"So I said 'the Will of the Multiverse' when I introduced this concept to you but that's bullshit. It's the official party line but everyone knows it's bullshit. The multiverse isn't sentient and if it did it wouldn't care about romantic video games. The guy I work for is a really powerful person of mysterious origin and there isn't, strictly speaking, any reason you can't eventually become a multiversal power of similar magnitude and superior ethics."

"I had been going to wonder in that direction when I was designing my afterlife."

"Yeah. I'll get in trouble if they find out I just came out and said it, though."

Bella nods.

"So any joy on soul-rescuing magical installations? I was thinking along those lines for the explanation of the genesis event anyway - prior occupants decided to advance to a higher plane of existence, their soul collectors which double as resurrection devices caught some stray souls..."

"...Ooh. Okay, yes, I can sell that."

"Cool, now we're cooking. Universe is recyclable, if all my people decide to ascend to a higher plane of existence too the soul-collectors can grab another batch."

"I really, really like the way you think. Weird question, but did you ever live in Minnesota? My briefing says you moved to Washington recently but not where from."

"Arizona, why?"

"I'm trying to guage the likelihood that you've heard of Gustavus Adolphus already, and if you were from Minnesota you definitely would have."

"Doesn't ring a bell, what about him?"

"He was a really epic Swedish king and I want to talk you into having one of your neighboring space kingdoms be a space Scandinavia ruled by a reincarnated Gustavus Adolphus."

"...drop a book about him on the stack, I guess."

"Oh, he's already in a bunch of the historical fiction I already gave you."

"Then I will get back to you on that one, s'pose. I was not expecting you to be partial to specific Swedish kings."

"They named a shitton of things after him in Minnesota. He was really cool."

"Well, I will read the books. Do I have working decisions down on everything - high tech high magic, monospecific, princess, engaged to a heroic explorer dude, heroine's the moon princess with a commoner buddy - I didn't pick all my minions besides my promoted admirer, did I. Hmm...

- what-all does 'anything you can do' apply to, because, like, that's a little personally aggravating but not a huge deal given how I'm planning my approach -"

"It applies to approximately everything. I suppose there could be exceptions but I'm not thinking of any off the top of my head."

"Like, in the degenerate case it starts applying to like - personality traits, doesn't it?"

"I think I see what you're saying...it definitely applies to any concrete skills, anything measurable...ask me if something counts and I think I can say yea or nay."

"In approximate order of how likely I think I'll get a yea... general intelligence, moral reasoning, introspection, understanding me specifically..."

"Yes, yes, yes, no."

"If I teach myself, uh, econ, here, with Earth examples she doesn't have access to, in what sense will she manage to be better at econ than me?"

"That...um...I don't know."

"Can you like - talk to other people with the same job as you, get a sense of it - I might be unusually methodical here but if you folks do this a lot everybody's going to have facts and skills from their homeworld -"

"Well, usually your civilization isn't starting from scratch and she could just have learned better economics than you from somewhere even without the Earth examples."