She lands on a wide boardwalk amid skyscrapers. There doesn't seem to be anywhere for vehicles to run, just a wide street with a few stalls set up at the base of the skyscrapers. That over there is probably a bar, that's probably a movie theatre, that is a hot dog stand and the stall next to it appears to be selling cheap jewellery, mostly garnets in dark steel. 

Almost everyone has horns. Some people have wings. Her sudden appearance gets a couple swears and a "watch where you're 'porting!" from a nearby passerby. Over there there's a man leading a non-horned woman on a leash. 

There's big advertisement billboards on the sides of the buildings. "Splattercorp 2 - Bloodier and Gorier", "Refined. Exclusive. Excruciating. The new Sanguine Ruby minter from OTC.", "Rejuvicare Medical - Regeneration from 499 OTC." 

"Definitely a developed world." she muses quietly. Before she goes anywhere she does a passive check for radio signals. Do they have any unencrypted radio channels?

"- and I'm just saying the Houses are still around, right, they didn't go away just because of the war -" 

Music full of guitars and synthesizers and growling/screaming. A half-dozen channels of that. 

A channel in another language: "- looking for more Drow entertainment you can try the dark district near Motherload, the Magpie and Raven clubs there give everyone a chance -"

"- 106 Flame FM for all the latest in OTC news -" 

There must be at least 50 channels. 

Definitely a developed world. She'll walk along the boardwalk for a while, she might be a bit of a misfit because of her large backpack but if nobody objects to her presence she has no urgent need to go into any stores.

She passes another two couples (?) wearing leashes in public. One of them is a woman leading a man, the other is a woman leading another woman. Collars and necklaces without leashes are a common fashion statement as well, particularly two types of necklace - one made of black thorns, the other with a single pure blue gem mounted in silver. The silver one seems higher-status?

The theatre is advertising "Fire in my Bones", "Fall of the House of Shariva", and "Red" on the side of the marquee she can see. She can spot another human like herself, wearing a rather skimpy outfit and trailing along behind a horned and winged woman. She has a visible tattoo of some kind of rune on her upper right shoulder. She's seen a lot of tattoos in the crowd, of flowers and skulls and pentacles. 

Down the street she can see a train track on stilts above the crossing avenue; a bullet train whips by as she watches. There are a lot of balconies and crossing bridges on the buildings above her, and winged people are darting back and forth or hovering above the street. 

There's a fast food store, a souvenir shop (the theme runs to runes, flames and whips), a public art piece of some kind of metal horse with spikes on, a restaurant with a patio outside where people are sitting and talking. One of them, in a business suit, is sitting alone and talking on a smartphone. Her wings flare out behind her around the narrow chairback - it seems to be designed for people with wings like her. 

There's a fashion store with skimpy outfits ("Dutiful Heart"), right next to a similar chain selling more conservative outfits ("House of Valerian") and what's maybe a tattoo and piercing parlor ("Sharps").

She wonders any of these tattoos or collars are magic. She restrains herself from active magical scans for the moment but opens up a passive magical sense. Is anything radiating magic for lack of a better word? Or are there ambient magical fields?

Almost all the horned people and all of the winged people are radiating some degree of magic. It seems to be inherent, though some of them are stronger than others. Most of the tattoos aren't radiating any magic but the rune on the human woman is bright to her senses, definitely designed to be seen. There are trace emissions from some of the collars and necklaces, though none of them seem to be in use right now. Oh wait a second, that one - one of the black thorned ones -  is pulsing gently. It doesn't seem to be doing anything obvious though. 

There's an ambient magical field around the train tracks down the street.

Inherently magical species it seems. Nothing that seems to be trying to do anything to her. Probably for the best to refrain from active scans, someone might notice. She'll keep walking for the moment. She's looking for some sort of posted map, a library, a bookstore or a computer cafe if they have any of those things. If she can't see any of those for a while she'll give in and ask for directions.

There's an internet cafe another three blocks down, and a small bookstore across the way from it.

That was fairly fast. Bookstore first. Hopefully they don't have rules against backpacks.

Nobody bothers her. 

The bookshop is broken into fiction and non-fiction sections. The fiction section is further broken down into graphic novels, Cthonic fiction, and otherworld fiction. The non-fiction section breaks down into biographies, histories, cookbooks, and artbooks (including poetry.) 

History is definitely the priority. Is there anything that looks like an intro textbook?

Nothing that immediately grabs her eye, no. 

The shelf holds: "House Acadia: Past and Present"; "Contact: A History of the Namer's War", "The Little People: Non-Demons after the Namer's War", "Sword of Shinrai: A Memoir of the Namer's War", "We Had Their Names, They Had Their Gods", "Takkarash: A History of Cthonic Minting", "Whipless", "Houses In Unrest", "Shinrai's Conquest". 

She starts with "Contact: A History of the Namer's War" That sounds like it might be evidence of a cross realm war which is super concerning.

The table of contents reads:

1: An Introduction by Professor Maxim Electra

3: Contact

29: Shinrai's Response

51: The Theft of a Name

85: More Than We Could Chew

119: Thorn's Escape

152: Insurgency

169: Open War

195: The Gods Come Down

225: In The Rubble

248: A New System

289: Gentle Masters

From some quick skimming, it becomes clear that Cthonica made contact with an out-realm polity (the Oifilei Trade Consortium or "OTC"), attempted to hijack it with name magic, and were defeated and forced to give up many of their cultural institutions, among them slavery. 

And apparently they now use OTC currency. A war of retribution seems justified on the surface but history does tend to be written by the victors. She's in favor of banning slavery though so that's a promising sign. What other cultural institutions?

Apparently everyone here is a sadist, and as a result torture (both recreational and as a punishment) used to be commonplace. Recreational torture is mildly suppressed (consent is required now) and corporal punishment has been largely phased out. Non-demons and half-demons now nominally have the same rights as demons. The old nobility was largely destroyed in the war and the Houses that exist now are more mercantile and new-money, closer to the OTC's corporation model. Name magic is all but illegal now and remembering the truename of someone who has not consented to give it to you is a crime. 

Is there any background on what a truename is? If she should avoid giving out her name that's something she urgently needs to know.

Skimming the last few chapters turns up the following: Truenames are unique to each person and come in the form "adjective-adjective-noun", eg. "Quiet Trembling Breath." Everyone instinctually knows their own truename and can be compelled to produce it through certain magics. (Doing so is usually a crime.) If a demon or tiefling knows someone's truename they can issue magically-enforced orders to that person just by thinking it. Truename slavery used to be widespread but has been largely wiped out. 

Did she suddenly grow a truename... that's going to be awkward. She runs an inwardly focused scan on her own soul. Did anything of note change since the last time she did this while preparing to take this trip?

Nothing about her soul seems to have changed. However, there's clearly documented cases of people from other realms having truenames. That's how the whole Namer's War started.

If she tries to summon her truename does it come to her?

Bright-Glittering-Waters.

Well... that needs to be reported. She skim scans the entire book into memory and transmits it back to Crescent with a note that she apparently has one of these truenames. She also attaches the content of the new soulscan for comparison maybe there's something subtle she missed.

And now she's going to look for a book which might indicate how the OTC protected themselves against this assuming this one doesn't... maybe it does.

In "The Gods Come Down" - It would appear that the OTC revised the local realm to do a one-time removal of all memories of truenames, in the end, using the abilities of a woman named Aura, colloquially known as the "Sleeping Goddess". She is described as being able to treat reality as her lucid dream. 

Well that's terrifying, they have a clearly sapient being as powerful as the heart that takes requests. She already sent the book at high priority so people will know soon enough.

A couple minutes later she gets a message.

Local emergency committee convened. Truenames appear to already be present in localspace. Anti-soul countermeasures are functional. Tentative decision is to proceed with exploration.

New priorities:

At all costs don't initiate hostilities with OTC

Gather information on OTC

Well, it looks like she's here to stay. She could bail and they'd send someone else. Everything is volunteer but that isn't the sort of person she is.

She looks for more books that talk about the OTC, is there anything that looks like it says more about their gods?

There aren't very many books about the OTC directly, but over in the artbook section there's a big splashy picture book of "The Worlds of the Consortium". It's pretty thin. The table of contents says:

1: Trade Worlds
    2: Arcbright
    8: Cthonica
    14: Valimer
15: Tourist Worlds
    16: Sensefest
    22: The Rose Bowers
28: Manufacture Worlds
    30: Seria
    36: Theta
    42: Lifewell
48: Half-Tamed Worlds
    50: Heresy
    56: Skanthivus
62: Oifilei

That seems worth looking at. She scans it and sends it back. Then she goes looking for a map of this world if they have one.

She's able to find a historical atlas comparing pre-OTC and post-OTC Cthonia.

Cthonia is an arid planet, so settlements clustered historically around limited water sources, but now that the OTC's come in there's been a bout of terraforming and also a certain amount of immigration. The planet is about the size of Mars. There are five major oceans with settlements all around their rims and on their islands. The deserts were recently colonized and parkscaped with the help of teleportation logistics, so most of the planet is inhabited now. The borders are a mess; there are a lot of independent cities doing their own thing under the "federal" rule of the OTC. She's in one of the largest and oldest cities on the planet, Shinrai's Breath, usually shortened to Breath. It's on the coast and surrounded by satellite cities of its own.

That's useful context. Does the Atlas have modern-ish maps for the city? She'd like to find a large library if it does.

There's a map of the city in it, with a public library marked. If she checks the streetsigns outside she can find her position - it'll be a bit of a long walk but a doable one, twenty blocks or so.

Thankfully she optimized her biology years ago. Twenty blocks is easy. While walking she keeps an eye out for any businesses without clear analogs.

There is an import shop with OTC branding ten blocks down the road!

Risk vs reward. Risk vs reward.

If they wanted someone extremely cautious they would have given her more specific priorities and rescinded the priority to establish diplomatic contact.

The books don't make it seem like OTC is inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.

She goes inside.

There's a human woman standing at the desk inside. "Hello, welcome to the OTC! How can I help you today? Imports? Travel? We have almost everything."

"I don't have local currency... I expect that's an obstacle to purchasing anything so I'm mostly browsing."

"I can provide you a minter for free if you're interested in spending from your personal stores. Dyne? Takkarash? Neither? I have a tablet here with a pricing catalog."

"A catalog sounds good." She accepts the tablet both reading it herself and scanning it for transmission. "I take it that these are current exchange rates between the currencies? Also, for Dyne if I'm understanding correctly someone for whom a night's sleep lets them work for two days would lose more working time than someone for whom sleep only sustains them for one day?"

"Yes, you have that right. And yes, those are the current exchange rates - except you should know that Izikiel is deprecated and currently being rebought by the OTC for twice its face value in credits. The effect has proven too subjective in practice."

"That seems like it's probably for the best. Destroying people isn't something I would generally expect societies to encourage."

"No comment, sorry. I'm on the clock. Anything else catch your eye?"

"Nothing in particular is jumping out at me. I'm more in the market for information than items and I'm not sure if it's just the labelled items that would react poorly to analysis."

"Just the labelled ones. And we do sell information, here. What are you in the market to buy? I can quote you prices."

"I'd be interested in a history of the OTC if that's available. Also any general primers on what kinds of magic exist. I'm not sure if I'd be better off going to the library though."

"You'd probably get a better deal from the library, sorry to say."

"That's why they exist. It's good to know that this city has a good one. I think I'll go check it out, I might be back later depending."

"See you!"

And she's off on her way to the library.

She crosses a few roads full of car traffic and into a large  public park full of ferns and conifers. The library is in the center.

The tiefling at the desk waves at her when she comes in. "Hello! Need help finding anything?"

"Yes please, I'm looking for a history of the OTC and a general primer on what magic exists."

"History section's in the back left, I reccommend Robinson's "A History of Many Worlds"; Magical Theory is on the right, for an introductory overview I recommend Marquia's "Finding Your Path". Do you have a library card?"

"I'm new in the area, what are the requirements for getting one?"

"Just a calling and an address - calling to distinguish from truename, I mean, you look like you might be an offworlder. Do you have an address yet or no? You can read as much as you want without one, you just need one to take out books."

"I don't have an address no, I'll stick to reading for the moment. Do you often get offworlders around here?"

"We're one of the major cities, we get offworld tourists. Here to gawk at the blood and tats and then go back someplace that less offends their delicate sensibilities. Sorry, did I just say that out loud?"

"Every place I've visited has things to teach."

"And I'm glad you're looking for them in my library!"

"I'm gonna go read now but maybe we can talk more later. I hope you have a nice day." Being in a library is comfortable, it's not exactly like a library back home but all libraries have some commonalities.

A History of Many Worlds covers the founding of the company as a merchant venture from the then-small world of Oifilei; how it gathered godly backing and immortality from the world of Lifewell, where anti-aging magic erupts from deep in the planet's core; how Theta and Seria brought advanced technologies and magics into the company's wheelhouse, and three of the remaining Directors; how the first Trade world was established with the help of Arcbright's native goddess, Aura; the expansion of Oifilei over the years into an industrial and bureaucratic juggernaut; the Namer's War with Cthonia; the exploration of hundreds or thousands of Half-Tamed worlds; the discovery of Heresy, and the resulting Thousand Years' War, still ongoing, as the OTC attempts to salvage the entire plane from its ongoing massive humanitarian crisis. Evil gods and also galactic scale seem to be to blame.

Finding Your Path covers thirty different magical traditions ranging from artificery to persona magic and discusses what qualities are necessary for each.

The ongoing war is concerning. Is there an indication that it's spreading or is it confined to Heresy? What exactly are Half-Tamed worlds?

As for the magic, how many of the traditions are heritable vs being something a significant part of the population can learn? Starlight mostly hasn't found useful magic that isn't dependent on the Heart or confined to particular heritable traits.

The war is confined to Heresy and has been for the last several centuries. 

Half-Tamed worlds are - worlds the OTC has contacted and made mercantile ties with but not yet fully absorbed, terraformed and upgraded to a full Trade world. There are 126 Trade worlds and 1,539 Half-Tamed worlds. 

There are no less than 17 magics in this book which can be learned by putatively anyone.

Are there introductory exercises in the book for those seventeen? She shouldn't actually experiment with unknown magics without a spotter but knowing the exercises is something she'll want to lookup at some point anyway. Just to be through.

There are! Many of them seem to start with esoteric variants on meditation. A few are more concrete, involving gathering reagents or inscribing runes.

She carefully commits them to memory. And also scans them of course. And then she takes a step back. The assumption that every world will be assimilated into OTC is a concerning one and she packages up another report with the scans of the history book and the magic book. While she waits for a reply she looks for a runic dictionary. Rune magic seems at the surface similar enough to magecrafting that it's intriguing.

There's a runic dictionary right over here with two hundred of the most common glyphs arranged by stroke count. It goes all the way up to fifteen strokes. All of the meanings are unique and precise. There's an example working in the introduction that composes some of the earlier runes into short phrases - when inscribed precisely into a circle, this should produce a floating sphere of pure white light.

So rune magic works without being activated by a person. That's fascinating. If that scales that's going to change a lot.

While she's contemplating that another message comes in.

This assignment is now marked as extreme risk. As always further participation is voluntary.

Diplomatic contact is not advised at this time. Prioritize any public information on inter-realm travel methods. Prioritize information of how much control the OTC exercises over trade worlds.

She considers leaving this to someone else but again decides against it. It's possible that even messages are reinforcing the link between realms and if Starlight decides to quarantine itself she doesn't want Crescent ending up on the OTC side of the quarantine.

She steels herself and goes looking for the information that she was asked to.

In the travel section there's brochures on interworld tourism. It's apparently possible to teleport to other worlds through OTC-controlled Transit Centers located in major cities on all Trade Worlds and in wherever-the-OTC-has-a-foothold in Half-Tamed worlds. There are some simple searches at the transit sites to ensure you're not carrying prohibited materials to worlds that bar them, but otherwise travel is very free; reading between the lines a bit, it seems like free movement of people and goods between worlds is one of the things the OTC enforced on Cthonia when they conquered the place. 

Cthonia is a Trade World, but it has a non-OTC planetary government called the Seat of Shinrai that manages everything the OTC doesn't. It seems the rules imposed from on high are quite simple - no slavery, exit rights for everyone, otherwise the plane can fend for itself. It seems to be the case that Arcbright and Valimer are treated similarly, with independent world governments and the OTC managing interworld trade and transit. Nobody pays taxes to the OTC - it is a company, it makes a profit by selling things that are common in some worlds within the greater Consortium to worlds where they are rare or nonexistent. This mostly means magic and high technology, though agelessness is a common leader that it uses to convince half-tamed worlds to accept the OTC's presence. It does not attempt to administrate any of the Half-Tamed worlds, instead apparently trusting the effects of the goods it sells and its cultural presence to eventually convince the world to willingly come under the OTC's control. The attitude is very much "We'll wait and they'll come around."

That is... a lot less bad than it could be. It's still an attempt to impose a foreign economy but that is potentially something that Starlight can survive. Of course she's reading this on a world conquered by the OTC so everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt. She dutifully scans the relevant works and send them off.

And then she takes some time to think. OTC could probably do whatever it wants to them if it becomes aware of them. The real question is what it wants and how with the level of power it has there's anything meaningful to exchange. How does it make sense that stepping on 2000 legos is equated to an AK-47... why is an AK-47 even a useful thing to offer to people when you have runic magic. It feels like she's missing something really important.

She goes back to see if the librarian is still there.

She is! 

"Hey there, find what you were looking for?"

"I did and I didn't... I'm trying to understand what the OTC's goals are and failing. Do you know if there's books about that or do you personally have thoughts on it?"

"The Project, by Directors Grey and Sunaira, is the best source for that. To summarize - the OTC is trying to terraform the multiverse."

"I'll have to read that then. Do you mean culturally terraform?"

"I mean literally terraform. They spend most of their profits finding new worlds to put displaced refugees from places like Heresy and Skanthivus. What they don't spend on that they invest in magical and technological research. And obviously everyone with the company gets a proper immortality contract."

"That... is not the answer I was expecting. How many refugees are they needing to resettle? Also where can I find the book you mentioned is it in the history section again?"

"Trillions. Heresy is enormous, there's an entire inhabited galaxy there and it's all unfit for long-term life. And for every five decent places the OTC turns up there's another Skanthivus. The Project is in the biography section, actually. Right side near the front."

"Thanks," She goes to find the mentioned book. She also reviews what was in that picture book about Skanthivus.

The Project proves to be a plain, no-nonsense explanation of what the OTC has done in the past five hundred years, as narrated by two of the five reigning Directors, the immortals responsible for the OTC's current path. Director Grey, head of a cabal of forks of herself that composes about 25% of the OTC's total workforce, narrates in terms of strategic and business sense about the necessity of retaining key employees and therefore the sense of offering them good rates on immortality. Director Sunaira, a love goddess originating from Lifewell, speaks more about the humanitarian goals of the OTC, such as ending slavery and ensuring agelessness and proper medical care reach as many people as possible. Against them is pit the warlike Director Black, an ancient dragon who merely seeks to gather as much wealth as possible through any method possible, even unsavoury ones such as the sale of drugs and weapons. Neutral in this conflict are Director ELURIA, a sentient machine who wants to invest heavily in future research, and Director Saivon, the youngest of the board and the most interested in expansion into other worlds. 

The picture book describes Skanthivus as a cursed world where many predatory species stalk the native humans and additionally all magic is subject to a form of backlash called Paradox. It is considered not sustainably habitable by the OTC, but penetrating the backlash barrier with interworld transit has not been easy and the first true evacuation only began twenty years ago.

It's a bit like looking in a funhouse mirror. Aside from this Director Black the OTC's priorities seem at least compatible with Starlight's. The idea of framing it as a corporation still seems rather strange though. She scans and sends the book then tries to find some sort of book on terraforming. With the physics she knows terraforming shouldn't be an efficient way to create new habitable land but maybe OTC has a cheat of some sort.

The OTC cheats so hard. Mostly this comes down to a very strong magitechnology base, but the goddesses they have in their pocket have been known to turn airless rocks of the right size into earthlike worlds when they have spare time. 

Well that would do it wouldn't it. At this point there are two real questions:
1: Is the OTC learning of Starlight inevitable... and from a very cursory gloss that seems likely but not guaranteed to be the case.

2: Will the OTC change Starlight to a degree that it isn't recognizably the same. That's much less clear. Change isn't necessarily bad but the OTC at least on the surface gives a very strong impression of scarcity.

And now she's off to find a book on economics. What supports if any are available on OTC worlds? Is it standardized across worlds to any degree or is it all up to local governments.

It is all up to local governments! The OTC does not care very much if it crashes economies in the transition period, it's very much playing the long game.

Far away in a fairly generic conference room the emergency committee is meeting.

"This is a mess. Do we really have to allow it to go on? We have quarantine procedures for a reason."

"There's still a lot we have to learn even without making contact. I recommend allowing Ms. Clearsky to use an array to digitize the entire library she's in. As is we've only have a few books and it's easier to find things that are hidden with more sources."

"And the fact that it would expand our libraries and potentially give us information about novel phenomena has nothing to do with it."

"Learn all there is to learn."

"The precepts aren't inviolate principles. I think Alethia is perhaps being too paranoid but this is a circumstance that warrants caution. If this OTC wishes to conquer us it is likely they can unless the Heart wakes up."

"We have no proof that the Heart can wake up and no evidence that it would be good for us if it did."

"It would be exciting but perhaps not the sort we want right now."

"If we can take the books and the librarian at face value then they're spending a lot of resources on evacuating people from bad situations. That's something we would be doing too if we had encountered the same worlds."

"That's the crux of all our concerns. Can we trust the sources we have when they admit to having high-tier reality and mind altering magics."

"That's one concern but another is whether our quarantine procedures would even work. They were designed to contain civilizations and entities limited to a single realm. OTC is almost certainly not lying about being a trans-realm expansionist power."

"I've been tracing their trans-realm links using the Heart's analysis tools. They look pretty similar to ours. Quarantine isn't an option, not indefinitely. In most cases we might still be ok but they appear to have some form of faster-than-light travel and we can't realistically secure ourselves from that without faster-than-light travel of our own."

"I hope you were just using passive tools. But if quarantine is off the table then it's off the table. Fighting a delaying action would likely convince them we had something to hide and bring increased scrutiny."

"I'll go. It's my responsibility as the horizon chair for foreign affairs."

"In that body or your adult one?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"What about my digitization proposal?"

"Clearsky should do an active scan for magics first. If there's any sort of copy protection magics I don't want us triggering them but more information would be good. I'm in favor as Horizon chair for Exploration."

"I'll accede to that modified plan on behalf of long-term planning."

"The library is open to anyone. We can offer compensation to the publishers later if necessary."

"That's an acceptable modification to the plan."

"There's going to be a lot of work for the research teams. The books will help. I agree on behalf of research."

"I just hope we're making the right choice."

"Caroline, can you accelerate your teams and determine their cultural norms around apparent age once we get the scans? I'll make my choice based on that and transpose to meet Clearsky in the park the map said was nearby."

"I assume nobody objects to me using discretionary resources for this?" She waits a moment and when there are no objections, "It'll be our highest priority," she agrees.

A minute later and back in the library Riley receives the new plan and smiles. Finally a chance to actually flex her magic instead of keeping the lowest possible profile. She releases several scanning effects to search for magic in the library.

There are simple preservation effects on all of the books, and a few are inherently magical due to containing runes or suchlike, but there's no visible DRM.

Slurp. Information floods her mind, channeled through her implants and queued for compression and transmission through the pairstone.

Once it's received, Caroline and the others working in the archives dig in. Is there any indication about whether OTC would respect someone wearing a young body more or less than someone wearing a more mature one?

Full morphological freedom - including such bodies as eye-and-wheel angels and floating cubes - is a luxury good in the OTC, achievable at about the same cost as an average immortality insurance policy. (Agelessness is standard, and medical care is magical and highly effective - immortality policies protect largely against accidental death.) It costs an order of magnitude less (about as much as commissioning a fork of oneself) to get something that's humanoid and doesn't come with major inherent magical powers. This is achievable for most individuals but very expensive. (It's a bit like a car payment or medical insurance policy in a 2000-Earth world.) 

Different worlds come down differently on the subject of neotenic morphs in specific. Arcbright and Cthonia allow them, Valimer bans them. Trade worlds are more likely to allow neotenic morphs than Half-Tamed worlds. (About two-thirds of Trade worlds allow them, while only about a quarter of Half-Tamed worlds allow them.) In the worlds that allow them they are largely considered to be a personal choice on the part of the person wearing the body and it's impolite to ask "why are you a neotenic" or similar. 

It seems that diplomacy would be better served by wearing a more mature form then.

In the meantime, Riley walks to the park and tries to find somewhere at least a little discrete. She stops to give a thank you and a goodbye to the nice helpful librarian.

"See you around!" 

There's a small glade that looks like it's specifically set aside for spell meditation. There's a privacy-screen device at the path in that will allow her to reserve the space for up to a half hour.

That seems ideal. She reserves the space.

"Hello Clearsky."

"Are you here as an envoy or chair for foreign relations?"

"Both, I enjoy working as an envoy but this is higher stakes than normal."

"Yeah, I feel the same way as an explorer. Are we headed straight back to the OTC office or are we exploring some more first?"

"I want to get a better sense for this place. Figure out whether people are happy, maybe see if there's more signs of the changes that had to have come even if it's been a while."

"I thought you'd say that. People watching it is." Riley takes down the privacy barrier and relinquishes the time slot if that's a thing then they pick a random direction and go.

A demon pair who appear to be brother and sister are sitting on a bench and talking. Across from them in the field, a pair of winged demons are playing flying-frisbee-with-drones, while a tiefling woman and a pair of human men (all wearing collars) look on and cheer. There are other small meditation groves screened off from the rest of the park; a black-skinned woman with pointy ears is stepping out from one, carrying a small stack of books that emanates magic under passive scan. 

The library is quite clearly visible. It looks like mostly stonework, but there's a tall dome on top made of stained glass inlaid into a web of black material. It looks newer than the rest of the building. 

"People seem happy here. Including the natives."

Riley nods and they continue walking. Did the maps have any areas that seem like they might be less prosperous?

It's not exactly marked on the maps, but the histories and biographies they have on file can direct them to the nearby apartment blocks where the servant classes have historically lived. 

As they approach, the proportion of demons drops and the number of teiflings and humans they encounter on the street increases. There are also definitely more men here. Most of them are wearing the black, thorned necklaces, which the books they have on file say are takkarash minters - they induce pain, which is used to power sacrificial magics elsewhere in the OTC. The general attitude seems to be "stressed but coping"; people are walking fast, or else looking at their devices. There's a tiefling man leaning against a building smoking something that smells peppery and sweet. 

The buildings are visibly older, small apartments all pressed together. There's also a gate that stands in front of a small garden plot, and as they watch a human woman turns a key in the gate, steps through with a flash of magic, and vanishes. There's some graffiti, mostly of claim-runes but they also pass a large mural of a tattooed back with a brand in the shape of pursed lips. 

Siobhán switches to encrypted radio. "It's about what I would expect and given this was historically a servant's area it was likely worse before the war. Not as nice as areas we run but maybe a bit better than most Earth analogs. I think I can work with this."

"Back to the office then?"

"Back to the office." They turn around and start their walk.

They pass demons and drow and humans, all occupied with their own business. The shop bell dings as they step in the door.

The clerk at the desk looks up, and notices Riley. "Ah, it's you again. Change your mind on buying something?"

"Not exactly, we're from a realm with no contact with the OTC are you a good person to talk to?"

"- I'm not the person to talk to but I can get you a meeting room and an exec within ten minutes. Come back behind the desk here, meeting rooms are on the left."

"That sounds ideal." They go where directed.

The clerk ushers them into a small meeting room.

"Would you like tea or coffee while you wait? It shouldn't be long."

"No, thank you."

Riley shakes her head.

"Alright then. I need to mind the shop but I'll show in the executive when they come."

And she leaves them alone. 

They wait silently.

And eventually an androgynous woman wearing an immaculately tailored suit knocks on the doorway. 

"May I come in?"

"Of course. Thank you for being so prompt."

"It's rare that other worlds make contact with us before we make contact with them. When they do, it usually means we'll do something great together. I'm Morning-Glory, Executive for Discovery, First Contact Management, Universal level. It's my duty to treat with the high representatives of newly contacted worlds. And you two are?" 

"I'm Siobhán Ionbhá Envoy for Starlight and this is Riley Clearsky Explorer for the same."

"To be clear, what territory does Starlight administrate?"

"Our primary holdings are in a solar system in each of two realms, we also claim a demi-realm there's another seven realms with polities we're in the process of integrating. We have outposts in a further hundred and fifteen inhabited realms and two hundred and six with no known inhabitants."

Morning-Glory's eyebrows rise. She looks at her smartwatch and taps an icon. "Verify."

A green checkmark comes up on her watch. 

She flicks away the app, brings up a phone. Taps a red button, and selects from a short checklist.

There's a muted flash of red light from out in the hallway, and a woman with rich red hair steps into the room. She's wearing a perfectly tailored suit, just like Morning-Glory's, and carries herself with an air of utter confidence. 

"Executive Morning-Glory is not authorized to treat at the multiversal level. I am Director Grey, and I speak for the OTC as Chairwoman of the Directorate. It may take up to three days to convene a full meeting of the Directors regarding this First Contact but I am available to you now." 

She sits down at the table. "Executive Morning-Glory, please take minutes for the meeting."

"Yes, Director."

"I admit I wasn't expecting one of the directors to get involved so quickly. Thank you for taking the time to meet with us."

"This is the first time we've been contacted by another multiversal sovereignty. Naturally I made time. Tell me, what do you know so far about us?"

"I read 'The Project' our archive teams have also read a large number of historical texts from this city's central library and the basic catalog provided by your employee at this location. Your goals seem broadly aligned with ours, save Director Black's obsession with profit, though your methods seem strange."

"Historical accident, mostly. The two-tiered economy brings deity-level talents to the OTC's attention and grants the ability to meaningfully trade services among that elite while providing a hands-off framework for bringing OTC standards of living to the planes. Director Sunaira would call it a humanitarian project - I call it good business."

She steeples her hands. "What would you say your diplomatic goals are for this meeting?"

"Our primary goal is to retain independence. It seems that your organization has the ability to force the issue if you chose to. Beyond that we would be interested in a broader exchange of knowledge and possibly to offer some assistance in building places for refugees to resettle given that seems to be one of your pressing concerns."

"So long as your sovereignty is not slaveholding we are content to allow you to do what you like. If you are slaveholding we will take the necessary steps to end that, preferably peaceably. We would like to negotiate for the ability to open OTC branch stores within your territory and to terraform uninhabitable territory in your worlds to house refugees, but if for whatever reason you would like to refuse either of these we will accede to your desires. We would greatly appreciate knowledge exchange and humanitarian aid."

"No areas we're politically in charge of have slavery that we're aware of, I think there is some amount of it on some of the worlds we have outposts on. We don't single out slavery in particular among abuses against sentients and in general a more gradual approach is our preference. We have concerns about allowing OTC stores in our territory though we don't have the authority to prevent you from making the offer to other polities in our sphere of influence."

"The OTC sees its goal as allowing the full flourishing of the autonomy of all sentient beings. As such, Director Sunaira has pushed very strongly that we not allow slavery to continue within our sphere of influence. It is theft of time, and time is our central and most valued currency." 

She smiles. "That's the company policy, but we prefer softer methods. Applying diplomatic pressure is common, leading to 50-year phaseouts or similar compromises, preserving the company's bright line stance while preventing casualties from war."

"What concerns would you have about opening OTC stores in your territory?"

"Primarily the economic implications, we're a functionally post scarcity economy and it's not clear how that would interact with the introduction of additional currencies. There's also some concern about you selling weapons that might make it easier for people to do permanent damage to each other without coming to the notice of our emergency services, though given that some of your magics work with knowledge alone we'll need to face that regardless."

Director Grey makes a cutting motion with her hand. "The exact content of the stores is relatively unimportant, we will happily ban any items you wish us not to sell. How does your post-scarcity economy function for things such as concert tickets and rare magical services?"

"Most concerts popular enough that they are likely to be sold out either use lotteries or a first come first-served system depending on the preferences of the artists. Rare magical services are generally at the discretion of those who have the ability to offer them. People can post requests and magic users fulfill the ones that interest them. Practically speaking magic is only critical for research work and instantiating new resonator factories. Magic is otherwise mostly a novelty. Perhaps that will change with the introduction of so many new types."

"I see. This does produce some natural concerns about free trade and immigration between our two polities. Do you have any proposed solutions? We would like to negotiate for open borders."

"Our current infrastructure is scaled to support up to 200 billion people which is four times our current population. About half of that is currently allocated towards providing humanitarian aid to other polities in our sphere of influence while a the remaining quarter is focused towards infrastructure upgrades and various non-critical projects at the discretion of the Assembly. I can't predict exactly what the Assembly will do when they next meet in full session but I expect they will be reexamining priorities. We have budgeted for immigration of about 100 million per year on average based on historical trends and adding a generous allowance on top of that. Though we have refugee facilities built to house up to two billion people on short notice."

"I see. Well, there's no need to be hasty. You seem to be getting along quite well on your own."

"I like to think so. On our last census people 81% of people rated themselves as very satisfied with life and only 6% rated themselves as very dissatisfied."

"Impressive! Our figures aren't quite so good. Depends on what you're optimizing for, of course, but..." She shrugs. "The people being as happy as possible is a worthy goal."

"Satisfaction and happiness aren't quite the same but that's a quibble. It's certainly something I'm quite proud of, though I can't take any significant credit."

"What are your figures for mortality?"

"Last year forty-four thousand two hundred and sixteen people died. Mostly from people with religious or philosophical objections to mind backups though there were a few murders and accidents."

" - what's your average price for -"

She pauses. "That's of your own people, yes? You're not counting contacted civilizations and you have - seven Trade equivalents, a hundred Half-Tamed worlds - your population is on the order of a hundred billion?"

"Yes, our fully integrated population is about 50 billion the polities we're in the process of integrating amount to another 75 billion. Among the inhabited realms where we have contact but no major holdings it's considerably more I think the last estimate was on the order of two trillion people all told, about half of that is in a realm with faster than light travel."

"We have about 6 trillion on trade worlds, a further trillion in outposts on contacted worlds, and then Oifilei accounts for another trillion by itself. Contacted... putting aside Heresy, which at last estimate has a human population in the sextillions, we have contact with another nine trillion. Including refugee worlds from Heresy, another... let me see here, we've evacuated 17,432 star systems as of last count, Heresy crushes people to a trillion a planet, estimate ten planets per star system... one hundred seventy four quadrillion. Of all of those, only about six trillion have access to an immortality policy. We've made agelessness standard - only people who don't want it or haven't made solid contact with the OTC don't have it, which amounts to about five trillion without it, mostly on Half-Tamed worlds again excluding Heresy, the depth of which's humanitarian disaster is - almost literally beyond reckoning. Inconsistent physics."

"The situation in heresy sounds extremely concerning and at a scope we're not currently able to help with meaningfully in a hands on sense. It's possible we have knowledge which could be helpful but that's hard to assess. If you have any documentation on the problem we assign researchers and archivists to see if there's anything they can think of. The assembly might vote to put our crash build plans into effect but that would be such a major change that I can't really speculate on how the politics of that would work out. Currently projections are that we could sustainably house about a hundred trillion people in a median solar system with our current magic and technology but our current infrastructure doubling time is estimated at ten years under crash build conditions and wide scale use of self-replicating machinery carries its own risks."

"We are most concerned with finding the wild talents in your population at this time - we have access to enough magic systems with variable enough scope that it's likely that in a non-Heresy population of fifty billion we'll find about ten deity-level talents. Each one would have power sufficient to fully evacuate a star system within a reasonable timeframe - a hundred trillion people each, and continuing from there."

"If there are such individuals among our population we haven't detected them, one individual having that amount of personal power is... unsettling. We use the Heart to tune realm bridges and restrain some magics and exotic physics from spreading. I expect you could bypass our protections but we'd prefer you didn't."

"I see." 

Director Grey taps her thumbs together. 

"What is your policy on sharing your immortality technologies?"

"We share them pretty freely, though we mostly distribute the magic based version because distributing advanced nanotechnology without oversight is a recipe for disaster. We also tend to deploy some spies to ensure that others aren't editing stored minds without their consent. A bit like your own crackdown on slavery I expect."

"We would make a point of crediting your state account with us the value of such advances, which I expect is more than enough to cover any knowledge or technology base you might want from us."

"What do mean by advances in this context? Our nanotech based immortality is something that could be shared as data but our magic based immortality relies on magical objects that we manufacture en mass but aren't really something I think people without our primary magic system could make."

"We're confident that if you give us access to a functioning example of your immortality tech - magical or technological - we'll be able to replicate it to some degree."

"Alright, I think that's something we offer as a show of good faith." She turns, "Riley?"

"It'll take me about five minutes. I'll be salvaging one of my dodecs though. Assuming it's alright for me to do magic here?"

"Let me just get a sign-off with Security..." 

She taps her watch. Green checkmark.

"Alright, we're set up to catch now. Morning-Glory will receive your sample on my behalf."

She nods sharply.

Riley taps her staff once and a small disk detaches from midway down and hovers onto the table. Extremely intricate symbols begin writing themselves into the surface before Riley sets down the hand not holding her staff to cover it. Simultaneously her backpack opens and a metallic dodecahedron about ten centimeters on a side hovers out. The it comes apart. The metal panels from the exterior neatly stack themselves before finding their way back into her backpack nine cloudy white crystalline spheres and one metallic box set themselves down on the table while the remaining parts also return to her backpack. Throughout it all Riley smiles widely. Clearly enjoying herself. The crystals go from cloudy to perfectly clear over the course of about a minute. And then they start to get cloudy again. The metallic module splits in two and also starts to morph in small ways the interface port on one half changing from a structure used by Starlight into one documented in a book from the library. The other part grows a small hatch.

"While she's working is there anything else you'd like to discuss?"

"I would like you to have this."

She reaches up and pulls a golden ring from the air, inscribed with the OTC's trigram amid a honeycomb engraving.

"This is a Cernnous. It represents one year of godly effort on the bearer's behalf. It is at a very rough valuation the equal of the technology you intend to grant us. I encourage you to use it for the betterment of your people."

"Thank you. I expect there will be a lot of debate about how we use this."

"I trust your people to find a good use for it."

And she hands the ring over.

A little hologram pops up as it touches her skin. It reads: "This ring is a Cernnous."

Liath frowns. "Sorry, identification routines - Cernnouses announce themselves to their bearers because the form is ceremonial. The enchantment is the coin, not the object it's anchored on."

"Interesting. Do you know how it decided I'm here? Most magics we know of don't register bodies like the one I'm wearing as being people."

"Proximity cues - it assumes anything human shaped is a human, and displays the message if they're nonreceptive to telepathic contact."

"That makes sense. Simpler than I would have expected but simple is good sometimes." She slips the ring onto a finger. "Could you give me a sense of what we could do with this? I expect we'll do a lot of research into things but the only direct application of godly power I was briefed on was the true name erasure on this world and I don't know how much time that took."

"It's roughly worth as much as a custom star system. Where by 'Custom' I mean 'down to individual flowers in the gardens.' A year is a long time in god-hours."

"Would a less detailed construct take less time? Why would someone use a god to fine tune down to that level of detail?"

"Less detailed constructs take less time. Because that level of fine detail control is only really possible with godly intervention, I suppose. It was merely an example."

"That's reasonable."

"I've finished setting up. It'll take a bit longer for the magicite resonators to finish but I can explain what they'll do. Magicite resonators require external energy input to function, you can supply this energy with a heat differential, an electric current or via vibration similar to piezo-electric crystals. The first three resonators here are encoders, all encoders work upon being touched by a person. They first obtain consent from the person they're touching and they store a person's genetics code, mind-state and enough information about the state of their body to allow minimal adaptation for an individual when re-embodied. The first of the encoders is a datastream encoder. After it stores a pattern it'll encode it into the structure of a crystal or several other types of data storage devices. The second encoder will archive the person's pattern in the Heart's Archive and output a token that can be used to lookup the data. The third encoder will store the pattern into the user's non-corporeal metadata substrate, what we colloquially call a soul, this third type of encoder is still undergoing testing because we're not certain if the soul can stably store this much information. Do you have any questions or should I continue? The full documentation will also be on the data storage device when I'm finished transferring it if you're not interested in the details."

"Is the Heart's Archive special in some way or is it simply a very large magical archive?"

"It's stored by what was prior to encountering your organization the closest thing we were aware of to a god. The Heart is the origin of our primary magic system and it exists within its own realm which continually expands as those with its magic use that magic to learn and do more things."

"How do you assemble new bodies to transfer into?"

"These next two resonators are decoders. They'll take a lot more energy than the encoders. You need to pair them to some sort of container or vessel by tapping them on the side. Then they'll begin constructing a new body based and mind from whatever pattern they're provided, either as a retrieval token or a full datastream. They work faster when provided with a medium that is close in elemental and chemical composition to the body they're supposed to construct. They also have safety interlocks that prevent them from using the bodies of living sapient beings from being utilized. In theory, they could construct a full body from the air and input energy but the costs are so astronomically high that we've never actually tested it. The second decoder is paired with the third and it also has the ability to summon and read from a soul, that will only work if the soul isn't currently embodied though, again it's a safety interlock."

"When you say Elemental, you mean periodic and not classical, yes?"

"Yes, this magic system doesn't have a mystic elemental classification."

"What components of the resonators run on nonstandard physics? Or are they entirely magical?"

"For most intents and purposes they're pure magic. They pretend to obey conservation laws but they exceed the maximum efficiency thermodynamically possible as best as we can determine. Some of the energy absorbed is used to power the computation required to perform the operations they're designed for and our experiments suggest it performs computation at an efficiency approximately equivalent to the Landauer limit, which is to say the maximum theoretical efficiency for any computational operation. When a resonator operates on the world though it needs to pay the full energy costs of whatever it's doing though, from elemental synthesis to fusion of elements to chemical synthesis and the creation of charge differentials. The only exception is when it's copying a magical effect from another system of magic or an effect of exotic physics that exceeds those standard limits."

"But if you're using them commonly the energy limit can't be that strict. Or you have some major energy source?"

"Fusion works for most purposes. Hydrogen is cheap. This resonator is a fusion generator." She points to one which has a large number of indentations in the surface. "It'll supply power to a linked resonator if you toss it in either a tank of hydrogen or a tank of water, though it's more efficient with hydrogen."

"We should have no difficulties supplying energy, then. Are there any other components?"

"I'm just making one of each of the resonators we distribute to other civilizations, among the remaining three one is a more durable data storage device for use with the encoders. It has a mental interface which allows you to select one of the stored patterns for use with a decoder. The second device is a general purpose healing device, it operates much like the decoder but repairing damage rather than creating a body from scratch. It will address most conditions but it will only treat the symptoms of genetic conditions rather than editing the genome. There are a variety of documented limitations. The last is a womb-tree regulator. It'll either create or repurpose a plant into one designed to sustain and bring to term a of any species programmed into our central medical archives. The regulator also serves as an interface to assist those carrying a pregnancy with understanding how that might be transferred to its care or allow individuals who would typically be incapable of conceiving do so."

"Fascinating. Oifilei will love it."

She smiles. "Does that about cover it?"

"It does for resonators. You also seemed to be requesting an example of the nanotech based method. Samples of the nanites are stored in an inactive state within that case, and the details on how to use them are stored in the data storage device." She indicates the two metallic devices on the table. And all of that's finished now."

"- I'll need to keep that case in isolation until it's verified as safe. Theta has nanotechnology but it's all persistently infected by a nasty virus so we don't export any of it off-plane. We're cautious about this sort of thing."

"We wouldn't give it to you if we didn't think you'd take precautions like that, nanotechnology is dangerous."

"I'll have it securely teleported to an isolation demiplane now, if you don't mind."

"Of course."

She taps her watch, and the case disappears. 

"Back to freedom of movement?"

"Certainly, what does freedom of movement mean to you? I can see a spectrum of freedom ranging from anyone being allowed to teleport to anywhere else at will to controlled border crossings where anyone who can reach the checkpoint is free to traverse when certain conditions are met."

"We do teleportation circle networks. Small flat fee for transposition of everything you can fit in the circle, traditionally a person and what they're carrying."

"That seems broadly acceptable, I think we would have three concerns. First, there are some items like certain kinds of resonators that we would prefer not be transported beyond our sphere. Two we'd prefer people not be able to bring weapons or other highly dangerous items into our sphere. Three if we end up being an attractive location for migration we may need to place temporary limits on throughput while we build up our infrastructure."

"We have a sponsorship system for habitation on Trade worlds, we could treat your worlds as Trades. They seem to satisfy the criteria more or less. And of course there are import and export controls between any two planes."

"Then I think we can tentatively agree. Any large decision like that will need to be approved by the assembly of course but I expect it will be passed."

"Similarly they'll need to pass the Board here, but I expect it'll be a unanimous decision on our end. More contact is good for business."

"And more contact gives people more chances to learn about and from other cultures."

"I'm glad we can see eye to eye. Is there anything of ours you'd be interested in importing immediately?"

"I think for now we're just interested in importing information. I expect most of your interesting items require exotic magics or physics and those can't be imported without the agreement of at least several committees since allowing magics and physics to spread is generally irrevocable."

"That makes sense. I can offer you bulk rates on our public knowledgebases."

"What would we be trading you and what would we be getting?"

"Either credit from your Cernnous, or knowledge of your own in return, or one of our other currencies. In return you would receive the compiled OTC internal databases of all the magic and goods in our Consortium. It's our business to know things."

"Knowledge for knowledge seems like a fair trade if you're going to put a price on such things. What would you like to know?"

"Your science, your magic. Any exotic materials or technologies you have access to, any pharmacology... In general, we'd want to know about all your advances and culture."

"That seems quite doable, if anyone came to visit our sphere they'd be able to get that anyway. Though I think we'd need to transport that in physical form or as a console interface to the Archive. We have done a lot of research over the past hundred and fifty years and that's not counting the knowledge from before the crisis or that we've received in similar trades from other worlds we've contacted."

"That seems settled, then. Is there anything else you'd like to negotiate?"

"I think that covers the important points. I would be interested in a summary of the situation with Heresy, especially open problems you're having there in case there's something we could do to help. I'm not sure if that's something we would need to purchase though." Siobhán will be quite disappointed if they do charge but these people are already established to be weird.

"That you can have for free, on Director Sunaira's authority. Do you have devices I can dump data to?"

"I have an auxiliary processing core in my bag. That has five petabytes of data storage. Will that suffice? Otherwise I can make another storage orb those have much higher data capacity."

"That will suffice. Please place it in plain view for me?"

She almost levitates it out of her bag but then decides she isn't sure if the permission to use magic still applies and rummages in her backpack instead to pull out a rectangular machine and puts it on the desk.

She taps it once. 

(The gesture mostly is meant as a visual cue. The real data dump is wireless.)

"There," she says. "Our most up-to-date analysis. You'll want to start with the Threats abstract."

"Thank you, I expect myself and my colleagues will be studying that information a lot in the coming days."

"Thank you for your time. I expect that at this point our governing structures are going to have a lot to talk about. Is there a good place for us to stay in this area while we're waiting to hear back? Also do you want to write any formal language around the terms we tentatively agreed to?"

"The OTC maintains pocket-space apartments for visiting employee housing - we can get you two an Executive's pocket condo for immediate use as a temporary residence. An official embassy will no doubt be established on Oifilei itself, but it'll take some negotiation of the exact circumstances. Space there is at a premium. As for formal language - do you object to any of the contents of this meeting being released to the public?"

"Of course not, we'll be releasing the contents on our side too as part of our political process. Is there anything you'd like us to redact? We can do that for a time within reasonable limits."

"No, I think a full release is a good move. I'll talk to the other directors about a formal wording and get back to you with a draft document tomorrow."

"I'm glad we agree then and I look forward to hearing from you."

"Anything else before we adjourn?"

"I think we covered everything we needed to."

"Morning-Glory will show you to your apartment, then. And you're of course free to explore our worlds if you'd like to."

"Thank you."

Director Grey stands and offers her hand to shake. "Welcome to the OTC."

Siobhán is honestly stunned for a moment, though she manages to keep it off her face. Then she decides to assume the inoffensive meaning. "Thank you, I look forward to seeing more of your organization and what you've built."

Director Grey smiles. "Morning-Glory?"

She sweeps a hand across the contents of the table, vanishing them. Then she stands and opens the door. "I'll show you two to your condo now, if you would like."

"That would be appreciated."

"This way." 

Morning-Glory steps out the door and into the hallway.

They follow, "Do you think it would be possible to arrange a tour of OTC worlds?"

"Yes, quite possible. We'd have to arrange the itinerary beforehand, but it would be very doable. Just down the hall here to the circle room, if you please."

"Of course."

Morning-Glory steps into a large runic circle, and gestures for her guests to follow.

As soon as everyone's in the circle, there's a soft flash of light and the room flickers to a different one.

"This way, just around the corner to the right." Windows on the left look out onto a city of carbon-fiber towers; they must be on the fiftieth floor or so.  "Here are your keys." They look charmingly antique, and are engraved with runes all over.

"Thank you."

"Are there any rules about magic use in this facility?"

"So long as you observe proper safety protocols for your own world and magic it should be safe."

"Good to know." She takes the keys and opens the door.

It's a mimimalist-style condo with a great view of the city. Kitchen, living room, laundry room, guest bedroom, master bedroom, bathroom.

"Thank you, this will definitely suffice. We needn't take up any more of your time."

"Here's my cell number, you have a landline here you can call me on if you need anything. I hope you enjoy your stay."

"Thank you again."

"It's no problem."

And she turns and leaves.

Siobhán sighs. "I really hope this wasn't a mistake."

"If they're expanding at anything like the rate we think they are then we could have bought maybe a few years, a decade at most and they would have found out we were intentionally avoiding them. Also their oracles can already see us if I understood correctly. If they thought to ask they could have found us even faster."

"Yeah... Just you heard what she said, they expect to absorb us, for us to become a small part of their sphere."

"Maybe, I think she was surprised by our abilities though, it sounds like for all their scale they focus on a few powerful people."

"I also got the impression they don't have high quality scalable power. I'm not sure how they got to where they are without it but I think the fusion generator might be the most important part of the package for them. Regardless it's mostly out of our hands at this point. The assembly will meet within the next week and I expect a lot of coalitions will change."