The air above the middle of the street now contains a twenty foot wide sphere of ice-cold ocean. It hits the ground without much time to spread out and splashes outward in a big wave, knocking people over and disturbing gardens.

In the middle of it a mermaid wearing an elaborately pretty dress lands on her head and flops heavily to the ground and shouts, "Holyshit, ow!" as soon as her mouth is uncovered.

"Sorry!!" Hannah calls back. 

She pulls a wand from the holster at her hip and snaps off a Cure Serious Wounds at the accidentally-kidnapped mermaid. The water damage is for later she just kidnapped a person holy shit - 

She races over in case more serious spellwork is needed to let the mermaid breathe or similar.

She's sitting up and looking around. "The- The fuck is going on, it takes a lot to get me to swear like this but holyshit that triggered my adrenaline rush and my neck is fixed now I can't move but I gotta move - what - did I blackout or something-"

All this is said very quickly. She seems to be breathing just fine.

She sheathes her wand. "Interplanar accident, you teleported. Welcome to Arcbright." 

She spreads her hands and a big soft fluffy towel falls into them. She offers it. 

"You're probably in shock a little. It's okay, I can get you back home. You following me?"

Fluffy towel --> Drying off --> Something to do with her hands while the adrenaline calms the fuck down at her command.

"You just did something impossible!" She says through the fluffy towel. "Do re mi fa so la ti do - high and away go we, luna awaits grey and free-"

She's a talented amateur with perfect vocal cords and decades of sporadic practice.

"I'll calm down in a bit," she says, still muffled by towel. "Adrenaline! Good to react quickly in emergencies not so good when the 'mergency isn't! This is a nice towel."

"'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Know the quote?" She pulls her third-favorite fidget cube from her personal hammerspace and hands it over. "Here, something to fidget with."

"Impossible! Again! Except evidently not!"

Towel is shoved away and cube is fidgeted with. Her fin is visibly receding and her lower body acquiring a divot, like one of those sped-up videos of plants growing.

"Shakespeare? I think? I'm not an actress I'm a perpetual dabbler. We've done a lot of dreaming, teleportation is a dream in a way that lukewarm fusion isn't, except for some quantum bullshit I don't understand. You saying it ain't so?"

"If you have Shakespeare you've probably got an Earth. Not all places do! Thanks for helping me narrow that down." She accepts her towel back and stores it again in her personal dimension.

"This city is built on the reality of teleportation and a whole host of other things we shorthand as magic. I'm a dimensional mage, I was putting in compressed apartment blocks when I hit a snag and accidentally grabbed a chunk of your world."

"Does that happen often? How does magic work is it more 'alchemy' or 'innate superpowers' or 'bargaining with demons'-"

"It's rare for skilled workers, but not unprecedented. Mostly enchantments and willworking, enough sacrificial magic for masochism to be an industry. Here, have a skylime." She appears the green fruit and passes it to the mermaid. "It's good for five minutes' flight per section eaten, thirty minutes if you eat the whole lime. Mind you it's sour."

She takes the skylime but doesn't immediately eat it.

"A masochism industry, huh? I know what my next job is. 'M a bubblehead-" she points to her own head with a sideways smile. "Being the same person for too long is boring. I tried that out for a few months, a while back. Wasn't bad, would be a lot better if I can get paid for it. Uh, do you need to do something about the water, are cops going to show up here-"

(Squelch, goes her lower body as it separates into two limbs. The fin is mostly gone, but her new feet are grossly half-formed.)

""Being the same person too long is boring", huh? I should introduce you to my sisters. 

There'll be an admin-mage along any second now. Fortunately the apartments here are all safely in their demiplane bubbles so there's not much to flood except some public park. Glad to see you're leg-capable, gross but cool. Especially since that's tech you've got there. OTC's going to want to contact wherever you came from for sure."

A flash of pink light, and a girl wearing a black gothic lolita dress with a skull tattoo pops out of nowhere. 

"Is everything okay?" she calls. "Should've known it'd be a you, Hannah."

"Under control! Accidental transport from an uncontacted, seems friendly!"

"Meat shifting around is gross, it's pretty hard to make that go away." She crosses her arms and pouts a little.

"Hello," she says with a little wave. "I have to believe it's real at this point, it's either that or hostile simulation with really expensive toys and I have no idea who'd bother to do that to little old me-"

"It's real, it's perfectly normal as far as anything is ever actually normal, let's get you to a quarantine suite - no offence but we have no idea what where you came from is like, we don't know if you have a disease or are shedding nanobots or what have you. Take my hands please, the both of you."

She offers a hand to each of them.

Hannah takes her hand.

"I am not consenting to medical treatment or scanning or anything like that, legally speaking, by assenting to quarantine. No offense but I have no idea how you operate or what authority you're drawing upon."

She ducks her head and takes the hand, musing that many of her other personalities would bristle more and be offended or at least annoyed, but it seems only reasonable really. Just like her response.

There's a flare of pink light, and then they're both in a well-appointed suite with wide windows but no doors. Audrey aims the teleport to drop Changeling onto the couch, and Hannah is left standing in the middle of the room. Audrey blinks back out again without so much as a by-your-leave.

Hannah sighs. "Looks like they're making a big deal of it. It's not like Audrey to be such a hardass, I guess 'interplanar accident' got her spooked."

"It's understandable to take precautions. Anyone competent back home would do the same. And this mindset has high empathy and low baseline for irritation so I'm not annoyed. If I were someone else right now I might be. The strategic part of me is considering turning into a firebrand and making a big deal out of being kidnapped, getting offended and loudly so I can get better compensation, but without knowing who anyone here is or works for and how they might react to that it seems a worse bet than playing nice and reasonable and waiting a while."

She shrugs. 

"Would you like me to sing to pass the time?"

"Please do," says Hannah. She goes and digs through the minifridge and pulls out a can of pop. 

"Ooh, grab one for me please."

She sings. Normally she'd just sort of croon aimlessly but this time she does a song from a recent movie, Acceleration Eternal. It's fast and the lyrics are about being Shocked! Dazzled! Amazed! By the wonderful world of magic.

Hannah fetches Changeling a pop and laughs at the lyrics. "I like you. We should - hang sometime." She halfsmiles.

Audrey pops back in, tablet at the ready.

"Alright, so. I have here a form for a one-year visa with a few fields for you to fill in. Name, did you bring any controlled or hazardous goods with you, if yes or maybe please list, do you understand that Arcbright's laws apply during your stay. And for you, Hannah, I have a form for accidental displacements that'll establish your legal responsibility for her. Either of you have any questions?"

"Some time when I haven't just been accidentally yanked into another world? Sure."

She finishes the song with a smile. Her dress is shifting too, albeit more slowly. Longer, fewer curves and more straight lines, darker colors... More businesslike, if anything. And less swimsuit-y as the material changes. She doesn't appear to be wet or even damp anymore.

After Audrey's spiel, "I kind of like to know the laws of places I go. Does having the capacity to make hazardous goods count? Do I get a stipend or anything? How do I get home?"

"I can't just summarize the entire legal code. No theft, murder, public nudity outside a Bower Enclave, no entry to Bower Enclaves for minors..."

She waves a hand. "Hannah is supposed to be handy to give you information in the moment. Via remotelink or personally, whichever. As for the rest of your questions: Yes, a stipend and an apartment, you wait for Hannah to find your plane again based on the interaction she had in the first place. It could take some time."

"Months, probably."

"I'm not in a huge rush to go home, this all seems very exciting, but I'd like it to be on the horizon, thank you. That doesn't sound very unusual, legally, but I had a bad experience in one of the Arean nations once and I'm kind of on edge here. I was thinking somewhere I could download the legal code?"

She lists her name as "Preferred: Changeling. Real: Abigail Cooper." Yes, she has 'the capacity to make various chemicals including poisons/medicine in my body- No nanotech'. She checks the 'yes' box about the laws.

Audrey accepts her form. "There's ambient net, do you have a phone? If not you can probably cover it from your stipend. There's a legal code publicly available from the Arcbright Civil Service website."

"...Oh, duh. My cortical stack doesn't seem to know how to talk to this internet. And I wouldn't know how to fix it."

"I bet that's fixable, but not in the next fifteen minutes. What's a cortical stack?"

"It's- Not a brain, but a brain backup that holds the most important bits, and also a... Cell phone... That's right in your head. Er, neck. They're not delicate by a long shot but if I manage to die, keep it safe and return it to Gensedyne - my insurance company - when you find my world, and they'll put me back in a cheap off-the-shelf body that I'll have to do a lot of hard work to upgrade again."

"That is so cool."

"A wholly technological immortality! Fascinating. But also not my business. I'm willing to declare you two nonhazardous; Changeling, here's your payment card, here's a portal key to a state apartment, block 34 northwest; enjoy your stay in Arcbright." 

She accepts Hannah's form back as well. "And I can teleport both of you out of here now, if you'll take my hands?"

"It is! Best thing since penicillin! Even a meathead like me admits that."

She takes the hand.

Hannah latches on as well, swigging her pop with her free hand.

And they're deposited at the local portal station!

People flow into rows of inscribed circles on the floor by ones and twos, selecting their destinations by touchscreen registers on the way. They vanish without so much as a flash of light; on the other side there are rings with people arriving just as smoothly. 

Most people here are either human, anthropomorphic foxes, or some combination of the above, but there's an elf over there in a dark suit carrying a briefcase. Most people wear casual athletic clothing with the occasional black thorned necklace; they seem fairly standard, and one of them even has its hooks buried in the skin of the person it's on. 

The portal hub seems to be set up in the middle of a garden. The walls enclosing the space are actually hedges; out one entrance she can see a tree with a plastic basket of skylimes under it. Planters bristling with flowers separate the ingoing circles from the outgoing ones. 

"From here you can reach anywhere in the city," says Audrey. "Have fun."

She makes sure she's not blocking traffic. (The blue scales all over her skin have been receding, the dress continuing to shrink and change, now she's wearing something reasonably sporty as well. And suddenly- floof go two new ears off the top of her head.)

"So..." She says to Hannah, "The Bower Enclave sounds fun." Giggle. "But maybe not right away. I get the feeling changing shape so often is maybe a little more fraught when there's people that way all natural. It's fashion all the way down for me, but I'm not gonna grow a snout and tails around here, you know? How about the local music scene, do you know it? Or I could settle into the apartment if we're being boring."

"The best clubs are in the Bower Enclave but there are good ones outside too. Lemme check my phone..." She fishes it out of her hammerspace and scrolls a bit. "Ooh, Devilmachine is in town! I know the frontwomen, I did an apartment for them once. They're devils from Cthonia, which is the next Trade World down. Bit sharp as people, but what do you expect from demons? And they rock. Want to go? There's a performance in... three hours, which is maybe not ideal but we could go down to their club and hang. Or explore the shopping district, I bet there's all kinds of stuff you want." 

"What, demons? Actual demons, from Hell, who torture people?"

Beat.

"Why not! And shopping sounds really fun when there's entire new industries to look at."

"A former hell. They used to torture and enslave people down there and then the OTC came in and put a stop to the slavery and moved the former slaves elsewhere as refugees. So now they mostly torture the willing - most demons are pretty hardcore sadists. Otherwise they're just people. And sure, let's do some shopping! First stop the OTC main branch."

She bows dramatically. "Lead the way, prithee, and inform me of my budget? The number on this card is meaningless to me, you see."

Hannah laughs, and inspects the card. "Four thousand five hundred OTC - that's like half of a basic service worker's pay. I usually spend about six hundred a month on groceries, and a monthly ring pass is fifty OTC. A decent phone'll run you about five hundred. Since your rent is free you're still getting a decent deal." 

She steps up to the closest teleport circle, taps her own payment card against the kiosk, selects "two passengers", and "Temple of Aura Shopping District", then steps into the ring with a beckon to Changeling.

Follow, follow.

"I see, I see... Not sure I want to get a computer that goes outside my body, I'd have no idea what to do with it. I'm sure I can find something to do if I want more money. Those thorn necklaces have something to do with the masochism industry, don't they?"

They port into a similar station, this one with white roses on the walls. A king-sized bed sits under a glass dome in the middle of the concourse. 

"Yeah, they're Takkarash minters - Takkarash is the kind of currency that's earned from pain, it trades with OTC at about thirteen Takkarash to one OTC. So the necklaces provide pain in precisely calibrated amounts so you can pick the balance that's best for you. Or they can give you spikes worth several thousand OTC if you're okay with traumatizing yourself. Most people go for weak chronic pain, but among professionals there's some rivalry involved as to who can deal with the highest base rate and the biggest spikes. They tend to get custom-made necklaces in different styles, though if they don't want to advertise they can just get a higher-quality necklace of the same style. Cheap necklaces take a cut for the OTC, a high-end professional model is about seven hundred fifty OTC but you can get one for as cheap as eight OTC if you don't mind the reduced quality."

Hannah sets off towards the exit as she talks.

"Thirteen to one, and one OTC is like... A twelfth of a nice meal at a restaurant, thereabouts? How much ow is one takkarash? My bubbleheading can do lots of weird stuff for funsies, I can be a masochist for a while, but it's hard to get really extreme without risking it sticking."

"If you have previous masochism experience, a single whipstrike is about ten takkarash all told, not accounting for lingering aches into the next day. A single takkarash is five point two six seconds of pain like you stepped on a lego brick. I've heard of professionals taking spikes in the thousands, though that's... impressive."

"I've felt whipstrikes. I'm an omnivorous hobbyist. I'd be surprised if you named something non-magic I haven't tried, and then I'll go try it. It sounds like I could handle enough to pay out well, at least."

She smirks. Her tail wags in that sort of close side-to-side motion that cats' tails do. (Wait, when did that get there?)

"It definitely does. You might not rank in the top of all masochists but you'd be able to support yourself." She glances at the tail appreciatively but doesn't comment.

They're into the shopping district now. The distinctive green honeycomb logo of the OTC marks the closest building. 

"This is the OTC, the multiversal trade company that's basically responsible for how Arcbright is today. Minters are theirs, Oifilei Trade Currency is theirs, teleportation circles are theirs, you get the picture. They sell all kinds of weird stuff from across the planes; come have a look!"

There is an extensive catalog.

She paws through the catalog excitedly and has lots of questions.

Are sending stones FTL comms? Does Forgotten Song stay on permanently? Does the Will-O-Wisp light work through cameras- Will the user be able to see its light in the view of a camera, and will someone else, or automated monitors, see it? Do perfected boots go even faster if you're already fast? Are things that violate your form a big concern such that she needs the amulet making it Inviolable? Does the rod of freedom do anything about non-magical mental manipulation? Why not make vat-jellied elf ears? She really wants a laser sword because lasers don't work that way but that's not exactly a high priority. Or a question. Does the eternal car battery come in 'power plant' form for big spenders? Does sinflower work on people with really weird biology or full body androids? Does she have to stay awake forever to use Thirteenth Hour or just a week? Upon seeing the Seven-Pinned-River she wants to grow lots of eight-foot carbon nanofiber hair with titanium wire core and tools on the end and be Doc Ock but that's not a question either.

Yes, sending stones are FTL. Forgotten song can be removed but is by default permanent. The Will-O-Wisp's light is not caught on camera at all. Perfected boots do go even faster if you're fast enough already. The amulet is mostly worn on half-tamed worlds and as a personal defense for people who have pissed off wizards. The rod of freedom only defends against magic. They sell vat jellied elf ears as well but some people prefer the genuine article. Similar but more powerful energy sources can be purchased for more, yes. Sinflower works on every biological they've tried but it is a chemical and won't work on androids. Thirteenth Hour is... it's best if she doesn't sleep at all, but some short snatches of sleep now and then can be managed. Has she considered purchasing Dyne? 

She predicts some people will want to digitize the sending stones back home and make a proper zero-latency extranet. Not to mention teleporting between planets. Dyne sound fun and she wants some. She needs to know more about what Thirteenth Hour actually does before deciding to actually get it. She can go a week without sleep for a week but will crash pretty hard afterwards, so maybe not? She wants a forgotten song and the basic pain necklace and 5 Dyne for now and will come back later having thought about it more.

Thirteenth hour gives you an hour during the day that didn't exist before and during it a personal demiplane is accessible. If you fall asleep while the personal demiplane is open there can be... issues. Rarely. But they're in the class of "kidnapped to a hell dimension." Thirteenth Hour is illegal many places where they judge the risk too great.

They will give her purchases in a plastic bag and ask for the next customer in line. 

"Not really into shopping?" asks Hannah.

"Shopping is fun but I'm not allowed to make major purchases as a catgirl. 'Cause unless I deliberately don't every time I change shape I'm changing my brain too, ya know? All my money would be gone in a week. And I'm new around here, sooo I'm interpreting 'major purchases' a bit low in OTC to start with. Food's usually okay and clothes I tend to just copy - I wanna morph into a nerd if I'm gonna nerd out about my outfit rig, lemme know if you're interested? Anyway, I'll come back for more stuff later in a more foresightful frame of mind~"

"Makes sense! Then probably shopping won't be that fun, though we can walk around and see what's on sale. There're usually buskers on the Main Concourse this time of day if you want to call things off."

"Window shopping's still fun. I could change into something else but I get the feeling I'm already being the kind of person who gets along with you, yanno?"

She swings the bag casually. Pauses to put the necklace on.

"Also I think watching buskers could go either way 'cause I'll be tempted to join in."

She smiles. "Yeah, you seem pretty cool. Let's windowshop, having you join in on some buskers is not my idea of a good time."

The shopping mall is filled with people in various shapes and sizes; most are humanoid but there is at least one telekinetic squid. In other oddities there is a huge flower, too big to fit through the doorways of shops, with a woman nestled inside it; she floats along in a large planter and somewhat obstructs the walkway. One of the shop clerks has come out to show her dresses. 

For sale, there is clothing and crockery and furniture and watches and smartphones and household enchantments and blenders (electric and magical) and chocolates and caramels and vanillas and exotic candies for people who like the taste of grass and perfumes by the same company and peacebonded weapons (swords, bows, guns) and shoes and bronze sculptures and pets (robotic and biological) and tabletop games and toys and so on. There are two one-Credit stores selling enchanted fidget tesseracts, plastic battery-powered hand fans, and kitschy home decorations. There is also an extensive food court with prices in both OTC and Takkarash; it sells pizza, Cthonic fusion cuisine (which seems to rely heavily on sausages), ice cream in various strange flavours like "bloodfruit", noodles, sushi, curry, submarine sandwiches, and so on. There are "vat-certified" certificates on the walls of the outlets that use meat. 

Most meals are around 99 Takkarash or 8 OTC. 

She starts minting pain two or three at a time every minute or two; It makes her ears twitch but doesn't otherwise seem to affect her.

Ooh, a fidget tesseract. Buy. Fancy exotic candy? Buy! Just 10 OTC of it though.

...Food court. "I will NOM ALL THE FOOD. Well, not literally all of it. What's your favorite, Hananh? Ooh, hey, I should listen to something Devilmachine made so I can get properly excited for it."

"I usually go to the curry place, they've got some hot vindaloos you can mint TK off and they're worth it. Then I go to the ice cream place to get the lingering spice out of my mouth. As for Devilmachine, I can pull up something on my phone - Your Wings is pretty good -"

Your Wings turns out to be a grungy electronic duet between a pair of sadists in love. "A knife against your skin/a kiss with teeth within/so brilliant the pain/your wings begin again"

"It's relevant to note," says Hannah, "That Scythe, the singer, has an elaborate scarified tattoo of wings on her back which I understand Rose, her partner, is almost always working on."

"Nuclear spice? Let's do it."

She nods along to the music and comments, "Hot."

Hannah points out her favorite curries from the menu. Ordering is practically instant; the clerk just loads up their trays with separated-compartment platters and waves them off. Just leave the platters afterwards, they're self-cleaning and teleport back to the restaurant when you're done. 

The spice is nuclear as advertised. Changeling's necklace starts minting TK all by itself, the balance on her payment card ticking back up. Hannah grins through watery eyes and flashes a thumbs-up. 

"Yeah, they're definitely hot. I've never tried; that level of masochism isn't my jam, I'm much more casual. Know some people who have though; Kumi's had demonic clients and I know Eva's done it, Eva's done everything."

She doesn't even notice the convenience, drones do the same thing at home. "Holy hell that's hot! Am I breathing fire right now?" She flushes from the spice, but her eyes don't water more than a little bit.

"Casual omnivory and bucket lists are the two components of my soul. But most of the more extreme stuff I only do once, you know? There's this death game, last-man-standing in an abandoned moon arcology thing they do with cheap Sony Sameface frames backed up by AR, in Usea. That was fun but I wouldn't do it again, it got pretty intense. And I've been with a hardcore sadist before, if not a literal devil. But I can still appreciate the idea." Shrug.

"Just a little," says Hannah, seemingly unperturbed by her dish's own spice. "You get used to it. As for bucket lists, you really gotta meet Eva. She's made it her goal to go everywhere and do everything and she's pretty much achieved that, mostly through a lot of forking. - Do you, er, have that where you come from?" 

"Sounds like I really should meet her, that sounds amazing. Eh, proper forking is super dangerous, because of - quantum bullshit, I don't know the details. People can come out wrong, or with psychoses and stuff. If your stack gets fried, that's risky too, they restore you from a backup but the process is just like forking, technically speaking. It's illegal some places too."

Hannah pulls at something invisible around her neck, and a gold necklace with a quartz crystal on it flickers into view. "This is my equivalent of your stack. I have it because I used to be an Eva - we diverge a lot, since we end up falling in love with very different things. I have a lot of the dabbler drive and the hedonism; also some of her more negative traits like her naturally poor memory and not-so-good executive function. The memory crystal fixes the poor memory, but..." She shrugs. "I think I'm more fun this way anyway."

"Hmm. I lean on my stack a lot for memory, too. Don't know whether to consider myself a hedonist. Probably I am most of the time. Sometimes it's like... Whoever I used to be is buried under swapping around all the time. But it's fine, this existence is fun, and I get different things out of it, like- When I go skim the legal code later I'm going to be properly anxious and paranoid to really understand and internalize the implications. It's useful like that."

(Nom on the nuclear spicy curry, with breaks to flush and pant. It's about half gone.)

"Sounds good to me. Eva will be interested, she hasn't lived like you have yet I don't think. The tech isn't there for us. I'd be more sympathetic about your feeling lost between forms but it's your own fault if you didn't keep proper backups."

Shrug. "Well, backups are harder for us. Riskier. Couple centuries ago I'd be dead of old age though, so I can't complain about the tech. Anyway, who I am now is what counts in my opinion."

(Rapid noms to finish the dish. Ear-twitching and squeezing her eyes shut at the spiciness concentration.)

It is so cute and she really wants to pet her. She restrains herself. 

"How widespread are these cortical stacks, anyway? Are they cheap? Because while we've fixed aging accidentals and genetic diseases still get people."

"They're cheap, the procedure is really streamlined. There's charities that do work stacking people in really poor places on Mars and dust-speck republics? Er, little asteroids full of survivalists. So it's not literally free. But pretty close to. It's considered inhumane to have a kid and not stack them and I think most governments subsidize it hard. Oh, kids have to be like two or three before it'll take."

"Sounds like we'll pay a lot for the technology once we get back to your world. And of course then your world will get our cool shit too, it'll be a whole thing, but we have practice with that, it ought to go fine. Want to go meet my sisters before the show?"

"Hmm... Sure. Sounds interesting. I change myself, but you fork and change yourselves. It's kind of a neat mirror. Ice cream first, though." She sticks out her tongue and winks. It's slightly fuzzy.

Ice cream! Chocolate swirl for Hannah, and for Changeling?

She rolls a mental die, which lands on lemon sorbet.

Also, a small bloodfruit, just to try it.

The sorbet is quite good. The bloodfruit is an acquired taste; it's sticky-sweet and coppery and clings in your mouth. 

After tasting both, she finishes the bloodfruit first, savoring it, then washes it away with the sorbet.

"Kind of literal, isn't it? Well, I'm glad I tried it. Are there vampires around?"

"There are vampires! They're from down in Skanthivus, one of the Half-Tamed worlds. Has an effect that screws up magic. They've got some weird instincts and they need sun-charms but they're again mostly just people." 

She fishes in her interdimensional pocket for a couple seconds and comes up with a pyramidal beacon. She sets it down in a clear space, pushes a button, and there's a door. 

"After you," she says to Changeling.

"Spiffy portal!" She prances walks in, ears twitching in a slightly different way (front-to-back for excitement, instead of the quick side-jig that pain causes).

It's really cute how her ears broadcast her emotions. She follows Changeling and gets the beacon behind her.

"Hello there Hannah!", says Eva from behind her paperwork-covered desk. "Who's this you've brought along with you?"

"This is Changeling, she's from an uncontacted and shifts to be different people, naturally I thought of you."

"Fascinating! Mind if I ask for a demonstration?"

"Sure thing. One personality and body change coming right up. Takes a few minutes though. Hmm... D'you want someone chill or careful or confident?"

"Let's go with confident, my own selves who get ambitious are - exciting, let's put it that way."

"Sure thing, one dragon-girl coming up. Meanwhile, so, you're the Eva I've heard so much-" Ear-twitch "-A few things about. I think the way I said it was, the two components of my soul are casual omnivory and bucket lists, meaning I'll try everything once and many things repeatedly, as hobbies. And Hannah says you do something similar."

"There's this organization I used to belong to, the Society of Sensation, that says that life is about getting out there and doing things and experiencing things. I took that credo to heart. One of the first things I did when I got this immortality was I threw myself into a sun. Just to experience dying like that. ...well, and other reasons too, like establishing that there's no "original" me anymore. I'm not one person, I'm a whole organization, and these days my activities can only be understood statistically, but - go everywhere, do everything. I have a very heavy presence in the OTC's exploratory arm."

"Yeah I noticed that there seem to be a lot of you. Forking's nightmare fuel where I'm from because it fucks up in little or big ways so much, and illegal mostly. I've only gone sundiving the once, in a super special shielded spaceplane. Have you experienced being a spaceship? It's trippy, I couldn't take it for more than a couple hours."

"I have not!" She taps her necklace, and far away a place is set aside in the Thousand Stars for precisely that memory. "Now I have to do it. Your world lets people be a lot of different things, then?"

She grins and lets out a little subvocalized "Huh-hn" laugh, and ear-twitches. (The ears seem - slightly different, now)

"Yeah, you can map 'stack inputs lots of different ways. It's an art and a science. There's lots and lots of frames you can pick up - bodies, that is. Robotic ones and ones made of meat. Planes and submarines and spider walkers, or plain androids. Lots of different animal bodies - I was an octopus for a while. I'm a meathead - biological purist, I don't ever want to spend more than a few hours in a robot or get too much metal in one of my bodies." Shrug. "People think we're silly but it's a way to be."

"It seems reasonable to want to - defend some part of what you were before all of this. It's conservative in a way I didn't expect but it makes sense."

"That's a good way to put it actually. I'm not saying gynoids aren't alive, but - something's just missing if you're all circuits and no cells. Hannah, you still here?"

"Yeah, just holding my peace to let the big girls talk. I know when I'm outgunned in a conversation."

"I would definitely miss a lot of the pleasures of daily biological life if I got a robot body that wasn't capable of them. 'course that means a really good robot body should have them too, but even then - it feels more like a novelty to me than something I couod move into. But then again, maybe I'd learn to love it! Try everything once, and all."

"There's also halfway options, cyborgs that still eat and breathe and have biology, just... Not much of it. The military uses high-end cyborg bodies for the best of both worlds, adaptability and power. The human form is flexible! But they're expensive. Like, decades-of-middle-mismanagement-wages expensive, and high maintenance too."

"Makes sense," says Eva. "Whereas biology you can grow?"

"Oh, my body's probably cost just as much over the years. It's really fancy and I've done a bunch of custom work to it. I could nerd out but I wanna be shaped like a nerd if I'm gonna do that." Thoughtful pause. "Actually, dragon-girl is a decent shape for nerding. Anyway, most people have to go to a clinic to change shape and get their brain adjusted."

(She definitely looks strange now, sort of halfway between her current form and another. Nubs of growth have raised the ears out of her hair on the base of what look like - horns? Parts of her skin are going black and shiny. Her hair is paler.)

"But yeah, you can grow it, there's big cloning plants that just need a few starter cells and feedstock and then some quick surgery five years later to make a valuable product from a nice optimized gene line."

"Fascinating. So we're definitely kindred spirits then, not satisfied with what one life or one brain has to offer and willing to go a hell of a long way out of our ways for more."

"Yep! Okay here comes the part where I'm a little out of it for a minute, hold the questions-"

The morphing speeds up. Horns. Red hair. A slightly wider and taller frame, with narrower hips.

"How do you like the new me? I love shifting into her, ready to kick ass and win, but I get bored so easily like this if I'm not doing something."

Eva grins with teeth. "Nice. I like the broadcasting, it's its own thing. I get bored pretty easily too. You said you played a death game once, I figure you've got training - want to spar? Not like seriously or anything, I'm out of your weight class, but for fun."

"Hot." comments Hannah. And: "I'd like to watch that."

"You think you'd beat me that easy? With magic, yeah, probably. Sure. Any particular style, any particular place? Should I go full combat mode? Fucks up my metabolism for a bit after but I do like showing off."

Eva hums. "I'd like to see what you can do in your full combat mode; I can just wish you a preloaded Ring of Sustenance to absorb the shock. I'll bring gear as if I were on a scouting assignment of a zero-magic world - pistol and athame. I'll load with rubber bullets, unless your combat form can shrug off the regular kind. Wooden athame, same deal. Normally I'd fight to the death but I can't guarantee I can reconstruct your lovely body so we'll do first blood. Do you need a weapon? We have all kinds."

"Honestly a gunfight sounds like it'd go to you pretty easy. Guns are OP. Any fancy magic on the gun and knife? If not I can handle it for real as long as you don't shoot fifty cal at my neck. Just... Remember I'm not a cop or anything, I'm not a pro." Grimace. "I'm feeling like a polearm today but that's just a whim. Short blades are redundant in combat form."

"Antimagic rules, no enchantments on anything. I could go with my dagger alone against you with a spear and it'd probably be something near fair with your augs factored in. Want to try it?"

"Kinda hard to tell what's a fair fight without trying it. Let's do it."

Eva makes a door, and through it is a large fighting ring with bleachers surrounding. She steps into the middle and pulls a steel dagger from nowhere. 

"I'm ready."

Hannah takes a position on the bleachers. "Want me to count off the round start?"

"Works for me."

"Hey now, gimmie another minute. Taking a couple minutes to get ready for a fight isn't ideal but that's the hand I have."

"That's cool. Oh, and I should get you a spear."

She appears a weapon rack at the side of the arena. "Pick whichever you like."

She hefts a few spears until she finds one she likes the balance of. She breathes deeply and stretches a bit longer, moving in a contained, precise way, then walks into the middle of the ring.

"Ready."

"Three, two, one, now."

Eva readies her knife and begins to circle.

Changeling now looks... Somewhat wrinkled and a little ugly, actually. It's the subdermal armor over crucial areas, it disturbs the skin quite a bit. The knee, elbow, finger, and ankle spikes don't help.

She circles as well, grinning, grip rock steady on her weapon.

Suddenly- Leap forward, a long jump with close to zero windup to indicate it, spearpoint first, carrying her just off the ground so she can slam her talons feet down and change direction if she has to.

Eva leaps sideways, away from the blow, and throws her knife as she does. Unless Changeling can somehow change direction in midair, that knife is going to go thunk into her center of mass.

She snaps one leg down a surprising distance at great speed, lifting her up but also jarring her whole body and knocking her sideways, towards Eva again. She bats at the knife with the spear haft and misses, but she dodged enough that the blade doesn't draw blood, just cuts her jacket.

She's a little shocked Eva just gave up her weapon like that and so - hesitates, what's she planning - doesn't follow up and press very intelligently, just stabs the spear at her opponent when she's probably already dodged further backwards.

Eva dodges, goes for the spearhaft and wrenches. She's strong, and she knows just where to put her leverage. If Changeling just holds on the spearhaft might snap.

(She's grinning, her blood is up and she might lose and it's THRILLING.)

Changeling is very strong, like this. Her muscles are still made of protein, but only just.

You know what's biological? Electrocytes. The cells electric eels use to generate their disabling shocks. How does Eva feel about a ZAP delivered through the metal spear haft?

The spear haft snaps. Changeling lets go of the broken end of it and - overbalances - rolls and tries to aim her ankle spike into Eva as she snaps back upright.

Eva swears loudly. The shock got her for sure, but she's not stunned; she flips over the broken spearpoint in her hand and now she has an improvised dagger. She presses with it, just barely avoiding catching the ankle as she approaches. 

Changeling trades blows with Eva for a while. She's fast, but not quite as fast as Eva herself, and nowhere near as skilled, and relying on being able to absorb blows or having claws on both hands only helps so much.

So, in a moment calculated for maximum surprise and confusion, she sharply exhales a cloud of glitterdust, hopefully distracting Eva long enough for the spray of skin-contact paralytic venom her finger-claws suddenly release to splash across some bare skin.

She doesn't see it coming, and the sudden ranged attack catches her off-guard. She feels her arm go numb and slump by her side, and can tell her time is short, so she makes a final lunge with the remaining arm, daring Changeling's claws. It's sloppy, but she has to end this now. 

The speartip-knife skids over her wrist, then draws a long line of blood up one of Changeling's forearms before getting stuck and wedged in something close to her elbow. 

Changeling falls backwards and tries to swipe at Eva on the way down out of reflex, but misses, lands flat on her back with a loud smack and immediately shouts, "Yield!"

Eva pulls the spearpoint free and tosses it aside, a wand of Cure Serious Wounds appearing in her free hand to seal the wound and make sure it doesn't fester. 

She offers Changeling a hand up. "Sloppy of me," she comments. "Think you could've got me, I got cocky."

Changeling laughs. She takes the hand up, careful with the sharp points.  "Well now all my surprises are spent and you're still an obvious expert, so I bet you'd win a rematch easy. That was fun, though! That stuff I tagged your arm with should wear off in a couple hours, if you don't just magic it away."

She calls out towards Hannah. "Enjoy the show?"

Hannah claps enthusiatically. "Nice fight! I agree, Eva was sloppy, she forgot those talons of yours. That throw would have been a sucker shot against most people, but not you. And I'm very entertained. It's rare to see Eva even halfway serious, and she was definitely into it."

Eva runs a hand through her hair. "Yes, well. Don't you two have a show to get to?"

Hannah checks her watch. "We've got another hour, but maybe better to chat than spar. I'll get your arm for you." She pulls a wand of Neutralize Poison and zaps Eva.

"I was totally trying to bait a mistake with that leap, it looks like I can't move but I still can and people fall for it. Still almost got me. Oof..."

She's breathing hard, skin not just warm but hot. She takes deep breaths. "Cooldown time. Yay. I was only in it for a few minutes, at least... What was that about a magic ring...?"

Eva flashes a ring out of the air. "Ring of Sustenance. Handles food, water and most of sleep. Should help."

She passes it over.

"Shiny. Sounds expensive, am I returning it?"

On goes the ring. The claws are already softening, so it mostly fits.

"Consider it a present, it's rare that I meet someone this interesting nowadays."

"Does that make you two engaged?"

"No."

She snickers. "Funny how shiny rocks are still the gold standard for classical romance even these days. This is a nice pad, by the way."

"We're all just magpies at heart. And thank you, it's all custom. Some bits are Hannah's work, actually; she's faster than me on getting the foundations laid."

"I should do more architecture and construction type stuff, last time I took a serious look at it was... Forty years ago? And that was mostly a pivot from this hyper-realistic base-building combat sim I was into for a while. I should practice fighting more too. Hell, I should do more of everything. Maybe I should fork since you guys can do it safely."

"- How old are you, incidentally? I'm a few thousand but a lot of that is parallel - I'm more like five hundred linearly. And forking is possible but expensive, I have a goddess on hand to help me with that. We'd do it for a family friend but you'd owe us one." 

"One sixty four. I'm part of the first generation that got 'stacked and count myself really lucky for it. I don't want expensive favors. I figure I can probably do custom bodywork for people, there'd be demand for that right? I don't like working much but that was when there weren't really things I both wanted to buy and couldn't afford."

"Glad to hear you're past your first centennial, that one's a bitch for humans. Not wanting expensive favours is fine; custom bodywork would probably work. Alas, things still run on money here. Is that different where you come from?"

"Nah, we got money. We also got basic income, most places, or just real good social services. I used to do streaming stuff, gotta love that ad revenue. That and custom bodywork, and," smirk, "Odd jobs."

"Ah, 'odd jobs.' Always my favorite profession. Glad to hear things are alright for most people. Say, has Hannah mentioned SenseFest?"

"I figured she'd prefer something a bit more... normal. SenseFest is cool and all but it kind of has the dire cocoa problem."

"Yeah, nothing too crazy... At first. Devil band is about the right level of crazy. And window shopping, and food. Is dire cocoa, like, brain-meltingly tasty? There's nasty stuff like that back home. Also, I think I found my next research project- Figuring out what this ring is actually doing. Chemically, like. I'm watching my vitals change and it doesn't make any sense and it's kind of amazing?"

"Nice, you get readouts?" The envy in Eva's voice is palpable. "That's super high end out here, all the biometrics is, like, extra senses which take training to give anything like a precise result. Or bulky annoying monitors. I would pay a lot for that, not to disparage the extra senses but there's only so much training I can transfer if I don't just want a straight-up duplicate of myself." 

She catches herself. "And yeah, Dire Cocoa is brain-meltingly good, we have precision memory editing so it can be safe to eat it and then delete it but sometimes people aren't careful about it. There's a lot of drug use at SenseFest in the designated areas; which, well, tried it didn't like it. Feels cheaty. And technological analysis of magical artifacts is always great; sometimes it just tells us new things about magic and sometimes it renders magic a technology. The line is blurry."

"I get readouts and also a sort of intuitive understanding of things! My stack- Well, long story, but lots of stuff is designed to manage itself but lots of other stuff talks directly to my cortical stack. Little bundles of, like, sensitive-to-whatever cells that send signals down a nerve that the stack catches. It's sort of like extra senses in the sense that it's using the same surfaces on the cortical stack that bonus senses do, but I also get readouts. Like, I'm about done cooling down - my core temperature shot up during the fight - and for temperature management I have- Well, everything's really twisty and interconnected because biology is wet and messy, right, but I could set a new target core temperature or specifically cool down my left arm or go in and manually start changing which blood vessels ought to constrict. You can-" 

Pause.

"Hah! I'm nerding out. Like I thought, dragon form's alright for nerding, but maybe I should shut up, hm?"

"No, go on, this is fascinating -"

"We have a show to get to, Eva."

"There's time! I'll come back tomorrow, though. In a nerdy nerd mood. This place have an address or is it portal access only?"

"I have a realspace apartment in the city, I'll give you my address for that." She looks over. "Do you have something for notetaking in there?"

"Eva. I have a whole entire computer in here, spreadsheets and all. About the only thing it's not great at is heavy BD editing."

"Right, yes, sorry to forget." She runs a hand through her hair. "What's BD editing?"

"Ooh... Braindance. Full-immersion VR-ified recordings of someone's experiences, often edited a bit. It gets put to all the uses you'd imagine, and then some. It's especially good for immersion, for coherent storytelling and the like books and flat movies are often better, for interactivity proper games are better, but BDs definitely have their place."

"Sounds like my memory crystals!" She pulls out her pendant. "This holds a BD of my entire life, basically. And that's used as the data to reconstruct my mind if this body's destroyed. Like a stack, but not."

"Neat. Everyone should have a stack if they want one- And there are better and worse kinds, and you can transfer, it's just copies that don't work right. I don't know what the state of the art on reconstructing people is beyond 'not great, because quantum'. Maybe some kinda magic can fix that. I know there's some frozen heads and half-fried stacks in vaults here and there..."

She suddenly snaps her fingers.

"I could miss the concert if I stay here much longer at this rate. Address?"

"Fifteen quillgrove lane northeast. We have proper resurrection magic but it takes the attention of a hardcore reality warper like Aura, and their time is worth hundreds of millions. I won't keep you from your concert; go have fun!"

"Can do will do! Expect me to stop by tomorrow sometime for nerdery. Meanwhile," she looks at Hannah, still in the stands. "We've got a concert to go to. Don't worry, I'll be a catgirl again in a few~"

Hannah comes down from the stands and nods. "This you is pretty cool too. Eva, a door?"

Eva gestures, and there is a door.

Hannah heads out into the street.

"Yeah but she's getting bored now that the fight's over. If I weren't hanging out with someone cool I'd go back to mer, she's patient." She snorts.

And heads out the door, and looks around at the sky-city of Arcbright around them, whistling.

"Damn. What a great big world out there. It's only really hitting me now. Only so much frontier to explore in Sol, and my other option was hopping on a one-way trip to some other big ball of burning gas that takes decades or centuries, which, nah. But now... You ever feel something like that?"

"Yeah, once. When I first got access to the selftree. It's a hell of a thing to see all the other selves you've been and could be. Kind of hard to live up to, which is why I called the whole thing a mug's game and stepped out."

"Hmm. It's a nice feeling for me, the - sense of infinite possibility. Oh, stepped out? I don't have a great understanding of how the Eva tree works, what did you step out of - sharing memories with each other?"

(The horns and ears and black scales are definitely shrinking down.)

"Yeah, I opted out of the memory-sharing gig after a couple years ransacking it for the best stuff."

Shrug. "There's something a little pathetic about living your whole life in BDs but that doesn't mean shutting them out entirely either. And I sold BDs for a while. Eh... Not sure what point I was trying to make, doesn't really matter. What's learning magic like?"

"Depends on the type. Mine is all about learning to visualize and manipulate complicated hyperplanar topology, but there are people who learn magic songs, or how to express their innermost heart through magic, or how to connect to natural sources of mana and animistic spirits - and that's just scratching the surface. Artificery magic is most common, I am technically an Artificer because I am only magic because of my tools. Artificery is basically a way of recording other magics for playback later, sometimes with a limited reservoir of internal power like most wands and sometimes just permanently like with most other enchanted items."

"Magic songs sound more my speed. The first thing sounds like a mathematician's wet dream. Is most OTC stuff artifice then?"

"Most of it, since 's how you make stuff tradable. Some stuff like the skylimes and sinflower just naturally grows that way."

Her horns are now visibly starting the slightly face-misshaping process of retracting. The black scales are showing gaps too.

"Well, you guys are going to make a moonful of money off us, and vice versa. Set up an Earth-Mars teleporting train and it'll be packed full for decades to come at just about any ticket price you care to name. And tech's repeatable too, I should buy stock in a 'stacking company when I get back right away 'cause I bet they'll boom."

"Yeah, I'll be telling a few of my friends about this quietly so they can get in on the ground floor, for sure. Always good money in a new Trade world."

"We heading to the club these guys are playing at now or what? I kinda want to eat a skylime real quick and see what it's like first if we've still got a few."

"We'd better hurry over now, we're starting to cut it a bit close. Fortunately we're right by a teleport station here, it's just over there -" She points. "Let's go."

To the teleport station she goes! She fidgets with her fidget tesseract.

"Really looking forward to this concert but more long term... What I should do, aside from nerding out over magic and tech, is get some instruments later. Flute, guitar, harp, keyboard, maybe a violin or sax."

"Tone sphere's prominent too these days - magical synth form factor, looks like a translucent floating orb."

She leads the way through the teleport rings, flashing her paycard for the pair of them.

Changeling makes a quick detour to buy a 50-OTC monthly ring pass. When she comes back she has ears and a tail again. "How do you play a tone sphere? Not with fingers, one assumes."

"You 'kine it, usually. Some you can play manually but that only gives you the outer surface to mess with." 

Hannah hangs a left and steps into something pretty recognizable as a bar. She pays a cover charge at the door ("she's with me") and settles in at a table. 

"Want anything to eat while you wait?"

"Can you get telekinesis? That'd be handy. Ooh, how about an interesting new drink? A slightly magic one, ideally. You sure I shouldn't be paying for some of this?"

"You can, standard package is will and intent-based, takes training just like playing the piano with both hands. Raspberry Smash with a shot of Chorister? I don't drink anymore myself, lost a decade to a drug phase a while back. And really, don't sweat it, I'm a dimensional mage, I bought my own immortality. I could give you this bar as a gift if I wanted to. Not that I like to boast, but..." She shrugs. 

"What would I even do with a whole entire bar. Except drink it?" Thoughtful tail-wag. "Oh uh, are there rules about recording the concert? Some places have that. Can't very well keep people from trading memories I'd think but BDs are a bit different maybe."

She orders a Raspberry Smash with a shot of Chorister while observing for clues about whether one gives tips here.

"Nah, no rules about recordings. Tradeable memories just about put paid to that."

People are occasionally tipping a TK or two, often fresh-minted. Hannah sets aside an invisible octahedron with a glowing silver spark in the center. "That'll pay for good service all night," she says. 

"Looks powerful whatever it is. Lemme guess... Chron?"

"Yep," says Hannah. "And I see the openers setting up - they're usually decent at these things, I don't know them. Looks like a Tone Sphere player and some guitars."

"You know I haven't actually been to a good and proper concert for a while? It's been mostly about the aesthetically wandering in wilderness for me the last couple years. Singing on fjords and moors. Meeting shepherds and goats. Not without internet access, 'course."

She takes a fairly big gulp of her drink, and pays attention.

"...Holyshit ♪maaa-gic drugs♫." Grin.

Hannah grins. "Yeah, Chorister's cool. Recent, too. You can feel the range it gives you, yeah?" 

The band is finishing their setup, looks like.

"Huh? Oh! Let's go LooooOOOOO-"

She can get her voice extremely basey, apparently. She giggles.

"Nice! But it looks like the show's starting."

The opening band announce themselves as Winged Serpent and launch into their set. They've got a crunchy-guitar-with-glassy-synth kind of thing going; their singer can do high and ethereal or strident and commanding pretty well. Their lyrics seem to be mostly about fighting to take over hell(s).

Those are some pretty good lyrics! She orders several 'surprise me's over the course of the set.

And grins at Hannah once or twice.

But mostly just listens.

Hannah grins back. She goes through a lemon twist and a root beer: Changeling gets shockberry rum (tingles on the tongue!) and marala liqueur on ice (about the consistency of cough syrup, though it tastes much better) and a shot of sinflower liqueur, which hannah raises an eyebrow at but doesn't further comment on.

Eventually Winged Serpent finishes playing and Devilmachine takes the stage. The front singer seems to be a tall, buxom deviless with a confident swagger.

She's followed by a short, pink-haired girl in a black hoodie emblazoned with the name of the band in red, plus a seven-pointed star. 

Hannah waves!

The frontwoman makes eye contact and nods just slightly.

Hannah grins and puts her arm down.

This is fuuuuun. New drinks, alien music on an alien world. (Changeling notices the raised eyebrow and connects the dots a minute later, then blushes about it.)

"She's hot," she says of Scythe.

"She is. Rose is a lucky devil. I've partner-swapped with them before in the Bowers, they're cool."

"Hmmm~ Monogamy is weird."

"It is. Still, no accounting for taste." 

"Alright, everyone. We are Devilmachine, Scythe on lead, and that's Rose behind me. Ready to rock?"

She joins the answering shout. "Hell yeah!"

"Alright, let's hit it!" And she strums the first few chords on her guitar. 

Rose steps up to the plate with a fusillade of fast rapping, and the song blurs past in a scream of chords. The lyrics of the set are about being the demons on the other end of the war Winged Serpent sang about, and recovering afterwards. 

She gets surprisingly pensive and melancholic about the lyrics. War sucks. Even if simulated war can be fun. It feels painful and hopeful.

Rose steps forward to sing about how it feels to be outcast for the urge to hurt others, about the instincts to cut, burn, control that her people were cast down for.

Scythe finishes the set with Her Wings. 

Afterward, the singers step forwards off the stage and a merch table ports in. Rose takes a seat behind it, while Scythe talks to the crowd up close and personal.

"Want to meet the band?" asks Hannah.

"You're a friend, right? I don't wanna push 'em, I know after a set sometimes I just want to disappear, so..."

"I'm a friend," Hannah confirms. "With benefits."

"Sure, let's meet them. I kind of want to hear more about that war, we don't have those much anymore, but that's for later."

"Definitely don't bring it up if you want to stay on Rose's good side, she lost some people."

She slides out of her seat and leads the way towards Devilmachine.

Changeling follows behind Hannah smilingly. Not tipsy despite being several drinks in. Okay, just a little bit tipsy, but not showing it.

Scythe looks up at them. "Hannah! Been an age, always great to see you at a show. Who's your date today?"

Hannah smiles. "Scythe, Changeling, Changeling, Scythe. Changeling's from an uncontacted with some really cool technology, I've already told her about you a bit."

She pouts a little at 'date'. But well, fair. That's an okay word for whatever this is.

"No-magic immortality is a damn big deal apparently~. That music gave me feels."

"Yeah, I'll say. And thanks for the praise, it's always great to have another fan."

"I'm not pro enough for a band and gigs, not to mention too much of a lazybones to rehearse consistently and keep to a gig schedule, but I do sing. Sorta curious how you guys know Hannah."

"We met through the Rose Bowers - do you know of them?"

"I've heard implicationy things about a 'Bower Enclave', so I can guess~"

"Yeah, it's the world the Bower Enclaves try to emulate. Very fun. You should go sometime, Hannah can afford to take you I'm sure."

"Think that's 'tween us, ain't so simple." She shrugs, still smiling.

"Oh, yeah. Not everyone's up for that sort of thing. It's good at providing, but." She shrugs. "So what are you doing aside from seeing concerts?"

"I'm still getting used to all the everything. There's tons and tons of new magic stuff to experience even before I get into stuff like the Rose Bowers, so I'm doing that. Gonna nerd out with a nerd friend, gonna figure out what to invest in when Hannah here finds my world, gonna keep trying new food, gonna hang out with cool people."

She idly activates the Takkarash minting necklace, without really thinking about it, halfway through this sentence; Her ears twitch but there's no other reaction.

"Sounds like a great time. Now if you'll excuse me there's a bit of a line."

"I can call you, right?"

"Yeah, sure."

Changeling wanders clear with good grace.

"Today was a good day overall. I'm starting to feel like sleeping though."

Pause.

"DYNE!" 

She proceeds to dig one out of her pockets and crush it, and perk up considerably.

"They are so amazing, aren't they?"

"Who even mints these to make them so cheap??"

"People with shorter wake cycles, plus there's relevant magic that gets turned into Dyne - there's a number of fatigue-removing effects and so on."

"Lots of kinds of people, huh? I feel like I should get to whatever apartment's been found for me around now. You know, shower, process, furniture-ize it if it's not already."

"Makes sense. Back to the teleport grid."

Hannah leads the way out of the bar, typing something on her phone. "Audrey's found a place for you with customizable furniture included, sounds like. It ought to be decent. Off way the heck and gone on the other side of the planet from here, but." She smiles. "Doesn't matter much."

"In our cities you can spend an hour in the metro if you're not lucky, that's gotta be way up close to the top of OTC goodness. Address so I can try to memorize it?"

"514 Heartsblood Lane. It's a pocket apartment but it has internet - not that'll interface with your implants though. We really should get someone to check that out for you." 

She walks up to the teleport pad, keys in the address, and gestures to Changeling. "You first."

She goes first. It looks like she's morphing again.

"I have no idea where to start or who to ask. It's not like there's a universal tech support is there?"

"There's the OTC, which is the next best thing, but getting in a rep from them would involve telling them about your universe and I think you want some more time to adjust?" 

She steps into the circle, and out the other side. Walking down a hedged row of gardens, she stops at a wrought-iron gate and presents an aged brass key. A door snaps into place, 514 on its blackwood exterior. She inserts the key, turns it, steps in. Her gaze flicks through the room, and then she steps aside to let Changeling in. 

"No furniture just yet save for the wall TV and some built in countertop and cabinets in the kitchen here, but I see a teleorder catalog here with a note - "furnishing is on the govt, A."" 

She holds up the furnishing catalog for Changeling to take. "Flip through this, pick out what you want and I'll call it in for you, it's a little fiddly if you've never done it before."

"I could talk about my universe, might wanna get paid about it. This place is fancy."

She flips around and takes her time picking things. Her aesthetic runs towards fluffy and comfy in bright colors.

Hannah calls in each piece where she wants it on her phone, specifying coordinates in the apartment for each piece and then watching them pop in in flashes of white light.

She finishes morphing long before this is done. Her latest body looks like an antelope or something.

"Can you poof in things that aren't furniture? What sort of security is on this place, what happens if I lose the key? Can I get a, uh, desktop internet browser? I really do need to read the laws just in case..."

"Yeah, you can get food delivery and so on tele'd. You can leave without the key but you can't get back in again without a specialist like myself, make sure you have it on you when you leave. That comes standard with any real computer, you can order one from the catalog. You can look up the laws on it from there."

She orders one on the cheap side, not expecting to use it much. Sets up a free email account and gives the address to Hannah. And then she's done.

"Thanks for all your help. I'll figure out how to call you sooner or later, but feel free to ask Eva where I am, or knock on the door or however you do it here."

"It's no problem. Have fun, enjoy your stay." She passes her the brass key and steps out.

The next day, Changeling knocks on the door of the address given to her by Eva yesterday with a new face.

A different face answers the door, too! 

"Hello," says the woman on the other side. "Who are you exactly?"

"Hello! I'm called Changeling; A Hannah accidentally brought me here, and I spent time with her and an Eva yesterday. We sparred. We had vague, tentative plans to 'nerd out' - and this is the address she gave. -I don't have local net access."

"Oh, she'll have sent you to me as the local representative of the Evatree for such things. December Morning-Glory, pleasure to meet you Changeling."

"Likewise! Hmm, what an odd feeling to be passed around like that. Have you heard anything about me and my world yet-"

"I heard something about a new uncontacted with technological immortality, is that your world?"

"Indeed. We use 'cortical stacks', which are sophisticated quantum computers embedded in the neck that record enough about a mindstate that even with a destroyed brain, the person in question can be restored with only moderate memory loss in most cases. We can also transfer between bodies, android or biological human or exotic. Mine is custom with quite a lot of high-end cellular nanomechanics. Notable limitations are that the technology doesn't support forking, and small children can't safely be stacked, and that some memory loss is unavoidable in any case but a complication-free ordinary transfer."

"Fascinating. We're behind you on that, which let me tell you is not a phrase the OTC often employs. Please, come in, let's not have a discussion in the doorway."

She nods and walks inside. "I'm not actually an expert on cortical stacks, my specialty is biology. I don't know enough to recreate them without contact, just enough to speculate how they might interact with other species or magic."

She nods. "What about our immortality has Eva told you?"

"Not much. Just that it's too expensive for everyone to get one, and that all of them involve magic of some kind or another."

December pulls out the chain with her memory stone on it. "Has she told you about these?"

"I know a bit about the eva tree, how it stores memories, but not the exact mechanics..."

December leads Changeling deeper into the apartment, to a small sitting area with beanbags and a couch. "We've got a constructed minideity called the Thousand Stars that acts in the interests of Greater Eva and produces forks and merges when called on. As long as we can retrieve a memory crystal we can produce a new fork from it with all the memories and personality of the original, which is close enough to straight immortality for us. Care to take seat?" 

She takes a seat. "Thank you. Should I be imagining this as a Virtual Intelligence that is capable of interacting with magic- VIs are debatably sapient in that they synthesize information into a world model and perform problem-solving, but not sentient or agentic in that they have no experiential memory or preferences. They're generally not considered people."

"The Thousand Stars usually operates in that mode, but it can produce human representatives since after all it creates humans. It's programmed to maintain one of those: Evenstar, the living avatar of Greater Us."

"I think I want to fork sooner or later. It's quite a novelty to actually want something enough to work for it again. I mean, work hard specifically so I can afford a certain thing. I haven't done that in decades."

"Work out of style on your world, or were you getting by with the equivalent of takkarash minting?"

"Some of both. I did various kinds of publicity and sex work for a long while and had a lot of savings, and still have some passive income streams from that, I do consulting on finicky problems in my expertise occasionally, and most countries have basic income, good social services, or both. Admittedly I couldn't casually catch an express ship out to Jupiter before, but I mostly didn't want to."

"I'd love to hear more about your world. I take it your kind of body is common?"

She grins. "Oh, no. This body is extremely custom. A work of art. Tens of thousands of hours put into it with weird artsy design goals nobody else really wants. I have patents on it. The most common bodies are the clone army bodies with a pretty basic set of conveniences, or Sony Sameface androids - called that derisively for obvious reasons. And most people need to visit a clinic or robodoc to shapeshift."

"Oh, lovely! About your body, I mean. Some of me are doctors, it's not my specialty but it speaks to the affinity, yes? The Evatree is all custom too - we rather mirror each other."

"Are you sufficiently doctorly that I could brag a bit~?"

"I'll understand the basics at least!"

She has thousands of little DNA tricks including having basically ripped out and replaced her vascular and hormonal systems wholesale. Also her bones, muscles, her immune system, most major organs... And the way she enables the shapeshifting is incredibly complicated but basically it's tied in to the general 'robustness' and regen upgrades. It would normally lead to immediate massive cancers everywhere, and how she handles that is a whole other story.

She is having Lots Of Fun explaining this, but stops after about ten minutes. "-I'm probably boring you aren't I? We should talk about what you're interested in."

"No, go on, I'm taking notes for my doctor friend!" She taps her memory crystal. "I really admire your work, it sounds extremely technically complex. And worth applying in our world - cancer still gets people here sometimes, it's not infectious so Remove Disease won't cure it."

"Is that - gameable - I don't understand the rules of magic, would something that destroys cancer but is itself infectious in theory be a workable solution, for example?"

"That might work! It might be destroyed by Remove Disease still but you could always reintroduce it, it ought to work. It's very dependent on the exact effect of the spell, it's all special cases on the artificery side, sucks to work with."

"Yes, the idea was be something that destroys cancer and would go on to kill you, but, Remove Disease. I have some vague ideas about how it might work, though honestly it's a decade research project for a team of a hundred and several VIs..."

"Even if it takes a decade it would be worth it," says December. "The category of... teratogenic? Sorry I'm not a doctor - noninfectious diseases - is one of our major killers still. Cancer is one of the most common killers. We can somewhat prevent cancer with the use of Ka, but if you live long enough there's a lot of time to build up carcinogens, and once the body is compromised badly enough the only recourse we have is to replace it - which isn't casual for us."

"It sounds like there might be more low hanging fruit, from my world's perspective. Life extension treatments. And we do grow bodies."

"I'm really excited for the introduction! Do you know anything about how Cortical Stacks work?"

"The computing side of things is not my expertise, but I'm pretty well up on how they interface with the body... I've customized mine so I have internal sensors as a new sense on the same 'surfaces' you'd add, say, magnetoreception or an internal clock or a vehicle status jack-in."

"Nice. You can develop some extra senses through certain kinds of meditation or polymorphing here, but custom bodies like that are the domain of Assume True Persona or similar."

"I can actually manufacture samples of 24th century medicine in this body, if that would be useful to OTC - the legality of it is a bit questionable given the unholy mess that copyright law is, though."

"They'd almost definitely be interested. Most of our worlds aren't that far advanced - there's a big cluster around the second millenium A.D. and then a bunch of openly-magical worlds with different development."

"I wonder why. I'd think you'd find worlds from 60,000 BC and a million years in the future..."

"The sample of worlds we get is distinctly non-random, because we're looking for worlds with people, but why we get mostly twentieh century earths is unclear, much less why we occasionally get alts - has anyone told you about alts?"

"They have not! However the translation magic is working is rendering it into a fan-fiction term - same personality, different books."

"Same personality different worlds, here. Some people just crop up all over the place."

"...Hmm. Bizarre. Because of the same thing that so often gets Earth, is that the theory?"

"That's the theory. We think the search method is using the circumstances of specific people to tell whether a world is inhabitable or safe. Which is not ideal, but..."

"Alts must be like free forks, pre-diverged. I wonder if I have any."

"A good question! One of the phenomena that has been noticed is that - significant people, people with impact, are more likely to have alts. And you're here introducing a whole new world to the OTC. So it seems plausible you might have a couple."

"Perhaps there is a God of Gods, laying things out from the start in some grand design. But this is far too far into speculation. I'm curious what learning wizardry is like, visualization and math? It's possible you could design BDs and plug-mods to help the learning process, and then anyone 'stacked would have an easier time becoming a wizard. Surely more mass-produced magic is generally to the good."

"Oh certainly. We've been trying to mass-produce magicians for decades now but it's hard to copy over the necessary skills into a fork, it takes extremely custom hardware that makes it more of a "boutique" kind of industry. Holovid is already very helpful for instruction; BDs could be more so."

"Many people don't like plug-mods, including me, but they're useful for some things. They're... Neural shortcuts, say, something that does mental math for you right in your brain, fast as thought, up to and including spreadsheet work and statistical analysis and calculus. But the relevant skills tend to atrophy hard and if the plug is ever removed or goes wrong you might be in trouble."

"Mmm. Sounds a bit underdeveloped. I wouldn't risk it personally, but I know people who might - Hannah, for one."

"I may be a bit biased." Shrug. "Would you mind telling me how to get started with wizardry? I thought about learning Bardic yesterday, but when I'm like this wizardry appeals far more."

"Traditionally you take at least a university course. But I have some properly written teach-yourself manuals if you'd like to borrow them." She passes Changeling a book from nowhere; it's entitled "A No-Nonsense Guide To DIY Wizardry."

"...I probably shouldn't read that while on a social call, tempting as it is. Is-" She frowns slightly. "Is it rude to wonder what the other yous I've met are up to and whether I could go visit them?"

"No, not at all! We're to best approximation a family, it's like you're asking after my sisters."

"I had honestly expected to talk to Eva again, but this is fun too. At some point every person I know being a version of you will get old, even if it's also a fascinating mirror of me and my self-altering. Say, do you know who I should talk to to get my 'stack talking to the local internet? I don't really know how to use a phone or desktop, since my computer is in my head. I could read off some technical specifications, probably, if that helps."

"I'm the person to talk to there, actually, I'm a cybermagi. Give me those technical specs?"

"Uh..." It takes a minute of searching but eventually she manages to find the technical standard for 24th century internet and read it off in a slightly confused voice. The standard is weird and a bit counterintuitive, but not magic.

"That's going to take some adapting to... but I think I can manufacture you a hotspot adapter if you give me an hour or so."

"I would greatly appreciate it. Anything I can give you in return?" It's only polite.

"An hour of your time to talk shop about the possible transition? I want to be up on what's coming."

"Certainly. I can definitely imagine some bumps in the track."

"Let me get your adapter's shell printing now though, we can talk about that later. I'll just need to duck into my study for a second - you're welcome to come."

She smiles and follows. "Ooh, a magic-user's workshop of sorts."

"Yes, that's the printer over there on the left, mind it it's delicate, over here we have some runic circles I've been working on for better compression algorithms, and there's of course the whole bookcase on thaumaturgy and networking."

She gestures around as she speaks, taking in a sleek black machine, a drafting desk covered in precise geometric designs, and a bookcase of well-thumbed-looking manuals. C and Python are apparently her languages of choice. 

"...Oh, of course," she says, looking at the books. "C. How nostalgic. It was ancient when I was born, but some really old legacy systems still used a close derivative."

"Ha! It's great to be on the other end of the technological divide for once. Can't wait to see what new paradigms you've built in your extra time."

"I'm not really a programmer, sadly." She shrugs. "I could give you names but not tell you anything about them on that level."

"Guess I'll have to find out with everyone else, huh?" She taps at a series of buttons on the face of the printer, consults a reference manual for information about the current internet standard, presses more buttons. "That should work, now. It'll take some time to fab though, hence the hour."

Smile. "Happy to answer what I can. I'm sure I could tell you something about programming, but my custom 'stack work is actually really minimal. I had friends do it. With backups of me ready to fire, of course. Something like politics or culture I would be more able to tell you about."

"What is the politics like? Is it just Earth, I think you mentioned something about other planets?"

"No, there's a lot of polities. There's a pan-solar system federation that has mostly standards regulatory and disaster relief powers. They maintain communications relays, traffic databases, that sort of thing. The major inhabited bodies are Venus, Earth, Luna, El-Four and El-Five, Mars, and most of Jupiter's and Saturn's moons. There's still over a hundred Earthly governments, though many of them are in economic alliances with each other. There's three Lunar states, ten major Martian ones, four Jovian, two Saturnian, Venus is itself, Mercury is nobody's in particular. And there are little belter stations all over the place, it's the modern version of the boonies, with the odd band of crazy survivalists on an icy rock out past Neptune."

"Sounds vibrant. I'd love to go someday." 

"Avoid the state of Ilkum, on Mars." She scowls. "I may or may not have a bit of a grudge against them but my suggestion stands."

"Why, what did they do?"

"Gave me an official clearance that my body did not constitute civilian ownership of military equipment, which they forbid, then decided it did after all and tried to confiscate it when I actually visited."

"They tried to confiscate your body? That sounds like a clusterfuck, alright."

"Technically, they tried to draft me. I turned it into a media circus. They eventually let me go." Scowl. "It's kind of a fucked up place, really."

"Any other places you'd recommend against?"

"Nowhere near as strongly. Little places out in the asteroid belt. Parts of Earth are known for chaos, especially the Middle East. The Mare Tranquility Republic has deplorable infrastructure safety standards but if you have a hardy body you'd probably be fine."

"Sounds better than a lot of places we find. It's not too uncommon to find tyrannical empires and so on."

"There's corruption galore and probably some terrible secrets hiding in the shadows, but on the whole, the governments of my world bend towards justice, I think."

"I'm glad to hear it. No slaves anywhere?"

"...Maybe some de facto slavery somewhere on a dust speck, those survivalist asteroids I mentioned, or out in the oort cloud. 'Do as I say or I turn off the oxygen'. Some conscription, in a few places. But no legal, de jure slavery, even debt bondage."

"That's good, the OTC takes a very hard line against that sort of thing. Tore up Cthonia something fierce when it was discovered. All in a good cause, of course, but..."

"I have no doubts that war is bad. I wish more people realized it. Feels like conflict is in our nature. Wargames and combat are fun."

"Less my field, but I know enough to agree. You might like the combat games at SenseFest."

"That does sound very appealing to mirror-me. The me Eva fought is practically jumping up and down in excitement. Oh, have I actually told you about how I change my mind- It's sort of like I deliberately become alts of myself, I do it often. It was hard to get right." She smiles smugly.

"Sounds fascinating. What's your range like?"

"Catgirl is a playful minx, a lot like Hannah really. Dragon girl is confident and confrontational. Mermaid is calm, kind, and musical. Harpy can fly and is sort of - mermaid's kindness but catgirl's playfulness. Robot girl tunes all my emotions down so I can think calmly and get difficult analytical work done. This form I'm not sure what to call it - vampire girl? I'm a prim and proper nerd, like so. There's a succubus-like body, I'm sure you can guess. Frog girl is just extremely relaxed. Antelope-girl is anxious and diligent, good for thinking defensively. Elf is prim and proper too, but very musical. Those are all the mindsets I use commonly."

"A different you for every occasion. Damn, I'd really like to try that!"

"Unfortunately you need a cortical stack and it's rather permanent. And a lot of work to implement."

"Shame. But then I suppose I've committed to wear this -" she holds up her quartz necklace "- for life already."

"It's definitely on the experimental side of things. Much less so now than a century ago, I think you could get it reversibly, in fact - but it's definitely not a mainstream service."

"I bet we'll dedicate a fork to it at least."

"Just how expensive is forking? I want one."

"About a hundred grand. We could probably get you one cheaper though, if you helped us get what you've got. You're an expert in the field, after all."

"Another you offered me a loan of sorts, but I'm much more comfortable with a discount based on consulting work, yes. I'm hoping once I have my lab equipment I can sell body-modification services through OTC, actually."

"Ooh! We'd be interested in that. A lot of us go in for cosmetic things just to set ourselves apart from the rest, like my hair. More serious mods are always something we consider."

She smiles. "Maybe I should see if you - OTC that is - can conjure up good enough tools for me to do some basic edits. Programmable hair is relatively easy, for example."

"I would love programmable hair. Tell me what you need and I'll get it out of my Evatree budget."

She is much more confident about these specifications! Mostly she has model names and specs like number of protein synthesis channels stored on her 'stack, not blueprints, but can also produce fairly detailed descriptions of what exactly the gadgets do, and when she doesn't know in enough detail, enough about how she uses them to make some inferences.

"This is good. We can't conjure all of this reliably enough to know for sure it's safe yet, but it seems extremely promising and we might like to try for some of the simpler tools."

"I can use them on myself and undo most everything they'd attempt to do to me. One of my body's design goals was robustness."

"Oh, in that case... Let's go next door to my spare room." 

She wanders out and into a small square room with nothing in it. "Conjuring space. How big are these machines again?"

This one is laptop size. Same with those two. That one is more minifridge-sized. Nothing is bigger than that, and most of them are somewhere in between.

"Should be space for most of it if I pull a few tables..." mutters December. 

She ports a few tables in, and gets conjuring.

"Shall I just hole myself up in here for, oh, four hours should cover it if I'm being safe, and make sure everything is to satisfaction?" She sideways-smiles. "I'd appreciate a lunch when I emerge, I admit."

"Sounds like a deal. What would you like for lunch, we can do teleorder."

"Surprise me. Spicy is good but I've already had-" She names the chthonian fusion place from yesterday.

"Alright! I'll go read and check in in a couple hours."

There are not any ominous sounds from her spare room. Certainly not. And that swearing is just a bit of exuberance, really.

"Do I need to come in there?"

"It's all dead and I'm not sure why. I think I need to add a particular microscope to my shopping list."

"Damn. That's a crap result."

"Ugh. Hyperbole. My apologies. It's one machine not working right, and I need a microscope to see if I can determine why."

"Oh, that's much better. Can I conjure you the relevant microscope?"

She has specs and a model name. "-But any desktop SEM would work if it's cheaper, probably."

"Here you go." She conjures the SEM for her.

"Oh, excellent. You can watch me work if you'd like but it'll mostly be staring and muttering. I'm no good at explaining things while I'm in flow state."

"That's cool, I'll go back to my books."

Twenty minutes later, she pokes her head out.

"I can fix it, almost certainly. But I need to let something... Cook. Is now a good time for lunch?"

"Now can be a good time for lunch! Here you go, spicy beef bowl with egg."

"Ooh. So are you the kind of person who likes the gory details?"

"Hit me, I can't promise I'll follow all of it but I'll try to keep up."

"Well, essentially the problem was the biggest machines you conjured came with malformed nanomachines. Either the conjuration failed slightly or it's some kind of DRM. My own body is also a little piece of a lab, though, and I can... Make replacements."

"Probably the conjuration magic doesn't have enough resolution at the commercial grade. You'd need really high-quality stuff, the same kind of thing used for forking."