She scrambles for the door.

"I'll get iii..." oh, wait she's alone.

She looks through the peephole to see if it's someone they know.

Uh.

She unlocks the door but keeps the chain on, as her mum told her to do for strangers.

"H... hello?"

"Hello! Do you have a few minutes to answer some survey questions about magic?" Hammond inquires.

"Would that require opening the door? I'm sorry, but mum says to never let strangers in. I don't think she was considering talking walruses but you know, better safe than sorry."

"Oh, no, that's quite understandable," Hammond agrees. "I would tell my calves the same thing, had I any."

"But no, I'm content to put questions to you from out here, so long as you don't mind conversing through the gap."

"No, no, that's fine. This is most probably a dream anyway, walruses can't talk in real life."

He huffs a little.

"Perhaps not in your world," he admits. "But in mine it's perfectly usual. I've been able to talk since before I said my first word."

"And anyway — it might become more common here pretty soon. I've been sent around because your world has grown enough that it's about to develop magic, and I'm surveying people on what form magic should take here."

"Wait. How does that work? If you haven't said your first word yet you haven't talked? I'm confuddled."

"Wait, we're getting magic? For real? Oh, I really hope this is not a dream! Which kind of magic? Is it like Harry Potter? Like the Lord of the Rings? Are you magic? Can you use magic?"

Hammond smiles.

"Well, if I hadn't been able to talk before that point, how would I have said my first word?" he points out. "As for your more important question — that's rather up to you. The Will of Magic is still trying to decide what kind of magic to be, so it sent us out to ask for people's opinions."

He looks to the side.

"... well, technically it didn't send me; I'm a subcontractor. But it's close enough! Anyway!"

He makes a show of consulting the clipboard.

"Are those the kinds of magic that you'd like to have? Magic isn't so limited that it has to match what you're already familiar with, but if you have a kind of magic in mind already, it might make sense to start there."

"I mean, not precisely? Harry Potter's magic words are just silly. 'Wingardium Leviosa', really? Magic should be more dignified than that. And Tolkien's magic is uncommon and often subtle. I want everyone to be able to learn magic. Well, maybe not everyone. You should be smart enough or something. People who are not good at thinking would be dangerous with magic."

"I definitely want spell diagrams! And portals!"

He writes this down.

"How do you feel about the question of 'hard' and 'soft' magic? That is, should magic be based on mechanistic, mathematical principles, or on less rigidly defined concepts such as language or emotion?"

"Definitely hard. I think it's neat if you can choose to use your emotions to influence magic, like feed your rage to make a fireball more powerful, but if you have a spell diagram for light, it should do light, consistently and predictably."

"So I think I'm fine with emotions affecting spells, but if you're calm and comfortable then magic should feel like math, not art."

"That's an excellent distinction!" Hammond comments, scribbling this down on his clipboard. Somehow.

"You mention spell diagrams — if that's how you want magic to work, could you explain a little more about what that means to you?"

"I think... I really like the æsthetic of a big ritual circle on the floor, and I also enjoy smaller spell diagrams. Maybe they could be helping tools? Like, when you're first learning you caaaarefully draw the diagram for the null spell, then cast it channeling your power through it. Then as you get better you can just visualize the diagram and cast more intuitively, so circles would be mostly used either by the novices or for very complicated spells, like ones requiring multiple people or for spell research!"

"Ah, yes, I see. Do you picture the spell diagram as defining everything about a spell, or would you be able to tweak things on the fly once you get to that casting-intuitively stage?"

"I think it would be mostly fixed if you use a physical diagram, whereas the intuitive stage allows you to tweak it. I kinda see it as a recipe? It's easy to add more or less salt, cook slightly longer or shoeter, but if you change something major on the fly it has a good chance of going badly. Like burning your sauce."

"So that's why you want diagrams for spell research. Less probable to explode the room."

"What do you see the process of spell research being like? Constructing new experimental spell diagrams and testing them? What else?"

"Building and testing diagrams is definitely a good chunk, yes, but also trying to build theories on how the symbols relate to the effects? Actually I'm unsure if I'd prefer that to be something known or something that needs exploring. On the one hand, science, on the other hand, what if we never discover the most efficient form for something? I'm conflicted."

"It's not usually a component of hard magic systems, but some forms of magic do have a notion of predetermination or destiny; how would you feel about it being predetermined that people would eventually figure out everything there is to know about magic?" he asks.

He's deeply tempted to point out that, if the magic ends up compatible with creating processes that last forever, something like a Gödel search will almost certainly result in that being the case anyway. But he's really not supposed to get sidetracked into abstract computer science.

"I don't think I'd want that. Destiny seems... stifling. Especially destinies of the self-fulfilling kind."

"What if magic was like... physics, in a sense? We don't know everything, but we can look inside atoms, and at galaxies, and learn things in a way which feels... It feels like eventually we'll be able to know enough? That made more sense in my head, I'll be honest."

She ponders for a moment.

"What if the building blocks are very easy to discover and then magic is such that you can build any possible spell out of those basic building blocks? Like you do in programming. There are still an infinite amount of programs that we haven't written yet, but we have the building blocks, and anything we want to build we should eventually be able to?"

"What if magic was like programming. So a magic circle would just be... a program? And the reason that you need them for bigger rituals or experimentation is that you need to write down what you're doing to check it. But like, you can definitely write an hello world from memory if you've ever programmed, and you can write - like - a calculator from memory if you have even a small amount of experience and so on."

Hammond smiles widely.

"Oh — when you have the time, you should really look up an explanation of Gödel numbering; I think you'll find it very interesting," he advises her. "But yes, that's definitely a way magic can work; is it your opinion that it should be like that?"

"It makes sense to me? But maybe there should also be space for something more... magical?"

"Maybe this should be like, the mainstream way of doing magic? Like with folk medicine? It's mostly superstition but then you find out that willow bark works because it contains... something?"

"I don't know, it feels really neat to have magic as programming, but it also feels... reductive" 

"Salicin," Hammond supplies. "It's a precursor to acetylsalicylic acid, which I think people around here use for pain relief. It doesn't work very well on walruses on account of our delicate skin."

He relates this with the air of someone repeating rote facts while his attention is elsewhere.

"And I do see what you mean, I'm just trying to think how to phrase my natural follow-up question ..."

He drums his tail in thought.

"Earlier you made the comparison of spell diagrams being used as a kind of mnemonic, to guide the creation of the spell — how would you feel about a system where there are multiple competing kinds of mnemonics, such as different kinds of rituals, some of which are programming-flavored and some of which are more esoteric?"

"Yeah, I think that works. Like you have wizards and witches and sorcerers and it's all magic but with different flavors."

He nods.

"Excellent. Alright ..."

"What are some things that you think magic should definitely be able to do?"

"Fireballs! Teleportation! Flight!"

"I want to say 'control Time and Space' but I think that could create paradoxes?"

"Well, it depends on what you mean by 'control Time and Space'," Hammond replies. "For one thing, there are some models of time-travel where paradoxes — except for pre-destination paradoxes, which I don't think should count — are impossible. The 'the past was always that way, and when you go back in time you will turn out to be making it be that way' model. Or the 'traveling to the past creates an entirely independent timeline' model, which also avoids paradoxes like that."

"If you could pick a particular way for time-travel to work (which you can), would you want to extend your answer?"

"Oooh, like the Asimov story! I love that. It means that you can go back in time but only to change things you don't already know to be different. I reeeeeeeally dislike the independent timeline one. It means that in your original timeline you just disappear, and all your friends and family mourn you. Terrible. Horrible. The worst."

Hammond diligently records this.

"Alright — what should magic definitely not be able to do?"

"Make it easier to kill people, I guess. Like, obviously if you can throw fireballs those can kill people but like, no Power Word Kill or Inflict Wounds. And honestly I'm having second thoughts on the fireball. I think it's acceptable if magic is dangerous and can be used for evil. A kitchen knife can also be used for evil. But I wouldn't want more magic to bring more misery."

"A thought."

"I don't like it, I don't think it works in the real world - well, the world is weirder than I expected but... you get what I mean I hope."

"Maybe there is a way to make it work, you seem to have good ideas."

"What if you needed to be Good to use magic?"

"Oooh! Clever!"

Hammond straightens up and considers this for a moment.

"So the basic idea is definitely possible: you can have a system that judges people on their Goodness, and only gives magic to the ones that meet some threshold. The tricky part is where the definition of Good comes from. There are plenty of universes that judge Good and Evil in various ways — sometimes contradictory ways. How would you go about defining Good? Either directly, or in terms of a process by which magic, which lacks built-in mortal sensibilities, could come to know it?"

"It's something about... using magic for good? But that's not really explaining it, is it?"

"What if... my intuition is that using magic for good means that you do something which is good for people. Most of the time this is easy. If I scrape my knee, healing me is going to be good for me and neutral for everyone else. But what if I want to be very rich? That money needs to come from somewhere, so the criterion cannot simply be 'good is what a person finds valuable', although it definitely is a component of that."

"And it's not even a matter of how many people a spell is good for, because I'm sure that you can convince the majority of people to do horrible things. If you've read anything about our history for the last century you would know."

A moment of silence, to remember.

"I don't know. Good is... helping others, working together, happiness, safety, growth, discovery, freedom, but this is still not pinning it down..."

"Well, in fact, with magic money doesn't have to come from anywhere, but places that work like that tend to get a bit strange," he notes.

"Hmm. Would you say that something that has more of those traits is more likely to be good, and something with fewer of those traits is less likely to be good, but no specific trait in that list, itself, directly indicative?"

"Yes, definitely, and I can probably come up with a better list with more time. Does it make sense to do that?"

"Maybe! One thing that magic can often do is tell whether two things are 'similar' or not, because there are a lot of magic systems that depend on being able to make that kind of judgement in one way or another, when you think about it — so the capacity to judge similarity is something that the Will of Magic often has to implement. So if you want to, you could define goodness by listing a bunch of things that are good, and a bunch of things that are bad, and saying that, when determining if something is good or bad, magic should compare it to each one of those and combine those comparisons to form a final judgement."

"The risk with a system like that is that you're giving up fine control over the precise definition of 'good', in favor of a sort of vague gesture. But if you can't give a precise definition of 'good', maybe a vague gesture is better than the alternative. Does that kind of system for judging goodness sound like something magic should do? It's definitely not the only way, so if it doesn't sound right we can talk about alternatives."

"I'm not convinced? If you go back two thousand years, no one - well, almost no one - believed slavery to be particularly evil. I don't want to bind magic to unchanging values when in two thousand years we could realize that... I don't know. Pineapple on pizza is evil. Even though it clearly is."

"Well, any specific concrete decision you could make now could turn out to be wrong in the same way," Hammond points out. "So it sounds like maybe you want a procedure that magic can go through to change the definition of 'good' as people's views change, so that it grows alongside people."

"That sounds way better, yes! Although... like. We don't have world peace right now, so 'the majority view' is not necessarily... enough? I don't know. I feel very unqualified."

Hammond bites his lip. There's a limit to how much he's supposed to lead people's answers, but surely helping her brainstorm a bit isn't a problem.

"I agree that the naive majority view probably isn't the best you could come up with," he settles on. "For one thing, to use your slavery example, the slaves probably knew it was wrong far before the majority of people did, and if magic could have picked up on that it would be a good thing."

"When I have a hard problem, I sometimes find it useful to think about how I could identify a solution if I saw one," he muses. "What properties would a satisfactory solution have? I can write them down, and then we can brainstorm alternatives and see which one comes closest."

"Well. A solution would look like magic being used to make the world better and not worse. Which is kinda self-referential, we are trying to define 'better' in the first place. Some values are prooobably going to be seen as good in the future as they were in the past? It's good when people are free to make choices for themselves. It's good when people can eat, have a place to stay, friends, when people have time off work or school to pursue their hobbies and passions. Very little poverty, ideally none. I think it's fine if some people are rich, as long as the gap isn't too big? Olivetti had a rule that the CEO pay couldn't be more than ten times a blue collar worker's pay, and it seems intuitively like a good idea? I think... wait, I'm getting distracted from the question."

"I'm somewhat tempted to just crib some ideas from the Gospel? There's a lot of stuff that was meant for... a different time, but the basic message of 'love each other' is sound I think."

Hammond hums in thought. That's not really what he was getting at, but this is a pretty abstract question.

"Some magic systems involve the creation of gods, spirits, fae, or other magical people — do you think that having the magic mediated through a loving person, about whom you could specify additional details, would be a more approachable potential solution?"

"Uh. So divine rather than arcane magic... It would work but... It would also lose the flavor? A research wizard should feel like Prometheus, not... Sĭbylla"

"But I also very much love kamis, and it would solve the problem. I'm conflicted."

"Well, perhaps the magical people in question could only grant the ability to use magic, and figuring out how to make use of it would still be up to the individual wizard?" Hammond suggests.

"Yessss! That works! Like, a friendly kami can 'light your spark', and from there it's your job to understand how to use it! I like it! It also mean that you can still use magic for evil, which is not great, but... people can already do that, and if only people who are fundamentally good can wield magic then it should solve most of the problems."

"Or the kamis could take magic away, if someone is evil enough, I guess but also... that seems like a - pardon the pun - too magical solution. Whereas if only good people get magic but then they can still use it for bad reasons, that's just... a police matter? And avoiding truly horrible people from getting magic will help."

"And the police will have magic too! There should totally be a truth spell, although it should probably just be limiting lying, not compelling speech."

"Well, I hope they will be good enough," Hammond, who remembers going to peaceful protests with his then-boyfriend that became riots when the police got involved, replies.

"But that raises the question of how you want the kami to, hmm, prioritize? Would they give magic to people who are good, or people who would do good, or people who need goodness in their lives? I mentioned the idea that they would be loving, but what does that mean to you? Can you describe what they're like, as a person?"

"Well, good people would do good in general, right? If you think of... you wouldn't know him but like. He's good and he does good? Are those things really different? People should probably not be getting magic for needing goodness in their lives? They should get friends! Money, if needed, or the ability to get to a safer place, or things I'm not thinking of but I don't think that a person that needs help will be best served by having magic? Especially because... in my mind magic is a lever. If you're in a bad place you need a hand, not a lever?"

"What Kami should be... they should be somewhat understandable, but not fully? Like, a kami of a fireplace will want warmth, family, peace, but maybe they're also fond of ashes, and something else we don't know about? I really like the idea of kamis. Wouldn't it be adorable to have... a small kami of river pebbles? They're not powerful, or well known, but they're absolutely enamored with the shiny ones, and will ignite people who will be good to nature, healing and curiosity..."

"Ooooh, what if, what if! Finding your kami should be a Journey! So that people who want magic need to understand what they want to be about and find a place that calls them? So I may find mine... in a library, but probably not my local library but rather... a secret or ancient one?"

Well, now they're straying well away from the whole "nature of Good" question, but she is just a child.

"What kinds of places end up developing a kami? How does one go about finding your particular kami?" he asks, flipping to a fresh page.

"My intuition tells me that both a fireplace and a mountain should have one. So it's not people living there, nor being remote. Hmmm..."

"Stories! Kamis should be born out of places that have a story to tell. So a house can have a story if it's old and has seen generations of the same family, but probably not if it's some apartment for rent that people just live at for a while. Places of worship should have kamis - oh, that's going to be so confusing for believers if it happens. And mountains will also have kamis, older and more powerful than most, but also less... human, less understandable and more slow to action, unlikely to ignite someone."

Hammond dutifully takes this down.

"Alright, let me see ... we've covered how people should receive magic, what exploring and using magic should be like, what magic should be able to do or not do, and some aesthetic opinions ..."

He flips through the rest of his clipboard.

"Are there any other ideas for how magic should work that you want to talk through? Or important questions I seem to have missed?"

"Probably magical energy and power? Oh, and how it interacts with technology!"

"So, because complex magic requires more study and/or complex diagrams I think magic users should be able to - in principle - cast all possible spells, mostly limited by experience and practice. I'm not a fan of the idea of power level being an extrinsic thing like with D&D, so I don't think there should be "spell levels" or such. Spells will be simpler or harder but if you focus your learning on a single spell you should be able to just use it even if casting a different spell of the same complexity on the fly would be impossible to you. Which probably means that most spellcasters would have some very fancy spells that they perfected or modified and then know the most common ones... I like this æsthetic! It still implies more experience means you can glance at a spell diagram and cast it if it's below your 'level' - but it doesn't limit what you can do, it's just a trade off, specialized versus generalist!"

"Sorry. I got sidetracked. The thing I wanted to mention is how many magic systems have a form of 'mana' or 'magic reserves' and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Probably yes? But then I'm not sure how I'd answer questions like 'how many spells per day?', 'does it grow with age or experience?', 'is the maximum size personal or universal?'. I think I dislike the idea of people being born with more or less mana. It feels... racist? Like, not racist but. All men are created equal and such. But yeah, I think there should be some form of mana. Would also explain why some spells can only be cast by more people. It would also mean that like... a big, country-scale ritual probably requires a lot of people, which I like as an idea."

"And I think you should be able to store mana? Maybe? Oooooh, should we have something equivalent to D&D scrolls or wands? Maybe! Decisions, decisions..."

"So no intrinsic concept of a 'level', but some spells are more complicated than others. Spells need mana as fuel, but everyone should have the same potential for generating and storing mana. Some spells need more than any one person has," Hammond summarizes.

"When you say 'store mana', do you mean in a person, or in an artifact of some kind?"

"Oh. Oh no. Sorry, not your fault but. Just thought of something. I don't want death-fueled magic. Kamis would be unlikely to ignite someone who'd do that but I really, really don't want that to be a temptation ever. Nope."

"I think mana stored in a person would just be... normal energy? Like, casting a spell or doing pushups should use the same kind of energy?"

"Oh, but then you'd give an advantage to men because of hormones and stuff and people would do excessive budybuilding. No. Bad idea. Mana energy should be separated from normal calories."

"I don't think you should be able to store mana in a person? I don't see how it would work, but maybe I'm not being creative enough. It should be possible to store mana in artifacts, yes. Gems, probably? But I don't want it to be diamonds, getting mana batteries shouldn't be a thing reserved to rich people. I think quartz is common enough? But then you'd risk big companies hoarding it... Maybe it should be possible to create mana crystals, just directly out of mana? And then you could power spells by tapping into them... and they should be stable, I don't want 'mana crystal bomb' to be a thing the world needs to worry about to be honest."

"Okay! No death magic, mana can be stored in mana crystals, but those can't explode. Do mana crystals come in different types, or are they all one thing?"

"Probably different types? I think some tradeoff between density and rate of extraction could be interesting? You would have -  say - a tiny deep purple crystal that could power a whole three people ritual by itself but using it means it takes one hour for the full cast. Or you get a balloon sized almost transparent one, really unwieldy but it can discharge its power in a fraction of a second, which could be crucial if you want the effect to be quick. Like metaphorically quenching swords, for some processes you need that speed, but on the other hand you could power a magelight for months with a single fingernail-sized mustard seed."

"You're picturing both the wavelength of the color of the crystal and the saturation of the color varying continuously with charge, yes?" he clarifies.

"No, I think I'd like the wavelength to depend on density and the saturation on charge?"

"Oh, I see!"

He crosses a line out and writes this in.

"You mentioned wanting to talk about the interaction between magic and technology. What were you imagining there, and how do mana crystals play into it?"

"I'm not sure? Much like with mana versus calories and regular energy... I feel keeping them separate leads to less centralization? Cause unfortunately I can picture mana crystal sweatshops and I don't know if they would be more or less likely if you could convert mana into energy?"

"Wait, you can totally convert mana into electricity. If you can make fire you should be able to - at the very least - power a steam engine. So that's one direction. Now the question is whether you can convert electricity or some other form of energy into mana."

She pauses a paces a bit.

"I think... maybe? I'm still not sure. But you definitely need a living being to actually cast the spell, of that I'm pretty convinced."

"If you can convert other forms of energy into mana, does that lead to more concerns about fairness of access to mana?" he gently leads. "Earlier you were worried about men having a caloric advantage, but access to cheap energy is also not evenly distributed."

"Probably, yeah..."

Oh.

She's... she's going to lean on the wall next to the door.

"Magic should be able to create food. And water. And cure diseases and heal people in general. And protect from weapons."

And maaaaybe slide down until she's sitting on the floor.

"And in general make it possible to snatch peace from the jaws of war."

She's crying now.

"What do you know about Africa?"

Oh dear.

He can't exactly kneel to comfort her, since he's been tragically deprived in the knee department and they're more or less the same height already.

"Very little, other than I can guess from your reaction," he answers, speaking gently. "Being from another world and all. So I can't tell you that there's no need to cry — but I can say that maybe there won't be, soon. Magic can make things better."

"Yes. Please."

"It should also do contraception, and... honestly I'm not even sure it should do fireballs at this point. But it should definitely do personal protection and..."

"People are starving, and I was worrying about the impact of magitech on the economy."

"Fuck the economy."

She takes a moment to compose herself.

"I think that it would be nice for this to be one of the other forms of magic. Not the diagrams, not the programming, but a magic of healing, of growth. I'm picturing potions, mundane or magic ingredients mixed with love and intent to make a whole bigger than the parts. Instead of a potion of healing, why not a soup of healing. It can cure your wounds, but it can also fill your stomach. I still love the idea of the more... thinky kind of magic. It's nice to have technology and superpowers and big complex spells. But the world is crying and I also want a magic of soothing, of tending."

"Druids. Their magic to purify wells poisoned by mines. To clean the rivers foaming with chemicals. To free the birds from oil spills, and protect the sea from industrial fishing destroying the seabed."

"And are these magics also granted by the Kami? Or is there a different mechanism?"

"The kamis would still work as a mechanism but... maybe for healing magic we don't need as much filtering? Evil people deserve healing and health and food as much as anyone else. I think I'd like druidic magic to come from the Earth?"

"I have a cute idea which should also give us a lot of this kind of magic on day one: to be a druid you need to have planted a tree and tended to it for at least one year and one day."

"Ah, and your idea is that this would be retroactive to people who have planted trees in the past?" he clarifies. "Do you picture druidic magic as also being something that one can explore and develop over time, or would you want its capabilities to be available to qualifying druids from the start?"

"Exactly! Whereas the arcane one would require ignition by a kami, and I expect those to slowly appear into the world, from small ones to big ones. I think druidic magic should also improve over time, yes, but it should have a stronger starting point? I want to end famine as soon as possible. Reforestation and cleaning our human mess can take a bit more time, and it's fine if reversing climate change requires a decade or so. It would still be better than the default timeline we're on."

"Greta Thunberg should be a druid. Which means that 'has planted and grown a tree' should be a sufficient condition but not a necessary one maybe?"

"I just realize, the amount of gardeners which will get magic out of curating incredibly posh lawns of rich people. I don't think that's bad. Kinda funny, but not bad to have more food and more healing. Maybe the tree idea is more romantic than logical. Maybe the criterion should be... to care for communities? That would definitely include Greta and a lot of people. And probably many doctors. I like that."

"I still think the tree idea is neat tho."

"I have no idea whether Greta Thunberg has ever planted a tree, but I can definitely put it down as one of several sufficient conditions," Hammond agrees. "You've listed some things that druidic magic should definitely be able to help with; I can guess the things that it shouldn't be able to do, but just for clarity would you enumerate any limits on what druids should be capable of that you had in mind?"

"My intuition is... no destruction? Like, fireballs and lightning bolts are definitely out but... lights and small flames are probably fine? I think that Guardie Forestali (Park Rangers) sometimes need to intentionally start fires to control forests... so controlling the weather yes but tornadoes, hurricanes, and other extreme events no. No teleport, or weapons. And the magic is probably more intuitive than mathematical."

Hammond scribbles attentively.

"Okay! I think I have a pretty good understanding of how you want druidic magic to work; are there other important questions that come to mind, or other things you'd like to clarify? About druidic magic or about, ah, academic magic?"

"Mr Hammond, you said you're interviewing other people too, right? I would feel really bad if I missed something as important as... the possibility to end famine and diseases. I'm smart but not perfect."

"I think I'd like to have more than two kinds of magic. Probably something ritualistic would work well in China and Japan?"

"Oh my god, I'm being racist. To be clear, none of the magic traditions should be restricted in any way by country or sex or skin color or any such bullshit!"

"I am interviewing other people, yes," he agrees. "... but my bosses are pretty strict about not trying to share answers between people. Both for bias and confidentiality reasons. So I can do my best to help you think through anything else you may be missing, but I can't really share if anyone I've already spoken to has ideas in that area."

He taps a flipper to his lip in thought.

"I've done this before for other worlds, though — I could tell you about what happened when magic came to them, and you can see if that gives you ideas of more things to cover?" he suggests.

"Yes, that would be very valuable, thank you."

"Well, the most memorable is probably this world that was being menaced by pre-existing shadow monsters — it had actually had magic in the past, but the magic had gone away because of a big cataclysm, and I was there surveying to help magic come back ­— and the shadow monsters were powered by negative emotions. So there would be a shadow monster attack, and people would be scared and hurt, and that would power the generation of more shadow monsters, and so on. Eventually the whole place was crawling with them, despite the best efforts of the native monster hunters."

"Anyway, mostly people there wanted magic that would be useful for fighting the monsters, for obvious reasons. But one young boy I spoke to had another idea: he wanted magic to be able to redeem the monsters, and make them powered off of positive emotions instead. Well, the Will of Magic incorporated his idea, and the new magic practitioners managed to flip the polarity of this big bird monster. So it turned bright gold and went around hunting down the shadow monsters, and people were happy to see their new protector, so it spawned a brood of little happiness-birds. It took a few years and a lot of effort from the monster hunters, but eventually they got the polarity of the whole planet flipped, and now the place is full of roving golden happiness and beauty creatures that go around constructing gardens and statues and secret grottos."

He has other anecdotes lined up, but he pauses first to see if this generates any follow-up questions.

"So I should probably think about my world's problems, and see if there are ways to win better than just making them go away."

"Is it fine if I check Wikipedia?"

"Yes! By all means. I'm not technically paid by the hour, exactly, but I'm happy to stay here as long as you need to work out your answer."

"Ok, let me see..."

"I... would offer you a chair but I still think I shouldn't open the door to strangers - sorry - and also... I only have human chairs."

"Poverty, diseases, desertification, malnutrition, regional conflict. These seem decently covered by druidic magic. Which should definitely include controlling or improving plant growth... possibly without consuming the terrain? I remember something about crop rotation... It seems that 'make this terrain rich in nutrients again' should be a druidic spell. And probably also spells to control fertility in animals."

"And I guess in humans." She blushes furiously.

"Ageing population, demographic transition. Healing people is most of this, but also fixing damages done by aging. In particular - but not limited to - Alzheimer and Parkinson and general cognitive decline."

"Sustainable agriculture, food security. This is covered by druids, definitely."

"Prevention of HIV/AIDS, HIV and pregnancy, HIV/AIDS denialism. Prevention would be nice, but if we can cure it completely and at scale that's also probably... fine? As long as we have enough people who can create healing potions with local ingredients (oh, that's important! Potions should require skill but not rare ingredients!) I think we'll be fine long term? A disease that doesn't kill you very quickly is way less scary if you can cure it by just drinking something. Denialism though..."

"That's a hard one. I guess... ways to make people smarter? I think I read something about malnutrition making people less bright... oh, and lead. We should remove lead from everything. Which means that we need a way to cheaply make... pots and pans? Ah... alchemists! Transmuting simple clay into metal or something like that..."

"So — healing magic should be able to handle aging and cognitive problems, and HIV specifically but probably infectious diseases in general ..."

"For Alchemists, you're imagining using them to offset the need for hazardous chemicals such as lead; do you think magic should have a way to address hazardous chemicals that are already present in the environment? Which discipline does that fall under?"

Hammond is immune to a lot of poisons due to the particulars of his magic system. But being hired for a job on Earth is still slightly buffing his microplastics resistance.

"Yeah, aging and related issues, and definitely all diseases. Like, even including radiation poisoning. I've read an article about Chernobyl once... not a good way to go."

"That's part of it but also... imagine if you could, in fact, transmute elements. It would solve so much of the scarcity, make mines obsolete - mining is a really bad job for people."

"I think dealing with bad chemicals in the environment should be druidic... maybe alchemists get some of that too? Like, for removing asbestos and extracting oil... yeah, I think they should both have it. But alchemy definitely sound more dangerous than druidic, and I think it should also be granted by the kamis, like academic magic."

"Nuclear weapons, nuclear waste."

Well, fuck. How do you solve this one?

"Nuclear waste can be solved by either druids, removing pollution, or alchemists and academics, negating the need for nuclear energy. Nuclear weapons... that seems like a hard problem."

"Maybe," Hammond allows. "But if you can clean up the long-term effects with druids, nuclear weapons are 'only' huge explosions. There are a few ways I could think of to deal with that. Again, I'm not supposed to suggest things, but there was this other world I worked with a while ago ..."

"So they had been relying on an increasing amount of nuclear power. No weapons — they were weird people, not anything you'd recognize as a 'country' exactly, and if anyone had proposed building a nuclear weapon they probably would have gotten sent to a hospital — but they had a serious energy problem because their world was going through an ice age and they refused to burn large amounts of coal for ideological reasons. Anyway, they had all this nuclear waste to deal with. And they had been burying it in geologically stable salt mines, but when I was interviewing people about magic, someone asked for nuclear waste to become the food of choice for a set of culturally important spiritual creatures."

"Well, they started selling the nuclear waste to the creatures — like I said, weird people; even their mythological creatures were willing to trade for things — and eventually they actually had to spin up more nuclear plants because the price of nuclear waste rose due to demand. Eventually, you couldn't find a scrap of nuclear waste anywhere on the planet, because it was all being sold off in exchange for magic gadgets."

"Of course, that's not the only world that had a similar problem, and their solutions can end up quite different. This other place, everyone was very concerned with privacy, and their magic ended up making it very easy to create isolated demiplanes, that weren't connected to their planet through normal space. The planet eventually ended up an irradiated nuclear wasteland, but only because nobody really minded because they had all moved into custom extraplanar bunkers."

Hammond shakes his head and refocuses on Bonnie.

"Anyway, forgive an old Walrus his ramblings. You were talking about nuclear weapons?"

"Only huge explosions??? People would die!"

"... should we have resurrection as part of magic?"

"I feel so unprepared for this."

"So. Yeah. Resurrection. Totally, and probably unlimitedly. Do you have information about... whether afterlives?"

Well, Hammond had been trying to hint that magic could deal with the explosions. But this works too.

"Afterlives are part of Magic — different worlds have their own systems. When I die, I'm going to get sorted into this big tree-cum-filing-cabinet where I'll slowly merge with the universal unconscious until my husband gets together the big ritual to get me back," he explains. "Do you have any thoughts about what the afterlife here should look like? And about how you'd like people to be able to get back and forth?"

"Will... it be retroactive? For people who died before Magic?"

"The afterlives should be... peaceful. A place to rest, heal physical and mental wounds and just... exist. There should be art, and music and books and the other things that make life beautiful but people shouldn't need to eat, shouldn't age and there would be no diseases. I'd like it if it was impossible to hurt each other but I don't know how I would make that happen, whether by magical limitations or by making it always possible for people to escape. If you don't need a job or a house, and can teleport away at any time it's probably easier to not get hurt."

"It can be retroactive," he agrees. "Many of the best afterlives are."

He records these other details.

"That sounds like what many people imagine the afterlife to be like," he ventures after a moment. "I think there's a good chance that the Will of Magic will end up on a similar design."

"Ok, next one! Child poverty, labour, abuse, mortality, education. Poverty and mortality seem the easiest to fix. If families have access to healing and it's simpler to grow food it should fix most of it... Labour... maybe magic can help there? I think children are forced to work because otherwise the family doesn't have enough money, and if you have food provided with magic you probably need less food and can let your kids study instead? Abuse is. A tough one. Especially because I don't understand evil people."

"... ah."

Hammond thinks about how to explain the motivations behind abusive relationships to this young child. It's not a topic he was prepared for, exactly, but luckily he always has the skills for the job.

"I think the key thing to understand is that very few people think of themselves as being evil. When someone abuses someone else, they often have a reason or justification for it in their own minds, even if those reasons are illogical and don't actually hold up to scrutiny. Since those reasons are individual, and often not responsive to logic, there probably isn't a single, uniform solution that will 'solve' all cases of abuse in the way that 'more food' is the solution to 'hunger'. But that doesn't mean that you can't come up with ways that magic could make abuse harder to get away with, or less appealing, or more difficult, with some thought."

"Truth spells can make it harder to get away with crime but also... it would only help in places where there is a working police force? It could help someone living in - say - Italy but probably not someone living somewhere in rural Burundi..."

"I think maybe I'll try to think harder about it later. I want to make sure I'm not missing something big again before trying to make it all perfect, if that makes sense?"

Hammond nods.

"Yes, that makes perfect sense. It's a lot to tackle all at once."

He looks down at his clipboard and flips through his notes.

"So ... we've covered death generally (afterlives), environmental issues (druids), healing magic, farm productivity ... And then putting off dealing with abuse for later ..."

"Are there other problems that you want to focus on right now? Or should I ask some more prompting or clarifying questions?"

"I think I'd like to keep going through the list, if that's fine with you?"

"Climate change! God, I wish people would stop being stupid about this one. If a scientist tells me something and a politician something opposite, I know who to trust. Politicians lie all the time, while scientists care about the truth and solving problems."

"I don't think it's super urgent? And by that I mean that if magic can replace fossil fuels for energy generation that should help a lot? I guess we would still have blast furnaces... but academic magic should be able to deal with that too? They need a lot of heat, and a source of carbon, and coal is convenient but. Uh, magic could do heat easily, but maybe not carbon? A druid should definitely be able to avoid pollution from furnaces - what a thought, an industrial druid. I can see a law in the future mandating hiring a druid if you're doing things which would otherwise pollute, and hiring a person is probably cheaper than having to deal with filters, and hazardous substances, and... - anyway yes, it's not that simple. But I think if most of the CO₂ emissions are solved then the climate is still going to be fine in the end?"

"Magic can provide a convenient source of carbon if you think it should provide a convenient source of carbon," he reminds her. "But yes, I suspect that the magic you've already laid out is probably flexible enough to deal with climate change as it is. Although I'm neither familiar with this world's climate science literature nor a meteorologist myself, so there could be something about it that I'm missing."

He has actually run through almost all of the recommended questions. He flips around until he finds an optional sub-tree that might help.

"How do you feel about substitutibility? That is, the degree to which and the ease with which one form of magic can imitate or replace another form, at least in principle? Academic versus druidic magic, for example: in the very far future, when both academics and druids have had centuries to experiment and refine their techniques, how much overlap do you imagine that creating?"

"Alchemy, now that's a though! Can you write it down for later?"

"I think there would definitely be some overlap but also not full substitutibility? It's like... a tram and a train? A cinquecento, a bus and a Ferrari? All of these are means of transport, and sometimes you can replace one for the other but not always? So - imagine you want to purify some water. A druid would just... do it, whereas an academic would probably have to go through boiling it to kill bacteria, and use sand or something to filter it out - I'm not an expert. Likewise for creating heat, an academic would be able to control flames, a druid would probably need to call the heat of Mother Earth for it... different paths and different tradeoffs."

"So the different forms of magic would be able to accomplish mostly the same effects, but with very different mechanisms," Hammond summarizes. "I know you said to hold alchemy for later, but you've already raised a few different examples of magic potentially substituting for different components of industry; how does alchemy fit into that? Are you imagining that between alchemy, druidcraft, and academic magic, traditional industrial processes could be completely replaced?"

"I wouldn't say mostly? I'd say they have some overlap, and ingenuity can go a long way but... up to a point? They should feel distinct, I think."

"I wouldn't expect industrial processes to be replaced but rather integrated with magic? Cause like, transforming a kilo of ore into steel should definitely be doable by an academic mage, but doing the tons of it that a furnace can do would be beyond the power of anyone. Concert magic could definitely do that but then... you're paying a lot of people when you could simply use machines instead? I'd expect magic to work alongside technology, doing things that are not possible today or making it work better, but not replace it, no."

"Ah, okay!"

He notes this down.

"Do you imagine technology and magic continuing as separate but complementary disciplines, or do you think that magic could be integrated directly into machinery?"

"Complementary? If magic requires being judged by a kami and Awakened then.. you can't really do that to a machine, can you? I like the idea of magic being human."

"Wait actually. I like the idea of magic being... wielded by sapients? If druids find a way to make chimps smarter then they should probably also be able to wield magic? That's a bit scary, but that's why we have the kamis and the awakening at all. I don't want to be... racist."

Hammond has a brief flashback to the mandatory work orientation lecture Defining Your Terms: Sentient, Sapient, People. He must be pretty close to developing time-based powers for warping through dull and unnecessary workplace presentations, surely.

"That makes sense," he agrees. "Do you want to get into defining the exact criteria there, or leave it up to the kami, since that's their purpose in the system?"

"Prooobably better to not get into it. I honestly wouldn't know where to draw the line."

"Decolonization... I... don't think magic is super relevant to this one?"

"Demining... this definitely feels a druid area of expertise, detecting and disabling mines as part of excising unnatural influences from the environment."

"Seems natural," he concurs.

"Democracy... is important but... you can't really force a people to become a democracy. We've had several sad proofs of it. And as usual, powerful people make decisions, and poor people die and starve."

"Yeah, I don't have anything more here. I think that solving famines and poverty through widespread magic is going to make it easier, because if you don't need kids to work to survive they can learn instead, and you need an education to have a democracy I think."

"Alright — I have some notes to circle back to; do you want to expand your thoughts on Alchemy?"

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean the list is done, just Democracy, but we can talk about Alchemy for a bit."

"Potion making is cool. Modern chemistry came from what our world calls 'alchemists' after all! Potions should be a thing although..."

"I don't think it should just be physics? Even starting with magical ingredients? I think that the kami mediation in preventing bad people to get more powerful via magic would probably help here too? But then where's the line? A normal person should definitely be able to drink a potion, but probably not make one..."

"Oh, I'm sorry — that's my misunderstanding."

Hammond nibbles gently on the end of his pen.

"I think that traditionally, alchemy is often understood as magic that transforms materials. Such as transforming base ingredients into a potion with its own magic power. Perhaps that's the distinction you're looking for? That anyone can use a potion, but that creating the potion requires some knowledge, ability, or catalyst that can be Kami-mediated?"

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"This list is so looong. But I want to do this properly. So."

"Development... well, there's going to be a bunch of it, not worried here. Disarmament... I think it will shift the balance? If a powerful druid can quickly demine a place then it doesn't make sense to mine it in the first place, against weapons I can imagine protection talismans... which is probably a mostly-druidic specialization, but not necessarily. I can see different protection amulets with different tradeoffs..."

"Environment: druids. Lots of druids. So many druids. Love 'em."

"Family... I think that if people are richer from magic they should have more time to spend with their kids. But then maybe not, the stories from the most alone kids often come from very rich parents working impossibly long hours... But also like. If you're juggling jobs, trying to feed your kids, you would probably be able to become a small druid, and then you don't need to pay for vegetables and legumes and... I guess this means that the things that are still hard to do would cost more? Man, that's depressing to think about..."

"Economics is not often a simple if-then sort of calculation," Hammond cautions. "The simple notion of supply and demand doesn't account for induced demand, for one thing. Also, many people find it fulfilling to have a job or a purpose, and will still do economically relevant things even if a purely economically self-interested being wouldn't in their situation. Magic is definitely going to drastically reshape the economy — it's just difficult to say exactly how without all the details."

"Yeah, I admit I don't understand it nowhere near enough. And I probably don't need to? I picked this list because I think it would illuminate the discussion, and I think it is succeeding in doing that. I don't need to solve all the world problems on my own. When magic comes... I won't be fighting alone." Her voice falters a bit at the end.

"Food: did I mention how much I love druids? Cause I really do. Governance... yeah, same reasoning applies as Democracy, I recognize I don't know anywhere near enough. I guess truth magic would probably help? Health is solved. Human Rights... that's going to be hard, isn't it?"

"In my experience, nearly everything worth doing is hard," Hammond replies. "And I don't think that's just because my magic system rewards me with the abilities necessary to accomplish jobs."

"I think making it easier to survive could help any, but... there's still going to be de facto slavery, and violence and... sigh..."

"I think I'll go on for now. I may want to explore it further but I don't want to get too lost even though... it pains me to think about all the people suffering."

"Human Settlements, slums... there should probably be a way to magically build houses so they become cheaper? This is definitely not a druid thing, probably not Alchemy... but it doesn't super feel wizardy either?"

"Hmm. I could see ways to make it fit each of those things — having druids shape trees, having wizards create pocket dimensions, or construing the transformation of raw material into a building as an alchemical transformation. It could also be something that requires collaboration, or you could invent a fourth kind of magic that fits it more naturally."

"Oh, the mental image of a druid shaping a tree into a house is delightful. Unfortunately it's not particularly convenient. I can see it as a long term solution, but growing trees - even with magic - would still be a long term project, while people need houses now. Or ideally yesterday."

"Pocket dimensions would work but... maybe this points towards some fourth branch of magic, yes, something suitable for coordination, or logistics... I'll think about it."

"Refugees and migrations... this is a political problem before being a logistical one, isn't it? I'm so annoyed at everyone demonizing immigrants - they're people looking for a better life and they deserve our love but - I can also understand that it's something that needs coordination and ideally we'd want to integrate people instead of creating cultural pockets. So... maybe the yet-undefined branch of magic could take communication alongside logistics... I could see them working well together..."

"Better communication is usually a good thing, but trying to change people's attitudes directly is often less effective than changing the systems in which they are embedded," he councils. "You cannot convince a man of anything, whose paycheck depends on him not believing it."

"But what if something is clearly false? I can see someone lying if they need to but how can you ignore evidence?"

"Ah ..."

Hammond thinks about how to reply for a moment.

"Do you want the true and complete answer, which involves a lengthy digression into psychology, or a simplified answer that will point you in the right direction, but which technically involves lies of omission?"

"How much time do we have? Actually, what time is it? It feels like we've been speaking for minutes and for days at the same time..."

"Ah! Well, that's one of the benefits of working for the Will of Magic, actually — we happen to have exactly as much time as you need to give me your full and complete answer, no more, and no less. It makes filing my timesheet a bit of a pain, but it's worth it to have the time to do the job right. It's also how we're able to canvass an entire planet in a single day."

"Then I think I may want the long answer, if you feel up for giving it. I've never understood people lying about things which will obviously inevitably come out, or ignoring facts and data that is in front of them."

"And I will never say no to the opportunity of learning something new! Learning new things is the best way to spend time!"

Hammond nods.

"I have a certain fondness for teaching, myself," he admits. "My own calves have long since surpassed the need for it ..."

He shakes his head and centers himself.

"Life on this planet evolved. I know that because it was in the briefing, but I think it should also be common knowledge? That process of evolution did whatever random things it could that resulted in there being more babies who survived to reproduce. It didn't design anything intentionally, because it has no intention."

"Luckily for your early ancestors, it turns out that being intelligent is very helpful to surviving to have babies. So by random chance, evolution happened to stumble into a brain design that kind of worked, and kept tweaking it from there until we get to you. But it was never optimizing for being truth-seeking or correct — it just happens that being curious and correct happens to be useful in a wide variety of circumstances."

"But there are a lot more ways to do something badly then there are to do something perfectly, so it should not be surprising that evolution, in its blind fumbling, did not happen to randomly pick the perfect brain design that does everything correctly. It just happened to find an adequate brain design, with a lot of behaviors that are helpful in some cases but detrimental in others. Psychology is the study of how people's minds actually work, as opposed to the various fields of philosophy and economics which study how people's minds ought to work if they were perfect."

"So, with that background, the short answer to your question is: motivated reasoning. While coming to know true things is generally useful — and can actually shown to be optimal overall — there are specific circumstances where it's actually detrimental, either in the short term, or just to people who need to make decisions with a limited amount of time to think. In those circumstances, evolution had to find a design that would produce more viable children anyway, and so it created a brain design that does not operate purely in the realm of logic, instead incorporating various other components such as emotion, snap judgements, and habituation."

"And, to be clear, none of this is a bad thing! When I say that a perfect reasoner wouldn't let emotions cloud their judgement, that's a fact about the theory of economics, not a value judgement on the utility of emotions. The fact is that we don't get to pick our brain designs, and that just because being different 'should' be better by some metric doesn't mean we have to change. Having emotions is not only empirically good at producing large numbers of children who survive, it's also useful for understanding others, and often pleasant as an end-in-itself. So please don't think that the design of minds like ours is a problem — it's just a fact of life, the understanding of which will help you better model what other people are thinking."

"So, to return to the topic ... how good are you at lying?"