"Maybe the better singing helps the other chanters with the emotional part and doesn't do anything directly."

"It's an area of research that I'm sure someone will work on if our world isn't ending. It's kind of hard to overstate how much everyone just takes that as given, that if we didn't have our dubious ancient cult sometimes conscripting people, the world would end. Like I said, I should probably be verifying any of what I know somehow. Is it easier to find somebody who could do remote viewing than post-cog? It's another world, though, that sounds harder. It seems like for every potentially useful way our different magic systems could work together, there's twice as many problems Chant is bringing to the table."

"Remote viewers exist, I don't think they're substantially more or less common than postcogs, but they'd have to expand their power to make it reach to another world."

"I'm putting a lot of my eggs in the 'Quell can boost psionic range' basket. We should test that one sooner rather than later. You said you have some precognitive ability, right? Could you predict whether it would work if we started chanting right now, or is the process more complicated than that?"

"That won't work specifically for precognition because I can't precog about precogging - mine or someone else's. Postcogs don't have this problem but I don't know any, they tend to work mostly with, like, detectives."

"Huh. Fascinating limitation- I shouldn't worry about them, but- there must be all kinds of implications- right. Why don't we practice rapport while we're sightseeing so that we have more leeway when it comes time to experiment, later? Have you ever had reasons to build rapport with someone you don't know very well?"

"Net...working? I don't know if that's the kind of thing you mean."

-Dottie laughs.

"If you're really expressive, maybe. Most of it is about figuring out what emotional common ground you have. Where do you get happy about the same things, sad, angry, things like that. Some partnerships just don't work for certain chants, which is why the pros need emotional regulation and the ability to get on the same page as other people. Are there any emotions that we've covered which you think you'd be really good at? Don't think about how I would influence this, right now we're talking about you."

"I think I acquitted myself well at envy! I don't think I want to try Aid or Arouse but in general I'm pretty good at managing my emotional state. Contentment might be hard, I'm a malcontent by nature, but I could probably finesse it if called for."

"Right. So we've got- Gift, maybe Dampen- I might not be much help there, we might want to experiment with Churn in case you can get the right kind of anger...think you've got any wonder in you about the whole 'other earth' thing?"

Maybe Chant is just too disappointing to muster up wonder about; Dottie thinks she could muster some up about Eclipse.

"I think I could pull it off! Uh, Churn is maybe the one that melted your ice caps, right?"

"Maybe, yeah. It seems likely we can avoid that if we don't use it for energy production, which caps its usefulness but we can discuss what that does leave available. If you can do wonder well enough, we might want to invest time in co-chanting Escape. I've always been really good at both sides of it, no matter who I'm chanting with. It's- narrower than Churn in its scale but there are so many different things you can use it for. It's one of the most versatile."

"...isn't that the one that sent you here?"

"Yeah. Theoretically unprecedented. We don't have precogs. People have tried to use it for teleportation, but even professionals can't casually use it to cross more than 100 miles. The furthest any group of chanters has gone is somewhere around 300 miles. Right now, I'm treating this as a fluke, because- it really shouldn't be possible. Unless crossing worlds is easier than crossing ordinary spatial distance."

"I mean... sure, it might be a fluke, but I don't really want to try to reproduce the conditions when I do not care to be catapulted into another universe."

"Interesting threat model. Fair enough, though, we have no reason to think they're all this safe. I think that makes Gift the most exploitable one here. We should test whether there's a limit to what it can copy- what are some things eclipsed need to spend, I don't know, decades on?"

"There's hypercog stuff that takes that long, and really advanced healing, and long-range precognition, and turning into animals..."

"If we can figure out what went wrong when I chanted Freedom, we have turning into animals covered for anyone who wants that. Advanced healing- someone from my world might be capable of impressive stuff with Bless, if paired with someone who's been working on it that long, they might just have the right emotional resonance. Hypercog and long-range precog seem like the kind of things that Gift is made for. Tell me more about the possibilities there?"

"Hypercognition is just a loose collection of powers that make people better at thinking. You have to be careful with it because psionics is by no means opposed to making people worse at thinking as a technical matter so you can do that by mistake if you're wrong about what good thinking looks like."

"-promising, since Gift doesn't work for things you don't want. Precog seems a little harder but not impossible in principle- I'm worried that Churn is the best way to improve on it, but I could just be constraining myself creatively. More things in Heaven and Earth. Okay. My instinct here is to use Gift to get us both benefits from hypercog that we both want, without putting in the work- are you the type to feel especially triumphant if you get something without having to work as hard as someone else, or do you like the feeling of accomplishment of doing it yourself?"

Which is to say, are you the type of person who can't use triumph as well as you can use envy- it doesn't make a huge difference, just changes Dottie's overall strategy. If she's right, here, she could make herself so useful to Isabella that if it comes down to it, she'll protect her.

"I like both, but when there happens to be a way to cheat cleverly at something - something important, I mean, not like Monopoly - that's more satisfying than not cheating."

"Then let's cheat."

First, though, maybe they should get something quintessentially New York to eat. Dottie- has U.S. dollars on her person, actually, but she's not sure if they'll somehow be counterfeit. Does Eclipse have good anti-counterfeiting measures?

"I don't know the Secret Service to have anybody on staff for counterfeit but it's not the sort of thing I'd definitely know. I can cover it, I make a lot of money. Pizza?"

"Pizza's familiar. What's the point of being in a new world if you don't try something new? Unless New York City pizza is unique."

"It's the best kind but if it's old hat we can do something else. Manhattan clam chowder? Pastrami?"