

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"And a pretty boring job, probably. ...we should check whether years-long tours out-of-bounds obviates it -"

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"Yeah, we should hunt up some kid who's not committed to being a psion right now or likely to get really homesick... I can get that done if you're not so keen on 'filtering eclipsed kids'."

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"I want those resurrections right away. Owe it to the families."

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"That's a separate thing; as far as I know eclipsed are not nonreductionist in the way that would prevent the existing resurrection solution from working so you just get Matirin and Epic-or-Cam to do it."

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"Good. ...Liz?"

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"Well, I suppose we could rez her out of neighborhood."

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"That might be the best thing to do."

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"I don't know what I'd say to her - I talked to her but it was more like trying to find a good path in a dialogue tree in a video game, if I could've come up with anything that'd get her to kill Maira and Melkor before she got reset -"

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Hug. "Probably not, most people can't be talked into murdering their girlfriend in under an hour."

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"I'm not even sure she couldn't've, if she hadn't been so closely supervised." Hug. "It's not like you have to tell that many lies to make Mandos sound like bad news..."

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"Yeah. Wonder why she didn't just leave it at that, not kill or kidnap anyone else, and leave -"

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"Liz was at least told that her Elf victims were obstructing departure, but I don't know how they were supposed to have been doing that, and she didn't know that the other eclipsed kids died."

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"I guess if she didn't anticipate anyone eclipsing killing the other psions made some sense -"

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"Yeah, I don't think anyone, uh, saw that coming. I guess some longrange Earth eclipsed might've caught it incidentally but since the disaster was thoroughly mitigated it would've sounded like - faraway not very important news no one was paying them to mention."

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Sigh.

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"Or maybe they didn't get it because I was precogging way too much, it'd depend on how they would otherwise have heard about it whether they'd get enough detail for that to fox it."

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"It must have been horribly eventful to coordinate."

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"I ate myself sick and passed out afterwards, yep."

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Hug. "Oh, Isabella -"

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Hug. "It's okay, I'm fine."

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"But you weren't, and you couldn't tell anyone -"

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"...we're not talking about my decimating Tirion's cheese supply anymore? I could talk to Alex and occasionally your dad."

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"I was thinking of - the whole thing, years and years -"

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"I'm okay, lovely."

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"Good."

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"And tomorrow Boots'll finish up and you are going to be okay too. I love you."

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"Love you too."

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Tourism!

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There are a lot of visually distinct planets with lots of visually distinct people. She watches them intently - posture, stride, expressions, reaction to scrutiny -

 

 

- that file back home with millions of names -

 

She squeezes Isabella's hand.

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Isabella squeezes back. And hops up a bit to peck her on the cheek.

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And eventually they go home for more therapy. Orcs, orcs are fairly triggering, as is discussion of how Melkor makes more orcs, as is being touched unexpectedly -

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Boots is good at her job.

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That's good.

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"All done, unless there's anything else you'd like to address?"

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"I think I can figure out the rest from here. Thank you."

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"You're welcome."

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"...if you wanted to demonstrate the scary powers it wouldn't be as convincing as for Kib but if you find anything psions aren't known to do - or just a bunch of things it'd take Liz forever to pick up -"

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"Uh, with Kib I gave him color agnosia and hemisphere neglect and dyscalculia. Which if I understand it would each individually be time-consuming and a waste of effort for a psion to learn to do?"

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"...yeah, sure, I'll have those, I won't be completely certain that settles it but I'll be able to assure myself that I wasted vast quantities of Liz's time if it's not."

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"I also considered a bunch of other agnosias, if you want to stack it deeper than three. Agnosias are actually really easy for me and they get bizarrely niche, like, 'cannot distinguish the fingers on the hand' bizarrely niche."

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"...yeah, okay, why not."

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"I have the oomph for like, five, today, and then I need my break -"

Agnosias!

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...yeah, okay, that would have required putting her on pause for a long time while picking up a lot of completely useless stuff. She squeezes Isabella's hand again, with fingers that she is unable to distinguish.

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Giggle. Squeeze.

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"Thank you," she says when she has sorted out all of the agnosias.

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"You're welcome. I can take 'em off or they'll wear off on their own in a bit -?"

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"Off, please -"

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And they are off.

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"Thank you."

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"You're welcome. Let me know if you need any other arts subtled."

Pop.

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And she sits down. "Well. Interesting day. I think - I think I want to see my family."

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"That can be arranged -" Who's most conveniently available at this moment -?

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Word about this has gotten out and all of them are there in less than ten minutes if she tells them Maitimë wants to see them.

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"- who first, they are apparently all prepared to drop everything if you ask for them."

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"...don't know if I have the energy for everyone -"

 

 

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"Sure, not at once. Start with your dad maybe."

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"Okay."

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So Isabella calls him over.

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And he comes over. "Hey. How're you doing?"

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"Very magicked. Little overwhelmed. Okay. You can hug me, the magic made it so it isn't terrifying."

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Hug.

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Hug. "How's everybody -"

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"Confused about how to do right by you, working themselves to death on the principle that if we'd all been clever enough -"

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"Wasn't your fault. Wasn't anyone's fault, seems to be universal, actually -"

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"Yeah, everyone is also eager to demand a great deal of information about the multiverse."

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"I should get them computers, distract them from asking me things -"

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"...your mom pieced together what Isabella whisking you off to get rescued by her alternate universe friends -"

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" - right. Is she mad at me -"

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"...worried for you -"

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Sigh. "I like girls in universes where humans don't even have roles and I never meet Isabella - well, actually, I don't like girls, the other mes are boys, but same -"

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"Really? We have a son first?"

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"You two are flipped too, everyone's flipped, it's weird. Anyway. It's not Isabella, it's me, and I know I should have gotten the Valar to fix it but I didn't and I don't want to now -"

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"Oh, dear, no, you shouldn't have -"

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"You wanted to be Queen that badly?"

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"...yeah kind of but also I'm testing you for being Maira, it's not really very fair of me -"

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"Okay."

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"...did she have some kind of consistent reaction to this sort of thing or what?"

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"Not consistent but - things being horrible for some reason was likelier than everything being great once I was home -"

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"Ah."

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"...can I tell people that, or -"

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"Yeah. Things not being horrible stops being evidence now that I've said I'll take it as such, but on the other hand now things won't be horrible."

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"We love you, sweetheart. We want you to be happy."

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"Yeah, everyone wants me to be happy and I want to not have been a net negative part of their lives, it's sort of annoying how that works out."

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"It would, I'm sure, be very suspicious if you woke up one day to discover that no one cared about your well-being."

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" - it'd be more suspicious than this, but it'd also mean a closer alignment between 'what I do if this is real' and 'what I do if I'm not sure?' I could just - leave, and go get citizenship somewhere badly managed and make friends and fix things and eventually run for office -"

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"Ah. I mean, you could also do that now but we'd miss you."

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"Yeah exactly. If this is real the thing to do is to be the best daughter and sister and girlfriend ever, to make up for what I've put everyone through, I owe people that -"

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"I don't actually hold you responsible for anything I've been put through, if that was unclear."

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"My alts do. At least partially. And they'd know, so-"

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"It is not up to them what you owe me."

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"But they know what I can handle."

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"They do have the advantage of me in not needing to hope to be informed one day, I suppose."

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"I'm sorry. I told you all I know."

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Sigh. Hug.

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"You can ask them if it helps."

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"Probably will."

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Hug.

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"Should I deflect everyone -"

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"Can you give mom the computers, it'll distract her -"

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"Sure, how do I do that -"

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"You write 'letter to Cam' and then ask him to come bring them."

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"...and then -"

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"That's it, those are all of the steps."

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"...all right. Take care, dear."

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"I will. Promise."

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"That all the family you want to see for now?"

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"If my mother knows about us I want her thoroughly distracted by the multiverse. I think."

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"Kib's didn't give them any trouble but I dunno how far you want to trust that. I can just check if you think her reaction would be prompt."

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"Probably."

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So if she calls Fëanárë -

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Isabella.

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Maitimë's up for seeing family now.

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We'd be delighted to have her over.

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Okay, if she relays that does Maitimë go and if so does she tell Isabella anything about how it went -

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 - Maitimë says - "can you precog it -"

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"I am."

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"....huh. Okay. I'll let you know, then, why don't I-"

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"Thanks."

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And a while later - "fine -"

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Bounce.

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"I should probably go, then."

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"Probably. I have never tried telling someone they were in a precognition before, that was - underwhelming."

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"Part of not being awful to you includes not reacting with 'oh my god, that means I'm going to stop existing in an hour, aaaah, please at least give me the full hour, please'."

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"Would you even want the hour that bad, I didn't think Boots was that good."

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"...well, no."

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"Anyway. It's probably fine. I can repeat the introductory bits if you think that might matter."

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"I don't think so. At all, actually."

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Nod.

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And  she goes to her mother's.

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"Hi. Extradimensional magic? Do explain - I want a list -"

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"Has Cam come by with the computers? Cam will come by with the computers and they have explanations written by alternate universe versions of you which are very likely to be more informative than me because I have only had a day's exposure myself and I spent it being computationally expensive."

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"Your father demonstrated the procedure that will supposedly inform Cam we want computers and I want an explanation."

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It is forty-five minutes before Isabella even comes up. When she does Maitimë raises a questioning eyebrow.

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"If she hurts you -"

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"It'd be an improvement over the present situation where she's so sad about me."

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"Would it actually or are you just conditioned or something to -"

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"Was, but one of her alts broke it, and also - I get to decide in what order I want to put myself back together, and if I don't think 'whoever I was before all of this' is possible I still have to move forward somehow.

 

And we were together before any of this, and we were happy."

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"Okay. Can demons conjure for all the writings of all the neighbors of this dimension, or does that not count -"

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"I love you, Mom. And I don't know. It's probably in the computer."

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"Well, I don't have the computer yet, do I? What were they able to pull off with three Silmarils -"

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And while she is explaining that -

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Pop.

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"Oh, good, it's Computers I want a computer you have the best powerset of all the ones Maitimë has mentioned though she has terrible taste and was more excited about the Earth where we're blue pointy-tailed aliens."

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"The version of you who is yea high," hover hand, "also likes my powerset to the point where he has an excellent facsimile cobbled together. It has been explained that computer involves brain surgery etcetera?"

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"Yes, yes, go ahead - Maitimë, dear, did you -"

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"I failed to notice that I am not into boys until I met a boy Bell, yes, but most of them are girls for the same mysterious cosmic reasons most of us are male -"

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He's a fetching boy! Such a tail!

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Moooooooooom -

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Oh, good, have you discovered preferences besides not being tortured?

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Yes!!! Yes!! I have!

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"Anyway I would love a computer," she says, beaming at Cam, and Maitimë makes a spluttering noise.

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"Computer!" says Cam, handing one over. "Teach it how you think and enjoy the best user interface in the multiverse, comes preloaded with everything pseudopublic, one of your alts will have to authorize you for anything your template can see that I am not allowed to."

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"Thank you!!! I also want to meet my alts!"

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"I can osanwë you the basics of the teleport spell," he does this, "and you can read the spell itself in the files and then you can bounce wherever you like and crash their think tanks."

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"Thank you very much."

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"Mmmhhmm!"

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Wag. "No problem, anything else?"

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She is distracted by the computer.

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"I'll take that as a no. Dream, anybody else I should compute while I'm here?"

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"My sister's'll probably all want one, I'll call them -" pause - "yeah, if you don't mind waiting a minute -"

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"Can do." He has his own computer and fusses with it.

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And here come sisters! "This is Isabella as a boy?"

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"Yes," she says, more defensively than is actually necessary.

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"Hi, Isabella as a boy."

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"How do the computers work -"

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"Hi, Tyelcormo as a girl. Uh, I am in fact competent to give a software engineering lecture but I am kind of booked timewise, I can't help you on the hardware and suspect you should just read the developers' documentation, which your alts have probably conveniently tucked into a folder for you," he tells Curufinwë.

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"I'll do that."

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Cam wiggles his fingers. "Chipped and," he hands out computers, "computerized, tutorial should be self-explanatory, yours is already in your alphabet," he tells Tyelcormë, "but our universal translation solution fixes that as an incidental, swing by Vanda Nossëo whenever to get that installed."

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"Nelyafinwë Maitime, you did not mention universal translation -"

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"How could it possibly have slipped my mind."

 

They both burst into giggles.

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"...what'd - someone - do -"

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"Isabella has a therapist alt and I have a terrible family - I love you all so much, I missed you so much, I'm so sorry -"

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"...anyone need anything else while I'm here?"

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"Are you doing resurrections, I have a dozen of those I'm personally invested in. Otherwise no."

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"I can't solo them, but if you want a pile of basement-dwellers for Matirin to wake up whenever he has a few minutes I can do that? Mind this doesn't work on Flat Elves, you're nonreductionist."

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"Yeah, we've been told. We've got mages for the ones who aren't destroyed forever and - well, most psion stuff is reversible. Though I don't know if I should hope for that. These are human kids, anyway."

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"Human kids should work fine. The destroyed forever will have to wait for Loki to finish her generic resurrection spell, that's still decades off, her magic system envies snails their alacrity, where do you want your basement dwellers?"

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"Here's fine, I can move them in a bit."

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"ETA on Matirin appearing? Affects how much maintenance whatnot I attach."

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"Apparently he's off hopping his neighbors - which we're going to do also, once Golden's free, Eclipse neighbors are particularly likely to be problematic - so it could be a couple days, doubt it'd be more than that."

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"Okay then. Who'm I making for you?"

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Names!

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Basement dwellers!

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"Thank you very much. Think that's all."

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"No problem. See you around." Hop.

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And she hugs all her sisters and unlock house-of-Fëanor stuff and eventually extricates herself to let Isabella know all is well.

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"Good." Hug.

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Hug. "I missed everyone. I am glad they don't not care about me such that I could just go off and run some quiet planet sufficiently different from Eclipse and Ithil."

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Snuggle. "Good."

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"So now I can pick an adjacent planet, which is much nicer. Can Cam conjure the complete works of all this world's neighbors or not -"

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"Can't, has to know what worlds he's quantifying over."

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"Has to know what about them?"

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"That they exist, I guess? In particular as opposed to 'probably there is at least one Eclipse neighbor'. Doesn't have to have gone there though."

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"And once it's confirmed there are neighbors, he'll only scrape from ones that he knows exist?"

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"Right."

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"...we can probably still find them all in a day if instead of actually jumping each time we have you tell us where we'd land, right?"

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"Depends on what governs worldleaping. Might be they don't change where they'd go until they go there, or something. Definitely worth trying."

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"That'd be inconvenient, if it means we'd get stuck if we find one that's not safe to go visit."

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"Yeah. Could be we can route around that by making more worldleapers or switching to wizardry transit or something."

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"...oh, there was a try-a-cantrip guide in the computer, we should tap a Maia and have a go - I should have Tyelcormë bring Huan over, she'll find it more fun than all that reading..."

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"Sounds like a plan."

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She comes over!

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...cantrips work even before they've figured out tapping Maiar for mana.

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"...okay, so we're adjacent to Materia, or something in its cluster, or some other world that works similarly enough -"

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"...yeah, must be - is there a way to distinguish between those possibilities -"

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"Some of them; Boots can earwire someone known to be in Materia from here, see if it works."

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"Okay! Want me to actually bother her or does she come over in time -"

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"...she will not be here to install a crystal ball in range - she will appear very fast if sent a note about it - she'll bring Epic."

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"Oh, cool, I'd love to meet a small male version of my mother who is a demon and was adopted by a you."

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"He's reportedly adorable!" Note note.

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Hey, Fëanáro, Ithil has mana recharging, I'm going to go check if it's next to Materia or better yet wherever your alt wound up, want to come?

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He appears behind her holding a scale model of her current surroundings. "Yes I do let's go!"

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Hop hop hop hop hop hop hop hop hop hop hop!

"Hello again!"

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"Hi! - Hi, Epic -"

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"Hi, Girl Maitimo! I acquired your-mom-when-she-was-my-age in Cube so now if I ever want to look like me but a girl I can do that, in Cube! I can also give places moons, if there are places that want moons! Hi Bell."

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"Sibyl," says Sibyl. "Do you often want to look like you but a girl?"

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"I like being able to do stuff! Sort of no matter what stuff it is! Also I like it when everyone recognizes me as a Fëanor and it sounds like your world is weird about gender? Telperion was too I guess but I don't even live there and Warp's not. I wouldn't have the wings though."

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"A terrible loss. Yeah, Ithil is genderswapped relative to all the other Ardas."

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"Not adjacent to Materia proper."

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"What about the afterlives -"

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"Checking those next."

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Bounce bounce.

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"You're really cute."

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"I'm a hundred twenty five Earth years."

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"...congratulations?"

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"...so I'm not a cute little kid I'm big?"

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"...uh, sorry if you don't like having it commented on, if I'd realized it might've been an issue I'd've checked."

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He folds his wings. "It's okay all the Bells say it."

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"Why don't you like it?"

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"I want people to take me seriously?"

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"...does thinking you're cute preclude that?"

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"I think so? People think I'm cute because I'm a kid which is also why they don't take me seriously?"

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"...I mostly think you're cute because you're short and excitable and look like a child rather than because I was inferring things about how long you've been around, but you should be advised that being very concerned about exactly how old people think you are is also childlike behavior."

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"...that's sorta unfair."

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"Is it?"

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"Yeah, obviously. It doesn't have anything to do with how seriously you should take people."

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"Whether parsing somebody as a child should make you take them less seriously is a separate question from whether caring a lot if your exact age is accounted for should cause you to parse as a child."

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"I guess, but if the reason children care about their age is that people don't take them seriously and then this gets counted against them it feels like double-counting."

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"Yeah, fair enough."

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"And you can start teaching Materia magic - it's really useful - I think there're people working out rollout procedures for magic in places where there're sources other than Maiar -"

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Ferardrin?

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The Plane of Chaos has lots of things happen but none of them are predictable from any things that have previously happened and there is no reason to expect that answering the voice in his head would have any effect because nothing has any effect because effect does not exist at all. 

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She can tell the difference between "not there" and "not replying". Ferardrin, my name's Bella and I'm a friend of your family's -

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That is an unusually long complete sentence.

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and I evacuated them from the Material Plane to a science world -

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- how - can you -

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...I haven't tried evacuating anyone from the plane of chaos yet, it's possible it's harder in some way. Do you have a body there?

"Found him," she murmurs.

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It's hard to tell the difference between 'I have one but it can't have effects on things and my senses are not any likelier than chance to report as if they're coming from it' and 'no' -

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If you don't have one my current spell won't work to extract you and once I have one that does I'll need a separate one to attach you to a new body, this could take a while to develop.

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...develop?

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Science world. I can almost certainly come up with the spells but it'll take some work.

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That's amazing. Uh - I like the talking, it is - likelier than chance that certain words would follow other ones, could someone maybe talk to me while you're - developing spells, can you tell me how that works -

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Yes, I'm using an artifact to talk to you and I can hand it off to somebody who wouldn't be of use in spell development to keep that up. How do you want to trade off speed at getting out against getting a description of spell development in a science world sooner?

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I wanna know how it works so when you get me I can do it -

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I'll hand off the earwire soon for the time being, anyway, someone else can give you the basic introduction and teach you a language or something. Uh, in addition to being a friend of your family's I also know a lot of alternate universe versions of you and them.

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There are alternate universe versions of people? What, on other planes?

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Yes, although it's typical to call worlds which are not in the known cluster around the material "worlds" instead of "planes". And most planes are science planes.

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So the mes are - okay?

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You are the only one who has died more than once and even the others who died are all alive now and doing fine.

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Do they want another one of me? They might have already done everything-

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There is a lot to do, I'm sure you'll find a niche. Anyway it sounds like it'd be better than the Plane of Chaos.

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Not if everyone wished I didn't exist.

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Nobody wishes that. I've been looking for you since I found out there was one of you from our world.

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...okay.

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Do you want to talk to your alt who's here?

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Okay.

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So she offers Epic the earwire. "He's been stuck in the Plane of Chaos and wants to be kept company."

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Hi! What's the plane of Chaos like? 

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If I could answer that question I wouldn't hate it nearly as much!

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-there's this concept in science worlds called entropy, it's loosely how orderly things are - living beings are ridiculously orderly, a book or a computer chip is ridiculously orderly, one interpretation of 'chaos' would be 'maximum disorder' but that would actually just be kind of boring -

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No, it's not like that, sometimes there's a giant frog or everything is on fire or it looks like there's a castle made out of hissing snakes or molasses drips or something -

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Does it drip in a consistent direction? Is there a sort of place that castles out of hissing snakes and stuff are usually on, are amphibians and reptiles more common than conventionally cute animals -

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No, and no, and no. Don't you think I'd have noticed -

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I mean, you couldn't have known about entropy, you wouldn't have been allowed. 

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I really don't think it applies here.

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Maybe not but practically all the things you are describing are really high entropy ...I guess less so if they're just illusions of those things -

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How about places that aren't the plane of chaos, what are they like -

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And he flaps his wings and settles in a corner and tells him all about the multiverse.

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Awww.

"Thanks for the heads up," Boots tells Sibyl and Maitimë.

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"How long are you expecting retrieval to take -"

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"Depends. It might be that eclipsed who've learned to do reembodiments could do that for him too, actually, I don't know how specialized their magic winds up being."

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"If nothing else it should branch pretty easily..."

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"Epic, does it sound like he's doing okay -"

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"He'll be okay. Boots can help him."

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"I'm not a panacea. But he was talkative and coherent, he'll probably be all right."

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"Good."

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"If Epic gets bored you can take the earwire and talk to him too if you like, but maybe read the background material in the files on Materia first for context."

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"Will do. So far it sounds terrible."

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"It is!"

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"And I'm not coming from a place of much enthusiasm about Ardas."

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"I am the only Bell who goes around with my hair like this because I'm the only one who landed and found Valinor so appealing by comparison that I went native."

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"I'm - glad Arda was that place for you and I wish I could figure out ways for it to be that place in general."

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"My thing does not alas generalize."

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"Extremely low standards? I hope not."

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"I'm not sure I'd actually say 'low'. Materia has a surprisingly high standard of living considering."

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"Weirdly Earth-like, right? Is there an explanation for that?"

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"No, not really. Sort of like there's no explanation for alts in general."

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"Maybe eventually we'll stumble across it."

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"Here's hoping."

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"Is it needed for anything?"

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"Uh, your human alt and Iobel want their own Elspeth. And it could provide some insight into what the fuck Erus are doing."

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"Materia seems unlikely to let Eru do anything, and yet it had alts of us. Well, some of us."

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"Yeah, and no Erus are next to each other but Ardas are samey..."

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"That could follow just from the Erus being alts, right?"

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"Yes, but then that still means alts need explaining."

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"I'm almost more disturbed by all known Earths having the same apparent trajectory until the late 20th century despite vastly different underlying magic systems."

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"Space Arda seems even weirder than that to me - Earths are at least geographically alike, and Space Arda is spacey and more populous and missing magic and I'd have expected literacy earlier to do more than it did -"

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"More than getting them to the point of FTL instead of swords?"

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"Nah, for narrative purposes lightleapers just equal boats, but the more - social-effect advances - should've had social effects."

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"Human populations change socially because the people in charge die."

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"I guess that could be all it is... Endorë was also still itself though."

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"I don't actually know much about any Endorës."

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"They usually don't have writing at all until the Noldor show up. Maybe I'm overestimating the importance of writing, but writing."

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"Yeah, wow. ....I guess in the dark it's less useful."

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"They have stars and Elves can see in the dark really well!"

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"They probably don't have trees you can make into paper! Or animals you can make into parchment!"

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"Endorë has not only trees but tree people! Which I suppose introduce their own paper related complications."

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"Maybe slightly. How does Endorë have trees."

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"Yavanna maintains them, betraying a slight failure to understand how trees are supposed to work."

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"Glowing ones and work-in-the-dark ones. Yes, it kind of does."

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"I would naively have expected more tree expertise!"

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"Valar."

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"Valar."

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"Do we have a way to kill Telperion's Melkor?"

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"Portable solution won't touch him and nonportable ones can't reach while he's locked up."

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"Can we move him here and do it -"

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"Secure Vala prisoner transport is not a solved problem. Also we'd probably stop in Wish so Gem could let you or one of your alts wish it instead of hauling him the extra hops to here."

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"Wishes're one off, Isabella can do it all day - has anyone tried wishing on a Vala-killing power -"

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"Doesn't go."

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"No one feels strongly enough or it's not the sort of thing the machine can do or -"

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"Seems to be a device limit, but if anybody with a higher reading somehow turns up I'm sure she'll retry."

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Nod. "And wishing Sybil'd work outside adjacency -"

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"No adjacency-affecting wishes have gone through yet but it's definitely worth a try to get Sibyl portable."

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"Isabella, was it ever verified that other mage portals are to planets in your world -"

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"Remote viewers who can't see Ithil can see the planets."

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"Huh. Okay."

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"Yeah, the portal to here is just weird somehow. It's a pity we don't have decent generic metamagic."

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"Maybe Eru. How does Loki feel about precogging a chat -"

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"I doubt she'd mind but I bet all the Erus kick me out of precog just as much as the local."

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"...yeah, I guess that's likely. Worth it to have a chat with one anyway?"

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"Maybe? Should probably agree on a question list in advance."

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"Yeah. Hmmm."

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"I'll put out a note about it." Multiversal network: so handy.

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It is!!!

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The important thing to know is really 'are any of them going to interfere'.

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If I don't work on them, we have a problem if the answer is 'only if you start talking to them'...

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Yes, we do. 

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Valar have talked to him. Even about things we did.

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Doubt we can assume that's functionally the same, the Valar have some species exceptionalism going on...

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I don't know how to compare risks here, but I doubt we'll find a better way than the Tesseract to interact with him, even if we find a hundred alts.

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Does seem hard to beat, Loki can go stand in a boring neighbor and talk to him from there...

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Exactly. Whereas if the Erus are interference-inclined, something will catch their attention eventually.

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Well, Loki should let me know when she's planning this in case I don't get blocked by faraway Erus.

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Can do but agree on picking a question list in advance.

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And a channel is created for brainstorming these.

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Meanwhile, Boots evaluates the parameters of her evacuation spell and determines that it should fail gracefully if it can't pull Ferardrin I out of the plane of chaos. She nips out to top up on mana and comes back and asks Epic to warn his alt.

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Boots is gonna try and grab you now!

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Okay.

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"Told him."

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"Sibyl, spot me?"

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"Yep, you're all set."

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Cast!

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He appears! His knees give out and he totally fails to catch himself in any way!

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Sibyl catches him and sets him gently on the floor.

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He sits on the floor. And blinks. A lot.

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Bounce bounce - "Hi! This is Boots she kind of adopted me this is Maitimë she's kind of our daughter this is Sybil she's another Boots."

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"Welcome to Ithil."

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" - hi - why can I understand you all -"

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"Universal translation but it's not as cool as it sounds it sorta gets in the way of learning the language, I actually just speak yours because your kingdom got evacuated to Warp."

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"Can you teach me -"

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"Yeah of course. Ithil'll mostly speak Quenya -" he switches to it.

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"You can come back with us to Warp if you want," Boots adds, "you'd be welcome most places on the map but it's sort of the obvious one and your family is there."

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"...could you get my mom?"

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"Warp is adjacent to the material plane and Ithil is adjacent to the plane of chaos but I don't know of any that's adjacent to whatever afterlife she's in and she might not appreciate it anyway."

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"Okay."

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"If we do find that plane we can ask her."

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"Yeah."

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Back to Warp.

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He still hasn't quite got walking sorted out.

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"Maybe Epic should make you a floatchair."

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Pop.

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He can sit in the floatchair. "That's cool."

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Flap flap. "I know! And I can hang out in Hell and learn the languages!!"

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"Do you want more time to adjust before I tell your family you're here?"

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"It'd just be my dad, right? ...and he's old, by now - how long has it been -"

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"...your dad, you've got a half-nephew named after you among others, etcetera. It's 263 in Materia by Imperium accounting."

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"...they're not family. And wow. That's a long time. Why am I still a kid -"

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"Because you were dead, I assume."

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"Probably - I'm so behind on everything - science world - can I have a crystal ball and just read until I'm caught up on everything, I'm not very coordinated and that'll be less overwhelming and then I'll know everything and won't be useless -"

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"Yeah, of course." She shows him to the ballroom.

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"Thanks.  ...please do tell my dad I'm okay, but maybe not where to find me?"

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"All right, although he might guess the ballroom on his own."

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"Yeah, maybe."

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"Let me know if you need anything. Subtle arts range is almost a mile, a-mail will get me anywhere."

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"Thank you. A lot. I - think I mostly need to know what is going on but I'll let you know if there's anything else -"

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"Epic might be better at prioritizing explanations for you than I would be, because alts, but if you have questions for me I'm happy to answer them for you."

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Flap flap. "There's an orientation for new Fëanors. It's got languages every other section but you don't need to learn them all if you're in a hurry, English and Quenya are enough to be getting along for most peal stuff."

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He seems to not remember how to do facial expressions. "Okay."

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She pulls out her pocket mirror and a-mails Ferardrin I's father: A new world turned out to be adjacent to the afterlife Ferardrin was in and retrieving him was more straightforward than expected; I got him out and he's reacclimating to life.

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He would very much like to come and see his beloved son!

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She sets up a mail account for Ferardrin on the hybrid network and forwards this reply to him.

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And he replies "I'm busy, sorry."

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Epic leaves him to figure that one out on his own.

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Okay then. Boots heads to her office, which is less than a mile from the ballroom.

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And he tries to learn everything he would need to know so that it would be good for him to exist. It is a lot of stuff. 

 

(Epic goes and gets him an eidetic memory necklace - "it'll help with the languages and stuff -")

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"Cute kids."

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"Yeah. I don't think it's just relatedness-to-an-alt that makes Mitros and Iobel want an Elspeth instead of a Fëanor, though."

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"I feel like it would be weird to bring up an alt of one of one's parents."

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"Yes, but I mean, even besides that."

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"Yes, and a small Fëanor seems high-maintenance, this I will also grant. Boots seems to find it worthwhile."

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"He adores her."

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"And seems to think she's omnipotent, which must get awkward."

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"Possibly. Or perhaps she'll become omnipotent and then it'll work out fine."

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"That'd be ideal."

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"It really would."

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And she knocks on the door! "Nelya!"

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"Yeah?"

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"I want to meet my alts, can I -"

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"I'll message them."

 

Laurië wants to meet other Macalaurës, she sends. I think she should meet Makarial first.

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"Mitros?"

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There's a war in one of their neighbors and it's getting to the point where he is considering ending it and announcing both parties have been absorbed. "Mmmm?"

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"Why does your new alt think I should meet my new alt ahead of the Elves?"

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He giggles. "Go, and tell me if you don't have it figured out in an hour."

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So he heads over to the new Arda. He lands outside the gates of its Tirion, walks through the city. 

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"Think he's here."

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"Oh good," she says, and rushes out into the street and into his arms.

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Awww.

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They will both start singing!

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Pretty. How do they both know the lyrics and the harmony, though, that's the question -

It has never occurred to me to ask how Elves coordinate all the singing and even if it had I suspect my question would stand what with one of those people being a non-Elf.

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Osanwë- and yeah, she has to be leading -

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So it's improvised on the spot? How very musical-logic.

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Musical logic?

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Earth art form, did you never run into any? Theatrical or film productions where the characters start singing without any of them acknowledging that this is not a human-typical activity - it's sort of hard to describe the way in which it's conventional for the songs in musicals to work, we normally pick it up by exposure...

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Anyway, I expect they're improvising. 

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Cute.

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Yeah.

 

A crowd is gathering.

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Is the audience part of their cunning plan or incidental?

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I'm sure it's deliberate.

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And they'll announce their engagement when critical mass has assembled or something?

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You've got it. Critical mass or at least some people with cameras.

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Giggle. Swaying to the music.

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It's very pretty music!

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Lovely!

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Of course it is.

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And when lots of people have assembled they kiss, and giggle, and she whispers something even Elf hearing can't, and then they both say simultaneously "will you marry me?" 

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I will have to find them a nice present.

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You already did, you know. She squeezes her hand. It's safe enough; no one is looking at them. 

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All right, then I will have to find some very nice wrapping paper and roll you up in it and add a fetching bow.

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I am sure Tirion will be offering nothing but wedding presents for the next Year.

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Getting them something here would not be taking full advantage of my special multiversal privileges at all!

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I suppose that's true.

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I should get them, like, some kind of awesome otherworldly musical instruments or something?

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I suppose you can always ask their alts.

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Yeah, I will probably wind up doing that.

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