"Oh - no doubt they're enormously convenient but they'd be a problem back home."

"...what kind of problem, exactly?"

"Place is full of people with the same kind of magic I've got, making stuff, and indestructibility. It's pleasantly anarchic when everybody has these properties. We can't make minds; mindless human bodies cannot carry to term; we can make zygotes; I believe it would be less pleasant in its anarchy if people started manufacturing children."

"...yes," he says, after a moment of stunned silence, "I can see how that could turn out badly."

"Yeah. I'll avoid publicizing."

"So in a world where no one can be hurt and everyone has access to all they could possibly desire, what do you want more magic for?"

"Well," he says, "I'm not there at the moment."

"Oh?"

"And some people are dead, and some of them are cyborgs and I can bring those back and I'm working on it, but some of them were magical immaterial god things who were not backed up to chip."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

"My condolences. Were they friends of yours?"

"No."

"Should I not ask?"

"It's my fault and I would like to fix it."

He goes still.

"Ah."

Sigh.

He stays still for a few more seconds, overcome by some nameless emotion.

Then -

"I've been there," he says. "More times than I'd like. It does not get any easier. I'm sorry."

He stares moodily into his orange juice.

"I'll probably feel a little better once the cyborg Elves are all okay again, maybe unless by that time they've started organizing protests or something."

"Well. Good luck. I'm sorry I can't be more help."

That is evidently the saddest cup of orange juice in the whole multiverse.

"Thanks."

Delicious sausages. The orange juice of woe.

"I have to admit I was expecting more recriminations or at least demands that I justify myself when I confessed to mass murder, not that this is an unpleasant surprise."

"Well, 'it's my fault' doesn't necessarily equate to mass murder," he says. "The incident that left me with a multiplanetary reputation for mass murder was arguably my fault, and certainly my responsibility, but I didn't kill two hundred civilian prisoners whose lives I had sworn to spare, I just failed to stop one of my subordinates from doing it on his own initiative. Surprising how little that seems to help."

Sigh. "I am without such extenuating subordinates."