The concept of subways is vaguely disquieting, even if this world isn't as worried about flooding. Taxi it is. Dottie arrives at the meeting a ten minutes early. He makes small talk with the receptionist if they seem amenable, and if not, takes in the décor.

Decor: photographs of magnolia blossoms, a collection of attractively multicolored wicker baskets mounted to the wall, ceramic floor vases in a cloudy green color with pampas in them, a selection of magazines and a copy of the Wall Street Journal on the solid wood coffee table, a water dispenser hidden inside a wooden casing so no plastic is exposed, plush tufted couches in eggshell white, deep pile dark green carpet vacuumed into perfect stripes, a chandelier shaped like a flower. One minute before his appointment he's called from the waiting room to the office.

Dottie will, as always, start with an amount of small talk calibrated by the impatience or, conversely, stuffiness, of the person he's talking to. In this case, it'll be even simpler- usually, when he's in someone's office, they set the pace of the discussion. When they do finally get to the meat of the matter:

"How much do you already know?"

"Only what Swan has told me, which was only the briefest overview."

He can give a more detailed explanation, then. Here's what chants can do- constrained kinds of healing and de-aging, intensifying and reducing the effects of some activities including electricity generation (but with these caveats relating to climate change which he wants to look into), personalized transport (but it may be unreliable in some ways given the chant that landed him here), and a few others. The most promising interaction is Triumph and Envy (and can he copyright those names? back home they're both lumped in together as 'Gift' but maybe he can wring something out of distinguishing them) with eclipsed, since it seems that he can both help eclipsed train their powers more quickly, and give powers to people who never eclipsed.

Everything ultimately has to go through him, which probably simplifies things, but he admits to not knowing a lot about how he should market this.

He cannot copyright common English words but he can trademark them. The lawyer is not a marketer, but will give what advice he can.

Trademark it is.

Does he know anything about legal precedent for making money as the discoverer or something rather than the inventor? Maybe he can win some kind of award, or get a research grant to innovate the field of chanting?

The lawyer can refer him to somebody who does trademarks and get that arranged. There's the Nobel Prize in Magic? He can probably get a Nobel Prize in Magic.

That sounds like exactly what he was hoping for.

Also, Dottie was wondering whether he knows anything about how Eclipse might handle a situation like this in terms of differences in laws between worlds. Does Dottie come under Eclipse's jurisdiction, in the absence of specific treaties? Obviously, Dottie won't take anything said here too seriously, but he would appreciate the advice.

Dottie will probably be as much in the Eclipse US's jurisdiction as a tourist from another country within Eclipse. In the absence of treaties, no one is going to assume he has diplomatic immunity, obviously, but there is unlikely to be much fervor about extradition while that remains practically impossible.

Good to know.

It doesn't answer his real question, but that's not safe to ask. The U.S. here seems to care about rule of law as much as the one he's used to, so he can't rely on government corruption to protect him. He'll just have to be untouchable by the time the worlds make contact.

Dottie thanks the lawyer for his time and lets Isabella know via text that he's done with the meeting and is going to wander the city a bit, unless she'd feel safer with him squared away.

Nope, you're free to go! Have fun! she replies. Plan firmly to check in with me if you have some emergency, telepathically if necessary, and I'll see it coming and warn you.

With that settled, Dottie explores the city. All the while, he plays around with different designs in his head. Somehow, he doesn't think fast-forwarding is going to be the interface that works best for him. A slideshow, which gives him detail at the expense of crawling by slowly? A panning camera, giving a 360 degree view when it's finished turning? A comic book page, panels organized in a sequential fashion but with information bleeding between them...

Comic book is the one likeliest to bring out a strong emotional reaction from him, which is one point in its favor.

When admiring the city loses some of its allure, Dottie taxis back to the hotel. While there, he reads up on climate change research on Eclipse's Earth. And then eventually, when he thinks Isabella will be done work in an hour:

How do you feel about dinner and Gift tonight?

Sounds good! I'm feeling Italian?

Sure. I'd love to be able to say something like 'We don't have Italian' and keep up our fun multiversal banter, but I'm familiar with breadsticks.

Place I'm thinking of stuffs an artichoke like nobody's business.

Sounds delicious. Any other recommendations?

Tiramisu!

Tiramisu, stuffed artichokes, and breadsticks. See you then!

And assuming that Isabella will continue to quietly arrange things in the background, between her actual work tasks, Dottie proceeds to surf the web until dinner.

Isabella fetches him after work and leads him to her Italian place. She gets an order of mussels in garlic sauce and a stuffed artichoke and chicken parm and tiramisu.

Dottie orders a panini, stuffed artichoke, and tiramisu.

He waits a respectful amount of time for Isabella to get cracking with her stereotypical eclipsed appetite before giving her a summary of how things went at the lawyer, excepting the discussion of extradition.

"I should probably feel bad about trademarking the names, but I'm not passing up an opportunity like this. The job market was going to be a real bear to navigate."

"I don't think a trademark is that bad. You're not saying you'll fine anyone who uses the word, it's just if anybody else tries to market a magical service under the same name you can be like 'hey get off my turf'. I guess other people from your world might be annoyed. You could sell them the trademarks and retire."

"The rest of the chants all go by two names. The public will eat up 'Triumph' and 'Envy' and no one else will stand a chance against me. Soon, my evil plan will come to fruition. Mwa. Haha. Ha.

How are the mussels?"

"Garlicky. Want some?"

"Sure, I'm game."

Garlicky mussels are appreciated.

"There are some interesting applications of Quell with food, if we ever work out the kinks. You can save a lot on ingredients that add flavor. It's not the highest impact thing for everyone, but you can make huge strides with certain people, getting them to eat otherwise bland food. Do you think they could use that to find new angles on anything here?"