"...we don't look the same. You and Timothy look the same and you're not the same species and Cam used to be a human. Also I am a girl."

"I had observed this, yes. But you are exactly what I would expect Cam to be like as a thirteen year old wizard girl from a preindustrial society."

"Witch."

"Independently noticed that magic should be used to stop everyone dying all the time which is horrible, check. Set about coming up with creative ways to achieve that with magic without risking yourself too much, check. Thinks in terms of resources in a relevant way, more or less prefers to have ownership of projects except the people stuff which Timothy gets to do because he's really good at it, you're not, and he listens to you, right? Want to administer a planet once there are some to go around?"

"...yes?"

"He was unsure how to assess whether our war was justified and didn't want to help us too much until he was sure, but he jumped at the chance to administer a refugee planet because that would be really fun - he's not like that now but that's because of the genocide -"

"Okay you might be right but I'm going to check," says Miranda, and she goes up to Bar. "Hey is he right?"

Yes.

"You could've said."

You didn't ask.

"Can you assume for future reference that we definitely want to know that kind of thing?"

You can certainly register a preference that your own alts be pointed out.

"There is no chance I wouldn't instantly recognize them! Even if they're a different species and don't look like me, if they're older than three bet you I guess it."

Then perhaps my assistance will only be useful in the presence of child instances.

"I would like to know about alts of me," Miranda tells Bar; and to Maitimo, "Why do you think Timothy didn't notice?"

"I'll have to ask him, but possibilities: he met Cam and then selected, of all the people he knew, the ones he wanted working with Cam most, and could attribute a lot of the similarities to that; he has a crush on Cam and it is clouding his model of him; he hadn't met any alternate universe versions of people yet and noticed all the other things that are subtly the same about them."

"...he has a crush on Cam?"

"Presumably."

"I'm not sure I was supposed to presume that."

"Right, sorry, that's not fair, if I'd met Cam when I was the-equivalent-of-his-age I would definitely have had a crush on him so I am guessing that he does."

"No, no, I totally see it now you've gone and said it, I'm just not sure Timothy will thank you for telling me."

"Your world has magic love potions? He was probably previously planning to get an advantageous political marriage and drug himself into doing right by whoever he chose for it and this would not have been good for him and I'm not going to enable him."

"...and he has a crush on Cam who is secretly me please tell me I was not under consideration for that."

"What? No, of course not, it'd upset you, that's completely disqualifying - we are competent at not hurting other people when we fold and spindle ourselves into social mores we know aren't worth the disks they're written on."

"Just checking!"

"He values you highly because you are one of in his case vanishingly few people who he trusts both morally and practically, people he can trust not just to competently do things he asks them to do but also to catch him when he misses things and call him out when he's wrong about things and maneuver around him if somehow it ever became necessary. He trusts you. He wants to and intends to and will in fact give you the world. But I guarantee he hasn't considered marrying you; he'd be bad at it, and we so hate being bad at people."