"Seems like it might, yeah."

"I thought it was sort of like getting out of bed in the morning when it's really cold and you're still tired."

"When it won't get me jailed we can write a book on it." And to Cam - "you okay?"

"Yeah."

"Let me know if you ever want to practice more, get it shorter -"

"I don't think so."

"Okay. So we should still check if summoners who die in my world become daeva but even if they can rollout is going to be complicated - even lots of wizards who don't know any Unforgivables will try to Confund their way into better deals, probably - so secret experiment on discreet dying people in London and then we have to figure something out -"

"I might be able to develop some kind of protection against mind control but there's no obvious avenue to start down -"

"Occlumency doesn't constitute one?"

"It's mental exercises, not something you could cast on a little doodad."

"Timothy, are you sure you can't do it to me -"

"I couldn't get it with Michael and it would surprise me if you were easier. It's - even without intending anything horrible the mental posture is still one it's hard to adopt towards my little brothers."

"What does it feel like?"

"Casting it or being under it?"

"Either."

"No comment."

"It was... sort of trying to be pleasant? Maybe it is pleasant for some people, I dunno, I thought it was trying too hard."

Nod.

"It's floaty. Peaceful. I would imagine it'd be very popular if it weren't for the malicious intent part."

"Well, we have sixty percent of a workaround, I might in fact start offering lessons."

"Because that wouldn't be suspicious at all, people going to be Imperiused and then popping out refusing to say what you made them do but insisting they're satisfied customers."

"No one could passively maintain dozens of them at once. I'm not even sure I could handle two but I have very little practice at the spell."

"No, if I saw that happening and I didn't know any better I'd think you were casting some variant on the spell, or something else altogether."

"You could just tamper with peoples' memories and not advertise it as the most stigmatized activity ever."

"Yes, obviously it would have to be more complicated somehow, but still."

"The problem is that the intersection of 'people whose reasonableness I trust' and 'people who I can think the right way about' is pretty small."

"How do you have to think?"

"I would like to assume total control of this person, their thoughts and desires and actions, and use that to harm them, and keep them that way -"

Twitch.

"I have never and will never use it without consent."

"I believe you but that's kinda..."

"I know."

"I could probably cast it but I don't know if I could cast it on people I liked."

"I don't have that problem, I can't get myself into the mental state unless it'd be okay if they didn't like me afterwards."

"Huh."

"I have a lot of control over how I feel towards people. But it's hard to put myself in certain mindsets if I feel like the justified reaction would be not trusting me and I couldn't actually live with that."

(Geez, what happened to the sad demon.)

"Anyway, Miranda, want to read about 2179 and then help me figure out how to fix up the world? Minor and my father are working on the technical aspect."

"I have actually been trying to get Bar to find a world with our magic system where it is later."

"...oooooooooh."

"Bar is having some trouble with it."

There is no way for me to directly verify common magic systems, only published works, which may match for a considerable time before diverging due to later discoveries.

"So, like, there are worlds that have On the Fundamental Principles of Transfiguration word-for-word the same as ours but then it turns out their magic system is different, later?"

Yes.

"Bizarre. Okay. 

...trying to think of a safe way to let everyone summon..."

"Do they have to know they're doing it?"

"No. But they do have to voluntarily dismiss the daeva, or die. Since the idea is death insurance we could just have a lot of daeva long-term in your world but that sounds complicated to say the least."

"We should verify that people who die in our world do become daeva if they summon before we expend too many resources assuming that's the case."

Nod.

"I can go to London and just find dying people, anyone have a better idea?"

"How would you find them?"

"Hospitals?"

"I know some Muggles and some of them are old."

"That'd be significantly easier - though we probably want 'imminently dying' if possible -"

"How do you know Muggles?"

"Mum thinks they're cute. Some of them might be sick, I can ask, but it's hard to tell for sure if they're definitely going to die."

"If we get a bunch we'll probably have an answer within a year or so, and we can do work that doesn't attract attention until then."

"I can find maybe twenty, I'm not sure that's enough..."

"I know a couple Muggle-born students who might be able to suggest some more."

"Yeah, that would add up if we got enough of those."

"We need someone to stay here at the door and preferably someone else staying in the bar so if the one at the door slips we don't lose everything. And it's - upsetting how many people will die before we have come up with a way to safely distribute summoning - maybe we could convince all wizards to move to Mars -"

"You cannot convince all wizards to move to Mars."

"If anyone could it'd be me and I have so so much to bribe them with."

"You could maybe convince most wizards to move to Mars."

"Wasn't I going to rule Mars? Me and my apparent non-immunity to mind control?"

"Hey how come he gets Mars?"

"Requires terraforming, which is putting plants and air and things, and generally a bunch of things demon powers are useful for. For a time he was considering training a successor; you could apply for the position? And I do not actually want to put all wizards on Mars but especially if you can learn Occlumency you'll be safe enough."

"Time frame on that?"

"It took me like a year and a half and I was doing a lot of other things."

"So not a huge deal in a time pausing bar, okay."

"Yeah, exactly."

"I was faster but I was very motivated."

Nod.

"I'd have recommended you as a Mars-ruler-in-waiting, Miranda, but the whole point of our Mars plans was to have all the vulnerable-to-mind-control-and-extremely-dangerous daeva far away from any wizards. I think that's still viable, but it's going to be awful if that's all we can do. - should check the Imperius and bindings, next, do you know anyone good to ask for that?"

"Wait, so you want to move all the Muggles to Mars? That's even harder."

"We were thinking more 'let Muggles emigrate to Mars', which would hopefully inspire Earth governments to try a little harder to be good places to live."

"Oh, that makes sense."

"I can think of people who might kink on the curse, if that's an acceptable form of consent."

" - can you recommend me a book or something on - 2179 social norms or something -"

"...not off the top of my head..."

"....yeah, okay, that's - consent-y enough."

"I'm not sure about any given one and could sound them out by letter, or we could pretend it's a drug trial or something."

"Your call, I haven't met any of these people yet."

"It's mostly a matter of timing, letters take longer but it'd be easier to be very precise about what information we give 'em."

"Could it plausibly pass as a drug test? I don't know what future drugs can do or how they affect daeva."

"Oh, it couldn't at all, but you could describe a drug as having the effects in question and get as far as 'sign me up' before revealing that there was magic involved, so you didn't explain magic prematurely to half a dozen people only one of whom wound up wanting to try it."

"Sure, let's do that, we're not pressed for time exactly."

Cam nods and starts composing a letter.

He returns to his reading and takes notes on development interventions.

Eventually Miranda has quizzed Bar to her temporary satisfaction, found representative future textbooks from several worlds similar to theirs to hand off to Finis for closer investigation, and made an itinerary for finding elderly and sickly Muggles of her acquaintance as soon as they can be sure of the door enough to go all the way to London.

He is calling in some favors to arrange for that.

"I'm not sure how we convince all these people to pretend to be from 2179."

"What goes wrong if demons learn about this world? - or we could only summon angels, that'd substantially delay the demons finding out..."

"...means that Revelation finds out sooner or later, means it gets a little harder to pay them with whatever media effect wizards have had but magic items would still probably work, means Arda finds out sooner or later because the non-Elf species are using summoning as an immortality measure now..."

"Are any of those bad things? - and we're going to be leaning on magic much more than media - can you fly a broomstick? That's worth checking."

"Get me one to try, then. They're not particularly bad. Demons knowing that there's not just one extra world but a whole proliferation, though, that might make it awkward if anything came up they really shouldn't know about which didn't happen to be encrypted right."

"...like -"

"I don't know - memetic virus? Nonmagical artificial womb?"

"...we should probably not ask Bar about memetic viruses. Could ask about artificial wombs - Bar, are there nonfiction books with those mentioned -"