"Oh, time travel! I have thoughts about that!

"But hmm, I think that good immortality keeps you healthy and also let's you keep leaning and growing. A lot of people get really set in their ways or have issues learning new things as they get older and it would be sad if immortality just meant being stuck forever.

"As for how to be able to become immortal, I mostly just want it to be something I can do so it shouldn't be too hard. Maybe there should be multiple ways so everyone who wants to be immortal can be.

"In general I think it's better when there's multiple ways to do things. Especially if there isn't one best way that's better than all the others."

"... multiple ... ways," he mumbles as he jots. "Alright!"

"What are your thoughts on time travel?"

"The main thing I care about is that you're not erasing the future when you travel to the past. There are great stories about desperate last ditch efforts but it's usually not worth it and time wars are really messy things that I don't think would be fun in real life.

"As long as you rule that out, I think the idea of being able to talk to your past self or meet historical figures or even set the future on a different path are all fun ideas."

"Oh, yes — my universe doesn't do time-travel, thankfully, but I've had to do the trainings and it was a headache," Hammond agrees.

"Do you care whether traveling to the past creates a separate timeline, whether things are predestined to have always been that way, or some other mechanic, as long as timelines aren't getting wiped out? What about timelines becoming inaccessible, but continuing to exist?"

"If I get to pick I'd prefer branching timelines. I think it's fine if they're inaccessible though. It might hurt people if they time travel accidentally but you can't protect people from every possible mistake."

He nods.

"Other than immortality and time-travel, are there other things that you think magic should definitely be able to do? Or that it would be nice if it could do?"

"Oh that's a big question. There's lots of things I would like but definitely at least one of teleportation and being able to fly. Maybe flying could be part of some sort of elemental magic or telekinesis. Some way of changing things into other things is also a classic and I figure that if magic can do immortality then it should also do healing."

"Telekinesis ... changing things ... healing ..." he mumbles to himself.

"Do you have opinions about whether those things should be separate, specific effects, or whether they should be particular manifestations of broader skills?"

"Hmm, in general I think fewer broader things is better than a lot of separate things but I don't think everything needs to be part of one big whole at least practically speaking. I would like it if there was some grand unifying theory for all of magic though. Even if it's hard to find it."

"Hmm."

He taps his pen to his lip.

"Does that change your answer to whether magic should be 'hard' or 'soft', or are you imagining that a grand unifying theory could be compatible with either?"

"I think a grand unifying theory is compatible with both."

"What kinds of things do you think should be involved in trying to discover something like that, or discover unknown magic in general?"

"Ooh, that's a fun question. Ultimately I think it should come down to studying known magic and trying things that are similar. Having magic you can use to study other magic would also be good. That could be anything from the classic of mage sight to elaborate divination rituals. I think needing to experiment is a good thing regardless though. Obviously it's more important for softer magical since those generally won't be precise enough to know exactly what's going to happen before you try it."

"How do you think people should get started on knowing magic, if you think learning more should be based on studying what exists?"

"Well I think that some magic can probably happen by accident either because it's just based on people intending to do something and not expecting it to happen or because it happens to mirror or encompass something people are doing already like art or religious rituals or something."

"Oh, that makes sense."

He flips through the list of questions.

"We've touched a little on what magic should be able to do, and how it should work; what shouldn't magic be able to do?"

"That's a less fun question. I guess the fast answer is that it shouldn't make it really easy to kill people or hurt them badly. Otherwise, I'm not sure. I think in general bigger effects should be harder to do for one reason or another but I don't think there's anything I want to be impossible. Well beyond the time travel thing I mentioned or other things that hurt a lot of people in ways that are easy to pull off and hard to fix."

"Do you mean things that are hard to fix right now, or does the boundary of what you care about shift when things become easier to fix?" he clarifies.

"It shifts. It's still not great when people are hurt but if it's easier to help people than to hurt them and easier to fix what's broken than to break it than that's better than how things are now in a lot of ways."